[...] The girl would have been, I don’t know, I can never tell how old people are, but I think she would have been between fourteen and sixteen years old. And yet she behaved as if she were younger, with that stiffness, that dependence on the old lady still rooting around in her handbag. The girl had her eyes fixed straight ahead and her gaze was guarded, or rather it was as if she were hiding a second gaze underneath. There was something stupid about her expression, but it was a proud kind of stupidity and suggested she was extremely ignorant as well as not very clever. But something beneath this gaze slightly refuted what I’ve just said; not about the pride, but about the stupidity and the distance she put between herself and the world; as if she were watching everything out of the corner of her eye, amazed; as if she were deliberately avoiding looking around so as not to be amazed, because she’d realised that what she saw would amaze her. My God, I don’t know how to explain it. She wasn’t ugly. But she wasn’t very beautiful either. I don’t have a clue what it was I found so attractive, but I was violently attracted to her nonetheless. I could even pick up the scent of her, not because she smelled bad but because I’m sensitive and have a powerful imagination; she smelled of the countryside, of sunshine and dried grass. When I passed nearby, I stared at her with all the enormous eyes at my disposal. When I reached the exit, I turned back for another look. My God! I wanted that girl so much! I spent the whole walk home thinking about her, imagining different scenarios, those erotic fantasies I’ve always looked down on and never let myself indulge in. I gradually realised that my desire for her was violent, and a desire for violence rather than sex, or violent sex, at any rate. I didn’t imagine myself seducing her so much as forcing myself on her. Taming her, like an animal. That was it: she was a dumb beast and wouldn’t understand any language other than brutality. But there was a lot more inside me than this. At one point I imagined I was a feudal lord, saying to the old lady: ‘I shall take your daughter away,’ and the old lady had no choice but to hand her over. The thought of being alone in a large room with the girl drove me crazy. I wanted to make the struggle last forever, because she wouldn’t give in just like that; I had to make her, I had to fight, and she’d fight back, biting and kicking. I’d have to hit her and dominate her, I’d have to rip off her clothes. Oh, my God, my God. And all in silence, without a word; with nothing, perhaps, but moans. I couldn’t picture her naked; my mind lingered on the struggle, or the point before the struggle: the moment she found herself shut inside the room with me alone, preparing for a defence that she knew would ultimately be futile. I’m sure she wouldn’t alter her gaze, her shyness that looked like pride or distance; that in the end, whatever I did, I would never reach her real gaze, and that this would be her triumph, and my defeat.