"There is a story to the effect that a
passenger who inadvertantly dropped his glove out of a train window promptly
threw out its mate so that at least the person who found them should have a
pair." (The Gift, Chapter Five)
Russian for "glove" (one is reminded of Schiller's
Handschuh) is perchatka (which comes from perst,
obs., "finger"); while the word used by the Swan Princess in Pushkin's
fairy tale is rukavitsa (which comes from rukav, "sleeve,"
because the ribbon tying a pair of rukavitsy is passed
through the sleeves of a fur coat). The idiom derzhat' v ezhovykh
rukavitsakh ("to rule with an iron rod") occurs in Pushkin's novella "A
Captain's Daughter".
As to the happy lost glove, I thought VN was making fun of
proverbs and their often obscure meaning. Inventing bits of Zemblan folklore
helped him to make Zembla more real.
Alexey Sklyarenko