The dining room was busier that evening. The Season, so it would seem, was upon us. There were two hefty Dutch people at one table, blond, fat, in sensible clothes, gobbling, not so much the food as words, poring at a map. Beside them a solitary man,...
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The dining room was busier that evening. The Season, so it would seem, was upon us. There were two hefty Dutch people at one table, blond, fat, in sensible clothes, gobbling, not so much the food as words, poring at a map. Beside them a solitary man, probably a traveller in agricultural products, reading a paper slanted against his Evian bottle, wearily crumbling breadcrumbs. And the couple from Paris were back again, silently eating, slowly, precisely, looking towards each other now and again for approbation, rather as if they were making a mosaic or laying out a jigsaw puzzle. Their intense concentration on a tough guineafowl in a thick red wine sauce irritated me. Quite unreasonably. But I was, I remember very well, in an unreasonable frame of mind. I felt odd. Jagged, fragmented, restless. Strange for me. I don’t lose my marbles easily. Rather too tame sometimes. Reasonable usually. Dull. Joanna said. Probably rightly. Eugène had suggested what I should eat and I had agreed and ask
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