from My Tango with Barbara Strozzi

Bloomsbury, London (2007), page 158

Extracted from Mr Hoban’s most recent novel and dropped on 4 February 2008

in celebration of his eighty-third birthday

Each new generation of children has to be told: ‘This is a world, this is what one does, one lives like this.’ Maybe our constant fear is that a generation of children will come along and say: ‘This is not a world, this is nothing, there’s no way to live at all.’

from Turtle Diary

It was one of those mornings when there suddenly seemed nothing whatever that could be taken for granted. I felt a stranger in my own head, as if the consciousness looking out through my eyes were some monstrous changeling. Here was the implacable morning light on all the books and litter that were always there but nothing was recognizable as having significance. What in the world was it all about, I found myself wondering.
 

from Turtle Diary

"I bet the stories you could tell would make a hell of a book," I said, "If only you knew how to get them down on paper."

He shrugged. "Not everything needs to be written down."

from The Man With The Dagger

(The Moment under The Moment)

Mortal life is a difficult proposition because hardly anything can be experienced as what it actually is; everything is time-distorted. In childhood we wait for things that seem too long in coming, we wait for treats, for presents, for festivals and holidays, we wait for growing up. There is so much waiting that suddenly childhood itself is gone with all that was being waited for. As grown-ups we find ourselves pitched headlong down a steep and slippery slide with everything hurtling towards us at a great speed; some things smash us full in the face, others streak past half-glimpsed or unseen; everything has happened before we were ready for it. Only after the hurly-burly of mortal life is over can one have a really good look at what has happened; unburdened by choice and unthreatened by consequences one is able to sort through the half-glimpses of a lifetime and find perhaps one or two workable fragments of recognition.

from Pilgermann

Everything is twice itself, this I often think. Things are what they are every day, but then sometimes they are not. Sometimes I see people talking, crossing the road, running to catch a bus. Suddenly it is like TV with the sound turned off and I see that this is really Death dressing himself up as these people talking, crossing the road, running to catch a bus. So that is what is really happening, no?

But who am I that I should say this? My mind is like a top that spins crazily just before it falls over.

- from Come Dance with Me

Dream Woman

The dim light, the faceful shadows murmured, tinkled, gleamed. The steady flame of the candle on the table made a globe of stillness around the two of us, a warm bright globe of stillness in which she raised her glass and the luminous rosy wine made a smaller bright globe, a little world of the poised wine of this moment. She tilted the glass, the wine poured out, its brightness in the candlelight falling, falling. With an indescribable smile she looked at me and poured out the wine and never said a word, saying with her smile that she knew herself to be a dream and lost to me. That was how the first time ended.

The next time I saw her she said straightaway, 'Why do you bother when you know I'm not real?'

'I don't know that. I refuse to know that.'

'How am I real then? You know I'm only a dream.'

'What is that? What does it mean when you say "only a dream"?

'I'm only in your mind,' she said.

'What does that mean? The whole universe is only in the mind of God and nobody says the universe isn't real. '

'Maybe your mind isn't as real as God’s mind. In any case you'll have to go back, you can't stay here. Why should I begin something with a man who can’t stay?'

'You're in the world that's in me,' I said. 'I'll find a way to stay.'

'For me there's no future in this. I've seen it happen before with dream women and realies and it never works. '

'Is that what they call us? "Realies"?'

'Yes, and it never lasts. They see the man a few times, and that's the end of it. Sometimes they're left with a child. It's hardest on the children I think - it's like growing up in whorehouse. '

'But you're not a whore. You're not here for anyone else, are you?'

"'Not here for anyone else"! You amaze me. I've seen you once before and for all I know I'll never see you again and you want me to keep myself pure for you. You're not even young: in a few years you'll be dead and this world in your head will still be here in other heads and I'll still be in it. What am I to do then, wear black and live on memories?'

'You're saying you've been with other men,' I said. 'Other realies.'

'You don't seem to have a very quick mind. How do you suppose I occupied myself until you turned up? With needlepoint? How would you like to live in this awful tatty place where nothing ever works properly? You go to the bathroom to wash your hair and maybe there's a sink and maybe it's the front half of a crocodile. Whole neighbourhoods disappear overnight without a trace, you're lucky if you can find the supermarket two days running. And in between times you sit around waiting... '

From The Moment Under The Moment

(pp 61-62)