And I — drunk, heartsick, on the threshold of my future — I am needful of some talk.

ф

“He set out to shoot horses.

“Imagine a young man, lying naked on a blanket high up on the dust floor of a derelict mill. Not me, mind, but someone like me: a well-born, handsome youth, the heir to a large fortune. Like a prince in a tale. He is freezing, our prince. A January morning, dawn just broken. Above him are the rusted gears once powered by the windsails. Beyond them vaults a hole-punctured roof. A streak of pale light cuts across his shoulders, another separates his hand from his arm. The window in front of him points west. All around him, in the mill’s old timbers, there nest a thousand starlings. They scattered when he first climbed up. Now, an hour later, they have returned to their home. A rifle stretches from the young man’s hand. His clothes are tied into a bundle near his feet.

“There is a bar of soap in the bundle, too, and a rough cotton towel. By his left shoulder sits a box of sweets. (You know what sweets are, my dears? Oh, I think you do!) You see, our prince, he is expecting to show, that morning. Not much — he pops a sweet in his mouth just as he thinks it — but a little. Shooting horses, it’s a different business than dropping a deer. Especially when they are in harness: dressed for work. His fingers are moist on his gun.

“It is a long wait. Time for a thousand thoughts. He smokes a cigarette. To settle himself. To get in the mood. Cigarettes and sweets: he’s been indulging himself of late. It’s changing him, little by little, on the inside. It’s as though his skin has become a soft cocoon. A new self, straining against it, denting it, stretching it taut. It is a process not without pain.

“Soon the worry grows in him. That he’s not up to it. That his hackles lie flat and his spirit is cowed. That he will fail, will miss his shot, be humiliated. A fortune in cigarette butts, stubbed out on the mill floor: and yet he can find no edge, no fire in him, feels like a match that will not catch. His teeth are aching with the sweets. He gets up, reaches for his bundle. He fetches his mask.