The Man of Feeling Read Online Free PDF Page B

look exactly as everyone imagines a singer should look. Now I don't know much about music, but I love it, all of it, I don't mind what it is, I can happily listen to music whatever I'm doing, really, anywhere, any time. Yours must be a fascinating life."
    Up until the moment when I lied about my situation, I was telling him the truth, although, from the start, I found Dato's manner very hard to take and his comments utterly trivial, so much so that just as I was about to respond, I was seriously considering whether it was worth getting involved in a boring conversation of a kind I'd had thousands of times before and which was (as can be seen) tinged with the inevitable impertinence of the ignorant, and all for the sake of a little company in what had once been my own city. But, despite his manner and his opening remarks, the truth is there was something intriguing about the fellow (whom I no longer believed to be a traveling salesman: he was too relaxed, his voice and his gestures too languid, his clothes, on closer inspection, too expensive) and, at the same time, too, there was something about him that invited confidence. For all his worldly tone, his appearance and his expression still struck me as unreal or perhaps too real, like a Daumier caricature. He smiled constantly and easily, revealing those great, bulging gums that seemed about to burst at any moment, and gestured animatedly with his miniature hands.
    "Well, I don't know about fascinating. It's varied and interesting, and all the moving around certainly keeps you on your toes. But, although it might not seem like it, it's a pretty hard, solitary existence. All that traveling is very unsettling." And I spoke to him briefly (though vehemently) about my sorrows and my discontents, about my partial or latent despair, and then asked him the obligatory question: "And what do you do?"
    As I said earlier, by then, indeed as soon as I recognized him as being the same man who had been staring so intently out of the train window, I had rejected the idea of him being a traveling salesman, but apart from what I had thought at the time (without much conviction or insight, that he owned some medium-sized company), I had not stopped to think what he might do. Of course, I could never have guessed what his reply would be.
    "I'm a companion. Now, don't look so surprised. That isn't what it says on my passport, and I suppose that isn't really my proper tide, perhaps private secretary, financial adviser, Manur & Co.'s Iberian representative, whichever you prefer. I was a stockbroker once and that marks you, oh, yes, it leaves a mark, but what can you expect? Basically, though, I'm a companion. At my age there's no point in trying to dress up the truth. And the truth is that I'm just a companion, albeit a well-paid one."
    I was still trying to decide if I was interested in this conversation or not and so I did not reply at once, but in one gulp drank down my glass of milk which was still intact before me, and which gave rise to another of Dato's inappropriate remarks:
    "I suppose you have to look after your throat and avoid cold drinks. Another whisky, please, barman."
    "Yes," I said mechanically. "You must never let your throat get cold, that's absolutely fundamental. For example, I don't usually take my scarf off until well into June, and even then that very much depends on the weather."
    "Really? And when do you put it on again?"
    "Usually in early September. If you ever see a young man wearing a scarf around the end of June or the beginning of September, you can be sure that he's a singer. As I say, it's an unforgiving life, with a lot of obligations and duties. We can't even allow ourselves an ordinary cold, which, as you can imagine, would be a complete disaster, because although you might recover soon enough from the cold, it takes four or five weeks before your voice is in perfect condition again. And meanwhile we're in breach or semi-breach of our contract and we lose both