Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov Chapter One 1 The elderly passenger sitting on the north-window side of that inexorably moving railway coachnext to an empty seat and facing two empty ones was none other than Professor Timofey Pnin.Ideally bald sun-tanned and clean-shaven he began rather impressively with that great browndome of his tortoise-shell glasses masking an infantile absence of eyebrows apish upperlip thick neck and strong-man torso in a tightish tweed coat but ended somewhatdisappointingly in a pair of spindly legs now flannelled and crossed and frail-lookingalmost feminine feet. His sloppy socks were of scarlet wool with lilac lozenges hisconservative black Oxfords had cost him about as much as all the rest of his clothingflamboyant goon tie included. Prior to the 1940s during the staid European era of his lifehe had always worn long underwear its terminals tucked into the tops of neat silk socks whichwere clocked soberly coloured and held up on his cotton-clad calves by garters. In thosedays to reveal a glimpse of that white underwear by pulling up a trouser leg too high wouldhave seemed to Pnin as indecent as showing himself to ladies minus collar and tie for evenwhen decayed Mme Roux the concierge of the squalid apartment house in the SixteenthArrondissement of Paris where Pnin after escaping from Leninized Russia and completing hiscollege education in Prague had spent fifteen years--happened to come up for the rent while hewas without his faux col prim Pain would cover his front stud with a chaste hand. All thisunderwent a change in the heady atmosphere of the New World. Nowadays at fifty-two he wascrazy