Proof [antikvár]

1 •.V Agony is socially unacceptable. One is not supposed to weep. Particularly is one not supposed to weep when one is moderately presentable and thirty-two. When one's wife has been dead six months and everyone else has done grieving. Ah well, they say: he'll get over it. There's always another pretty lady. Time's a great healer, they say. He'll marry again one day, they say. No doubt they're right. But oh dear God the emptiness in my house. The devastating, weary, ultimate loneliness. The silence where there used to be laughter, the cold hearth that used to leap with fire for my return, the permanent blank in my bed. Six months into unremitting ache I felt that my own immediate death would be no great disaster. Half of myself 1