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148 V The interviewer and I have been sitting for what feels like hours, the room getting warm. She asks: Who are your greatest influences? I give her some names, but say—of course it’s easy to be influenced by the dead. You don’t have to wonder what they think. When they come and visit you, in bed, again, stuck there, what do they say to each other after they’ve left? As they sit together all those nights without you. Z chopping the basil he coaxed up from a few window boxes, cooking something he may bring you later, but you won’t eat. I don’t really say this. Do you have any advice for young writers? she asks. If you have to raid a hospital, don’t tie the hands of the doctors trying to cut an umbilical cord. Just let them finish. But if you had to give— I never mean to be difficult. It’s just that I falter. I make a 149 mug of tea and forget where I’ve left it. I say I want to have Z’s body cremated, and don’t think how there wouldn’t be a grave to go to. I’ve forgotten the sound of Z’s skin against mine. What is your next book about? As a child I found my mother crying in front of the mirror at her vanity table. When you were sick she sat for hours by your bedside. Yes, and still I have not dedicated anything to her. You say you wouldn’t have minded about the blood. No, just the child’s crying. And then the mother. The mother? I don’t know what happened to her. ...
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