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Niagara on the Lake, Ontario, Canada
My virtue is that I say what I think, my vice that what I think doesn't amount to much.

Tuesday, July 21, 2020

“Details of a Sunset,” a short story by Vladimir Nabokov

The last streetcar was disappearing in the mirrorlike murk of the street and, along the wire above it, a spark of Bengal light, crackling and quivering, sped into the distance like a blue star.
“Well, might as well just plod along, even though you are pretty drunk, Mark, pretty drunk….”
The spark went out. The roofs glistened in the moonlight, silvery angles broken by oblique black cracks.
Through this mirrory darkness he staggered home: Mark Standfuss, a salesclerk, a demigod, fair-haired Mark, a lucky fellow with a high starched collar. At the back of his neck, above the white line of that collar, his hair ended in a funny, boyish little tag that had escaped the barber’s scissors. That little tag was what made Klara fall in love with him, and she swore that it was true love, that she had quite forgotten the handsome ruined foreigner who last year had rented a room from her mother, Frau Heise.
“And yet, Mark, you’re drunk….”

Read the whole story: Biblioklept

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