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gigantic motorbike parked opposite – for some reason made him strangely uneasy. He turned away and went to wash out Rappaport’s coffee mug in the kitchen.
    37. Gérard de Nerval. On my first visit to the Institute of Lucid Dreams Alan asked me what I was currently reading and I told him it was a biography of Gérard de Nerval Alan then instructed me that, as a conscious sleep-inducing device, I should either concentrate on the life of de Nerval or else indulge in sexual fantasies – one or the other. These were to be my choice of ‘sleep triggers ’ and I should not deviate from them during my treatment at the Institute – it was to be de Nerval or sex.
    Gérard de Nerval, Guillaume Apollinaire or Blaise Cendrars. Any one of them would have been apt. I am unnaturally interested in these French writers for one simple reason – they had all changed their names and reinvented themselves under new ones. They started out their lives, respectively, as Gérard Labrunie, Wilhelm-Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky, and Frédéric-Louis Sauser. Gérard de Nerval was closest to my heart, however: he had serious problems with sleep.
    The Book of Transfiguration
    Lorimer bought a hefty leg of lamb for his mother and then threw in two dozen pork sausages as well. In his family a gift of meat was prized above all others. Coming out of the butcher’s, he hesitated in front of Marlobe’s flower stall – just enough time, as it turned out, for Marlobe to catch his eye. Marlobe was talking to two of his cronies and smoking his horrible pipe with the stainless steel stem. As he spotted Lorimer he broke off his conversation in mid-sentence and, holding out a flower, called over, ‘You won’t find a sweeter-smelling lily in the country’
    Lorimer sniffed, nodded in agreement and resignedly offered to buy three stems, and Marlobe set about wrapping them up. His flower stall was a small, complicated wheeled contraption of folding doors and panels which, when opened, revealed several rows of stepped shelves filled with flower-crammed zinc buckets. Marlobe loudly claimed to believe in quality and quantity but interpreted this homily to mean lots of limited choice and consequently kept the range and type of flower he sold very small, not to say disappointingly banal. Carnations, tulips, daffodils, chrysanthemums, gladioli, roses and dahlias were all he was prepared to offer his customers, in or out of season, but he provided them in overwhelmingly large quantities (you could buy six dozen gladioli from Marlobe without clearing the stock) and in every colour available. His only concession to exoticism were lilies, in which he took particular pride.
    Lorimer enjoyed flowers and bought them regularly for his flat but he disliked Marlobe’s selection almost exclusively. The colours, also, were primary or lurid wherever possible (Marlobe was loudly derogatory of all pastel shades) on the assumption that vividness of hue was the main criterion of a ‘good flower’. The same value system determined price: a scarlet tulip was more expensive than a pink one, orange rated higher than yellow, yellow daffodils fetched more than white and so on.
    ‘You know,’ Marlobe went on, rummaging in his pocket for change with one hand and holding the lilies with the other, ‘if I had a Uzi, if I had a fucking Uzi, I’d fucking go into that place and fucking line them up against the wall.’
    Lorimer knew he was talking about politicians and the Houses of Parliament. It was a familiar refrain, this.
    ‘Gnakka-gnakka-gnakka-gnak, ’ the imaginary Uzi bucked and chattered in his hand, once Lorimer had relieved him of the lilies. ‘I’d shoot every last fucking one of them, I would.’
    ‘Thanks,’ Lorimer said, accepting a palmful of warm coins.
    Marlobe smiled at him. ‘Have a nice day.’
    For some bizarre reason, Marlobe liked him and always took the trouble to pass bitter comment on some aspect of contemporary life. He was a small, burly man, quite bald