She remembers her happy love affair in New York.

His raining tongue laps under her eyelids herds of woolly mammoth, bison, leaping reindeer, a tusked wild boar. Her head fills till it’s so heavy it rolls away by itself.

How would you define our relation? he asks. Technically we are lovers, she says after a while.

And nontechnically? (She cannot think of the term that would cover everything.)

The day hangs suspended—a dull golden weave on which an impressionist master’s brush has sketched, placed at random, the familiar furnishings of a New York City apartment: the whiskey bottle, jar of instant coffee, cans of soup and spices on the shelf, a torn bag of sugar, ashtrays, magazines and a bowl of fruit on the floor. A tropical garden painted on the air. At this moment the mind, which has sunk deep into the trunk, a migrating organ, passing through the clapping valves of the heart and the belly toward the bowels; the mind, especially lucid, observes with surprised amusement an old riddle unfolding into a simple demonstration. Irrespective of will or will-lessness, the arm plunges into space, the hand reaches out to seize a pear and as gratuitously arrested, lies still on the fruit. Movement and rest, irrespective of will or will-lessness. The mind, sunk comfortably in the liver, finds a wonderful significance in this. It would like to make a note of it; but does not, in fact, any more than a fat man submerged in a hot bath will make a note of his revelation. He cannot. The paper would get wet. Besides, to lift his arm out of the water is inconceivable: it would damage his insight.

“But why?” Ezra gasps.

He stands stunned in the hallway, still in his galoshes, coat half unbuttoned, a night’s train journey written on his face.

“I don’t want to be married to you,” she repeats.

“But why, Sophie?”

His look of utter bewilderment belies the least suspicion of a rift between them. Hardening his face, biting on his pipe, he struggles to maintain calm. A shattered man, he has not lost all pride. It is difficult not to be moved. Ezra has his moments of beauty: just now, staring expressionless, an animal dazed by a sudden blow, he seems so solitary and forlorn—a stranger, as if he were already deserted, the person she cast out into the street, cut out of her life. If he were to walk out now without a word, she could not bear it.

...go somewhere else for coffee and dessert? No, she will finish the wine, it’s marvelous. She must remember the name—no, it’s better not. It’s quite wonderful not to be Sophie Blind just now. It’s wonderful enough to be this someone else in the car. He asks why she is smiling. She answers with a new smile which turns into a kiss. She is thinking of what her aunt told her when she was twelve: Always be sure your underwear is clean even if you’re only going across the street; you never know when a car might hit you and people will see your underwear. While they wait at an intersection she hears him tell her about the garage; it’s three blocks from the hotel, does she mind walking? He could ask the doorman, but he doesn’t want n’importe qui to drive his car. She doesn’t mind walking; it’s right, his tenderness for his car, it’s such a delicate, sensitive, powerful beast—she’s in love with it herself. They talk about cars. He finds it unusual, her enthusiasm for machines, women don’t usually—she hasn’t had the opportunity of course. She chatters foolishly about typewriters, phonographs, a motor scooter she owned once. She wonders how long this euphoria will last. Whether it will last her through. In the elevator (perhaps just the stupid situation: sealed in this ascending coffin with him, a separate individual who doesn’t mean anything to her) the reflection that she is a bitch taints her euphoria; doesn’t interrupt her ease, only changes its color, which may be for the best. Undeluded, she walks with the same ease, it doesn’t spoil her pleasure. There is no regret when she awakes to herself, all the wine drained off in the act of pleasure, leaving her utterly lucid, alone, curiously purged; after a while, just empty and becoming restless. She recalls other rooms in other places...the men...It’s really quite nice, this elegant suite at the George V. Faïence knobs high in the wall so you don’t have to bend when you take a shower. Nice, the thin white blankets—Does she really have to go in half an hour? They could have an early supper served in the room. He is explaining about his trip to London: He would invite her to come along except that his brother-in-law will be waiting for him at the airport. But she could join him in a day or two, and they could drive through Scotland or fly off to—

Nice for an afternoon—but too strenuous a business to incarnate some guiding star or even an exotic fish for a floundering millionaire. Has she missed her calling? She recalls backing out of a very attractive offer two years ago: a yacht, villa in Nice, apartment in Paris. Wanted her to fly to San Francisco with him. Took her three days to realize the futility of it. Sorry now? But then other things wouldn’t have happened. As for the tyrannical rich man who was usually on the other side of fifty, that too was impossible in the long run—and anything over a day ran into a long run or just a waste. No, it was just too much trouble to comply with an assured, vain man’s whims, or revolt, or get around him—that was the kind of patience Sophie knew she didn’t have. It naturally occurred to her that she might use a floundering rich man for her ends, indeed this was mostly on her mind. It wasn’t so much a question of the means; it wasn’t at all a moral problem, but simply that if you’ve set your heart on going to Rome, the Shanghai Express won’t get you there. You’re better off walking. The Shanghai Express might be great fun, you might fall in love with a station master, it could make you forget about ever wanting to go to Rome, revolutionize your life or be just an adventure. All this was possible but it wouldn’t get her to Rome.

[...] “Consider it as a business proposition,” he pursues with gentle irony. “I am not pleading with you; I will not use force. We are in the twentieth century; you are a free woman and I want you to make a rational choice. I hope one day you will feel some affection for me. I have a right to hope, after all, but I accept your present feelings of hostility. I want you to look at this as an offer in terms of your interests, professional ambitions, your taste. I know how important it is for you to live in the right setting. We have struggled through such difficult years; now for the first time I can offer you what you always wanted.” A city of culture, he pursues, and reminds her that she always wanted to live in Europe; and she could go to Greece every summer. As for her Paris apartment, he can think of any number of solutions. “Isn’t it reasonable?” he asks. “Be reasonable,” he says.

She can’t be reasonable even if his proposition appears reasonable—reasonable and attractive for someone else. She cannot be that person. Even if her own position is groundless, the fact is she has no position, she has no plans, she is nowhere. She has only her feelings to rely on. And she must say no. Perhaps she is really in another room, a young woman listening to Ezra Blind’s marriage proposal fifteen years ago. Must this time say no.

Weeks before the day when Sophie Blind walked up the ramp into the upholstered belly of a jet prop, weeks before she made her flight reservation, before she wrote her lover what she wanted, back in January when Paris was leafless, a bleak wet wash, and New York as bleakly wind-swept; in January at the unrecorded hour of its birth, her naked desire had started walking toward him.

Getting more Jewish every day. Fooled even Ezra as a freshman in his Hegel seminar. Had a wedding cooked up with a girl from a wealthy Sephardic family. Surprised to discover his star pupil was a pure Polish Catholic (son of a small-town New England pharmacist—corrupted by Marxist piano teacher, Nicholas explained with cynical Semitic shrug). Ezra decided his mistake was not a mistake. Claimed he could smell a Jew, developed trans-racial theory. Nevertheless, the wedding didn’t materialize.

More guests keep arriving. There is excitement at the door. A raspy voice rising above the general hubbub sounds like my father, speaking louder and with a heavier Hungarian accent than normally. He keeps asking how much all this cost—the shipping, the rabbi, the mortician, the total sum; he will write a check—so loudly it’s embarrassing. While Ezra placates him, he mutters on about religious atavism, back to the primal horde. There is Uncle Joske, the soccer player from Budapest. Have they all come? The aunts and cousins from Australia, Canada and Paraguay? I see my mother enter, wrapped in a crystal cocoon. No, it was only a reflection. A little draft lifted the edge of the drape over the mirror. Renata has fixed it already.

“A woman with your potentialities,” he proclaims wide-eyed, his arms outthrown to illustrate her far-flung positions. “You are not one but many women. You’ve got a fantastic problem between Spinoza and being a playgirl in Acapulco,” he exclaims. “How will you resolve this?”

She senses her peril. In a minute he will make the initial move to resolve this conflict for her which she cannot, which no woman alone can resolve for herself.

“It’s no problem. I told you I am writing a novel. The truth of the matter is that I’ve never read Spinoza.”

“Baby, I saw your publications on display in the lobby, but it’s understandable that you should want to deny it; the conflict between your intellectual passion and your femininity, just as I was telling you. It’s obvious you’re worried I’m less attracted to you because you read Spinoza.”

“I swear to God I’ve never read Spinoza. As for my degrees and publications—ancient history. If you must know, my husband made me do it.”