Pursuit by Alex Preston

Author:Alex Preston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canongate Books

What is so significant about writing? Why is there this omnipresent and ceaseless craving to write, as if it were a ritual? Let’s go back to the notion of randomness and our hopeless struggle against it as a species. Randomness is the fundamental law of the universe and it compels us to forget. It is our nature to forget and it’s also in our nature to resist it. To write does not facilitate forgetting. Rather, it’s the ultimate manifestation of remembering. To concretise it with language, to engrave it on stone, to encapsulate it in books, to pass it on and make it eternal.

It sounds incredibly appealing. But still, I find myself feeling sceptical about any kind of order. Because it turns everything into signifiers and draws power to the centre. All order is a system for rule. By whom? I don’t know. I will stay vigilant and discover the answer.

I have trouble falling asleep and when I finally do I have trouble staying asleep. As a result, I’m awake all the time. It prolongs the days and makes life more intolerable. In order to get myself going, I eat a lot.

I go to the kitchen in the middle of the night and devour whatever we have in the fridge. One morning, my mother gets up and finds no bread, no milk, no cereal – no nothing. She becomes extremely upset, especially since she usually wakes up with low blood sugar.

‘Can’t you just leave something for me, for Christ’s sake?’ she bellows. ‘I need to eat right now! Jesus, I can’t breathe!’

Her face turns pale, lips purple. She falls down into an armchair and pants with her mouth open. ‘Anthony!’ She calls my father. ‘Anthony! Anto!’

Nobody answers. It seems my father is not in the house.

‘Let me find something for you. I’m sure we have something somewhere.’ I open the cupboards and start searching. Finally, behind the gas meter, I find a half-finished Mars bar. I smell it.

‘Do you want to have this? I’ll go to the shop now to get you some breakfast. But have this for now.’ I hand her the bar.

She looks at it and eats. The packaging rustles off like snakeskin.

‘Do you want to have some water?’ I ask her.

She nods. I give her some water before I grab the car key to get groceries.

Who hid the Mars bar behind the gas meter? I wonder as I start the engine.

The engine starts. I reverse my mother’s red Volvo slowly out of the driveway.

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