I have suggested [Zembla, "Arbitrary Signs and Symbols"] that 
Nabokov wished his readers to discover the exact historical date of 
the pointedly unspecified fictional Friday on which the story 
unfolds, and that this discovery is central to the story.

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Sandy Drescher makes use of my observation that the story is divided into three sections of 7, 4, 19 paragraphs, thus, according to a certain "referential mania" or "logic", suggesting the year 1947. He then states that the fictional Friday is the fourth of April 1947, which in historical reality happened to be both Good Friday and Erev Pesach (Eve of Passover) that year. But he gives no "evidence" for the day or the month. Surely, the very first two numbers in the story, by the same "referential mania" or "logic", provide it: "For the fourth time in as many years..."

 

Anthony Stadlen