On windy nights the shutters beat against the walls like the bony wings of a giant albatross.

The wall against which the bed lay was wildly licked by the small river waves and they could hear the lap lap lap against the mildewed flanks.

In the darkness of the barge, with the wood beams groaning, the rain falling in the room through the unrepaired roof, the steps sounded louder and more ominous. The river seemed reckless and angry.

Against the smoke and brume of their caresses, these brusque changes of mood, when the barge ceased to be the cell of a mysterious new life, an enchanted refuge; when it became the site of compressed angers, like a load of dynamite boxes awaiting explosion.

For Rango's angers and battles with the world turned to poison. The world was to blame for everything. The world was to blame for Zora having been born very poor, of an insane mother, of a father who ran away. The world was to blame for her undernourishment, her ill health, her precocious marriage, her troubles. The doctors were to blame for her not getting well. The public was to blame for not understanding her dances. The house owner should have let them off without paying rent. The grocer had no right to claim his due. They were poor and had a right to mercy.

The noise of the chain tying and untying the rowboat, the fury of the winter Seine, the suicides from the bridge, the old watchman banging his pails together as he leaped over the gangplank and down the stairs, the water seeping too fast into the hold of the barge not pumped, the dampness gathering and painting shoes and clothes with mildew. Holes in the floor, unrepaired, through which the water gleamed like the eyes of the river, and through which the legs of the chairs kept falling like an animal's leg caught in a trap.

Rango said: "My mother told me once: how can you hope to play the piano, you have the hands of a savage."

"No," said Djuna, "your hands are just like you. Three of the fingers are strong and savage, but these last two, the smallest, are sensitive and delicate. Your hand is just like you; the core is tender within a dark and violent nature. When you trust, you are tender and delicate, but when you doubt, you are dangerous and destructive."

"I always took the side of the rebel. Once I was appointed chief of police in my home town, and sent with a posse to capture a bandit who had been terrorizing the Indian villages. When I got there I made friends with the bandit and we played cards and drank all night."

"What killed your faith in love, Rango? You were never betrayed."

"I don't accept your having loved anyone before you knew me."