Extract from the story VIENNA

As he walks to the tube station he thinks about the snow of his childhood and all the trams he rode on with his sister. He thinks about how there is sex with women whose eyes must be avoided because they know too much and there is sex with women whose eyes must be avoided because they know nothing. He thinks about the wars and famines his parents lived through, he thinks about fascism and he thinks about sex and desire. He thinks about the 11.07am that leaves promptly every Sunday morning from Zurich where his ex-wife and children live. He thinks about how there is life with rye bread and black tea and there is life with champagne and wild salmon. He can live without champagne but he cannot live without his children, that is a grief he knows he cannot endure but he must endure and he knows his hands will itch for ever. He thinks about feeling used, teased, abused ,and he thinks about the twentieth century that ended at the same time as his marriage.

Most of all he thinks about Magret who he has just left swimming in the cold pool below her apartment, her head surfacing, her mouth opening to take a breath. He knows she is dead inside and he is aroused that this is so and he takes out a cigarette, a cheap industrial cigarette and lights it .