Nabokov begins the final chapter of the book with a memory of walking home from the maternity hospital in Berlin in 1934. It is 5 a.m., and his wife, Vyra, has just given birth to their first child, a boy they named Dmitri.
He describes their fascination with their new son, the encapsulation of humanity in a tiny, but rapidly evolving form. As Dmitri grows, he develops a love of trains. This, Nabokov says, seems to be an a priori male fascination for anything with wheels, which he has already noticed in his son's interest for the wheels of the pram that bear him along the sidewalks of Berlin.
Nabokov aptly sums up Demitri's toddler years, writing, "Never in my life have I sat on so many benches and park chairs, stone slabs and stone.....
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