The element of awareness acted not only as a partial control, enabling me to move with imaginative feet from one escalator to another, but it served a more important purpose still—it stimulated the desire to commence the work of creation. That Melanie whom I had heretofore ignored, whom I had regarded as a mere cipher in the complicated sum of experiences, could prove such a rich vein, opened my eyes. It was not Melanie at all, as a matter of fact, but those word-clots («beauty,» «insanity,» «varieties of flesh») which I felt the need to explore and clothe in sumptuous style. Even if it took years to do so, I would remember this train of fabulation, capture its secret, expose it on paper. How many hundred women had I pursued, followed like a lost dog, in order to study some mysterious trait—a pair of eyes set far apart, a head hewn out of quartz, a haunch that seemed to live its own life, a voice as melodious as the warble of a bird, a cataract of hair falling like spun-glass, a torso invested with the flexibility of rubber.... Whenever the beauty of the female becomes irresistible it is traceable to a single quality. This quality, often a physical defect, can assume such unreal proportions that in the mind of the possessor her staggering beauty is nil. The excessively attractive bust can become a double-headed maggot that bores into the brain and becomes a mysterious watery tumor; the tempting overfull lips can grow in the depths of the skull like a double vagina, bringing on that most difficult of all diseases to cure: melancholia. (There are beautiful women who almost never stand before the mirror nude, women who, when they think of the magnetic power which the body wields, become terrified and shrink into themselves, fearful that even the odor which they give off will betray them. There are others who, standing before the mirror, can scarcely restrain themselves from rushing outdoors stark naked and offering themselves to the first comer.)

Varieties of flesh.... Before sleep, just as the eyelids close down over the retina and the unbidden images begin their nocturnal parade... That woman in the subway whom you followed into the street: a nameless phantom now suddenly reappearing, advancing towards you with lithe, vigorous loins. Reminds you of someone, someone just like that, only with a different face. (But ' the face was never important!) You have the memory of the ripple and flash of loins just as strong as you have somewhere in your brain the image of the bull you saw when a child: the bull in the act of mounting a cow. Images come and go, and always it is some particular part of the body which stands out, some identification mark. Names—names fade out. The endearing phrases— they too fade out. Even the voice, that which was so potent, so undoing, so altogether personal—that too has a way of vanishing, of becoming lost in all the other voices. But the body lives on, and the eyes, and the fingers of the eyes, remember. They come and go, the unknown, unnamed, mingling as freely with the others as if they were an integral part of one's life. With the unknown ones comes the remembrance of certain days, certain hours, the voluptuous way they eased into a blank moment of lassitude. You remember just how the tall one in a mauve silk dress stood that afternoon, when the sun beat down with smouldering warmth, and gazed entranced at the play of water in the fountain. You remember exactly the way your hunger expressed itself at the time—sharp, quick, like a knife-blade between the shoulders, then dying away almost as quickly, but in such pleasurable smoke, like a deep nostalgic whiff. And then another one rises up, heavy, stolid, with the porous skin of sand-stone; with her everything is centered in the head, the head which does not fit the body, the head which is volcanic, still filled with eruption. They come and go like that, clear, precise, trailing the ambiance of the collision, radiating their instantaneous effects. All kinds, all tempered by texture, weather, mood: metallic ones, marble figurines, translucent shadowy ones, flowerlike ones, svelte animals covered with pelts of suede, trapeze artists, silver sheets of water rising in human form and bending like Venetian glass. Leisurely you undress them, examine them under the microscope, bid them sway, bend, flex the knees, roll over, spread their legs. You talk to them, now that your lips are unsealed. What were you doing that day? Do you always wear your hair like that? What were you going to tell me when you stared at me that way? Could I ask you to turn around? That's it. Now cup your breasts with two hands. Yes, I could have thrown myself on you that day. I could have fucked you right on the sidewalk, and people stepping all over us. I could have fucked you into the ground, buried you there near the lake where you were sitting with legs crossed. You knew I was watching you. Tell me... tell me because nobody will ever know... what were you thinking then, that very moment? Why did you keep your legs crossed? You knew I was waiting for you to open them. You wanted to open them, didn't you? Tell me the truth! It was warm and you had nothing on under your dress. You had come down from your perch to get a. bit of air, hoping that something would happen. You didn't much care what happened, did you? You wandered around by the lake, waiting for it to get dark. You wanted some one to look at you, some one whose eyes would undress you, some one who would rivet his gaze on that warm, moist spot between your legs...

You spool it off like that, a million feet to the roll. And all the time, shifting the eyes from one to another with kaleidoscopic fury, what gets under your skin is the inexplicable nature of attraction. The mysterious law of attraction! A secret buried as deep in the isolated parts as in the mysterious whole.

The irresistible creature of the other sex is a monster in process of becoming a flower. Feminine beauty is a ceaseless creation, a ceaseless revolution about a defect (often imaginary) which causes the whole being to gyrate heavenward.

11

«She tried to poison herself!»

Those were the words that greeted me on opening the door of Dr. Onirifick's establishment. It was Curley who made the announcement, smothering his words under the rattle of the door-knob.

A glance over his shoulder told me that she was asleep. Kronski had taken care of her. He had requested that nothing be said to Dr. Onirifick about it.

«I smelled the chloroform as soon as I came in,» Curley explained. «She was seated in the chair, huddled up, as if she had had a stroke.»

«I thought maybe it was an abortion...» he added, looking a little sheepish.

«Why did she do it, did she say?»

Curley hemmed and hawed.

«Come on, don't be silly. What was it—jealousy?»

He wasn't sure. All he knew was what she blabbed on coming to. She had repeated over and over that she couldn't stand it any longer.

«Stand what?» I asked.

«Your seeing your wife, I suppose. She said she had picked the receiver up to telephone you. She felt that something was wrong.»

«How did she put it exactly, do you remember?»

«Yes, she talked a lot of nonsense about being betrayed. She said it wasn't the child you went to see but your wife. She said you were weak, that when she was not with you you were capable of doing anything...»

I looked at him in astonishment. «She really said that? You're not putting it on, are you?»

Curley pretended not to hear. He went on to speak of Kronski, how well he had behaved.

«I didn't think he could lie so cleverly,» said Curley.

«Lie? How do you mean?»

«The way he talked about you. You should have heard it. God, it was almost as if he were making love to her. He said such wonderful things about you that she began to weep and sob like a child.»