They were his emotions! First there was his desire to leave. He felt this so strongly that his stomach ached with longing. But then he fell through that feeling to the one beneath. This one was a combination of relief and shame so closely bound together, glued, that the feelings were like fabric and he fell into the soft slippery folds of unsuspected shame.

His real emotions, buried, denied, now caught him. He was really so glad to have “a place,” so really delighted not to be wandering half-hungry, that he was ashamed. A man should be free, not tied down to one family, one room, one woman. Tears ran down his face as he fell through the shame to the emotion that had been beneath.

The anger felt like a thick red web that enveloped him. He stormed about the room, feeling the web grab at him, catch his legs in a tight grasp. Even this gave way, and he tumbled headlong into the fear that had given the anger its strength. He tossed a chair across the room and threw his knapsack at the wall.

For this was what had been bothering him, beneath all the other guises. The fear—he’d tried to avoid it—but it was too late, of course. The inspiration that he’d wanted so desperately had come—and it had somehow betrayed him. It was forcing him to care, to feel, to become attached. Even while the inspiration seemed to come from another world, it was forcing him to relate to this one—and he hadn’t wanted to. Even the Hosentaufs were becoming real to him. They were no longer caricatures that he could make fun of, or ignore.

The superclear light bathed the room again. Or was he only imagining it? He turned. Amazingly, Bianka stood in the doorway; staring. He hadn’t even heard her come up the stairs. She was different too, he saw—uneasily. She was no longer just someone to romp with, or the model for his latest painting. She was … herself, whatever that meant, with a reality of her own apart from his … alive with the same tormenting complexity of emotions that he’d just experienced, and usually tried to hide.

“You didn’t leave,” she said. This time she closed the door.

She looked so splendid—she might have just stepped out of one of his paintings, he thought. Grinning at him, she went over and waited for him by the bed, willing to make some compromises now that matters seemed sealed. They threw their clothes off, shouting happy obscenities at each other. In his mind’s eye, Josef saw the two of them laying in the courtyard on the hot tiles, and staring from the painting out into the room.