138 / 194
123
with their grime. Our living room wasn’t a particularly
venerated place, but it was very much his space, and now
it’s difficult for us to make it our own. We need to do
something, urgently; we can’t allow our living room to
disappear from the house. (In my planner for killing time:
Give new life to the living room.)
•
When the moment for killing time arrives, I’ll have a lot of
things in my planner. But I haven’t even started it yet. I
spend my days answering letters and responding to phone
calls: from students, acquaintances, friends who have
reappeared from the past. Everyone has something to say,
and if someone doesn’t say something, I do. If need be, I’ll
take the initiative. I search my memory in case there’s
someone left who doesn’t know; I check to see if there’s an
acquaintance who hasn’t shown any signs of life, and if
that’s the case, I’ll give her a nudge, help her get her act
together. And when I’m done with acquaintances, I’ll start
with strangers.
Any available stranger will do: the plumber, the carpenter,
the mailman, the telemarketer who phones asking for him .
. . Yes, they too will learn. “No, he’s not in.” And if they
insist: “He died the other day.”They stop insisting.
The problem is how to delay the moment when there is no
longer anything to communicate, nothing related to his