After the show, Annie and I had a late dinner. The joyousness of the performance and Annie´s company cleared my mind of much of the depressive mood the last two days of solitude had inflicted on me, and little by little I started to feel like my former self. I had inertly, I realized, come to expect all manner of unpleasant surprises lately, just because of a few aleatoric mishaps, mostly regarding meeting with the wrong people. And thankfully, I thought as I glanced about me, the people at the adjoining tables seemed very much ordinary and displayed no odd behavior. A typical state of anxiety and alienism was easily induced by such things as long journeys. Perhaps there was too little sleep, the strain of adaptation and a lack of common pleasantries.

(I now recall a case I once wrote an article about, a certain John Robust – I remember the name because of it´s absurdity according to the circumstances – that temporarily had shown all signs of a well developed paranoia in little less than three weeks. Then he spontaneously recovered and remembered nothing of his erratic and volatile behavior, which, deemed a medical state and according to the doctors, with no exception always were permanent once developed to such a degree. After the case was concluded I was permitted to view the journals, and I also set up an interview with both John and his doctors about a month after his discharge from the Mensaposa hospital. The attention to John´s mental status had been raised by one of his neighbours after he had drowned her two cats in the tenements basement water basin. In doing so he had uttered very strange words that the unlucky neighbour was not able to recount. John had then taken his car and driven some 600 miles across the country, displaying a disturbing behaviour everywhere he stopped. Fortunately, no one had come to hurt, except from the cats and later a dog, just before he was taken in by the authorities. He had evidently also drowned the dog and while being caught in the very act, claimed that the lord of water would refuse him ‘if not the dog’. He had also said other things, which were as strange and unrenderable as in the case of his neighbour´s statement. In our two conversations, he was devoid of memories from his manic paranoia, and while being confronted with his actions, he started to cry. Upon being asked about his doings before the fatal day of his neighbour´s cats, he mentioned he had been away on a business trip abroad, as he usually was several times a year, and that he remembered having some stomach problems. I never managed to get anything else than that out of him, and I sincerely believe his state being as spontaneous as it is unexplainable. Now that I think about it…well, I will elaborate on it in case I have any spare paper left in the end.)

After having savoured the seafood (which is typically abundant here) (we both chose langoust, prepared simililarily to what they call “Demoiselles de Cherbourg” in France) we finished our wine with Annie getting increasingly tired, no doubt because of her working hard lately, and we agreed to leave the restaurant for my tiny apartment. The small misunderstanding from earlier in the evening, was, to my gratification, obliterated by an hour of conversation and Annie showed a certain compliant affection as I helped with her coat. The only slight snag, as I remember it from just before we rose from the table, was her mentioning of the proprietor of the theatre, telling me that he “had taken a liking to her”. There was nothing else following the statement and by the casualness by which she informed me, she made me unsure of whether her fatigue made her outspoken of ultroneous facts, or there was some part of her wishing to cause jelousy on my side. I found it difficult to comment upon, and so while considering her motif I initiated our leaving, absentaneously slipping the serviett ring from the table into one of my pockets, before asking for our outerwear.