Pushkin Press

he was not so much interested in the world as he was invaded by its many forms.

I breathed freely, purely, and full of sudden delight I felt the air on my lips like a clear drink. It was soft, effervescent air carrying on it the aroma of fruits, the scent of distant islands, and making me feel slightly drunk.

Now, for the first time since I had set foot on the ship’s planks, I knew the blessed joy of reverie, and the other more sensual pleasure of abandoning my body, womanlike, to the softness surrounding me.

conversation in which everything appeared to be illuminated and stoked by fires only just under the surface occupied her mind, intriguing her already lively curiosity so much that she did not avoid another meeting at a public recital.

Her horror at her own wickedness, which alarmed her for the first few days, became a source of heightened pride. But these mysterious emotions too were felt at their full strength only at first. Beneath the surface, her instincts resisted this man, and most of all what was new in him, the difference that had in fact aroused her curiosity.

Frits rolled a cigarette and ran through the luminescent scale of frequencies without finding anything to his liking.

Frits smiled and looked closely at the handsome, bronzed face with its deep-set, dark blue eyes. “Look for the brand when you buy toothpaste,” he thought. “Wandering?” he replied, “I’m not wandering. It’s bound to be a nasty business this evening, don’t you think, Wim?”

felt his eyes grow moist, seized the sheet between his teeth and fell asleep.

“A doctor once told me that they asked one of the loonies in the asylum: What are you going to do when you leave here? He says: Oh, maybe I’ll become an actor, I’ve always had a flair for that. Or else I’ll work for a newspaper, I did that too for a few years. But there’s always a chance that I’ll pick up my old calling; in actual fact, I’m a teapot.”

I begin to feel elated, buoyant, even boisterous.