a nixie, suddenly in the still smooth surface of the well:

up to her shoulders in the hasty game of tag played by the rings of water, her hair flowing out and splotched with flashes of green light from the depths she rose out of, her eyes astonished by the alien human world she is gazing at.

It was an illusion, but it made me realize what the lack of understanding was all about that had existed between Christa and me from the start.

•

Among the papers from 1965, I can’t find anything referring directly to Schwab’s funeral (the occasion of my final stay in Hamburg, which lasted for just three days).

The date books for 1965 and 1966 are still somewhere with the things Gaia left when she died—I nurse the suspicion that she hid them in order to secretly keep them for herself. They contained our story in playful, foolishly tender code words that only the two of us could understand; and in the end, after her death, I hadn’t had the emotional fortitude to rummage through her apartment. Presumably they ended up with other personal effects at the Marché aux Puces (from which had come so much of what had often afforded us the bliss of discovery browsers and collectors feel when they make a find).

But I know for sure that while returning from Hamburg to Paris (this time via Saarbrücken), I sketched out a treatise on love. And I think I remember having at least set down an outline of it in the days that followed.

Splendid days, incidentally. The city of Paris was still alive. I was still alive. I had just loved Dawn and I now loved Gaia. Our wanderings through an autumnal Versailles: the brown-blue-golden backdrop to Gaia’s exoticism. Her large, brown hand in my coat pocket. The rhythm of our steps in the wet leaves (two of my steps for every one of hers, my caryatid; I, holding Miss Fern’s hand as I toddle along the Promenade des Anglais; Dawn at Lake Zurich, toddling along beside me, holding my hand, two doll-like steps on high-heeled shoes for every step I take).

The good silence between Gaia and me. Our even breathing. A word or two exchanged now and then. The calm question whether I’m writing anything else besides my work for the piglets. Yes, a book. (Shamefaced confession.)

“A novel?”

“I’m not quite sure. There’s so much chatter about what a novel is and what it isn’t that I don’t know anymore. In any case, it’s a story that begins with the childhood of its main character and ends with his death.”

“Is it very important for you to write it?”

“My friend—you know who I mean—”

“I know. . .”

“Well, he died because he couldn’t write it.”

“Is it his story?”

“Mine, of course. Who would dare write anything but his own story? Yes—stories. The kind of stuff I write for the movies. Pulp romances—no end of them. I have another friend, a man named Nagel. He churns out three a year. He’s a candidate for the Nobel Prize.”