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PARTISAN REVIEW
it turns either blond or auburn. Mine is dark brown and I
usually wear it drawn back in a snood. He told me once the bun
looked like a chimpanzee's tit bunched in a large rotten pasty.
Perhaps it does. I can't help it; I love him. Besides, he was only
joking and I enjoy his foolishness. It's about all we have, and
sometimes I think it's enough. Sometimes.
I read what she wrote. I don 't trust her. And I no longer care
about who's reading this, a careless diary from a commune of
two. We have no children. We shall never have any. And I have
no job. I don't need one. Ours is a rarefied existence. At least
that's what we tell ourselves. Neither one of us, however, is
capable of much truth. No one else we used to know was either.
I can't think straight. I think in circles, and I'm undecided if
that's a sign of degeneration or creeping wisdom. What differ–
ence does it make? I'm only scribbling on our way to death.
We're getting closer. I suspect that not much more remains
except embalming.
To the flesh, she said. I don't know whether to admire her or
have pity for her. I know very little, except that the air we
breathe is fresh enough. I admit, however, that part of me is
repulsed by the kind of honesty I've just displayed.
Nev–
ertheless-
... I don't know what I was going to say. I can't
think straight. I think in circles, and those circles, which are
lopsided like the journeys of Earth around the sun, move, they
move! ... like the spiders she and I contain. They are feasting,
but their gnawing does little more than make me itch inside.
Whatever Jerome says, I still love him.
She's trying to distract me. I can tell it each night when we
go to bed. Each day. We rarely leave the bedroom. She never
mentions her friends. I don't suppose I do either. We're bewild–
ered. Our life is calm. Like that night. We kissed goodnight the
way we've kissed goodnight thousands of times, and I was struck
by the niceness of the gesture and by the sureness of the intense
gyrations which followed.
More and more I recognize the absence of stillness in our
situation. It's as if we're retreating, not out of fear, but in motion
