nixie-bright female flesh bursting through the fish baskets of bodices, caught smooth as eels in the black nets of cancan stockings; lascivious gaping coral lips millipedes of false eyelashes peacock-blue-green mother-o’-pearl of mascaraed eyelids; blond hair like beer foam, black hair grease-enameled in piglet-tail whorls, painted on floury-powdered skin; cartwheel hats the plunder of ostrich plumes the impudent fire of crab-red wigs over violet feather boas the pale medusas of tremendous breasts fat arms like dragon bodies guarding the grottos of acrid-smelling shaven armpits the lacing of hams of tremendous matron-thighs high-heeled champagne-bottle-shaped boots tightly buttoned up to the jellied-meat of old knees emaciation-larvae of weak sweaty cellar-child-skinniness back-courtyard-vileness of eyes and words knife-sharp voices and the clatter of keys on the salon windowpanes)

and there—I cannot believe my eyes, but there she is: the same woman; the woman I saw just a few short weeks ago, striding as proud as a queen through the tattered railroad terminal.

She sits with her back beautifully straight, gazing imperturbably out into the street. Her full, rusty-brown hair is swept up; she wears nothing but a lightweight sleeveless sweater with a narrow turtleneck and very short velvet pants (years later, they would be all the rage as so-called hot pants); her wonderful long legs are bare; her feet are in flat suede pumps.

I purchase a quick trick; she handles it with sovereign and businesslike dispatch, merely stripping off her hotpants; only after I put a bonus on the table is she willing to pull the sweater over her head. She is not wearing a bra, her breasts are magnificent. She knows how beautiful she is, and she is intelligent enough to know that such beauty counts for little here; the important things here are stylization, alienation from reality, denial of reality, which the imagination puts, unrestrictedly, into the splendors of its creations. This doesn’t bother her; nothing fazes her: she is sovereign, utterly sure of herself.

Our coupling takes place on a narrow, greasy sofa; the room is tiny and messy, repugnantly appointed with teasing effects in the worst petit bourgeois taste; one can smell the bedbugs in every nook and cranny. The thin door cannot be locked, it opens onto a stairway that creaks continually under footsteps, voices speak, as loud and as close as if they were with us in the room. The whole place smells of chamber pots and disinfectants.

I have to overcome an instant of panic, which ambushes me with a memory