PARTISAN REVIEW
269
little life is all the life I'll live, I thought. What a pittance. Three
score years and ten. My nerves vibrated. And what a chance.
He placed the book between us. "Look there!" he said. We lay
on our bellies and contemplated a witch's imp belaboring with a lute
the exposed buttocks of a man wedged in a beehive. A flock of birds
shot out of his arse-hole. His trousers were rolled tight under his
protuberant bum. "Bulging over the top like tomatoes," chuckled
Klaus.
"You've cut my dream," I said. "I saw three orbs each repre–
senting an anus surrounded by ellipses of tomato pips. Imagine,"
I hazarded, "a vertical eye, if it's any help. The orbs were gold;
the seeds had golden fringes. They were all sharply delineated."
"Enough," he said. "I get the message. It's no accident that you
recollect such a dream at this moment; you thirst for sex
per
anum.
Tomatoes, once, were called love-apples and assumed to
share the aphrodisiac properties of cantharides - the notorious Span–
ish fly."
"Nevertheless," I said, "my dream escapes you; its meaning
is its stylization, its totality. I am indifferent to the symbolism of its
parts. Your sorts of meanings mean one thing today, another to–
morrow, one thing in respect of me and quite another in respect of,
for example, Belle. But I want the final, absolute meaning which
is to be reached through the organization of the formal elements."
"Humph," he said.
He glanced again at the picture, then looked for his trousers,
dove-grey stinking corduroys. He stepped into them, pushed them
below his hips and waddled toward me. He fell willingly face down
on the bed exposing his nacreous rump. I kissed its chilly surface.
I attended to it as an object in its singularity. I spread my palms on
his buttocks which I prised apart. I wouldn't for the world be ham–
my. Better always err on the delicate side. Time slid away; my room
fell flat as Jericho.
"I'm a whore," he said; "you've just picked me up." I touched
the purple skin of his hole the runnels of which disappeared into
their source. "Yes," I said. "Say it," he implored. "Say it." "I've
just picked you up," I said, "and you're a filthy whore." I licked the
edge of the dark nimbus. Sparse black hairs gave off a papery
sound as I wet them with my tongue. His fingers were poised,
