Soon after my arrival I met Pa at nearby Birkhall. To my surprise, to my relief, he was gentle. Even bemused. He felt for me, he said, he’d been there, though he’d never been naked on a front page. Actually, that was untrue. When I was about eight years old a German newspaper had published naked photos of him, taken with a telephoto lens while he was holidaying in France. But he and I had both put those photos out of our minds. Certainly he’d felt naked many times before the world, and that was our common ground. We sat by a window and talked for quite a long time about this strange existence
...more
