HOW EASY IT IS TO NEARLY DIE

14 Jan 2023

Photo by Tolga Ahmetler on Unsplash

I wake at four in the morning knowing I will be moving today. I wonder what the place will be like. At five my favourite doctor arrives and we begin our morning chat. We discuss my legs, Giorgia Meloni, the up-bringing of teenagers and the pleasure of when your children become your friends.

He tells me that Russian novels were originally translated into French before being turned into English. He asks me to recommend a good translation of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past.

I show him a photograph of my psychoanalyst and suggest some books. He breaks a sugary biscuit into murky tea and feeds me while he tells me the story of being taken to Calabria to perform surgery on a Mafia Don.