Status Updates From Die Stunde der Komödianten

We’re back!!

Opposite the wall of the cemetery stood a jeep, but the sight of it for a moment didn’t change the current of my thoughts.

‘We’re a bloody advertisement for human existence.’

. . . we are as brave as the Cubans, but the terrain is very cruel. We have destroyed our forests. You have to live in caves and sleep on stones. And there’s the question of water . . .’

It was as though he were apologizing to me and proffering humbly his passport—Nationality: human being. Special peculiarities: cuckold.

‘I wonder if he has Baudelaire in his breast-pocket to stop the bullets.’

Never before had Martha come of her own will, unpressed, to the (hotel). We had never slept before in my bed. It was for half-an-hour only, but the sleep was deeper than any I have known since. I woke flinching from her mouth with my wounded gum.

We lay quietly side by side in our grave, and I loved her as I had never done in the Peugeot or the bedroom above Hamit’s store. We approached one another by words more nearly than we had ever approached by touch.