I told him it wasn’t exactly “about” anything. “I mean, there’s a story of sorts but it’s highly ambiguous. A faun wakes from an afternoon nap and remembers an erotic dream about a nymph. A couple of nymphs actually. And it’s not clear whether the encounter was what we would call consensual, or even whether it was in fact a dream—it’s possible he’s remembering something that actually happened. Basically it’s a celebration of a certain phase of male desire where the intensity of feeling dissolves all the usual categories of reality. I teach it alongside Sylvia Plath’s journals and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnet about female desire, ‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways . . .’ ”
“It’s about rape?”
“No . . . I don’t think so . . . It’s very tender and delicate. Paul Valéry thought it was the most beautiful poem ever written, at least in French. There are flashes of brutality, but the language creates a kind of pagan, premoral atmosphere in which—”
“What is a faun anyway?” Marco interrupted. He never had much patience when I waxed pedagogical. “Is it the same as a satyr?”
“No. Those are cruder—”
“They’re the ones with the hairy goat legs and the enormous rampant dicks?”
“Yes. Fauns have something more shy and elusive about them. They live in enchanted forests, as far as I remember. You could say they represent male desire in its youthful, innocent form, when it’s all just wonder at the magical new kinds of pleasure that arrive with puberty. Whereas satyrs embody something worldlier, more corrupted. Lechery, I guess, as opposed to desire.”
“So she was being complimentary then.”
“Your tutor? Definitely.”
“Well, anyway, she was certainly extremely interested in—what you said: the combination of brutality and tenderness.”
It appeared this old professor of his had come to consider herself not only his academic instructor but also his tutor in matters of erotic technique. On breaking off the affair (which she did after a few weeks, as brusquely as she’d started it) she assured Marco she’d taught him an infallible method for arousing women, and guaranteed him limitless success with future lovers if he applied it.
“I believed her. Why wouldn’t I? She was this sophisticated woman who seemed to know everything there was to know about sex, while I was this nineteen-year-old . . . faun.”
He fell silent.
“Did you try it out?” I asked.
“Yeah. A couple of times, with girls my age.”
“And?”
“Well, it worked, sort of. Or anyway, no one objected. But I didn’t feel good about it. In fact, I felt pretty awful. I made a conscious decision never to use it again, and I didn’t. It was ancient history by the time I met Julia.”