Secret Lolita: The Confessions of Victor X (3 page)

That worried our good Pelageya, who decided to convert the little pagans and taught us religion, which could be done without our parents knowing about it, for much as they loved us, they did not bother a lot about us, as I have already said. Pelageya not only explained the main doctrines of Christianity to me, but even taught me prayers which I solemnly recited. Finally she decided to take me and my elder sister to church for communion in the Greek Orthodox church, to which I belonged by birth, for in Russia baptism is obligatory for all
Russian
children, that is born of Greek Orthodox parents, the state does not consider Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Protestants as Russians - they are just allogenic (
inorodtsy
) subjects of the Empire, but they are not Russians. I used to know a Jewish student, a Russian subject, who was very taken aback when an official French document ascribed Russian nationality to him; he thought there must have been a mistake and exclaimed, "But no, I have Jewish nationality," and could not understand the French official's reply: "In France we recognise a Jewish
religion
but we do not recognise a Jewish
nationality
." In the Greek Orthodox church there is no set age for first communion, the child can take it as soon as he or she is baptised and that is what is sometimes done among the simple people. But before taking me to communion, Pelageya explained that the priest would hear my confession. So I got ready for confession with much trembling and ended by digging up sins which I suppose were pretty insignificant. But, like all shy people, I had bottomless pride and the idea of revealing my faults to a stranger frightened me a lot. Pelageya had taught me that I had a guardian angel who went everywhere with me and protected me from the devil. I remember lying on my little iron bed with the lights out, unable to get to sleep, thinking what I was going to tell the priest. At one point I was on the point of deciding to hide my sins (such as sticking my tongue out at my sister with intent to insult or being lazy in practising scales and learning French grammar set by Mlle Pauline), but then I told myself that this impious decision had been suggested to me by the devil. Then I made up my mind to tell all and I felt that I was now obeying the guardian angel. In the end the guardian angel won and I was determined to reveal everything to my confessor, whatever it cost my pride; I felt holy joy and bliss and thereupon fell asleep. The next day my heart was beating fast when Pelageya took us to church, but my saintly decision was unshakable. Imagine my amazement when at confession the priest did not question me about any of my sins, but just asked me if I knew my prayers and the Nicaean creed which Pelageya had taught me and which I somehow managed to recite, understanding virtually nothing (for in Russia the liturgical language is Old Church Slavonic which is to modern Russian what the English of Beowulf or
Caedmon's Paraphrase
is to modern English. That is why the prayers the Russian people say are quite unintelligible to them.) Then I took communion without feeling any sort of emotion, just wondering why the bread (the Greek Orthodox have pieces of bread, not wafers, for communion) and the wine I was swallowing did not taste in the least of flesh and blood. As for confession I might say in passing that Greek Orthodox priests have quite a different view from that of Catholic priests. Later on, actually, when I was a grammar school pupil, school rules meant that I had to have confession and communion every year and the priest never asked me anything about sexual sins even when I was seventeen; he just asked me if I was respectful to my teachers, if I had fights with school friends, whether I was studying conscientiously! I did know of a Catholic lady who converted to Greek Orthodoxy and who was indignant - quite disillusioned and disappointed - by the perfunctory and 'superficial' way in which the priests of her new religion heard confession. "He hardly questioned me at all," she said.

My religious fervour did not last long. Pelageya left us shortly after my clandestine communion, which my parents never found out about. At that time in my life, between eight and ten, my intelligence moved in leaps and bounds. I realised that my parents were atheists, which abruptly stopped my believing, especially as the good Pelageya's moral authority had lapsed now she was gone, whereas my patriotic, military feelings were kept up by talking to my dear friends the soldiers, incarnations of physical strength which my father himself, not forseeing the outcome of his words, had inspired me with deep veneration for. Thus the mystical stage of my life was short.

At the age of nine I lost my two little sisters. They were carried off by croup which I caught at the same time, but which I recovered from. For several months their death was kept secret from me and stories were invented. But even then I was beginning to develop a critical attitude and I suspected tragedy. When at last I knew the truth, it hurt me, but - oddly enough - did not make me cry, whereas I would cry if I saw a dog, a cat, a bird or a mouse dying. Perhaps this was because I had felt no mental shock: I had already guessed at the truth which had been kept from me.

Some time later Mlle Pauline also left, which was very upsetting for me as was Pelageya's departure earlier. My mother gave me lessons to get me ready for
gimnaziya
(grammar school). The Russian grammar school course consists of eight classes, not counting one, two or even three preparatory classes. One entered the first class at ten or eleven and finished secondary education, unless you had to retake any classes after failing the end-of-year examinations, at eighteen or nineteen. Success at the final year examination (matriculation) opens the doors of the universities and certain colleges, just like the French baccalauréat. I missed out the preparatory class but after an examination I entered the first class of grammar school when I was not quite ten.

My mother was amazed by my aptitude which she had not suspected. I had an extraordinary memory, a lot of taste, a talent for numbers and a boundless love of reading. My attempts at story-writing, too, were remarkable for my age. Soon I had the reputation of being a child prodigy. I knew of my reputation, but it did not make me any more self-confident; any self-assurance did nothing to lessen my shyness - it only puffed up my pride which was already too great. My parents were proud to see me reading serious books in Russian and French which other children of my age could not even have understood; I was equally proud of the fact.

Between eight and a half and ten I spent two summers in the country on one of my uncles' estates. This uncle had several sons. Only one of them, the youngest, a boy of sixteen or seventeen and a pupil in the sixth class of grammar school, would chat to me. This youth was, I believe, utterly and literally dazed by eroticism. He thought only of women and talked only obscenities. But he thought I was better informed and more experienced than I was and did not explain in detail. His conversation was such that I could not follow what he was saying. He would regale me with scandalous pornographic anecdotes whose sense was quite beyond me and which I grasped only much later. He was chasing after young girls (chambermaids, working girls) while I was there, taking them by the waist, kissing them, but this did not arouse me at all or interest me. He would point out a working girl, for instance, and tell me, "You know I sleep with her," or, "I've slept with her." But I did not know the ambivalent meaning of the word
sleep
and could not see what pleasure or point sleeping with women could have. Sometimes he would leave our room at night, saying, "I'm going to sleep with girls," and would invite me to come with him. I was astounded by these weird ideas, would wonder if he was mad and refuse. Once we were about to bathe in the river and were sitting naked on the water's edge. My cousin showed me his scrotum, saying, "See how big it is; no wonder since that's where babies come from." This remark amazed me. "How," I thought, "is it he doesn't know at his age that women are made differently from men and haven't got testicles!" But I did not think it worthwhile to enlighten him. Perhaps I was pleased I knew more about it than a boy of seventeen. I knew then that children came from the woman's belly; only I thought that this happened through a tear that formed during labour around the navel. That was my understanding of the expression I had met in books: "The child at birth tears the entrails of its mother." But naturally I had no inkling that men had anything to do with the creation of babies.

When we were bathing in the river - sometimes together with my cousin's elder brothers - the girls of the village, from twelve to seventeen or eighteen, would come and watch. Contrary to the usual opinion, I have noticed that girls are much less bashful in villages than in towns. At least that holds true for Russia. People of any age and sex in Russia, especially in the country, find it quite normal to bathe completely naked in rivers and in the sea. Men and women form separate groups which bathe not together but close enough to have a good and quite detailed look at each other. That was so in the village where I spent the summer. But in any case, while we boys were bathing, girls - little, pubescent and grown-up - would come, as I have said, and look at us, without themselves undressing. They would quietly sit on the grass eight to ten yards from where we had flung down our clothes and wait for us to come out of the water. This did not worry my companions at all: it was fun for them, a chance to exchange a few more or less lewd remarks with the girls. But for me it was real torment because of the bashfulness I was inflicted with, which I have already mentioned. I would get out of the water with the deviousness of a Red Indian, hiding behind the tangle of bushes on the banks and holding out for a moment when the girls were not paying any attention to me. That was not very hard, for it was the big boys, not me, they were watching out for. Usually I had only to wait and hide up to my chin in the muddy river water until the big boys had got dressed. Then the girls would go away and I could get out of the water and dress in peace. But once, when my cousin had already put his clothes on, two nasty little girls, one about fifteen and the other about twelve, refused to leave their posts and waited for me to appear
in naturabilis
. I saw that they had no intention of clearing off, I did not dare emerge and stood up to my neck in the water, desperate, shedding bitter tears which mingled with the water that was streaming off my hair onto my cheeks. Finally my cousin realised what was up and had a diabolical idea. He took off his clothes again, got into the river, grabbed me treacherously from behind and lifted me out of the water with his arms outstretched, pulling my thighs apart and showing my sexual organs to the girls. They were delighted and roared with laughter. This incident was a severe psychological shock to me and for a long time after I could not recall the scene without feeling real anguish. And yet it would be quite wrong to assume that there was any connection between my hysterical anguished shyness and my sex life.

Immodesty bothered me only because it seemed to flout social conventions and offend good breeding. I knew that exposing one's naked self to women was something shocking, but not that it was any different from keeping one's hat on when coming to someone's house. I can prove that this is the right explanation because in my agonising dreams I saw myself more often than not just in a drawing-room with no shoes on, rather than totally undressed, and yet the first nightmare was just as excruciating as the second. I would have killed myself rather than agree to walk down the street without a hat on, something that did not bother my little friends in the least. And if anyone had made me cross town with no hat on, he would have inflicted on me a torture just as terrible as forcing me to walk quite naked. I was, and still am, labouring under enormous pride and my bashfulness is a consequence of it. To be seen naked, or without shoes or a hat, is to get into a
ridiculous
situation: that was all. To say something obscene meant showing yourself to be brought up badly. Perhaps my fathers influence was responsible for my being in such a bad mental state as a child. He was a refined gentleman who cultivated outward correctness to the point of
cant
and was very fussy about anything to do with social etiquette. This love of etiquette, for traditional, conventional rules in everyday life was quite contradictory to his ultra-radical and ultra-democratic social and political views. Fear of ridicule (that is, by society) has haunted me all my life. It may be odd, but when I remember nowadays any social gaffe or clumsy action I committed
as a child
(for instance, being slow in raising my hat, a ridiculous greeting, an uncalled-for question, an awkward answer, absent-minded impropriety) it hurts me as though it had happened yesterday, and often I cannot help crying out or groaning when I think of it. To my shame I admit that memories of that kind give me more acute pain than do my worst actions. Moreover wounds like these never scar over; they stay open for ever and time can do nothing to heal them. My shyness as a child gave me virtually nothing but these kinds of experience: the fear, prompted by adults' examples and words, of being improper or ridiculous.

Boys and girls from the village usually bathed at the same time of day. On several occasions I saw two groups of boys and girls from fourteen to eighteen bathing in the river at about twenty yards' distance from each other. They were stark naked, the water reaching only their knees, facing one another, making crude jokes and throwing balls of mud from the river bed at each other; they aimed their missiles to hit the genitals of the other sex and this raised storms of laughter. When I had a hot bath in the evening at the house I took care to see that the blinds were drawn without any gaps, for I knew that the servant girls (and my uncle had a lot of them) watched through the window when my cousins had baths. Once in fact I overheard two servant girls' conversation which never ceased to amaze me:

"Did you see him when he had his bath yesterday, the
panych
(Ukrainian for young master)?"