It's Getting Later All the Time (New Directions Paperbook) by McEwen Alastair

Author:McEwen, Alastair [McEwen, Alastair]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780811222624
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2006-05-16T16:00:00+00:00

A Good Man like You

Some things are in our power,

others are not in our power. In our power are

opinion, sentiment, aversion

(EPICTETUS,Manual)

My dear,

“ … because things can’t go on like this, for me, perhaps you didn’t realize, but I have the right to think of myself, and so save myself. Some nights I used to think: what am I, to him?, a refuge, a hearth, a comfort? And how is it possible that I come after everything else, I mean really everything? As you know, I love you (or perhaps I loved you), but put yourself in my shoes, you who are so good at putting yourself in the shoes of those who are suffering, try at least once to put yourself in my shoes. Sure, what you do is noble, I don’t wish to deny that, and if there were a paradise you would deserve it, even though you maybe believe in it less than I do. And I understand that you feel the sufferings of the world upon your shoulders, but look, you aren’t the one who’s going to cure them, the world has always suffered and it will suffer still, despite the existence of people like you. Take your last trip to Abyssinia for example. Leaving like that, in twenty-four hours, while I was in Venice at my mother’s place, just because your Organization had sent you a telegram from Paris requesting your urgent departure. You called me from the airport, at the last minute, as you were boarding, I don’t know if you realize. Do you really think this is the way to do things? You said to me: look at the photographs they sent me from Paris and you’ll understand everything, I left them for you on the bureau at the front door. And the first thing I did as soon as I got back from Venice (you obliged me to take the 16:41 train that changes in Bologna at 18:48 and gets home at 19:47, though you know that Venice is far away and that I like to stay overnight, to avoid unreasonably long round trips in one day) was to look at your terrible photographs. You could see a parched plain, ground cracked by the drought, a bunch of people beneath tarpaulins, women with babies in their arms, creatures with distended bellies and bulging eyes. I can imagine how it makes you feel good to get off your organization’s airplane, unload crates of foodstuffs, set up the field hospital, put on the white coat and the sterilized gloves you brought with you from Europe, and in the light of lamps powered by generators practice your redeeming arts on the poor bodies of those children. I can understand this, I repeat. But you must understand me too. I threw those horrible photos in the trash and took the first train back to my mother’s. There was no way I was going to wait for you at home like Penelope, in the state of mind I found myself in.

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