A Clue to the Exit

Начало книги

I want to thank Francis Wyndham whose subtlety, sympathy and rigour make him the reader every writer is looking for.

I’ve started to drive more cautiously since I was told I only have six months to live. All the love I’ve ever felt seems to have waited for this narrowing funnel of time to be decanted more precisely into my flooding veins. Bankrupt, I cannot resist staring through jewellers’ windows at those diamond chokers locked solid around black velvet necks.

I’ve often wondered whether to commit suicide. I assume I needn’t go into the temptations, but in a self-service world where you have to fill your own petrol tank, assess your own taxes, and help yourself to self-help, the one thing you don’t have to do for yourself is end your life. So why not luxuriate in that old-fashioned sense of service? Go on, do yourself a favour, you know you deserve it: let something else finish you off.

As I watch the dying leaves turn red in the valley, I shudder with admiration. The defiance of that incandescent decrepitude, spitting in the face of its executioner: that’s what I want. The smoke, wobbling up in diffident communion with the sky, thrills me less. It soon dilates over the reddening fields and sinks back to the clotted earth.

Читать дальше →