He lit the cigarette and sucked at it and smiled covertly at me.

‘Well, now,’ he said again. He had his little lamp beside him on the table and he played his fingers on it.

‘That is a fine day,’ I said. ‘What are you doing with a lamp in the white morning?’

‘I can give you a question as good as that,’ he responded. ‘Can you notify me of the meaning of a bulbul?’

‘A bulbul?’

‘What would you say a bulbul is?’

This conundrum did not interest me but I pretended to rack my brains and screwed my face in perplexity until I felt it half the size it should be.

‘Not one of those ladies who take money?’ I said.

‘No.’

‘Not the brass knobs on a German steam organ?’

‘Not the knobs.’

‘Nothing to do with the independence of America or suchlike?’

‘No.’

‘A mechanical engine for winding clocks?’

‘No.’

‘A tumour, or the lather in a cow’s mouth, or those elastic articles that ladies wear?’

‘Not them by a long chalk.’

‘Not an eastern musical instrument played by Arabs?’ He clapped his hands.

‘Not that but very near it,’ he smiled, ‘something next door to it. You are a cordial intelligible man. A bulbul is a Persian nightingale. What do you think of that now?’

‘Do you mean that I should be locked in the cell and kept there and hidden from the world?’

‘You surely heard the instructions of the Inspector?’ [...]

‘Is this all a joke for entertainment purposes?’

‘If you take it that way I will be indefinitely beholden to you,’ said the Sergeant earnestly, ‘and I will remember you with real emotion. It would be a noble gesture and an unutterable piece of supreme excellence on the part of the deceased.’

‘What!’ I cried.

‘You must recollect that to turn everything to your own advantage is one of the regulations of true wisdom as I informed you privately. It is the following of this rule on my part that makes you a murderer this today evening.

The Inspector required a captured prisoner as the least tiniest minimum for his inferior bonhomie and mal d’esprit. It was your personal misfortune to be present adjacently at the time but it was likewise my personal good fortune and good luck. There is no option but to stretch you for the serious offence.’

‘Stretch me?’

‘Hang you by the windpipe before high breakfast time.’

‘That is most unfair,’ I stuttered, ‘it is unjust…rotten…fiendish.’ My voice rose to a thin tremolo of fear.

‘It is the way we work in this part of the country,’ explained the Sergeant.

Ed So, what’s the plan?

Shaun Right. We take Pete’s car, we drive over to mum’s, we go in, take care of Phillip [I’m so sorry, Phillip!], then we grab mum, we go over to Liz’s place, hole up, have a cup of tea and wait for all this to blow over.

Ed Why have we got to go to Liz’s?

Shaun Because we do.

Ed But she dumped you!

Shaun I have to know if she’s all right!

Ed Why?

Shaun Because I love her!

Ed All right... gay. I’m not staying there, though.

Shaun Why not?

Ed If we hole up, I wanna be somewhere familiar, I wanna know where the exits are, and I wanna be allowed to smoke.

Shaun Okay. Take Pete’s car, go around mum’s, go in, deal with Phillip [Sorry, Phillip!], grab mum, go to Liz’s, pick her up, bring her back here, have a cup of tea and wait for all this to blow over.

Ed Perfect!

Shaun No, no, no, no, wait, we can’t bring her back here.

Ed Why not?

Shaun Well, it’s not really safe, is it?

Ed Yeah, look at the state of it.

Shaun Where’s safe? Where’s familiar?

Ed Where can I smoke?

Shaun Take car, go to mum’s, kill Phil [Sorry!], grab Liz, go to the ’Winchester’, have a nice cold pint, and wait for all of this to blow over. How’s that for a slice of fried gold?

Ed Yeah, boyyyeee!

He fills our plates, and as we eat, we talk about everything except for how he’s feeling. I tell him what he’s missed in U.S. Geography and talk about the places left to wander. I give him his birthday present, a first edition of The Waves I found in a little bookstore in New York. I inscribed it: You make me feel gold, flowing too. I love you. Ultraviolet Remarkey-able.

Он кладет еду на тарелки, мы ужинаем и говорим обо всем на свете, но только не о его самочувствии. Я рассказываю о том, что он пропустил на уроках географии США, о тех местах, которые остались для путешествий. Потом вручаю ему подарок на день рождения, это первое издание «Волн», которое я обнаружила в маленьком книжном магазинчике в Нью-Йорке. Я подписала его: «Ты тоже заставляешь меня чувствовать себя так, будто это я вся в золоте и теку. Я люблю тебя. Ультрафиолет Марки-Ни-Одной-Помарки».

Oh, stop it, я вся теку. Кровавыми слезами.

А вот как было у Вирджинии Вулф:

The black-and-white figures of unknown men look at me as I lean forward; as I turn aside to look at a picture, they turn too. Their hands go fluttering to their ties. They touch their waistcoats, their pocket-handkerchiefs. They are very young. They are anxious to make a good impression. I feel a thousand capacities spring up in me. I am arch, gay, languid, melancholy by turns. I am rooted, but I flow. All gold, flowing that way, I say to this one, “Come.” Rippling black, I say to that one, “No.” One breaks off from his station under the glass cabinet. He approaches. He makes towards me. This is the most exciting moment I have ever known. I flutter. I ripple. I stream like a plant in the river, flowing this way, flowing that way, but rooted, so that he may come to me. “Come,” I say, “come.” Pale, with dark hair, the one who is coming is melancholy, romantic. And I am arch and fluent and capricious; for he is melancholy, he is romantic. He is here; he stands at my side.

I spend the rest of lunch hour talking to them about my favorite spots back home—Honest Jon’s, Rough Trade East, and Out on the Floor, the record shops I hang out in. I tell them about my mean but sexy Irish girlfriend, Fiona, and my best blokes, Tam and Natz. By the time lunch is through, I’ve created a universe I can see down to the last detail—the Sex Pistols and Joy Division posters on my wall, the fags I smoke out the window of the flat Fiona and I share, the nights spent playing music at the Hope and Anchor and the Halfmoon, the days devoted to cutting records at Abbey Road studios. When the bell rings and Charlie says, “Let’s go, you todger,” I feel homesick for this London I left behind.

There was an Old Man of Peru,
Who never knew what he should do;
So he tore off his hair,
And behaved like a bear,
That intrinsic Old Man of Peru.

~~~

There was an old Person whose habits,
Induced him to feed upon Rabbits;
When he’d eaten eighteen,
He turned perfectly green,
Upon which he relinquished those habits.

~~~

There was an Old Person of Cromer,
Who stood on one leg to read Homer;
When he found he grew stiff,
He jumped over the cliff,
Which concluded that Person of Cromer.

~~~

There was a Young Lady of Russia,
Who screamed so that no one could hush her;
Her screams were extreme,
No one heard such a scream,
As was screamed by that Lady of Russia.

~~~

There was an old Person of Burton,
Whose answers were rather uncertain;
When they said, ‘How d’ye do?’
He replied, ‘Who are you?’
That distressing old person of Burton.

‘Hello?’

‘Hello, Mandy. This is Dan.’

‘Hello, Dan.’

‘Mandy, the reason I’m calling is…’

(pause)

‘Yes?’

‘The reason I’m calling is… that I have something important I need to say to you.’

‘OK, Dan. What is it?’

‘Um… Er… Although we’ve never met I think we’ve got to know each other pretty well over the years from our talks over the telephone.’

‘Yes, I think we have too, Dan.’

‘You do? Oh good. I’m glad you think so, Mandy, because the truth is…’

‘I love you.’

‘What? Mandy, did you just say I love you?’

‘Yes I did, Dan.’

‘But that’s… that’s wonderful! I can’t tell you how happy that makes me! Because that’s what I was about to say to you! I love you too, Mandy! I love you! I was so nervous about ringing you today. I didn’t think that you felt the same way. I mean I hoped that you might but it just didn’t seem possible. But now I know that you do, it’s… wonderful! Isn’t this wonderful, Mandy?’ (pause) ‘Mandy?’

‘I wasn’t talking to you, Dan.’

‘Eh?’

‘I’m sorry, Dan. When I said I love you I wasn’t talking to you.’

(long pause)

‘Then who were you talking to?’

‘The telephone.’

‘What?’

‘I love you so much. How I wish that you could speak for yourself.’

‘What?’

‘Bye, Dan.’

You follow PC Carter and Mr Edwards as they walk away from the hospital, through the village, past lit yellow streetlight after lit yellow streetlight.

They pass a small, square building in a state of disrepair. The building’s bricks are crumbling and its windows are boarded up. The words ‘Gladeville Undertakers’ are printed in black above its door. The words are faded, almost illegible.

PC Carter points at the faded black words.

‘What do you think that means?’ she asks.

‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ says Mr Edwards. ‘Mr Anderson is crazy.’

You fly through the derelict building’s door and emerge inside a small, dust covered room. An elderly man wearing a black suit is standing behind a wooden counter in the centre of the room, lit from above by a single yellow bulb. This is Mr Anderson. No one has entered the building for as long as Mr Anderson can remember, for no one in the village knows what the building is for, including Mr Anderson himself.

‘I am an undertaker,’ he mutters to himself. ‘An under taker. An under taker. A taker of unders. I am an undertaker. I undertake. What do I undertake? What is it that I do?’

You see a gold temple.

The gold temple is glowing; it is emanating a gold aura of extraordinary brilliance. The gold light touches you and you feel bliss.

The gold temple has no windows, no doors, no openings of any kind. Its exterior gives no indication as to the nature of its contents.

What shape is the gold temple that you see? What shape is its base? What shape is its roof? What shape are its walls?

The gold light that the gold temple is shining continues to touch you and you continue to feel bliss. You gaze in wonder at the enigmatic edifice. It is a seamless vision of endless fascination. You could gaze at it forever.

Tick.

Suddenly the gold temple vanishes and you see only these words on this page.

The feeling of bliss has disappeared.

Where is the gold temple?

When the yogurt took over, we all made the same jokes.

“Finally our rulers would have culture.”

“Our society is curdled.”

“Our government is now the cream of the crop,” and so on.

But, when we weren’t laughing about the absurdity of it all, we asked ourselves, “How did we ever get to the point where we were, in fact, ruled by a dairy product?”