When, in the middle of the twentieth century, Van started to
	reconstruct his deepest past, he soon noticed that such details
	of his infancy as really mattered (for the special purpose the
	reconstruction pursued) could be best treated, could not seldom
31.05	be only treated, when reappearing at various later stages of his
	boyhood and youth, as sudden juxtapositions that revived the
	part while vivifying the whole. This is why his first love
	has precedence here over his first bad hurt or bad dream.
	He had just turned thirteen. He had never before left the
31.10	comforts of the paternal roof. He had never before realized
	that such "comforts" might not be taken for granted, only
	occurring in some introductory ready-made metaphor in a
	book about a boy and a school. A few blocks from the school-
	grounds, a widow, Mrs. Tapirov, who was French but spoke
31.15	English with a Russian accent, had a shop of objets d'art and
	more or less antique furniture. He visited it on a bright winter
	day. Crystal vases with crimson roses and golden-brown asters
	were set here and there in the fore part of the shop — on a gilt-
	wood console, on a lacquered chest, on the shelf of a cabinet,
31.20	or simply along the carpeted steps leading to the next floor
	where great wardrobes and flashy dressers semi-encircled a

[ 31 ]

	singular company of harps. He satisfied himself that those
	flowers were artificial and thought it puzzling that such imita-
	tions always pander so exclusively to the eye instead of also
	copying the damp fat feel of live petal and leaf. When he
32.05	called next day for the object (unremembered now, eighty years
	later) that he wanted repaired or duplicated, it was not ready or
	had not been obtained. In passing, he touched a half-opened rose
	and was cheated of the sterile texture his fingertips had expected
	when cool life kissed them with pouting lips. "My daughter,"
32.10	said Mrs. Tapirov, who saw his surprise, "always puts a bunch
	of real ones among the fake pour attraper le client. You drew
	the joker." As he was leaving she came in, a schoolgirl in a
	gray coat with brown shoulder-length ringlets and a pretty face.
	On another occasion (for a certain part of the thing — a frame,
32.15	perhaps — took an infinite time to heal or else the entire article
	proved to be unobtainable after all) he saw her curled up with
	her schoolbooks in an armchair — a domestic item among those
	for sale. He never spoke to her. He loved her madly. It must
	have lasted at least one term.
32.20	That was love, normal and mysterious. Less mysterious and
	considerably more grotesque were the passions which several
	generations of schoolmasters had failed to eradicate, and which
	as late as 1883 still enjoyed an unparalleled vogue at Riverlane.
	Every dormitory had its catamite. One hysterical lad from
32.25	Upsala, cross-eyed, loose-lipped, with almost abnormally awk-
	ward limbs, but with a wonderfully tender skin texture and
	the round creamy charms of Bronzino’s Cupid (the big one,
	whom a delighted satyr discovers in a lady’s bower), was
	much prized and tortured by a group of foreign boys, mostly
32.30	Greek and English, led by Cheshire, the rugby ace; and partly
	out of bravado, partly out of curiosity, Van surmounted his
	disgust and coldly watched their rough orgies. Soon, however,
	he abandoned this surrogate for a more natural though equally
	heartless divertissement.

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	The aging woman who sold barley sugar and Lucky Louse
	magazines in the corner shop, which by tradition was not
	strictly out of bounds, happened to hire a young helper, and
	Cheshire, the son of a thrifty lord, quickly ascertained that
33.05	this fat little wench could be had for a Russian green dollar.
	Van was one of the first to avail himself of her favors. These
	were granted in semi-darkness, among crates and sacks at the
	back of the shop after hours. The fact of his having told her
	he was sixteen and a libertine instead of fourteen and a virgin
33.10	proved a source of embarrassment to our hell-raker when
	he tried to bluster his inexperience into quick action but only
	succeeded in spilling on the welcome mat what she would have
	gladly helped him to take indoors. Things went better six
	minutes later, after Cheshire and Zographos were through; but
33.15	only at the next mating party did Van really begin to enjoy her
	gentleness, her soft sweet grip and hearty joggle. He knew she
	was nothing but a fubsy pig-pink whorelet and would elbow
	her face away when she attempted to kiss him after he had
	finished and was checking with one quick hand, as he had seen
33.20	Cheshire do, if his wallet was still in his hip pocket; but some-
	how or other, when the last of some forty convulsions had come
	and gone in the ordinary course of collapsing time, and his
	train was bowling past black and green fields to Ardis, he found
	himself endowing with unsuspected poetry her poor image,
33.25	the kitchen odor of her arms, the humid eyelashes in the sudden
	gleam of Cheshire’s lighter and even the creaky steps of old
	deaf Mrs. Gimber in her bedroom upstairs.
	In an elegant first-class compartment, with one’s gloved hand
	in the velvet side-loop, one feels very much a man of the
33.30	world as one surveys the capable landscape capably skimming
	by. And every now and then the passenger’s roving eyes paused
	for a moment as he listened inwardly to a nether itch, which he
	supposed to be (correctly, thank Log) only a minor irritation
	of the epithelium.

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