— Yes, indeed. I suppose you see it.
— Why shouldn’t I — pigs see the wind, and it’s pink. But, my God, how I hurt her feelings. Ma non è vero. She said she saw me in the Piazza, drinking a cup of café nero at one of those iron tables, and that I was thinking. I denied it. I never think. And she laughed like hell.
— What the hell are you talking about.
— From Venice as far as Belmont.
— Why don’t you try to take a nap.
— Good God, man, what am I? Don’t be insulting. Take a nap yourself if you feel like it. Go on, you take it. Take the couch. Wrap your feet in snow, it’s pure. Puzzle record number two is now ready, on sale at the nearest dealer. Contains two tunes. Can you find them. I think I’ll be an advertising man. There’s no money in private tutoring. None. Never. But puzzle record number two is now ready, that’s the think to remember. That ought to interest any analyst. Analist. How do you pronounce the anal? Christ, what a breeze.
— I’m laughing.
— That’s good of you. Presently I’ll laugh too, I’ll join you. Take a seat, madam, and I’ll join you presently.
— What’s this about Venice.
— As far as Belmont. Shakespeare said that. He was always saying things like that. He said everything, the damned bastard, except the truth. But, my God, how I hurt her. I think she was in love with me. She was teaching me Italian at the Berlitz — excuse me — school. And I ran away from her. I paid off and left without even saying good-by to her. She saw me. She came out into the hall just as I was paying the bill, and saw me. And even then, I didn’t say anything to her. I just smiled. What kind of a smile, Bill? There are many kinds of a smile. You know. This was a guilty smile, a Judas smile, a cut-throat smile, a tombstone smile. E divieto il nuoto. Il nuoto è vietato. As if anybody would want to swim in their foul canals anyway. Did you ever see them? Jesus. It’s a lot of liquid garbage. But at the Lido, those German fräuleins, with their one-piece bathing suits and their delirious, upstanding breasts — Christ, what a breeze. And strawberries, too, con panna. She admired Tiepolo. One afternoon we took a gondola and saw them all. Putty cupids. Wings everywhere. Angels ascending and descending and all diaphanous — such pinks and blues, Bill, such pallors of pink and blue. But that was far away. And then there was — hell, I can’t even remember her name. At Interlaken. I ran all the way from Venice to Interlaken, and the hotel was only just opened for the season, and I was the only person there, and the maid who waited on the table — I’ve forgotten her name. Elsa! When I paid my bill after a week, the manageress looked hard at me and said, “Elsa will be sorry you go. She will miss you.” I went back into the dining room and gave Elsa a good tip, I don’t remember how much it was. She was crying. I told her the number of my room, but she never came. I told her I would take her for a walk, on her afternoon off, but I never did. I said she ought to marry and have six children, all of them with blue eyes and golden hair, and she laughed, she giggled, she simpered, she went to the other side of the room and stood up on a chair, pretending to rearrange dishes on a shelf, so that I could have a good look at her legs. My God, I was excited about her. But when I saw she was excited too, I got frightened. I ran away again, this time to Paris. What I really wanted was to get back to the Atlantic Ocean, to salt water, freedom. Something I knew. I wanted to leave behind me my wife, Elsa, and my six blue-eyed golden-haired children, by gum. Elsa, with her lovely teeth, false every one of them. That’s what Alan said. I met him later in London, and told him about her, and he said he would go there, in Interlaken, and give her my love. He did, and she cried again. And he said, on a postcard, I love her false teeth, every one of them. Just the same, she was damned pretty, damned nice. I’m sorry about it. At this very minute I might be living in a Swiss chalet with Elsa and the six children and the cow. And an Alp-horn, Bill!
— What the hell.
— Where else, Cambridge, Mass. Harvard Central Kendal Park, through the subway in the dark. But this was later, much later. And now Alan is dead, and all the others are dead, everybody I loved is dead, whenever I pick up a newspaper somebody is dead. Anyway, Elsa’s skull will have detachable teeth. What a rush there must be on the escalator to hell. Among the lost people. Per me si va nella città dolente. Have your tickets ready, with your passport, please — have your tickets ready, with your passport, please. Brattle Street is, as you might say, one of the main arteries of hell. Cambridge is a flourishing suburb. What swarms of hypocrites there be mounting the slopes of Calvary.
— Why Calvary again.
— Ah, but my dear chap, I’ve changed it this time. That’s my cunning. You thought you’d caught me, didn’t you. Why, here’s some Rhine wine, some echt love-lady milk, as I live and breathe.
— I wouldn’t begin mixing drinks, if I were you.
— But you aren’t me, Bill. Quod erat demonstrandum. Why not hang yourself on the wall like a bat beside that rusty harpoon. Upside down, like Dracula on the turret. Jesus! What a turn that gave me, in Paris, on Christmas Eve! It was snowing, too, just like tonight. Snowbroth.… Oh, sorry, damn that ash stand anyway. Why do you have it. It’s ugly.
— Why don’t you sit down.
— I will. There’s nothing I like better. Whoooof. My God, that went fast. But I saw it going, just the same.
— What.
— I think it was the nasturtium quid.
— What did it look like.
— Excuse me. I’m not really drunk, Bill. I’m not as much of a fool as you think. I can see pretty straight. I am thinking clearly, too. Very clearly. I see you distinctly, there, you with your three eyes, and an extra one in your ear. Oh, I know what you have them for, it’s all right, I understand it perfectly, every man to his taste, as the farmer said when he kissed the pig. There’s the pig again. But this death business. This dying business. These coffins. These funeral parlors. These greasy undertakers, and the ribbons on doors. Do you know what, Bill? We’re dying piecemeal. Every time some one you know dies, you die too, a little piece of you. Now a fingernail, now an eyelash. A hair today, a corpuscle tomorrow. Slowly, slowly. The liver, then the lights. And the worst of it is that what’s dead isn’t buried: it rots in you. There’s Alan, dead in my side. Elsa, dead in my prostate gland. Uncle David, dead in my right hand. My father, dead in my memory of geometry, turned to a putrid phosphorescent rhomboid. I’m a walking graveyard, a meditative dance of death. So are you. A bone orchard. Why if I were to investigate you, Bill — good God, how I widen my eyes at the mere thought! I’d probably know why you’re an amateur analyst. I’d know why you’re afraid to speak out. Why you sit there and wait for your poor fool of a patient to do the speaking for you. Who died on you, Bill? Who lies dead on your heart? Oh, Jesus. I feel sick. But that eye in your ear. What’s that, synesthesia? Dislocation? Per auram wollen sie? Und das hat mit ihrem singen. Per auram. I suppose it was your little sister, who died when you were twelve. I’m sorry — I shouldn’t have said that. Perhaps it was only a cat. But this death business — aren’t you really dead, Bill? And if not, why not? I’m dead. Any further death for me would be merely, as it were, a publication. No essential addition. Just take the bones out, Felix, and spread them on the grass. Burn them, and spread them on the grass. I feel sick.
— I don’t wonder. Why don’t you try the Roman feather.
— Don’t be simple-minded, you idiot. I don’t feel sick in any sense so God-damned easy.