Invitation to a Beheading

by Vladimir Nabokov

Cincinnatus moved the table and began dragging it backwards as it shrieked with rage: how unwillingly, with what shudderings it moved across the stone floor! Its shudderings were transmitted to Cincinnatus’s fingers and to Cincinnatus’s palate as he retreated towards the window (that is, towards the wall where way, way up high, there was the inclined cavity of the window). A loud spoon fell, the cup began to dance, the pencil started to roll, one book began sliding upon another.

Cincinnatus was standing on tiptoe, holding the iron bars with his small hands, which were all white from the strain, and half of his face was covered with a sunny grating, and the gold of his left moustache shone, and there was a tiny golden cage in each of his mirrorlike pupils, while below, from behind, his heels rose out of the too-large slippers.

For a while they were all silent – the earthenware pitcher with water at the bottom that had offered drink to all the prisoners of the world; the walls, with their arms around each other’s shoulders like a foursome discussing a square secret in inaudible whispers;

Matter was weary. Time gently dozed.

The first sentence drags. The second sentence floats.

Rodion as he dragged her; her eyes kept rolling back, her shoulder strap slipped off, and now, with a swinging motion, as though he were emptying a water bucket, he splashed her out into the corridor.

he startled the loud-legged chair, which never spent the night in the same spot twice,