Slow Man

He is just talking, making the best of an uncomfortable situation, trying to cheer up a woman suffering the tristesse that descends after coitus with a stranger. From his envelope of darkness, not yet giving up hope of forming a picture of her, he reaches out again to touch her face; and in the act plunges into a dark gulf of his own. All his larkiness deserts him. Why, why did he put enough trust in the Costello woman to go through with this performance, which seems to him now less rash than simply stupid? And what on earth is this poor blind unlucky woman going to do with herself in these less than welcoming surroundings while she waits for her mentor in her mercy to return and release her? Did Costello really believe that a few minutes of inflamed physical congress could like a gas expand to fill up a whole night? Did she believe she could throw two strangers together, neither of them young, one positively old, old and cold, and expect them to behave like Romeo and Juliet? How naive! And she a noted literary artist too! And this damned paste which, though she swore it was harmless, is begi

As for the woman herself, growing colder minute by minute at his side, what can be ru

An experiment, that is what it amounts to, an idle, biologico-literary experiment. Cricket and marmoset. And they fell for it, both of them, he in his way, she in hers!

'I must leave,' says the woman, the marmoset. 'The taxi will be waiting.'

'If you say so,' he says. 'How do you know about the taxi?'

'Mrs Costello ordered it.'

'Mrs Costello?'

'Yes, Mrs Costello.'

'How does Mrs Costello know when you will need a taxi?'

She shrugs.

'Well, Mrs Costello takes good care of you. Can I pay for the taxi?'

'No, no, it's all included.'

'Well then, give my greetings to Mrs Costello. And be careful on the way down. The stairs can be slippery.'

He sits still, containing himself, while she dresses. The instant the door closes behind her, however, he whips off the blindfold and claws at his eyes. But the paste has caked and hardened. If he tears at it too hard he will lose his eyelashes. He curses: he will have to soak it off.

SIXTEEN

'SHE CAME TO me as you came to me,' says Costello. 'A woman of darkness, a woman in darkness. Take up the story of such a one: words in my sleeping ear, spoken by what in the old days we would have called an angel calling me out to a wrestling match. Therefore no, I have no idea where she lives, your Maria

A repeat visit. That is not what he wants. Sometime in the future, perhaps, but not now. What he wants right now is an assurance that the story he has been presented with is the true story: that the woman who came to his flat was truly the woman he saw in the lift; that her name is truly Maria

For there is an alternative story, one that he finds all too easy to make up for himself. In the alternative story the Costello woman would have located big-bottomed Maria

Might that be the real story, give or take a detail here and there, behind the visit of the so-called Maria

Was Maria

'You treat me like a puppet,' he complains. 'You treat everyone like a puppet. You make up stories and bully us into playing them out for you. You should open a puppet theatre, or a zoo. There must be plenty of old zoos for sale, now that they have fallen out of fashion. Buy one, and put us in cages with our names on them. Paul Rayment: canis infelix. Maria