Secret Lolita: The Confessions of Victor X (2 page)

At the age of seven I now knew from looking at my sisters' bodies how little girls were made, but it did not interest me in the least. Then came an episode that I remember very precisely, although the impression was not at all sexual. I was between seven and eight.

We were spending the summer in a villa on the Black Sea, in a Caucasian town. Our neighbours were a general and his family; his three sons of six, nine and ten often came to play with me in the enormous garden that surrounded our country houses. One day, I recall, I was alone with the little boy of nine, Seryozha (diminutive of Sergey), by a wall on which someone had drawn in charcoal a man with an enormous penis and the following inscription: "The man with the pointed prick". I don't know what we were chatting about; Seryozha suddenly said to me:

"Do you
fuck
your sisters?" (He used a Russian equivalent of the term, just as crude.)

"I don't understand what you mean," I replied, "I didn't know the word."

"What, you don't know what the word
fuck
means? Every boy knows that." I asked him to explain the mystery.

"Fuck," he told me, "is when the boy sticks his pisser in the girl's pisser." For my part I thought it did not make sense and was of no interest, but I was polite and said nothing and started talking about something else. I gave this conversation no more thought, since it had disappointed my curiosity, but a few days later along came Seryozha and Borya (Boris), the eldest of the three brothers, who said to me, "Victor, come with us and fuck Zoya." Zoya was a Greek girl of twelve, the general's gardener's daughter. Now that I had found out what
fuck
meant, I was even more bored by an act that seemed absurd to me and at first I declined the invitation. But they insisted: "Come on, you idiot. You'll see how nice it is!" I was always temperamentally afraid of hurting people's feelings, always polite to the point of being pusillanimous, and followed the two little rogues; we were joined by their little brother Kolya (Nikolay), Zoya whom I have mentioned, a Jewish boy of eight or nine called, I recollect, Misha (Mikhail) and a Russian boy of eleven or twelve, Vanya (Ivan).

We made our way to the most overgrown part of the garden. There, in a well hidden thicket, the boys took their penis out of their trousers and started toying with them. I can remember what their organs looked like and now I realise they were erect. Zoya was handling them with her fingers and pushing blades of grass between the foreskin and the glans and into the urethra. She tried to do that to me, but it hurt and I protested. Then she lay down on the grass, pulled up her skirt, parted her thighs and showed her sexual organs. She pulled the labia majora apart with her fingers and I was astounded to see that the vulva was red inside. Although I had seen my sisters' genitals, I had never seen a half-opened vulva. I did not like what I saw at all. Then the boys lay down, one after the other on Zoya's belly, pushing their penis against her vulva. As I was still bored by it all, I did not try to see if there was an
immissio penis
or whether the contact was just superficial. I saw only that the boys and the girl moved about a lot, the girl underneath and the boys on top and to my great amazement each boy went on with this exercise for quite a long time. My turn came. I was always polite in company and so put my penis against the little Greek girl's vulva, but she was not pleased with me, called me an imbecile and an old nag (
klyacha
) and told me I couldn't do it, that my pisser was
like a rag
. She tried to show me how to do better, but with no luck and repeated that I was an idiot. My pride was badly hurt, particularly at being called an old nag, all the more because I knew I was doing something so absurd and boring only out of courtesy for my companions, without having any personal interest in it. In any case I had no inkling that all this might be considered shameful or immoral. As soon as I got home, I told my mother in front of everybody and with all the calm and ingenuousness that can be imagined - this was not telling tales, since I did not know that 'fucking' little girls was reprehensible - about the way we had passed the time. General horror, terrible scandal. Off goes my father to see the general and warn him of the moral danger his children are in, doubtless because they mix with such bad cases as Zoya, Misha and Vanya, all children from rough families. But the general was enraged at the very idea that his children (just think, a general's children!) could be thought capable of doing dirty things, insisted that I had lied about it and insulted my father who responded violently. The rift between the two families was complete. This was my first contact with sex, a contact which did not sully me in the least, for I understood nothing of what I had seen and had not felt a shadow of any genital emotion. It was as if I had watched children rubbing noses.

Some time after this incident, when we were back in Kiev, I remember that my aunt had arrived from the country and was chatting with my mother, unaware that I was listening to them. She said she had found out that Olga, who slept on the terrace in the country because of the summer heat, had been constantly visited by the coachman's son, a boy of twelve, who got into her bed "to do dirty things to her". After the scandal in the Caucasus I now realised what these "dirty things" were. And my mother said to my aunt, "Ah, I understand now why Olga came here so sallow and with bags under her eyes." That made me conclude that doing "dirty things" was bad for the health.

At that time, until I was eleven, I was exceedingly bashful. This shyness had no sexual cause: it was, I believe, purely imitative, but I thought it was a frightful thing to be seen by someone female not just naked but even in shirt and pants. From seven onwards I had a bedroom to myself and I can remember the terror I felt when our maid nearly caught me changing my shirt. From then on I always took care to see that my door was shut properly before urinating, undressing etc. The reason I think that there was nothing sexual in it was that I knew of children of four or even three with the same terrified shyness: it is something due to imitation or suggestion - children see adults hide when they want to undress, go to the lavatory and so on, they hear ladies shriek if they are about to be caught half-dressed, and they conclude that to be seen with no clothes or not enough clothes is a terrible thing. Impressions at that age are so deep and so lasting. To give me physical courage my father used to talk with scorn, when I was present, about weak boys, cowards who were 'little cissies'. This made such a deep impression that until I grew up I considered physical weakness as the most shameful thing, worse than the worst vices; I was aghast to think that I might be one of the 'cissies' my father was telling me about. In fact I was quite the contrary, very robust for my age and physically courageous, though a moral coward - thus I would not hesitate to fight a boy bigger than myself, yet did not dare raise my voice to claim what were clearly my rights.

To come back to my bashfulness, I had dreams at that time which have recurred throughout my life and still recur. I would dream that I was in the street or the drawing room with no clothes on, or without trousers or just without shoes or a jacket, or with one shoe off. I would be trying to hide this scandalous state of affairs, going through unspeakable torments. As I have just said, I still have these dreams and they cause me as much suffering as they did when I was eight or nine years old! And yet from the age of twelve I no longer had any feelings of bashfulness in real life and when I avoided being seen naked, it was only out of respect for the rules of decency, not because of any intimate personal feelings. Yet another proof of the depth of childhood impressions on the subconscious. Another horrible dream which nothing has been able to free me from is seeing myself on a grammar school bench, not knowing the lesson and waiting to be questioned by the teacher. Even now I have this agonising nightmare at least once a week. The dream about being improperly dressed in public comes once every two or three weeks and it is really painful. I have talked to others about it and I gather that many people, especially women, have anguished dreams about being unclothed or half-dressed in public. When I was a child I often dreamt also of falling down chasms or being chased by wild animals and dogs, but when I grew up these dreams stopped.

I recall that when I was seven or eight (it was after the incident with the general's sons), I went for a walk once with my sisters and our French governess, when a little working-class boy (a little
muzhik
) whom I did not know pointed a finger at one of my sisters and said to me, "Do you fuck her?"

At that time we had a French governess, a fine girl whom we were very fond of. She got me reading French books, which I did with enthusiasm, especially if they were travel books or about wartime adventures. The only time I feared Mlle Pauline was when she was teaching me piano. I loathed any exercise that consisted of banging away on the keyboard. We were also very fond of our maid, and I don't know what I liked better: to listen to the Provençal songs Mlle Pauline sang, accompanying herself at the piano, or the fairy stories which Pelageya the maid used to tell us. I was firmly resolved to become later an explorer of the heart of Africa, but I wanted to travel with my wife, as did Bekker whose voyages I was reading. I realised that it was much more practical for a traveller to have a wife like Pelageya, a daughter of the people, strong and good at cooking. But I had more affection for Mlle Pauline and also she was better educated and her conversation was more interesting. So it would be better to take her with me, especially as there were no pianos in the desert to torment me with scales. But once I heard from somebody that Rubinstein travelled with a little portable piano with a dummy keyboard to stop his fingers 'going rusty' on journeys. Then I became afraid that Mlle Pauline might take a portable piano with her on our travels to make me go on with the hateful exercises. That took away all my African explorer's courage. It tipped the scales in favour of Pelageya, to whom I solemnly declared my intention of marrying her when I grew up to be my companion in my African explorations, to which she kindly consented.

At that time in my life I was full of affection for all those around us. I loved Mlle Pauline and the servants (above all, Pelageya) as much as I did my parents, but I especially adored soldiers. There was a garrison actually quite near our house and I had many friends among the soldiers. As a matter of principle my parents gave their children complete freedom of movement, and likewise as a matter of principle,
they never chastised us
. When I agreed to do unpleasant duties like, for example, learning piano, it was out of politeness and weak will, not because of outside pressure. Our French governess had to submit to this system, however odd she might have found it. We went out when we felt like it, we struck up our own acquaintances. I, for one, built up friendly relations with several soldiers who in my eyes were surrounded in an almost godlike aura of majesty, particularly the cavalry - hussars and dragoons. It gave me a heavenly pleasure to touch their metal buttons, their braid, their helmets, but above all their weapons. Like all children I was mad about weapons (sabres, rifles, pistols) and I spent whole hours in the barracks touching these fascinating things. How happy I should have been if my parents had bought me sabres and rifles instead of train sets and other toys which left me cold. But they never did, probably on principle, and I was too timid to let them know what I wanted. My internationalist, antimilitarist parents never knew what a little admirer of 'sabre-rattlers' and what a jingoist their son was! It was the soldiers who initiated me into Russian patriotism by telling me that the Russian army had never been beaten and never could be by any human force, because one Russian soldier was stronger than fifty German, French, English or Turkish soldiers. I even asked my father if all that was true. He told me no; but I did not believe him. I was more convinced by what my Hussar friend said, as he was a competent professional, while my father was a simple civvy. It was so good to belong to a nation whose soldiers have never been defeated! My father told me that Sebastopol had been captured by the French, but my soldier friends assured me that, quite the contrary, it was the French and the English who were all wiped out to a man at Sebastopol, and this seemed much more likely to me. During the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78 my parents (a fact I had not known then) hated the government so much that they wanted Russia to lose. But I read the papers enthusiastically and was excited by tales of my compatriots' victories (reverses were never admitted by the Russian press). I was furious because I was a child and could not enlist in the army to fight side by side with my Hussar friends. Generals Grechko and Skobelyov were my favourite heroes.

At around the same time (between eight and nine) I nearly became a believer. Both my sisters and I had been brought up outside any religion - which is normal for almost all "intellectuals" children in Russia. Europeans are not really aware that the educated classes in Russia are totally irreligious and atheistic. Russia is judged by its exceptional minds, such as Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Their mysticism, their Christianity are totally alien to enlightened society in Russia. And women in our country are just as much unbelievers as men. We Russians cannot conceive how educated people in western Europe and above all in England can be so taken up with religious questions; we are amazed that intelligent and sometimes learned Englishmen should go to church to listen to a preacher's moral banalities and commonplace platitudes; the English habit of endless Bible-reading, quoting it at every opportunity seems a strange mania to us, for we think that there are thousands of books more instructive, more pleasant, more interesting from all points of view than the Bible. Similarly, when we find that in western European countries scholars, philosophers, serious thinkers discuss whether religious feeling is eternal, whether humanity could ever do without it, we cannot hide our surprise, since we live in an environment where all religious feeling has vanished without leaving a trace. How can we concede that religion is necessary and perennial, if the whole of our educated society, the flower and elite of the nation, over a million individuals live without feeling the slightest need for religious beliefs? From this angle, the typical Russian is not that eccentric Tolstoy, but more likely Kropotkin who meditated on all sorts of things during his long existence, but never on God or the soul. It never occurs to him to ask questions about religion any more than about astrology, chiromancy etc. In my family, as in all the families we had anything to do with, children were never spoken to about God, the life to come, Jesus Christ.