Tu as été très fort ce soir—presque aussi fort que le père Bouglion—et Dieu! ce qu’il était fort!”). I love her, I stand at the bathroom mirror, brushing my disheveled hair, she stands behind me and says, “Tiens! C’est comme ça que tu te vois . . .” What? How so? Qu’est-ce qu’il y a? “Rien. Je t’ai seulement vu comme tu te vois toi-même.” So what? What’s so special about how I see myself? “Tu ne te vois que dans le miroir, n’estce pas?” Of course not, where else could I? “Et je te vois différemment.” One hopes. So what? “Rien de spécial. Pour une fois je t’ai vu comme tu te vois?” “Viens, ne dis pas de bêtises—allons au lit!” And lights out, shuddering with bliss under the fur cover, snuggling together, flesh entangled with flesh, flesh galore, flesh in masses, in mountains, pulsating blood-warm, spice-scented, coffee-brown female flesh . . . I think of the salmon in her mouth and, suicidally, sink the defective teeth of the Caucasian race into her.

Thereafter, my dream . . .

•

Or another time, a year earlier, the period of my martyrdom. The no less remarkable creature whom I loved during that period was named Dawn. An American. Twenty-one years old. Extremely beautiful. A fashion model by profession. A psychopath. A virgin when I met her (soon no longer, but God alone knows with what terrible effort). Drove me crazy with her unpredictable ways.

At present, she’s vanished somewhere in Paris, I’m stuck in Hamburg, Wohlfahrt has promised me a movie, as usual it’s taking forever but I can’t get away, I’m in hot water, Christa’s suing me for her alimony, I’ve got to scrape up the money for my son’s tuition, creditors are beating down my door, my friends here (Rönnekamp, Schwab) are avoiding me like a leper, I’ve milked all of them for cash, Big-Time Publisher Scherping won’t give another penny for the book I’ve been promising him for years.

Yet daily, nightly, I phone away a fortune. It took me two weeks to find out that Dawn had landed in the Hôtel Épicure again, heaven only knows in what condition. In any case, I can’t get her to the phone: morning noon and night I talk to Madame, to the handsome Pole, I leave messages that are never passed on, directions no one gives a damn about, I act like a total lunatic. Strangely enough, I’m working marvelously despite everything, I’ve written two presentable chapters of my book, it took me only a few hours to hand Wohlfahrt a treatment based on a subject now popular with distributors and he was jubilant (“Damn it, baby, we’re gonna knock those guys on their asses!”), and on the side, I’ve got three subjects of my own that I’m penning, or rather ballpointing: the words are simply scurrying across the paper. And I’m getting fatter and fatter. The broad is fattening me up.