A group of ese in brown jackets preceded us through the halls of Versailles. They were middle-aged mey, obviously important, perhaps thirty of them. At the entrao ea a guard stopped us, held us batil the ese had finished iing it. A fleet of black gover Citro?ns had brought them, they were much at ease with Versailles and with each other, it was clear that they were being rewarded for many years of good behavior.
Asked her opinion of Versailles, my daughter said she thought it was overdecorated.
Well, yes.
Again in Paris, years earlier, without Anna, we had a hotel room opening on a courtyard, and late at night through an open window heard a woman expressing intense and rising pleasure. We blushed and fell upon each other.
Right now sunny skies in mid-Manhattan, the temperature is forty-two degrees.
In Sto we ate reieak and I told the Prime Minister. . . That the price of booze was too high. Twenty dollars for a bottle of J & B! He (Olof Palme) agreed, most politely, and said that they fihe army that way. The ference we were attending was held at a workers vacatioer somewhat outside the city. Shamelessly, I asked for a double bed, there were none, we pushed two single beds together. An Israeli journalist sat owo single beds drinking our costly whiskey and explaining the devilish policies of the Likud. Then it was time to go play with the Afris. A poet who had been for a time a Minister of Culture explained why he had burned a grand piano on the lawn in front of the Ministry. "The piano," he said, "is not the national instrument of Uganda."
A boat ride through the scattered islands. A aovelist asked me to carry a package of paper to New York for him.
Woman is silent for two days in San Francisco. And walked through the streets with her arms raised high toug the leaves of the trees.
"But youre married!"
"But thats not my fault!"
Tearing into cold crab at Sas we saw Chill Wills at aable, doing the same thing. We waved to him.
Ihe air was full of the noise of helicopters. The helicopter landed on a pad, General A jumped out and walked with a firm, manly stride to the spot where General B waited -- generals visiting each other. They shook hands, the huard with its blue scarves and ed rifles popped to, the band played, pictures were taken. General A followed by
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with a good book, Rilke, as I remember, and resolved o find myself in a situation as dire as his.
In San Antonio we walked by the little river. And ended up in Helens Bar, where John found a pool player who was, like John, an ex-Marine. How these ex-Marines love each other! It is a flat sdal. The gress should do something about it. The IRS should do something about it. You and I talked to each other while John talked to his Parris Island friend, and that wasnt too bad, wasnt too bad. We discussed twenty-four novels of normative adultery. "t have no adultery without adults," I said, and you agreed that this was true. We thought about it, our hands on each others knees, uhe table.
In the car on the way back from San Antonio the ladies talked about the rump of a noted poet. "Too big," they said, "too big too big too big." " you imagine going to bed with him?" they said, and then all said "No no no no no," and laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed.
I offered to get out and run alongside the car, if that would allow them to verse more freely.
In hagen I wen