Vladimir Nabokov. Un jirón de vida : Клуб изучающих испанский языкVladimir Nabokov. Un jirón de vida
Vladimir Nabokov. A SLICE OF LIFE
n Russian, "my father did not wish to get into trouble with the authorities and therefore de-cided to build a fence around it. Okay, that was settled. Our house was about as far from theirs as—" He looked around, nodded absentmind-edly to his wife, and continued in a perfectly relaxed manner: "—as far as from here to the tramway, so that they could not have any claims. But you must agree, that spending the entire autumn in Vilna without electricity is no joking matter. Well, then, most reluctantly—"
I found it impossible to understand what he was talking about. The German listened dutifully, with half-opened mouth: his knowledge of Russian was scanty, the shee