The Bat Tattoo

11 Adelbert Delarue

Truly, it is not that I am simply a wealthy sybarite. (Are there poor sybarites?) No, to me there is more than that. I do not flaunt myself as a doer of good works but in that sphere I am not idle, not unknown. I have given thousands of millions of francs to all the major charities and some that are minor, even unknown. Why do I mention this? Life is a fast-flowing river of moments; to step into this river is to find it each time never the same. Last night I had a dream in which … No, I won’t talk about it just now. Everyone has dreams.

All the same, every morning is different, is it not? I wake up with Victoria warm beside me smiling in her sleep; last night was good; life is good. Certainly the dead don’t have much fun. It seems I am given to reflection today. I ponder long the Crash Test toy that aroused my interest in Roswell Clark.

I do not look back over what I have written here before this and I do not want to; I speak from the ever-changing moment. I think I have a few words said on the metaphor of this toy, the profundity of it. These thoughts remain with me. We forward go at speed; we are stopped, WHAM! You, I, the world. ‘Even the sea dies,’ said Lorca in his Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías long before anyone knew about pollution or global warming. Even the sea dies.

I have given to many of the Holocaust and Holocaust-Survivor charities. Naturally nothing goes away. This, I think, is the first law of the remembering animal: nothing goes away. Gottfried von Peng, my father, has gone away but not as far as Genghis Khan, for example. He died full of years and billions. Death as a Friend is the title of a drawing by Rethel in which Gevatter Tod in hooded garb and sporting the scallop shell of the Santiago pilgrim tolls the bell for the old man who in his church tower has come to the end of his journey. Death of course can afford to be friendly — no one comes with a scythe to cut off his life.

The dream: Victoria and I were naked in the Rolls-Royce; Jean-Louis was driving us around the Périphérique … No, I don’t want to be telling this, it’s bad luck.

I want something from Roswell Clark. What it is I do not know. Certainly I have with this money primed the pump. What will he make? Of himself. What will he of himself make?