190
PARTISAN REVIEW
Swedenborg the real sunrise is an imitation.... The technique seems
vaguely literary in origin."
"You've got to admit it has certain advantages of privacy-"
"Och aye. . . In short, with certain obvious reservations it's
much the same bastard-mansard ye olde Wigwamme Inne Cocking–
ton Moosejaw and Damnation-in-the-World-"
"What did you say, Rod?"
"I said, do you remember the man who wanted to pebbledash
Gerald's house? Or perhaps I was thinking of those sheets of fabric
on Percy's garage that are painted to look like red brick."
"First wine, every one will be drunk, and afterwards brothel,"
announced Signor Salacci, locking the Casa dei Vetti behind them and
with the air of an indulgent host in the middle of a debauch pro–
posing further delights.
They left the house and drifted off at a great pace through
the sunshine down the Vico dei Vetti, and after casting a glance
down the Strada del Vesuvio in the direction of the mountain, turned
the Strada Stabiana.
"It was a silly place to put a volcano," said Roderick as now,
passing the Casa di Cavio Rufo on their right, they arrived at a
crossroads made by the intersection of the Strada degli Augustali with
the Strada Stabina.
They turned right again into a narrow, rough, and extremely
crooked and winding street that had the appear.ance of going on
forever.
"Vico de Lapanare. Wine woman and song street," crowed
the guide triumphantly. "First wine, and afterwards brothel," he
repeated. "Bread and woman, the first element in life, symbolic....
All symbolic.... wait! one entrance-bachelors downstairs; married,
priests and the shamefuls upstairs."
There are, unless you happened to be Toulouse-Lautrec, few
things in life less profitable than going to a brothel, unless, Roderick
reflected, it was going to a ruined brothel. This was a whole street
of ruined brothels. The houses had been built of stone but it was
necessary to use considerable imagination to people them, least of
all
with delights. To him they resembled at first rather a series of
disjasked ovens, or, if one could imagine pigpens made of brick,
pigpens, but with shelves and niches, so that they seemed to have
