A lives in a picturesque, if rather dull, Tudor village on the southern tip of Surrey, not far from the border with West Sussex. He rents a room in a ramshackle, red-brick house from a local businessman. The room is sparsely furnished – a bed (squeaky), a chair (rickety), a wardrobe (missing a panel) and a floor lamp (temperamental) – and very damp, barely inhabitable in fact. Other people live in the house, itinerant workers who do all the shitty jobs that no one else wants to do in the village, but A rarely sees them. They keep themselves to themselves and so does A. It is, if you like, an unwritten rule that one must abide by if one resides in this particular house.
Unlike his fellow dwelling occupiers, A does not work. He neither believes in working nor needs to. Instead of working, A wanders the fields that surround the village investigating possibilities. The fields are spread out over many hills, hills that look like the waves of a green or sometimes brown ocean. On his perambulations, A often comes across other villagers who are strolling around for their own, perhaps dubious, reasons. Sometimes a villager he comes across will say a cursory hello in passing, but more often than not they will avoid making eye contact and keep walking, maybe even quickening their pace a little. A is fine with that. After all, he is not out in the fields looking to socialise. He is, as stated, out in the fields for the express purpose of investigating possibilities. Occasionally, however, very occasionally, a villager traversing the fields will stop to make conversation. Typically, it is a villager who has only recently moved into the village and has not yet come to know the ways of the village, one of which is not, under any circumstances, to stop and talk to A when he is out in the fields investigating possibilities (not that the villagers know that’s what he’s doing, not that it matters), or otherwise it is a villager who has gone mad, which happens, infrequently, but it does happen, or else it is a villager who for temperamental reasons is antithetical to the ways of the village, again, rare, but these people do exist (A himself is one of them of course). When, for whatever underlying reason, a villager does stop to talk to him, A is polite enough, if understandably somewhat taken aback, although he tries his best to keep the conversation to the barest minimum possible. A is not a conversationalist. Certainly not when he is out in the fields investigating these so-called possibilities we keep referring to. At other times, for example if A stops off for a drink in the village pub, which he has been known to do, he may be more predisposed to converse with someone, but only if A feels the person is likeminded, which is almost never the case, and even then there is always a sense in which A is holding something back. That is the type of person A is. Something inside him is buried and no amount of digging will ever unearth it. God knows, A himself has tried hard enough over the years to excavate whatever it is that is buried inside of him.
When he isn’t trampling in the fields, A reads. He reads short stories mainly, but also sometimes novels, though only very short ones. As A reads, he consumes alcohol. The two go hand in hand as far as he is concerned. The more he drinks the more he reads, the more he reads the more he drinks. That is just the way it is with A. His preferred tipple is tequila, unbranded bottles of which he procures from the businessman who rents him his room. Sometimes the businessman will share a drink with A when he delivers the tequila (often late at night in a furtive manner). The businessman is a somewhat dissolute man who likes to tell the odd bawdy joke or two. A is fine with that. He is not without a sense of humour and if necessary he is more than capable of laughing at a joke even if he doesn’t think it is especially funny, which is often the case when it comes to the businessman’s jokes, which are in fact too crude or too crass for A’s tastes. Tonight, the businessman stays longer than usual. He is not his normal self, A realises. Ordinarily the businessman will only have a couple of drinks (to be sociable, as he puts it), but tonight he has already downed five shots and seems in the mood for several more. The businessman keeps referring to another villager who he believes has behaved improperly in a business transaction. You have to tie things down contractually with some people, says the businessman, otherwise they’ll fuck you up the arse. Yes, says A, although in fact he has no idea what the businessman means or if he does, it is such a vague sense that he might as well not have any idea. In reality, you have to tie things down contractually with everyone, says the businessman, sighing, oherwise -. They’ll fuck you up the arse? ventures A. Exactly, says the businessman, laughing. A laughs too, though inexplicably he feels like crying. Then the businessman knocks back two hastily poured measures of tequila in quick succession and leaves.
A decides he isn’t drunk enough to read and goes to bed. A can’t get to sleep however. He has a feeling that someone is at the door and he can’t shake it. Eventually the feeling gets too much for him and A gets out of bed to open the door. He turns the floor lamp on first, which flickers on and off a few times and then, when S gives it a kick, stays on. Sure enough, when he opens the door there is someone there behind it: a young woman who he has never seen before. Her face is exquisitely detailed and has an otherworldly pallor. She’s wearing a see-through negligee, beneath which A can’t help but notice her breasts (perky with exceptionally wide areolas in case you were wondering). She appears to be completely unfazed about being caught standing by the door and makes no attempt at explanation. For his part, A can’t think what to say. It is a stand-off of sorts, thinks A. Finally, the woman breaks the stand-off by introducing herself. I’m Elda, she says. A, says A. Then there is a silence between them again until A, who dislikes awkward silences even though he has been the cause of so many and should have gotten used to them by now, asks Elda if she’d like to come in for a drink. Yes, says, Elda, I’d like that.
A opens a bottle of tequila and pours two shots. He sips his, but Elda gulps hers and A immediately pours her another. Are you trying to get me drunk? says Elda. No, lies A. Elda laughs a tinkly laugh. Then she proceeds to tell A her life story, which seems to A to involve a myriad of synchronicities and maze-like plotlines that swirl into a vortex of incomprehensibility. Pretty crazy, huh? says Elda when she gets to the end of her monologue. Yes, says A, quite a story. Your turn, says Elda. My turn? says A. Yes, to tell your story, says Elda. A does not want to tell his story and anyway he doesn’t have one. It’s not like that for A. Nonetheless, A realises he has to say something. So he goes back in his mind to the short story he was reading the previous night. He remembers it’s about a Korean man who loses his memory and finds himself in a remote village. At first the villagers believe the man is playing some sort of practical joke, but after a while they realise he really has lost his memory. Once they realise this the villagers explain to the man that he has lived in the village all his life and that his name is B. They take him to a small cottage. They tell him he has lived for many years in a room in this cottage. Like all the other rooms occupied in the cottage, the villagers tell him, the rent is paid for by a generous benefactor who lives in an opulent house by the coast. The villagers point at a distant hill to show in what direction the benefactor lives.
B thanks the villagers and tries to make sense of what has happened. Everything seems strange to him: the villagers, the room in the cottage, even his name is a complete mystery. However, over time, B gets used to the situation of resuming a life he can’t remember. He keeps his room neat and tidy and goes for long walks in the fields, walks on which he speculates about metaphysical potentialities. Sometimes he is accompanied on those walks by a black dog that appears from somewhere, though B can never ascertain where exactly. Other than walking, B doesn’t do an awful lot. Eventually, he grows old and infirm and has to give up walking. At this point he takes to his bed and to relieve the boredom he reads copiously. The villagers bring him the books to feed his voracious reading appetite (trashy detective novels mainly, but also the odd philosophical tome) and other provisions and change his bedpan on an occasional basis. He never does remember who he was before he lost his memory, but it doesn’t bother him unduly.
Other things probably happen to B, but that’s the gist as far as A can recall. It’s not a great story as far as A’s favourite author goes, one of his worst in fact, but it will have to do, thinks A. In the version he tells Elda, he changes the nationality of the protagonist from Korean to English (although A has never thought of himself as English exactly, not that it matters). He also leaves out the part about the rent being paid for by a generous benefactor (he doesn’t want Elda to think he doesn’t pay his way in life), the part about growing infirm (A is as firm as the next man) and the part about the bedpan (it’s not exactly a sexy look, thinks A), other than that he stays true to his favourite author’s fable in passing it off as his life story. As A drones on and on, Elda listens with an intentness that A finds slightly unnerving. When he’s finished there is a silence that feels ominous to A. Then Elda’s deadpan facial expression segues into a smile. That’s the biggest pile of shit I’ve ever heard! she says, laughing. Without knowing quite why, A also starts laughing. Their laughing becomes hysterical and then for no reason or no apparent reason it stops abruptly. Then Elda asks A if he would care to fuck and he says he would and so they do. Furiously and for many hours.
In the morning, A discovers that Elda has gone and he wonders if she ever really existed. He decides it doesn’t matter, although he knows that deep down it really does. Then he gets dressed and goes for breakfast at the village pub. He has scrambled eggs and black pudding sat on the terrace overlooking the church. The sun is slanted obliquely and it gets in his eyes. At some point a black dog appears from somewhere, though A couldn’t say where exactly, and sits by the table waiting for scraps. After a while the dog gets impatient waiting for scraps that in all likelihood won’t be forthcoming and it slinks off to try its luck at a table occupied by a rotund man who is tucking into a huge mound of pancakes. Just as well, thinks A.
