Alicia said he needed company. She didn’t say he didn’t. Alicia never mentioned the idea of his needing company at all. John could be entirely harmless, a blessed event, or a malevolent soul, and it would be perfectly within reason for me to want to see if what Alicia thinks of him is true or has any relation to reality. Even a trace. Since Helen is my good friend.
The water dashes against the harbor, excited by something stirring beneath it. A beast, a hideous octopus is moving down below, a war is being waged between monsters of the deep, that kind of thing. I have been working steadily for some hours. Helen is not on her terrace.
The restaurant beckons, and I take my usual table. The wine is cold and tingles in my gullet and on my tongue. Alicia is not here again, which is good, as I might feel compelled to reveal something I oughtn’t, but that awful Wallace is. Is he out of jail so soon: Do I have to talk with him? He’s not really one of our crowd, such as it is, but an interloper on the scene, a madman, different from Stephen, whom I haven’t seen in months. Perhaps Wallace will tell me again his idea for irrigating the Sahara—planting a gigantic rubber tube in a fertile source, from which it will suck water, carry it miles and miles, then expel it into the parched desert. He talks about his invention with such unwarranted excitement he means it to be taken seriously.
Wallace plops down at my table, uninvited, pulling along his Dutch girlfriend, who understands his Afrikaans. I ought to feel pity for Wallace, in and out of mental asylums and jails, this last time for indecent exposure, which could have gotten him thrown out of the country, but someone—probably Roger, he plays chess with one of the judges—interceded. Wallace’s parents own one of the major newspapers in South Africa, and all of this must have been trotted out—Wallace’s respected books of poetry along with his mother and father, whom Wallace despises for their politics and so on. On the basis of this, no doubt, he was set free. And here he is. I wish I’d been on the beach last week when he ran into the water wearing a red net bikini bathing suit. Not the thing to do here, even if men expose themselves, and certainly touch themselves, regularly. They do it furtively—but not Wallace, he’s a flaunter. I ought to have sympathy for him—committed to a mental institution when he was just a boy of sixteen, deemed insane for opposing apartheid. He was sane then but has over the years lost whatever marbles he had, I think, though occasionally he’s lucid and amusing. I find it hard to tolerate him. He talks so much, in that annoying accent.
I cut my fish, lifting the flesh away from the bone. My hand is steady and as usual I wonder if I oughtn’t to have become a surgeon, since I enjoy doing this so much. I always think this when I cut flesh, exactly the same thought, and always wonder, in precisely the same way, if others have the same thought when they do simple tasks over and again, and then what would it be like, if that were so, to be working in a factory, on the line, doing the same job daily, repetitively? I do a good job with my fish and feel satisfied. Little things please me. My mother could never serve fish that was not riven with bones. I hated fish, the way most children do, and it took me years to develop a taste for it, and if I hadn’t I couldn’t have made my home in Greece.
At the moment I seem to be invisible at my own table, which is to my liking. Wallace and his friend chatter away in Afrikaans. I’m sure his Dutch girlfriend is kind but I have an antipathy to the Dutch and may be the only non-Belgian or non-German so inclined, or disinclined. Years ago I visited Amsterdam and had a most dreadful time. I stayed a few months, it rained constantly, and I met no one and found the Dutch barely civil. Everyone says they’re so nice, so I never interject that I think they are dull. Actually I don’t know if they
The water dashes against the harbor, excited by something stirring beneath it. A beast, a hideous octopus is moving down below, a war is being waged between monsters of the deep, that kind of thing. I have been working steadily for some hours. Helen is not on her terrace.
The restaurant beckons, and I take my usual table. The wine is cold and tingles in my gullet and on my tongue. Alicia is not here again, which is good, as I might feel compelled to reveal something I oughtn’t, but that awful Wallace is. Is he out of jail so soon: Do I have to talk with him? He’s not really one of our crowd, such as it is, but an interloper on the scene, a madman, different from Stephen, whom I haven’t seen in months. Perhaps Wallace will tell me again his idea for irrigating the Sahara—planting a gigantic rubber tube in a fertile source, from which it will suck water, carry it miles and miles, then expel it into the parched desert. He talks about his invention with such unwarranted excitement he means it to be taken seriously.
Wallace plops down at my table, uninvited, pulling along his Dutch girlfriend, who understands his Afrikaans. I ought to feel pity for Wallace, in and out of mental asylums and jails, this last time for indecent exposure, which could have gotten him thrown out of the country, but someone—probably Roger, he plays chess with one of the judges—interceded. Wallace’s parents own one of the major newspapers in South Africa, and all of this must have been trotted out—Wallace’s respected books of poetry along with his mother and father, whom Wallace despises for their politics and so on. On the basis of this, no doubt, he was set free. And here he is. I wish I’d been on the beach last week when he ran into the water wearing a red net bikini bathing suit. Not the thing to do here, even if men expose themselves, and certainly touch themselves, regularly. They do it furtively—but not Wallace, he’s a flaunter. I ought to have sympathy for him—committed to a mental institution when he was just a boy of sixteen, deemed insane for opposing apartheid. He was sane then but has over the years lost whatever marbles he had, I think, though occasionally he’s lucid and amusing. I find it hard to tolerate him. He talks so much, in that annoying accent.
I cut my fish, lifting the flesh away from the bone. My hand is steady and as usual I wonder if I oughtn’t to have become a surgeon, since I enjoy doing this so much. I always think this when I cut flesh, exactly the same thought, and always wonder, in precisely the same way, if others have the same thought when they do simple tasks over and again, and then what would it be like, if that were so, to be working in a factory, on the line, doing the same job daily, repetitively? I do a good job with my fish and feel satisfied. Little things please me. My mother could never serve fish that was not riven with bones. I hated fish, the way most children do, and it took me years to develop a taste for it, and if I hadn’t I couldn’t have made my home in Greece.
At the moment I seem to be invisible at my own table, which is to my liking. Wallace and his friend chatter away in Afrikaans. I’m sure his Dutch girlfriend is kind but I have an antipathy to the Dutch and may be the only non-Belgian or non-German so inclined, or disinclined. Years ago I visited Amsterdam and had a most dreadful time. I stayed a few months, it rained constantly, and I met no one and found the Dutch barely civil. Everyone says they’re so nice, so I never interject that I think they are dull. Actually I don’t know if they
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