Communication and Miscommunication

Nabokov's France is a place where attempts at communication routinely break down. For example, when the narrator and his wife write to her uncle in New York, they receive no reply. After finding his wife (and the train) gone at Faugeres, the narrator engages in a "nightmare struggle with the telephone" trying to find her, and sends "two or three telegrams which are probably on their way only now." These examples of bureaucratic miscommu-nication serve to underscore the more subtle examples of miscommunication that occur throughout the story. For example, the narrator's wife is initially attracted to his "obscure" verse, only to eventually find behind it "a stranger's unlovable face." She had thought the man would be as mysterious as his poetry, but was mistaken. Similarly, before his wife tells him that she has been unfaithful, her body language communicates to him tenderness (he "held her...