Pnin

Nabokov não é só o Lolita.

Não dá para escrever uma review de livros do Nabokov - sinto-me demasiado abaixo disso para o fazer.

Pnin é possivelmente dos livros do Nabokov que já li o mais comovente (ia usar emocional, mas depois lembrei-me do fim do Bend Sinister em que comecei a chorar imenso do nada). Tem pouca história, sendo acerca de Timofey Pnin, um professor universitário que ensina russo aos poucos interessados numa terra onde não se sente à vontade e cuja língua não consegue aprender, que dá água a esquilos, que conduz tão bem como eu, a quem roubam o emprego, que tenta conquistar o filho da sua ex-mulher:

On the eve of the day on which Victor had planned to arrive, Pnin entered a sport shop in Waindell's Main Street and asked for a football. The request was unseasonable but he was offered one.

'No, no,' said Pnin, 'I do not wish an egg or, for example, a torpedo. I want a simple football ball. Round!'

And with wrists and palms he outlined a portable world. It was the same gesture he used in class when speaking of the 'harmonical wholeness' of Pushkin.

The salesman lifted a finger and silently fetched a soccer ball.

'Yes, this I will buy,' said Pnin with dignified satisfaction.

(...)

'It's awfully good,' said Victor, 'but I am not very hungry.'

'Oh, you must eat more, much more if you want to be a footballist.'

'I'm afraid I don't care much for football, In fact, I hate football. I'm not very good at any game, really,'

'You are not a lover of football?' said Pnin, and a look of dismay crept over his large expressive face. He pursed his lips, He opened them - but said nothing. In silence he ate his vanilla ice-cream, which contained no vanilla and was not made of cream.

Pnin é uma personagem completamente inadequada, perdida, emocionalmente imatura, que ninguém quer: não os seus co-expatriados, não os seus colegas de trabalho, não os seus alegados amigos, não a sua ex-mulher. Pnin vive de memórias, do seu pai, do seu primeiro amor, Mira, que ele tenta não recordar por ter sentimentos tão fortes por alguém cuja morte ele não conheceu e que imagina de várias formas, vezes e vezes sem conta.

One had to forget - because one could not live with the thought that this graceful, fragile, tender young woman with those eyes, that smile, those gardens and snows in the background, had been brought in a cattle car and killed by an injection of phenol into the heart, into the gentle heart one had heard beating under one's lips in the dusk of the past.

Mas voltando ao que eu disse no início, sobre ele não conseguir dominar a língua inglesa:

He came out of there, darkly flushed, wild-eyed, and she was shocked to see that his face was a mess of unwiped tears.

'I search, John, for the viscous and sawdust,' he said tragically.

'I am afraid there is no soda,' she answered with her lucid Anglo-Saxon restraint. 'But there is plenty of whisky in the dining-room cabinet. However, I suggest we both have some nice hot tea instead.'

He made the Russian' relinquishing' gesture.

'No, I don't want anything at all,' he said, and sat down at the kitchen table with an awful sigh.

E depois há todas as coisas na sua vida que correm mal, as coisas banais do dia-a-dia, uma simples ida à biblioteca:

'Mrs Fire, permit me to ask something or other. This card which I received yesterday - could you maybe tell me who is the other reader?'

'Let me check.'

She checked. The other reader proved to be Timofey Pnin; Volume 18 had been requested by him the Friday before. It was also true that this Volume 18 was already charged to this Pnin, who had had it since Christmas and now stood with his hands upon it, like an ancestral picture of a magistrate.

'It can't be!' cried Pnin. 'I requested on Friday Volume 19, year 1947, not 18, year 1940'

'But look - you wrote Volume 18. Anyway, 19 is still being processed. Are you keeping this?'

'18, 19,' muttered Pnin. 'There is not great difference! I put the year correctly, that is important! Yes, I still need 18 - and send to me a more effishant card when 19 available.'

Growling a little, he took the unwieldy, abashed book to his favourite alcove and laid it down there, wrapped in his muffler.

They can't read, these women. The year was plainly inscribed.

E tudo isto muda completamente de figura quando é revelado no final que o narrador, a pessoa que nos conta sobre Pnin e a sua vida, é o homem que lhe rouba o emprego, que lhe rouba a mulher, que lhe destrói a vida, que o tira do seu rumo (sendo que há um twist ainda maior por detrás disso).

4/5

Podem comprar uma outra edição em inglês aqui ou em português aqui.