Page 160 - harryDEC12_clean.iba

We had made an agreement to reduce private spending because of the high costs of the house. I cannot make sense of it: was it an expression of limitless egoism or a sign that she wanted to ruin me? Actually I had wanted to drive to France to relax there for two weeks. Now I fly with pent-up rage to make her explain herself. She collects me at the airport in Nice. On the trip we scarcely speak. There is electric tension in the air, waiting for release. Having reached the house, I sit down at the stone table on the terrace. Martha opens a bottle of wine and joins me.
“What is it now?”
She asks, waiting. I put, no, I hurl the credit card accounts onto the stone table.
“Have you gone absolutely mad? What’s the meaning of that? Do you want to ruin us?
I ask, trying to keep my composure. She looks at me coolly and answers with incomprehensible calmness and without any trace of a guilty conscience:
“Well, what about your Aston Martin? You could sell that and everything would be fine and dandy. Just don’t get yourself all worked up over nothing.”
I get up in a rage, change my clothing, and go into the pool. Afterwards I drink a lot of red wine and then we dine together in silence. Further discussion is pointless. I have to do something - that is clear - with my whole messed up life. The days pass with little conversation. I do a lot of reading and pass the time touring on a mountain bike, sit for hours at the fountain, reading again. My heart, my whole breast feels constricted, I feel no joy in life, not even in this paradise setting. A merciless sun shines on my condition - heat and the constant chirping of crickets - like mocking at me. I start to see the full dimension of the truth.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away.
Of all people it was Elvis Presley who said that, I wonder as to what he referred to at that time. What has been catching up with him.
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