In the side road where we finally halted, another car approached us. The driver stuck his head out the window and proposed a partouse somewhere in Neuilly. “Non merci, mon vieux, nous avons des problèmes, tu vois.” “Oh là là! . . .” Dawn remained wordless and motionless throughout. (Don’t act so puritanical, I thought, you with your unknown lover!) But the night was soft, and naturally I couldn’t help myself, I had to talk. Had to tell her what I felt for her. What I had suffered because of her. Suffered mainly because I had been forced to torment her (to my son: when Daddy spanks you, it hurts him more than you). That I had been forced to torment her, however, because I loved her so tremendously (just as Daddy loves his little boy). That she had never understood the full extent of the causal relationship (just like Daddy’s little boy). How regrettable that was, though, what a waste of good time in our lives if one thought about it, wasn’t it? Yet how beautiful, how wonderful it could be if . . .

Around us, the lovely city of Paris hummed and seethed (some fifteen million inhabitants when you include the suburbs: first-class nuclear target). And there I was, talking once again—oh shame! Once again spewing out the contents of my soul. Vomitatio animae. My inner life, fermented in its emotional essence (“a speciality of the bloody fucking middle classes,” as John and Stella called it).

Thus did I talk, spitting forth a lover’s verbal gruel. Nonstop and in detail. Soliloquizing. Laying my worldview at her feet. The ordeal of human life. God’s coldheartedness. Needless to say, I did not make it sentimental (people like us avoid sentimentality like the plague). I said, “I’m sorry, my darling, I know it’s not agreeable to be loved, but . . .” I spiced my verbal gruel with piquant little jests. (“What does Torquato Tasso say? Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast . . . That’s not quite the case with me. Two breasts, alas, are dwelling in my soul, and they’re yours!”) In short, I did everything to make myself disagreeable.

Overhead, in the dark backdrop of branches, the stars were twinkling. Many, many. God alone has counted them. It must have taken Him His sweet time. Galactorrhea in the firmament. And it’s big. If you imagined the sun (its diameter one hundred and nine times the size of the Earth’s) as the head of a pin somewhere in West or East Berlin, then the next fixed star would be like a soccer ball in Hamburg. And here I was sitting and talking of my love. Pouring out verbal gruel.

Embarrassing. But—oh my goodness! What man hasn’t been guilty of this sort of thing? And I of all people—how often, how many shameful times, had I not already done this! Talked away, tormented, pigheaded, and persistent, at some then-beloved female. Sputtering verbal figures wrung from necessity: aphorisms, sublimated from my spiritual ordeal. Sentences fraught with confession. Metaphysical knowledge. Blurted out to the beloved female body, to the sweet female flesh, to the soft skin, the fine, frail limbs, the tender curves, the airy, fragrant hair—oh misery! To a face that briefly epitomized all the sweetness of life, mother, sister, the regained half of the original pair, the fulfillment of the dream of being One, of blissfully entering, dissolving into, another human being. To eyes whose depths I filled with poetry and there found the answer to myself. (How did Scherping put it? “If only they couldn’t speak. If they just barked or meowed, then we wouldn’t expect them to react humanly like you and me . . .”)