In his room he noted down expenses on a pad. Then he looked at the pages he’d written and didn’t think he could do any more. It was too hard. It was harder than major surgery and it didn’t even keep you alive. He looked at a picture on the wall and saw everything that existed outside the room he was sitting in and the one he was trying to write about. It was a picture of fishing nets stowed in canvas baskets and it had sex, memories, cravings, names of old friends, principal rivers of the world. Writing was bad for the soul when you got right down to it. It protected your worst tendencies. Narrowed everything to failure and its devastations. Gave your cunning an edge of treachery and your jellyfish heart a reason to fall deeper into silence. He couldn’t remember why he wanted to write about the hostage. He’d done some pages he halfway liked but what was the actual point?