Bronco at the Photoplasticon

Laughing, lightly shocked, he told me later how he normally bought a ticket and went inside. With two unnaturally large packages in the complete darkness somehow he finally found a free stool and through the binocular speculum began to contemplate the fascinating three dimensional showing. This time it was the super attractive reportage from Bastille Day, celebrated in Lyon on 14 July in the year 1927. In this darkness, he managed to notice something strange, and even somewhat suspicious.

That even though half the seats in the place were empty, often at one seat the moving slides were watched and contemplated by two people. He thought even that this was in some sense absurd, because the full valor of the three-dimensionality could be appreciated only when you were watching the moving slides using both eyes, through the binocular speculum.

When finally his sight became more accustomed to the darkness, Bronco decided that at either side of him there was a pair of young people. The pair on his left side spent the whole time kissing passionately, while the pair on his right side acted very unnaturally. None of them were observing the slides.

On his right, the girl sat on the stool with her back to the binocular-looking photoplasticon speculum, and the boy stood very close to her. Moreover the girl let out some strange quiet groans, even as if crying a little.

Not adapted yet to this darkness Bronco suspected that maybe the guy was doing something bad to her.

He knew that he should somehow react to this, but on the other hand he did not want to start in this darkness any scandal by, for example, hitting the guest in the face. As he gathered his thoughts like this, after a very long time, when he really felt he had to do something after all, he discovered at last that they were simply copulating.

He fell on this thought also thanks to this that the entire time the girl tried through the wicket to lean with her right leg on one of the cork filled packages, and Bronco time after time interrupted her, pushing away the leg with his knee.

When I laughed at this educational adventure, I remembered a story my mother told me, similar, because it also involved in a certain sense sexual naiveté. This history happened at the end of the twenties to her father, meaning my grandfather, who had the beautifully sounding name Kayetan.