Mary (Nabokov novel)

 Mary is the story of Lev Glebovich Ganin, a Russian exile and former White Guard Officer displaced by the Russian Revolution. Ganin is now living in a boardinghouse in Berlin, along with a young Russian girl named Klara, an old Russian poet, Podtyagin, his landlady Lydia Nikolaevna Dorn and his neighbour, Aleksey Ivanovich Alfyorov, whom he meets in a gloomy, broken elevator at the beginning of the story. Through a series conversations with Alfyorov and a photo, Ganin discovers that his long-lost lover, Mary, is now the wife of his rather disapproving neighbour, and that she'll be joining his family soon. When Ganin realizes this, he decides to end his relationship with his girlfriend, Lyudmila, and begins to become consumed by the memories of his experience in Russia with Mary, which Ganin declares were "perhaps the happiest days of his life". Enthralled by his image of Mary and unwilling to let Alfyorov have her, Ganin contrives to reunite with Mary whom he believes is still in love with him. At last, Ganin claims that he will leave Berlin the night before Mary is due to arrive, and the other residents organize a celebration for him the night before. Ganin continues to intoxicate Alfyorov by providing him with alcohol. Alfyorov is about to sink into a drunken sleep when Ganin requests Ganin to set his alarm to half-past-seven because Alfyorov is planning to meet Mary at the station the following day. The enthralled Ganin decides to set the timer for 11 and plans to meet Mary at the train station by himself. But, when he is leaving the house, he has a moment of clarity. "The universe of memory Ganin was living in changed into the reality it was: The distant past... Without this image, there is no way that Mary existed or would have existed." Instead of meeting Mary, Ganin decides to board a train to France.