ABSTRACT
Catherine, sculptor, standing in the glare of the Ibiza sun, is working on The Negress. Catherine, wife of Ernest, considers herself a neo-realist. Neo-realists, she explains in her Southern accent, the deep accent of an educated Southerner, blend reality and fantasy. I am a satirist and literary prankster whose favorite narrators are fictitious narrators with their own idiosyncracies. I am on the terrace of the fisherman’s house, la casa del pescador (“la casa del pecador,” Catherine calls it; but “pescador” means fisherman, while “pecador,” everyone knows, means sinner). I’m in the peacock’s chair reading the impressionist Chekov and Feodor Sologub’s The Petty Demon and more Sologub, “In Bondage,” in the bright glare of the same Ibiza sun.
