The Underground Man

Nothing in the world moves at half the speed as a rumour with the scent of scandal to it.

Deprived of our memories we are deprived of our very selves. Without our histories we are vacated. We may walk and talk and eat and sleep but, in truth, we are nobody.

the Berry Man can scatter himself into a hundred disparate parts and a prying eye would see nothing but the same leaves and twigs as lie on any woodland floor. But once the prying eye has passed on the Berry Man draws himself back in. The scraps of bark slowly shift along the ground and are reintroduced to each other; the chill wind shuffles him in

a tale is remotely worth telling then one might tell it a dozen times.

I could tell straight away that my seeds had been cast on the stoniest of grounds.

the man’s wife was a coal-eater

the gradual revelation of one’s body as nothing more than a bag of unshakeable aches.

no great weeping when I go. I did not even manage to marry the woman I loved

our daily constitutional: