But that’s it for now. She jumps up, marches into the bathroom, there are alternating gurgles of pipes and faucets while I smoke a cigarette, take a little (cleverly set up) baking soda with a sip of water, slowly begin to dress. She comes back from the bathroom—“Do you have to go so soon?”—the question is asked quite impersonally, a manner of speaking, so to speak, even the finest ear could not detect any implicit protest. While I then lay claim to the bathroom, she telephones for a taxi (“A gentleman would like to be driven downtown”). The leave-taking is (although jestingly intimate) casual (“Well, dear, be good now, but not too good!”). She holds the apartment door open, waiting to say good-bye, and as I pass her going into the hallway, she raises her arm to buzz open the building door, her dressing gown falls open, there is a split second of breast splendor—but before I can even think of returning, she has pulled it out of sight with a quick motion of her left hand. The building door springs open with a hissing squashed humming of wasps, I don’t have to turn my head, I know she’s still standing there, intersected by the door and door frame in a narrow rectangle of light that is denser and yellower than the neon lymph in the hallway. When I get to the front door, she sends a last “So long!” after me (it topples from a headvoice C down to the A: “So lo-ong!”), and I slam the stubborn reluctant door behind me: an air cushion in the cylinder catches the swing, and the door settles with slow dignity and a pejorative hiss into the lock. The final snap is salvation, I hear it as I flee, hunched into the artificial-leather upholstery of the taxi, I give my address to the cloddish male rump in front of me, and a hand (lit by the blue dashboard light) turns a key, the engine, rattling, kicks on, a pull on the gearshift sets the car in motion, in the rearview mirror the outlines of the first, the second, the third high-rise block (covered with radiant square mildew spots) dance darkly in the cobalt blue, and then the entire development is visible: Stonehenge, starting to fluoresce in its decay. . . It swings to the left and out of the mirror’s range while we dip rightward into the bright flurry of an arc lamp.

Thereafter, at home, in the blissful solitude of my rented room, my dream. . .

•

There is no basis whatsoever for assuming that S. could actually be connected to my dream. It was probably pure coincidence that at the very moment the slip of paper with Schwab’s name came into my hand, the fear hit me like a punch in the solar plexus—the fear that my murder was real, was not the projection of some triviality that had slid into my subconscious and been dramatically enlarged there by the residues of old established guilt complexes, was truly what my dream showed me: the gruesome killing of an old crone for no other reason than to prevent some even more shameful ignominy from coming to light. The momentary recognition is almost pleasurable: it is a holy terror that strikes me . . . but there’s no way this sort of thing could be triggered by the thought of S., much less by my projecting him into a fictional character: a ridiculous notion, inspired by an overwrought brain. A hint of burnout, presumably. Nevertheless . . .