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	a great impact on cartoonists. Deans, local politicians, national
	statesmen, and of course the current ruler of the Golden Horde
	were pictured as mascodagamas by topical humorists. A gro-
	tesque imitator (who was really Mascodagama himself in an
182.05	oversophisticated parody of his own act!) was booed at Ox-
	ford (a women's college nearby) by local rowdies. A shrewd
	reporter, who had heard him curse a crease in the stage carpet,
	commented in print on his "Yankee twang." Dear Mr. "Vas-
	codagama" received an invitation to Windsor Castle from its
182.10	owner, a bilateral descendant of Van's own ancestors, but he
	declined it, suspecting (incorrectly, as it later transpired) the
	misprint to suggest that his incognito had been divulged by one
	of the special detectives at Chose—the same, perhaps, who had
	recently saved the psychiatrist P.O. Tyomkin from the dagger
182.15	of Prince Potyomkin, a mixed-up kid from Sebastopol, Id.
	During his first summer vacation, Van worked under Tyom-
	kin, at the Chose famous clinic, on an ambitious dissertation he
	never completed, "Terra: Eremitic Reality or Collective
	Dream?" He interviewed numerous neurotics, among whom
182.20	there were variety artists, and literary men, and at least three
	intellectually lucid, but spiritually "lost," cosmologists who
	either were in telepathic collusion (they had never met and
	did not even know of one another's existence) or had dis-
	covered, none knew how or where, by means, maybe, of for-
182.25	bidden "ondulas" of some kind, a green world rotating in space
	and spiraling in time, which in terms of matter-and-mind was
	like ours and which they described in the same specific details
	as three people watching from three separate windows would
	a carnival show in the same street.
182.30	He spent his free time in gross dissipation.
	Sometime in August he was offered a contract for a series
	of matinées and nights in a famous London theater during the
	Christmas vacation and on weekends throughout the winter
	season. He accepted gladly, being badly in need of a strict

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	distraction from his perilous studies: the special sort of obsession
	under which Tyomkin's patients labored had something about
	it that made it liable to infect its younger investigators.
	Mascodagama's fame reached inevitably the backwoods of
183.05	America: a photograph of him, masked, it is true, but unable to
	mislead a fond relative or faithful retainer, was reproduced by
	the Ladore, Ladoga, Laguna, Lugano and Luga papers in the
	first week of 1888; but the accompanying reportage was not.
	The work of a poet, and only a poet ("especially of the Black
183.10	Belfry group," as some wit said), could have adequately de-
	scribed a certain macabre quiver that marked Van's extraordi-
	nary act.
	The stage would be empty when the curtain went up; then,
	after five heartbeats of theatrical suspense, something swept out
183.15	of the wings, enormous and black, to the accompaniment of
	dervish drums. The shock of his powerful and precipitous entry
	affected so deeply the children in the audience that for a long
	time later, in the dark of sobbing insomnias, in the glare of
	violent nightmares, nervous little boys and girls relived, with
183.20	private accretions, something similar to the "primordial qualm,"
	a shapeless nastiness, the swoosh of nameless wings, the unen-
	durable dilation of fever which came in a cavern draft from
	the uncanny stage. Into the harsh light of its gaudily carpeted
	space a masked giant, fully eight feet tall, erupted, running
183.25	strongly in the kind of soft boots worn by Cossack dancers.
	A voluminous, black shaggy cloak of the burka type enveloped
	his silhouette inquiétante (according to a female Sorbonne cor-
	respondent—we've kept all those cuttings) from neck to knee
	or what appeared to be those sections of his body. A Karakul
183.30	cap surmounted his top. A black mask covered the upper part
	of his heavily bearded face. The unpleasant colossus kept strut-
	ting up and down the stage for a while, then the strut changed
	to the restless walk of a caged madman, then he whirled, and
	to a clash of cymbals in the orchestra and a cry of terror (per-

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	haps faked) in the gallery, Mascodagama turned over in the
	air and stood on his head.
	In this weird position, with his cap acting as a pseudopodal
	pad, he jumped up and down, pogo-stick fashion—and sud-
184.05	denly came apart. Van's face, shining with sweat, grinned be-
	tween the legs of the boots that still shod his rigidly raised arms.
	Simultaneously his real feet kicked off and away the false head
	with its crumpled cap and bearded mask. The magical reversal
	"made the house gasp." Frantic ("deafening," "delirious," "a
184.10	veritable tempest of") applause followed the gasp. He bounded
	offstage—and next moment was back, now sheathed in black
	tights, dancing a jig on his hands.
	We devote so much space to the description of his act not
	only because variety artists of the "eccentric" race are apt to
184.15	be forgotten especially soon, but also because one wishes to
	analyze its thrill. Neither a miraculous catch on the cricket
	field, nor a glorious goal slammed in at soccer (he was a College
	Blue in both those splendid games), nor earlier physical suc-
	cesses, such as his knocking out the biggest bully on his first
184.20	day at Riverlane School, had ever given Van the satisfaction
	Mascodagama experienced. It was not directly related to the
	warm breath of fulfilled ambition, although as a very old man,
	looking back at a life of unrecognized endeavor, Van did wel-
	come with amused delight—more delight than he had actually
184.25	felt at the time—the banal acclaim and the vulgar envy that
	swirled around him for a short while in his youth. The essence
	of the satisfaction belonged rather to the same order as the
	one he later derived from self-imposed, extravagantly difficult,
	seemingly absurd tasks when V.V. sought to express something,
184.30	which until expressed had only a twilight being (or even none
	at all—nothing but the illusion of the backward shadow of its
	imminent expression). It was Ada's castle of cards. It was the
	standing of a metaphor on its head not for the sake of the trick's
	difficulty, but in order to perceive an ascending waterfall or a

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	sunrise in reverse: a triumph, in a sense, over the ardis of time.
	Thus the rapture young Mascodagama derived from overcom-
	ing gravity was akin to that of artistic revelation in the sense
	utterly and naturally unknown to the innocents of critical ap-
185.05	praisal, the social-scene commentators, the moralists, the idea-
	mongers and so forth. Van on the stage was performing organ-
	ically what his figures of speech were to perform later in life—
	acrobatic wonders that had never been expected from them and
	which frightened children.
185.10	Neither was the sheer physical pleasure of maniambulation a
	negligible factor, and the peacock blotches with which the car-
	pet stained the palms of his hands during his gloveless dance
	routine seemed to be the reflections of a richly colored nether
	world that he had been the first to discover. For the tango,
185.15	which completed his number on his last tour, he was given
	a partner, a Crimean cabaret dancer in a very short scintillating
	frock cut very low on the back. She sang the tango tune in
	Russian:
	Pod znóynïm nébom Argentínï,
185.20	Pod strástnïy góvor mandolínï
	'Neath sultry sky of Argentina,
	To the hot hum of mandolina
	Fragile, red-haired "Rita" (he never learned her real name),
	a pretty Karaite from Chufut Kale, where, she nostalgically
185.25	said, the Crimean cornel, kizil', bloomed yellow among the arid
	rocks, bore an odd resemblance to Lucette as she was to look
	ten years later. During their dance, all Van saw of her were her
	silver slippers turning and marching nimbly in rhythm with the
	soles of his hands. He recouped himself at rehearsals, and one
185.30	night asked her for an assignation. She indignantly refused,
	saying she adored her husband (the make-up fellow) and
	loathed England.
	Chose had long been as famous for the dignity of its regula-

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