Mary (Nabokov novel)

 Mary is the tale of Lev Glebovich Ganin, a Russian emigre and former White Guard Officer displaced by the Russian Revolution. Ganin is currently living in a boarding house in Berlin, along with a young Russian girl named Klara, an older Russian poet, Podtyagin his landlady Lydia Nikolaevna Dorn and his neighbour, Aleksey Ivanovich Alfyorov, whom he encounters in a gloomy, broken elevator at the start of the novel. Ganin learns from Alfyorov that Mary the first woman he fell in love with was his first love, is now his wife. He also snaps an image. Once Ganin realizes this, he ends the relationship with his girlfriend, Lyudmila, and begins to be consumed by his memories of his experiences in Russia with Mary that Ganin says as "perhaps the most joyful times of his life". Enticed by the vision of Mary and unable to let Alfyorov have her, Ganin contrives to reunite with Mary whom he believes still loves him. Ganin eventually claims that he'll be leaving Berlin the night prior to the time that Mary arrives. The other residents of the house organize a celebration for him. Ganin consistently bribes Alfyorov with alcohol, progressively intoxicating him. When Alfyorov is able to fall into a drunken state of sleep, he demands Ganin to set his alarm for half-past seven as Alfyorov plans to meet Mary at the train station in the following morning. Ganin fascinated by Mary, sets the alarm to eleven and plans to meet her at the station. There is a brief moment of clarity as he leaves the home. "The memory-filled world Ganin lived in was transformed into the actuality it was: The past that was far away... In the absence of that image, no Mary existed or would have existed." Instead of meeting Mary, Ganin decides to take a train ride to France.A other, unimportant plot concerns an old Russian poet named Anton Sergeyevich Podtyagin, who seems to be an older version of Ganin. His life spent writing poetry is often ridiculed. Podtyagin is longing to leave Berlin and reach Paris but is unable do so because of a variety of negative events, including. loses passport).