From the first moment, her eyes surprised me: she seemed like a collage, like a magic trick. It wasn’t just that the eyes did not fit the woman’s then jaundiced face: they didn’t even fit reality itself. They were beautiful, but not as you would say, “A flower is beautiful,” or, “A child is beautiful,” rather as you would say, “It is beautiful that there are flowers and children.” The word “beautiful” didn’t fit her except as a substitute for a word that doesn’t exist.
