Who was it, I thought, had set about designing something theologically witty? In about ten seconds I was near enough blind with humiliation and rage—not at once rage with Rick; for this after all had been no more than one of those ordained moments of low comedy like going over a horse’s head into shit, or Lucinda fished out of the dustbin. Once every ten years or so the life of the natural clown met with a proper, natural circus act. Now this one, perhaps the best of the lot, was added—hanging on a cliff, suspended in the fog, saved from destruction by my biographer—retrieved, useful, to disremember with burning cheeks at hours of sleeplessness, nature’s comic, but Rick the proximate agent, Rick the accessible, Rick the object, Rick the Prick— There, just under where I’d hung in fog, a meadow stretching away, with cows in it. Tinkle, clonk.

I found I was standing up and trembling with my fists clenched. I turned away and began to walk carefully towards the hotel—carefully because I did not want anything nasty to happen to my old heart at this altitude, I needed to live until Rick got there and I had to do breathing exercises to get some control back, half-blind with fury as I was. My ears were singing and my heart beating somewhere up by the base of my throat. I don’t remember the path back or opening doors. I remember looking at the bottle of Dôle and deciding to leave it alone. I told the new fat young woman, who would serve behind the bar for a generation or two then die, that I was going to acclimate, yeah, that was how I said it, the interview with Rick was going to be done at strength ten. I told her that bit. I don’t think she understood anything. I hung a “do not disturb” notice on the door, took about a handful of pills and knocked myself out, if anything a little too far, and slept from Thursday afternoon until midday Friday. Then I woke. And after a light lunch consisting of the Dôle I thought I could probably risk, I tried myself out on the path again and really I had acclimated a bit for I reached the stone in little or no time and sat there, feeding my rage like you might poke bits of wood into a fire. I don’t know how long that took. Then I kind of tamped it down and went back to the hotel. I walked backwards and forwards in my sitting-room, waiting for Rick to come. I’d forgotten that Friday wasn’t Saturday and I had to consult my journal to make sure, but the journal itself seemed confused so I had some more pills and knocked myself out again.

Saturday morning wasn’t so good. No, let us have less of this British reticence. Saturday morning was bloody awful. I was so strung up with the wire I thought anyone else in the place—there were three other people staying there but I was able to ignore them—would be able to hear me coming. I remember though, asking the nephew of the manager—well, he was the manager—to let me use his typewriter, as you can’t buy them in the Weisswald. I typed a carefully considered document. I put this in the middle of my polished table. It lay on the polish very pleasantly and watching it really made the time pass so I sat there, my back to the french windows, my sunglasses hiding the top of my face and I took an occasional swig from the new bottle of Dôle but not too much, as I needed a degree of sobriety.