it. As time went on, I realized how close I had come to committing an unpardonable sin. The clarinet was my last link to Uncle Victor, and because it was the last, because there were no other traces of him, it carried the entire force of his soul within it. Whenever I looked at it, I was able to feel that force within myself. It was something to cling to, a piece of wreckage to keep me afloat.
Several days after my visit to the music store, a minor disaster nearly drowned me. The two eggs I was about to place in a pot of water and boil up for my daily meal slipped through my fingers and broke on the floor. Those were the last two eggs of my current supply, and I could not help feeling that this was the cruelest, most terrible thing that had ever happened to me. The eggs landed with an ugly splat. I remember standing there in horror as they oozed out over the floor. The sunny, translucent innards sank into the cracks, and suddenly there was muck everywhere, a bobbing slush of slime and shell. One yolk had miraculously survived the fall, but when I bent down to scoop it up, it slid out from under the spoon and broke apart. I felt as though a star were exploding, as though a great sun had just died. The yellow spread over the white and then began to swirl, turning into a vast nebula, adebris of interstellar gases. It was all too much for me—the last, imponderable straw. When this happened, I actually sat down and cried.
Struggling to get a grip on my emotions, I went out and splurged on a meal at the Moon Palace. It didn’t help. Self-pity had given way to extravagance, and I loathed myself for surrendering to the impulse. To carry my disgust even further, I started off with egg drop soup, unable to resist the perversity of the pun. I followed it with fried dumplings, a plate of spicy shrimp, and a bottle of Chinese beer. The good this nourishment might have done me, however, was negated by the poison of my thoughts. I nearly gagged on the rice. This was no dinner, I told myself, it was a last meal, the food they serve up to a condemned man before they drag him off to the gallows. Forcing myself to chew it, to get it down my throat, I remembered a phrase from Raleigh’s last letter to his wife, written on the eve of his execution:
My brains are broken.
Nothing could have been more apt than those words. I thought of Raleigh’s chopped-off head, preserved by his wife in a glass box. I thought of Cyrano’s head, crushed by the stone that fell on it. Then I imagined my head cracking open, splattering like the eggs that had fallen to the floor of my room. I felt my brains dribbling out of me. I saw myself in pieces.
I left an exorbitant tip for the waiter, then walked back to my building. When I entered the lobby, I made a routine stop by my mailbox and discovered there was something in it. Other than eviction notices, it was the first mail that had come for me that month. For a brief moment I fancied that some unknown benefactor had sent me a check, but then I examined the letter and saw that it was merely a notice of another kind. I was to report for my army physical on September sixteenth. Considering my condition at that moment, I took the news rather calmly. But by then it hardly seemed to matter where the stone fell. New York or Indochina, I said to myself, in the end they came to the same thing. If Columbus could confuse America with Cathay, who was I toquibble over geography? I entered my apartment and slipped the letter into Uncle Victor’s clarinet case. Within a matter of minutes, I had managed to forget all about it.
I heard someone knocking at the door, but I decided it was not worth the effort to see who it was. I was thinking, and I did not want to be disturbed. Several hours later, I heard someone knock again. This second knocking was rather different from the first, and I did not think it could have been made by the same person. It was a coarse and brutal pounding, an angry fist that rattled the door on its
Several days after my visit to the music store, a minor disaster nearly drowned me. The two eggs I was about to place in a pot of water and boil up for my daily meal slipped through my fingers and broke on the floor. Those were the last two eggs of my current supply, and I could not help feeling that this was the cruelest, most terrible thing that had ever happened to me. The eggs landed with an ugly splat. I remember standing there in horror as they oozed out over the floor. The sunny, translucent innards sank into the cracks, and suddenly there was muck everywhere, a bobbing slush of slime and shell. One yolk had miraculously survived the fall, but when I bent down to scoop it up, it slid out from under the spoon and broke apart. I felt as though a star were exploding, as though a great sun had just died. The yellow spread over the white and then began to swirl, turning into a vast nebula, adebris of interstellar gases. It was all too much for me—the last, imponderable straw. When this happened, I actually sat down and cried.
Struggling to get a grip on my emotions, I went out and splurged on a meal at the Moon Palace. It didn’t help. Self-pity had given way to extravagance, and I loathed myself for surrendering to the impulse. To carry my disgust even further, I started off with egg drop soup, unable to resist the perversity of the pun. I followed it with fried dumplings, a plate of spicy shrimp, and a bottle of Chinese beer. The good this nourishment might have done me, however, was negated by the poison of my thoughts. I nearly gagged on the rice. This was no dinner, I told myself, it was a last meal, the food they serve up to a condemned man before they drag him off to the gallows. Forcing myself to chew it, to get it down my throat, I remembered a phrase from Raleigh’s last letter to his wife, written on the eve of his execution:
My brains are broken.
Nothing could have been more apt than those words. I thought of Raleigh’s chopped-off head, preserved by his wife in a glass box. I thought of Cyrano’s head, crushed by the stone that fell on it. Then I imagined my head cracking open, splattering like the eggs that had fallen to the floor of my room. I felt my brains dribbling out of me. I saw myself in pieces.
I left an exorbitant tip for the waiter, then walked back to my building. When I entered the lobby, I made a routine stop by my mailbox and discovered there was something in it. Other than eviction notices, it was the first mail that had come for me that month. For a brief moment I fancied that some unknown benefactor had sent me a check, but then I examined the letter and saw that it was merely a notice of another kind. I was to report for my army physical on September sixteenth. Considering my condition at that moment, I took the news rather calmly. But by then it hardly seemed to matter where the stone fell. New York or Indochina, I said to myself, in the end they came to the same thing. If Columbus could confuse America with Cathay, who was I toquibble over geography? I entered my apartment and slipped the letter into Uncle Victor’s clarinet case. Within a matter of minutes, I had managed to forget all about it.
I heard someone knocking at the door, but I decided it was not worth the effort to see who it was. I was thinking, and I did not want to be disturbed. Several hours later, I heard someone knock again. This second knocking was rather different from the first, and I did not think it could have been made by the same person. It was a coarse and brutal pounding, an angry fist that rattled the door on its
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