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VERMEER
is a practicing Sikh and wishes to be known as Khalsa Hari Atmar
    LANIER CROSS
is scheduled to star in Lucy Wang’s film
Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal
    GEORGE MALINVERNO
has opened a third pizzeria in Pacific Palisades
    VINCENT BANDINE
has announced Alcazar Films’ eighteen-picture slate for the coming year
    BARKER LEAR
lives in San Luis Obispo
    MATT FRIEDRICH
has taken his own life
    “NATHALIE X AUX ETATS-UNIS”
has been nominated for an Academy Award in the “Best Foreign Film” category
    AURÉLIEN NO
is not returning your calls

T
ransfigured
N
ight
    From my tenth or eleventh year I remember the following incident:

SELBSTMORD
    In this city, and at this time, you should understand that suicide was a completely acceptable option, an entirely understandable, rational course of action to take. And I speak as one who knows its temptations intimately: three of my elder brothers took their own lives—Hans, Rudi and Kurt. That left Paul, meand my three older sisters. My sisters, I am sure, were immune to suicide’s powerful contagion. I cannot speak for Paul. As for myself, I can only say that its clean resolution of all my problems—intellectual and emotional—was always most appealing; that open door to oblivion always beckoned to me and, odd though it may seem, suicide—the idea of suicide—lies at the very foundation of all my work in ethics and logic.
THE BENEFACTOR
    I came down from the Hochreith, our house in the country, to Vienna especially to meet Herr Ficker. The big white villa in the parks of Neuwaldegg was closed up for the summer. I had one of the gardeners prepare my room and make up a bed, and his wife laid the table on the terrace and helped me cook dinner. We were to have
Naturschnitzel
with
Kochsalat
with a cold bottle of Zöbinger. Simple, honest food. I hoped Ficker would notice.
    I shaved and dressed and went out onto the terrace to wait for him to arrive. I was wearing a lemon-yellow, soft-collared shirt with no tie and a light tweed jacket that I had bought years before in Manchester. Its fraying cuffs had been repaired, in the English way, with a dun green leather. My hair was clean and still damp, my face was cool, scraped smooth. I drank a glass of sherbet water as I waited for Ficker. The evening light was milky and diffused, as if hung with dust. I could hear the faint noise of motors and carriages on the roads of Neuwaldegg and in the gathering dusk I could make out the figure of the gardener moving about in the allée of pleached limes. A fleeting but palpable peace descended on me and I thought for some minutes of David and our holidays together in Iceland and Norway. I missed him.
    Ficker was an earnest young man, taller than me (mind you, I am not particularly tall) with fine thinning hair brushed back off his brow. He wore spectacles with crooked wire frames, as if he had accidentally sat upon them and had hastilystraightened them out himself. He was neatly and soberly dressed, wore no hat and was clean-shaven. His lopsided spectacles suggested a spirit of frivolity and facetiousness that, I soon found out, was entirely inaccurate.
    I had already explained to him, by letter, about my father’s death, my legacy and how I wished to dispose of a proportion of it. He had agreed to my conditions and promised to respect my demand for total anonymity. We talked, in businesslike fashion, about the details but I could sense, as he expressed his gratitude, strong currents of astonishment and curiosity.
    Eventually he had to ask, “But why me? Why my magazine … in particular?”
    I shrugged. “It seemed to be exemplary, of its sort. I like its attitude, its, its seriousness. And besides, your writers seem the most needy.”
    “Yes … That’s true.” He was none the wiser.
    “It’s a family trait. My father was a great benefactor—to musicians mainly. We just like to do it.”
    Ficker then produced a list of writers and painters he thought were the most