The Eye

by Vladimir Nabokov

Actually, of course, they might just as well have been Norwegians in Naples or Ambracians in Ambridge:

WEINSTOCK: Have you found rest? LENIN: This is not Baden-Baden. WEINSTOCK: Do you wish to tell me of life beyond the grave? LENIN (after a pause): I prefer not to. WEINSTOCK: Why? LENIN: Must wait till there is a plenum.

People used to joke that she had a weakness for me, but I had always found her obesity and her carnal lips extremely repulsive.

Again in the semidarkness Weinstock floats by, seated at his planchette table as if at a steering wheel; again the maid – Hilda or Gretchen – passes dreamily from one door to another, and suddenly begins to whisper and wriggle out of her dress. Whenever I wish, I can accelerate or retard to ridiculous slowness the motions of all these people, or distribute them in different groups, or arrange them in various patterns, lighting them now from below, now from the side … For me, their entire existence has been merely a shimmer on a screen.

a pogromystic novelette by a Russian lady in Belgrade or Harbin.