blue

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 re

All that I remember of the autumn is waiting for Giovanni to come to trial. Then, at last, he came to trial, was found guilty, and placed under sentence of death. All winter long I counted the days. And the nightmare of this house began. Much has been written of love turning to hatred, of the heart growing cold with the death of love. It is a remar

‘You want to get away from me.’ He laughed; he watched me; the look in his eyes was so bottomlessly bitter it was almost benevolent. ‘At last you are beginning to be honest. And do you know why you want to get away from me?’ Inside me something locked. ‘I—I cannot have a life with you,’ I said. ‘But you can have a life with Hella. With that moonfac

‘What made you go to live with him?’ ‘I told you. I was broke and he had this room—’ ‘But that can’t have been the only reason.’ ‘Oh, well,’ I said, ‘I liked him.’ ‘And don’t you like him any more?’ ‘I’m very fond of Giovanni. You didn’t see him at his best tonight, but he’s a very nice man.’ I laughed; covered by the night, emboldened by Hella’s b

He grasped me by the collar, wrestling and caressing at once, fluid and iron at once: saliva spraying from his lips and his eyes full of tears, but with the bones of his face showing and the muscles leaping in his arms and neck. ‘You want to leave Giovanni because he makes you stink. You want to despise Giovanni because he is not afraid of the stin

‘But I’m a man,’ I cried, ‘a man! What do you think can happen between us?’ ‘You know very well,’ said Giovanni, slowly, ‘what can happen between us. It is for that reason you are leaving me.’

‘Giovanni,’ I said, ‘you always knew that I would leave one day. You knew my fiancée was coming back to Paris.’ ‘You are not leaving me for her,’ he said. ‘You are leaving me for some other reason. You lie so much, you have come to believe all your own lies. But I, I have senses. You are not leaving me for a woman. If you were really in love with t

He knew that Hella disliked him and this amused him. And, to corroborate her dislike, and also because at that moment he really hated me, he bowed low over her outstretched hand and became, in an instant, outrageously and offensively effeminate. I watched him as though I were watching an imminent disaster from many miles away. He turned playfully t

‘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.’