So off to mail the letter to my mother, to drop it in the box and walk down Olive Street, where there were no brick buildings, and then across an empty lot and down another street that was barren of buildings to a street where only a low fence marked the spot, and then a block to a section of town where high buildings rose to the sky; but there was no escaping that block, save to walk across the street from the high buildings, walk very fast, sometimes run. And at the end of the street was the little church, and here I prayed, making my novena.

An hour later I come out, refreshed, soothed, spirits high. I take the same route home, hurry past the high buildings, stroll along the fence, dawdle through the empty lot, taking note of God’s handiwork in a line of palm trees near the alley. And so up to Olive Street, past the drab frame houses. What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul? And then that little poem: Take all the pleasures of all the spheres, multiply them by endless years, one minute of heaven is worth them all. How true! How true! I thank thee, Oh heavenly light, for showing the way.

A knock on the window. Someone was knocking on the window of that house obscured by heavy vines. I turned and found the window, saw a head; the flash of teeth, the black hair, the leer, the gesturing long fingers. What was that thunder in my belly? And how shall I prevent that paralysis of thought, and that inundation of blood making my senses reel? But I want this! I shall die without it! So I’m coming you woman in the window; you fascinate me, you kill me dead with delight and shudder and joy, and here I come, up these rickety stairs.

So what’s the use of repentance, and what do you care for goodness, and what if you should die in a quake, so who the hell cares? So I walked downtown, so these were the high buildings, so let the earthquake come, let it bury me and my sins, so who the hell cares? No good to God or man, die one way or another, a quake or a hanging, it didn’t matter why or when or how.

And then, like a dream it came. Out of my desperation it came — an idea, my first sound idea, the first in my entire life, full-bodied and clean and strong, line after line, page after page. A story about Vera Rivken.

I tried it and it moved easily. But it was not thinking, not cogitation. It simply moved of its own accord, spurted out like blood. This was it. I had it at last. Here I go, leave me be, oh boy do I love it, Oh God do I love you, and you Camilla and you and you. Here I go and it feels so good, so sweet and warm and soft, delicious, delirious. Up the river and over the sea, this is you and this is me, big fat words, little fat words, big thin words, whee whee whee.