2

I packed. I put the ribbed socks, the expensive slacks, the shirts with the neat small monogram, the good shoes, the tweed sport jacket, the dark suit with the fine lining, into the suitcase. I put the album of pictures of myself into the suitcase. There were no books to pack. I did not want books. I could always buy books. Reading was painful anyway. I put the jockey shorts whose waist size had increased the last few years into the suitcase and a sleeveless sweater. I expected it to be cold in New York. It was January and it would be cold in New York. I was running away to New York. I could have gone elsewhere: I had money enough. I had this money from the good years. I was not going to let that bitch get her hands on what was left of the money. I put the silk kimono I had bought in the silk mill in Kyoto into the suitcase. I could have used the money I still had to go back to Japan. Japan was a good place to be nothing in. In Japan the Americans I had known had all been more or less finished. The sex in Japan had been like the booze used to be in the jungle or the islands. The sex went on with the obsessiveness that the drinking had in other places. But I did not want to go back to Japan and Paris, where I had lived, too, wasn’t a place to hide. Switzerland was peaceful but it wasn’t a peaceful life I wanted. I did not want to ski or buy watches or take long walks through the country past small vegetable gardens. I wanted to be lost. I wanted to be effaced. I wanted a place that could suck the pain out of me. I was going back to New York.