 Brilliant's Audio presents the unabridged recording of Look at the Harlequins by Vladimir Nabokov, performed by Stefan Rudnitsky. Two Vera. Part one. One. I met the first of my three or four successive wives in somewhat odd circumstances, the development of which resembled the clumsy conspiracy, with nonsensical details and the main plotter who not only knew nothing of its real object but insisted on making inept moves that seemed to preclude the slightest possibility of success. Yet, out of those very mistakes, he unwittingly wove a web in which a set of reciprocal blunders on my part caused me to get involved and fulfill the destiny that was the only aim of the plot. Sometime during the Easter term of my last Cambridge year, 1922, I happened to be consulted as a Russian on certain niceties of makeup in an English version of Gogol's Inspector, which the Glow Worm Group, directed by Ivor Black, a fine amateur actor, intended to stage. He and I had the same tutor at Trinity, and he drove me to distraction with his tedious miming of the old man's mincing ways. A performance he kept up throughout most of our lunch at the pit. The brief business part turned out to be even less pleasant. Ivor Black wanted Gogol's town mayor to wear a dressing gown because wasn't it merely the old rascal's nightmare and didn't Revisor, its Russian title, actually come from the French for dream, rev? I said I thought it a ghastly idea. If there were any rehearsals, they took place without me. In fact it occurs to me now that I do not really know if his project ever saw the footlights. Shortly after that I met Ivor Black a second time, at some party or other, in the course of which he invited me and five other men to spend the summer at a Côte d'Azur villa he had just inherited, he said, from an old aunt. He was very drunk at the moment and seemed surprised when a week or so later on the eve of his departure I reminded him of his exuberant invitation, which it so happened I alone had accepted. We both were unpopular orphans, and should I remarked, banned together. Illness detained me in England for another month and it was only at the beginning of July that I sent Ivor Black a polite postcard advising him that I might arrive in Cannes or Nice some time. All complete. Ready to continue?