Lost for Words: A Novel by Edward St. Aubyn Page B

annihilation through ecological catastrophe; preferably, of course, a catastrophe that is not going to happen, rather than the one that is happening. We would rather watch a movie about the threat of a meteor from outer space than contemplate the actual impact of the Capitalist meteor on the Earth. We may be frivolous consumers of information, who cannot stop eating popcorn until the US Air Force has saved humanity by destroying the alien meteor with nuclear weapons, or we may be serious consumers of information, who enjoy the voluptuous guilt of betraying the polar bear, or worry that our grandchildren may never know the pleasures of skiing in the Alps, or wish we had bought an apartment on a higher floor of the Manhattan sky-scraper where we live. Finally, it is of no importance, because both catastrophes, the fantastic and the actual, are deployed to distract us from the desert of the Real into which we have marched the exhausted culture of the West. In this desert, it is forbidden to think. Even if Capitalism is the crisis, Capitalism must be the solution!
    Didier paused, waiting for a second preposterous paradox to pop into his head. He was en pleine forme, no doubt about that. Would another espresso send him spiralling into a circular but inconclusive sterility, or keep him riding on the rushing and glittering wave of La Pensée ? Before he could decide, the ping of an incoming email drew his attention to the lower corner of the screen. He would usually have ignored an email in the midst of writing, but this one was from Katherine and might require a quick reply. He clicked on his Mail icon and read her message.
    Didier, you’ll probably think me very cowardly to tell you this by email, but I don’t feel that I can go on being with you. I know this is the second time and that you’ll think I shouldn’t have taken you back if I wasn’t serious, but my restlessness is, as you might say, structural and not personal. I would have left whoever I was with at this point, because I need continual change to keep me ahead of the wolf pack – whatever that is.
    I am going to Italy with a (girl) friend for two weeks. I have an inkling of a new novel, and want to see if I can start it there. You’re welcome to stay in the flat until I get back.
    Please forgive me, and don’t cut me off from your wonderful company, unless you have to.
    Love, K
    Didier felt the glittering wave collapse around him and found himself tumbling and spinning, and struggling to know which way was up. How could she do that? How could she suddenly do that?
    He thought of Lacan’s opaque but strangely compelling remark: ‘Woman does not exist, which does not mean that she cannot be the object of desire’. Whatever charm this insight had once held for him, it slipped through his grasp as he groped for a sane response to Katherine’s email.
    She had ruined a day’s writing. That, at least, was a concrete starting point for his resentment. Mercifully, his focus on lost writing reminded him that he would one day infold his present suffering into a masterful analysis of Desire, or Love, or Delusion; it hardly mattered: he would perform a vivisection without anaesthetic on any abstract nouns that presumed to rule his life. He knew it would be some time before he could gather enough detachment for that task. Rome wasn’t deconstructed inaday, he thought, immediately typing the sentence on to his screen, to see if he felt the return of some measure of control. He did not.
    Didier got up from his desk and suddenly swept the coffee cup from its ledge of papers, smashing it against the wall of Katherine’s drawing room. He would have his revenge, he didn’t yet know what it would be, but he would write something about Love, or Delusion, or Desire that she would never forget. As this thought died out, Didier pictured himself sweeping the coffee cup against the wall, and suspected there was something staged about the gesture. Yes, he had been in the stupidity