Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Victor Chooses a Companion

Checking in from Moody's Internet Gallery in Mendocino CA (highly recommended)--

Victor Segalen, on his quest to comprehend the Imperial City, undertakes to select a companion for the evening:

At random I asked, “the big girl there?”

“If you like,” René Leys conceded, adding carelessly, “She’s the policewoman I was telling you about—‘Jade of the Five Colors.’”

I felt like going back on my choice. Love à la police was something I found disturbing to contemplate. I should be searched, stripped, and dturned thoroughly inside out. I should be denounced, charged and implicated in wanton and hideous crimes, when the very most I had in mind was an assault—against payment—upon the lady’s decency!

—Victor Segalen, René Leys, 56-7 (NYRB Paperback ed. 2003)

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