That’s exactly what I’m saying: I do feel that you love me. But, in the end, what’s it all about? What is there to strive for? You who are always going on about explanations, I have explained myself. Do I have to spell it out for you? I’ve explained everything I know. Everything. I don’t know anything else, and I don’t want to know anything else. But you—when all is said and done—do you really want to know? You, who are some kind of prodigy, do you really want me to tell you something that the most intelligent or, really, the most dull-witted of the angels doesn’t even know: I have a desire for slippers, like everybody else. But no, I’m not referring to your feet, or to mine either; I know very well that angels have no feet. I know they have nothing but long robes and long wings. Many’s the time you’ve smothered me in all that stuff that smells of vanilla and absinthe. What I mean is, whether you happen to be intelligent or thick-headed, you’ve never understood that you’re on one side of the barricade, and I’m on the other. Don’t ask angelic things of a man. I am a man, I want my slippers. I want to live: yes, to eat, drink, sleep. Sleep, do you hear? And afterward, let those who want to explain do the explaining. Me, I’ve done enough explaining. It’s someone else’s turn to go without sleep. I want to go out for a walk, I want to go fishing, I want to play a game of patience at my dining-room table. No one man has ever stopped the world from turning.

Ah! You agree with me! So, then what? I’ve written a few books. They’re stories. They’re entertaining, that’s all. Thank heaven, because I can turn out as many books of that variety as I want to, like hot cakes, effortlessly, with no surprises! What are you saying? That this has nothing to do with heaven? Too bad for heaven. I’ll blaspheme if I want to! Make the world turn yourself since, that’s right, it’s your job. But stop coming around all the time to make a poor devil like me miserable on the pretext that I’m a poet. Do your promoting on your own. I’m a man like any other. Yes I am! I am a man like any other! Let’s get going. Come on, get off my shoulders! You want to know where I’m going? I’m going to the bar, that one over there, across the road.

It was a sailors’ bar, and hardly anybody was in there at this hour.

“What’ll it be?” says the owner.

“I’d like something to eat.” He called out again, “And some stout.”

There were two blokes leaning against the bar. They were smoking short pipes. The owner came back. He was potbellied, but his fatness started from his shoulders and funneled down into strong, longish legs. He wore a bib apron. He was clean-shaven, with a hard, sculpted face. He had a bulldog jaw, and nostrils with short little hairs, almost red, tightly curled.