Once he’s finished the crabs, he’s completely lost his appetite for the cod soup. It would be colorless and would taste too much of the North Sea. No, he hasn’t yet satisfied his appetite for curry, for pepper, for the red, green, and brown heat of crabs, for rice. Nor for the low-lying coastlines, whose sands (which the wind used to whirl about, like ringlets of hair) would continually batter the hillsides, already broken up by the mirrorlike reflections of the rice paddies.

He comes up to the bar and slides the bottom of his empty mug across the zinc.

“So, what now?” asks the proprietor.

“Give me another double serving of your rice. Too bad for the boys from the Royal. Oh, and while you’re at it,” he makes a sign to the other man to lean in closer, and he points to his empty mug, “pour me another stout and spike it with a full shot of gin. It helps build morale.”

“You don’t look like you’re in need of that,” says the bulldog.

“You never know.”

“You never know,” he repeats to himself, as he tucks in to his second portion of rice (it’s even better than the first).

He’s never been very depressed. At least, he means to say, not depressed like other people. But plenty of times he’s been just as unhappy as them, just as hopeless, and wracked by even worse misgivings. The dreariness of the open seas: He felt it like everybody else. He took his hard knocks like the rest of his mates. More than the rest of his mates. His sorrows weren’t the kind that faded away at a whiff of vanilla or because dry land had just been sighted. Not in the least. All the dry land on earth could have come crowding at me in a heap, like a flock of sheep leaping at a man bearing salt, and the sorrow would have stayed put. My sorrow.

I’ve seen the blackest of depressions pack up and leave, because all of a sudden the wind carried the foul odor of a pigsty, which signals a major landfall three hours ahead of the lookout. But my sorrow stayed steadfast at its post. Don’t imagine that anybody could have mastered it by material means. Oh, I know very well, it’s entirely my own business. The earth grants me as much as it grants the rest of humanity. The earth grants me more than it grants the rest of humanity. But, every time, I think: What’s next? I am not a lost child. I don’t stick my tongue out at the world’s shop-windows. And don’t worry, I don’t spit at its amusements.

As for good fortune, I’ve had plenty. I am not a wretched orphan. Fathers and mothers—I have them wherever I turn. I don’t ask for charity, I dole it out. I’m a nobleman. If the world is a house, I’m a habitué of the house. I’m acquainted with all its wings, and familiar with its little twists and turns. Homemade gin: acquainted. The same goes for all the shelves of the bar, the wine cellar, the kitchen, the bedrooms, the attic, and the garden. The same for getting soused at home, and for being hungover at home.