9

Wanders the estate, past the launderette which is boarded up now.

Between a slop shop and a gin shop.

Through the nearby streets.

Veil of lightly falling snow.

Little two-storey houses with battered doorways.

Walls cracking like the last days of Pompeii.

One of these perhaps where the old woman lay dying on the floor.

Little window that he got in at.

What went on inside those buildings.

Divide up in little worlds and you stay in the world you belong to and you don’t know anything about what happening in the other ones except what you read in the newspapers.

Man beating their wife.

Lofts where families hide children.

Caresses of a murderer.

Police are pursuing their inquiries.

Complete story in tomorrow’s weekend edition.

Stops to write in his notebook.

Faces glaring in suspicion, steam rising from beneath the street in frozen wisps.

Pen pressing into the paper.

Not so easy to find a man.

Get to the true facts.

The inside details that the newspapers never mention.

What his feelings were whom I pursued.

Why he behaved as he did.

Nobody, my mother said, knows anything about anyone else. Not even about a close neighbour. Not even about the person you are married to. Or about your parent or your child.

Even about ourselves we know nothing.

Each still lives behind the wall.

Wall in our heads.

Fog closes in and blurs the edges of the moment.

Tell me the story in your heart.

Er läßt sich nicht lesen.

You catch the snowflake but when you look in your hand you don’t have it no more.