Some or another reader of this work of fiction may be surprised by the remainder of this paragraph, but I assure that reader that the man of more than sixty years valued above all other passages in the several thousand works of fiction that he had read those passages that made him alert to what he called the feel of things. Whenever the man had begun to read some or another work of fiction, he had hoped to become, at some time during his reading, at least as alert to the feel of things as he had been as a child whenever he had watched, towards the end of some or another film, some or another scene in which an unlikely character, or a character previously belittled or despised, had brought about the events that delivered freedom to a captive character or joy to a grieving character or peace of mind to a troubled character. Or, the man had hoped to become, at some time during his reading, at least as alert to the feel of things as he had been whenever he watched a sporting event in which some or another person or animal succeeded against all odds, as a journalist or a commentator might have reported the matter.
The man aged more than sixty years often supposed that he was more affected by image-persons and image-events than by actual persons and events, as though he possessed an image-self whose image-thoughts and image-feelings were more powerful than their actual counterparts. The man often wished that he could have read, if not a published report, then at least a typewritten or even a handwritten report of certain image-events that had appeared in the mind of a man aged fifty and more years while he sat alone on many an evening and tried to write some or another work of fiction that he would never complete. Some of those image-events are reported in the following paragraphs as though they are fictional events in this work of fiction.
A man aged forty years and more stood beside his wife late at night in a cubicle in the emergency department of a public hospital in a suburb of Melbourne. The man’s wife, who was fastened by straps to a wheeled stretcher, cried out continually. The curtains had been drawn around the cubicle, but the man understood that his wife’s cries could be heard by the many patients and visitors and nurses and doctors in the emergency department. The man’s wife cried out that her husband wrongly considered her insane or that he had plotted for some time past with persons from her place of work to have her dismissed for incompetence and later confined to a locked ward in a hospital. The man knew better than to try to dissuade his wife from crying out, or to try to stifle her cries with a hand. His wife had cried out in this way from time to time during the past five years. In earlier years, she had cried out only occasionally, but in recent years she had cried out often, especially during the night. On many nights during the past year, she had woken her husband with her cries and had then kept him awake during the night with her reports of the plots against her at her place of work. Whenever, for the sake of peace, her husband had agreed that her reports seemed persuasive, she had demanded that he accompany her next day to her place of work and there confront the plotters. Whenever her husband had disputed her reports, she had cried out loudly enough to be heard in the neighbouring houses or she had struck him. Sometimes her husband had struck her in return.
During the year before the man stood beside his wife in the cubicle mentioned, he had worked during many a night in a building with glass walls. Sometimes his wife had telephoned him in the building and had cried out to him that she would swallow all her supply of medicines if he did not come home at once and listen to her reports of the plots against her. The man was usually able to persuade his wife to wait until he had finished his work, after which he would return home at once. Once, the man had ended a telephone call while his wife was crying out to him and had declined to pick up the receiver when the telephone had sounded again soon afterwards. Later, his wife had arrived in a taxi at the building with glass walls and had cried out to him through the walls.
During the last months before the man stood beside his wife in the cubicle mentioned, she had been absent for so long from her place of work that she no longer received salary payments. She no longer dressed or did housework or shopped but kept mostly to her room, sometimes crying out and often smoking cigarettes. After she had ceased to consult her doctors, her husband had himself consulted them and had sometimes telephoned them, but neither doctor would agree to visit his wife in her home. One evening, however, after the man had told one of the doctors by telephone that his wife had already swallowed some of her supply of medicines and was threatening to swallow the remainder, the doctor had advised the man to call an ambulance and to have his wife taken to the emergency department of the nearest public hospital.
The man standing beside his wife in the cubicle mentioned had expected to go on standing beside her for at least an hour, but his wife’s crying out had seemed to persuade the doctors to deal with her promptly. After his wife had cried out for no more than ten minutes, the man became aware that a young female doctor was standing beside him.
The man could never afterwards recall the appearance of the young female doctor mentioned, although he recalled that she had seemed to him good-looking. The man recalled afterwards only the surname of the young doctor and her way of looking at him while he explained to her, even while his wife continued to cry out against him, what had brought him and his wife to the hospital. The surname of the young doctor had told the man that her parents had been born in one or another country beside the Baltic Sea. The young doctor’s way of looking at him had told the man that she was alert to the feel of things while she listened to him and then while she signed the page or pages that caused some or another employee of the hospital to arrange by telephone for a police van to arrive at the emergency department and for the two policemen in the van to remove his wife from the cubicle and to confine her, still crying out, in the van and then to take her, still crying out, to a nearby hospital for the so-called mentally ill where she was interviewed, still crying out, by a doctor and afterwards taken, still crying out, to a room that her husband supposed, after he had later seen, through the small window in the door of the room, the upholstered walls and floor of the room, was a padded cell.
The man aged sixty and more years had never read any sort of report of the fictional events reported in the previous five paragraphs of this work of fiction. Nor did he expect ever to read any sort of report of the fictional events reported in the following paragraph.
Four husbands and their wives, all of them aged fifty years and more, travelled every year from their homes in various suburbs of Melbourne to a certain city in the south-west of Victoria to attend a so-called three-day racing carnival, on the third day of which was run a famous steeplechase. On one or another evening during their stay in the city mentioned, the husbands and their wives travelled about forty kilometres from the city to a nearby town where they dined and drank in a fashionable hotel overlooking a pier or jetty and a view of the ocean. Each year, while one of the husbands and his wife travelled from the city mentioned to the town mentioned, the husband preferred not to mention to his wife that a certain overgrown cemetery, set far back from the road between the city and the coastal town, contained the grave of a certain man whose wife had been, more than a hundred years before, the postmistress at a certain township a short distance inland and whose daughter had written, long after the death of her parents, a novel comprising three volumes and containing a passage in which a woman trying to care for an insane husband was reported as writing for help to a woman known only by a surname and a place name.