The Last Man of Letters

Despite the festive time of year, it had become, for X, a season of numerous discontents. The more acclaimed he was in the public world, the more the myriad imperfections of others, in the private world, offended him.

The imperfections of women, particularly. There were women who offended by making no effort to be feminine---sexually attractive. There were women who offended by making too obvious an effort. As if he, age 73, were an ordinary old fool, a would-be lecher to be galvanized into responding to female subterfuge of any kind.

X had become by degrees an elder literary celebrity of international reputation, a novelist, poet and essayist once called by The Times Literary Supplement the "last man of letters"---an exaggeration surely, but one which pleased. He was a perennial candidate for the Nobel Prize and a favorite of many outspoken literary commentators in England and the U.S. In real life, he was larger, more bulky of body than his photographs suggested; still, he had a handsome head, a much-creased but lapidary face with recessed, hooded, haunted-looking eyes, thin white hair brushed back from his forehead in wings. He rarely smiled, his face grown mask-like with thought and calculation. His manners were exquisite, though sometimes rude. He was, his admirers acknowledged, difficult. But a genius, of course. Even before he'd become rich he'd taken care to dress expensively in custom-made suits, white silk shirts, elegant neckties. His nails were manicured, his jaw smoothly shaven, his cologne carefully chosen. There had emerged in the past several months a just-perceptible, infuriating tremor in his left hand, which X controlled by gripping that hand tightly whenever possible. And sometimes, in the early morning, his eyes watered mysteriously, blurring his vision in a maddening way as if unprepared, after the intense, private state of sleep, for contact with the air. But X had never been one to indulge weakness, in himself or in others, and he gave little thought to these matters. Because he'd become famous, he was much photographed; because he'd been much photographed, he became yet more famous. Often, he murmured his name aloud---X. I am X and no other. He could not have said if he was proud of such a fate, or humble. From within, the great man may be as much in awe of his greatness as are others. How has it happened? I am X. I!

These were secrets of X's inner life, of course. Never shared with another.

Another secret X could not keep from sharing with certain others, his several earlier wives and some of the women with whom, over the decades, he'd become intimate. This was the asthmatic condition he'd endured for more than six decades. The attacks varied widely in intensity, having been severe in childhood, intermittent in adulthood and now more or less controlled by medication developed in the past 20 years. Yet sometimes in the middle of the night X woke choking for breath, thrashing about in terror that breath would be denied him---his life would be denied him! He'd badly frightened his most recent wife shortly before leaving on an ambitious European tour to promote his newest book when he'd awoken from a seemingly dreamless sleep convinced he was choking, suffocating. The woman sharing his bed, whom he had not immediately recognized as his wife, had cried, panicked, "What is it? Oh, what is it?"---but even after he'd recovered from the attack, X didn't tell her his secret since childhood. I'm fighting for my life.

•

Strange, how he took an instant, visceral dislike to the girl.

Her incessant, nervous smile in his presence. Fleshy lips that were too pale, without lipstick. A plain, scrubbed-looking face devoid of makeup. How like a schoolgirl in manner, shy, eager to please, yet her khaki-colored clothes---a loose-fitting jacket and matching trousers---and her lean, boyish body itself seemed to him brazenly between 20 and 30, he supposed; it offended him that his French publisher had chosen her to translate his latest book of essays. In the publisher's office he'd barely nodded at her when they were introduced, and had not heard her last name. His manner conveyed an aristocratic hauteur even as he smiled, uttered witticisms and spoke at length, always compellingly, as if his words were prose and not merely words. At the luncheon in his honor, in an elegant three-star Parisian restaurant tastefully decorated for the Christmas season, he'd avoided sitting near the unattractive girl in khaki, and had not once glanced at her during the course of the meal; yet he heard himself saying coldly, in response to some praise of his new book made by one of the journalists at the table, "Really? But the translation leaves something to be desired, I think. I open the book at random, and I read-----" And in his beautifully modulated voice, clear enough to be heard virtually everywhere in the restaurant, X read a passage with seeming spontaneity and subtle, almost playful mockery, in the translator's French, then shut his eyes and recited his own prose, in English. Around the table, his audience of 12 people sat very still, listening in amazement. What a performance! How it would be spoken of, for years afterward! Not once did X glance at the girl translator who, stricken with chagrin, hunched gracelessly, elbows on the table with both hands pressed against her mouth. X was a gentleman, yet he could not mitigate his scorn. "There is no excuse, I think we can agree, for such slovenliness," he said, and shut the book with a snap.

In the embarrassed silence, the girl translator murmured something dazed and unintelligible, whether in English or in French X could not have said, and stumbled away from the table.

X's publisher began to apologize profusely. As did others at the firm. It would require many minutes, and a fresh bottle of 1962 Bordeaux, to bring the distinguished man of letters around to his usual equanimity.

•

You won't readily forget X, will you, my girl? Alone in his luxurious hotel suite, mellow with the afterglow of exquisite wine, X felt a belated tinge of guilt. Seeing again the girl translator's plain, look of slow-dawning incredulity and hurt in her eyes. Although it had seemed dramatically spontaneous, X's gesture had been rehearsed; in fact, he'd had to search for some minutes before the luncheon to find a passage from the French edition of his book that might seem to diverge slightly in tone from the original English. (X wondered if perhaps he'd done something like this before, in another language, during an earlier European tour. His performance seemed to him vaguely familiar, like the startled expressions on the faces of his rapt listeners.) He smiled uneasily, thinking of how the tale would be told, and retold, in literary Paris. Swiftly it would make its way to London and New York. X's French publisher had promised that in future editions of X's book, the offending passage would be modified; the several journalists at the luncheon, attached to major Parisian publications, would respectfully report X's penchant for perfectionism. Almost, X felt sorry for the girl translator. She was young, inexperienced, ignorant. It hadn't been entirely her fault, perhaps.

But, after all, X had a reputation to uphold. The last man of letters.

•

En route to Berlin several days later, X inwardly vowed he wouldn't behave in such a way again, no matter how provoked, for, after all, he was a gentleman. Soon after his arrival, during a press conference at his hotel, he found himself yet another time repelled by a young female---a striking blonde journalist attached to the cultural desk of one of Germany's premiere weekly magazines. This girl journalist was younger even than the French girl translator, or appeared so, and considerably younger than the other interviewers, nearly all of whom were men. X found it difficult to take his eyes off her even when he was answering questions put to him by others, for here was a brazenly attractive female, no doubt one of the new-generation Berliners whom X had heard were professionally ambitious and sexually liberated. Here was a girl well aware of the impression she made upon male eyes. She had long, straight, dyed-blonde hair that fell past her shoulders, and large, staring eyes behind green-tinted glasses, and full, fleshy lips that shone with crimson gloss; she was forever moving her body of her eyes with nervous gestures, and fixing X with a gaze of starstruck adulation so extreme as to seem mocking. And how absurd her costume, resembling a parachutist's jumpsuit of some silvery-steel synthetic fabric, clinging to a thin, perversely erotic body. X felt a shiver of repugnance that a female so blatantly lacking both breasts and hips should present herself in a seductive manner. And her Berlin-accented English grated against his ears. And she was hardly shy, posing questions with the confidence, or more than the confidence, of her fellow interviewers. How did she dare! The girl seemed to pride herself on her ability to speak English, allowing X to know that she traveled often to the States and had stayed for some time in New York---"in Tribeca"---and she'd read "almost every one" of X's books as a college student, in English of course. X stared at the girl interviewer with scarcely concealed fury. There was a tremor in his left eye, and he was obliged to grip his left hand tightly with his right; someone must have been smoking in the room, for his throat was constricted. How offensive, the way the girl interviewer wetted her lips as she posed a question to X. brushing her shining hair out of her face for the dozenth time, and leaning forward so that the neck of the jumpsuit shifted to reveal the tops of her small waxy-white breasts, naked inside the costume. Worse yet, she had a way of uttering X's full name with heavily accented solemnity, as if the distinguished man of letters were already dead and this was some sort of posthumous occasion honoring him. Unbearable! At last X lost his patience, startling everyone in the room by bringing his fist down hard on a tabletop and saying, with icy courtesy, "Excuse me, Fräulein. Would you please speak English? I am having a most difficult time understanding you."

X had interrupted the blonde girl interviewer in the midst of a lengthy, pretentious question about X's literary forebears and his political leanings, and now she blinked at him in stunned chagrin, startled as if he'd leaned over to slap her arrogant face. There was an abrupt silence in the room. (It seemed to X that the other interviewers glanced at one another with small smiles---they approved, did they, of X's admonishment?) Half a dozen tape cassettes spun in their machines in the awkward stillness.

Then the girl stammered an apology, her face flushed; the press conference resumed, though with more formality and hesitancy; no one wished to offend X but posed to him questions of a sort he encountered everywhere in Europe, to which he answered with his usual balance of wit and sobriety, casualness and elegance. At the conclusion of the hour, everyone applauded, everyone, with the conspicuous exception of the blonde girl, who'd sat silent and hunched in her chair as others spoke, staring at X's feet, twisting a strand of hair and bringing it to her mouth unconsciously, like an overgrown, hurt child. As the others politely shook X's hand in farewell and thanked him for the privilege of the interview, the girl retreated without a word and was gone. X frowned after her, annoyed. It would only have been good manners for her to come forward and apologize, after all. It was clear that the new generation of German youth lacked the courtesy of their elders. X had noticed, too, belatedly, with a small tinge of regret, that the girl had brought with her a duffel bag that was no doubt crammed with books of X's she'd hoped for him to sign, but she'd crept away without asking him to sign even one. So rude.

Also in Berlin, X was vexed by the publicist assigned to him during his visit, a fleshy, perfumy girl in an alarmingly short vinyl miniskirt, black textured stockings and shiny black boots to midthigh, who, in the limousine in which they traveled together from appointment to appointment, was forever chattering on her cellular phone. Yet he maintained a dignified composure and made no complaint of her apart from a casual, glancing remark to the head of the publishing house about the amusing resemblance between the professional class of young Berlin women and "women for hire." In Berlin, as throughout Germany, X was treated with the respect due one of his stature; as his German agent pointed out, sales of X's books were high and steady. In Stockholm, in Copenhagen, in Amsterdam and at last in Rome, at the conclusion of his itinerary, X was treated royally, and so made an effort to bear in stoic silence, as much as he could, the grating imperfections of girl translators, girl interviewers, girl publicists and even, outrageously, girl editors--- for it was quite a shock to X to discover that the editor at his Italian publisher who'd overseen his books for 20 years had retired and been replaced by an exuberant young Milanese woman of no more than 35, a specialist in American literature who'd taken courses at Columbia and whose name was some -thing like Tonia, or Tanya. X took an immediate dislike to this girl editor, whose complexion appeared slightly coarse and whose long face and nose were so recognizably Italian; he disapproved of makeup on one so homely and wondered if the single gold ring on her left hand was a wedding band---or was X supposed to play a sort of guessing game, not knowing if she was married or not? Though Tonia, or Tanya, was deferential to the distinguished elder writer, he resented her familiarity with his books, as if, knowing his books, she somehow knew him, forever quoting, in the presence of others, from X's writing, as if he were a revered authority on literature, politics, morals and the very universe. Nothing more vulgar than fulsome flattery! Almost, X wondered if Tonia, or Tanya, was deliberately making him out to be, by her excessive homage, a pompous old fool. "Enough, please!" X several times protested, but his distress was misinterpreted by the girl as old-fashioned humility, or shyness; she persisted in her enthusiasm, until X had all he could do to listen in pained silence. It annoyed him, too, that Tonia, or Tanya, should exhibit such a general zest for American writers, including on her list even notorious feminists who had, for political reasons, long ago denounced X. Had she no sense? Had she no embarrassment? X was particularly incensed when she introduced him as "the greatest American writer of his generation." American only? Of his generation only? As if X's achievements had not lifted him well above the mere provincial and time-bound. X felt the sting of this insult as if the arrogant young woman had reached over to tweak his nose, but he bore his displeasure in dignified silence until at last, on the eve of his departure from Rome, two days before Christmas, at a small, elegant dinner in his honor, when the girl editor began again to quote him in her proprietary, maddening way, X turned to his host, the wealthy owner of the publishing house, and said in a voice clear and penetrating enough to be heard about the table, "Excuse me! I am so very weary of chattering sycophants, I believe I would like to be driven back to my hotel."

How silent everyone was, at once. How like magic X's effect upon these strangers. He did not deign to glance at the stunned girl editor but was well aware of the incredulity and hurt in her eyes. And so, dramatically, there came to an end X's European itinerary, the last publicity tour of his career.

•

You won't readily forget X, will you, my girl?

X smiled to himself as, in his luxurious suite at the top of the Spanish Steps, he prepared somewhat distractedly for bed and for an early awakening in the morning. Yet he was incensed, still, insulted. His dinner had not agreed with him, nor the several glasses of chianti, an artery throbbed in his head, and his breath was short as if he'd been running. The indignities he'd had to bear on this European trip were outrageous for one of his stature and age! No doubt there was, in his wake, a flurry of anecdotes, in time to become literary legends; much would be embellished and exaggerated. But such was unavoidable, for X was, after all, a famous man; about famous men, all sorts of wild legends accrue. He was an artist, a creator, like Picasso, Beethoven---a man of unpredictable moods; a man of genius, of course, and genius must be indulged, not stifled.

X had been driven back to the hotel in his host's limousine, accompanied by the contrite, apologetic man, and though X had of course accepted his publisher's apologies for the tactless behavior of an employee, X was well aware that the girl editor herself had retreated from the table in mortified silence, no doubt to a women's room to repair the damage done to her vanity; but she'd made no effort to follow after X, to explain and to apologize. X wondered if it might be time to instruct his Italian agent to find another publisher for his books, one more congenial to his needs.

So you will soon see, X is not to be treated lightly.

This prospect would ordinarily have placated X, for through his career he had derived considerable pleasure from making abrupt switches from publisher to publisher, and indeed he'd switched literary agents several times. But, happening to turn on an overhead fluorescent light in his bathroom, he was shocked to see how exhausted, how sallow, how aged he looked. Is that X? Dear God! X's heart thudded as if a cruel prank had been played on him. Like many individuals of a certain age, he had long practiced the technique of what might be called the discreet angle; he seemed to know by instinct which mirrors would glare out at him and which would soothe his eyes; in his imagination, it was not a mirror reflection he saw when picturing himself, but his most frequently reprinted publicity photograph, which showed a handsome white-haired gentleman with sensitive eyes, a wide, thought-creased brow and a sympathetic expression. But now, in the bathroom mirror, what did he see but a ghastly frog-face, sunken eyes and quivering jowls and a pug nose with dark, hairy nostrils! Is that X? No, it cannot be. All along, others, including women, had gazed openly upon this face, while he himself had been spared; but now he saw his own true face, in the fluorescent glare of a bathroom mirror in Rome, and the sight of it made him sway with dizziness, nausea. He slammed the flat of his hand against the mirror and cried, "I deserve better. I deserve your respect. How dare you insult me!"

•

Though X was exhausted, as exhausted as he'd ever been in his life, and though the enormous canopied bed was as comfortable a bed as he'd ever lain in, he had difficulty sleeping; his brain swirled with vivid, hallucinatory images and shrill snatches of voices and laughter. His dinner weighed heavily in his stomach, and the wine he'd drunk, against doctor's orders--- for X took blood-pressure medication---made his temples ache and his heart pound in a wayward, lurching manner. As often at such times when, in a foreign city amid luxurious surroundings, he was suffused with a sense of regret, melancholy, guilt; for what exactly, he didn't know; for having quarreled with his wife, perhaps, before leaving on the tour; for having refused to take her with him; even as, in his confused state, he had to acknowledge that he didn't clearly recall which wife, which woman, this was; on a previous European tour he'd fallen in love with a woman some years younger than he, and he'd divorced his wife to marry this woman. But precisely which woman she was, and whether she preceded, or succeeded, one or two other women who resembled her, he didn't know; the effort of trying to make sense of it exhausted him and disgusted him. What do I care for the merely personal life? I am destined for higher things. With a start, he recalled that he had children scattered about the world, not only grown but frankly middle-aged children, and there was something repulsive about middle-aged children, something very unnatural; could he be responsible for squabbling offspring, must he be their father forever? Why should he, X, who'd labored so hard to create a reputation, to amass a modest fortune, provide them with the charity they seemed to think they deserved? As if, crouched forever in X's shadow, deprived of natural sunshine, these hulking, overgrown children possessed no volition of their own, no souls. Leave me alone! I don't know a single one of you.

Suddenly the dark of the unfamiliar bedroom was shattered by a gaily ringing phone close beside X's bed. X fumbled to answer, stunned, groggy, yet relieved, for he'd had enough of his miserable thoughts; this was his last night in Rome, his last night in Europe, and he deserved better. The call was from the hotel's room service, a heavily accented Italian voice inquiring if the signore would accept a midnight treat from admirers of his books; X heard himself say, with childlike eagerness, "Yes, good! Send it up, please, at once," though the suite was already filled with virtually untouched holiday gift bottles of wine, champagne, liqueur, expensive pâté and cheeses, as well as enormous, cloyingly fragrant floral displays of the kind suitable for a funeral home. Quickly X climbed out of bed, struggled into his silk dressing gown, squinted into a mirror and made a swipe at brushing back his disheveled, filmypale hair from his flushed forehead. Here was a more flattering mirror, softened by lamplight, providing a more authentic portrait of the distinguished writer. Even as X stumbled into the other room he heard a low rapid knocking at the door, for already the room service delivery was there; he heard, too, curious muffled voices and giggles in the corridor. Excitedly he called, "Yes, thank you, I am here!"

Opening the door then to see to his surprise that the bellboy was not a male after all, but a female, though wearing the old-fashioned olive-gray livery of the renowned hotel, with rows of buttons and gold brocade, and a visored cap perched rakishly on her head. Why, it was the girl editor of X's Italian publishing house whom, only an hour or so ago, X had denounced as a chattering sycophant! Tonia, or Tanya, clearly wanted to make restitution, to apologize; her skin was no longer coarse or displeasing to the eye but glowed with cosmetics, and her thick, black Italian hair was loose, in tendrils and wisps falling seductively to her shoulders. Even as, in exuberant high spirits, Tonia, or Tanya, flashed a dazzling smile at the elder writer, crying, "Signer X, may we come in? We have such Christmas surprises!" X understood that he would forgive her.

How dreamlike and confused and deliriously wonderful it was, X's surprise midnight treat, like nothing else he had experienced in more than 70 years of existence: And only a few minutes before, how self-pitying, how morbid he'd been! He stood back in awe as the Italian girl editor and another attractive female in bellboy livery pushed an ornate silver cart of the approximate size of a hospital gurney into the sitting room; the cart was heaped with delicacies---an unusually large bottle of champagne in a gilt-embossed wrapper not familiar to X's eye, goose-liver pâté and gourmet cheeses and crusty breads, chocolate-covered truffles, bonbons, cashews and pistachio nuts, and remarkable fruits of all varieties: great glossy apples, blood oranges, fat black grapes, plums and kiwis, classically proportioned and in colors vivid as a still life by Matisse. X saw to his astonishment that the Italian girl's companion was the Fräulein with the long, shimmering, dyed-blonde hair who'd interviewed him in Berlin! The first several buttons of her jacket were unbuttoned to show the alluring tops of her pale, perfect little breasts, and she too flashed a dazzling smile at X, as if she and he were old friends, sharing delicious secrets. At once, his heart swelling with magnanimity, X forgave the brash Fräulein, too. "Yes, of course! Please come in," he stammered, laughing in delight.

It occurred to X that, through his long, blessed life, in such instances of surprise and confusion, he'd stood by helplessly as others, nearly always women, took charge.

And now a third young female in bellboy costume appeared, helping to push the cart, and yet a fourth! The heavy door was shut, amid giggles high-pitched and silvery as the tinkling [continued on page 211] Last Mane of Latters[continued from page 88] of ice cubes in delicate crystal goblets. X tried to behave as if he were not astonished but perhaps halfway accustomed to such episodes of high gleefulness; he clapped robustly, laughing. What did he care that he would be awakened by a call at 6:30 A.M., to be driven to the airport; what did he care for mere sleep, he who had often stayed up through the night working at his books, and sometimes, though less frequently, making vigorous love. Already the girls had taken over the sitting room. There was the German publicist, full, shapely, perfumy; there was the French girl translator he'd misjudged as plain, graceless and without feminine charm, quite transformed now, with rouged cheeks and lips, mischievously shining eyes and a ripe body that strained at the silk fabric of her costume. With giggles, X was pushed onto a sofa. With the jarring sound of an artery popping, the enormous champagne bottle was uncorked; the ebullient Italian girl splashed some champagne into a long-stemmed glass for X, and into glasses for herself and her companions, and she raised her glass in a toast, declaring that this midnight feast was in homage to a great writer, to the last man of letters, whose work had penetrated their souls and changed their lives permanently---"Signor X, thank you!" Breathless, X drank from his glass; the champagne was delicious, though slightly tart, with a queer metallic bouquet; its myriad miniature bubbles flew up his nostrils and into his brain, to burst. More toasts followed, for the girls were insatiable in their praise of X. He begged them, "Please, please! Enough! You are very kind, but-----" And they crowded in to kiss him, wild wet kisses landing anywhere, as one of the German girls cried, "Ah, no, Herr X, we are not kind at all, we are only just." Though X tried to push their hands away, the girls prepared him for the feast like a great baby, tucking a linen napkin beneath his chin; the French girl patted him familiarly up and down his sides and gave his cheek a caress; another girl bestowed a wet smacking kiss on his right ear, and another girl bestowed a wet smacking kiss on the dome of his head; more champagne was splashed into glasses and drunk; champagne ran in rivulets down X's chin and wetted the linen napkin; X understood that this was a game, perhaps it was a game he'd played in the past, a celebration of his worth. He, the male, was the girls' captive, their trophy: They were his preening captors but also his adoring slaves.

Next, they competed with one another to ply X with delicacies from the silver cart: an apple pared and sliced into bite-sized pieces, pâté lavishly smeared on a piece of crusty bread, a large chocolate-covered truffle. To his surprise, X was hungry after all, ravenously hungry, his angel-girls had aroused his long-dulled appetite, tears glistened in his eyes as he ate, he squirmed on the sofa racked with delight as with an almost unbearable pain. The girls exchanged excited murmurs in their accented English, as if X's greedy appetite pleased them; he could hear their voices distinctly but he could not understand their words. It was then that the midnight feast took an abruptly salacious turn; X tried to protest, his dressing gown was torn open, his naked body was exposed, feebly he tried to hide his genitals, but the girls snatched his hands away. Shouting with glee, the girls hoisted him to their shoulders, his considerable bulk of nearly 200 pounds, crying, "Heave-ho! Here we go!" and stumbling and staggering like drunken revelers they bore him flailing and kicking into the sumptuous bedroom, with much laughter and little ceremony he was dropped onto the rumpled bed, which he'd feared was the girls' destination from the first, theirs and his. When X opened his mouth to protest, for he was a contentedly married man, and a gentleman, a bold kiss stopped it; the acrobatic French girl with her sinewy, squirmy body pinioned him to the mattress, and one of the German girls clambered beside him; the girls had shed their bellboy costumes and X himself was naked now; he would have cringed in shame except his aged flaccid body was pronounced beautiful by his captors, his skin admiringly stroked, how handsome X was! How manly! The girls took turns straddling his chest, kissing him with deep, sucking kisses; sucking at his tongue as if to tear it from his mouth; sucking at his breath; X could feel, against his strangely cool, dampish skin, the powerful heat of the girls' skin; the heat between their naked thighs as they straddled his chest and belly; the crinkly damp of their pubic hair; the pulse and throb of their young bodies. When had they tied him, wrists and ankles, to the four carved-mahogany posts of the immense canopied bed? Tied him with silken cords? His hairy navel, his hollow, sagging belly button, was smeared with pâté to be licked by rapacious, tickling tongues; he was being forced to lick goat cheese from the navel of the fleshier of the German girls; all the girls shrieked with impudent laughter; if X's enemies saw him now, what tales they would spread! What legends! The girls were vying with one another to touch, to fondle, to stroke his limp penis, a limp veined old carrot of a penis, and the testicles delicate and cool as quail's eggs; roughly the girls tickled the pubic hair that was a coarse yellow-white, like wires; the Fräulein had discovered the scar from X's abdominal surgery of several years ago, an eight-inch scar like a zipper in his sallow flesh, and playfully she ran manicured red talons up and down the scar---"Zip zip zip, Herr X!" Tonia, or Tanya, panting with desire, had smeared her buoyant breasts with whipped cream and her pert little nipples were maraschino cherries X was obliged to eat, how she screamed when he bit her, screamed and kicked and struck him with her hard fists, so that for an instant he was terribly afraid. But the French girl was squealing in triumph for she'd managed at last to stroke X's penis into a steely rod. All the girls exclaimed at its length, its elasticity, its healthy burnished-red hue, its throbbing heat; greedily they competed to hold it, to stroke and caress it, to kiss its tip that gleamed with precious juices, the very elixir of life. "Stop. No. Please!" X begged. For the sensation was almost more than he could bear. He was covered in perspiration and panting as if he'd run up the seven flights of stairs to this very room. His heart was banging like an impatient fist against his rib cage. One of the girls had lowered herself over his penis, having stroked it to a red-hot rod, and had fitted her satiny, smooth and muscular vagina over it, thrusting herself down upon him, and gripping him tightly; X heard his groans like strangulation; he was sobbing, and then he was laughing; the lights in the bedroom were in fact candle flames and these flames were now being blown out. X pleaded, "Stop! My dignity! Don't you know who I am?" And at once the girls cried, "Yes, we know who you are, you are X, the last man of letters!" And a scalding geyser erupted from the very pit of his belly; his eyes flew open and his heart ceased beating; the astonishment of such a moment, the wonder of it; he was alive after all, alive, and young, and his life lay before him; the shell that was X slipped away, he was free, triumphant. "Thank you!"---X's words were sobs, a lover's plea, snatched from his throat even as consciousness was extinguished like a blinding-bright fluorescent light in a white-tiled bathroom.

And in the morning, to their shock and distress, they found him. After X failed to respond to telephone calls and anxious knockings at his door, his Italian publisher, who'd arrived to escort X personally to the airport, directed the hotel manager to force the double-locked door, and there in the darkened bedroom lay the old man lifeless on the carpet beside his bed, his arms outflung as if in protest. Champagne had been spilled on the carpet, and on X; there was a lurid trace of chocolate on X's gaping mouth, and what appeared to be pâté was smeared on his torso and belly; his face was deathly pale and his cheeks sunken; his dentures were in a water glass beside his bed. X's eyes were starkly open, yet sightless; the left eyeball was turned up into his head as if peering inside, inquisitively. The publisher crossed himself and cried, "L'ultimo uomo di Lettere. O Dio. . . ."