he went on talking a little, perhaps she leaned over to kiss
me, perhaps I heard words falling from her lips like pellets of lead:
"country--trial--sacrifice." The door closed upon my slaughtered love.

I know I tried to stand up--it was like trying to lift a tombstone--and
drag myself to the window to lean my forehead on the pane; but something
pulled at me from deep within, something cold and incomprehensible, like
a slimy slug, like a deep gash in living flesh. And a strange dizziness,
not entirely physical, threw me back into the armchair.

The walls of this black hissing pit into which I fell were the walls of
my dining-room, the very same walls papered in a scallop design, and I
saw a cloud of tiny coal-black butterflies, mere specks, whirl without
end from the blackened lamp-chimney.

My being turned into something enormous and gaping, which fed constantly
upon a great wound. I was so overwhelmed with a senseless horror that at
moments during the night his death seemed quite normal and natural. But
when I withdrew my hand from under my head a multitude of serpents
wriggled about within me, and I felt suffocated again and began to
tumble through emptiness, while little pointed teeth bit my blood and
left behind a penetrating icy poison.

It has ever been the same, Lord God. Suffering is too monotonous....
When a bit of sense and ordinary life returned and cried in my ears: "It
is over. Never more," I felt that suffering is too monotonous; and when
a clamor of revolt sounded in my being: "They have killed him!" I felt
that suffering is too monotonous.

And when the dawn came tapping at the window and creeping toward the
table, drab and livid, when I rose from my bruised knees, and when the
humming and buzzing began in the indifferent house, I still felt that
suffering is too monotonous.

IX

Your beloved is dead.

News that comes from the depths of the ages or the depths of the flesh;
you can't tell.

One day--there--a clap of thunder. It bursts from your flesh and tries
to enter your flesh again. It beats at the portals of your heart,
besieges your ears, howls round your entrails, but there is no place for
it, no part of your body wants it, your soul retreats to shelter, your
heart drips black blood, your mind goes round and round. News, News!
Your beloved is dead!

No need for the thunder to break. I knew it was brewing in me.

When we used to come back from work and I kissed him with this very
mo