JULES OLiTSKI
his desk. The child is too agitated to speak. Her face is scarlet
with shame (or at least that's what he thinks).
"Have courage, my dear," he says, slipping an arm
around her shoulder, the tips of his fingers lightly carressing
an. as yet unfulfilled breast, not merely unfulfilled but bony as
a wash board. Her nipple, however, is a treasure.
It
reminds
him of the sour green gooseberries he loves to bite into.
Zadonsky's erection is now fluttering wildly, all sails to the
wind. He no longer cares if she sees. Finally she tells him in a
barely heard whisper that she has sinned, mortally sinned. She
has sinned with a goat on her father's farm, and not for the
first time either. Well, yes, for the first time with a goat–
before that only with dogs. Zadonsky chuckles hoarsely. His
throat has become quite dry. He is trying to edge his hand
under her skirt, without releasing the other hand from her
nipple, but the contortion his body is forced into (he is quite
old and sedentary) gives him a sudden and terrific pain in the
neck and across the shoulders.
Zadonsky cries out, "Oh, Jesus! You were right
to
say,
'Suffer the little children to come unto me.'''
At the sound of this outcry, and seeing the look in
Zadonsky's eyes, the child tries to pull away, but he holds her
fast as he lurches and stumbles towards the desk drawer. He
seizes the ball of twine, but has to release her in order
to
undo
the end of the twine which is snugly enclosed in the ball. ...
That was the end of the rapist fantasy. That did it. That
damn ball of twine. I must say I found it difficult, extremely
difficult
to
do, imagining myself that way, a priest-rapist.
Probably this is becau e I've never raped anyone . . . never
been a priest either. Still it's disappointing in terms of ... in
terms of what, self-esteem? That my imagination had diffi–
culty accomodating this rapist fantasy? As Freud is supposed
to have said, "The problem with masturbating is that one
must know how to do it well." How true! Take my Parisian
art dealer for example. His name is Moise Rolland. He's a
swaggering little fellow, not much higher than a dwarf, but
endowed, he maintained, (well-hung is the expression he
uses) like a stallion . Moise says that he must masturbate four
to five times daily.
If
not, he gets nervous. Of course he's
boasting, just as he's always boasting about the way women
throw themselves at him. Moise can't board a bus or an
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