'What would you prefer? A zoo without keepers, where the animals fall into a trance when you stop looking at them? A zoo of ideas? A gorilla cage with the idea of a gorilla in it, an elephant cage with the idea of elephants in it? Do you know how many kilograms of solid waste an elephant drops in twenty-four hours?
If you want a real elephant cage with real elephants then you need a zookeeper to clean up after them.'
'You are off the point, Mother. And don't get so excited.' He turns to the fat woman. 'We are discussing literature, the claims of realism versus the claims of idealism.'
Without ceasing to chew, the fat woman removes her eyes from them. He thinks of the cud of mashed corn and saliva in her mouth and shudders. Where does it all end?
'There is a difference between cleaning up after animals and watching them while they do their business,' he starts again. 'I am asking about the latter, not the former. Don't animals deserve a private life as much as we do?'
'Not if they are in a zoo,' she says. 'Not if they are on show. Once you are on show, you have no private life. Anyway, do you ask permission from the stars before you peek at them through your telescope? What about the private lives of the stars?'
'Mother, the stars are lumps of rock.'
'Are they? I thought they were traces of light millions of years old.'
'Boarding will now commence on United Airlines flight 323 non-stop to Los Angeles,' says a voice above their heads. 'Passengers requiring assistance, as well as families with young children, may step forward.'
On the flight she barely touches her food. She orders two brandies, one after the other, and falls asleep. When, hours later, they begin the descent to Los Angeles, she is still asleep. The flight attendant taps her on the shoulder. 'Ma'am, your seat belt.' She does not stir. They exchange looks, he and the flight attendant. He leans over and clips the belt across her lap.
She lies slumped deep in her seat. Her head is sideways, her mouth open. She is snoring faintly. Light flashes from the windows as they bank, the sun setting brilliantly over southern California. He can see up her nostrils, into her mouth, down the back of her throat. And what he cannot see he can imagine: the gullet, pink and ugly, contracting as it swallows, like a python, drawing things down to the pear-shaped belly-sac. He draws away, tightens his own belt, sits up, facing forward. No, he tells himself, that is not where I come from, that is not it.
At a dinner party she meets X, whom she has not seen in years. Is he still teaching at the University of Queensland, she asks? No, he replies, he has retired and now works the cruise ships, travelling the world, screening old movies, talking about Bergman and Fellini to retired people. He has never regretted the move. 'The pay is good, you get to see the world, and – do you know what? – people that age actually listen to what you have to say.' He urges her to give it a try: 'You are a prominent figure, a well-known writer. The cruise line I work for will jump at the opportunity to take you on. You will be a feather in their cap. Say but the word and I'll bring it up with my friend the director.'
The proposal interests her. She was last on a ship in 1963, when she came home from England, from the mother country. Soon after that they began to retire the great ocean-going liners, one by one, and scrap them. The end of an era. She would not mind doing it again, going to sea. She would like to call at Easter Island and St Helena, where Napoleon languished. She would like to visit Antarctica – not just to see with her own eyes those vast horizons, that barren waste, but to set foot on the seventh and last continent, feel what it is like to be a living, breathing creature in spaces of inhuman cold.
X is as good as his word. From the headquarters of Scandia Lines in Stockholm comes a fax. In December the SS
