I look at you for signs of leaving me and find to my despair that one of us has already left. Maybe it’s me. But, if it’s me, I always do come back, or always have. Please don’t go. Writing is always, in part, bending somebody’s ear. As reading is. In the matter of the commas. In the matter of the question marks. In the matter of the tenses. In the matter of the scandal at the tennis courts.
But then, don’t you see, I despaired. I simply, no, not simply, I rarely do anything simply, despaired. And then I despaired.
In the dining room, my place is set, back to the windows, at one end of the table, which is long. Along the wall at the opposite end of the table is a massive sideboard, on which there is a silver bowl of fruit. On the table, to the left of my plate, is a small electric bell. From the kitchen, Kathleen brings in oxtail soup, which is very hot. Before I have finished, she brings in a serving tray with five lamb chops, also mashed potatoes, string beans, squash, all home grown. Five lamb chops seems a lot for a single guest. I eat two, wonder ever so briefly who will eat the others. Kathleen comes in with a crème caramel large enough to serve, I guess, twenty people. When I ask for seconds, having for the first time used the electric bell, Kathleen returns with the immense dish, on which half a single portion now remains. I am really tired, and perhaps slightly crocked. As I pass the kitchen, on my way to the stairs, Celia says, What time will you be wanting breakfast? I say, Don’t trouble with breakfast; I like to go to sleep very early, and get up very early. Kathleen says, We come in at nine-thirty, but you just sleep in late. That subject seems closed somehow. But before I say goodnight, I ask, Is there anything I need to know about the peat fire in my room: I mean, do I just use a match? Kathleen says yes. When I reach my room, there are no matches. I return to the drawing room, find matches beside the grate, go back upstairs to my room, and try match after match against the peat, to no effect. I go downstairs to the kitchen, say, Somehow the matches don’t quite seem to work. Oh well, Kathleen says, of course you need the firestarter. She walks into a room, which, when she turns the light on, turns out to be the study, hands me a packet of brown squares, in color and texture rather like what was served to us in college as scrapple. I take the packet to my room, put one of the squares against the peat and light it. The fire takes, immediately. Soon the room is hot. I open the window slightly, upon the luminous seascape and the tower; I do not shut the drapes against the sky. Putting blankets, pillow, sheets on the carpeted floor, beside the grate, I fall asleep almost at once, coughing slightly, from the smoldering peat perhaps, or the air coming through the windows. I think of the coughing man on the plane, and then, with a smile, of the seriousness with which our night editor, at the paper, regards what his secretary refers to as his little colds. When I wake up, well before dawn, I am warm. The sky is still blue-black; and yet sea, rocks, green verge, and tower are irradiated, clear. I have begun to love the beauty, and the quiet. To begin with, after all, I almost went instead to Graham Island. Not to have to wait for you any more, your call, the sound, as characteristic as your footsteps, of your engine in the driveway, what that would mean. Not to think of you all the time any more. And suddenly I welcomed grey weather, clouds and rain.
What’s new? the biography of the opera star says she used to ask in every phone call, and What else? I’m not sure the biographer understood another thing about the opera star, but I do believe that What’s new. What else. They may be the first questions of the story, of the morning, of consciousness. What’s new. What else. What next. What’s happened here, says the inspector, or the family man looking at the rubble of his house. What’s it to you, says the street tough or the bystander. What’s it worth to you, says the paid informer or the extortionist. What is it now, says the executive or the husband, disturbed by the fifteenth knock at the door, or phone call, or sigh in the small hours of the night. What does it mean, says the cryptographer. What does it all mean, says the student or the philosopher on his barstool. What do I care. What’s the use. What’s the matter. Where’s the action. What kind of fun is that. Let me say that everyone’s story in the end is the old whore’s, or the Ancient Mariner’s: I was not always as you see me now. And the sentient man, the sentient person says in his heart, from time to time, What have I done.
Was it in the contemplation of my ancestors that I should share a guest room, one long weekend, with Mausi Esterhazi? Was it in the contemplation of Mausi’s ancestors. Was it in the contemplation of my ancestors that the sushi chef should say to me, with concern, at summer’s end, You are lose weight? Or that one curator should say to another, in my presence, of a third, He is married, which is very important in Chicago?
You spend too much time alone, says a murmur from the anti-claque; you are like some wet, tousled, obsessed rat or mouse, in a concrete bunker, all the time alone. But also, you spend too much time with friends. Here we have the water colors, here we have the bas reliefs. And these are the oils. This is the sculpture garden. We also have mobiles, in color, that can both make sounds and move. And here, he said, we have the rubble that resulted when the breakthrough came. You remember everything, he said, you remember everything, out of context, and then you brood. Look, you can’t write on a trapeze, and this is not a metronome. Yes, it is. I live with an hysteric and a metronome. I live with a person in despair. I live on a trapeze in a jungle where there is a harpsichord. I’m a pretty persuasive advocate when the cause is just.