Djuna was silent, thinking that jealousy of the past was unfounded, thinking that the deepest possessions and caresses were stored away in the attics of the heart but had no power to revive and enter the present lighted rooms. They lay wrapped in twilight and dust, and if an old association caused an old sensation to revive it was but for an instant, like an echo, intermittent and transitory. Life carries away, dims, and mutes the most indelible experiences down the River Styx of vanished worlds. The body has its cores and its peripheries and such a mysterious way of maintaining intruders on the outer rim. A million cells protect the core of a deep love from ghostly invasions, from any recurrences of past loves.

An intense, a vivid present was the best exorcist of the past.

So that whenever Rango began his inquisitorial searchings into her memory, hoping to find an intruder, to battle Paul, Djuna laughed: "But your jealousy is necrophilic! You're opening tombs!"

"But what a love you have for the dead! I'm sure you visit them every day with flowers."

"Today I have not been to the cemetery, Rango!"

"When you are here I know you are mine. But when you go up those little stairs, out of the barge, walking in your quick quick way, you enter another world, and you are no longer mine."

"But you, too, Rango, when you climb those stairs, you enter another world, and you are no longer mine. You belong to Zora then, to your friends, to the café, to politics."

(Why is he so quick to cry treachery? No two caresses ever resemble each other. Every lover holds a new body until he fills it with his essence, and no two essences are the same, and no flavor is ever repeated...)

"I love your ears, Djuna. They are small and delicate. All my life I dreamed of ears like yours."

"And looking for ears you found me!"

He laughed with all of himself, his eyes closing like a cat's, both lids meeting. His laughter made his high cheekbone even fuller, and he looked at times like a very noble lion.

"I want to become someone in the world. We're living on top of a volcano. You may need my strength. I want to be able to take care of you."

"Rango, I understand your life. You have a great force in you, but there is something impeding you, blocking you. What is it? This great explosive force in you, it is all wasted. You pretend to be indifferent, nonchalant, reckless, but I feel you care deep down. Sometimes you look like Peter the Great, when he was building a city on a swamp, rescuing the weak, charging in battle. Why do you drown the dynamite in you in wine? Why are you so afraid to create? Why do you put so many obstacles in your own way? You drown your strength, you waste it. You should be constructing..."