"Listen," he said, in his loudest voice, "I heard your entire conversation. I would say in this case the man is very unjust and the woman right. She was more faithful than the man. She was faithful to a personal emotion, to a personal rite."

"Who are you?" said the man in the other room, angrily.

"No one in particular, just a neighbor."

There was a long silence. Then the sound of a door being closed violently. Faustin heard one person moving about with soft rustles. Judging from the steps, it was the man who had gone out.

Faustin lay down again, meditating on his own anxiety.

He felt at this moment like a puppet, but he became aware that all this had happened many times before to him, but never as clearly.

All living had taken place for him in the other room, and he had always been the witness. He had always been the commentator.

He felt a guilt for having listened, which was like the guilt he felt at other times for never being the one in action. He was always accompanying someone to a marriage, not his own, to a hospital, to a burial, to a celebration in which he played no part but that of the accompanist.

He was allowing them all to live for him, and then articulating a judgment. He was allowing Jay to paint for him, and then he was the one to write ironic articles on his exhibits. He was allowing Sabina to devastate others with her passion, and smiling at those who were consumed or rejected. Now at this moment he was ashamed not to be the one consumed or rejected. He allowed Djuna to speak, Michael to face the tragic consequences of his deviations in love. He was allowing others to cry, to complain, to die.

And all he did was to speak across a protective wall, to knock with anger and say: you are right, and you are wrong.

Rendered uneasy by these meditations, he dressed himself and decided to go to the café.

He was called Uncle Philip by everyone, even by those who were not related to him.

He had the solicitous walk of an undertaker, the unctuous voice of a floorwalker.

His hands were always gloved, his heels properly resoled, his umbrella sheathed.

It was impossible to imagine him having been a child, or even an adolescent. It was admitted he possessed no photographs of that period, and that he had the taste never to talk about this obviously nonexistent facet of his personality. He had been born gray-haired, slender and genteel.

Attired in the most neutral suit, with the manners of someone about to announce a bereavement, Uncle Philip nevertheless did not fulfill such threats and was merely content to register and report minutely on the activity of the large, colorful, international family to which he was related.

No one could mention a country where Uncle Philip did not have a relative who...