Fire blooms in my chest whenever I recall the gently abashed way she told me her name was Snowy, Snowy Amworth, knowing it was a peculiar name, knowing that it was also a charming name, although she could not have known how strong that charm would be, that she was casting a lifelong spell on me. She claimed every flake of snow I would ever see, and, at the same time, the soft and fragrant air of summer twilight into which she always seemed about to dissolve, and with which she always seemed about to become one, Snowy, name of my life.

Bisected by a shadow, a truncated arm... the open palm hangs open in front of me. You wanted me to put her name into that palm? You got what you deserved. I know exactly what’s going on, and I’m not naive about the role the police are playing in it, hiding your death, even making believe you’re still alive, all because it wasn’t enough, what you did to her—and that’s the only thing that makes sense, that you are part of it too. You were all against Snowy, and us, everything was, everything but nature, which you hate, the trees and the sky, which you mock, the quiet at the Purlieus, the sound of the fountain and the birds in the drowsy haze, which you sneer at—so you want her memory now? It wasn’t enough, the image you took from her, you have to filch her image from my memory too, because I loved her, and so some of her life still lives in me? And you’ve come after me at last. You’ve finally worked up the nerve to come after me and try to take it from me, after all these years. But who did you send? A drunk?

Was that really the attempt on my memory? Or was it a trap—to provoke me to murder, and to give yourselves a pretext to make away with me? Arrest me, drag me to prison, extract her memory from my mind at your leisure then? But then, why waste a man’s life like that, when you could have pulled me right off that bench? Something is apparently restraining you. You’re the types who can’t move in straight lines. You wanted me to disclose something, didn’t you? Let me drift into her memory, and that would expose her to you, your seizure. Then you could finish the job, is that it? With me as an accomplice, and that accusation you knew would destroy me?

Well, that didn’t work out so well for you, did it? How are you going to catch me unawares now? What a blunder!