And I am talking. Spouting confused verbal gruel. I say, “Why, on the other hand, were there so few neuropaths in Uncle Ferdinand’s circle of friends, in the ‘Middle Kingdom’ of his playmates at the polo grounds and baccarat tables of Deauville and Monte Carlo? After all, their monstrous wealth and constant idleness ought to have created all kinds of neuroses and psychoses. But not a trace. On the contrary: the serenest rapport with life. Not a hint of communication problems or the like. Model sociability: Uncle Agop’s parties were epoch-making. Bully Olivera had more friends the world over than Dr. Schweitzer. Plus the smoothest, most graceful love affairs with dozens of women. I remember what Uncle Ferdinand said to me about his relationship with my mother when I visited him for the last time, in Bessarabia, during the winter of 1939– 40: ‘She was an ideal mistress in the truest sense of the word—not only a great beauty but a great teacher of life. She used to say, “The entire secret of a harmonious mind lies in the ability to recognize the imminent formation of cramps and to prevent it in time. If you desire something that you can’t get—then a cramp will form. You have to relax it before it distorts everything else. Vous comprenez, mon ami? . . .” I did understand her. She taught me that the encounter of two people is like the collision of two billiard balls: only one point of one touches one point of the other. Therefore we must never draw conclusions about the entire relationship. For only a moment later, some other point of mine meets another point of yours, changing the relationship entirely. The number of possibilities is infinite. Every instant is new and without precondition—that is to say, with no rights deriving from a previous moment. Hence, every instant of harmony is a gift. Every possible next instant of estrangement is due to a change of reciprocal position that must be respected.’ That,” I say to S., “is what I call realism. There’s something really artistic about it. I wish our politicians had it, not to speak of the poets . . .”

Schwab doubles over as if he’d been punched in the stomach. He hears scorn and malice in every word. He believes I am out to torture him. His hand trembles so badly that his Cuba libre sloshes out of the glass before he can bring it to his lips. His sensitivity provokes me to bait him. I needn’t think up anything. Whatever I say elicits something from him.

I say, “I don’t quite know whether I should be flattered or insulted by your suspicion that my equanimity about losing Dawn may not be genuine. That it is only feigned to camouflage wholly different and dramatic feelings.” (I intentionally use the word “camouflage,” which is bound to provoke him.) “How little you know me! I mean, how poorly you appreciate my literary déformation professionelle! Don’t you notice? I’m so fascinated by myself as a case that I haven’t got a scrap of attention left for my personal feelings. I must ask you to indulge me: regrettably, I cannot suffer, as you wish, after the loss of my beloved, because for the time being I am much too interested in what actually went on here. Something in any case that didn’t simply happen to me. Rather something that, as you witnessed, I undertook of my own free will and with open eyes. After all, I dashed into this madness consciously and deliberately: I needed the experience. An experience, though, that was the very opposite of what you think.