I was so highly agitated that I actually felt nauseous, and could barely concentrate on the change from tube to cramped bus I had to make at S_, and when I eventually (with some surprise) found myself outside the familiar door on the bright, bare concrete stairwell (I felt that the florescent tube was making my skin prickle and perspire), I really felt I might faint, and remember wondering who would find me slumped there, and when, and whether my sleep in that interval would be peaceful. It was immediately apparent, however, on his wordlessly opening the door, that A was in a state incomparably worse than my own.
As he seemed barely capable of standing, let alone articulating any kind of greeting suitable to his role as host, I let myself in, having to squeeze slightly though the doorframe past his gently swaying and uncomprehending form, and surveyed the small, chaotic lounge, smaller and more chaotic than I remembered it. It was hard to find anywhere to sit, so indescribably full of assorted junk was the room, covering with its lurid patina (there was nothing specific that attracted my focus, in fact I somehow felt it might be disastrous should any one item of the detritus of A’s life succeed in capturing my attention, and so I deliberately kept looking generally about) not just the scant furniture but the floor as well, but, fearing collapse might be imminent, I cleared some plates and papers from a low table and sat on that.
For a longish time nothing happened at all. It occurred to me I had not heard the front door being closed. A was nowhere in sight; he had gone into some anterior room, or possibly had disappeared off the face of the earth, though there were some curious, indistinct noises coming from somewhere else in the flat which I assumed must be made by him. I picked up one of the items I had swept onto the floor. It was a black notebook. Opening it, I discerned two things: that it was a diary, and that the handwriting was certainly not that of A – in fact I thought it must have been a female hand, because the characters were rounded. The page I had opened the diary on began like this:
was in the bathroom I spent a long time looking at myself in the mirror; it was as if my face had altered and in fact was perpetually altering then shifting back. After a time I realised that this was happening in time with my breathing, then my skin seemed to take on the texture of a kind of dry parchment, and I had to look away. I felt that the others downstairs might be beginning to notice my continued absence, and wondered if they were talking about me. All I could hear was the snake-hiss of water moving somewhere through (I imagined) a pipe. I felt that there had never been
I broke off reading suddenly, becoming conscious of someone watching me. It was A, framed in the doorway which I think led to his kitchen. He seemed to have recovered his self-possession, and was watching me with an odd, inscrutable expression on his face.
