Book Quote Friday: Sounds

         For my book quote this week I've chosen a passage from Sounds, a short story by Vladimir Nabokov. He's obviously best known for Lolita and other work like Pnin and Pale Fire, but he wrote a prodigious number of short stories in his time, amongst which are some of the best examples of the form. Sounds was one of his first, and as someone at the very beginning of their much hoped-for writing career, it really interests me to see what other writers were able to achieve at the very beginning of theirs. Suffice to say, I am humbled.









Short Story Serial: ‘Saturday Afternoon, Odessa’ – Part Thirteen

     ...Maybe I'll just lock my bedroom door until he's gone. Click. There. Me on one side, them on the other. Maybe I should escape in a box of oranges like Cheburashka? I can be cute when necessary too.

THE END

 






Short Story Serial: ‘Saturday Afternoon, Odessa’ – Part Twelve

         ...I can't wait for it. I know that there's got to be air above this level, but with a leather jacket in my kitchen and a single thought inside his head even I can admit aspiration seems foolish. I guess I can't blame my parents for not wanting to take the chance.
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Short Story Serial: ‘Saturday Afternoon, Odessa’ – Part Eleven

     ...Anyway, there's not much money in the jar to give today's hooligan so he should be gone as soon as he's scared my mother witless. Maybe if we didn't pay and had to flee in the night, bags in hand and possessions on our backs, then we could go somewhere better? Well, perhaps not. That hardly seems like an honourable way to progress and I'd hate for someone to dig that little fact up once I'm well-known and in my proper place. Mud sticks, you know, so I'm gonna keep myself rosy clean and sparkly fresh and in fight stance so I'm ready when my moment arrives.


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Short Story Serial: ‘Saturday Afternoon, Odessa’ – Part Ten

      ...I can see now that that vehicle I saw approaching is one of Simeon's vans and can (from my bed) hear it hurtling up the road and hand-braking into our yard. I hope one of the dogs get whichever base-level thug he sent to collect the money this time; although when you consider how the wild dogs round here have thrived and multiplied perhaps I should give them more credit than to go for minion shit like him. Or not; they do live on rats and the anything else that wanders down from Chernobyl. Maybe the dogs succeed so successfully because they don't buy their protection from the same people that pose the threat? Huh.
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Short Story Serial: ‘Saturday Afternoon, Odessa’ – Part Nine

       ...As I think I said before, I plan to educate my ass out of this dump as fast as humanly possible, and then I'll be on the first flight, full scholarship, one way. There might be an obligatory year in Odessa whilst I find the right course, but then I will be on my way, leaving a welcome trail of jealous looks and snide put-downs in my wake. Who cares? It's not like I'll write. My teachers think I could do it. They told my parents so at a school visit last year and they just scoffed and laughed and looked at each other with pathetic sad eyes. It must be hard to hear that your daughter is desperate to leave, but that's not my fault: if they wanted me to stay so badly they should have lived somewhere worth living in the first place.
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Short Story Serial: ‘Saturday Afternoon, Odessa’ – Part Eight

       ...I don't see the attraction of the city, I really don't. The kids in my class dream of the day they can live in their own little box of post-Soviet slum and either date or be one of the guys who managed to bring his weapon back after completing his National Service. It's disgusting. The guys who run the place (the bratva, if you'll excuse the use of my native tongue) are usually Ukrainian-Ukrainians, rather than Russians like me, who wield their state-issued firearms around like they're something to be proud of. If I was ever in charge, ensuring the proper return of military kit post-conscription would be the first thing I'd do, as for years now it's been a fucking joke. Give a kid a weapon, teach him how to use it, scramble his brain with hideous sights and then set him free, telling him he'll never get a job. Government-enabled mafia boys under the steely grey sky. Forgive my slight lyrical turn there again; I have words running through my head in a way that people here don't understand. I rarely get the chance to flaunt my mind.
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