I returned from my lunch break at a quarter to five, in excellent form, having looked in at a bar or two on my way back across town. Three hours and a hundred and twenty pages to go. Ninety seconds per page: no sweat. Caduta Massi didn’t give me any trouble either, up in her vast suite. I just sat there nodding along with her old Prince Kasimir (still on the mend from World War II) while Caduta talked like a folksong about kids, mums, birth, the seasons, and her own Tuscan hills, where the grass grows, the wind blows, and the sky is blue. Over there on the slopes of Caduta’s homeland, apparently, spring is a time of renewal, the soil gives forth fresh life, the buds quicken, and the sap rises in the young trees. ‘Now I shall leave the men together to enjoy their coffee and port, free of a woman’s chatter,’ said Caduta, and disappeared. Kasimir and I sat drinking heavily in total silence for forty-five minutes, until Caduta returned bearing three fat albums devoted entirely to her godchildren. Godchildren are the only kind of children Caduta’s got, but, boy, has she got a lot of godchildren. I sat close to her on the sofa and sneaked in many a filial caress … By now the book and I were bowling along. This reading lark, it’s a doddle. My theory is that whisky helps. Whisky is the secret of trouble-free reading. Either that, or Animal Farm must be unusually easy to follow … The only thing that puzzled me was this whole gimmick with the pigs. Pull the other one, mate, I kept saying to myself. I mean, how come the pigs were meant to be so smart, so civilized and urbane? Have you ever seen pigs doing their stuff? I have, and believe me it’s a fucking disgusting experience. I checked out these pigs when I was on a farm making a commercial for a new kind of pork-character rissole. I almost walked off the set when I realized what I’d have to be working with. You should see these hairy-jawed throwbacks, these turd lookalikes, honking and chomping at the trough. To eat your girlfriend’s tail when she isn’t looking—that counts as good behaviour, that counts as old-world courtesy, by the standards of the sty. And when I think of what they get up to in the hay even I have to shudder. I tell you, it’s no accident that they’re called pigs. And yet Orwell here figures them for the brains behind the farm. He just can’t have seen any pigs in action. Either that, or I’m missing something.
The creatures outside looked from pig to man, I read, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which. Brill. I rang Martina and mellifluously arranged to meet her at the Tanglewood on Fifth Avenue. She made some footling objection—I can’t remember what. I showered and changed and arrived in good time. I ordered a bottle of champagne. I drank it. She didn’t show. I ordered a bottle of champagne. I drank it. She didn’t show. So I thought what the fuck and decided I might as well get loaded… And, once that was accomplished, I’m afraid I have to tell you that I threw caution to the wind.
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I grew up — or got bigger — out here, out here in the US of A. Between the ages of seven and fifteen I was a resident of Trenton, New Jersey. I did all the stuff American kids did. I stowed my sandals and shorts and scored my sneakers and longs. I had buck teeth, big ears, cropped hair, and a squat bike with whitewalls and an electric horn. I pitched my voice somewhere in the mid-Atlantic. Alec Llewellyn tells me that on occasion I still sound like an English disc jockey. I don’t remember everything seeming big out here but I remember everything seeming small when I returned. Cars, refrigerators, houses — pinched, derisory. Out here I collected many subliminal tips on wealth and gratification. I did the groundwork for my addictions to junk food, sweet drinks, strong cigarettes, advertising, all-day television—and, perhaps, to pornography and fighting. But I don’t hold that against America. I don’t blame America. I blame my father, who shipped me out here soon after my mother died. I blame my mother.