The actual shit, of humans, was deposited everywhere, as if sprayed, as if thrown from a height: on the floor around the bowl, the lip, the walls, in solid and diarrheic form, the result of several bowel movements. Unsteady, Asquith put down a hand when he leaned over to vomit into the bowl. The vomit fell mostly where intended. He covered his nose while gasping. Wept quietly, so no one would bother him. He squatted on his toes. His balance was all wrong and impossible to sustain—crouched down over the bowl like that, but not too close, because the porcelain was covered in shit. One of his hands was in the stuff, steadying him for another minute or so. His shoulder now rested on the dirty wall. His jacket must be soiled. No one came into the toilets, because maybe perhaps they knew, out in the bar, probably they had done this to him. Maybe it had been prepared for him. Sitting on the floor now, more terrified than he’d ever been; he stayed like this for half an hour or so. Then he began to vomit again, into the bowl, onto the floor. Asquith couldn’t leave until he’d emptied his stomach, which took some time.

Suddenly up and moving, leaving his good grey blazer behind. The bartender called out to him. Asquith was sure he heard the word ‘Ian’ as he tumbled in the street. In total there were three taxi rides: the first tossed him out within a hundred metres, after smelling him; then he found another driver, who caught a whiff around William Street and promptly ejected him. By persistent means he got home. The only fare he paid was to the last cab driver, who threw him out on Greenknowe Avenue, not far from his flat in Elizabeth Bay.

Asquith’s clothes and shoes went straight from his body into the unlit fireplace. There was shit on his cheek and something moving, it seemed, under his collar. Then he removed his clothes from the fireplace and threw them down into the street, ashamed, terrified, certain that someone was in the flat with him.

Next, Asquith took up the keys and went out, entirely naked, to fetch his leather shoes, a bottle of sherry in his hand; the bottle corked and raised in case someone attacked him. He rescued his shoes, but left the rest of his clothes outside.

Before sleep he removed all his books from the bookcase and laid them in piles on the floor next to his bed. (It was difficult, the next day, to remember why he went through with such an exercise.) From this into unconsciousness and then Asquith woke up, without his painful body registering the rest. He had little recollection of getting home—just flashes of still images—or what happened afterwards, but this information was of little interest to him; that he’d somehow found his way back and into bed was enough. The toilet incident was like a fall from a horse. ‘Everyone should fall from their horse now and then,’ Asquith said to himself in the bath. Every day a little fall. More people, he thought, should go through what I am going through.