Notes from a room

But after these failed fidelities and betrayals shouldn’t resignation shimmer in the distance? Since it goes on, this It. Then I must find something for my men in black to do. But no, they’re gone. Then I must find out how he’s doing. Is he lying on his floor, bruised and beaten? If the men came I imagine it was to muzzle him. There he lies, another failure. We can do this the easy or the hard way, though the easy way is just as hard. Would you prefer the carrot or the stick? When you give in your pain will go away. It’ll go on. But I hear him again now, bustling and muttering angrily downstairs. There are no other voices, no one answers him.

Rain pours down outside, angry fat wooden tinny timid patters blowing every which way, ceasing slowly, dripping to a stop, swirling down drains and seeping through the earth. The weather’s strange these days, as if it can’t decide on a season. Clouds thicken and disperse, the sealine draws near and retreats. One morning is transparent as glass, opening out to the gas fields in the middle of the sea. Another closes off everything, whips up the water and drives fog and clouds inland. Others separate an angry sky from a still sea or cloak both in milky air. The water itself changes colour constantly, from brown to blue to grey to black.

The drone is back. I wear my earplugs, take paracetemol and drink wine, that helps shut him out too. And you? You come and go too, don’t you? I never know when you’ll abandon me or teach me. You’re more than the drone, aren’t you? And me, am I not more than myself? Aren’t I what emerges from you, your excrescence? Or am I the doll that comes to life in your hands and reveals himself to be the speaker? But with whose voice? Where was I before I started to talk to you, let alone listen for you? Was I happy? Almost myself… Wasn’t that before the mist rose from the ground and up around my legs, before I weakened and you got strong? But you didn’t strengthen in me, did you? I never got weak enough for you, never got strong enough for myself. Yet I couldn’t stop talking and listening, each step I took was in and out of you and in and out of myself. You suspended my life, and what was left to be? I live on, my life held in reserve until I gather the strength to live it. Meanwhile your words turn into this.

They might have turned up not knowing much about him, sipped from two glasses of water, dismissed his accusations with a cynical smile and left. That might have been even worse. I suspect he’s seething and pacing about downstairs now. But why am I spending so much time on him? I must be regressing further, falling deeper into the hole. But isn’t it what I long to have happen to him?

But aren’t they the ones who make me think I’m stupid in the first place, who make me take pride in my stupidity, if it even isn’t stupidity? he asks. Who’s he asking? It doesn’t matter anymore, all is confusion. Maybe it’s their own stupidity they’re foisting on me, he says. Unlikely, I think. I can barely bring myself to write these words, with each one I’m on the point of – what exactly? You tell me. Tell me what to do, these are your words, aren’t they? Curious how things mix, maybe because everything’s in the wrong time, the wrong key. I could let myself go, have him come up here, wait on me, be his master, it would be easy, as easy as it would be to be his slave. I could have him procure me things, pleasures. Women? Unlikely. I could make him run about for me, as I run about for you, make him suffer. What stops me? I could go downstairs and beg his forgiveness. Grovel on my knees and beg to make amends. No, that’s his job. Besides, forgiveness is in very short supply in these parts. I could kill him before he kills me, that would be the manly option. I could kill myself, and you along with me, that would leave him in the lurch, the joke would be on him. The joke would be on us all. And who’s to say we wouldn’t converge in him to horrid effect? But enough about him, I can’t think of anything more tedious. You’re the primus motor of this contraption, with its teeth full of dust and crushed bones of rats, and I’d rather you didn’t get me started, I have pacing to do and I’m neglecting it, along with any number of things. Jerking my pen is less exercise and I’m badly in need of exercise. Maybe I should take up running again. I used to run through – but haven’t I said that? Anyway let’s not be coy, you know what I ran through. The thoughts run ahead of the pen, maybe that’s why I have no time to pace, maybe that’s why everything I write’s a lie by the time it’s consigned to ink and paper. There are other reasons too, surely, for the writing and the lying. A myriad, as they say. Though it might be worse if there were only one reason, one insurmountable reason. It’s clearly a problem, even a shameful one, let’s hang onto that at least. I’d be better off pacing, I’d be better off doing any number of things besides scribbling. But there’s little choice when all else fails. There it is, that’s what they’ll put their finger on, the ones who are proud to be here. And I know in my secret moments that it draws me out of the world and makes me neglect what would make me give it up, that is, everything else. No matter, butch up, we are where we are, no use crying over spilt ink, either way there are wastes on all sides, hence the wounded laughter echoing from beyond the horizons. Wounded how? If there are only wastes there’s no one there to be wounded or to wound, is there? And not to be a stickler, but for the laughter to echo it would need walls, caverns, cliffs, hillsides, alleys, corridors and the like, and there are none if there are wastes all around as I say, let’s hang onto that at least. And what about you, where are you, are you wounded? Or are you the invisible wounder? Are you laughing, are you the invisible laughter? There’s laughter in any case, I won’t compromise on that point, start from the incontrovertible and proceed thence I always say, don’t you agree? But I swore not to bring you into this, didn’t I? No, I asked you not to bring me into this. Too late, here you are. I’ll tell him, One day you’ll be like me, you should be so lucky. Stay where you are, you don’t know how lucky you are. But to know certain things, incontrovertibly, certain facts like the fact that nothing ever ends, that’s something, I’ll say that for myself. I came up from nothing and that was what I learned. Or rather, that was what was given to me to learn at long last, but not exactly imposed, like arithmetic or the right way to kick a football. There’ll be time to go into those things as well. There’s nothing but time, if there’s even such a thing as time, sometimes it strikes me there isn’t, or that I’ve fallen out of it. But didn’t I say I had no time for pacing? That’s just it. Funny how much time falling out of time takes. But back to the story. If I were a cruel man, a real man, I could make it so he had no one and nothing left but me just as you’ve done to me. I could make myself a father just as I was made a son. What stops me? Or I could silence him, just as I want to be silent, or silenced. That might be the best option of all, that might be most helpful come to think of it. And being the best naturally the hardest. And do I really want silence, knowing it’s impossible? There’s a question to refresh the laughter. And there too is a thing I learned from nothing, something else that gives me hope against hope, in that strange phrase. Maybe I want to talk through him, as I want you to talk through me. Or rather, want to listen to you talk through me. I’m disgusting myself again. Let’s have a story, to cheer us up. I once knew a beggar, no doubt you knew him too, who never raised his face when I dropped coins onto his blanket. Eventually I stopped. And now? That was what I had to say. I’m empty. You know what I need, must I grovel? Maybe I should drink some wine, to get interested. In what? You must be getting tired of these questions too. Why not answer them then? Put me out of my – what? I should make him answer them. How I hate him! But that’s for another day, this is between you and me. No it isn’t, it’s time for a story, a good yarn’s always welcome. I had the men in black interrogate him yesterday. They sat him down and walked around him, exchanged sinister one-liners, gave each other false glances. This is vulgar, I can’t go on with this child’s play. I should stop it altogether. A professional, that’s what I should become. Buy a suit and take an interest in public affairs, that’s the ticket. To know when to buckle down yet also when to have fun. To work hard and play hard. Everything in its right place in a healthy balance. To live in time, up there under the public eye, to become transparent and productive. To imagine my life as a job interview, that’ll perk me up, gird my loins and snap my suspenders. To stop masturbating, scribbling and drinking, to become professional. Then I could have him come up and air out my room and clean my toilet, after the men in black deal with him. No. I want him nowhere near me. All I want is you, and all I want is to be rid of you, through you. What else is there to say? Nothing. Another empty day stretches out before me. An empty thing can’t stretch. A day isn’t a thing. I feel the fear of nothing returning. Where has it been? It has a way of making me forget it, as women forget the pain of childbirth. One thinks it’s kept at bay when it’s there all along, on the other side of nothing. Is this kitschy? Enough about me. How about a diverting story to fill the day? I’m telling you, both of you, all of you, no matter how many there are of you, I refuse.

Dead man walking. I tell a lie, writing. But I did walk today, along the water. I daydreamed of throwing myself into the waves, being thrown up by the waves and tossed around. I did no such thing. I walked once again into what faded from me, into what receded like the ebbing tide. Had I learned to let go what I’ve learned? I was still walking, I can’t sit still in my room for long. Longer than many, but that means nothing, it’s not a contest. I can’t recede like that which recedes from me, that’s the rub. To learn not to learn anew, can I aim for that at least? Isn’t that what you’re teaching me? Strange teacher, strange apprenticeship.

Seeing my neighbour in the supermarket I told him two men were coming to see me, I’m not sure why. Maybe to amuse myself, but it didn’t. He looked at me for a moment and told me he wasn’t even going to acknowledge that. He walked away, then followed me around the store. I thought I lost track of him but he turned up in the pub as I was finishing my first pint. It doesn’t matter, he said, I don’t care what you say, I already feel shown up. I suppose you’ll tell me you were in league with the man I was waiting for when you moved in. Oh, well done. You got me, well done you. You think I’m stupid? As if I didn’t know already. As if I’m not already being shown by everything I do that everything I do is wrong, he says. They might as well stamp me invalid. They’ve seen through me and they know I’m a fraud. I’m not even close to the real thing, whatever that is. I need a do-over, a mulligan but of course they won’t give it to me. What makes me feel this way, is it myself? Is it them? Is it me? Maybe it’s God, or the Devil, or the Unknowable, he says. Maybe someone’s cursed him with fraudulence, maybe some fake voodoo priest has stuck fake pins in some fake doll. What am I not living up to? he says. Can you find a girl for me? he asks. No, of course you can’t. But they’re probably right all the same, he says, I probably just need to get laid. So they sent me someone who’ll make sure I won’t. Or maybe I should get another cat to keep me company, he says, glaring at me… I have to pay a visit and when I return he’s drifting off. After a while he says, Obviously I’m a fraud, I know that, they know that, you know that. But the real problem’s much worse, even if they’re not there. There’s something infinitely worse which I’m not made to understand. Are you? Do you even know what I’m talking about? Because I don’t. There’s something I’m not supposed to understand, that’s the whole point, isn’t it? He drifts off again… Like a smell you can’t smell, he slurs. Like a bad smell hanging around me that everyone but me can smell. Except it hangs around them too, I know it does, it must do. He looks at me and says, Do I smell? I have to see a man about a pony and when I return he stands up and takes my hand to shake it. I pull it back.

Slush lies porridge-like on the sidewalks, it’s warmer now, the days are getting longer, making little difference. A pale turquoise sky beyond leaden clouds, dreaded dusk coming on. Time to hide, but where? Buy a couple of bottles of wine and go straight home in the cobalt gloom. That’s a little purple but no matter.

Nothing all around. Nothing but words. Not quite nothing, then, but almost. The more words the more nothing. Words to fill – what?

Onwards and upwards. What would happen if two men in black turned up at our building? I imagine they’d come for him, go straight to his door, what would they want with me? I’ve provoked no one, I keep to my sweet obscurity. No one could be interested in my scribbling. No one. They’d rap on his door. He’d be startled and angry, I have an idea he’s afraid of knocking sounds. But enough about that, how it bores me. No more story, no more collusions with silent partners.

Show yourself or vacate my words at once, I’m tired of this. But which one of us issues this order? At times I see you as a god, a god with a day-side and a night-side. Maybe more like the moon then, the unseeing eye of the night. Sometimes the moon is clear as day in the morning sky, that has always puzzled me. Or is that me, a blind shell of a planet, lighting up the night by proxy, interloping in the morning sky? This confusion of images all of a sudden. What am I saying, the whole way through, nothing but confusion. That’s what you get from starting down that road. Me that is, not you. Though maybe you too, you may very well be responsible for this. Of course you are, I can’t take responsibility for everything. A god… My god, for better and worse. Mightn’t it follow from this proposition that I’m your devil? Not the first fallen angel himself of course, but a lesser demon, like one of St Anthony’s whispering voices? It might follow, why not, what’s to stop it from following? A little noonday demon, I should say a demon of the dusk, sliding up your stairs, under your door and onto your shoulder, pressing my mouth against your ear, whispering and being whispered to in turn… Why did you call me out of my cave, I whisper, why did you call me from my final place of rest, stinking under my winding sheets, as the women gasped and covered their mouths with their hands? You regretted it, didn’t you, when you saw me stumble and squint out into the open against my will? You knew you shouldn’t have given in, that there was nothing there. Some god you are…

There’s a bare patch on the wall of the pub with frayed wires jutting out of it. Coppers and dust on the miscoloured carpet. Smell of stale frying oil and stale bodies. You know when you walk down the street and think someone’s following you? says my neighbour as he sits down, uninvited, then you turn around and no one’s there? That’s my life right there. I’ve been fooled, he says. But by who? he says. Myself? That doesn’t make sense, all I do is watch myself. You? Are you fooling me? Are they fooling me through you? I don’t even know the right questions. No, they’re not even there, you’re hardly here, I’m hardly here. There’s no one to fool me or help me. But what about the compromising pictures, at least tell me about those. Don’t tell me they’re not there, I know for a fact they are, I lived them, all I do is think about them. Fine, give the men in black my best regards and tell them to fuck right off. No, tell them to bring it on, let them do their best, or worst, let them lock me up for all I care. At least it would be something, someone taking me seriously. I don’t think I’d mind being locked up anyway, at least not in solitary confinement. My room’s like a prison as it is, I’m already in prison, all I do is sit here, here or there, it doesn’t matter. Sometimes I walk around, feed myself, evacuate, he says. The walls wouldn’t make a difference and seasons mean nothing to me. Ha! The interrogators wouldn’t know what to do with me, with their stupid games, he says. They’d just think I was arrogant and try to break me down. An abomination, he says, that’s what I am. But it’s not in their interest to lock me up is it, or even to show their faces and interrogate me, or even for me to know they exist. They’ll just let me go about my business and let me compromise myself more and more so they have something to laugh about during their cigarette breaks. Probably they have no lives of their own. Then they send me you, knowing I can’t resist! Knowing how stupid I am and how much more stupid I’ll feel talking to you! he says. But how can I get back at them except by talking? By talking about myself, to you especially. They’re afraid of me, I can feel it, they’re afraid I’m getting at their secrets. They didn’t take my stupidity seriously when they roped me into this, my stupidity which makes me keep asking and keep talking. You know you can learn more about a person by talking to him than by listening to him, and I’ve learnt a lot about you, buddy, believe me. Or maybe they did account for my stupidity but didn’t count on its consequences. I’ll get at them, and on their own turf, he says. Even if they do get at me, they won’t really, I’m too stupid and too shrewd. And you, he says, you can’t be much better off than me, maybe even worse. What do they have on you if they assigned you to the likes of me? I shudder to think, he says. He gazes out the window, apparently drifting off to the music. Suddenly he turns to me, throws his beer in my face and storms out. But my thoughts are elsewhere.

I wake up, tired of waking up. Lured into the day. Embroiled in the day’s events. Which admittedly are few and far between. Or many and close together, depending on how you look at it. I wake up and at once the words swarm on me. I can’t tell sense from nonsense except by plucking phrases out of the swarm, phrases which swarm in turn. Are you turning against me, or were you against me from the beginning? Ignore the thought, I thought I’d passed through it anyway, I’ve passed through it. The swarm is mine and not mine, it passes through me trailing absence all around it. I remember last night’s dream. My speech merged with yours, I addressed myself to you as to my death: your words floated around me, too light for themselves.

Maybe I’ve become too soft, or too stubborn, maybe I always was. I need a shelter to prepare myself. For what? The clearing. Or is it the other way round, do I have to roam the clearing, exposed to danger, to find my shelter? Or am I still in the hole, is all that up there, both shelter and clearing? Useless questions, to fill the time.

But I feel the need to keep the lie going, it might lead me to the truth. So what happens next? Very little. Almost nothing. Silence. No, laughter. Distant. It barely reaches me, the laughter from beyond the silence that doesn’t exist. Laughter at what? Me, probably. I stand at the window, it’s better than standing at the wall, I’m not sure why. Silence. No. There’s my breathing for one thing. And the drone, what about that, has it gone? Maybe I just can’t hear it anymore. Maybe my ears are plugged with wax, or grit. The grit of life. Ugly. I’m starting to disgust myself again, I’ll have to stop soon if this goes on.

I’ve reached the point when I’ve nothing to say, I knew it was coming. Nothing to say and the strange guilt that follows from not filling empty time… Don’t let the words die out, there’s something I’ve missed, some fatal flaw in my reasoning, some progression from here to the final vantage point… And between those two points something vast and sprawling, I can’t find a figure for it. Too much and nothing to say. But I was given something to say before I can allow myself the luxury of having nothing to say, that much is clear isn’t it? Perhaps a compromise can be reached. How to speak without saying anything, how to speak nothing? But no, I’m nowhere near that stage and so much the worse. Shall I give in to a cosy discourse on the power of storytelling? No, anything but that. Maybe a new approach is in order. I could try sign language, flagwaving, smoke signalling, modern dance, blinking in morse code, they say the body has its own language. But this is no time for bad jokes, the whole enterprise is doomed by too much nothing to say. Let me come at it from another angle, then maybe a better one will present itself. If I could condense all this into a perfect sentence, and condense that into a single word, which I could cross out… Then I wouldn’t have to begin again, I’d be done, I’d start living. But I confess I’m afraid to write and afraid not to write, and aren’t they the same thing once that first word is written? What’s the difference between the first and last word, the one I learned first, so reluctantly, and the last one I wrote before I ran out of words, the one I crossed out? Doesn’t the last become the first, no matter how hard I cross it out or how little I have to say, isn’t it the same word? The word which lets me speak and lets me alone at one stroke. No, which makes me speak. And you, don’t you still make me speak? Can’t I still address you, speak your name and call you into existence? To speak in order to be called to speak, to be sweetly undone in my speaking, as you turn your absent face towards me…

Was that kitschy? I promise I’ll do better. There’s another pub on the coast, in the other direction. I walk to it along the empty road. I buy a pint and sit down with my back to the corner. I drink. I scribble these lines. I drink. I run out of things to say and look fishlike out the window, distracted by the thumping music. I order a semi-edible meal. I drink. I walk home, brush my teeth and lie down. I masturbate. I fall asleep. I awake before dawn with a pricking in my loins. I relieve myself, go back to bed and scribble these lines. I tell a lie, it’s morning, I managed to fall asleep. Another queasy day to look forward to, perhaps relieved by beer, scribbling and masturbation, not necessarily in that order. In fact definitely not in that order, for I’ve already started scribbling and I’ve neither drunk beer nor masturbated. Maybe I’ll take a walk through the white soup, over the gleaming shifting shingle, sea air does a body good they say. But first a mug of tea, and if I don’t throw it up, a nap. In fact if I do throw it up a nap will be even more indicated. But I won’t sleep, and why should I, I haven’t even got up, the day hasn’t started. Besides, I’m neglecting my pacing. Perhaps a walk, then, followed by a nap and some pacing. Or a walk and a pint, followed by a nap and some pacing. Or I might get carried away, I might have a thought, in the pub, say. Or I might have a sudden brainstorm on the shingles and have to find a cove to crouch down in with my pen and my notebook. It seems unlikely from my present standpoint. Absolutely the wrong word. But this is no time for bad jokes. I might just lie here until I get hungry, there are lots of possibilities. In any event I’ll have to think about food sooner or later, that’s the only given, no, there must be others. Like sleep. But I haven’t even had my tea. Perfect, have a nap before the tea perks you up. But I can’t sleep yet, and why should I.

I awake before dawn and lie in the murk with silence heavy in my ears and on my hands. I drink some water, get up and dribble. Drink and dribble, drink and dribble. Meanwhile I lie and wait for the light and birdsong I know will bring sleep. In the meanwhile nothing to do but turn on the light and scribble. Touching pen to paper I feel an unease, as if all I’ve written here is worthless. Nausea, or is it vertigo? Fingers scribbling, mouth mouthing. Whose fingers whose mouth? Does this nausea worm though you as it does through me? Strange impression of another voice mouthing my words as I write, as if someone else were reading them out to me from inside me. A voice by turns mocking and indifferent, louder and softer than mine. Write what I read out, it says. But what if I myself am this other voice, compelling the writer to write, to mouth my words as he writes? When I was a child I got a fever and I saw myself from far off, a small body lying in a bed. Who was this being, I thought, who looked down on myself? But that’s enough questions for now. So many without answers, not because every question’s been asked and still less because each has been answered, but because each reply jostles among other questions, like the shingle churned by the tides. They are part of you and torn apart from you like the shingle which was once one rock. You, not me. I still call you you, that much is left, as dawn breaks and sleep overcomes us both.

I’m woken by crashing sounds and a series of curses from downstairs. I turn and stretch with jerking limbs. Get up and walk, I tell myself, across the pebbles, you like the crunch, it’s an effect you cause at least. And this story needs a story, perhaps you’ll get embroiled in some intrigue. You might witness a group of walkers head for the sheer cliff round the bend and come back minus one, there’s a story. You might have a stirring interaction. But the coast seems endless, the bottoms of the bluffs free of corpses, the coves empty of lovers. Dog-walkers here and there, a conference of gulls. Minerals glisten in the rocks, I return the smile of a passer-by, there’s the day’s adventure. The cat sits on a warm car in front of my building. Some time later it mews once outside my door. It wants in but resists my advances. A little stranger on my bed, which gives me nothing and needs nothing from me. It’s only here for the warmth, for heat rises to the tops of buildings I’m told. It’s here to help me unlearn something whether it knows it or not, that’s why I’ve invented it, I decide. But am I not a little honoured by its presence, despite myself? Am I not drawn to it, even close to doing it some violence? I poke it for a response, it hisses at me and runs to my door. I leave it for a while, out of spite, then let it out, feeling sorry.

As I did the sun came out. It’s been so long I first thought someone was shining a searchlight in my room. I look around. The sunbeams show up my winter neglect: a coat of dust on the desk and shelves, innumerable rolls of fuzz and cat hairs on the carpet. I looked away, got up, walked to the kitchen cupboard, pulled out the hoover and set about hoovering the kitchen and bathroom. In my room, after I hoover the whole carpet in the normal fashion, I have to take the floor tool off and run the black tube across the fuzziest, darkest places. I shuffle all along my pacing circle. Even then there’s always more fluff, much more, the more I hoover up the more I see, but there must needs be a cut-off point, otherwise where would it end? I carried the hoover back in the kitchen and stuck it in the cupboard. I slid the dust container out of the hoover, gently emptied it into the rubbish bin, pulled the bin bag out and tied it up. I put on my shoes, carried the bin bag down the stairs and dropped it in the wheelie bin. On my way up my neighbour stuck his head out of his door and said, What the hell are you doing up there? I put the hoover back in the cupboard, went to the bathroom and turned on the hot water tap in the bathtub. I went back to the kitchen cupboard, took out the bucket, mop and bleach and brought them to the bathroom. The boiler kicked into action like an old truck. I turned the head of the mop around under the tap. Then I put the bucket in the tub, turned and squeezed the mop in the wringer, emptied the bucket in the tub, squirted some bleach into it, stood it under the tap and waited for it to fill. I felt too heavy for myself, as if I were sinking into the floor. I mopped the kitchen floor, brought the bucket back to the bathroom, poured its murky content in the toilet, turned the bathtub tap back on, rinsed the bucket, shook the head of the mop under the tap, squeezed it in the wringer, emptied the bucket, put bleach in it and put it under the tap. When it had filled I mopped the bathroom floor, poured the bucket’s murky content in the toilet, turned the bathtub tap back on, rinsed the bucket, shook the mop under the tap, squeezed it in the wringer and disposed of them. I sat on my bed and waited for the floors to dry. I cleaned the bathroom tub and sink with a sponge and soap, and the toilet with the toilet duck bottle and the brush. The advantage of the toilet duck design, of course, is that you can spray under the rim, where there may well be remnants of urine, faeces, iron, lime, rust or mould. I wiped under the rim with a wad of toilet paper and flushed the brown mess. I went to the kitchen and cleaned each horizontal and vertical surface with a cloth, cleaning the cloth between each surface. I used the same cloth to wipe the desk, bookshelves, windowsills, doorhandles, lists, I won’t bore you with an exhaustive list. I took a roll of paper towels and the window cleaning liquid and sprayed and wiped the bathroom mirror. Halfway through I stood still for a while, dropped the paper and bottle on the floor, looked up at my face, partly obscured by the dripping spray, put on my coat and shoes and went to the pub. Walking felt like standing. Snow melted everywhere in the sun and eaves and trees spilled incontinently, much like me. You’ve ruined my day, says my neighbour as he sits down at my table – just as the alcohol kicks in and I’m taking my notebook out of my pocket. I was trying to focus and then I had to go get drunk, he says. I worry about my wet shoes, consider taking them off and leaving them against the radiator, but don’t for fear of the potential stink. The gleaming dripping branches outside the window make me feel the need to dribble, but I hold it in, I don’t want to draw attention to myself by walking across the pub too many times. My neighbour spills his drink, swears and goes to buy another, without asking me if I want one, but now I sound like a woman. A pool of cider spreads towards my feet. I feel like an unravelling spool of thread, running ahead of itself. They’ve heard me talking to you, he says as he sits down, if they’re there they’ve definitely heard me. They’re following me, one way or another, and they’re probably following you too, unless you’re following me for them, in which case they’re probably following you to see if you’re following me, but what can I do? he says. I get up and get a drink. Even if I saw them I’d rather die than confront them, he says when I sit back down, in fact I’d probably die if I tried. And you sure as hell won’t do it, for your own sake or mine, I can see that much in your face, you don’t give a shit, he says. It’s all up to me. But they’d suck the life out of me before I got to them, they’re already sucking the life out of me, there’d be no one left. I’m afraid of everyone I see, I’m afraid to order a drink, I’m afraid the barman will think I’m a drunk. I didn’t know if I was relieved or scared when you came in, he says. I thought, This is it, he’s following me for sure. And to think in another time in a happier country I’d be walking through some white seaside village under a blue sky, I’d be dreaming under a lone oak tree, calm and content. You should leave, he says, this isn’t right, you must know that in your heart of hearts. You’re a menace to the building’s residents. I intend to write a letter to the owners, they’ll know what to do. You make a lot of noise, for one thing, he says, setting down his pint. I have very sensitive hearing, you know. Every noise you make makes me wonder what you’re doing and when it’s going to stop, and when it stops the silence makes me worried that it’ll start again. Then I stop and think, and I don’t like thinking! he says.

I get up and go to the loo for a piss. My knees lock and unlock. I sink into myself and ask myself whether I need to shit. Not yet, but soon, I tell myself, and it won’t be pretty. I get another drink, as does he when he sees me walk back to the table, as if I’ve reminded him of the opportunity.

When I think I can’t help looking back over my life and all the stupid things I’ve done, he says, sitting down. It’s all stupid! No, don’t say anything, that’ll only make it worse. All this time I’ve been secretly thinking how clever I was without realising how stupid I really am. It’s amazing how little I know about myself, he says. Maybe that’s why I talk so much. Even now I might be thinking how clever I am for realising how stupid I am, when tomorrow I might look back on this moment with horror, in fact I already do. Sometimes I even think I’m being humble for realising how stupid I am, when all I do is lay the ground for more humiliation. No one should think, he says, we should just take on the colours of the world and disappear against the backdrop like chameleons. Thinking is a curse. But maybe he just needs to get laid, he says. Do I know any girls? Of course I don’t. Basically it’s all been compromised, he says, shifting uncomfortably in his seat and looking around. I’ve been compromised. There’ll be pictures of me compromising myself in various positions when they hand me the folder. There I’ll be, looking up at myself, straining and leering. Eyebrows will be raised, tongues will wag and my face will be lost. That it’s come to this! he shouts, leaning forward. How could you let it, why didn’t you step in? They’re laughing, I can almost hear them, he says. They listen to me when they have nothing better to do, then they take a cigarette break and laugh about me. You may too, but think about me for a second, why don’t you, think about how I must feel. This is my life I’m talking about, he says. It’s all over, my life, they’re just stringing me along now, giving me enough rope. When I sense them coming I won’t even bother to prepare, I won’t pack anything. I won’t call my mother, she’s dead anyway. I’ll walk straight into the icy water or whatever it is they have in store for me. Do your worst, I’ll say, I’ll laugh at them, go ahead and tell them that, what do I have to lose? I’ll forget to think of pithy last words but it won’t matter, it’ll be too late for last words, it’s always too late, he says. I’ll walk across the ice like an old Eskimo, I’ll shuffle into my ultima thule, I won’t care, don’t try to stop me. But more likely they won’t come, he says, more likely they’ll just watch me waiting with their uncaring fisheyes and let me live out my living death. If they’re even there, or if you don’t get me first, I wouldn’t put it past you. I wouldn’t trust you as far as I could throw you, he says. Are they even there? Do you know anything? If only he had some philosophical talent, he tells me, then he might not need to ask questions, or even talk to me. Then he’d just give an explanation when asked or lean back with a smirk and say it was ever thus, or that it’s old hat and tell me I should really do some reading. That’s what he should cultivate, he says, the cynicism of a world-weary intellectual! At the very least he should read more, he says, how can he get any philosophical talent if he doesn’t read? But he doesn’t even know what to read, he says, and I’m no help, in fact I’m probably thick as a plank. But you’re right, he says, you’re doing the right thing, best not to say much if you’re dim. And that makes you smarter than me. If you’re not a thinker you shouldn’t talk, he says, that much is clear, just look at me! What do they call it, a cautionary story? You’ve learned that much, he says. But then you are a thinker, he says, aren’t you, if you’ve learned that much? So what do you think about me? Am I full of shit? Am I? He grabs me and we end up in a scuffle. I push him back on his chair. It tips back but he ends up with his forehead on the table, exhausted and breathing heavily. I leave before the publican comes round from behind the bar.

Mornings like dusk. Sun rising to set. Nothing happens, every day. I get up, go to the bathroom and vomit, brush my teeth and put some clothes on. Sky like pulp, sleet like wet clumps of it. Are these good phrases? No idea. Someone will think they’re repulsive. How the things I make desert me straight away! But let’s move on to more important matters. Such as? Ask some more questions, it’s got you this far… But there are no more questions, are there? Everything’s been asked, nothing answered. Unless you come out of hiding and – no, stay where you are, murmuring beyond me, don’t come too close, don’t go too far. Keep me in my hole, in the welcoming trap you pushed me into, wasn’t it around the time of the first word? Write me from inside my writing, remember for me… You lifted me out of my hole and I fell into another hole. I got tired and I fell out of time. I managed to raise my eyes and say something to someone. I told myself to stop talking and listen for the voice inside my voice, the voice that gets louder as I weaken. The voice within, above, beyond or beside me, between teller and told.

I had something to say, now what was it? I remember, begin my tale and ruin your beginning. You remind me to forget and I try to lose myself in listening. I rear up again, silence you, continue my story. Sometimes I flatter myself that this movement sustains you, we all have our little conceits. The voice I listen for, this voice that speaks inside my words… I name it yours and am instantly led astray. I backtrack from my naming and my backtracking itself leads me astray. I ignore you, but it’s too late. I speak, and what speaks in me is your solitude, which I enter as one enters a foreign language. I scribble and return to myself in your form. What form is that? The question opens up a cold space inside me. Then someone whispers in my ear and returns me to my missing self. Then what? More stagnant time, more endless dusk. And if I address you right, the dispersal that affirms, something that affirms itself through me. As if I have to drop into dead water for time to come alive in me, to stream through me, breaking up against itself. Is it worth it, does it help? Moot questions, since there’s no turning back, no possession to turn back into. You turn away as I turn into you. Then let the words show the way as they fall apart in my mouth. Show me the way as your words undo themselves between the tip of my pen and the page. Let that be my survival, your survival in me.

Have I discussed my bed? This notebook is a mess. Of all my possessions, rented or otherwise, it’s my favourite, my bed I mean not my notebook. It’s narrow, to be sure, it has no head, the mattress is thin and the steel rings beneath it a little squeaky, and who knows how many have slept in it and what they’ve done, all valid points, but it remains my favourite, for I’m least unhappy when I’m recumbent under a feathered cover, I won’t compromise on bedclothes, I’ll say that for myself at least. My natural position is horizontal, which is the posture in which I think and sleep best, and in which I write the bulk of these notes, not that that’s necessarily an advertisement either for my bed or the horizontal position as such, though it does explain the messiness of my notebook. The floor simply doesn’t do the same job, I can say this with some degree of certainty because I once spent a night on it thinking I might have more space to roll around, for I am a tosser. I got dust up my nose, my hips hurt in the morning and that was only the half of it so that was the end of it. Oh I arranged some padding between myself and the carpet, I’m not an idiot, yes I am, a couple of blankets and suchlike, but it wasn’t sufficient, a bed’s necessary after all, you’d think I’d have known. The other advantage of my bed besides the relative comfort or lack of discomfort it affords in the horizontal position, and indeed in the sitting or half-sitting position when I feel so inclined, in which I sit or slump at the head of the bed – or is it the end, there being no head, the end where I choose to rest my head when I sleep at any rate – in which I sit or slump with my pillow between the small of my back and the wall, the eastern one I think it is, the only disadvantage of this posture being that it sometimes results in the mattress, and occasionally even the bed itself, due to its lightness, shifting away from the wall, causing me to slip farther and farther down the wall till my chin rests on my chest; the other advantage of my bed, I say, is the vantage point it gives me, from which I can observe my whole flat and all that happens and fails to happen in it, as well as the window, its condensations and reflections, and lastly of course what lies outside the window when it’s not covered with condensation, namely the sky, the sliver of sea, a few brown rooftops and an occasional bird. I sometimes leave my doors open to give myself as wide-ranging a view as possible. The kitchen is currently satisfactory, it’s as I left it. The mirror in the bathroom reflects the window in here, which in turn reflects me, for it’s evening. I’ve acquired a clock from the second-hand shop and hung it on wall over my desk. The ticking is intolerable. I got up, ripped it off its nail and flung it on the ground. The pieces flew everywhere. A few seconds later, five knocks on my floor, under it rather, that’s to say on my neighbour’s ceiling, meaning it was my neighbour who knocked, with some kind of stick, a broomhandle maybe, or a hockeystick, though he doesn’t strike me as the sporting type. I sat back down on my bed and scribbled this.

The morning condensation on my window forms a grey screen. A few drops separate themselves out and leave clear wet lines as they drop, revealing more grey outside – lighter, diffuse. How shall I get lost today? Thin coat of fresh snow. Cars leave Ms, Vs and Ys, spelling nothing. The birds’ feet make little marks on my windowsill like Ws typed on a blank page. A pretty image. I stole that one, I forget where from – I have nothing left of my own, nothing to say. These words, once so familiar and obliging… Each a variation on the first, for there must have been a first of some sort, and what exactly have I added to it since? It wants to return, this first word, but without speaking… Go on, describe another face of the prism, this might be the one at last, the one through which all the others are illuminated. Have another shit-and-dribble and think of another pretty image, something to do with water, that’s what you like isn’t it, think of wellsprings and outlets, outlets that are their own wellsprings and vice versa, ebbs and flows and flows and ebbs, stop it, don’t mock, it’ll bore them for one thing. Who is this addressing me, show yourself. A dream, I’ll recount a dream. Last night I dreamt that you wound in and out of my life, from before the beginning and after the end, through regions vaster than I could imagine. I stepped out of you even as you entered me, I was already guilty of you. Ah guilt, taking advantage of my sleepiness. When did things first go awry? When did the mist descend and freedom slip between my fingers? Was it when I started talking to you? Did you replace my freedom, are you my freedom to come? I dreamed of the freedom of a desert, no, of an endless sea that gives birth to and drowns all life, that’s how I imagined it. Enough images, I’m starting to disgust myself again. Then go on. But there’s something I can’t say, the right word runs away from me or sits down just out of reach like a cat. The cat! What became of it? It’s sitting outside my front door. So it is. I let it in, that graceful walking word. It hops up on my bed and starts turning around itself on my pillow. I set to scribbling again, look up and realise I’ve been hearing a drone, beyond the usual hum of the refrigerator and boiler, that’s what’s been distracting me. I open the window. It’s from outside somewhere, a vague electrical undercurrent. I close the window, my mistake was to notice it. I now notice I have a headache. After a while it gets bad enough that I decide to go out and buy earplugs and aspirin. As I descend the stairs my neighbour opens his door and peeks out. Wait, he says. The slam of his door echoes in the stairwell. He catches up to me with loose shoelaces, pulling on his coat. Did you see him this morning? he says. I thought I saw him again. Why did he come back, I thought they’d given up on me? he says. I’m starting to think there’s something different going on from what I thought. He tells me he’s started to worry that one of these days someone’s going to show him his life in review and it won’t be pleasant. Someone’ll come to his door, he says, quite possibly the man from this morning, who may or may not be the man from the other day, the one I spoke to, hand him a dossier marked CONFIDENTIAL in big red letters and go away. It’ll detail all the things he’s ever done, with pictures. He’ll look around in horror and run down the street, he says, but the man will be gone, of course, and he’ll stand in the middle of the street, holding his file. They’ll have copies of course, he says. Why am I telling you this, he says, why do I humiliate myself in front of you like this? I think you know why, he says. A handful of gulls battle for something above us, it falls from their grasp, they swoop down after it, a car honks. I can still hear the drone in the background. Or more likely they’ll never turn up, he says, they’ll just have fun watching me humiliate myself till I die, then maybe they’ll turn up, not to point and laugh, or shoot and bury me, just to see the end, with scientific detachment, just to see what a truly humiliating death looks like. As if they haven’t seen it before! But they haven’t seen mine, he says. He follows me into Boots and observes sceptically as I make my purchase and swallow a pill at the counter. It might even happen tomorrow, he says, or today, who’s to say a long life’s been written for me, I might be struck down as we turn this corner, I might slip on the ice and get flattened by a bus, or you might push me, I wouldn’t put it past you. To tell you true it happens every day, at least since you turned up, every day’s a new end. I wake up and start from nothing, nothing but fear. No, just push me in front of a bus now, he says, save everyone the trouble. Or say something, shut me up, return me to real life. He stops and looks around, crosses the street and enters the second-hand shop. I take the long way home.

On the way the droning seems to stop, rendering the earplugs superfluous. My headache subsides. When I open my door the neglected cat pounces on me, scratches my leg and shoots down the stairs. Good for it.

And now?

Why keep talking over you? Not to resolve but to dissolve, and go beyond what dissolves. Does that make sense? Who knows. To try to turn my scribbling into yours, to let you turn yours into mine. To be free of this disgust. When they deliver you up it shall be given you for it is not ye that speak. Yet not I but death liveth in me. Hopeless, I know nothing, my ignorance is boundless, let me be clear. Or it may be a tiny cloud of unknowing around my head, what do I know. Laughter wells up from creation… Laughter at, with, from, in and through you, laughing itself to death as I pace around my room.

Enough faffing about, let’s get to the meat of the matter. What matter? Snow again, deep and even, sunned and chaste. Let it come down. My penis is starting to dribble whether I want or need it to. There’s seepage too from the anus when I walk so that I have to go into public bathrooms and wipe myself clean. Patches of ice on the beach, seagulls squawking over sea-carrion. Is this wretchedness or freedom? Don’t think about it, don’t think, no, think, I must. What shall I think, what will think me? Nothing. The window. What about it? It’s white now and my room is black, what time is it? Turn the light on and take this down, it must be important, it’s not important. Turn the light off and try to sleep again. Birdsong, then it must be dawn. But it’ll soon set again, the sun that is, there’s little difference these days between dusk and dawn. Nothing. Sleep. Wake. What time is it? It’s winter. Start from the incontrovertible and proceed thence. Winter in the northern hemisphere, in this grey space. He’s jabbering downstairs, who’s he talking to? Who am I talking to? No one. Plough through it, sow your barren seeds. Or is it the ground that’s rocky? No matter, same result. I awake in the hole, am I in danger? If not then why the fear? You lift me out and pull me along, your drift turns into another hole and so on. I look around not knowing what’s hole and what isn’t. I fall back in, half dreaming. Your words dance over me, what was that phrase I thought of, what was the word? Did I lose you or did you lose me? Am I finding you or losing you?

Scribble in the tub, let it echo off the tiles like a scratching rat. What to do… Drop the pad in the water and have done with it. But I can’t, I mustn’t. Don’t laugh, laugh. My voice is too strong, that’s it’s weakness. My only chance is to borrow your voice, to tie it – to tie it to nothing. Scribble then, into the endless hours. A drip from the tap, silence, a knock on the door. I ignore it, drop the pad on the floor and sink down under the water.

Later when I opened the front door he was sitting on the top step of the stairwell. I thought you weren’t in, he said, turning his head. He’s shaved it, imperfectly. I descend the stairs and he follows me to the beach. Dune scrub brilliant with frost, the dunes themselves dusted white over wet heavy sand. White fog over a steely sea and so forth. A nameless man who walks between us, the more nameless the closer he gets. My neighbour catches up to me, blows his nose on his coat sleeve. His words lost in the wind. He pulls my sleeve and shouts, Are you listening? He pulls harder, grabs my scarf, he’s sitting on me. Say something, hissed, hands wrapping around my throat. I grab his wrists and buck only to dig myself into the sand, as in a dream where you can’t get up. Snow now, falling fatly on my face. Everything slows down. He seizes up, loosens his grip and stares at my eyes in fear. Wide eyes for once, boring into mine for I don’t know how long. I shift back onto my elbow, punch him in the mouth. He falls back holding his jaw. I get up, stand over him, then walk away looking over my shoulder. He lies with his face in his hands till I’ve passed the curve of the strand.

I love the view that opens up in this place, its absolute indifference. I envy it. I walk into what fades from me as if into pure possibility, consign myself to let you come and go, relinquish my words.

In the pub on the next elbow of the coast I have my neighbour walk in after a logical interval. He’s opening and closing his swollen lips like a fish. There’s no great showdown. After all what happened besides what failed to happen, what we each of us couldn’t master? It could fail to happen again, to keep up the suspense. But enough of that.

He sits down opposite me. I’ve seen through you, he squints, right through you. You’re just as needy as you think I am. It’s pathetic if you care to think about it. Do you ever? He leans back with a grave gaze and says, Please don’t come near me again. You’re too close for comfort, you’re creeping me out. If you do I shall have to take official measures, he says. His tongue sticks out thickly as he speaks, to buffer his lips. He looks around, leans forward, looks me in the eye and says, I took a wrong turn somewhere. Everything got fucked up, and it was around the time you turned up, exactly the wrong time. Perfect timing. Just in time for the tragic denouement. It’s the third act, the gun’s out, there’s only one character on stage and the curtain drops on a pale corpse. Look how good I am with words, I’m well-read you know, I could have been somebody, unlike you. Can you even read? Can you make any face besides that one? Why did you come here? he says. Why did I take up with you? I didn’t know how good I had it. I’m such a moron. I’m a grade-A fuckwit. They’ll find me in a tub of red water with my arm hanging out like Chatterton’s. They’ll find me, I promise you, and there beside me will be the most moving note ever written, a note meant to lead them straight to you, but they won’t understand it, and neither will you, he says… Outside the fog moves in across the dark sea, folding over itself, its shadow preceding sunset.