But the ideal Juliet of the best possible reality closed the high window of the literary encounter on the fictitious Romeo of my blood. She obeys her father; he obeys his. The feud between the Montagues and the Capulets continues, the curtain falls on what didn’t happen, and I go on home – to my rented room where I loathe the landlady who isn’t home, her children I hardly ever see, and the people from the office that I’ll see only tomorrow – with the collar of a clerk’s coat turned up without astonishment over the neck of a poet, with my boots (always purchased in the same shop) automatically
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