Secret Lolita: The Confessions of Victor X (4 page)

"Of course I did. I saw what he had between his legs as clear as I see you now.
It made me piss with pleasure
. (Ya azh stsala vid visilia.)"

When the girls were bathing in the river, I was never very near and so I could not see their nakedness in much detail. I could see black triangles on their abdomens, but I did not know that these black triangles were hair. Then I wondered if they were painted or natural skin colour, or if they had put pieces of sticky paper or material over their vulvas to hide them out of modesty. I did know that men had pubic hair, but, as I often did, I failed to connect these two items of information.

As can be seen, I was surrounded by sensuality and crudity in the country, and yet I remained completely innocent. That can be accounted for by the fact that I lived then for the most part in a private, fictitious dream world. Sometimes I would act out the part of Godefroi de Bouillon, sometimes of Fernan Cortes or Livingstone. My head was stuffed with the crusades and the novels of Walter Scott and I hardly noticed the real world: it did not interest me a lot. True, when I was not reading, I would go in for physical exercise: horse-riding, swimming, canoeing, sailing; I would jump ditches, scale walls, climb the highest trees and even went shooting with my uncle's shotguns and with some success - I was strong enough to handle guns. But no matter what I was doing, I was playing the role of some imaginary character. I pretended to be Mungo Park, or Barth or Speke or Grant or René Caille or Gordon Cumming (not so often, because I didn't like him, finding him too ruthless to such noble animals as elephants) or Jules Gérard the lion killer. Sometimes I thought of historical characters, sometimes of heroes from novels by Mayne Reed, Jules Verne, Fennimore Cooper, Gabriel Ferry, sometimes various explorers whose travels I read in
Tour du monde
, a French illustrated magazine which we subscribed to. When I killed a crow or a quail it was a condor or a bird of paradise to me; when I got into my canoe I was setting off to discover America or conquer Jerusalem; scaling a wall was crossing the Andes etc. In any case I had no companions of my own age nearby and did not talk much; as the French poet puts it, "I walked all alive in my dream." When I couldn't understand something said when I was there, I never asked for elucidation - either because I was shy or because I was proud - and I pretended I had understood. That was why sexual mysteries remained veiled to me then.

There were often little girls from the neighbouring gentry's families visiting my uncle's house. But I would not stoop to play or talk with them. For one thing I thought I was too knowledgeable, too grand; for another, I deeply despised 'little cissies' who could not take part in my sports. Ladies liked kissing me: that was not surprising, for I was as pretty as a dream, pink and chubby with naturally curly blond hair and big blue eyes. But I loathed these caresses, which by the way made no sexual impression on me. Up to eleven and a half I never had any genital feelings, not even the smallest erection. I liked the people around me, men and women, but fell in love with no one and had no exclusive attachments.

I left the country to take the entrance examination for grammar school. The examination was a triumph for me. I was just under ten when I entered the first class of grammar school; I had got the maximum mark for everything and the teachers congratulated me. For the first two years my studies were brilliant. My marks were never less than five (the maximum in Russian schools) and always had my name on the roll of honour, the "golden table" as it is called in Russia - a red board in a gilt frame on which the names of the best pupils are inscribed. There is hardly ever more than one such pupil in any class and sometimes not even one pupil in a class is deemed to be worthy of this distinction. Any pupil who completes his studies after being on the "golden table" for his last year or years gets a gold medal. I was of course a day-boy, but my parents never helped me with my homework or my studies. They quite liked listening to the headmaster of the school telling them that I was a source of pride for the institution, especially my compositions which teachers used to read out to pupils in the higher classes to edify and to make them ashamed of their inferiority. My Latin prose translation of a poem by Lermontov,
The prophet
, (I did not then know Latin metrics of course, as I was only in the second class, and therefore the translation was in prose) was shown to the rector of the university who said that perhaps Russia would be able to thank me one day for giving it another Denys Lambin, Bentley or Ruhken. I heard of that tribute later. The arithmetic teacher too used to call me "our Lagrange to be" as a joke. How wide of the mark, however, these predictions turned out to be.

My schoolmates liked me because I did as my parents had taught me and never denounced them. That was a rare virtue in our school: on government orders, to make future
faithful
subjects of the Tsar,
true Russians
, the education authorities tried to develop an informers' and tell-tales' spirit among pupils throughout the system, which was well organised and controlled. I was liked also because I was a skilful prompter when questions were being asked and I would pass my friends my rough copy when we had a day of class composition (
extemporalia
) as well as solutions to problems etc. In short I was loyal to the collective and although the teachers pampered me, I saw them as the oppressors of my fellow pupils. But as I was not in open revolt I had top marks for behaviour. I had some close friends among my schoolmates. I gave them the benefit of my reading by telling them what I had learnt from books. In any case I tried to interest them in serious reading: history, geography, astronomy, Brehm's books on animals, Tyndall on geological and physical phenomena (my mother happened to have published a popular adaptation of Tyndall's works). I got one of my friends to share my tastes in full and we were very conceited about our knowledge. I remember that once we deliberately went off for a walk in a park, chatting loudly so that adults would hear us, decorating our talk with all sorts of difficult scientific words whose meaning we did not know, such as transcendental, subjective, objective, synthetic, atomicity, parameter, evolutionism, precession of equinoxes, thermodynamic etc. words we had retained, like the little parrots we were, haphazardly from our very varied and confused reading. What a pity no one took down that remarkable conversation in the park in shorthand.

At that time I never found myself talking about sex to my friends. My closest friend (the one who was so fond of learned works) was as innocent as I. When we saw dogs copulating in the street we did not understand what it meant at all; we realised nothing would unstick them, but we had no idea that they were 'stuck' together by their sexual organs and thought it was a sort of disease and tried to separate the poor animals by kicking at them. Once I asked my father to explain this disease and told him how I had tried to separate the animals. He gave me no explanation but told me to leave the dogs alone, which I did.

In my first class at grammar school at just over ten I all but took a decisive step towards my
geschlechtliche Aufklärung
(sexual enlightenment) as the Germans call it. We had then a servant girl Masha (diminutive of Mariya). She was a buxom country girl of between eighteen and twenty, very different from the city girl Pelageya. Whereas Pelageya had given children lessons only in goodness and religion, Masha undertook my 'sexual instruction'. At that time I went to my room every evening to do my homework at my desk - which did not take long - and then to relax and read. My parents would never come and disturb me. But Masha got into the habit of coming to keep me company after tea. At first I was glad of her company. I was eager to spread the light of science around me and I tried to educate the servant girl by explaining the mysteries of astronomy to her, by setting out before her what I knew of history and geography, showing her pictures etc. But Masha was not very keen on encyclopaedic knowledge and was more interested in certain anatomical and physiological facts. For instance, I would talk about historical events; I mentioned marriages, love affairs and she would make jokes and allusions that I could not understand. When I showed her travel books with engravings of savages
in naturalibus
she never failed to put her finger where the Botocudo or Hottentot's penis was drawn, laughing out loud, sometimes adding, "Pity it's only a drawing." Likewise, when she looked at a reproduction of some ancient statue with visible virility. Pointing out the abdomen of some naked female mythological figure, she would say to me, "They've left out the prettiest part. Would you like to see it for real?" These improprieties shocked me and I tried to get her interested in serious things, but she would interrupt me and say, "You
are
clever, you
are
clever. So young and so clever. You know everything there is in heaven and on earth, you've read all the books. But still there's one thing where I'm cleverer than you; there's one thing you don't know and I do. You don't know what ladies and gentlemen do at night."

"Nothing to it," I said. "They sleep."

"You're quite wrong. They do something that's much nicer."

Expecting yet another impropriety, I tried to turn the conversation onto a different track, but Masha would not give up.

"You don't know how babies are made."

"Of course I do. They come out of women's bellies."

"Yes, that's how women do it, but how do men make babies?"

"You must think I'm an idiot, I know for certain that men don't make babies."

"How wrong you are. It's men that make women have babies."

"How silly can you get," I said and, convinced that she was making fun of me, I began again to talk about something else. But she came back to the attack.

"I've got to tell you what ladies and gentlemen do when you're asleep. I'll tell you the dance they dance in bed. Your daddy and mummy do this dance too."

I retorted. "Anyway daddy and mummy never sleep together." (In Russia, in good society, married couples
always
have separate bedrooms; what are called in the south of Europe '
matrimonial
' beds are considered a shocking idea.)

"Wrong again," Masha went on. "Your daddy comes to your mummy's room at night. So listen, I'm going to tell you the dance they do."

Then I got angry. I forbad Masha to talk and threatened to go away if she persisted. It was not that I could guess what she was about to say - quite the contrary. But I sensed that she was going to say something that was against the rules of decency and also slanderous. This exchange, which I remember so well, began again every evening and each time I cut it short by threatening to leave the room. Once Masha said to me - "When you're asleep I'll come up to you and I'll tie your balls (in Russian the usual word for testicles is
yaytsa
, - literally eggs) with string and I'll make a tight knot. Then what will you do? You won't be able to do anything."

The very idea of this mysterious danger frightened me, so that I told Masha that I would complain to my parents to deter this assault. Now it was her turn to be frightened; she begged me to do nothing and swore that she had only been joking. "A very stupid joke," I replied.

Eventually, one evening, she got bolder. I was showing her the folio engravings in Michaud's
History of the Crusades
; sitting on my right, she quietly tucked up her skirts under the table, grabbed my right hand with her left and put it on her vulva, while her right hand undid my trousers and took a firm grip on my penis. She tried to rub my hand against her mount of Venus and I could feel something hairy and moist which utterly revolted me. Furious, I stood up and wrenched myself out of Masha's hands and told her I was off straight away to see my father. She went pale, stood in the doorway and begged me with real or fake tears not to ruin her by telling. I had such a weak character that I had to give in to her entreaties and I promised never to mention what had happened to anyone. But from then on I was afraid of being alone with Masha. I then told my mother that I would rather do my homework in her study, where she often spent the evening writing pamphlets or answering letters. She let me do so. When I was alone in the study, Masha did not dare come in.

I remember that after this affair I reflected on the hairy sensation I had when I was forced to touch Masha's mount of Venus. "Why has she got hair there? Is it a disease?" (I knew of cases of people with hairy skin and I was also thinking of a big wart covered with hairs on one of my aunts.) It was odd: I did not link my new experience with the "black triangles" I remembered seeing on the girls bathing, nor with the fact that I knew grown-up men had a hairy pubis. This proves that we can know things which are complementary and yet not think of linking two bits of information that we have come across under different circumstances, even though they would give rise to a new truth if only we linked them together. If we really studied the defectiveness of human intelligence, perhaps we would treat syllogisms less scornfully and would not be so quick to assert that the mental operation of syllogisms has nothing new to teach us. We can keep major and minor in separate compartments for the whole of our life and never hit on the conclusion that would spring from a syllogism that put them together.

Masha gave up making libidinous passes at me. Only once, when I was late getting up on Sunday, she was sent by my mother to my room to wake me up. On the pretext of making me get up straight away she tried to snatch my bedclothes. A desperate struggle began. I could see very well that Masha wanted just to see my sexual organs and I defended myself valiantly. I was very strong and she could not succeed in getting me naked; after long, strenuous efforts she had to give the match up.

During my first two years at grammar school that is the only episode I can recall that had anything to do with sex. The only other thing I can mention is that while I was in the first class, I was struck by the various obscenities scrawled over the streets, the walls, on park benches etc. I did not know what most of them meant and I asked my father about them. He merely told me that they were nasty things written by guttersnipes. So my little friend (the same one with whom I had so naively tried to sound like a great scholar) and I made it our business to rub out these words from walls and park benches when no one was watching. Apart from this
fidus Achates
I had other less intimate friends in class, and was on good terms with everyone in the class anyway: I never had fights with any of them. Those that had no particular liking for me were kept respectful by tales of my physical strength. They knew I had thrashed several pupils in the two classes above ours and that made me very popular.