A year after that scene in the garden, he suddenly didn't feel good, and after tests and a check-up, the doctors discovered that he had cancer, and the family moved to California, to a climate better than New York's. They treated Valentine, and one hope was replaced by another, and it seemed that there was still reason to hope, and then he died.

Did I pity the boy? Yes. The usual horror of life. Valentine was unlucky.

I'm still alive for the time being. If there is "another world," Valentine and I will meet there and we'll be friends. We were kindred spirits.

But then, standing and sitting in the flowering garden, we suspected nothing. All the trees were in bloom, every one of them, except for the magnolia, which had already finished. Isabelle was saying that she planned to come to the party that evening too and would bring the children with her and something Russian to eat, some caviar and vodka she had bought. "I'm always by myself," she said, neither to Bridget nor to Douglas but to me. "I don't go anywhere, only to my neighbor Jenny's when she has a party." She said it, and then went sadly back along the path to her house.

There are special moments in life that are much more deeply inscribed in the memory than others. It is that day that I remember Jenny, although there were many other episodes in the garden, and we spent two summers, two springs, and one fall there together. Still stupefied with grass, I sat in the garden with her and felt an extraordinary tenderness toward her. A tenderness toward her cheek, and her little hands. A tenderness toward her friends and those others close to me who were sharing with me my time on earth. Tenderness toward her as one of them.

Her combs were the same color as her eyes. And the embroidery on her East Indian dress and her shoes with their long straps tied around her ankles were the same color too. There were little mirrors sewn on her dress, a great many mirrors sewn on by the Indians, and when Jenny moved, rays of sunlight were scattered in every direction. How young she is! I thought.

Then we had supper on the terrace, steaks that Jenny had prepared, and drank red wine. Wasps circled the food, and everybody was intimidated by them, even the punk rocker Douglas — everybody except me. Bridget and Douglas admired my intrepidity and presence of mind in the face of the clear and present wasp danger, and Jenny snidely remarked, obviously making fun of me, that I had been as steadfast as a real revolutionary. She followed that with caustic remarks about bourgeois society, wondering how we could ever coexist, she being so bourgeois herself. I couldn't even answer — I was still stoned — and merely grinned sheepishly.

Bridget and Douglas got ready to leave, since they were supposed to come back to the party that evening. Jenny walked them to the door. "I'll make a speech when I return," she said in a tipsy voice. "I need another glass of red wine."

After she came back, we uncorked another bottle and sat down in the kitchen.

"You talk about inequality, Edward, about the rich and the poor," she began seriously. "But God, Edward, God loves everyone. And I, if you want to know, am happier than my boss. Whenever people come here, to my kitchen, I'm happy that I can feed them. God commands me to help people. My father is not a rich man. He was a naval officer in the war, and then served for twenty-eight years as an FBI special agent. He did his duty — he worked in order to raise and feed and educate us, his ten children. And we had everything. If you work, then you can have everything. But you want to destroy that peaceful life!" she surprised me by exclaiming. During all this we had been kissing and embracing each other from our chairs. But at that point she freed herself.

"Right now, right this minute, I'm going to show you something!" she suddenly cried and dashed out of the kitchen. She came back with a large-format book. "This is my favorite book," she said, and started quickly turning the pages. "Come over here and look," she demanded.

I moved to the chair next to Jenny and looked. There wasn't any text, just pictures. In picture after picture the artist showed the successive destruction of mankind by war until there was nothing left but a man and a woman and a flower. And then life began again and once again revolutionaries and soldiers appeared, and war again destroyed the whole world, except for a man and a woman and a flower.

"Here!" Jenny said, slapping the book shut and extending it to me. "I give it to you. So you'll remember how it all ends. If I have a baby, I want him to be happy," Jenny exclaimed. "But you, Edward..!" and she jumped up and started pounding her fists on my back.

Thus we talked and fondled each other, and then after eight the guests started to arrive. The party was a definite success. Many of the more than thirty people who had been invited had never tried Russian food before, and for them it was very exotic. Each guest drank a shot of vodka with me. I turned nobody down, and obviously got drunk as a result, since I couldn't remember later on how the party had ended.

Coming to, I didn't understand at first where I was. Only after looking around for a few minutes did I realize that I was in Jenny's room. You never know the time in the houses of the rich, or what season of the year it is. The air conditioner had been on all night and had made the room so cold that it felt like winter. The room was dim, since the blinds were down, and only the light of an unknown season showed through the crack. Then I remembered and scowled in disgust.

I've always been poor, ugly, and short. In any case not the sort that women throw themselves at. And now my prick won't stand up either, I thought pitilessly. Probably a little too pitilessly and a little too certainly, but honestly nonetheless.

An unsuccessful morning after an unsuccessful night. And now my prick won't stand up either, I repeated to myself and scowled again. "You ought to go to a doctor. I want to take you to my doctor," Jenny's words came back to me.

The next day after her dance lesson, her belly dancing lesson, that is, she went to her doctor and probably said to him, "I have a boyfriend. I like him, but he can't get an erection." That took place at 2:30 or 3:00 in the afternoon. And then she told the doctor my "case history" — what she knew about me. "His mother left him when he was a child. He was raised by soldiers until he was fifteen. His first wife was a prostitute. The last two years he has had sex only with men. He won't say how old he is, but I think he's about thirty."

From her bed I heard noises resembling the smacking of parched lips. She was waking up. And she had been awake several times during the night. That does her credit, even though she hadn't touched me or in any way tried to break down the wall that had arisen between us after my one unsuccessful attempt to fuck her. Or if she had tried to, it had been very tentative.

Actually, I did remain a few minutes in her "womb," as that place is pompously termed, or even more idiotically, her «vagina» (continue the sequence, if you like: "angina," "regina"…). I entered it, yes, but I didn't remain very long. Nothing lewd or particularly exciting — a twenty-year-old girl with a clean, slightly heavy body equipped to bear children and love a husband. Fresh young breasts, a long beautiful neck, everything fresh and smooth. And a cunt that was probably a bit wider than necessary…

And I, that twisted monster who had been lying next to her, had woken up in another bed, although one close to hers. A feeble monster. My body wasn't twisted; on the contrary, it was dark and spare, but inside… My God, inside it was a pathological jumble of nerves and terror…

Thus I quietly lay there, despondent yet at the same time thinking, But what about Rena, the Rumanian dancer? How am I to explain then my bestial, hour-long fucking with her? Of course, it had been several months since I'd quit fucking her. Maybe something had happened to me in the meantime? I didn't believe there was anything wrong with me. Probably it was something else, say a temporary aversion to Jenny. Or that I wasn't used to her yet? Yes, that's what it was. I was still getting used to her.