I think now that if I had had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home.

At the corner, in a faint patch of the morning sun, I looked in my wallet to count my bus tickets. In the wallet I found three hundred francs, taken from Hella, my carte d’identité, my address in the United States, and paper, paper, scraps of paper, cards, photographs. On each piece of paper I found addresses, telephone numbers, memos of various

The beast which Giovanni had awakened in me would never go to sleep again; but one day I would not be with Giovanni any more. And would I then, like all the others, find myself turning and following all kinds of boys down God knows what dark avenues, into what dark places?

‘Didn’t you like Spain,’ I asked, nervously, ‘at all?’ She ran one hand, impatiently, through her hair. ‘Oh. Of course, I like Spain, why not? It’s very beautiful. I just didn’t know what I was doing there. And I’m beginning to be tired of being in places for no particular reason.’

Hella and I went to a lot of movies, and found ourselves, very often, sitting in empty, fifth-rate bars. We walked a lot, in silence. We no longer seemed to see things to point out to each other. We drank too much, especially me.

‘Anyway,’ he said mildly, ‘I don’t see what you can do with little fish except eat them. What else are they good for?’ ‘In my country,’ I said, feeling a subtle war within me as I said it, ‘the little fish seem to have gotten together and are nibbling at the body of the whale.’ ‘That will not make them whales,’ said Giovanni. ‘The only result of

He wanted me to stay in the room with him. Perhaps he was trying, with his own strength, to push back the encroaching walls, without, however, having the walls fall down.

The trouble is that I love myself too much. And so I’ve decided to let two try it, this business of loving me, I mean, and see how that works out. (I feel fine now that I’ve made the decision, I hope you’ll feel fine, too, dear knight in Gimbel’s armor.)

I did not dare to mention Hella. I could not even pretend to myself that I was sorry she was in Spain. I was glad. I was utterly, hopelessly, horribly glad. I knew I could do nothing whatever to stop the ferocious excitement which had burst in me like a storm. I could only drink, in the faint hope that the storm might thus spend itself without