In VN’s novel Zashchita Luzhina (“The Luzhin Defense,” 1930) one of the guests at a party thrown by Luzhin’s wife, Petrov, is compared to nekiy sosud (a vessel) filled with something so sacred and rare that it would be a sacrilege to paint the clay:
In VN’s novel Zashchita Luzhina (“The Luzhin Defense,” 1930) Valentinov (Luzhin’s tutor and manager) tells to the twenty-year-old Luzhin (who came out a victor in a chess tournament in London, the first after the war) “Bleshchi, poka bleshchetsya” (“Shine while you can”):
In VN’s novel Zashchita Luzhina (“The Luzhin Defense,” 1930) Luzhin makes the acquaintance of his future wife at a German resort, a month after his father’s death. To the girl’s question how long he had been playing chess Luzhin replies "Eighteen years, three months and four days:"
At the beginning of VN’s novel Zashchita Luzhina (The Luzhin Defense, 1930) little Luzhin finds a mysterious sweetness in the fact that a long number, arrived at with difficulty, at the decisive moment, after many adventures, is divided by nineteen without any remainder:
In VN’s novel Zashchita Luzhina (“The Luzhin Defense,” 1930) Luzhin gets married on Thursday, November 29, 1928, and commits suicide 84 days (twelve weeks) later, on Thursday, February 21, 1929:
