I was irritated by his bogus linguistic nonchalance; the cheap freshness, preciously studded with the affectedly correct pronunciation of “ boulevard Saint-Michel” (although I’m grateful to him for not saying “Boul’ Mich’ ” ). Also, I left two manuscripts on the plane, things I’m supposed to read. He doesn’t find this so awful either: Schelmie must have copies she can send me. It makes me furious: Schelmie has no copies; I took the manuscripts precisely in order to spare her such measures of solicitude; now they’re lost for good (this will lead to incalculably tiresome arguments with Scherping).

“Maiden efforts by promising young talents?” he asks, reaching for my cigarettes. “Or even one of yours?”

For an instant, I’m alert, eager, almost delighted. What is he after? Treating me with numb-fingered caution, the way you treat a paranoiac: you clear anything out of his way that you think might anger him. A moment later, he trips me up from behind. Yet inside, he is so nervous that he trembles. I catch myself thinking, irritatedly, So he’s concerned about me. I make him uneasy. Why does he put up with me? He needs me. I’m necessary to him because I work for Scherping and I can turn the faucet on and off for his advances. His writhing helplessness is poignant. His scattered life grinds him down. One has to protect him.

I compliment him on his suit. I mean it honestly, but it sounds a bit venomous. (My exact words are: “Once again you look almost indecently elegant.”) He smiles sneakily. It amuses me to see him wondering what he can get me with. (I anxiously await the outcome.)

We drink another gin and tonic (my third). Paris begins to collapse upon me. I’ve been here for three hours already and I still have the plane turbines droning in my ears. If I went to my hotel now, I’d tumble into bed and sleep the rest of the day away. So I drink another coffee (and take another Pervitin on the sly). He acts like he doesn’t notice. For the moment (as if he realizes that I don’t want him watching), he wraps himself up in a newspaper. I know that he scarcely ever reads the papers, that nothing in them interests him. So he is only pretending to read; he puts down the paper the instant I swallow the pill. In a chatty tone he asks me about Hamburg. But I interrupt and ask how he found me. A piece of cake: he asked for me in the hotel and was told that I went out right away; the most obvious thing was to check here.

This rankles me. I’m annoyed that I’m so predictable. An unimaginative provincial who arrives in Paris and can’t think of anything better to do than sit on the terrace of the Deux Magots. He actually says as much quite brazenly:

“Nice sitting out here, isn’t it? Especially on such a lovely day. One learns quickly that it doesn’t get any better here in Paris. Nothing is quite what it is. But everything’s bursting with clues to an artificial superreality. That guy over there, squinting so obstinately, is not Sartre, but he could be. And that gay Negro is not Baldwin, but he could be, and why shouldn’t one take him for Baldwin? After all, the wild strawberries at Maxim’s were grown in a hothouse, but that doesn’t ruin the tarte aux fraises. On the contrary, it’s what guarantees perfection. It’s as if the mixture of types here had been very skillfully prescribed by a public-relations firm working for the Ministry of the Interior: not inauthentic—that wouldn’t seem Parisian—but simply artificial. Imagine how gladly you’d have stayed in Hamburg if there too the thugs and loiterers in the whores’ alleys of the Reeperbahn were on fixed salaries, paid by Hamburg’s Cultural Affairs Department.”