Voltaire Night

I’m the one who started it. I was depressed as hell and wanted to share my bad news. “Has anyone read Candide?” I said. I don’t even ­recall what the bad news was now but it must have had to do with a certain man who didn’t love me anymore. In those days I felt most of the time like someone had knocked me in the head with a brick, and even though I had stopped drinking, I had started again, and the way I saw it, a real brick in the head would have been okay because then I’d be dead or at least unconscious.