A ball rolls under a chair, the only furniture in a room: “things seem to have some sort of survival instinct.” Trying to quit cigarettes, Nabokov imagines the angels smoking in Heaven like guilty schoolboys. When the archangel passes, they throw their cigarettes away, and “this is what falling stars are.” From Paris, he describes the Métro: “It stinks like between the toes and it’s just as cramped.”