Vladimir Nabokov. Una belleza rusa
Vladimir Nabokov. A RUSSIAN BEAUTY
She spoke French fluently, pronouncing lessens (the servants) as if rhyming with agence and splitting aout (August) in two syllables (a-ou). She naively translated the Russian grabezhi (robberies) as les grabuges (quarrels) and used some archaic French locutions that had somehow survived in old Russian families, but she rolled her r's most convincingly even though she had never been to France. Over the dresser in her Berlin room a postcard of Serov's portrait of the Tsar was fastened with a pin with a fake turquoise head. She was religious, but at times a fit of giggles would overcome her in church. She wrote verse with that terrifying facility typical of young Russian girls of he