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PARTISAN REVIEW
queer masturbation fantasies if what we are given here is a
sample. My narrator is based on someone I know quite well.
Like myself, he's an artist and middle aged. He has had a certain
success. I needn't go on about him, because he will reveal
himself to you. His problem, among others, as you will see, is a
fear that you will identify him with the main character of the
book who he, the narrator, thinks is crazy. My problem, on the
other hand, is that you will identify me with the narrator, who
I
happen to think is crazy. So much for that, for the time being.
Back to my narrator and his masturbation fantasy:
Dostoyevsky leaves Zadonsky's cell. Now, as it happens,
Zadonsky has a passion for young girls. In fact, it's why he
became a priest in the first place, assuming that as a priest
young girls would be available to him
to
do with pretty much
as he liked. He was wrong. In his particular monastery young
girls rarely came to confess or ask advice. (Zadonsky had had
to settle for young boys-but that's another story and another
masturbation fantasy.) As luck would have it, just as Dostoy–
evsky leaves, and after all these years of waiting, a young girl,
ravishingly beautiful, appears at the door of Zadonsky's cell.
She is blushing and stammering. Zadonsky, already terribly
excited by Dostoyevsky's tale, smooths his cassock
to
hide his
tremendous erection and motions her
to
come and sit beside
him on the cot. Apart from the cot the cell is bare, except for a
simple table and desk and inkwell. It is late afternoon and one
small window lets in the last light of the fading sun . "Have no
fear, my child," Zadonsky says, "we are here in the presence of
God who is all merciful and forgiving. What has brought you
to me? You can tell me
ever~'lhing."
Zadonsky runs his trembling fingers along her thigh. He
reckons that she can't be more than eleven years old. He will
have her even if he has to strap her to the bed. After all, he's
been waiting a very long time. He has no fear that the child
might talk and cause a scandal. Who would believe an eleven–
year-old rather than the saintly Zadonsky? Even if she were to
be believed, he's so aroused he doesn't care. Any risk would be
worth it, to assuage his desire. What's the worst thing that
could happen, he asks himself? Be defrocked? So, is that so
terrible? He remembers there is a ball of twine in the drawer of
