A Short Story For Saturday

The opening paragraph of Nabokov’s “Signs and Symbols,” published in the May 15, 1948 issue of The New Yorker:

For the fourth time in as many years, they were confronted with the problem of what birthday present to take to a young man who was incurably deranged in his mind. Desires he had none. Man-made objects were to him either hives of evil, vibrant with a malignant activity that he alone could perceive, or gross comforts for which no use could be found in his abstract world. After eliminating a number of articles that might offend him or frighten him (anything in the gadget line, for instance, was taboo), his parents chose a dainty and innocent trifle—a basket with ten different fruit jellies in ten little jars.

Read the rest here. For more, check out The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov. Explore previous SSFSs here.