So I have to force myself to be disciplined, to try to create (difficult as this may be on a full stomach). I rummage about in the notes, sift carefully through the existing material, work on two pages of a chapter I sketched years ago, shift it around, draw a new structural draft, clarify the situation, purify the dialogue, chew amply on my pen, pour a jigger of whiskey to fire the creative (the Dionysian!) element—it’s five o’clock anyway, and what am I supposed to do? I’m no robot, a man’s got days when he’s in no mood for creative writing, this isn’t like baking bread, you know! . . . The whiskey is excellent (Glenmorangie), I pour myself another jigger, realize I’m tired, weary, empty; the incessant enjoyment of every moment wipes me out, saps all my strength; this ought to be depicted—the sweet paralysis of an existence that is lived with all too intense enjoyment (with raised pinky finger, so to speak), unfortunately Huysmans has already done it—and I lie down on the sofa to figure out if and how this can be integrated into the theme of my novel, wake up at seven, thank goodness—I’ve still got a good hour (she never comes home before eight or eight-thirty) . . . I go through my manuscript from the very beginning, cross out a few pages, rewrite a few others, while the hour passes like the blink of an eye and Gaia is already whirling in (vanilla wind of exotic spice shores), freshly lacquered (she dropped in at the coiffeur), her Moor’s cheeks glowing (“Tu sais, mon ours, il fait assez froid ce soir”). Glancing over my shoulder at the manuscript (“Voilà! Toujours à la page treize—comme si je ne le savais pas!” with scarcely a very fine shadow of bitterness in her voice), she must be in a good mood (thank the Lord!) and when she’s in a good mood then it’s a festival, it’s paradise on earth: the lamb and the tiger catfighting like brother and sister, laughing, joking, nuzzling (“Je t’ai eu, salaud: tu n’as pas travaillé cet après-midi, tu as bu, tu as dormi et tu as rien foutu—confesse, canaille!”), I love her, she is my sister, I don’t have to lie to her (“Je te le jure, mon amour: j’ai récrit au moins dix pages et j’en ai gagné au moins trois toutes nouvelles!”). She asks over her shoulder how many I crossed out, she’s already on her way to the bathroom, intending to warm up by jumping into hot water (Lord, preserve this house!), I follow her, perch on the edge of the tub, around the twins of her solid little breasts (the designer’s name is Maillol), the hot blue water smokes boreally, an adventurously contradictory geography: an Arctic atoll in the copper light of a desert sunset. In the depths, a sunken continent lies darkly, attempts to rise: Leviathan, from which the waters cascade, telluric birth out of the boiling ocean, growing up into the rain-fecundated Earth Mother, a brown breadfuit tree with honey dripping from its branches, a stream of water runs from her throat, quickly narrowing between her breasts, catching in the pit of the navel, one drop jumps across, races over the smooth curve of her belly and flees into the black bush wedged between her powerful thighs, a rough black chalice.