288
PARiTlSAN REVIEW
as this. When I try to review my summer, it seems like a flickering
of images that has passed me by while I have really been sitting all
the while in this room.
Actually I have been imprisoned here for only a day and a
half, waiting for the rain to stop, but that has been enough to pro–
duce the illusion that the whole summer has stood still. Earlier
this evening there had been a break, but one which only intensified
this unreal feeling that amid the flux of travelers everything has
really stayed just where it was all summer. For this was dinner with
Kaplan and Abel again, and when I arrived, I found them in the
midst of the very same conversation: Literature as a scandal. A
summer has passed, they are still
hocking
the same
tcheinuk,
and
Michel Leiris' penis has not got any longer! I look around the
restaurant for the "married" couple that I had observed the last
time we were here, as if by the inexorable law that fixes all things
to their place they too should be sitting in exactly the same spot,
casting the same fond glances at each other and eating the same
dishes. But it turns out some things have changed, for Kaplan, cheer–
ful and expansive after his own vacation, breaks off the conversation
with Abel, and begins to ask me about my own travels, where have
I been and .what have I seen. When I tell him my dominant im–
pression, this time he becomes really interested. "Somebody ought
to say something about all this," he announces decisively; then,
after a moment of thought, looking at me: "Maybe you. You might
write it up." I forget to tell him that he has already given me the
idea some time ago. I nod, "Perhaps. But if the subject were really
done as it ought to be, the title should be 'The Botched Sexes.' "
On the way back from dinner, which broke up early, I got
caught
in
another downpour, and having to strip, rub myself down,
and dry out near this window, I begin to feel that I have not left
this chair all day. Luckily I have stumbled upon a bottle of cognac
that I had left here and forgotten about before my departure, and
this begins to crawl warmly in my stomach now and drive away the
dampness. The fog outside turns from grey to chocolate, and one
by one the panes of light come on in the houses opposite, but I
prefer my own darkness and do not switch on the light. Thanks to
the cognac I am now quite warm; the heavy stone begins to roll
away and my thoughts pick up a little life. But as soon as I begin
