The Truth in Fiction

I am currently reading Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov.  I read Lolita in graduate school and was awed by the work and the writer.  I came across this passage yesterday in my reading, and it was so real and true that I could not help sharing it.  It is such a precise description of my experience here of late....


"I do not intend to complain, " said Cincinnatus, "but wish to ask you, is there in the so-called order of so-called things of which your so-called world consists even one thing that might be an assurance that you will keep a promise?"

"A promise?" asked the director in surprise, ceasing to fan himself with the cardboard part of the calendar (depicting the fortress at sunset, a water color).  "What promise?"

"That my wife will come tomorrow.  So you will not agree to guarantee it in this case--but I am phrasing my question more broadly: if there in this world, can there be, any kind of security at all, any pledge of anything, or is the very idea of guarantee unknown here?"

A pause.

"Isn't it too bad though about Roman Vissarionovich," said the director, "have you heard? He is in bed with a cold, and apparently quite a serious one..."

"I have a feeling that you will not answer me at any cost; that is logical, for even irresponsibility in the end develops its own logic."

Creepy how accurate it is, and to think.....we never even met and swapped stories.