Chapter 17

The result was, by the time of my next meal, I was in a thoroughly rotten state. I was in acute pain, and my mind was a fury of moiling angry thoughts. I was momentarily cowed when he first opened the door, but watching him calmly replace the old meal with the new, and present the little paper cup with the pills—while completely ignoring me, well—thatdid it.

I threw the plate of food at him, leapt out of the bed, and began screaming. I used every abusive word in my lexicon—focusing mainly, however, on Anatole’s obesity (which he really wasn’t), his stupidity, and his family tree. And I screamed the words directly into his face.

In consequence, I didn’t see his fist coming when he hit me. I just felt it, an explosion in the right side of my head. I was conscious of the shock, and of flying backwards, into a bookshelf, and falling, only to have a cascade of dislodged volumes fall down on me. I raised my arms over my head, but did nothing else. I felt utterly done in.