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- Feb 13, 2022
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I encountered the expression "Now watch the fort", but am struggling to understand it. Could you please let me know what it means? Here is the excerpt:
One day, I’ll come to clean the place out, picking up the shards of her life, of his life, worse yet, of my own life here. God knows what I’ll find, what I’m not prepared to find. His alarm clock, his address book, his pipe tools. A large ashtray bearing his yellowed meerschaum pipes with their engraved turbaned Turks scowling like two bookends who can’t stand each other’s sight. His vintage Pelikan pen and Caran d’Ache silver pencil lying, like camp inmates in the same bunk bed, head facing toe, like a dessert fork and spoon, his lacquered lighter, and, first among them, waiting cross-armed, running out of patience, his horn-rimmed specs, probably folded ever so warily, yet abandoned without false pretenses at the last minute when he said, Okay, let’s go face that witch doctor now. I can just see the resigned admonition in his gesture when he placed his glasses right smack in the middle of his emptied, clean glass desktop, meaning, Now watch the fort and be good to others, which reminds me how he’d take out a twenty-dollar bill and tuck it under an ashtray before leaving a hotel bedroom, meaning, You’ve been good to me, now be good to the next fellow. He was good to things, good to people. Listened, always listened. Somewhere, I am sure, Mother has stowed away his wine tools.
- André Aciman, Eight White Nights, Eight Night
This is a novel published in the United States of America in 2010. It is narrated by a nameless male protagonist. He meets Clara at a Christmas party in Manhattan. Now the protagonist is at his mother's home. He thinks how one day he would have to clean up his mother's house and find many things from the past.
I wonder what the underlined expression means.
My wild guess is "Now, watch the fortress", but it does not seem to make sense, so I just wanted to ask you.
One day, I’ll come to clean the place out, picking up the shards of her life, of his life, worse yet, of my own life here. God knows what I’ll find, what I’m not prepared to find. His alarm clock, his address book, his pipe tools. A large ashtray bearing his yellowed meerschaum pipes with their engraved turbaned Turks scowling like two bookends who can’t stand each other’s sight. His vintage Pelikan pen and Caran d’Ache silver pencil lying, like camp inmates in the same bunk bed, head facing toe, like a dessert fork and spoon, his lacquered lighter, and, first among them, waiting cross-armed, running out of patience, his horn-rimmed specs, probably folded ever so warily, yet abandoned without false pretenses at the last minute when he said, Okay, let’s go face that witch doctor now. I can just see the resigned admonition in his gesture when he placed his glasses right smack in the middle of his emptied, clean glass desktop, meaning, Now watch the fort and be good to others, which reminds me how he’d take out a twenty-dollar bill and tuck it under an ashtray before leaving a hotel bedroom, meaning, You’ve been good to me, now be good to the next fellow. He was good to things, good to people. Listened, always listened. Somewhere, I am sure, Mother has stowed away his wine tools.
- André Aciman, Eight White Nights, Eight Night
This is a novel published in the United States of America in 2010. It is narrated by a nameless male protagonist. He meets Clara at a Christmas party in Manhattan. Now the protagonist is at his mother's home. He thinks how one day he would have to clean up his mother's house and find many things from the past.
I wonder what the underlined expression means.
My wild guess is "Now, watch the fortress", but it does not seem to make sense, so I just wanted to ask you.
