“A-and you were so far away then… I couldn’t reach you… .”

Then. Something like pity comes into her face and goes again. But her whisper is lethal and bright as sudden wire: “Maybe you’ll find out. Maybe in one of their bombed-out cities, beside one of their rivers or forests, even one day in the rain, it will come to you. You’ll remember the Himmler-Spielsaal, and the skirt I was wearing… memory will dance for you, and you can even make it my voice saying what I couldn’t say then. Or now.” Oh what is it she smiles here to him, only for that second? already gone. Back to the mask of no luck, no future—her face’s rest state, preferred, easiest… .

They are standing among black curly skeletons of iron benches, on the empty curve of this esplanade, banked much more steeply than the waking will ever need: vertiginous, trying to spill them into the sea and be rid of this. The day has grown colder. Neither of them can stay balanced for long, every few seconds one or the other must find a new footing. He reaches and turns up the collar of her coat, holds her cheeks then in his palms… is he trying to bring back the color of flesh? He looks down, trying to see into her eyes, and is puzzled to find tears coming up to fill each one, soaking in among her lashes, mascara bleeding out in fine black swirls… translucent stones, trembling in their sockets… .

Waves crash and drag at the stones of the beach. The harbor has broken out in whitecaps, so brilliant they can’t be gathering their light from this drab sky. Here it is again, that identical-looking Other World—is he gonna have this to worry about, now? What th’—lookit these trees—each long frond hanging, stung, dizzying, in laborious drypoint against the sky, each so perfectly placed… .

She has moved her thighs and the points of her hips up to touch him, through her coat—it might still, after all, be to help bring him back—her breath a white scarf, her tear-trails, winter-lit, ice. She feels warm. But it’s not enough. Never was—nope, he understands all right, she’s been meaning to go for a long time. Braced for the wind the whitecaps imply, or for the tilt of the pavement, they hold each other. He kisses her eyes, feels his cock again begin to swell with good old, bad old—old, anyhow—lust.

Out at sea a single clarinet begins to play, a droll melody joined in on after a few bars by guitars and mandolins. Birds huddle bright-eyed on the beach. Katje’s heart lightens, a little, at the sound. Slothrop doesn’t yet have the European reflexes to clarinets, he still thinks of Benny Goodman and not of clowns or circuses—but wait… aren’t these kazoos coming? Yeah, a lotta kazoos! A Kazoo Band!

Late that night, back in her room, she wears a red gown of heavy silk. Two tall candles burn an indefinite distance behind her. He feels the change. After making love she lies propped on an elbow watching him, breathing deep, dark nipples riding with the swell, as buoys ride on the white sea. But a patina has formed on her eyes: he can’t even see her accustomed retreat, this last time, dimmed, graceful, to the corner of some inner room… .