The Goldfinch

Heavy head, bad throat. When, finally, I managed to flag down a cab on the street, I was only a few minutes from the hotel. The one good thing, when I got upstairs—bonechilled and shaking—was that they’d cleaned the room and restocked the bar, which I’d drunk clear down to the Cointreau.

I retrieved both mini-bottles of gin and mixed them with hot water from the tap and sat in the brocade chair by the window, glass dangling from my fingertips, watching the hours slide: barely awake, a half-dreaming state, solemn winter light tilting from wall to wall in parallelograms that slipped to the carpet and narrowed until they faded out to nothing and it was di

Black birds. Disastrous lead-colored skies out of Egbert van der Poel.

I stood and snapped on the desk light, swaying in the weak, urine-colored glow. There was waiting. There was ru

Act of rebellion. Life: vacant, vain, intolerable. What loyalty did I owe it? None whatsoever. Why not beat Fate to the punch? Throw the book on the fire and be done with it? There was no end in sight to the present horror, plenty of external, empirical horror to line up with my own endogenous supply; and, given enough dope (inspecting the bag: less than half left), I would happily have set up a fat line and toppled right over: great-souled darkness, explosion of stars.

But there wasn’t enough to be sure of finishing myself off. I didn’t want to waste what I had on a few hours of oblivion only to wake up again in my cage (or, worse: in a Dutch hospital with no passport). Then again my tolerance was down and I was pretty sure I had enough to do the job if I got good and drunk first and topped it off with my emergency pill.

Bottle of chilled white in the mini-bar. Why not? I drank the rest of my gin and uncorked it, feeling resolute and jubilant—I was hungry, they’d restocked the crackers and cocktail snacks but this was all going to work a lot better on an empty stomach.

The relief was immense. Quiet dismissal. Perfect, perfect joy of throwing it all away. I found a classical station on the radio—Christmas plainchant, somber and liturgical, less melody than a spectral commentary on it—and thought about ru

But that could wait. Instead I opened the desk and found a folder of hotel stationery. Gray cathedral stone, minor hexachords. Rex virginum amator. Between fever, and canal water lapping outside, the space around me had fallen quietly into haunted doubleness, a border zone which was both hotel room and the cabin of a gently tossing ship. Life on the high seas. Death by water. Andy, when we were kids, telling me in his eerie Martian-boy voice that he’d heard on the Learning Cha

I thought of Hobie at midnight mass, kneeling in the pew in his black suit. Gilding wears away naturally. On a cabinet door, on the flap of a bureau, there are often a quantity of tiny indentations.

Objects seeking out their rightful owners. They had human qualities. They were shifty or honest or suspicious or fine.

Really remarkable pieces do not appear on the scene from nowhere.

The hotel pen wasn’t great, I wished I had a better one, but the paper was creamy and thick. Four letters. Hobie’s and Mrs. Barbour’s would have to be the longest, as they were the persons who most deserved an explanation and also because they were the only persons who, if I died, would actually care. But I would write to Kitsey as well—to assure her that it wasn’t her fault. Pippa’s letter would be the shortest. I wanted her to know just how much I loved her while also letting her know that she bore not one particle of blame for not loving me back.

But I wouldn’t say that. It was rosepetals I wanted to throw, not a poison dart. The point was to let her know, briefly, how happy she had made me while leaving out all the more obvious part.

When I shut my eyes, I was struck by clinically sharp flashes of memory that the fever brought bursting up from nowhere, like tracer rounds going off in the jungle, lurid flares of highly detailed and emotionally complex material. Harpstrings of light through the barred windows of our old apartment on Seventh Avenue, scratchy sisal matting and the red waffled texture it left in my hands and knees when I was playing down on the floor. A tangerine party dress of my mother’s with shiny things on the skirt I always wanted to touch. Alameda, our old housekeeper, mashing plantains in a glass bowl. Andy, saluting me before stumbling down the gloomy hall of his parents’ apartment: Aye, Captain.

Medieval voices, austere and otherworldly. The gravity of unadorned song.

I didn’t actually feel upset, that was the thing. Instead it was more like the last and worst of my root canals when the dentist had leaned in under the lamps and said almost done.

December 24

Dear Kitsey,

I’m terribly sorry about this but I want you to know that it has nothing to do with you, and nothing to do with any of your family. Your mother will be receiving a separate letter which will have a bit more information but in the meantime I want to assure you, privately, that my course of action has not been influenced by anything that has happened between us, especially events of late.

Where this stiff voice, and u

As you well know, and have pointed out to me yourself, I have numerous problems that began long before I met you, and none of these problems are your fault. If your mother has questions for you about your role in recent events, I should urge you to refer her to Tessa Margolis, or—even better—Em, who will be more than delighted to share her views on my character. Also—completely unrelated matter, but I also urge you not to let Havistock Irving into your apartment again, ever.