The Gift Novel
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The Gift Novel
The Gift, a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, was originally serialized (in a stripped-down form in Russia) as Dar in 1937–38. It was published in its entirety as a book in 1952. The Gift is set in World War I Berlin, where Nabokov himself was a refugee.
An intimate story about the Russian émigré community, the novel tells the parallel story of Fyodor's character's development as a talented young writer and his love affair with fellow townsman Zina. Oops, it looks like your Internet Explorer is out of date. For a better shopping experience, please upgrade now.
C H R I S T M A S 2 0 0 6 It's Christmas night. Everyone is sleeping at home except me. From my window, I could see that it was starting to snow, but not seriously. I feel like a curtain falls on the day.
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There is a stillness with the moment that pervades my thoughts. I sit down with a pencil and a pad of paper. I am ready to write a story. This is not a Christmas story. Christmas is almost over, dying like a fire in my hearth, sharing its last warmth and light.
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Tomorrow the ornaments and decorations come down, and we put Christmas in boxes and bins. But first our family visits a graveyard which is not far from our house. I brush the snow off one of the headstones, then place the poinsettia on the marble table.
I hold my wife and daughter and we remember the children. We will not be the first footprint in the snow or the first flower left. Two bouquets are waiting. They are there every year. You may or may not already know some of our stories.
Some of them make news. But all you hear is a few playlists and it's not good to play. My heart is very heavy tonight. I believe it is time for the world to know the whole truth, or at least as much as I know.
You give them. So tonight, I begin recording our story for posterity. I knew from the beginning that many would not believe it. You may not believe it. It doesn't matter. I lived there. I know the boy and what he can do. And some things are true whether you want to believe it or not.
I was born with Tourette syndrome. If you're like most people, you're not sure what Tourette's is, but you suspect it has something to do with yelling in public. You would be right about ten percent. Tourette syndrome is a neurological disorder characterized by repetitive, involuntary movements;
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What makes a "normal" person uncomfortable. Some of us, about ten percent, have publicly cursed. Some of us bark or make noise at other animals. I have contractions. I have over 20 different expressions, from talking to clearing my throat and repeatedly blinking, shrugging, shaking my head and smiling.
My last tick was on my hand, and even though it hurt, I still prefer a face tick, because you can't hide your face in your pocket. I also have a compulsion to spit in the faces of famous people. I've never spat in anyone's face, maybe I don't know anyone famous, but the motivation is there.
Once I saw Tony Danza at a Park City restaurant and I put my hand over my mouth just to be safe. My strangest symptom is the need to touch sharp objects. If you go through my wallet you will find dollar bills folded at sharp corners.
Paper money has linen, which makes it a particularly sharp corner. But anything sharp brings me comfort. I always have a dozen or more pencils on my desk at work. Sometimes people ask if my contractions are painful. I invite them to try this experiment: blink sixty times in a minute and see how your eyes feel.
Now do this continuously for sixteen hours. I remember, as a child, holding my face at night so I couldn't stop it from moving and it hurt. But the physical pain is greater than the physical pain of society, like sitting alone in the school cafeteria, because no one wants to sit next to someone with a funny voice.
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The shocked look on the girl's face will do the trick when you ask for your face. (Contractions are usually more anxiety-inducing, and if asking a girl out doesn't make you nervous, what does?) Or being surrounded by all the kids at summer camp because they want to see what the freak is going to do next.
There is a reason I learned to take care of myself. Not surprisingly, I read a lot. The book is the most patient of friends. There were big books then. Old Yeller, Andy Buckram's Tin Man, Where Red Ferns Grow, Hockey Sticks Fly. But my biggest love is comic books.
Not lazy kids like Archie and Jughead, but Marvel, heroes with muscles, bulging through leather suits. Characters like Spiderman, Captain America, Ironman and the Incredible Hulk. I read my magazine before and after school and sleep long at night, with the light on. I've always dreamed of being special: being able to walk through walls (or punch one through one), fly, burst into flames, or roll around in a force field - safe from whatever the bad guys throw at me.
By the way, the power I want most is invisible. The way I got my wish when I was eight. I became invisible. Not everyone. Only with important ones. Tourette's wasn't a bad part of my childhood. Five weeks after my eighth birthday, on Christmas Day, tragedy struck my family. Ten months later my parents filed for divorce.
But it is not over. My father committed suicide on the twenty-fifth of December, one year to the day, grief struck. After that my mother was neither physically nor mentally well. She spent most of her time in bed. She never hugged or kissed me again.
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