Nabokov’s Memory Speaks
There, for an instant, the figure of my father in his wind-rippled white summer suit would be displayed, gloriously sprawled in midair…. Thrice, to the mighty heave-ho of his invisible tossers, he would fly up … and then there he would be, on his last and loftiest flight, reclining, as if for good, against the cobalt blue of the summer noon, like one of those paradisiac personages who comfortably soar, with such a wealth of folds in their garments, on the vaulted ceiling of a church while below, one by one, the wax tapers in mortal hands light up to make a swarm of minute flames in the mist of incense, and the priest chants of eternal repose, and funeral lilies conceal the face of whoever lies there, among the swimming lights, in the open coffin.
