A History of Books Read Free Page A

fictional study he suspected that the girl was looking at the image-details between the image-thighs of the naked image-men.
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    Two patches of dried gum lay on a mostly white page. The patches had formerly held in place a coloured reproduction of a painting. The title of the painting and several other details werestill printed at the foot of the page. The man remembering these details could not recall the title of the painting but he recalled that its subject was a group of naked women beside a pool in a large room with a tiled floor and marble columns. The man could not recall any detail of any of the images of the women, but he recalled that he had stared at detail after detail on many an afternoon from his eleventh to his fifteenth year.
    On each of the afternoons mentioned, the boy had found the reproduction mentioned in a book containing numerous reproductions of paintings but only one in which were images of naked women. He had then looked at the images of the women for as long as he had dared before he replaced the book and then reached for the book of fiction that he was presently reading during each afternoon. This book was one or another work by a famous author of fiction who had been born in England one hundred and twenty-seven years before the boy had been born. The boy had first been recommended to read these works of fiction by an aunt who was one of his father’s unmarried sisters and after he had boasted to her that he, the boy, was capable of reading the books that adults read. His aunt had told him that the famous author had not belonged to their church but that his books of fiction would be safe to read. She had then given the boy permission to take down one or another of those books from the tall glass-fronted bookcase in the parlour of the house where she lived with her two unmarried sisters and their unmarried brother.
    The house mentioned was a farmhouse surrounded by mostlylevel grassy countryside. The view of countryside ended in one direction in a distant line of trees and in another direction in a line of cliffs overlooking an ocean. During each of the years mentioned earlier, the boy had spent several weeks of his summer holidays in the house. During each of those weeks, he had read often from one or another book of fiction by the famous author mentioned and had looked often at the reproduction of the painting mentioned earlier until the day during the summer holidays of his fifteenth year when he had found, on the page where the reproduction had previously lain, only the two patches of dried gum mentioned earlier.
    Thirty and more years after he had found the two patches mentioned, the man who had been the boy mentioned was standing on one of the cliffs mentioned and was trying to remember what he had read about in the many books of fiction by the famous author mentioned, none of which books he had read since the summer holidays of his fifteenth year. The man had brought his wife and their two children to the cliffs during their summer holidays. While the man was standing on the cliff, his wife and their children were scrambling down a steep path into a bay or cove where waves broke against a strip of sand at the foot of the cliff. Before the man had turned to look across the grassy countryside towards the nearest farmhouse and to try to remember what he had read about in the parlour of that house more than thirty years before, he had been pleased to hear his wife and their children calling to one another and laughing on the steep path. During the previous year, his wife had been oftenill and had spent several periods in one or another hospital.
    While the man looked towards the nearest farmhouse, there appeared in his mind an image of a sailing ship lying on a reef within sight of cliffs. Tall waves were breaking against the ship, and the wind had torn the sails from the masts. Groups of people were huddled on the deck of the ship. Other people were trying to launch lifeboats. Noticeable