But Meershank was happy in his inactivity, he swore it. He felt-what?-fond of himself, fonder than he had for years, this pathetic stricken fellow caught in the human tide. It was a relief after his long gilded hubris to be among the dispossessed, newly numbed before his art which was growing steadily more noble as it slipped out of his reach. So this was what it was like, this agony of drought. Hmmmmm. Well, now he knew. He felt curiously flattered to be one with his fellows, those sincere scribblers he had so avidly avoided and scorned. Fraternity renewed him, the communal part of himself-here he stood, witness to the feast and famine of the creative cycle. The suffering of the throttled was his, and he felt appropriately shriven, haunted, beset and blessed. Hadn’t he always suspected that profligacy could be cured, austerity accomplished? A spare Beckettish brevity might yet come his way-he could at least hope-or failing that, well, silence. Why the hell not?

Filling time was not nearly the problem he had imagined since hours could be spent thinking about getting started, and further hours cursing the darkness, making false starts and reading them aloud with rich grunts of disgust. Crumpling sheets of paper was a satisfying activity and could be done very, very slowly. A whole hour-generally following a lunch of warmed-up soup-could be devoted to philosophical speculation, addressing that fleshy, many-fingered question: does the world really need another book? No. Yes. No. Well, it depended, didn’t it? (One of the treasures of Portugal, one of the treasures of....)

Or he could give himself over to gossip, to speculation. The publishing world being what it was, he imagined that word had got round: ungirdled, unbraked Meershank had been brought to heel. (Serves the old boy right.) It was July. Then came August. His first bookless autumn was fast approaching. The thought was crisp, bracing. He inhaled it with a sense of awe. There were tragic proportions here if he cared to take them up, but why should he? One more wordsmith muzzled, the old babbler, the old conveyor belt, scribbler, stumbler. Arghhhh!

Idleness, and an impulse for self-flagellation, led him to the reading of book reviews. Just how were his fellow écrivains faring? Aha !-there was old S-with yet another of his prolix empty potherings; didn’t the man realize his life’s work was nothing but goosedown! Had he no respect for the value of words, the craft itself, its intrinsic gold?

These pious, envious pangs were delicious to Meershank; he couldn’t get enough.

“It’s my fault,” Maybelle grieved, “for dragging you to Portugal.”

“No,” he told her truthfully, it had started before Portugal, almost a year before.