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2. Edmondsson thought there was something desiccating in my refusal to leave the bathroom, but this didn't stop her from making life easier for me, providing for the needs of the household by working part-time in an art gallery.


3. Around me were cupboards, towel racks, a bidet. The washbasin was white; a narrow shelf projected above it, and on the shelf lay toothbrushes and razors. The wall facing me, studded with lumps, showed cracks, and in places cavities pitted the lifeless paint. One crack seemed to be gaining ground. I spent hours staring at its extremities, vainly trying to surprise it in action. Sometimes I made other experiments. I would scrutinize the surface of my face in a pocket mirror and, at the same time, the movements of the hands on my watch. But my face let nothing show. Ever.


4. One morning I tore down the clothesline. I emptied all the cupboards and took everything off the shelves. After piling all the toilet articles into one large refuse bag, I began moving part of my library. When Edmondsson came home I greeted her book in hand, lying with my feet crossed up on the faucet.


5. Edmondsson finally alerted my parents.


6. Mom brought me pastries. Sitting on the bidet with the open box wedged between her legs, she arranged the pastries in a soup plate. I thought she seemed ill at ease, she'd been avoiding my eyes ever since she came in. She raised her head with a weary sadness, made as if to say something but didn't, picked out the eclair, and bit into it. You need some distraction, she told me, sports, I don't know. She wiped the corners of her mouth with her glove. There's something suspicious about the need to be diverted, I replied. When I added, almost smiling, that there was nothing I feared less than diversions, she saw there was no use arguing with me and, mechanically, held out a napoleon.


7. Twice a week I would listen to the radio broadcast of the day's play for the French soccer championship. The program lasted two hours. From a studio in Paris the announcer would orchestrate the voices of the reporters covering the matches in the different stadiums. Believing that soccer gains in the imagining, I never missed these dates. Lulled by warm human voices, I would listen to their reports with the lights off, sometimes with my eyes closed.


8. A friend of my parents was passing through Paris and came to see me. From him I learned it was raining. Stretching out an arm toward the washbasin, I suggested he take a towel. Best the yellow, the other one was dirty. He dried his hair carefully and at length. I didn't know what he wanted from me. When the silence had begun to seem permanent, he told me the latest about his professional activities, explaining that the difficulties he had to contend with were insurmountable since they were linked to incompatibilities of temperament among persons at the same hierarchical level. Fiddling nervously with my towel, he strode up and down alongside the bathtub and, fired by his words, became more and more intransigent. He began to threaten and vociferate. In the end he accused Lacour of irresponsibility. I am trying to do the impossible, he said, the impossible! And nobody gives a damn.


9. I dressed very simply: tan cotton trousers, a blue shirt, and a solid tie. The fabric fit my body so becomingly that, fully dressed, I looked powerfully, elegantly muscular. I lay down, relaxed, eyes shut. I thought about a White Lady—the dessert—a scoop of vanilla ice cream with a coat of scalding chocolate poured over. I'd been thinking about it for some weeks. From a scientific point of view (I'm not a food enthusiast), I saw this combination as a glimpse of perfection. A Mondrian, Unctuous chocolate on iced vanilla, hot and cold, substance and fluidity. Imbalance and rigor, exactitude. Chicken, despite my deep affection for it, cannot compare. No. And I was just about to fall asleep when Edmondsson came into the bathroom, spun around, and held out two letters. One of them was from the Austrian embassy. I opened it with a comb. Edmondsson, who was reading over my shoulder, pointed to my name on the invitation. Knowing neither Austrians nor diplomats, I said it was probably a mistake.


10. Seated on the edge of the bathtub, I was explaining to Edmondsson that perhaps it was not very healthy, at age twenty-seven going on twenty-nine, to live more or less shut up in a bathtub. I ought to take some risk, I said, looking down and stroking the enamel of the bathtub, the risk of compromising the quietude of my abstract life for... I did not finish my sentence.


11. The next day I left the bathroom.