Two trees were framed in between the buildings and in the foliage of one, a streetlight flickered erratically.

In front of us, the side of a tenement rose like a cliff-face. Behind us the one-bedroom-hall-kitchen, all 450 square feet of it, was quiet. I asked her about that late one night, when the two of us were smoking together on the balcony of our small flat in a city of small flats. She had another name for him: Limb of Satan. He called her Imelda, which was her name, and, sometimes, Beloved. She also called him Mambo, and Augie March, but almost never by his given name, Augustine.

Especially theirs, which seems to have been full of codes and rituals, almost all of them devised by her. When was the first time that she noticed his ears? Was it part of her falling in love with him, or did it happen in the hypersensitive moments that follow? And when she called him by that name the first time, did he respond immediately? He probably did, without asking why. But later that evening, as he stood in the kitchen and cooked for me and my sister, scraping at a fry-up of potatoes, I saw that his ears were indeed unusual. They look like bits of bacon curled up from too much frying.’ ‘Haven’t you noticed? His ears are the sweetest thing about him. For a while, her fingers stopped playing with the worn-out sheet that was covering her. She turned her cool green eyes on me and smiled. ‘Why Angel Ears?’ I asked her, in Ward 33 (Psychiatric), Sir J. In her letters to him, she called him Angel Ears. If your next letter is not to hand with heartwarming promptness, I shall declare you unfit for human consumption and throw you to the lions. These scribbles will not do, they are meant for the common masses.Ī butterfly is banging on the windowpane in the corridor and I must now rise to let it out. I think postcards are for acquaintances and now that we are friends, you should find some nice stationery and write me a proper letter. But if you are going to send me a postcard, I shall abstain. Other sounds: Mae mumbling about morning Mass an impertinent sparrow demanding the last bit of my toast. Mee-ee-et, he wails, Me-eeetwallah, mee-eet. Outside the window, a Marathi manus is asking mournfully if anyone would like to buy salt.

Big hoom