“[Nabokov’s] language is made visible . . . like a veil or transparent curtain. You cannot help seeing the curtain as you peek into the intimate rooms behind.”

I am face to face with Joseph Stalin in Lodz in 1950. I was then a freshman at the State University of Lodz, a Stalinist school in Stalinist Poland. It was early morning and I was late for an obligatory meeting of a student union.