³⁷ The papers of Kit
Shortly before he disappeared, I saw him begging at the entrance of a nearby tube station. Lying on the blanket of an old black woman I knew from sight — as if filling in for a momentary absence.
I avoided him and did not speak.
We met shortly afterwards and I asked why he was begging.
“It’s interesting” he said, or “it’s a game” (I don’t remember). He showed me a 100£ note — “You see”.
A few months later, I went in search of the old black woman, but she appeared to have vanished (as well) and nobody knew her name. I found her much later, by chance, at the entrance of a station in an entirely different part of town. She was drunk, and refusing to speak — except that “there was nothing worth remembering at all.”