They are announcing on channel-TV a program about Pope John VIII - who later turned out to be a woman. There are several scholars who insist this is a legend and that there was no "Popess", nor a special chair with a hole in the middle to allow cardinals to palpate and witness the next candidate's manhood.

Perhaps this story can never be ascertained by concrete facts ( once the Church keeps its holy secrets under lock and key) but, for me, it is enough that there is a word that describes this "testimonial" ( "testes" plus "manus"). It is sufficient proof for me, with or without John or Joan.

"sat in a canvas chair by a garden table and...gazed into the garden...A cold late-afternoon lucency penetrated the... air; the sharp blue shadows of the young trees stretched along the sunny lawn...The gardener had already twice taken hold of his wheelbarrow...the sun still bore down triumphantly on the right from behind the corner of the count's villa, which stood on higher ground with taller trees...The cloudlets in one part of the pale clean sky had funny curls... At last having heard all there was to hear and told all there was to tell, the gardener moved off with his wheelbarrow,turning with geometrical precision at the intersections of gravel paths, and Tom, rising lazily, proceeded to walk after him like a clockwork toy, turning when the gardener turned. Die toten Seelen by a Russian author...slid onto the flags of the floor...Two men in top hats, diplomats or undertakers, went by... Out of nowhere came a Red Admiral butterfly, settled on the edge of the table, opened its wings and began to fan them slowly as if in breathing. The dark-brown ground was bruised here and there, the scarlet band had faded, the fringes were frayed - but the creature was still so lovely, so festive..."

In Collin Collector's Choice English edition of KDK, it is mentioned almost twice on page 801: " this softness, this flexibility, this plexibility, this stylized animation..."..."what was it - 'ripplexibility'?"...

The book, with no foreword by VN, also doesn't mention the name of its translator. Should it have been Dmitri Nabokov, perhaps he was its creator. It would be worth checking the Websters ( I don't own one) since, in my poor dictionary, after "plexus" we find "pliability", with lots of similarities to Fet's explanation about the word "pleksiglas": indeed used in Russian, for "organic glass", a local imitation of Plexiglass brand product (transparent polymethylmetacrylate, or PMMA), easily glueable, scratchable and etchable, and wonderfully burnable at school's backyard (in my memory, the early 1960s ...)

... and thanks Victor!

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