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wanted you. Your hopelessness was so complete, your brow gave off such a radiance, that I fell in love with you. Your despair aroused me. Then, when in your calm, friendly voice you told about your way of wandering around—the professor thought it was pathological—it came to me: I’ve found the woman of my life, something I had only dreamed of up until then; now it had happened. A decision was possible—actually, once you appeared, the decision had been made. In your hopelessness you struck me as immaculate, pure, holy, divine, and yet you were all woman, all flesh, all body, a perfect vessel. From my seat high up in the last row, I fell on you, I penetrated you with such force and to such depth that our ecstasy rose to the point of annihilation. And in your features, though I was sitting far away, I saw no difference between the face of extreme misery, the mask of inviolable feminine beatitude, and the grimace of utter lewdness. That day we loved each other before the eyes of all, I you in your forlornness, you me in my pure compassion. Since then I have had no feeling for anyone or anything. Since that day I have had no encounter with that rarest of all things, a beautiful human being. In that hour we, you and I, publicly engendered a unique child.” Whereupon the woman might have asked: “What sort of child?” And the gambler might have answered: “A child unborn to this day, perhaps already dead, perhaps unviable—a faint image, faint and becoming fainter.”
    The woman has listened attentively to the gambler’s story. But from time to time she has shaken her head, as though the story were not to her liking, or in astonishment
that such things were possible. And once she laughed, as though thinking of something entirely different. After the last sentence, she rummages in the ashes at her feet, finds a piece of wood that is still glowing, lights her cigarette with it; in the sudden glow her face is slit-eyed, masklike.
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    The full moon, at first yellow and huge on the horizon, is now small and white overhead, but its light is stranger than ever. Not only the whole breadth of the river glitters but also the leaves of the bushes on the banks; not only the metal parts of the camper but the wooden parts as well. The curtains are drawn, soft snores of varying pitch issue from them. Smoke rises from the ashes of the deserted campfire. In the gleaming water, a far brighter spot appears, a moving object; it crosses the river, shapeless at first, with a V-shaped glow in its wake. Mounting the bank, it shows the silhouette of an animal, too small and furry for a seal, too big and tail-heavy for an otter. The beaver crouches motionless; his eyes and ears are tiny and black as coal, his belly and feet are coated with clay. He sniffs uninterruptedly; he is the guardian of the site, he is guarding it with his sniffing. He is the master here now; he toils at night, damming the river; he has just come home from his place of work downstream.
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    In the morning it is summer. In the warm wind, the wall of foliage on the steep opposite bank has become a band of green, modulating from bush to bush, interrupted only in those places where the undersides of leaves shimmer pale-gray as though withered. The still half-dreaming ear mistakes the chirping of crickets for the din of cicadas. This bank as well is bathed in the light of high summer. In knee-length
swimming trunks the old man stands under the little waterfall, which serves him both as shower and curtain; the woman sits with her eyes closed in a pool at his feet, quietly taking her bath, resting her head on a rock as against a bathtub; the water comes up to her chin.
    The gambler and the soldier sit in the grass, playing cards. The soldier seems to be smiling, but his ears are deep-red, almost black, and oddly enough, the same is true of the gambler, who is sitting there in his shirtsleeves. The gambler shuffles, arranges his hand, plays