Words.

Something happened to me last night, while I was asleep, and I just thought I’d share it with everyone. Perhaps, it’s just one of those terribly odd things that happen once in a while in our lives, that we don’t really know what to make of it in our waking hours. At best, I think, we can only remain puzzled, even though, try as we might, put it out into the open for all our friends to listen/read, and derive some vague sense on entertainment from it. This is what happened…

I was asleep. I remember, in my dream, that I was dreaming. I think it was very clear to me that I was dreaming, somehow there was this feeling within me when I was in my dream, telling me that I was dreaming. I was with a group of friends, and we met up for something, a party of sorts, and we were going somewhere for dinner, a meal, something along those lines. We were all chatting, having fun, and so on and so forth, the usual kind of gathering that you would have with your friends once in a blue moon, when you would catch up with them in the midst of your busy schedule. All that, so far, as you can read, just a few lines, that they’re really vague, really general, lack of detail, there’s the use of the words “somewhere”, “something”, “somehow”… And that’s the fact of this part of my dream, it’s just THAT hazy. (Or, is it on hindsight now that I’m awake, that I cannot remember this part of my dream? Which is it? I don’t know…) Quite simply, I cannot remember EXACTLY what happened, key details of this part of my dream that I could furnish all of you with to give a complete picture. Had there been more detail, I could have told you which group of friends I was with, where we were going, where we had met, and so on, and so forth. But, I cannot.

Then (and the oddity of the dream becomes more apparent now), I realized that I had lost my wallet. The horrors, indeed, when you lose your wallet, and I’m sure some of us at some point of time in our lives have lost something valuable, not just our wallets, but perhaps a journal, a handbag, a laptop, something personal, something that says so much about you once a stranger just takes a mere peek into them. It was bloody frantic. The problem is, I tried to remember where I had lost my wallet, where I could possibly have dropped it. You see, now that I’m awake, remembering this dream, remembering that in my dream I’m remembering where I lost my wallet; it’s as though my dream were dreaming itself another dream. The amazing thing is that I could remember DETAIL, almost everything that happened that had led to the loss of my wallet. The first thing that came to mind was where I had put my wallet: in the side pocket of a pair of cargo pants that I was wearing. No, the wallet hadn’t dropped out of my pocket accidentally.

I remember, that in my dream I remembered, that I gave my pants away to an elephant. That image was right smack there in my head: an elephant was wearing my pants. I could see myself taking off my pants, and wearing it on the elephant. Yes, the elephant was huge, I mean, those kind of usual sized elephants that we see in the zoo (in real life). I could see my wallet in the side pocket of my cargo pants as I put the pants on the elephant. In fact, I remember that my dream-self remembered that there were 9 elephants, each of them with their own advertising poster, and the elephant wearing my pants was the 7th one from the left, and of course, looking at the elephant posters from left to right, they gradually increased in size.

Ok well, summarily speaking, my wallet was in a pair of cargo pants that was being worn by an elephant. So the first impulse was to rush back to the zoo, and try to find the elephant, so that I could get my wallet back! Of course, that was all that I thought of. I didn’t even consider whether I was wearing any pants in the first place or not. Well, as I remember now, yes I was wearing a pair of pants when I went back to the zoo. I remember my dream-self remembering that I was cursing and swearing under my breath as I made my way along a stone pathway lined by cages (animal exhibits), smelling the animals (they all smell the same to me, and amazingly, in my dream, I can actually smell…), telling myself that if I did not get back to the elephant enclosure soon enough, my wallet would go missing because either the zookeepers would find a pair of pants on their elephant and take them off, or, the elephant would actually be smart enough to realize it was wearing my pants and take out the wallet and do something to it (like, sit on it or something). Then, I thought, why not call the zoo! I searched through my pockets and found this card which had two numbers which I could call the zoo from (and for one of the two numbers, I can tell you the first four digits are 6269****). The two numbers were highlighted in orange, and above those two numbers, on this white card, were other details, such as the opening hours of the zoo (from 9am to 11pm), and the location of the safety office (near the entrance of the zoo). I dialled the first number on my cell phone, and this old man on the other side picked up the phone. I asked him if he were the zookeeper, or at least one of the officials in the zoo, and he replied, in Mandarin, that no, this wasn’t the zoo, and that I should dial the second number below his, and I would get the zoo (and how did he know that there was another number beneath that one that I just dialled?). He sounded really cheerful and all, and it was right then that his image came into my mind, as though I were there with him on the other side of the phone, seeing him talk to me over the phone, telling me all that he had just did. Anyway, I gave my thanks, and dialled the second number. I got the zoo, but whoever it was on the other side of the phone, didn’t know what I was talking about (he didn’t believe that an elephant was wearing my pants).

Frustrated, I finally reached the zoo, and close by the entrance, there were a few wooden huts, and immediately I knew that those were the safety offices. So I walked over (and by now, the stone pathway had ended, and now I was walked on fine sand, as though I were on a beach), and began going to each door to find out which one was the main office that I could seek instant help from. A couple of the huts looked suspiciously like those kinds of makeshift huts that we see along East Coast Parkway, used for the storage of kayaks and paddles. I found one office, which a big blue sign on the front door proclaiming: “SAFETY”. So I knocked, went in, and right in front of the door, there was this chest-high partition with a clear panel near the top of it, and a pair of bespectacled eyes stared at me. I mean, in fact, the partition was so close to the door that I could not even open the door fully. The pair of eyes rose and I saw this woman, who asked me what was the matter. So, I just told her that I lost my wallet in the zoo (no point saying that an elephant is wearing the pants in which my wallet is to be found), and she said to me that I would have to wait for a while, as the officer who’s in charge of matters like that is busy, and that she was just a clerk, pushing pens and papers, with no real authority in the zoo. She jerked her head to her right, indicating to me a door behind which I would find the officer in charge. The door opened, and lo, the officer in charge was my college classmate.

His name is Vincent, and he was wearing this uniform, exactly the kind that the Navy would wear during National Day Parade. Just that there were no adornments that would inform the layman that he was with the Navy, no, none of that at all, but he was wearing a great royal yellow sash across his chest. Two other people had followed him out then, and when he saw me, we were both surprised at finding each other there and then. I told him that I lost my wallet and needed his help, and he in turn told me that I would have to wait after he had finished serving those two gentlemen… And that’s as far as I remember my dream remembering, for I woke up, and found myself lying in my bed.

It’s just one of those odd dreams where the fantastic happens, and frankly, I dream almost every night, but none have captured my memory as greatly as this one has. Somehow, it’s about the layering of this dream, that as I remember and recall this dream, I find that my dream was actually doing the same as well. Of course, I could try doing one of those Freudian interpretations of my dreams, and try to link it somehow to some part of my waking life, but then, I think that that would take too long already, for in fact, this post seems quite long in itself already given that I’ve described almost every single detail of the dream that I had. Of course, I found my wallet sitting on my table when I got up, still there, unmoved since last night when I put it there after I got home. Once in a while, as I’ve been typing this, I’ve been stealing glances at my wallet, just to make sure that it was still there, as it is now…

They’ve left me all alone here. They did ask them to go along with me, but I refused to. Not my kind of things anymore, I told them. Charlie went off to one of those clubs in the centre of town to party the night away and then find themselves the next morning stumbled forth into a new year. I couldn’t hold her back, after all, she just turned 21 this year. Even Josephine went off on her own. Like daughter, like mother. No more of these kinds of things for me. What’s the point of it all? I pleaded with them to stay with me, to watch the night with me, but they both told me that they had plans with their friends. There was no way that they could turn them down now. I railed at them, asking them where their priorities lay, since when was water thicker than blood, and who was the head of the household. There was no stopping them. They tried to bring me over to their side but I cleverly resisted and they desisted. No more. Now I’m here all alone. Sitting beside the fire place, looking out the window facing the street, with a book in my lap. The Politics of Friendship. But it’s a terrible book, only because it’s in English. I should have bought the original one instead, and try my luck at reading French rather than make things easy for me by going the way of translation, to a language that I’m most familiar with. But never mind. It’s too late. I’m stuck with this one already. The shops are all closed tonight as well, so that’s no way I’m going to get anything else. Moreover, I’ve stopped reading. The book is still in my lap.

I wonder what they are doing now. No, that I cannot imagine. As far as I know, I can only be certain of the things that I do. Like right now, I sit here. I know that I sit here because I am sitting here. I sit by the fireplace. I know that the fireplace is there, though it is not really a fireplace, it’s really just a hole in the wall where the fireplace used to be but now in its place stands a heater than runs on electricity. I know that it is there because I see it sitting there, I know that it is there because I can feel the warmth that is radiating from it. There are people out walking on the sidewalk, out in the cold, out in the rain. It’s useful to live in one of these kinds of appartements that were built in the forties and fifties. Ground floor units allows one to overlook the pavement, to be able to sit at one’s window and watch people going by. To watch people hurrying by. I saw Charlie and Josephine hurry off the moment they had the chance to. I tried to see where they were going. All I could see was them walking briskly through a curtain of rain towards the end of the rue. And then they turned the corner, then they were out of my sight, out of the grasp of my imagination. I did not think that I would be able to be responsible enough to handle the conceptions that I would have of what they were doing at the moment now at their respective parties. But I know that I am still here, at the very least. That’s some certainty after all.

Let me think of the past. It’s easier to think of yesterday first, because I can be sure that this part of the past is still fresh in my mind, and not corrupted at all by the workings of my own mind, by how I would have wanted things to have been back then and have warped them to suit my own memory. Yesterday, I was alone, just like today. The two of them had gone out, just like today, again. I did get out of the house, I remember going to the jardin nearby, a big one, and there were a lot of people just lying on the grass, taking strolls, walking their dogs, reading a book, and doing many other things. I didn’t spend much time there. I turned back home very soon. That’s all I can remember. That’s all I wanted to remember. I mean, is everything in the past worth remembering at all, when at the end of the day, or rather, given enough time lapsed, all memory in some way or another simply becomes part of one’s figment of imagination? The past, rather than being what it is, the past, would become a construct in any case, in any circumstance. The worth of it is not there anymore. Therefore, better, to record down what happened in the past in bite-sized chunks, just detail, all detail, no emotion involved for fear of distortion and metamorphosing powers. Small parts of the past so that one does not get distracted after long periods of rambling. And then one should just have all these different small parts of the past, try to piece them together somehow, but evidently there will be gaps. That’s the point of it all, isn’t it? i look into my own past, and I find it ridden with holes. As if someone had gone through it with a machine gun. Just like when the Japanese did beach landings on Kota Bahru well back in 1941, and the British were waiting on the beach with machine guns ready to nail them down. My past was trying to reach up on me, trying to board me, and that was all I could do to resist. But now, accepting it as it is, I see all those gaps and holes, and the best I can do is to try to plug it up with meaning, that there must be some connection somehow between all these gaps. I see that I am beginning to contradict myself. No, there can be no constructs. I will remain satisfied with these gaps, there is no desire in me to fill in the blanks of my past existence, I will be fine with these absences. The presence of these absences is good enough for me.

I walk around the house now, because I’m tired of sitting. I walk around the house in darkness, because I’ve been living here for such a long time that I know where everything is placed, every single piece of furniture, and I know that I will not knock into any of them at all. In fact, I could just close my eyes and try walking about the house instead of switching off the lights, but no, that is simply being foolish, being childish. I find myself standing in the kitchen, admiring the space that I am in, looking at the walls, doing a mental measurement of the dimensions of the kitchen. Ten feet, by ten feet, by ten feet. Nice proportions. Perhaps I could wait in here until the two girls come home. Wait in here until they step through the main door, and call out my name when they realize that they do not find me sitting in my chair in the living room. The knives hang on the wall with small hooks, different sizes each of them, different sizes for despatching different sizes of… There’s nothing in the fridge except a bottle of spoilt milk. When was the last time that we, as a family, had dinner together at home? Had a nice home-cooked meal? As a child, I lived with my grandparents, and grandmother always cooked. That was a long time ago. Fifty years have passed since? Has it been that long already? There’s no unity in any family that does not sit down together at a dinner table to have a meal together. The old has passed, and there can no longer be a renewal of old traditions and beliefs. There, there’s that long wooden sofa that has been in its place ever since we moved in here such a long time ago. In fact, now that I think about it, I realize that it’s even older than me. More than fifty years? Is that even possible? This sofa has even outlasted my parents. At least the frame of the sofa is that old. The original cushioning disintegrated and was replaced many times over in the years that have gone by. Replacements are a key facet in every single one of our lives. We replace many things, from cushions, to cutlery, to teeth, to organs, to light bulbs, and to people. But what about these replacements? They do not say much about the original that was there in the first place, and we replace them simply because they have grown old and even though we need to throw them away, we find that we have grown so used to them that we cannot bear to live a life without them. Thus, the great idea of the replacement came into place, substituting what was once there for another that is just as good, even though it might not be the same, but we’re fine with it anyhow. Yet some things will be able to outlast the passing desires of man. Just like that sofa frame, one of those few reliable things in life that cannot be worn away or gotten tired of.

It’s getting a little difficult now. I don’t know why, I can’t explain it. I can’t explain what’s getting a little difficult now, but I know that something is. Again, I hear the clock ticking. It’s half past one in the morning already. Already into another year. Did I miss anything? They’re not back yet. I doubt they will be. I doubt they’ve ever been back in the first place. There’s nothing in it left for me anymore. Never has there been anything for me in the first place. It’s getting crazy now. What is? No, I’m all alone here, waiting, waiting in vain for two people who’re my family, who’re complete strangers to me, who’re related to me, who’re my kin and my kind, less of one more of the other.

I met that old man just now. My neighbour. He smiled, and chatted with me. he had just gone out to buy lunch. Lunch for one person. He was alone. it seemed to me as though he was trying to be happy, trying to be unaffected. Yet, I saw that the sockets of his eyes were hollowed out, deepened from those sleepless nights. I could see that he had not shaved, for there was fresh stubble on his chin. Had he forgotten? Or had someone stopped reminding him? Or did he stop bothering anymore simply because it doesn’t matter anymore? He tried to keep up the conversation and appearances, but I stumbled. I did not know how to translate my English thoughts into Hokkien. And to think that we were talking about translation. Then we said goodbye. He turned, and shuffled back to his door, whist I lingered at the threshold of my door, contemplating his hunched back and drooping head, that seemed alot lower than the week before.

The triggers of memory come in various forms, their sources are as varied as the species of animals that God has created for this Earth that we all live in. Today, I remembered Grandfather. And what was that trigger that got me thinking about him? Well, I must say first that, Grandfather is often on my mind, but today it was different, it was the trigger itself that led me on a different path of memory to remember Grandfather, different from the usual that I had often thought of him. The trigger was Proust. When Proust’s narrator began talking his grandmother, who had died of a stroke…

One event that had played itself over and over again in my head took place many, many years ago, I remember, when I was still a child of about nine or ten years, still unsure of the ways of the world, my tongue still loose and rash, I was unable then to control it properly at all. I remember, that then, the ceiling in my Grandfather’s house leaked, or was it that the neighbours upstairs were hanging wet clothing and that they were dripping onto our laundry instead? Whatever it was, there was water. Grandfather went upstairs to talk to that neighbour, telling her about what was happening down at our side. I went upstairs with him. He had gone into the flat, while I stayed outside, talking to the daughter of that family, then, who was also about the same age as me. We stayed there for quite a while, and I didn’t know exactly what I was talking about. Perhaps it was all just childish talk. Then, Grandfather came out, and there was some more discussion at the door, and somehow, I do not know how, for these things happen from time to time without our knowledge, without us fully knowing why they came out the way they did, without intention, without ill-will, but I said out that Grandfather had spewn profanities at the neighbour upstairs before coming up to the flat. The lady then, glared at Grandfather, and closed the door. Grandfather was very upset with me that day, and he kept asking me to tell him, what did he say exactly. I refused. I had realized that I had created an improbable fiction that did not exist or take place at all, and there were serious consequences in terms of his pride, that in front of a stranger, he was let down by his very own grandson, a sort of betrayal had taken occured, and there and then he was trying to resolve it, trying to make sense out of it, trying to work it out with his stubborn grandson who had not known any better than to shut up. My pride, all ten years of it, was at stake as well, and as selfish as a child could have been, as though I were hoarding a precious toy that I did not want taken away from me, I refused to give in, I did not budge at all, but I held my silence, not wanting to say anything at all. Perhaps then, somehow, I also knew that saying anything at all would not do me any good, since I had already said something that was not true, this time, then, in front of Grandfather, just the two of us, what I would say would thus be the truth, and that then there would be no way out for me but to have my pride cast aside so that Grandfather’s pride could be re-instated. I still kept my silence, and then, days passed, the whole incident was swept under the carpet.

I still remember that incident, even though it took place nearly fifteen years ago. But I think that is the way the memory works, a key incident that engraves itself so vividly on the slate of our consciousness, becoming a permanent mark eternally to be located within the confines of our mind, the timelessness of the human mind preventing it from being corroded away into nothingness. Grandfather has passed away for nearly three years now. I know he still exists within me, and that’s the way it will remain for the rest of my days, until the day I even become as old as he was before he died, and how I will remember him will forever remain the same, unchanged and untouched by time. So will these memories, triggered off by these very markers that lie strewn all over our paths in life.

Stop.

He knows that he must not go on. He knows that he must go on. He knows. He knows too much. He knows too much to do anything. Caught. Stopped. Halted. Prevented. Stagnant movement. What does he do from thereon? He thinks. He forces himself to think, to imagine, to project. Future steps. Removal of obstacles. He knows something more than that. He knows what he can and cannot do. He decides. He chooses. He motions to himself. He closes his eyes and hears a voice coming to him in that darkness. Imagining things. Not just anything. Not nothing. Things. With possibilites and probabilities attached. He envisions and sees though the speaking voice.

You move forward. Fluid. Moving. Undecided. Opportune. You look backwards. Solid. Stagnant. Decided. You will accomplish your -.

For my grandfather, who taught me how to play chess. 

It was they… Who put me here in this room all alone. I didn’t choose to come to this room all by myself, to put myself in here, and shut the door. All they wanted me to do was to write. They wanted me to write something original. But how could I do it? How could I possibly write anything? Everything has been written. To write anything else would be to rewrite something that’s been written before. And they talk about penalizing one for plagiarism. That is totally absurd. Penalizing a person because he can’t write anything original. Who are they to judge? Nonetheless I will try. I will try to write something that seems original enough so that they will be satisfied. Once in a while they do come into the room to take whatever I’ve written. In return, they give me food and water. Sometimes, when I do not write anything good enough, they beat me up. They get two big sized men, I think they must work as bouncers at nightclubs, and pound me to a pulp each time they think that my writing is not good enough. It’s as if the humiliation isn’t good enough. The quality of the food varies with my writing as well. At times it’s a good steak dinner, with mashed potatoes and soup. But most of the time it’s just plain porridge and nothing else. I’m given talcum powder for my own hygiene purposes, but then I put that into my porridge to make it taste nicer. I have to make do with the things that they give me. After all, I am at their mercy. It’s not that I like to write or anything, it’s just that I have nothing else better to do. Given my situation in life, that’s about the only thing I can do. To write, and to write, and to write, and to write, and to write. Ten pages a day, twenty pages a day, forty pages a day! And then they come once in a blue moon and take it all away from me. What do they do with it, I have barely any idea. Sometimes they throw back at me what I’ve written before, some of the papers turned so yellow and smelling musky, so much so that I wonder if I’ve ever written those before. But when I look at the handwriting, I do see some resemblance to my own handwriting, and conclude that I must have written these beforehand, a long, long time ago. On these returned papers there are illegible markings in red, under-linings and scribblings. These returned papers are of a lot of use to me. I burn them in the corner of my room when it gets cold on some nights. There is a window in the room, well, it’s actually more like a hole in the wall. There’s nothing to cover the hole, there’re no window panes, and so the wind blows through and creates this turbulence in the room which messes up all the papers, old and new. Sometimes I can see the papers flying about the room in a circular fashion, as if caught up in a tornado. Actually there is one way that I often employ to keep the wind from blowing in. I take the big table top that I write on and lean it over the hole in the wall. That partially keeps the wind out because it doesn’t cover the hole completely. The hole is very big. I’ve looked out the hole once, and saw just the sea. That’s all, nothing else. They often say that one can see the sunset or sunrise by the sea, but I can’t see any of that. I think my room must either face the north or the south. So when I close the hole partially, the wind hardly gets through and so the papers don’t fly about so much after that. I can rearrange my papers and sort them out properly. But the problem is, when I use the table top to cover the hole, I have no where to write. I’ve tried sitting on the floor, hunching over to write, but it’s no good at all. It’s no good for my back. When my back hurts, I can’t think of anything to write, and then I just write anything, which is bad for me because when I hand up whatever I’ve written on the floor, I can be sure of myself to get ready for the two bouncers to come back into the room for me. Do I ever cry out in fear when they come? Of course not. I never cry out in fear. I just stay silent when they take their turns to rain blows upon me. I take it just like a man. What’s there to be ashamed of. I don’t retaliate as well, because I do not believe in retaliation. There really isn’t any point in retaliating because it doesn’t prove anything. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Perhaps it makes a good excuse, but of course this saying isn’t appropriate here, for no one can say who is right and who is wrong. That’s when all of this becomes so subjective. They think that I’m not original, because they just think so, and I think that I shouldn’t be beaten because I feel that I’ve put in the effort to write something original. Everything’s all rewritten anyway, so I wonder why they make such a big fuss out of what I write, and having to resort to having me beaten up, starving me and what not. What they think is what they think, and what I think is what I think, which will differ so greatly all the time, although I believe sometimes we’re both on the same runaway train of thought. I’ve tried to write about my life before I entered this room once, and it only served to get me beaten up. They think that my life is not original. Well, what can I say, I was born to a father and a mother, I had no siblings, I went to school and got myself a proper education, and went to work after that. Then there were these neighbors of mine, a father and a mother, and a son as well. The two of us went to school together, played football together, and practically hung out together all the time, well, till he went his own way and I went mine. Of our childhood, I guess we both shared the same experiences, and I wonder if he’s ever written about them before, because when I wrote about my childhood, they came back to me throwing the papers in my face and shouted that they’ve read it before. But anyway. The most memorable thing that I wrote about was my music, the music that I loved: the blues. Even that, they thought was unoriginal, and you can tell what happened after they took away that piece of writing and came back to me again. I remember giving my own definition of the blues: a desire to keep the excruciating facts and episodes of inhuman experiences alive in one’s sensitive awareness, to grasp the jagged edges of these experiences so hard that one’s hand bleeds, and to rise above these encounters and trials, not by the solace of philosophy but by squeezing from it a rhapsody that is horrifyingly funny. Big words one might think? Well it’s not the education that I received that helped me in this definition. I had a thesaurus! I begged them for a dictionary at first so that I could look up meanings of words that I didn’t understand, so that I could find the right, and original word to include into my writings. Instead, they gave me a thesaurus, and now I can only find other words to replace the words that I intended to give. Meanings of words that I can never understand are now only assumed, gathered from the meanings of other words that my limited vocabulary has. Of course, that isn’t of any worry to me at all. I do naturally have this love for the blues, helps to tell me that I’m alive and that whatever happens, worse can happen and I should really be prepared for it, although one knows that one can never really be prepared for whatever that might happen in the future. Now I don’t listen to the blues anymore, but I do think about it, and that’s the most I can do. I can’t sing the blues because the two men will come in and shut me up. Sometimes at night I squat away in a corner far from the door and sing quietly to myself, and they do not come in at all. I sing from memory, because I can remember many songs, many blues songs. Everything that I do is from memory, or at least in some sense is part of my own personal experience, which is what others might have experienced before. Which person is ever so different from anyone else? One day I will grow sick and tired of this room and writing, and force my way out of this place. I might very well jump through the hole into the wall and plunge myself into the sea and try to swim away from them. I don’t think those two men can swim very well. They look so big and bulky, so much so that if they jump into the water after me they’ll probably sink like bricks. Another way in which I could get out of this place is to walk straight out the door, and tell them that I’ve had enough. I know, this is my own decision, to put myself in this room to write in the first place, and in some sense put myself at their mercy, but after when I’m fed up of it am I not entitled to leaving this place freely? After all, the door… is always there.

What can I decipher from a single look? What are possible number of meanings and reasons that could lie behind a single glance, either sidelong or straight on, or a stare, or even in a blank look? Perhaps of these three examples given, the most could be read from a stare. But it wasn’t exactly a stare that M. had received. It was more of a passing glance. No, he couldn’t be sure what it was. He couldn’t classify the look, but he knew that when that single stranger walked by him just yesterday along the crowded Parisian streets, he knew that something was wrong, and he set himself out to find out what that look meant.

M. looked into the mirror the first thing in the morning when he woke up. In fact, the whole issue about the look that was given him by this stranger, who happened to be a man, had been on his mind throughout the whole night, so much so that he could not fall asleep peacefully. Jumping out of bed, he ran straight to the toilet and looked himself straight on into the mirror. One couldn’t say that M. wasn’t bad looking after all. His hair was short and cropped, a reflection that he had once served in the army, a fact that he was quite proud of, for he served in a regiment that had a rich heritage, known for producing brave warriors. He never kept a beard or a moustache, for his own personal hygiene reasons, he believed that only beggars and the homeless kept facial hair only because they didn’t have enough money to maintain their bodies, let alone their faces. There were barely any lines or creases on his face, showing that he was still keeping his youthful skin, even though he was really advancing on to his thirties very soon.

And M. looked.

He tried to remember how the stranger looked like, but the streets were way too crowded, and he could not have stopped in the middle of the pavement to hold back that person. He would have been pushed forward by the crowd, for the Parisian mob is not to be trifled with. But the look! That accusing look! He knew that something was wrong, terribly wrong, for if it did not matter to M., he would not have been so bothered by this person. There was certainly something that this person knew about M.