ONCE, JUST ONCE, I DARED TO ASK HIM A QUESTION THAT up until then had never even occurred to me. I felt compelled to ask this unwonted question in spite of my youth—unless it was, rather, precisely because of my youth. Once it had occurred to me, it nagged at me insistently, and I held on to it like a life preserver, because it offered me the hope that I might somehow recognize myself a little in G. I had to ask him this question, as sensitive as it was, without lowering my eyes from his, without trembling, without looking away.

We were lying alongside each other in his room in the sleazy hotel, sharing a moment of intimacy and tranquility, without quarreling or griping, tears or doors slamming. Something sad now lodged between us. The knowledge that the end was coming, the exhaustion from constantly hurting each other. G. ran his fingers through my hair. I started to speak.

Had there been an adult during his childhood or adolescence who’d taken the role of his “initiator”? I deliberately avoided using words like “rape,” “abuse,” or “sexual assault.”

To my great surprise, G. admitted that yes, there had been someone, once, when he was thirteen: a man, a friend of the family. There was no affect in this revelation. Not a trace of emotion. And I don’t think I’m mistaken in noting that there is no evidence of this memory in any of his books. Yet it is surely an enlightening element of his autobiography. As I had learned at my expense, the aim of G.’s literary process was to distort reality to flatter himself. It was never about revealing even a scrap of truth about himself. Or if it was, it was always cloaked with too much narcissism to lay claim to any genuine honesty. This infinitesimal instant of candor, these unexpected words addressed to me were his unwitting gift to me. I became a person again in my own right, rather than simply the object of his pleasure. I was someone in possession of a little secret about his past, someone who could hear him, perhaps, without judging him. Someone who understood him, perhaps, better than anyone else.