Protch didn’t lack courage that morning of
Wednesday, February 16. He had taken Nike a coffee to the library, where he had
led him that morning. And sitting next to him, he heard him finally sigh.
─Ow - said Nike finally
— how happy you can see them. My parents were very beautiful. Although I never
met them. What they lived must have been worthwhile. That you can see in their
faces: she is seen happy and he is seen self-absorbed. And they are escorted by
my grandparents, my dear Thomas Martin and Deborah. Thank you for bringing them
to Deanforest and place them where I put my parents.
─ Why in the library?
─Here I spent much of
the day alone, reading and drinking a coffee and at the end, when I brought their
portrait from Siddeley Priory, I placed them in the western wall so that they
were surrounded by books and they continued living among words.
─It will be difficult
to tell you their story
─Do not be afraid,
Protch. You will be able to. But begin further back.
─I will try to start with
the first Siddeley. As I've been living with them, something I know, but I won't
tire you describing you the luxury of Siddeley Priory or telling you again how the
real lineage, although there were no doubt many generations before, really
began with Thomas Siddeley, who met Luther and created form a priory a house
where your family has lived for generations, and he called it Siddeley Priory.
─You can tell me about
the famous arrogance of the Siddeley, which I also inherited, or about the cruelty.
─Although your
grandfather told me the history, generation after generation, just I remember
Horace Martin Siddeley, great entrepreneur, who built a large textile industry,
the Siddeley Co. But I went to work to the family mansion with 20 years. Your
grandfather was already married to your grandmother Deborah, and had two sons:
Martin Washington, your father, who then was ten years old; and Clarence, his
younger brother. But your grandfather had many brothers, and thus you have a
legion of cousins. And your uncle Clarence had three...
─Michael, Edmund and
Lydia. Edmund was always my favorite cousin, along with Nicole and Arwin, very
concerned about those who have less, but Edmund has always been my favorite
cousin and we spent hours in the forest of Dean, hunting, running, or talking
about our stuff. In the forest of Dean we were the days and I don't know if I
knew how to give him any relief, when her mother died. I hardly remember my
aunt Brigitte, my uncle Clarence’s wife. He was widowed very soon. I was six
years old, but I recall her telling me beautiful stories with her calm voice. I
don't know if I was a support for Edmund and his brothers. I did the best I
could. And please, Protch, before you talk to me about my grandparents, tell me
something about you.
─I was a mad young man
when I came to Siddeley Priory as a butler. And three months later you hired
Maude Heath, who would steal my heart. But it is not a very original story, and
in addition I'm not talking about your parents or grandparents.
─Protch, please.
Maudie and you are a part of my life and one day you could be my friends, and I
would love to know your story. Your wife I will also ask one day, when I see
her, about the origin of my name. I believe that it was she and soon everyone
forgot the Nicholas and started calling me Nike, and so I have always introduced
myself to everyone I met. But I want to know how your idyll started.
─Well, Nike, because
you're interested, I'll tell you. Maude Heath came to Siddeley Priory three
months after I came. She was hired to deal with the cleaning of the many rooms
of the house, but she aspired to be a cook one day. A close friend of Dora’s,
do you remember Dora? She was very short...
─Yes, I do.
–But especially a friend
of Ingrid Stiller’s. She was for us a matchmaker. Maude Heath came to me to
consult me things very often for I was the butler. Now I know that she was
already captivated by me. I stared at her when Leona opened the door. An
impressive woman, tall and slender as if she were...
─ A Nordic goddess?
─Very similar, Nike,
as a deity of other mythologies. She always spoke to me fondly, hiding a little
what she felt for me. We started to see often, with any excuse, and surely
Ingrid knew everything about us. One day your grandparents and your father went
somewhere and servants were not necessary. But Ingrid convinced us both to take
care of the house. We spent hours together, and in the afternoon, having tea, we
started saying to each other everything, and at dinner, we were already a
couple, and within a few days, we were engaged. We got married on June 30, our
first year at Siddeley Priory.
─Always the two of you
by my side, Protch, always loving that orphan Siddeley.
─I want to return to
your story, Nike, shall I finally go to your grandparents?
─Try to also remember
my maternal grandparents. And tell me about the two. Some picture I brought of them
also and they must still be here, in a room on the first floor looking east.
─There are still your
maternal grandparents’ pictures. As for the paternal, when I met him, Thomas
Martin Siddeley already was married. It is true that sometimes he fired a servant,
Nike, and not always for reasons that seem reasonable to me, but I don’t know
if you expect me to tell you something worse. For me the word that defines him
is pompous, but it is also true he was proud of the Siddeley luxury, because
you have history and lineage. He liked to spend hours in a fireplace telling me
in detail the story of the previous generations. He boasted of knowing it very
well and so was transmitting it to me. In a costume ball he met Deborah Carter,
from a traditional oil family, though she had no need to work. As none of the
Siddeley. You broke that tradition. Your grandmother Deborah was his weakness.
Certainly, as you know, and it is a pleasure to repeat it, your grandparents
loved each other, and when he was with Deborah, your grandfather was
transformed. He could be coming from a great anger with someone but he looked
at her and was quickly soothed. He loved her dearly.
─My grandmother
Deborah was a very special woman. She never lied to me, not even in delicate issues
and she often told me that I was her vanity. I hope that if at these moments she
could see me, she would feel proud of the beggar who I am now. Of her I think
it could be likely. Tell me something about my father.
─Martin Washington was
growing almost at the same time I was. Somewhat disobedient and much of a
dreamer. You never knew what he was going to answer to certain issues and like
you, he was transparent, and became a man knowing that he was going to inherit
the family business. But one day he met Alma Sheringham, your mother. She had an
ethereal beauty, often concentrated on one idea and she could spend several
minutes absorbed. With clear eyes and blonde, I never doubted what your father saw
in her. Of your mother you may have inherited rebelliousness, because Alma,
just like you, was never satisfied with things as they were, and wanted to do
something on her own, and more than once tried to convince her parents to let
her take care of any of the two industries she had inherited. Her father, Steve
Sheringham, your maternal grandfather, was a renowned breeder of horses, and
his family lived of it. Sheringham race was well known, and many of the ponies in
the Siddeley Priory stables came from there. Their horses sometimes crossed the
huge wheat fields of the Murchison, and talking with them on one occasion, he
met your grandmother, with the original name of Hedwigia. She had at least an
occupation. She was in charge of some of her family’s hives and the honey
collected by Hedwigia Murchison was famous. Once they were married, Steve and
Hedwigia moved to Horseland, where
your mother was born.
-Tell me more about her, Protch. She was so
beautiful. I only know her by photography.
─I will tell you more
soon. I don't know very well why your father went one day to Horseland. But I do know that the two
fell in love head over heels and one evening he introduced her at Siddeley
Priory and all the servants received her joyfully. She was extraordinarily
beautiful, and had a sweet and peaceful character that won our hearts. She got
along especially well with Maude and never created any conflicts and it was a
delight to know that one day she would be the lady of the house. Your parents
were two years engaged. Alma often spent the evenings at Siddeley Priory,
sometimes accompanied by her parents, and was already known as Lady Sheringham.
But an August 5 your parents got married. All the servants went to the ceremony
and we were engrossed watching their faces so much in love. How luminous your
parents were. What happiness finally to welcome Alma Siddeley to the same rooms
that were now her home, with Martin Washington Siddeley, more an ephebe than
new Lord of the house. Now we had two masters and two ladies and the servants
rejoiced of the new power at Siddeley Priory. And soon she announced that she
was pregnant.
─ And then?
─The time of pregnancy
was going well. Her husband, her in-laws and everybody did our outmost for the
welfare of Alma and the child she was expecting. Nothing foreshadowed what
would happen on July 30. Are you sure, Nike, that you want me to tell you?
-I am sure, Protch as
sure as I am that you also think that I have the right to know at last what
happened to my parents.
─Dr. Ivy was there all
that morning of July 30, taking care of Alma. And about seven o'clock in the
morning there we were many, waiting for the birth of Nicholas Martin. Your
parents had already decided how to call you.
─ And if I had been
born a girl?
─You would have been
Christine.
─Go on, Protch.
─There were your grandparents
Thomas Martin and Deborah Siddeley, Steve and Hedwigia Sheringham, Dr. Ivy and
I. Maude had gone a few days and did not see your birth, but I was allowed to
enter and I saw your arrival, worried about any need that your parents, your
grandparents, or the doctor had. The door was open, and by surprise, we saw
that in came Lippincott. Do you
remember him?
─The only dog I've
ever had. Thank you for this detail that I did not know. Later my grandparents gave
me many cats, aware of how much I liked them. I still remember Lipp, as I called it. Blackish and
almost always sad, he was indefatigable but had no offspring that I know of.
That day it was only a puppy. I lost it when I was 7, if I remember correctly.
─Suddenly your mother
suffered great pains, she weakened, had fever, cried... The clock struck seven
when we heard Lipp barking. Your face
could already be seen. Nicholas Martin had arrived. Your mother held you
proudly. At least half an hour she resisted with you in her arms. But she was
still losing blood. Dr. Ivy was seeing that little could be done. Your mother passed
away in half an hour and she wanted to go with a smile on her lips.
─Thank you, Protch. I
can't stop crying. Goodbye Alma Siddeley. I hope that your life was worthy.
Thank you for life, mama. Still, Protch, what happened to my father?
─I will overlook the
mourning which covered all Siddeley Priory or the pain of your grandparents
Sheringham. Alma was their only daughter. They kept coming to see their
grandson, but so much pain must have been unbearable. They accompanied you as
best they could in your childhood and adolescence, until two tumors took them
away.
─I was 15 years old
when I lost them. But it always was merry for me to see my grandparents Steve
and Hedwigia.
-For several days
Thomas Martin and Deborah tried to console their son. And his brother Clarence
was also by his side. What happened to your father was that he could not bear
the pain. He never drank, but those days he did what he could to forget. No one
at Siddeley Priory knew what to do. Very worried we were when on August 9 we
all heard a gunshot. The sound came from the living room. We approached and
discovered the body of Martin Washington Siddeley. Impossible to describe you
the shock, or the state in which your grandparents were. A few days later guns were
withdrawn forever. They had been of the Siddeley family for centuries.
─It is what I thought
that happened to them. I was told that they were killed in a traffic accident,
but I was guessing the truth slowly and I ended up finding a truth that only
now I know for sure. Goodbye Martin Washington, dad, how much you must have
loved her and the emptiness must have been unbearable. Thank you very much,
Protch, for daring to finally tell me the truth. Now I can already resume my story.
But, please, I want to continue listening to you. I want you, as long as we are
in the library to interrupt me every few minutes. I return to the story, in
reality to my prehistory.
Once
upon a time there was a beggar who was born in a golden cradle, because the
spirits of the universe, many times indomitable and often indecipherable,
wanted to confuse his birth and in the bed of fortune, an orphan, they laid him.
It is well known that they do as they please, but it has to be believed that
they know what they are doing; and wrote that he should start his life as a
king. And thus was born the beggar king not knowing who he really was, in his
golden cradle. Golden was my childhood and my four grandparents were like parents
to me. Nothing I have to blame them. But golden was also my first road, born to
follow the Siddeley tradition, even educated in the belief that one day I had
to have a son whose name should be Martin Thomas. Gold and pageantry Siddeley
Priory, immense, wide mansion, large manor, waste of rooms and luxurious
furniture, with expensive antiques. But a cradle also has some bars and I
lacked something and not having it pressed on me: the blessed freedom that at
another time I acquired, to make my own decisions, to be myself. But none of
this I knew and when one day my grandfather taught me to swim, I was also
instructed in another way of prolonging my absences: to compete, also to be the
first to win what was not money or properties. With this lure I was growing,
surrounded by cats, making mischief with cousin Edmund. Almost always
transparent and continuously rebel, look, Protch, all that I could have chosen:
besides the Siddeley industry, I had the oil of the Carter, the Sheringham horses
and the wheat fields or hives of the Murchison. I don't have memories that in
that time I was a moron. I was only a disoriented man. I hardly saw beggars at
Siddeley Priory, and I can't remember what I thought of them, if something I
thought.
I was enthusiast to the horses, not only
those of Grandfather Steve. Already it was necessary to create the Siddeley
Priory stables and my family hired the first groom, called Simon Bonner. With
few assistants, he was responsible for the main things. And the teenager Nike
spent there hours talking with him. He was an expert in all kinds of animals,
nothing of wildlife escaped him, and we spent hours talking about horses, cats
and even pigs, because beside the stables were the pigsties. Actually the
Siddeley family had everything. We always found subjects to talk. Simon, now
that years have passed, I know that you were my first love, but my disoriented
heart did not know. One day, without ever knowing why, grandfather fired him
and a few days later died Horizon,
the last pony Simon was responsible for, who knows if it was not of nostalgia
for his absence. A month later, came my grandfather’s first heart attack and we
spent days in the hospital until finally he recovered. Sometimes there came
guests who could have taught me many things in life. And once stayed with us
Mitch Heath, brother of my beloved Maudie, who used to speak to me often of
birds. He knew all about birds. The arrogant Mr. Siddeley could have learned
enough but hardly paid him any attention. And although these days I've tried to
recallf your brother-in-law, Protch, unfortunately I hardly remember him.
I do not know very well how came to me the
urge to study a degree. The Siddeley really did not need to. We were well off.
I guess that the itch came to me when I saw Cousin Cayron Siddeley, who would
later become a doctor of geology, ended his bachelor’s degree. He gave me the
idea, since one day I would inherit the entire Siddeley industry, of studying
economics. It was troublesome to tell my grandparents, who wanted to convince
me that I didn't have the need. It was on my first year of student, fortunately
on holidays, when my grandfather had the second heart attack and died. And I
was already finishing the degree when also Grandmother Deborah, the last
survivor, died and I found myself empty, already without roots, owner of
Siddeley Priory, but not owner of myself. I will overlook my crazy college
years in the Capital. I specialized in steel and soon I was hired by the Thuban
Star Company, so I had to go to Hazington. My lawyers were responsible for
finding me a luxurious property in the prosperous district of Newchapel.
Theoretically Mr. and Mrs. Woodward owned the house and it was called Mount Rushmore. I found a house that had
been empty eleven years, and named it Deanforest, thinking about the forest of
my first games in the Gloucestershire of my childhood.
But what future should I give to Siddeley
Priory? Already owner of all the gold of my cradle, I thought hard of what to
do with all that. Until it occurred to me to leave the mansion to the care of
cousin Edmund and to also leave the textile industry also in his hands and his
father’s, already a shareholder, my uncle Clarence. I just had to comment my move
with the servants, and it was then when it shocked me to know that the most beloved
ones, Maudie and Protch, decided to come with me to Hazington.
─ Why did you do it,
Protch?
─My wife and I had
spent half a lifetime with the Siddeley, who have always treated us with
affection. We could have stayed with Edmund, who retained his servants, but we had
much affection for the last offspring of the family, that child we trusted, by everybody
known as Nike. And you would need servants in Hazington.
─I had the invaluable
help of Victor Sheffield, who was your assistant, second butler who knew how to
do everything; of Karen Lindgren, head in the kitchen, with a multitude of kitchen
helpers with her; of the cleaning of the house was responsible among others
Agnes Moore, which I delayed to discover; of my clothes dealt Jack Stapleton
and were always clean and shiny. And the first year in Deanforest, for you to
have an idea, already Miguel in the street, I had the invaluable help of Maudie
and my butler Herbert Protch. Busy with the many parties that I organized, not
yet drunk, were with me a year. But a year later they left. And although I know
why, Protch, could you repeat it?
─We thought my uncle
Aurélien had a tumor. My cousin Rich, his son, was then in jail and could not take
care of him. It was not difficult to persuade Maude to move to Orléans, where I
spent my childhood and there, together with our cousin Louise, take care of
what we believed were the last years of his life.
─Thank you, Protch.
And now I return to my story.
Between Deanforest and Avalon Road I spent
my first months. Only three years later I was promoted to the Board of
Directors as director of economic planning. The council was presided then by
Harold Blessing, a difficult man with whom everybody had some problems,
reserved and unsociable. There was the old Norman Wrathfall, first president of
the company, who seemed to come alive with the affairs of the company and with
whom I did not have the slightest conflict. I then met Thaddeus Barrymore,
whose views often moved away from mine and yet it was easy to deal with him. I was
also then introduced to Walter Hope. It is difficult to describe him to you. For
my surname and I hope also for my abilities I was promoted quickly, and Walter
felt discontent with this situation. He
was an upstart and nothing was known of his origins and his relationship with
me was impossible. But in the Board of Directors was also John Richmonds, I
soon learned that he was the president's nephew, friendly and polite. It was a
pleasure to converse with him. At his side always Anne-Marie Beaulière. I
suspected that they were a couple, but she spent much time at my side and soon
became a great friend.
But before joining the Board of Directors, I
had a first assistant, called Marcel Wright, who it is possible that you remember,
Protch, as he came many times to Deanforest in a time that he was my family. Black-haired
and with pretty curly hair, perhaps a bit hippie, he ended up setting up a bar
in his neighborhood of Fairfields. He was my first friend in the Thuban Star
and after coming to some of the festivities organized in Deanforest, he led me
to know his house. Fairfields is a cheerful neighbourhood full of plants that
even resist Hazington asphalt. But I met there in his house his sister, Alison
Wright, and fell as if in a spell before her long blonde hair, her eyes like
Heatherling in a spring day, her look of clear sky, her serene soul, the light
of her smile. She was then taking care of the garden, where she was proud of her
bignonias, and in the center a tree that she called gingko biloba. We started
to talk about plants and we immediately entangled in personal matters. She
wanted to be a gardener and she put her heart in flowers; I had other concerns,
but spoke to her that many times I felt empty, with no clear course in life. She
liked me and soon we were already a couple. Alison! My first partner. They were
days of smelling the fragrances of Fairfields and disco nights. So I met her
more than once in the city, but with her we used to go to Baphomet, in Alder Street. She never loved me, but it was evident
how much I loved her, and I think... that I am not mistaken if I tell you that I
really was in love with her, even without really knowing my heart. She ended up
leaving me for another man, who she did really love. I stayed for the first
time in the ice of indifference and even though I have lived enough, I still
remember her.
Every day I was becoming a friend of
Anne-Marie Beaulière’s. We started talking about work issues, but with her it
was easy talks diverted to any point, and soon we were real friends. Of a
straightforward nature, she has always symbolized for me loyalty, and has supported
me in my two lives despite everything. Due to her friendship I became a friend
of the man I believed to be her partner, John Richmonds, and we went frequently
all three together for a drink, to the cinema, to Deanforest... One night we
had appointed to meet at the bar Starlight
in Temple Road, but she did not go due to I don't remember what. I met only John
and had to ask him what I had not dared until then, if they were a couple.
─ "She loves me
but I don’t reciprocate her, Nike. She knows why it would be impossible."
─ "Do you love
another girl?" – I asked candidly.
─ "I don't know
if you'll understand, Nike. My uncle Harold doesn't want this to be talked
about. But you and I are every day more friends and I think you had better know
it and if I finally have your contempt, I will understand - and then he said
it-. I like men, Nike."
How did I respond in those moments? I was
more taken aback than shocked, but started to say idiot phrases.
─ "Anne-Marie is
a great woman. And if she is not the girl, then another one. But I guess that what
you have has a cure. It's just a bad time in your life. Nothing more."
─ "It cannot have
a cure what is not a disease. It is nature. When I was 13 I discovered it and
up to now. Anne-Marie knows it. I have not cheated her. But it's much harder to
make me understand by men."
─ "I don't know
what to tell you, John. Of course now I have much to think about. I could not
expect this. Let me assimilate it. I don't know if it is nature or debauchery, whether
it can be avoided or you want to continue persisting in error. Tonight I will
start to think about it. Come on, let's go now."
As result of that night we began to speak
less and less, just of work. Anne-Marie began to find us distant and I excused
if she had planned that the three of us went out. I started to assimilate that
Anne-Marie knew it but never talked about that, but we were dodging the matter.
And a day of January, John surprised us all saying that he had fallen in love
with a beggar and left the work. And the next morning I saw him again at the
bar, hand in hand with that beggar who he introduced as his partner. And
Richard in the bar as a witness I reached the blackest moment of my existence
and insulted him. I began to poison myself then. In half an hour I had three
whiskeys at the bar. I couldn't understand why I felt so sad. But John went
forever; face to the future, his heart won back. We were friends for a while. Later,
if we were not enemies, at least we were hostile. And I lost him.
A year earlier you had left Deanforest, and
a week later I finished my love affair with Alison Wright. I was lost and
rather than being the king of Deanforest, I was the Thuban Star jester. Days
lost in which I didn't know I was a beggar and not a monarch. If I saw some
beggars in the streets, my memories are puzzling. I guess that like everyone
else I imagined them lazy, indolent, and reluctant to work. In my confusion I
don't remember even if I got to give alms to one. As soon as I saw them, I
tried to depart and their lives and mine did not cross, although I started to
share bars with them soon, and foolish conversations.
So in January of our year 26 I began to
intoxicate myself. More clown than king in my solitary court, I experienced
poisonous concoctions that blinded me. Drunk I came to work, drunk my servants saw
me, who told me nothing. For my butler Victor Sheffield I had a crazy gentleman's
life, and he said nothing. I used to talk a lot with the gardener John Ellis,
who always boasted of knowing the gossip of the neighborhood and the city. He
contrasted with his nephew Tom, sober and efficient, lover of gardening and something
else, always involved in his own affairs. In the Thuban, nothing said Harold
Blessing, but he looked at me with hostility. Actually my surname was important
for him but he assumed that one day I would be all right. Anne-Marie watched me
with pity, but could not do much for me. They were years of helplessness, in
which I was knowing all the slums of Temple Road and the nearby Templar Village,
in the company of prostitutes and criminals, with whom I spoke and talked
nonsense, but did not make friendship. They were brothels full of smoke and
alcohol, mazes without Ariadne. Nights with women entering Deanforest who never
were real conquests. With some of them I came and not having them I felt so bad
that I ended up destroying my own portrait in the living room. That’s why there
is no picture of Nike at Deanforest, Protch. I destroyed it like a madman and
without realizing it I lost my soul, which I would take years to recover. But I
thought: Luther protects the Siddeley. And at the end he will guide me.
From the throat to the veins entered the
toxic concoctions that poisoned Nike. Mind is overshadowed, and it was
impossible to find the soul when also the heart is lost. All around there were
ghosts, the outlines are blurred and though you try to forget, alcohol makes
you a servant of loneliness and in the hangover you are devoured by monsters
and the man who had been born in a golden cradle, lay now on a bed of entelechy.
It must have been the same month and almost
the same day as Luke attended the football match and met the bald people when
we learned of the news with surprise. An American had got more than half of the
shares of the Thuban Star and suddenly became our third president, the second
for whom I worked. Samuel Weissmann he was called. It was rumored that he had
convinced his family to move to this country and it was said that he had three
children, now in their twenties, who did not rebel against the expatriation. If
Harold Blessing felt bad for being without his throne, it is not known, but the
two men were talking in friendly appearance. I don't know what Mr. Weissmann thought
of me. He was secretive and somewhat unmoved, as without feelings, what was not
wrong because he did not seem to suffer with the presence every day clearer of
his employee Nike, for him Nicholas, with a hangover in the early hours, and as
they passed, drunk. But he didn't seem to take it into account. He knew the
story of John Richmonds, which was told in the Thuban in a legendary way, and I
was for him a difficult employee, but a good helmsman who knew where to steer
the ship.
Anne-Marie one day took me to The Wall Gardens, a bar with huge
gardens in Churchway Boulevard, walled and fragrant, next to Churchway Park, between
the bus station and the lair of the bald men. The friendly conversation was
giving way to confidence and we talked about us. And suddenly she confessed to
me that she was in love with me. I could not tell her "I love you"
and I started telling her the truth. She was for me however my guide, my
essential banner, I needed her, and we could try. She knew me an alcoholic but
helped me to not get drunk every second. And although we never got to pronounce
the word, we left being a couple, and I still was her lover in July of the year
29.
That was my month of holidays that year. I
decided to travel to the north of Italy, where I was half of that month. A week
in Turin and Milan, I stopped at a village called Gavirate and I moved to
Venice. Upon my arrival the world was obsessed with the fall of the Skylab
space station. No one knew where it would fall and it happened when I was in
Venice, July 11. It finally fell in the Australian territory, at sea, and the
planet regained its tranquility.
That day I was in Piazza San Marco. I had
finished seeing the homonymous Basilica and I was engrossed watching the waters
of the Adriatic. The Vaporetto was swimming there. Channels with its gondolas
were calm, with reason this town is called La
Serenissima, when unconsciously I began to talk with the waters. Its liquid
crystal hair seemed first to congratulate me for having been a conqueror
half-life of water. But it seemed to tell me in this crazy imaginary dialogue:
life is swimming, and you've always been fantasizing trophies at the end of the
road, but to live is not to compete. You have to find the lane where to swing
your arms, you swimmer, and at the end of each ribbon of water, you can start
over the same route. I figured responding to it that I didn't know if my life
had a sense, that perhaps one day I would find another river or pond, another
glass. I came back to myself, kissed the Adriatic and I said goodbye to San
Marco and four days later to Venice.
Back in Hazington, I went out one night with
Anne-Marie again, but on 26 July I decided to go alone to the Baphomet disco in Alder Street.
─And there, Protch,
ends my prehistory and now it will begin my true story. I have liked to tell
you that part of my life here, in the library, where I still can see the
portraits of my parents. But I've narrated the other seven sitting in the
living room and I want you to know mine there also. It will take me several
days to talk about the year 29.
─I have no hurry,
Nike. I've known all your fellow mates there and now I can name you the eight
in chronological order. Then you are Mistress Oakes, Olivia, Lucy, Bruce, Miguel,
John, Luke and Nike, but even so I have to see you with them. Tell me
everything without haste.
In the evening of that July 26 I have no
memory that I was somewhere previously. I went out in my dark grey suit, one of
the best I had, walking towards Alder Street, to Baphomet. I didn’t take the car because I was supposed to return
soaked in alcohol. The disco was crowded, smoke-filled. It was hot. As usual,
and though I was matched, I tried the conquest. But it was in vain. Women
looked at me hostile noticing an increasingly drunk individual. It must already
be July 27 when suddenly I felt like urinating. But all the toilets were occupied.
Surely people consuming drugs. I had tried them all in
those years but I only was addicted to alcohol. I made them no
reproach but the urge was now increasingly pressing. Not knowing what to do, I
looked for one of the doors and left.
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