up, the clouds disappeared, and it seemed that an early summer had arrived. When I went out, I did not even need a jacket. I met a woman. She was nice and funny. She was about fifty. She showed me a few places. She took me to her studio. We ended up back at my hotel room. When she left, she wished me a pleasant journey back to Berlin. When I was alone again, I stood naked in front of the huge closet mirrors. I do not have a full-length mirror in London, so it isnât often I get to examine what has happened to my body. At first I tried to stand erect, tighten up, suck my stomach in. But then I relaxed. I breathed out. The days of gluttony hadnât helped, but there was no denying that I had grown soft. I sucked in my gut. I squeezed the flesh in my chest and arms, then I flexed my muscles to see if flexing made that flesh taut. I bent over, and my gut balled up. It was made of three folds, folds that I poked and squeezed together. A wound Iâd given myself the previous night opened upâit was excruciatingâand started bleeding. It had been bleeding all day, actually, but only when I squeezed my gut together did the wound completely reopen. I told myself, Well, that was dumb. I had bought, at a pharmacy in Brussels, some dressings for it. I showed it to the pharmacist and he said I might need to see a doctor, and gave me some instructions for cleaning and re-dressing it. So I re-dressed it and sat on the edge of the bed, and waited. I looked at myself in the mirror while I waited, and I felt that I would never be able to exercise enough or eat well enough to reverse the deterioration that had taken place, a deterioration that was more than physical, that was fueled not by time and biology but by memoryâmy body was made of everything I could remember.
It started to rain, and when the bleeding stopped at last I decided to stop feeling sorry for myself. I got my notebook out, sat on the bed, propped myself up on all the pillows, filled a few pages. I didnât quite understand why the woman had to leave, but it would have been nice to have her stay the night, stay until breakfast, have her meet my father, surprise him. The bar where we met was full of young people. I donât remember how we started talking, but once we did, we admitted that the place made us feel old, so we went somewhere else, had a drink, then somewhere else, and so on, until we arrived at a place that made us feel young, which was not busy, neither too dark nor too loud, and played nice music that disappeared when you spoke. Finally I got her to talk about what she did, and why she was in Brussels. She said she was a musician. She had a residency, it was EU-funded. There was so much money, she said, for artists in Brussels, but nobody wanted to come and stay here, because it was so dull and full of diplomats. I asked her if I could buy a recording of her music somewhere. She said, Itâs not the kind of music you buy in a store. I used the word experimental. Oh, she said, please donât call it that. I asked her to describe it, and she said it was not the kind of music you describe. Well, I said, I like music that is hard to describe, now I have to hear it. She said, with a tone that suggested she was trying to call my bluff, My studio is not far. But I wasnât bluffing, so we finished our drinks, paid up, and left.
Her studio was in a vast, multistory steel box that had very few windows. I have been to the studios of visual artists, but this was something different. There were three rooms. The first was an office, the second was a place where she kept clutter, and the third was the size of a ballroom, except with a very low ceilingâit must have been a false ceiling. That room was white with glossy white walls, ceiling, floor. The surfaces were so glossy they looked wet. At the far end, a black trapezoidal box hung from the ceiling by fine, invisible wires. She gave me a soft white hooded gown and white paper boots.
It started to rain, and when the bleeding stopped at last I decided to stop feeling sorry for myself. I got my notebook out, sat on the bed, propped myself up on all the pillows, filled a few pages. I didnât quite understand why the woman had to leave, but it would have been nice to have her stay the night, stay until breakfast, have her meet my father, surprise him. The bar where we met was full of young people. I donât remember how we started talking, but once we did, we admitted that the place made us feel old, so we went somewhere else, had a drink, then somewhere else, and so on, until we arrived at a place that made us feel young, which was not busy, neither too dark nor too loud, and played nice music that disappeared when you spoke. Finally I got her to talk about what she did, and why she was in Brussels. She said she was a musician. She had a residency, it was EU-funded. There was so much money, she said, for artists in Brussels, but nobody wanted to come and stay here, because it was so dull and full of diplomats. I asked her if I could buy a recording of her music somewhere. She said, Itâs not the kind of music you buy in a store. I used the word experimental. Oh, she said, please donât call it that. I asked her to describe it, and she said it was not the kind of music you describe. Well, I said, I like music that is hard to describe, now I have to hear it. She said, with a tone that suggested she was trying to call my bluff, My studio is not far. But I wasnât bluffing, so we finished our drinks, paid up, and left.
Her studio was in a vast, multistory steel box that had very few windows. I have been to the studios of visual artists, but this was something different. There were three rooms. The first was an office, the second was a place where she kept clutter, and the third was the size of a ballroom, except with a very low ceilingâit must have been a false ceiling. That room was white with glossy white walls, ceiling, floor. The surfaces were so glossy they looked wet. At the far end, a black trapezoidal box hung from the ceiling by fine, invisible wires. She gave me a soft white hooded gown and white paper boots.
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