Glory by Vladimir Nabokov

the menials along the rustling paths, while his mother, seated on a bench beneath a maple, pensively pierced the damp crimson leaves on the brown ground with the point of her walking stick. Such wild, varied beauty did not exist in England, where nature had a tame greenhouse quality, and an unimaginative autumn faded away in geometrical gardens under a drizzly sky. But the pinkish-gray walls, the rectangular lawns, frosted with pale silver on the rare sunny mornings, the narrow river, the stone bridge whose arch formed a full circle with its perfect reflection, all had a beauty of their own.
    Neither the foul weather nor the icy chill of the bedroom,where tradition forbade heating, could alter the meditative joie de vivre characteristic of Martin. He grew sincerely fond of his little living room, with its comfortable fireplace, its dusty pianola, innocuous lithographs on the walls, low wicker armchairs, and the cheap china bric-a-brac on the shelves. When, late at night, the sacred flame of the fireplace threatened to die, he would scrape the embers together, pile some wood chips on them, heap on a mountain of coal, fan the fire with the asthmatic bellows, and make the chimney draw by spreading an ample sheet of the Times across the mouth of the hearth. The taut sheet would grow warm and transparent, and the lines of print, mingling with the lines showing through from the reverse side, looked like the bizarre lettering of some mumbo-jumbo language. Then, as the hum and tumult of the fire increased, a fox-red, darkening spot would appear on the paper and suddenly burst through. The whole sheet, now aflame, would be instantly sucked in and sent flying up. And a belated passer-by, a gowned don, could observe, through the gloom of the gothic night, a fiery-haired witch emerge from the chimney into the starry sky. Next day Martin would pay a fine.
    Being of lively and sociable temperament Martin did not remain alone for long. Fairly soon he made friends with his downstairs neighbor Darwin, as well as with various men at the soccer field, the club, and the dining hall. He noticed that everyone felt it his duty to discuss Russia with him and to learn what he thought about the Revolution, intervention, Lenin and Trotsky; while some, who had visited Russia, praised Russian hospitality and asked if he happened to know a Mr. Ivanov in Moscow. Such talk nauseated Martin; casually taking a volume of Pushkin from his desk he would read aloud “Autumn” in Archibald Moon’s translation:
O dismal period, visual enchantment!
Sweet is to me thy farewell loveliness!
I love the sumptuous withering of nature,
The woods arrayed in gold and purple dress.
    This caused some astonishment, and only Darwin, a large, sleepy-looking Englishman in a canary-yellow jumper, who sprawled in an armchair, making wheezing sounds with his pipe and gazing up at the ceiling, would nod approvingly.
    This Darwin, who often dropped in after dinner, elucidated certain strict, primordial rules in full detail for Martin’s edification: a student must not walk outdoors in hat and overcoat, no matter how cold it was; one did not shake hands or wish a good morning, but greeted an acquaintance one happened to meet, even if it were Atom Thompson himself, with a grin and a breezy interjection. It was bad form to go out on the river in an ordinary rowboat: for this purpose there were punts and canoes. One should never repeat the old college witticisms, of which freshmen become immediately enamored. “Remember, though,” Darwin added wisely, “that even in observing these traditions you mustn’t overdo, for sometimes, to shock the snobs, it’s a good thing to go out in a bowler hat and with an umbrella under your arm.” Martin got the impression that Darwin had already been at the university a long time, several years, and he felt sorry for him as he did for any homebody. Darwin amazed him by his sleepiness, the sluggishness of his movements, a certain comfortableness