And it's not as if they're the only things on the shelves.

Over the decades I've assembled here a vast library.

Though I speak only English, French and a halting Italian,

I read Hebrew, Latin and Greek, so my books are often antiquated, their subjects arcane. When you've had as much time on your hands as I've had, your curiosity takes obscure turns. In learned circles I'd probably be counted a world expert in a variety of subjects that no person with a real life to live-children, taxes, love-would give a fig about.

My father, were he here, would not approve of my books. He didn't like me to read. It reminded him, he would tell me, of how he'd lost my mother. A remark, by the way, which I do not understand to this day. The only volume he encouraged me to study was the two-leaved book that opens between a woman's legs. He kept ink, pen and paper from me when I was a child; though of course I wanted them all the more because they were forbidden me. He was determined that my real schooling be in the art and craft of horse breeding, which, after sex, was his great passion.

As a young man I traveled the world on his behalf, buying and selling horses, organizing their transportation to the stables here at L'Enfant, learning how to understand their natures as he understood them. I was good at what I did; and I enjoyed my travels. Indeed I met my late wife, Chiyojo, on one of those trips; and brought her back here to the house, intending to start a family. Those sweet ambitions were unfortunately denied me, however, by a sequence of tragedies that ended with the death of both my wife and that of Nicodemus.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I was talking about this room, and what it housed during my father's occupancy: the phalli, the scroll, the horse's skull.