I feel a pang of jealousy: I know the quarter tones in the range of Madame’s voice, the syncopes in her speech rhythm: “Si tu me cocufies, carogne, je vais te tuer!” Her laughter is defiantly uterine, it drives me crazy, the colored slut, let’s reverse the classical model and make it negative, with a white Othello strangling a black Desdemona . . . she’s as strong as a beer-wagon horse, but I’ve got my tricks, she’s already panting under me (“Attention, ours! Le verre—tu casses le verre, imbécile!”), I give her enough time to drink up, but then . . . the great affection makes me indolent, I sit on her lap, she cradles me gently in her powerful arms (c’est là que j’ai vécu dans les voluptés calmes / au milieu de l’azur, des vagues, des splendeurs / et des esclaves nus, tout imprégnés d’odeurs), I love her, I kiss her with ardently closed eyes: baby blisses, primordial home of mucous membranes, wonderworld of warm body fragrances (et je buvais ton souffle, ô douceur, ô poison . . . how does it go after that? . . . Qui me rafraîchissaient le front avec les palmes—that’s a different part, but it fits: qui me faisaient languir—it doesn’t rhyme, but it’s poetic) . . . the fire in the hearth burns slowly down, I stare into the glow, which starts to blink at me with black eyes, I’m snugly exhausted, the implacable experience of the singular, the extraordinary, the exquisite, fills me with steady, intense sleepiness, Madame leafs through the latest fashion magazines, I slowly sip my calvados, even this is a strain: every exquisite move made becomes a cultic gesture, I am too sloppy for such priesthood, I cannot celebrate myself in every moment of life, one really needs the energy of a Rastignac to be a full-fledged citizen of Paris, I don’t have it, I’m a lazy barbarian brooding about the ephemerality of things . . . in the fireplace, the black eyes splinter off in the fiery glow and turn ashen-gray, a final log is consumed, a lonesome salamander, I place the fire screen before its flame-darting rump (the reptile hisses softly), I yawn so hard my cheeks crack (good heavens: another day is done, and my book? . . .), she’s reading an endless article in Vogue, it must be very interesting, I wish I could read, anything, I haven’t been able to read for months, at best my weekly horoscope in Elle, why bother with anything else? Now, for instance, we could have been in bed for an hour already, sleeping (D’accord, mon ours—tu penses à ton travail très tôt le matin, n’est-ce pas?—naturally, what else?), we go to the bedroom, undress—and then comes the big moment (secretly feared): “Ours! Tu sais ce que tu dois faire—allez hopp!” and taking an enormous leap, she jumps on my back, it’s the nicest thing in the world for her, there’s nothing she enjoys more, nothing more intimate (a childhood dream, she’s confessed to me: being carried by a lover—no man has ever been prepared to do so)—so I allow one hundred fifty-two pounds of live weight to heave up onto my shoulders, under her impact my ribs crack from the vertebrae, my ears roar, I see red curlicues, but I bravely trot through the entire apartment with her: bedroom, dining room, salon, her study, my study, the vestibule, the guest rooms, three times all around, then I unload her in the bathroom (“Bravo, ours!