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This is not the first time I’ve undertaken such a sifting. I’d say it occurs with periodic regularity. Whenever I delude myself into thinking I might yield to the hope that I could finally find enough time, concentration, leisure (or rather: freedom from pressing necessities) to produce something conclusive and whole out of this welter of eruptively hurled-out literary production, the compulsion to create order overcomes me. Needless to say that each time I have had occasion to lament how thoroughly I had acted in prior cullings. In the past I have destroyed the irreplaceable—in all likelihood this time as well. And not once have I managed to advance the new conception, for whose sake I so horribly mangled the old one, far enough that my manuscript found a clearly defined form.

Not this time either. Although this last attempt (and failure) was undertaken with a clearer notion than ever before, and, unlike the previous ones, was not stymied by some unforeseen and unavoidable obstacle. What prevented achievement was something completely unforeseen, something that lay not in the thing itself, in the conception of the book or in my shortcomings as its author. It came from outside (I emphasize this word in order to indicate that I mean something that in fact came from outside normal reality: see the notes on Uncle Helmuth’s spiritualist circles; also Gaia’s mother—in Folder C).

Its way was prepared in me by a state of unusual exaltation, likely as a result of my heightened state of expectation. Eight days (and nights) ago I set to working in a state of excitement such as had overcome me before now only in the most humiliating moments of love. (The same foolishly intensified existential awareness; the same heedless fixation: nothing matters anymore that isn’t connected to this one, this only true, this all-excluding love: the same immediate presentness.) Incidentally, en route here, in Reims, where I had spent the night, I had dreamed my dream.

It is an evil dream, which has haunted me for several years. Nineteen years, to be exact. Not regularly, of course, but at various short and long intervals. I can never figure out what triggers it. This time too there was no apparent cause. It ambushed me like a highwayman. (The element of surprise is its most effective feature.)

The dream was in most of its features the same as always. I commit my murder for no other reason than a vile cover-up. Covering up some shameful crime that would come to light if I didn’t murder the old cleaning woman. Like a coward, I kill this lamentable creature of mislived life—mistreated, humiliated humanity, foul flesh and rags—in the most brutal way. And as I go to bury the corpse, I realize with increasing certainty that nothing can help me, that I have murdered in vain and that I will be found out—worse, I will be found out along with the deeply disgraceful reason for my committing such a dreadful crime . . .