The Man Who Went Down With His Ship by Hugh Fleetwood Read Free Book Online Page B

two, calm and reassure him. ‘What seems to be the problem …?’
    Nothing seems any longer, Alfred wanted to blub to the driver, who, remarkably, appeared quite unaware of the state his fare was in. (Unless, Alfred muttered to himself, he too is ‘one of them’—even though it was the concierge who wentdown to the corner and found him for me.) Now everything is ; and henceforth, until this matter is resolved one way or another, everything will continue to be. From now on the word ‘seems’ will no longer exist; and from now on, however frightening the situation becomes, you will never be able to escape into the luxury of a breakdown. You, who, for the last thirty-five years, have found reality unbearable will now have to bear it. Unless, that is, he muttered to himself again, in a small, pathetic voice, you want to renounce it forever. For you do have that choice. The choice of endless, permanent drowning.
    Just because, however, he knew that if he slipped back into the sea now he would never again be able to stand on dry land, Alfred ignored that small pathetic voice, and concentrated on trying not to let the middle-aged, indifferent man driving him (and no, he was not one of them) have any reason for ceasing to be indifferent; and on worrying, as he always worried when he was in a taxi, about whether he would, when he arrived at his destination, give the right tip. It was the reason why he had, all his life, been loath to take cabs. In case, when the moment came, he got confused, couldn’t work out his percentages and either gave the driver far too much—so much that he would think him mad—or so little that he would start to insult him, and maybe even attack him physically. ‘You ugly, stupid, mean little Jew …’ It had never happened yet, and he didn’t know anyone it had ever happened to. All the same, there was always the possibility. And unless he was prepared …
    It was already forty-three francs. That meant that if they arrived now—fifteen per cent of forty-three … But they hadn’t arrived, they were perhaps no more than three-quarters of the way there; which meant that the final fare might be …
    Then there was all that luggage to be taken into account. Did one pay extra for that? Or had that already been calculated by the driver, and was now included in the figure on the meter? He didn’t know, and thought that maybe he should ask. If he did that, though …
    Say it was seventy francs, the final fare. That would make … fifteen per cent of ten is one-fifty. Fifteen per cent of twenty is three. Fifteen per cent …
    So somehow, Alfred got to Autueil; and so somehow, he stopped worrying about whether he was being followed.
    ‘No, of course I wasn’t,’ he told Dorothy that evening, when she let herself in and asked him if he had been; looking around with something like pleasure at the shabby, cheerless place she had taken, furnished as it had been in the nineteen thirties, seventeen years ago, when she had arrived in Paris, and kept ever since. For the last five years she had been living in the rue de Phalsbourg. Before that she had been living in Montparnasse with the American psychiatrist who had treated Alfred for ten years and who had, one evening at a party, introduced his patient to his mistress. (When the doctor had discovered that the two of them were having an affair, he had tried to be understanding, telling Alfred that he was simply venting his feelings of hostility towards his father-figure. When Dorothy announced that she was leaving him for Alfred, he threatened to shoot himself and her, and told Alfred that he was a fat, ugly, mad, little freak whom he hoped would go so crazy living with Dorothy he would end up in a straitjacket. After which he started taking so much cocaine every day, in an effort to cheer himself up and make Dorothy feel sorry for him, that he was quite soon deeply in debt, totally addicted to the drug that he continued to insist was non-addictive, and