Four of these stories have been published in Granta: “The Destiny of Nathalie X,” “Cork,” “Transfigured Night” and “Alpes-Maritimes.” “Alpes-Maritimes” also made it into a second Penguin edition of my first volume of short stories—On the Yankee Station (1981) — but has never been collected between hard covers and I wanted to include it here, albeit in a slightly altered form. “Loose Continuity” was published in The New Yorker, “The Dream Lover” in London Magazine, “Hôtel des Voyageurs” in the Daily Telegraph and “N Is for N” appeared in Hockney’s Alphabet (Faber and Faber, 1993).

WB

Man’s Voice(over)

IONCE HEARD a theory about this town, this place where we work and wrangle, where we swindle and swive. It was told to me by this writer I knew. He said: “It’s only a dance, but then again, it’s the only dance.” I’m not so sure he’s right, but anyway, he’s dead now …

From my tenth or eleventh year I remember the following incident:

SELBSTMORD

In this city, and at this time, you should understand that suicide was a completely acceptable option, an entirely understandable, rational course of action to take. And I speak as one who knows its temptations intimately: three of my elder brothers took their own lives — Hans, Rudi and Kurt. That left Paul, me and my three older sisters. My sisters, I am sure, were immune to suicide’s powerful contagion. I cannot speak for Paul. As for myself, I can only say that its clean resolution of all my problems — intellectual and emotional — was always most appealing; that open door to oblivion always beckoned to me and, odd though it may seem, suicide — the idea of suicide — lies at the very foundation of all my work in ethics and logic.

THE BENEFACTOR

I came down from the Hochreith, our house in the country, to Vienna especially to meet Herr Ficker. The big white villa in the parks of Neuwaldegg was closed up for the summer. I had one of the gardeners prepare my room and make up a bed, and his wife laid the table on the terrace and helped me cook dinner. We were to have Naturschnitzel with Kochsalat with a cold bottle of Zöbinger. Simple, honest food. I hoped Ficker would notice.

I shaved and dressed and went out onto the terrace to wait for him to arrive. I was wearing a lemon-yellow, soft-collared shirt with no tie and a light tweed jacket that I had bought years before in Manchester. Its fraying cuffs had been repaired, in the English way, with a dun green leather. My hair was clean and still damp, my face was cool, scraped smooth. I drank a glass of sherbet water as I waited for Ficker. The evening light was milky and diffused, as if hung with dust. I could hear the faint noise of motors and carriages on the roads of Neuwaldegg and in the gathering dusk I could make out the figure of the gardener moving about in the allée of pleached limes. A fleeting but palpable peace descended on me and I thought for some minutes of David and our holidays together in Iceland and Norway. I missed him.

Ficker was an earnest young man, taller than me (mind you, I am not particularly tall) with fine thinning hair brushed back off his brow. He wore spectacles with crooked wire frames, as if he had accidentally sat upon them and had hastily straightened them out himself. He was neatly and soberly dressed, wore no hat and was clean-shaven. His lopsided spectacles suggested a spirit of frivolity and facetiousness that, I soon found out, was entirely inaccurate.

I had already explained to him, by letter, about my father’s death, my legacy and how I wished to dispose of a proportion of it. He had agreed to my conditions and promised to respect my demand for total anonymity. We talked, in businesslike fashion, about the details but I could sense, as he expressed his gratitude, strong currents of astonishment and curiosity.

Eventually he had to ask, “But why me? Why my magazine … in particular?”

I shrugged. “It seemed to be exemplary, of its sort. I like its attitude, its, its seriousness. And besides, your writers seem the most needy.”

“Yes … That’s true.” He was none the wiser.

“It’s a family trait. My father was a great benefactor — to musicians mainly. We just like to do it.”

Ficker then produced a list of writers and painters he thought were the most deserving. I glanced through it: very few of the names were familiar to me, and beside each one Ficker had written an appropriate sum of money. Two names, at the top of the list, were to receive by far the largest amounts.

“I know of Rilke, of course,” I said, “and I’m delighted you chose him. But who’s he?” I pointed to the other. “Why should he get so much? What does he do?”

“He’s a poet,” Ficker said. “I think … well, no man on this list will benefit more from your generosity. To be completely frank, I think it might just save his life.”

SCHUBERT

My brother Hans drowned himself in Chesapeake Bay. He was a musical prodigy who gave his first concert in Vienna at the age of nine. I never really knew him. My surviving brother Paul was also musically gifted, a brilliant pianist who was a pupil of Leschetizky and made his debut in 1913. I remember Paul saying to me once that of all musical tastes the love of Schubert required the least explanation. When one thinks of the huge misery of his life and sees in his work no trace of it at all — sees the complete absence in his music of all bitterness.

THE BANK

I had arranged with Ficker that I would be in the Österreichische Nationalbank on Swarzspanierstrasse at three o’clock. I was there early and sat down at a writing desk in a far corner. It was quiet and peaceful: the afternoon rush had yet to begin and the occasional sound of heels on the marble floor as clients crossed from the entrance foyer to the rows of counters was soothing, like the background click of ivory dominoes or the ceramic kiss of billiard balls in the gaming room of my favorite café near the art schools …

Ficker was on time and accompanied by our poet. Ficker caught my eye and I gave a slight nod and then bent my head over the spectral papers on my desk. Ficker went to a teller’s guichet to inquire about the banker’s draft, leaving the poet standing momentarily alone in the middle of the marble floor, gazing around him like a peasant at the high dim vaults of the ceiling and the play of afternoon sunshine on the ornamental brasswork of the chandeliers.

Georg—, as I shall refer to him, was a young man, twenty-seven years old — two years older than me — small and quite sturdily built, and, like many small men, seemed to have been provided with a head designed for a bigger body altogether. His head was crude- and heavy-looking, its proportions exaggerated by his bristly, close-cropped hair. He was clean-shaven. He had a weak mouth, the upper lip overhung the bottom one slightly, and a thick triangular nose. He had low brows and slightly Oriental-looking, almond-shaped eyes. He was what my mother would have called “an ugly customer.”

He stood now, looking expressionlessly about him, swaying slightly, as if buffeted by an invisible crowd. He appeared at once ill and strong — pale-faced, ugly, dark-eyed, but with something about the set of his shoulders, the way his feet were planted on the ground, that suggested reserves of strength. Indeed, the year before, Ficker had told me, he had almost died from an overdose of Veronal that would have killed an ordinary man in an hour or two. Since his school days, it transpired, he had been a compulsive user of narcotic drugs and was also an immoderate drinker. At school he used chloroform to intoxicate himself. He was now a qualified dispensing chemist, a career he had taken up, so Ficker informed me, solely because it gave him access to more effective drugs. I found this single-mindedness oddly impressive. To train for two years at the University of Vienna as a pharmacist, to pass the necessary exams to qualify, testified to an uncommon dedication. Ficker had given me some of his poems to read. I could not understand them at all; their images for me were strangely haunting and evocative but finally entirely opaque. But I liked their tone; their tone seemed to me to be quite remarkable.

I watched him now, discreetly, as Ficker completed the preliminary documentation and signaled him over to endorse the banker’s draft. Ficker — I think this was a mistake — presented the check to him with a small flourish and shook him by the hand, as if he had just won first prize in a lottery. I could sense that Georg knew very little of what was going on. I saw him turn the check over immediately so as to hide the amount from his own eyes. He exchanged a few urgent words with Ficker, who smiled encouragingly and patted him on the arm. Ficker was very happy, almost gleeful — in his role as the philanthropist’s go-between he was vicariously enjoying what he imagined would be Georg’s astonishment. But he was wrong. I knew it the instant Georg turned over the check and read the amount: 20,000 crowns. A thriving dispensing chemist would have to work six or seven years to earn a similar sum. I saw the check flutter and tremble in his fingers. I saw Georg blanch and swallow violently several times. He put the back of his hand to his lips and his shoulders heaved. He reached out to a pillar for support, bending over from the waist. His body convulsed in a spasm as he tried to control his writhing stomach. I knew then that he was an honest man for he had the honest man’s profound fear of extreme good fortune. Ficker snatched the check from his shaking fingers as Georg appeared to totter. He uttered a faint cry as warm bile and vomit shot from his mouth to splash and splatter on the cool marble of the Nationalbank’s flagged floor.

A GOOD LIFE — A GOOD DEATH

I got to know Ficker quite well over our various meetings about the division and disposal of my benefaction. Once in our discussions the subject of suicide came up and he seemed genuinely surprised when I told him that scarcely a day went by when I did not think about it. But I explained to him that if I could not get along with life and the world, then to commit suicide would be the ultimate admission of failure. I pointed out that this notion was the very essence of ethics and morality. For if anything is not to be allowed, then surely that must be suicide. For if suicide is allowed, then anything is allowed.

Sometimes I think that a good life should end in a death that one could welcome. Perhaps, even, it is only a good death that allows us to call a life “good.”

Georg, I believe, has nearly died many times. For example, shortly before the Veronal incident he almost eliminated himself by accident. Georg lived for a time in Innsbruck. One night, after a drinking bout in a small village near the city, he decided to walk home. At some stage on his journey back, overcome by tiredness, he decided to lie down in the snow and sleep. When he awoke in the morning the world had been replaced by a turbid white void. For a moment he thought … but almost immediately he realized he had been covered in the night by a new fall of snow. In fact it was about forty centimeters deep. He heaved himself to his feet, brushed off his clothes and, with a clanging, gonging headache, completed his journey to Innsbruck. Ficker related all this to me.

How I wish I had been passing that morning! The first sleepy traveler along that road when Georg awoke. In the still, crepuscular light, that large lump on the verge begins to stir, some cracks and declivities suddenly deform the smooth contours, then a fist punches free and finally that crude ugly face emerges, with its frosty beret of snow, staring stupidly, blinking, spitting …

THE WAR

The war saved my life. I really do not know what I would have done without it. On 7 August, the day war was declared on Russia, I enlisted as a volunteer gunner in the artillery for the duration and was instructed to report to a garrison artillery regiment in Cracow. In my elation I was reluctant to go straight home to pack my bags (my family had by now all returned to Vienna), so I took a taxi to the Café Museum.

I should say that I joined the army because it was my civic duty, yet I was even more glad to enlist because I knew at that time I had to do something, I had to subject myself to the rigors of a harsh routine that would divert me from my intellectual work. I had reached an impasse and the impossibility of ever proceeding further filled me with morbid despair.

By the time I reached the Café Museum it was about six o’clock in the evening. (I liked this café because its interior was modern: its square rooms were lined with square honeycolored oak paneling, hung with prints of drawings by Charles Dana Gibson.) Inside, it was busy, the air noisy with speculation about the war. It was warm and muggy, the atmosphere suffused with the reek of beer and cigar smoke. The patrons were mostly young men, students from the nearby art schools, clean-shaven, casually and unaffectedly dressed. So I was a little surprised to catch a glimpse in one corner of a uniform. I pushed through the crowd to see who it was.

Georg, it was obvious, was already fairly drunk. He sat strangely hunched over, staring intently at the tabletop. His posture and the ferocious concentration of his gaze clearly put people off, as the three other seats around his table remained unoccupied. I told a waiter to bring a half-liter of Heuniger Wein to the table and then sat down opposite him.

Georg was wearing the uniform of an officer, a lieutenant, in the Medical Corps. He looked at me candidly and without resentment, and, of course, without any sign of recognition. He seemed much the same as the last time I had seen him, at once ill-looking and possessed of a sinewy energy. I introduced myself and told him I was pleased to see a fellow soldier as I myself had just enlisted.

“It’s your civic duty,” he said, his voice strong and unslurred. “Have a cigar.”

He offered me a trabuco, those ones that have a straw mouthpiece because they are so strong. I declined — at that time I did not smoke. When the wine arrived he insisted on paying for it.

“I’m a rich man,” he said as he filled our glasses. “Where’re you posted?”

“Galicia.”

“Ah, the Russians are coming.” He paused. “I want to go somewhere cold and dark. I detest this sun, and this city. Why aren’t we fighting the Eskimos? I hate daylight. Maybe I could declare war on the Lapps. One-man army.”

“Bit lonely, no?”

“I want to be lonely. All I do is pollute my mind talking to people … I want a dark cold lonely war. Please.”

“People will think you’re mad.”

He raised his glass. “God preserve me from sanity.”

I thought of something Nietzsche had said: “Our life, our happiness, is beyond the north, beyond ice, beyond death.” I looked into Georg’s ugly face, his thin eyes and glossy lips, and felt a kind of love for him and his honesty. I clinked my glass against his and asked God to preserve me from sanity as well.

Tagebuch: 15 August. Cracow.

… If your wife, for example, continually puts too much sugar in your tea it is not because she has too much sugar in her cupboard, it is because she is not educated in the ways of handling sweetness. Similarly, the problem of how to live a good life cannot ever be solved by continually assaulting it with the intellect. Certain things can only be shown, not stated …

THE SEARCHLIGHT

I enlisted in the artillery to fire howitzers but instead found myself manning a searchlight on a small, heavily armed paddle steamer called the Goplana. We cruised up and down the Vistula, ostensibly looking for Russians but also to provide support for any river crossings by our own forces.

I enjoyed my role in charge of the searchlight. I took its mounting apart and oiled and greased its bearings. Reassembled, it moved effortlessly under the touch of my fingers. Its strong beam shone straight and true in the blurry semidarkness of those late summer nights. However, I soon found the living conditions on the Goplana intolerable because of the stink, the proximity and the vulgarity of my fellow soldiers. And because we were constantly in motion, life belowdecks was dominated by the thrum and grind of the Goplana’s churning paddles. I spent long hours in my corner of the bridge house needlessly overhauling the mechanism of the searchlight — anything to escape the torrent of filth and viciousness that poured from the men. But despite these periods of solitude and isolation I found that my old despair began to creep through me again, like a stain.

One day we disembarked at Sandomierz and were sent to a bathhouse. As we washed I looked at my naked companions, their brown faces and forearms, their gray-white bodies and dark, dripping genitals as they soaped and sluiced themselves with garrulous ostentation. I felt only loathing for them, my fellow men. It was impossible both to work with them and to have nothing to do with them. I was glad that I felt no stirrings of sensuality as I contemplated their naked bodies. I saw that they were men but I could not see they were human beings.

Tagebuch: 8 September. Sawichost.

… The news is worse. All the talk is of Cracow being besieged. Last night there was an alarm. I ran up on deck to man the searchlight. It was raining and I wore only a shirt and trousers. I played the beam of the searchlight to and fro on the opposite bank of the river for hours, my feet and hands slowly becoming numb. Then we heard the sound of gunfire and I at once became convinced I was going to die that night. The beam of the searchlight was a lucent arrow pointing directly at me. And for the first time I felt, being face-to-face with my own death, with possibly only an hour or two of life remaining to me, that I had in those few hours the chance to be a good man, if only because of this uniquely potent consciousness of myself. And, as ever, my attempts to articulate my experience as I understood and felt it, and to seize intellectually its profound implications, slipped beyond the power of language. “I did my duty and stayed at my post.” That is all I can say about that tremendous night.

THE AMPUTEE

Of course I did not die and of course I fell back into more abject moods of self-disgust and loathing. Perhaps the only consolation was that my enormous fatigue made it impossible for me to think about my work.

It was about this time — in September or October — that I heard the news about my brother Paul. He was a quite different personality from me — fierce and somewhat dominating — and he had tackled his vocation as concert pianist with uncompromising dedication. Since his debut his future seemed assured, an avenue of bright tomorrows. To receive the news, then, that he had been captured by the Russians and had had his right arm amputated at the elbow, as the result of wounds he had sustained, was devastating. For days my thoughts were of Paul and of what I would do in his situation. Poor Paul, I thought, if only there were some solution other than suicide. What philosophy it will take to get over this!

Tagebuch: 13 October. Nadbrzesze.

… We have sailed here, waited for twelve hours and have now been ordered to return to Sawichost. All day we can hear the mumble of artillery in the east. I find myself drawn down into dark depression again, remorselessly. Why? What is the real basis of this malaise?… I see one of my fellow soldiers pissing over the side of the boat in full view of the few citizens of Nadbrzesze who have gathered on the quayside to stare at us. The long pale arc of his urine sparkles in the thin autumn sunshine. Another soldier leans on his elbows staring candidly at the man’s flaccid white penis, held daintily between two fingers like a titbit. This is shaken, its tip squeezed and then tucked away in the coarse serge of his trousers. I think if I were standing at a machine gun rather than at a searchlight I could kill them both without a qualm … Why do I detest these simple foolish men so? Why can I not be impassive? I despise my own weakness, my inability to distance myself from the commonplace.

THE BATTLE OF GRÓDEK

On our return from Sawichost I received mail. A long letter from David — I wonder if he thinks of me half as much as I think of him? — and a most distressing communication from Ficker, to whom I had written asking for some books to be sent to me. I quote:

… I see from your letter that you are not far from Cracow. I wonder if you get the opportunity you could attempt to find and visit [Georg]. You may have heard of the heavy fighting at Gródek some two weeks ago. Georg was there and, owing to the chaos and disorganization that prevailed at the time, was mistakenly placed in charge of a field hospital not far behind our lines. Apparently he protested vigorously that he was merely a dispensing chemist and not a doctor, but resources were so stretched he was told to do the best he could.

Thus Georg found himself with two orderlies (Czechs, who spoke little German) in charge of a fifty-bed field hospital. As the battle wore on more than ninety severely wounded casualties were delivered during the day. Repeatedly, Georg signaled for a doctor to be sent as he could do nothing for these men except inject them with morphine and attempt to dress their wounds. In fact it became clear that through some oversight these casualties had been sent to the wrong hospital. The ambulance crews that transported them had been erroneously informed that there was a field surgery and a team of surgeons operating there.

By nine in the evening all of Georg’s supplies of morphine were exhausted. Shortly thereafter men began to scream from the resurgent pain. Finally, one officer who had lost his left leg at the hip shot himself in the head.

At this point Georg ran away. Two kilometers from the field hospital was a small wood that, at the start of the battle, had been a battalion headquarters. Georg went there for help, or at least to report the ghastly condition of the wounded in his charge. When he arrived there he found that an impromptu military tribunal had just executed twenty deserters by hanging.

I do not know exactly what happened next. I believe that at the sight of these fresh corpses Georg tried to seize a revolver from an officer and shoot himself. Whatever happened, he behaved in a demented manner, was subdued and himself arrested for desertion in the face of the enemy. I managed to visit him briefly in the mental hospital at Cracow ten days ago. He is in a very bad way, but at least, thank God, the charges of desertion have been dropped and he is being treated for dementia praecox. For some reason Georg is convinced he will be prosecuted for cowardice. He is sure he is going to hang.

THE ASYLUM AT CRACOW

Georg’s cell was very cold, and dark, the only illumination coming from an oil lamp in the corridor. Georg needed a shave but otherwise he looked much the same as he had on my two previous encounters with him. He was wearing a curious oatmeal canvas uniform, the jacket secured with strings instead of buttons. With his big head and thin eyes he looked strangely Chinese. There was one other patient in his cell with him, a major in the cavalry who was suffering from delirium tremens. This man remained hunched on a truckle bed in the corner of the room, sobbing quietly to himself while Georg and I spoke. He did not recognize me. I merely introduced myself as a friend of Ficker’s.

“Ficker asked me to visit you,” I said. “How are you?”

“Well, I’m …” He stopped and gestured at the major. “I used to think I was a heavy drinker.” He smiled. “Actually, he’s being quite good now.” Georg rubbed his short hair with both hands.

“I heard about what happened,” I said. “It must have been terrible.”

He looked at me intently, and then seemed to think for a while.

“Yes,” he said, “yes, yes, yes. All that sort of thing.”

“I completely understand.”

He shrugged uselessly. Certain things can only be shown, not stated.

He smiled. “You don’t have any cigars on you, by any chance? They haven’t brought me my kit. One longs for a decent cigar.”

“Let me get some for you.”

“I smoke trabucos — the ones with the straw holder.”

“They’re very strong, I believe. I don’t smoke, but I heard they can burn your throat.”

“It’s a small price to pay.”

We sat in silence for a moment, listening to the major’s snufflings.

“It’s very cold here,” Georg began slowly, “and very dark, and if they got rid of the major the conditions would be perfect.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Actually, I have several boxes of trabucos in my kit,” he went on. “If you could get a message to my orderly, perhaps he could bring me a couple.”

“Of course.”

“Oh, and would you ask him to bring me my green leather case.”

“Green leather case.”

“Yes,” he paused. “That is essential …” He rubbed his face, as if his features were tired of being eternally composed. “I think with a good cigar I could even tolerate the major.”

Hôtel de la Louisiane.

Me for good talk, wet evenings, intimacy, vins rouges en carafe, reading, relative solitude, street worship … shop gazing, alley sloping, café crawling … I am for the intricacy of Europe, the discreet and many-folded strata of the Old World, the past, the North, the world of ideas. I am for the Hôtel de la Louisiane.

CYRIL CONNOLLY,

ON ONE of the sunniest of bright May mornings Senator Dom Liceu Maximiliano Lobo needlessly ran his comb through his neat goatee and ordered his chauffeur to pull off to the side of the road. On mornings like these he liked to walk the remaining five hundred meters to his office, which he maintained, out of sentiment’s sake, and because of the sea breezes, in Salvador’s Cidada Alta. He sauntered along the sidewalks, debating pleasantly whether to linger a moment with a coffee and a newspaper on the terrace of the hotel, or whether to stop off at Olímpia’s little apartment, which he kept for her, at very reasonable expense, in an old colonial building in a square near the cathedral. She would not be expecting him, and it might be an amusing, not to say sensuous, experience to dally an hour or so this early before the day’s work called. How bright the sun was, this fine morning, Senator Dom Liceu Maximiliano Lobo thought as he turned toward the cathedral, his heels ringing on the cobbles, and how vivid the solar benefaction made the geraniums. Life was indeed good.

The name was the problem, he saw. The problem lay there, definitely. Because … Because if you were not happy with your name, he realized, then a small but sustained lifelong stress was imposed on your psyche, your sense of self. It was like being condemned to wear too small shoes all the time; you could still get about but there would always be a pinching, a corn or two aching, something unnaturally hobbled about your gait.

Wesley Bright. Wesley. Bright.

The trouble with his name was that it wasn’t quite stupid enough — he was not a Wesley Bilderbeest or a Wesley Bugger; in fact it was almost a good name. If he had been Wesley Blade, say, or Wesley Beauregard he would have no complaints.

“Wesley?”

Janice passed him the docket. He clicked the switch on the mike.

“Four-seven? Four-seven?”

Silence. Just the permanent death rattle of the ether.

Four-seven answered. “Four-seven.”

“Parcel, four-seven. Pick up at Track-Track. Going to Heathrow, as directed.”

“Account?”

Wesley sighed. “Yes, four-seven. We do not do cash.”

“Oh yeah. Roger, Rog.”

He could always change his name, he supposed. Roger, perhaps. Roger Bright. Wesley Roger … No. There was that option, though: choose a new moniker, a new handle. But he wondered about that too: hard to shake off an old name, he would guess. It was the way you thought of yourself, after all, your tag on the pigeonhole. And when you were young, you never thought your name was odd — it was a source of dissatisfaction that came with aging, a realization that one didn’t really like being a “Wesley Bright” sort of person at all. In his case it had started at college, this chafing, this discomfort. He wondered about these fellows, actors and rock musicians, who called themselves Tsar, or Zane Zorro or DJ Sofaman … He was sure that, to themselves, they were always Norman Sidcup or Wilbur Dongdorfer in their private moments.

NONE OF THESE girls is French, right?”

“No. But they’re European.”

“Not the same thing, man. French is crucial.”

“Of course …” I don’t know what he is talking about but it seems politic to agree.

“You know any French girls?”

“Of course,” I say again. This is almost a lie, but it doesn’t matter at this stage.

“But well? I mean well enough to ask out?”

“I don’t see why not.” Now this time we are well into mendacity, but I am unconcerned. I feel good, adult, quite confident today. This lie can germinate and grow for a while.

I am standing in a pale parallelogram of March sunshine, leaning against a wall, talking to my American friend, Preston. The wall belongs to the Centre Universitaire Mediterranéen, a large stuccoed villa on the front at Nice. In front of us is a small cobbled courtyard bounded by a balustrade. Beyond is the Promenade des Anglais, its four lanes busy with Nice’s traffic. Over the burnished roofs of the cars I can see the Mediterranean. The Baie des Anges looks gray and grim in this season: old, tired water — ashy, cindery.

“We got to do something …” Preston says, a hint of petulant desperation in his voice. I like the “we.” Preston scratches his short hard hair noisily. “What with the new apartment and all.”

“You moved out of the hotel?”

“Yeah. Want to come by tonight?” He shifts his big frame as if troubled by a fugitive itch, and pats his pockets — breast, hip, thigh — looking for his cigarettes. “We got a bar on the roof.”

I am intrigued, but I explain that the invitation has to be turned down as it is a Monday, and every Monday night I have a dinner appointment with a French family — friends of friends of my mother’s.

Preston shrugs, then finds and sets fire to a cigarette. He smokes an American brand called “Merit.” When he came to France he brought a hundred packs with him. He has never smoked anything else since he was fourteen, he insists.

We watch our fellow students saunter into the building. They are nearly all strangers to me, these bright boys and girls, as I have been in Nice only a few weeks, and so far, Preston is the only friend I have made. Slightly envious of their easy conviviality, I watch the others chatter and mingle — Germans, Scandinavians, Italians, Tunisians, Nigerians … We are all foreigners, trying hard to learn French and win our diplomas … Except for Preston, who makes no effort at all and seems quite content to remain monoglot.

A young guy with long hair rides his motorbike into the courtyard. He is wearing no shirt. He is English and, apart from me, the only other English person in the place. He revs his motorbike unnecessarily a few times before parking it and switching it off. He takes a T-shirt out of a saddlebag and nonchalantly pulls it on. I think how I too would like to own a motorbike and do exactly what he has done … His name is Tim. One day, I imagine, we might be friends. We’ll see.

ANNELIESE, ULRICKE AND I go into Steve’s sitting room. Steve is sitting at a table writing a letter. “Hi,” he says, not looking up. “Won’t be a second.” He scribbles his name and seals the letter in an envelope as the three of us watch him, wordlessly. He stands up and turns to face us. His long clean hair, brushed straight back from his forehead, falls to his shoulders. Perhaps it’s something to do with the dimness of the room but, against the pale ghost of his swimming trunks, his cock seems oddly pigmented — almost brown.

“Make yourselves at home,” he says. “I’ll just go put some clothes on.”

DATE: Monday

VENUE: Le Truc Intéressant, Lexington Street, Soho

PRESENT: Me, Gerald Vere, Melanie Swartz, Peter (Somebody) from Svenska Bank, Barry Freeman, Diane Skinner (account exec from SLL&L), Eddie Kroll (left before pudding)

MEAL: Tabbouleh chinois, roulade de foie de veau farcie, mille-feuilles de fruits d’hiver

WINE: Two Moët & Chandon nonvintage, two Sancerres, an ’83 Pichon-Longueville, a big Provençal red called Mas Julienne. Port, brandy (eau de vie de prune for Diane S.).

BILL: £678 (service not included)

EXTRAS: Romeo y Julietas for Vere and Freeman; T-shirt and souvenir condiments set for Melanie; a packet of Marlboro Lights for Diane S.

COMMENTS: NO piped music. Tabbouleh chinois an orthodox tabbouleh with sliced lychees mixed in. Unusual. Roulade de foie exquisite, served on a little purée of celeriac. Diane S. barely touched her food, “saving up for dessert.” Mille-feuilles—8 out of 10 for the pastry. Fruits bland. Diane S. picked up tab. Taxied me back too. Thank you Swabold, Lang, Laing & Longmuir. Thank you very much.

DATE: Tuesday

VENUE: Eurotel Palace, Heathrow Airport

PRESENT: Me, Diane S.

MEAL: Insalata tricolore, Dover sole, tarte aux pommes

WINE: G&T in bar, Merry Dale Chardonnay, house champagne with pud

BILL: £96 (service included)

EXTRAS: Irish coffee served in our room. £5.50 each. 20 Marlboro Lights.

COMMENTS. Almost inaudible classical Muzak. Rubbery mozzarella. When will the British stop serving “A selection of vegetables”? Tasteless carrots, watery broccoli, some kind of swede. Tarte aux pommes a simple apple pie, not flattered by translation. House champagne surprisingly good — small bubbles, buttery, cidery. Undrunk Irish coffee — waste.

DATE: Wednesday

VENUE: Chairman’s dining “set,” sixth floor. Pale oak paneling. Silver. Good paintings — a small perfect Sutherland, Alan Reynolds, two Craxtons.

PRESENT: Me, Sir Torquil, Gerald Vere, Barry Freeman, Blake Ginsberg (new CEO), some senior suit from Finance (introduced as “You know Lucy”—can’t be his first name, surely? Very foreign-looking)

MEAL: Vegetable terrine, lamb chops with new potatoes, raspberries with crème fraîche. Stilton.

WINE: Hip flask in loo downstairs, then Vodkatini (could have been colder), a perfectly good Chablis, followed by a ’78 Domaine de Chevalier (stunning). Port (Taylor’s, missed date).

BILL: A heavy price to pay

EXTRAS: At least I saw the Sutherland.

COMMENTS: Apart from the vegetable terrine (always a total waste of time) this was superior corporate catering. Sensible. Lamb nicely pink. Superb wine. They had the grace to wait until the cheese. The condemned man had eaten a hearty meal. Fucking heartless cold fucking swine.

DATE: Thursday

VENUE: La Casa del’ Luigi, Fulham Road

PRESENT: Me, Diane, (later) Jennifer

MEAL: Minestrone, spaghetti bolognese, tiramisù

WINE: G&Ts, Valpolicella, replaced by a Chianti Classico when spilled. Large grappa after Jennifer’s arrival and departure.

BILL: £63 rounded up to £80. Scant gratitude.

EXTRAS: 20 Marlboro Lights. Three glasses, two plates. Dry cleaning to be notified.

COMMENTS: Minestrone was tinned, I’d swear. Alfredo’s spag. bol. amazingly authentic as ever (why can’t one ever achieve this at home?). He refuses to divulge his secret but I’m convinced it’s the chicken livers in the ragu. Which must simmer for days, also. Watery, ancient tiramisù. Big mistake to eat so close to home. HUGE mistake. Jennifer could have walked right past. What bastard waiter called her in?

DATE: Friday

VENUE: Montrose Dining Club, Lincoln’s Inn. Basement, large overlit room, long central table. Staffed by very old ex-college porters and very young monoglot girls who appear to be from Eastern Europe.

PRESENT: Me, Alisdair Lockhart

MEAL: Potted shrimps and toast, duck à l’orange, treacle tart (!)

WINE: G&Ts, club claret, club brandy

BILL: £18. (I paid. Astonishing value. Alisdair said he could add it to his bill but I insisted.)

EXTRAS: About £5000 if I know Alisdair

COMMENTS: Time travel. Back to school. This was English cuisine until quite recently; we have forgotten that this was how we all used to eat. Potted shrimps like consuming cold butter, limp toast. Duck cooked to extinction, repulsive cloying sauce. I ordered treacle tart for nostalgia’s sake. (Alisdair has appalling dandruff for a comparatively young man.) I said Jennifer was being difficult, thus far. He was not sanguine. Asked if this had happened before so I told him of Jennifer’s ultimatum. Spoke briefly about custody of Toby. He left early as he had to get to court. Depressing. Drank whiskey in an Irish pub.

DATE: Saturday

PLACE: My kitchen, Rostrevor Road, Fulham

PRESENT: Me and (intermittently) Birgitte, the au pair

MEAL: Raided fridge — cottage cheese and crispbread, remains of Thursday’s shepherd’s pie, some of Toby’s little yogurt things, cheese triangles. Birgitte sent out for a pizza but I couldn’t be bothered waiting.

WINE: “Three goes of gin, a lemon slice and a ten-ounce tonic …” Who said that? Then two glasses of Pinot Grigio, before I went down to the basement and rooted out the Ducru-Beaucaillou. Fuck it. I gave some to Birgitte, who made a face. She preferred to drink her own beer. She gave me a can when I’d finished the Beaucaillou. Strong stuff. Slept in the afternoon.

BILL: The Human Condition

EXTRAS: I miss Toby and Jennifer. I miss our usual Saturday lunch. Best lunch of the week.

COMMENTS: Music — Brahms horn trio initially but it made me want to weep. Birgitte played something rhythmic, ethnic. She gave me a tape of ocean waves breaking on a shore. “For calming,” she said. Big, bighearted girl. Why would anybody eat cottage cheese? What, in terms of taste and texture, could possibly recommend it? Jennifer and her silly, perpetual diets. Perfectly slim, perfectly … The cheese triangles were unbelievably tasty, ate a whole wheel’s worth as I drank the Beaucaillou.

DATE: Sunday. Cold, low, packed clouds, a flat, sullen light.

VENUE: Somewhere in eastern England on the 11:45 to Norwich. Writing this in the bar. On my way to Mother and Sunday lunch.

PRESENT: Me, three soldiers, a fat woman, and a thin weaselly man with a mobile phone

MEAL: Started with a Jimmyburger on the station concourse, then a couple of Scotch eggs in the bar. On the train I had a bag of salt-’n’-vinegar crisps and an egg-and-cress sandwich from the steward with the trolley. In the buffet thus far I have had a pork pie, a sausage roll, something called a “Ploughman’s Bap” and a Mars bar. There is a solitary mushroom-and-salami omelette wrapped in cellophane that they will do in a microwave. Why am I still hungry?

WINE: Large vodka and orange in the station bar — vague, very temporary desire to keep my breath alcohol-free. Two cans of gin and Italian vermouth in the train before I wandered buffetward. Started drinking lager: “Speyhawk Special Strength.” Notice the squaddies are drinking the same. They do quarter bottles of wine in here, I see. I’ve now bought a couple, having ordered the omelette. It is labeled “Red Wine.” No country of origin. Tart, pungent, raw. I worry it will stain my lips. Mother will serve, as usual, Moselle and call it hock.

EXTRAS: A lot of cigarette smoke, everyone is smoking including, covertly, the steward behind the bar. Smoke seeps between the fingers of his loosely clenched fist resting on his buttocks. The fat woman is smoking. The man on the mobile phone is smoking as he mutters into his little plastic box. I have a metallic taste in my mouth, and am seized by a sudden, embittering image of Diane S. — naked, laughing.

COMMENTS: The English countryside has never looked so drained and dead under this oppressive pewter sky. The barman beckons … Now I have my mushroom-and-salami omelette, a piebald yellow with brown patches, steaming suspiciously, a curious, gamey but undeniably foodlike smell seems suddenly to have pervaded the entire carriage, obliterating all other odors. Everyone is looking at me. I screw the top off my “Red Wine” and fill my glass as we hurtle across Norfolk. Gastric juices squirt. I’m starving, how is this possible? My mother will have the archetype of an English Sunday lunch waiting for me. A roast, cooked gray, potatoes and two or three vegetables, a lake of gravy, cheese and biscuits, her special trifle. I look out the window at the miles of somber green. Rain is spitting on the glass and the soldiers have started to sing. Time for my omelette. I know what I am doing but it is a bad sign, this, the beginning of the end. I am deliberately setting out to ruin (because, let’s face it, you cannot, before lunch, lunch) lunch.

NGUYEN N, Laotian bellelettrist and amateur philosopher. Born in Vientiane, Laos, 1883; died Paris, France, 22 February 1942. N’s family was of bourgeois stock, comparatively wealthy, Francophone and Francophile. Nguyen, a precocious but somewhat unhealthy youth, yearned for Paris, but World War I delayed his arrival there until he was twenty-four.

But after humid Vientiane Paris proved noisome and frustrating. The severe winter of 1920 caused his health to fail (something cardiovascular) and he went south to recuperate, to the Côte d’Azur. Strengthened, he decided to settle there. He earned his living as a math tutor and semiprofessional table tennis player, participating in the short-lived Ping-Pong leagues that briefly flourished on that sunny littoral in the 1920s.

And it was there that he wrote his little masterpiece, Les Analectes de Nguyen N (Toulon: Monnier, 1928), a copy of which I found last year in Hyères, its cerise wrapper dusty and sun-bleached, its pages uncut. A sequence of epiphanic images and apothegms, its tone fragile and nervy, balancing perilously between the profound and the banal. “Somewhere snow is gently falling,” Nguyen writes amid the mimosa and the umbrella pines, “and I still feel pain.” English cannot do their tender sincerity full justice.

After the book’s success Nguyen was taken up by the cultural salons of Paris, where he returned permanently in 1931. He is a tenant of the footnotes of literary history; the unidentified face at the café table; a shadowy figure on the perimeter of many a memoir and biography.

He wrote once to André Gide, who had taxed him on his unusual surname, which is not uncommon in Laos “… It is properly pronounced unnnnhhhh, effectively three syllables, the final ’h’s being as plosive as possible, if you can imagine that. Ideally, after introducing me, you should be very slightly out of breath.”

The war brought penury. Nguyen went to work in the kitchens of Paris’s largest Vietnamese restaurant, where he discovered a talent for the decorative garnish. His lacy carrot carnations, scallion lilies and translucent turnip roses were miniature works of art. In between shifts he wrote his short autobiography, Comment ciseler les légumes (Paris: Plon et Noel, 1943—very rare), which was published posthumously.

Nguyen N was run over in the blackout one gloomy February night by a gendarme on a bicycle. He died instantly.

Persistence of vision is a trick of the eye, an ability the eye possesses to fill in the gaps between discrete images and make them appear perfectly contiguous. This is what makes animation work.

Murray and Ginsberg’s Dictionary of Cinema (1949)

O hornern não é um animal

IAM STANDING on the corner of Westwood and Wilshire, just down from the Mobil gas station, waiting. There is a coolish breeze just managing to blow from somewhere, and I am glad of it. Nine o’clock in the morning and it’s going to be another hot one, for sure. For the third or fourth time I needlessly go over and inspect the concrete foundation, noting again that the power lines have been properly installed and that the extra bolts I have requested are duly there. Where is everybody? I look at my watch, light another cigarette and begin to grow vaguely worried: have I picked the wrong day? Has my accent confused Mr. Koenig (he is always asking me to repeat myself)?…

A bright curtain — blues and ochres — boils and billows from an apartment window across the street. It sets a forgotten corner of my mind working — who had drapes like that, once? Who owned a skirt that was similar, or perhaps a tie?

A claxon honks down Wilshire and I look up to see Spencer driving the crane, pulling slowly across two lanes of traffic and coming to a halt at the curb.

He swings down from the cab and takes off his cap. His hair is getting longer, losing that army crop.

“Sorry I’m late, Miss Velk, the depot was, you know, crazy, impossible.”

“Doesn’t matter, it’s not here anyway.”

“Yeah, right.” Spencer moves over and crouches down at the concrete plinth, checking the power-line connection, touching and jiggling the bolts and their brackets. He goes around the back of the crane and sets out the wooden MEN AT WORK signs, then reaches into his pocket and hands me a crumpled sheet of flimsy.

“The permit,” he explains. “We got till noon.”

“Even on a Sunday?”

“Even on a Sunday. Even in Los Angeles.” He shrugs. “Even in 1945. Don’t worry, Miss Velk. We got plenty of time.”

I turn away, a little exasperated. “As long as it gets here,” I say with futile determination, as if I had the power to threaten. The drape streams out of the window suddenly, like a banner, and catches the sun. Then I remember: like the wall hanging Utta had done. The one that Tobias bought.

Spencer asks me if he should go phone the factory but I say give them an extra half hour. I am remembering another Sunday morning, sunny like this one but not as hot, and half the world away, and I can see myself walking up Grillparzerstrasse, taking the shortcut from the station, my suitcase heavy in my hand, and hoping, wondering, now that I have managed to catch the dawn train from Sorau, if Tobias will be able to find some time to see me alone that afternoon …