Yet Ambergris—city of versions and virgins both—did its best to remind him of the darkness. Everywhere, new tributes to Bender sprang up, for Bender’s popularity had never been so high. It could be said with confidence that the man might never fade from memory. Under the vengeful eyes of Bender statues, posters, and memorial buildings, the Reds and Greens gradually lost their focus and exhausted themselves. Some merged with traditional political factions, but many died in a final confrontation at the Voss Bender Memorial Post Office. By spring, Ambergris seemed much as it had before Bender’s death.

It was in the spring, one chilly morning, that Lake sat down in front of the unfinished painting of the man from his nightmare. The man smiled with his broken teeth, as if in warning, but he wasn’t fearsome anymore. He was lonely and sad, trapped by the green paint surrounding his face.

Lake had snuck out of bed, so as not to disturb his still-sleeping lover, but now he felt Merri’s eyes upon his back. Gingerly, he picked up a brush and a new tube of moss-green paint. The brush handle felt rough, grainy, the paint bottle smooth and sleek. His grasp on the brush was tentative but strong. The paint smelled good to him and he could feel his senses awakening to its promise. The sun from the balcony embraced him with its warmth.

“What are you doing?” Merrimount mumbled.

Lake turned, the light streaming from the window almost unbearable, and said, with a wry, haunted grin, “I’m painting.”

The Strange Case of X

The objects that are being summoned assemble, draw near from different spots; in doing so, some of them have to overcome not only the distance of space but that of time: which named, you may wonder, is more bothersome to cope with, this one or that, the young poplar, say, that once grew in the vicinity but was cut down long ago, or the singled-out courtyard which still exists today but is situated far away from here?

—Vladimir Nabokov, “The Leonardo”

It was damp and unpleasant that morning, a methodical drizzle drifting down out of a dull gray sky. An ephemeral rain he might have thought, and yet the buildings, discolored and blackened in their sooty ranks, steeped in the smell of gasoline and hay mixed with dung, seemed to have been contoured and worn down by it, or at least resigned to it. The few passersby on the street, shivering against the cold, were subdued, anonymous, sickly; their shoes made wet splacking noises in the puddles. The sound, startling in the silence, depressed him and he was glad to reach his destination, glad when the glass doors closed behind him, shutting out the smell of the rain.