Impulse without fulfilment. Can any Petitions Committee ever right this wrong? Very deliberately on my narrow bed in this nondescript hotel room where at one-thirty or -forty the apparently staid Avvocato Malerba still hasn’t returned to his bed, I start to masturbate over Plaster-cast-tottie. I start to masturbate, after my normal fashion. But to do this I have to remember what she looks like. What does she look like? And all I can remember is the unconcealed disappointment in her bright glassy eyes when, rather than remaining behind in the hotel lounge on our return from the stube supper, I elected to follow Vikram Griffiths and others out into the night in search of a bar, leaving her and her hobbling plaster-cast behind. I elected to go on this alcohol hunt, I reflect now, because she -had elected not to go on it, just as I elected to come on this coach trip because she had elected to come on it. Whether I choose to be where she is, or where she isn’t, it is always she who governs the choice.
