The Everlasting

SEVERAL YEARS AFTER the war, during the mid-afternoon hour I generally put aside to fantasize about setting fire to my manuscript and disappearing into the countryside to raise goats, I received a book in the post.

(I wonder sometimes: What if I’d refused it? What if I’d let it sit on my desk, unopened, or set fire to it, or thrown it out the damned window? But of course I didn’t. I never did.)

I tore away the wrapping. Observed your device carved into the cover and your name on the title page. Concluded unhappily that the doctors had been right about me, after all, and the pressures of academia had proved too taxing for my delicate mind.

They hadn’t wanted to discharge me, even once the war was won.