If I could say to you, my friend, that there was one thing that meant anything it would be this: what I consider to be right and just. What I cannot say I can simply feel, and these sensations are in their return largely ineffable. I could not describe my revelation, nor explain its presence. All I know is that it is there, overcoming my self, insuperable and empowering. The visceral longing for something beyond the end, an atheistic finale. Immorality, its alluring scent, is externalised in the legacy. Triumphal and cataclysmic, but at the same time tranquil. I descend upon it as a leaf unto a pool, leaving only the merest patterns in the water. Unto death, this is what I speak of, and the solution to life: that is to say, friend, that it should be like a coma. An abrupt ending -impenetrable desires and their dance upon the conscience- is nothing but a bad finish to a worse novel. Instead, friend, draw a picture of your self and stare at it. Reach a point where it is beautiful, its aesthetic value beyond question and its meaning incandescent. Then, friend, shall you know what it is that means anything at all: to sleep rather than to die, and to long for nothing more than the satisfaction of your wants. My longings, neither carnal nor avaricious, become the continuation of something older: humanity and its improvement. Therefore I write this to you as the first and most important part of the whole, and in the distance of time it shall be known better. Becoming the past and therefore real, and so distinct as to conquer doubt.

Anon

It had been a long day, and the musky scent of old air came into the office. It was stale, as befits a dead place, where men are no better than walking cadavers. The process of working, at least in this context, became the art of unliving. The blinds were drawn down, so as to mask the sun and to hide the heads of the employees. There had been a sniper in the town, they had said, and there had been engagements on its streets. The company, its presence the corollary of invasion, was a target. Yet it was all lucrative, and so that did not matter. Nor did it concern the staff, themselves becoming more wealthy as the situation grew more dangerous. Iraq first, it had been, and now here. He stared at his fan, its oscillations and turnings. The blades whipping round beneath the wire casing, providing him with a little solstice. Upon unbuttoning his collar he stared down at the keyboard in front of him, and punched a single 'a'. He then studied its appearance, so bored as to wonder. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence. It seemed appropriate to the circumstances, for there was nothing to be said about the time and the place. No reason or justification for being here, beyond the acquisitive, and no lesser journey than that from one desk to the next. To make toilet was the other Odyssey, though more enjoyable for its variety: he could picture the walls, a dissimilar shade of white, and the rinsing of his hands and splashing of his face. Again, his neck craned towards the screen. Endless statistics, too little information about too unimportant a thing. Once more unto nothingness, to spell out the most recent developments in a ballad of number. It was too hot. It was always too hot. He felt as the pied-noire, or at least how he thought they should feel; a transgression into an alien land, the scion of the white man's misdeeds and the testament to some history, best explained he said to himself, in terms of malevolence and the abuse of power. For if it had not been for the third war, the proposed ending to a century or more of conflict, then he would not be here. He might be somewhere else, he decided, perhaps learning and growing. It had been an appalling adventure, but one all the same, and therefore just in its perpetration. The myth of accomplishment, the struggle against the other. The movement of tanks through villages, the queer potency. It was almost dull. Now, to speak:

“Excuse me, sir.”

“Yes.” replied the attendant.

“Could I possibly excuse myself for a moment?”

“Yes, ok.”

In diurnal course he was untrammelled and left the office. He walked down the corridor, and forgot about his report, and moved down the stairs and to the lavatories. Something was wrong inside of him, but he wasn't certain. Life felt as if it had become routine, and in turn this structure bore no significance. As he sat on the toilet and lit a cigarette, covering the smoke detector with his sock, he rubbed his face. It had all been so wrong, so unjust. They were not welcome here. They were intruders. Their heady native orisons lost in the wilderness of the city. He glanced to the mirror, where his tired eyes slid across themselves. We fear the old because we fear ourselves. What is within us, almost a pathology, waiting to spring out and surge into the bones and organs. Dominance, for that is what we long for, cannot abide the inexorability of it; we are still mortal, in spite of the apotheosis in posterity. The worst part of it all was the death of passions, the genitals shrinking into themselves and unto asexuality. He patted his thigh. He extinguished the white stick and then flushed the toilet. He drew his sock around his foot, noticing that it was paler than the rest of him. He opened the door and left for his desk, coursing up the steps with a halting grace. It was about time that he should be doing something with himself, and work was not it. He reminded himself of the book that he had, and he swelled with fond visions.

Outside of the building now, at five. He drank from a plastic bottle, his jacket slung over his shoulder as he waited for the taxi. The sun forced itself upon his face, his ears clogging with a sequestered ringing. The working day had ended and he was smoking long, hard drags from the cigarette. It was pleasant, and he loved to watch the women walk past. Some of them were beautiful, and walked in step like lotuses. They wore sunglasses and had scrawled patterns on their face, their cheekbones rising above the commotion of blushed sandy skin. If he could have one of them he would, but he had not the money. Their skirts cloistered up against the thighs, their languid advance. The process of being sexually enticing, the process of inspiring a man to to picture linen sheets and sweat. His smile was slim, but there all the same. He pushed the crooked sunglasses up his nose and drew his band back across his hair. The taxi arrived, driven by a swarthy fat man bristling above the lips. He opened the back door and slumped into a sea of leather, leaning forward to address his chauffeur.

“Could you take me to the New Apartments, please?”

“Certainly sir.”

So it was that he arrived home shortly and safely, having paid what he considered to be too little. He went up the building and to his flat. He went inside, sweeping the mouldy plates and beyellowed newspapers aside with his foot. He let things fall to the carpet. To the lounge, and to the sofa. He opened a bottle of wine. He grew warm in the head and dehydrated, but cared not. To the book. It was taken out from beneath a solitary pillow, brought to his eyes. He read for a while and drank a little more, deciding that he liked this author. The author's name was beautiful to the tongue, so easy to navigate. He took a page out and attached it to the wall, so that it sat beside the others; a legion of inchoate papers, combined to produce what he termed the perfect novel. Decorative, so like fine art, it could be done and redone or perchance ignored. To stare at them made his mind calm, somnambulant almost. Incumbent thoughts rooted out by better ones. It was a magnificent scroll, the teachings of the best and most perceptive. He lolled again, though, and stopped to think as he napped a little. It was warm and he was tired; drinking had been good for him.