…When I found out about my father’s illness, it was three o’clock in the afternoon and I went into a bar and ordered a beer. I drank the beer and ordered a whisky. The whisky immediately warmed me up, ethanol on a sunny day at a bar with a few nibbles and a sweet-vending machine.
I thought about my father while I drank the whisky. And I thought I really should stop drinking. And I ordered another whisky, and then another and another, and the hours passed and then a moment came when I remembered what had happened, and I couldn’t possibly go home in that state because I didn’t want to explain and discuss the details of my father’s medical tests with anyone.
The lights at night are blurred and you walk along talking to yourself. It’s almost a joy to do that, knowing that no one is listening. One block before you reach a park. The damp, muggy air and the bus fumes. Fresh mud after the last rain shower. The scratched surface of a bench, no animals around, the results of my father’s test in an envelope, just me and the silence, me lying down and the sense of of imminent physical torpor, just relax and close your eyes and imagine some dark, isolated place and a warm, slow, constant rocking taking you nowhere.
[Diary of the Fall, Laub, M.]
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