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"Well, I lived in terror of the day he was going to have to sellthese two books! These books weren't like the other books. First off,the illustrations were exceedingly detailed. One page might containthe motif of a flowering vine, with blossoms from which birds drank,and in these blossoms there were human figures intertwined, as if in abower. Also, these were books of psalms. When you first examinedthem you thought they were psalms of the Vulgate, you know, theBible we accept as canonical.""Yes....""But they weren't. They were psalms that never appeared in anyBible. I figured that much out, simply by comparing them to otherLatin reprints of the same period that I got out of the library. Thiswas some sort of original work. Then the illustrations, the illustrationscontained not only tiny animals and trees and fruit but nakedpeople, and the naked people were doing all sorts of things!""Bosch.""Exactly, like Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, that kind of lus-cious sensuous paradise! Of course, I hadn't seen Bosch's painting yetin the Pradp. But it was here in miniature in these books. Little figuresfrolicking beneath the abundant trees. Old Captain said, 'Garden ofEden imagery,' that it was very common. But two books full ofit? No. This was different. I had to crack these books, get anabsolutely clear translation of every word.
"And then Old Captain did the kindest thing for me he'd everdone, the thing that might have made a great religious leader out ofme, and may still make one in Dora, though hers is wholly anothercreed.""He gave you the books.""Yes! He gave me the books. And let me tell you more. Thatsummer, he took me all over the country to look at medieval manuscripts!
We went to the Huntington Library in Pasadena, and the NewburyLibrary in Chicago. We went to New York. He would have taken meto England, but my mother said no.
"I saw all types of medieval books! And I came to know thatWynken's were unlike any others. Wynken's were blasphemous andprofane. And nobody, nobody at any of these libraries had a book byWynken de Wilde, but the name was known!
"Captain still let me keep the books! And I set to work on translatingthem right away. Old Captain died in the front room, the firstweek of my senior year. I didn?t even start school till after he wasburied. I refused to leave him. I sat there with him. He slipped into acoma. By the third day of the coma, you could not have told who hewas, his face had so changed. He didn't close his eyes anymore, anddidn't know they were open, and his mouth was just a slack sort ofoval, and his breath came in even gasps. I sat there. I told you.""I believe you.""Yes, well, I was seventeen, my mother was very sick, there wasn'tany money for college, which every other senior boy at Jesuit wastalking about, and I was dreaming of flower children in the HaightAshbury of California, listening to the songs of Joan Baez, andthinking that I would go to San Francisco with the message of Wynken deWilde, and found a cult.
"This was what I knew then through translation. And in that regardI had had the help of an old priest at Jesuit for quite some time,one of those genuinely brilliant Latin scholars who has to spend halfthe day making boys behave. He had done die translation for megladly, and of course there was a little of the usual promise in it of myproximity and intimacy, he and I being alone and close for hours.""So you were selling yourself again, even before Old Captaindied?""No. Not really. Not the way you think. Well, sort of. Only thispriest was a genuine celibate, Irish, almost impossible to understandnow, this sort of priest. They never did anything to anyone. I doubtthey even masturbated. It was all being near boys and occasionallybreathing heavily or something. Nowadays religious life doesn'tattract that particular kind of robust and completely repressedindividual. A man like that could no more molest a child than he could getup on the altar at Mass and start to shout.""He didn't know he felt an attraction for you, that he was givingyou special favors.""Precisely, and so he spent hours with me translating Wynken.
He kept me from going crazy. He always stopped in to visit with OldCaptain. If Old Captain had been Catholic, Father Kevin would havegiven him the Last Rites, Try to understand this, will you? You can'tjudge people like Old Captain and Father Kevin.""No, and not boys like you.""Also, my mother had a disastrous new boyfriend that last year, asugar-coated mock gentleman, actually, one of those people whospeaks surprisingly well, has overly bright eyes, and is obviouslyrotten inside, and from a totally unconvincing background. He had toomany wrinkles in his youngish face; they looked like cracks. Hesmoked du Maurier cigarettes. I think he thought he was going tomarry my mother for the house. You follow me?""Yes, I do. So after Old Captain died, you had only the priest.""Right. Now you get it. Father Kevin and I worked a lot at theboardinghouse, he liked that. He'd drive up, park his car on PhilipStreet and come around and we'd go up to my room. Second floor,front bedroom. I had a great view of the parades on Mardi Gras. Igrew up thinking that was normal, for an entire city to go mad twoweeks out of every year. Anyway, we were up there during one of thenight parades, ignoring it as natives can do, you know, once you'veseen enough papier-mache floats and trinkets and flambeaux?
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