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They’re dead now, my mother and my two brothers. For memories too it’s too late. Now I don’t love them any more. I don’t remember if I ever did. I’ve left them. In my head I no longer have the scent of her skin, nor in my eyes the color of her eyes. I can’t remember her voice, except sometimes when it grew soft with the weariness of evening. Her laughter I can’t hear any more—neither her laughter nor her cries. It’s over, I don’t remember. That’s why I can write about her so easily now, so long, so fully. She’s become just something you write without difficulty, cursive writing.
The point at which my memory suddenly softens, and perhaps my brother brings tears to my eyes, is after the loss of the money from the woods. I know he’s found lying in his car in Montparnasse, outside the Coupole, and that he wants to die. After that, I forget.
From the first moment she knows more or less, knows he’s at her mercy. And therefore that others besides him may be at her mercy too if the occasion arises.
Suddenly, all at once, she knows, knows that he doesn’t understand her, that he never will, that he lacks the power to understand such perverseness. And that he can never move fast enough to catch her.
