The American Read Online Free PDF Page A

The chairs are canvas and wood, like those used by film directors on a movie set. The table, of heavy nineteenth-century oak, has only two chairs. That is one more than is essential.
    Along one wall is a row of windows: like the fireplace, they are a modern addition. Opposite them are the bookshelves.
    I enjoy books. No room is fit for occupation without a lining of books. They contain the condensed experiences of humanity. To live fully, one has to read widely. I do not intend to face a man-eating lion in the African veld, fall from an aircraft into the Arabian Sea, soar through outer space or march with the legions of Rome against Gaul or Carthage, yet books can take me to these places, to these predicaments. In a book, Salome can seduce me, I can fall in love with Marie Duplessis, have my own Lady of the Camellias, a private Monroe or exclusive Cleopatra. In a book I can rob a bank, spy on the enemy, kill a man. Kill any number of men. No, not that. One man at a time is enough for me. It always was. And I do not always seek experience second-hand.
    Books are a drawback for, when I move on, they must be abandoned, jettisoned like bags of sand from a sinking balloon, ballast from a listing ship fighting the hurricane. Every new place, I have to start again, constructing a library. I am always tempted to have the books returned for storage but that necessitates an address, a fixed point, and I cannot afford such an indulgence. Looking at these shelves, however, I consider that they may be more permanent than those in the past.
    Music is also an enjoyment of mine, an indulgence, an escape from realities. On the shelves I have a compact-disc player. There are fifty or so discs beside it. Mostly classical. I am not a lover of modern music. Some jazz. Yet that also is the classical of the genre – the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, King Oliver, Bix Beiderbecke, the Original New Orleans Rhythm Kings, McKenzie and Condon’s Chicagoans. Music is also an excellent device for distorting or dampening other sounds.
    On the end walls of the room I have paintings. They are not valuable. They were purchased from a market frequented by artists in front of the cathedral on Saturdays. Some are distinctly modernistic, cubes and triangles and worms of paint. Others are inept representations of the countryside around: a church with a poorly executed campanile, a watermill surrounded by willows, a castle perched on a hilltop. There are many castles balanced on ridges in the province. The paintings are cheerful and merrily primitive in the way children’s art is attractive. They add colour and light.
    I need light. In a dark world, light is essential.
    At the end of the room is a small kitchen with a gas stove, fridge, sink and work surfaces of fake marble. Along a narrow and dark passage from this is a lavatory containing a water closet and, redundant in my abode, a bidet. At the facing end of the room is another door leading to five rising steps and another passageway, the whole side of which is a long window broken only by pillars. Once a balcony, this was glazed by the previous occupant.
    Off this passageway are two large bedrooms and an adequately appointed bathroom – a bath, shower, lavatory, linen cupboard with hot-water tank and another redundant bidet. The previous inhabitant, Signora Prasca informs me, was a prodigious amante . This she states with a smile of fond remembrance as if she, too, had been one of his conquests. When she recalls the inconvenience of his parties, the quickness of his temper and the loud moaning of a young mistress through an open summer’s night window and echoing in the courtyard, she speaks of him as seduttore . There is no pleasing old women.
    The first bedroom is simply furnished with a double bed, a pine chest of drawers, cane-seated chair and wardrobe. I am not a man desirous of luxurious sleep. I sleep lightly. It is part of my business. A room full of satins, cushions and mirrors and scents lulls the