[...] The letter was typewritten, cheerful, pleasant, and empty, and for a long moment I stared in stupefaction at the signature which sealed it closed as implacably as a tombstone. I could have re-read that page a hundred times, could have twisted and turned it every way, and still I would not have been able to squeeze out a single new word, a single smile, a single kiss. And it would not help much to begin waiting again: at the end of my waiting, I would meet only another sheet of paper. Lewis had stayed in Chicago, he continued to live, he lived without me. I walked over to the window, looked at the summer sky, at the happy trees, and I realized that I was only beginning to suffer. The same silence: only there was no longer any hope in it; there would always be that same silence. When our bodies were no longer touching, when our eyes no longer looked at each other, what did we have in common? Our pasts had nothing in common, our futures receded from each other, we did not hear the same language spoken around us, and even the clocks laughed at us. Here the morning was gleaming brightly, and it was night in that room in Chicago. We couldn't even meet in the sky. No, there was no path between us — except those sobs in my throat, those sobs I repressed.