Since then, I’ve been returning here regularly: whenever I’m fed up with the true-blue folkloristically preserved greasiness of the deluxe tourist hostels on the Left Bank; whenever the movie piglets won’t foot the bill for the George V; whenever I want to write undisturbed for a couple of days or read Nagel’s latest best-selling novel; sometimes simply because I want to be as alone as I truly am; sometimes, in Gaia’s days, whenever we had fought or I was overcome with a surfeit of my luxury-consumer existence; and over and over again when I have the compulsive thought that I might be pounced on in some hour of grace by the vision of a form for my book (as occurred during my drive here from Reims, as has occurred all too often throughout the last nineteen years; for the IT, which wants to be spoken through this book, constantly prowls after me; I can sense it at the back of my neck—only whenever I try to make a swift grab at it, it evaporates) . . .

in short: I return to this lousy dump like a murderer to the scene of his crime.

You know the details of my stay this time: I spent over a week here (one day more or less makes no difference) as a voluntary inmate (solitary confinement). The cause, as indicated several times, was an illumination during the drive here from Reims: I finally had collared my pursuer. The it that wanted to be spoken through me had revealed itself. The parasitic egg that Schwab had once (nineteen years ago!) planted in me had hatched, had gotten through its caterpillar stage, and was now floating before my eyes as a richly colored butterfly. All I had to do was grab him. Only—since we’re dealing with such pretty metaphors—I had reckoned without zoology and without the relationship between the guest and the host.

The eggs of the parasitic ichneumon wasp, Mr. Brodny, never become butterflies; they are placed in caterpillars which, in turn, nurture the hope of becoming butterflies. The evil guests eat up their hosts from the inside; no beautiful metamorphosis ever comes about. All that remains is an empty shell into which (as into Uncle Helmuth’s mediums when they stepped out in a trance) an astral being, freely floating in the beyond, can take up residence and materialize at will. Should your kind interest in me go so far that you muster enough patience to skim through the papers I am sending you with this (far too lengthy, far too prolix—forgive me) epistle, then you will find the faithful notation of such an occurrence.