He knew it was absurd: a lifetime of self-analysis enabled him to see himself as he was, fat and ugly and old and humiliated. It was as if a whole seducing choir of angels had silently withdrawn and left the voices of the children in the patio—‘Come to bed, José, come to bed,’ sharp and shrill and worse than they had ever been. He knew he was in the grip of the unforgivable sin, despair.
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