All this was decided imperceptibly while I was remembering the dream gaze and the real gaze, which were one and the same, and smoking a cigarette, and accepting that gaze. By the time I turned off the light to go back to sleep, I’d surrendered to it entirely. It extended over my whole being, opening up ever more avenues of sensitivity, preparing me for a new destiny. Afterwards, I did the right things. I didn’t look for the girl; in fact, I forgot all about her for a while, and even when I did remember her, it never occurred to me to go looking for her. Certainly not. I did all the right things. I had to destroy everything I’d been, thought, believed and felt. I had to get rid of every trace of that delirious life I’d been dragging along like a clumsy worm behind me for the past twenty-five years. I didn’t do it consciously, deliberately; I should have done. Accustomed as I was to my narrow consciousness, I carried on within its limits; but that gaze had injected me with the dimension of love, which everyone knows works of its own accord. My narrow consciousness fought back against the dimension of love; it shouldn’t have done. The battle was lost – or rather won – because God didn’t allow that dream to go unnoticed. stop right there! do you expect us to believe you’re going to tell us about luminous, mystical, spiritual experiences, when you’ve talked about nothing but women, destruction, alcohol and prostitutes? all that’s missing is drugs! go on, minions, take this miserable wretch and throw him into the most pestilent dungeon! Little old ladies in dark-green shawls are whacking me on the head with their umbrellas. You can hear the beating of a drum. A multitude of mothers with their children in their arms, their eyes full of tears, silently mouth the letters of a curse. The pyre is ready. While my body burns in resignation, I think: ‘They weren’t patient enough, they weren’t curious enough. If only they’d carried on reading … ’ And I raise my eyes to the heavens, wanting to exclaim piously: ‘Forgive them, oh Lord, for they know not what they do,’ but a final flicker of consciousness makes me shout instead: ‘The bastards! The fucking bastards!’