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answering
machine, when he felt drowsiness, heaviness in his eyelids, but instead of
getting into bed and going to sleep he undressed and took a shower, when
wrapped in a white bathrobe that reached almost to his ankles he turned on the
computer, only then did he realize that he missed Liz Norton and that he would
have given anything to be with her at that moment, not just talking to her but
in bed with her, telling her that he loved her and hearing from her lips that
she loved him too.
    Espinoza experienced something similar,
though slightly different in two respects. First, the need to be near Liz
Norton struck some time before he got back to his apartment in
Madrid
. By the time he
was on the plane he'd realized that she was the perfect woman, the one he'd
always hoped to find, and he began to suffer. Second, among the ideal images of
Norton that passed at supersonic speed through his head as the plane flew
toward
Spain
at four hundred miles an hour, there were more sex scenes than Pelletier had
imagined. Not many more, but more.
    Meanwhile, Morini, who traveled by train
from Avignon to Turin, spent the trip reading the cultural supplement of II Manifesto, and then he slept until a
couple of ticket collectors (who would help him onto the platform in his
wheelchair) let him know that they'd arrived.
    As for what passed through Liz Norton's
head, it's better not to say. Still, the friendship of the four Archimboldians
continued in the same fashion as ever, unshakable, shaped by a greater force
that the four didn't resist, even though it meant relegating their personal
desires to the background.
    In 1995 they met at a panel discussion on
contemporary German literature held in Amsterdam, a discussion within the
framework of larger discussion that was taking place in the same building
(although separate lecture halls), encompassing French, English, and Italian
literature.
    It goes without saying that most of the
attendees of these curious discussions gravitated toward the hall where
contemporary English literature was being discussed, next door to the German
literature hall and separated from it by a wall that was clearly not made of
stone, as walls used to be, but of fragile bricks covered with a thin layer of
plaster, so that the shouts, howls, and especially the applause sparked by
English literature could be heard in the German literature room as if the two
talks or dialogues were one, or as if the Germans were being mocked, when not drowned
out, by the English, not to mention by the massive audience attending the
English (or Anglo-Indian) discussion, notably larger than the sparse and
earnest audience attending the German discussion. Which in the final analysis
was a good thing, because it's common knowledge that a conversation involving
only a few people, with everyone listening to everyone else and taking time to
think and not shouting, tends to be more productive or at least more relaxed
than a mass conversation, which runs the permanent risk of becoming a rally,
or, because of the necessary brevity of the speeches, a series of slogans that
fade as soon as they're put into words.
    But before coming to the crux of the
matter, or of the discussion, a rather petty detail that nonetheless affected
the course of events must be noted. On a last-minute whim, the organizers—the
same people who'd left out contemporary Spanish and Polish and Swedish
literature for lack of time or money—earmarked most of the funds to provide
luxurious accommodations for the stars of English literature, and with the
money left over they brought in three French novelists, an Italian poet, an
Italian short story writer, and three German writers, the first two of them
novelists from West and East Berlin, now reunified, both vaguely renowned (and
both of whom arrived in Amsterdam by train and made no complaint when they were
put up at a three-star hotel), and the third a rather shadowy figure about whom
no one knew anything, not even Morini, who,