Vladimir Nabokov, The Return of Chorb
"And just as he had tried, on the southern beach, to find again that unique rounded black pebble with the regular little white belt, which she had happened to show him on the eve of their last ramble, so now he did his best to look up all the roadside items that retained her exclamation mark: the special profile of a cliff, a hut roofed with a layer of silvery-gray scales, a black fir tree and a footbridge over a white torrent, and something which one might be inclined to regard as a kind of fatidic prefiguration: the radial span of a spider’s web between two telegraph wires that were beaded with droplets of mist. She accompanied him: her little boots stepped rapidly, and her hands never stopped moving, moving—to pluck a leaf from a bush or stroke a rock wall in passing—light, laughing hands that knew no repose. He saw her small face with its dense dark freckles, and her wide eyes, whose pale greenish hue was that of the shards of glass licked smooth by the sea waves."
1 Quotes
"And just as he had tried, on the southern beach, to find again that unique rounded black pebble with the regular little white belt, which she had happened to show him on the eve of their last ramble, so now he did his best to look up all the roadside items that retained her exclamation mark: the special profile of a cliff, a hut roofed with a layer of silvery-gray scales, a black fir tree and a footbridge over a white torrent, and something which one might be inclined to regard as a kind of fatidic prefiguration: the radial span of a spider’s web between two telegraph wires that were beaded with droplets of mist. She accompanied him: her little boots stepped rapidly, and her hands never stopped moving, moving—to pluck a leaf from a bush or stroke a rock wall in passing—light, laughing hands that knew no repose. He saw her small face with its dense dark freckles, and her wide eyes, whose pale greenish hue was that of the shards of glass licked smooth by the sea waves."
"وكما سعى، على الشاطئ الجنوبي، أن يستعيد تلك الحصاة السوداء الفريدة المستديرة، ذات الحزام الأبيض الصغير المنتظم، التي أرتْه إياها صدفةً عشية نزهتهما الأخيرة، كذلك الآن اجتهد في البحث عن كل ما على قارعة الطريق مما استبقى أثر دهشتها: التكوين المميز لجرف، كوخ تعلو سقفه قشور فضية رمادية، شجرة شوح سوداء، وجسر خشبي فوق جدول أبيض متدفق. وما قد يرى فيه المرء إرهاصًا قدريًا: امتداد خيوط عنكبوت شعاعيًا بين سلكين برقيين تكللا بقطرات الضباب. كانت ترافقه: خطا حذاؤها الصغير بخفة، ويداها لا تكفان عن الحركة، لتقطفا ورقة من شجيرة أو تمسحا جدارًا صخريًا وهي تمر – يدان خفيفتان مرحتان لا تهدآن. رأى وجهها الصغير وقد غطته نمشات داكنة كثيفة، وعينيها الواسعتين، اللتين كان لونهما الأخضر الشاحب كلون شظايا الزجاج التي صقلتها أمواج البحر."
Vladimir Nabokov, The Return of Chorb
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