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myself as a composer, a miner, an officer, a labourer, a diplomat, a tramp: there was something convincing about each transformation, and so I began to believe that I really had no idea who I might be the very next day or what distance would separate me from this night after the darkness had passed. Where would I be and what awaited me? I had lived what seemed like so many different lives, so often had I shuddered as I experienced the suffering of another, so often had I acutely felt what affected other people, often the dead or those far away from me, that I had long lost all concept of my own profiles. So on that evening, as happened whenever I was left alone for a lengthy period of time, I found myself surrounded by this sensual ocean of innumerable memories, thoughts, experiences and hopes, which were both preceded and succeeded by a vague and overwhelming sense of expectation. Ultimately I would be so wearied by this state of being that everything would begin to get mixed up in my imagination, and then I would either go out to a café or else try to concentrate on a single, specific idea or series of ideas, or perhaps I might try to rack my memory for some salutary melody that I would force myself to follow through to its end. As I lay in my bed in a state of total debility, I suddenly recalledthe Unfinished Symphony; it resonated in the evening silence of my room, and after several minutes I began to feel as if I were once again in a concert hall: the black tail-coat of the conductor, the intricate floating dance of his baton, whose movements amid the vanquished silence led the music—strings, bows, piano keys—the immediate and essentially miraculous return of distant inspiration, halted many years ago by that blind and merciless law, the same law that stayed Michelangelo’s hand. Night was setting in and there were already stars in the sky, downstairs the concierges were asleep, the sign “
Au panier fleuri
” was shining brightly, and at the corner, like a pendulum, Mado was pacing back and forth—and all this filtered through the Unfinished Symphony, without darkening it or disturbing it, gradually blurring and disappearing in this whirl of sound, in this illusory victory of memory and imagination over reality and perception.

* * *
    I visited Pavel Alexandrovich almost every week and talked at length with him. I wanted to understand exactly how he had been reduced to the position in which I had found him when we first met, and how, once in this position, he had managed to preserve what had so sharply distinguished him from his comrades in misfortune. I knew that when a man becomes impoverished the road back is almost alwaysinaccessible, not only in terms of a return to material well-being—many poor people were comparatively wealthy in my experience—but mainly in what is termed social stratification: they did not, as a rule, rise up from their newfound status. Naturally, I never posed this question directly, nor did I even allude to it. However, reading between the lines of a few off-hand remarks made by Pavel Alexandrovich, I was able to construct a plausible narrative. Something had happened during his early years abroad—I never learnt what exactly—a tragedy linked to some woman, it seemed. Thereafter he had taken to drink. Thus his situation had continued for a number of years and probably nothing would have saved him had it not been for the fact that he fell ill. One night he collapsed in the street and lay there for several hours, until he was picked up and taken to a hospital. There he was given a thorough examination, all the necessary tests were carried out, he underwent treatment for several months, and when at last he felt sufficiently recovered the doctor told him that he would survive only on the provision that he completely abstained from alcohol. Pavel Alexandrovich was soon enough convinced of the truth in the doctor’s words: a single glass of wine immediately induced vomiting and