Elegy of the Dead Days

I sat on the floor of my father’s study, wiping dust off the books placed on the lower shelf. Though I wasn’t really wiping them—I was flipping through them. On the lower shelf were the books I liked to read most. One of them, titled “My Life Models,” was full of photographs of nude women frozen in poses—nymphs and goddesses—with old-fashioned hairstyles. The poses seemed beautiful to me, and the models’ figures—less so. Withered bodies of professionals. Flabby flesh. Heavy thighs. But in the strictly male atmosphere of the house where I grew up, those pictures were perceived as views from some forbidden zone.