The movements of the symphony and her movements had been always like Paul's, a ballet of oscillations, peripheral entrances and exits, figures designed to become invisible in moments of danger, pirouetting with all the winged knowledge of birds to avoid collision with violence and severity.

Together they had taken leaps into the air to avoid obstacles.

The Café

THE CAFÉ

THE CAFÉS WERE THE WELLS of treasures, the caves of Ali Baba.

The cafés were richer even than the oriental cities where all living was plied openly under your eyes so that you were offered all the activities of the world to touch and smell. You saw your shoes being made from the skinning of the animal to the polishing of the leather. You saw the weaving of cloth and the dyeing in pails of multicolored liquids. You saw the scribes writing letters for the illiterate, the philosopher meditating, the religious man chanting as he squatted and the lepers disintegrating under your eyes, within the touch of your hand.

And so in the café, with one franc for a glass of wine and even less for coffee, you could hear stories from the Pampas, share in African voodoo secrets, read the pages of a book being written, listen to a poem, to the death rattles of an aristocrat, the life story of a revolutionary. You could hear the hummed theme of a symphony, watch the fingers of a jazz drummer drumming on the table, accept an invitation from a painter who would take you to the zoo to watch the serpents eat their daily ration of white mice, consult a secretive Hindu on his explorations of occult streets, or meet an explorer who would take you on his sailboat around the world.

The chill of autumn was tempered by little coal stoves and glass partitions.

A soft rain covered the city with a muted lid, making it intimate like a room, shutting out sky and sun as if drawing curtains, lighting lamps early, kindling fires in the fireplaces, pushing human beings gently to live under the surface, inciting them to sprout words, sparkling colors out of their own flesh, to become light, fire, flowers and tropical fiestas.

The café was the hothouse, densely perfumed with all the banned oils, the censured musks, the richest blooms accelerated by enclosure, warmth, and crossgraftings from all races.

No sunsets, no dawns, but exhibits of paintings rivaling all in luxuriance. Rivers of words, forests of sculptures, huge pyramids of personalities. No need of gardens.

City and cafés became intimate like a room that was carpeted, quilted for the easy intermingling of man's inner landscapes, his multiple secret wishes vibrating from table to table as elbows and the garçon not only carried brimming glasses but endless messages and signals as the servants did in the old Arabian tales.

Day and night were colliding gently at twilight, throwing off erotic sparks.

Day and night met on the boulevards.

Sabina was always breaking the molds which life formed around her.