What Was And What Was Not

So, says Sweezus. How'd it go in the poisonous cave in Romania?

Nightmarish, says Arthur.

Good then? says Sweezus. I suppose you wrote heaps?

The Poem of the Cave, says Arthur. Infused with shattered glass. Devouring the something... I've forgotten the middle .....a pale piece of flotsam, a rabid drowned figure sinks....

Awesome! says Sweezus. Was that him, the drowned figure?

Him who? asks Arthur.

Proust, you dill, says Sweezus.

It was me, says Arthur. Proust came in but he had to go out again. He and Albertine started coughing.

Albertine! says Sweezus. What did she look like?

Boyish. His type, says Arthur.

Coolio, says Sweezus. Now, tell me every thing he said.

He hardly said anything, says Arthur. He's more into thinking.

Come ON! says Sweezus. You were with him for freakin' ages. He must've said something.

When the spider came out of his nose, on the flight back to Paris, says Arthur. He said something then.

Spit it out, says Sweezus. No wait, I'll just grab a pen.

He grabs a pen, and a notebook.

Arthur tries to remember what Proust had said when Daniel O'Connell made his dramatic reappearance.

He sneezed, says Arthur. And then he woke up. And then I told him something had come out of his nose.

A spider, says Sweezus, scribbling.

Not at that stage, says Arthur. I wanted to break it to him gently. Because the spider was known to us.

Far out! says Sweezus. Known to you? Was it Gaius's?

Yes, says Arthur. It was from the poisonous lake. Gaius caught it and kept it in a bottle. Turns out it has relatives in the Canaries.

Sweezus stops writing.

Seriously?

Yes, says Arthur. And it's name is Daniel O'Connell. Named after Daniel O'Connell the Liberator.

This means nothing to Sweezus, who missed out on 19th century Irish history at school, due to an extended family holiday.

He pauses.

Okay, says Sweezus. So what did Proust say when the spider came out of his nose and you finally told him it was Daniel O'Connell and not just a snot ball?

This, says Arthur:

I am relieved to know that it is not a snot ball, for if I had been asleep on a plane and something, which I was later to be assured was not a snot ball, by someone who had observed it during its emergence, tickled my nose, I should certainly have preferred it to be something out of the ordinary, and upon discovering that it had been a spider, and a spider that was known to me, and was a major player in the history of my unproductive affair with Albertine ......

 Does this sentence end any time soon? asks Sweezus.

No, says Arthur. And now I've lost the flow of the clauses.

Sorry, says Sweezus, Go on. Hey, wait. He had an unproductive affair with her?

Don't ask me, says Arthur.

Shit, man, you were supposed to be observing.

Do you want to hear the end of the sentence or not?

Yep! I do.

Right. So...

...an affair about which Arthur knew nothing...

You added that in!

No I didn't!

Go on.

...knew nothing, I should have been in a state resembling happiness until at a certain point the physicality of the event would have forced its way to the fore, and I should have become aghast at the thought that my nostril had been violated by a creature which only the day before had been dangling above a lake of chemosynthetic bacteria, eating smaller creatures that lived in it, but that was not...

Was snot? says Sweezus.

...was not..., says Arthur. Let me finish...

....but that was not the end of my troublesome imaginings for I then began to frighten myself with the idea that the spider had penetrated my innermost private sanctum and was therefore in some way party to my thoughts and would thereafter understand me better than I understood myself, and would know, even before I knew it, that it was...

What?

....good that it wasn't a snot ball.

The spider would have known that anyway, says Sweezus.

True, says Arthur. So, what do you think?

It's gold! says Sweezus. Come on, I'll shout you a burger.