Hanging with the Elephant Read Free Page B

Her soup spoon frozen in midair, because she knows me and my insatiable curiosity.
    So that’s where we were, eating our noodles with the masters of the universe, or at least one correspondent for a national newspaper, whom we recognised from his appearances on television. But the universe was empty apart from one further group of men at a table in the distance, whispering in London accents. And it was such a good meal that the bottle of wine we drank during the main course only kicked in three hours later at about midnight, when we were sitting in the lounge of the hotel with a nightcap. There too business was slow. An old country and western singer, a great bear of a man with dyed black hair, was trying to impress a thin woman in a grey dress with anecdotes about travelling around Ireland in a van years earlier when he had his own showband. She was recording it all, though when she went to the toilet her high heels clip-clopped with irritation on the parquet floor and her face looked as drained as an empty paper bag. We had Hennessy brandies and the wine kicked in so well that I suggested another bottle for the bedroom. After all, she was going away for six weeks. I would miss her. There would be no fun without her. And she was going to meet Polish friends, other artists,new people. She would be going to exhibitions and operas, and eating lots of Polish and Russian dumplings. So it was a big night for both of us. And since we had splashed out on a good hotel, and were safely situated in a deluxe room and there was a bus from just outside the hotel to the airport in the morning, we deserved another drink. That was my contention. And that’s when the trouble started.
    Up we went to the eighth floor. I was carrying two brandies, two wine glasses, one bottle of Bordeaux and the key of the room, all on a round tray. I’m always spilling things but we managed to get in, get the lights on and put down the drinks without losing anything.
    Pussy Riot had been interviewed on an Irish chat show a few days earlier, which we watched on YouTube, and we couldn’t take our eyes off the little laptop screen. We got so excited about how disastrous the interview turned out, that I suggested another bottle of wine. Which cost another €28.
    ‘We have spent more money on drink than we did on the meal,’ she observed.
    ‘Ah, yes,’ I replied, ‘but it’s a special occasion. We are separating.’
    ‘It’s only for a few weeks,’ she said.
    ‘True,’ I replied. ‘But that could be a long time with a mind as fragile as mine.’
    She was leaving me. That was the fact.
    ‘Beloved,’ I said to her in the hotel room, as we cameto the end of the Bordeaux, ‘I have rarely been alone these past three years. And now this is our last night together before your flight. So it is a very special occasion.’
    She agreed, not certain what I had in mind. I had drink in mind. More drink. Lots of drink. An endless flow of drink.
    So a youth from Latvia arrived with further wine. I gave him €30 and told him to keep the change, and on we went, drinking and watching various other YouTube videos. Pussy Riot. Panti Bliss. Johnny Rotten and Judge Judy. Tommy Tiernan. And live webcams in Warsaw to see if it was snowing. I drank most of the second bottle, laughing at the videos, until she brushed her teeth and got into bed and I assured her that I had set my alarm for 6.30 a.m.
    She was asleep in minutes and already I felt alone. I was embracing the dark. I was beginning a great adventure into the interior of my own psyche. I would be still, silent and alone, eating like a monk, my eyes glued to the flickering candle as I meditated my way into the dark interior of the unconscious. I would find what was in there.
Who was in there.
What had made me unwell? In what way is depression just a door into a deeper sense of self? What are the possibilities of compassion both for ourselves and others that awaken when we allow all the pain inside us to