Vladimir Nabokov. Lik
Vladimir Nabokov. LIK
Lik crossed the threshold and immediately found himself in a low-ceilinged, dark room, whose bare walls, as if distorted by some awful pressure from above, formed incomprehensible curves and corners. The place was crammed with the dingy stage properties of indigence. The boy of a moment ago sat on the sagging connubial bed; a huge fair-haired woman with thick bare feet emerged from a corner and, without a smile on her bloated pale face (whose every feature, even the eyes, seemed smudged, by fatigue, or melancholy, or God knows what), wordlessly greeted Lik.
"Get acquainted, get acquainted," Koldunov muttered in derisive encouragement,