Before that, I moved through the city like a sleepwalker; although my eyes were open, I saw no more than the bare minimum I needed in order to get where I had to go. But then, in the time opened up by the green-eyed gaze, the city filled all three, or four, of its dimensions; I lived in it, breathed in it and breathed it in, coming to know its pleasant and not-so-pleasant smells. I began to pick up on the slight sadness of particular neon lights glimmering on particular pavements, or the fleeting joy of an unexpected reflection – the red of a car in a torrent of water, traffic lights on rainy nights (the jubilation of the brilliant red or the gentle purity of the green, wet from the rain and bouncing off the asphalt; marble walls or the shiny surfaces of cars, which contrasted with the sweet, infinite sadness of those meek, tireless March and April showers that fell endlessly onto a city carpeted by the plane trees’ yellowish-brown leaves). Yes, there are happy autumns, just as there is happiness in sadness and even in despair: the point is to be alive and to know it, to feel it – and I curse and curse the dull fear of these long years, when all our lives are gradually drying out, dwindling, reducing, with never any place for sadness: nothing but fear, nothing but hatred, nothing but that long-lost, oft-hidden morsel of hope, worn out from so much manhandling, from our longing to squeeze just a few more drops from it, a few more drops to get us through the present with its shrinking horizons and impenetrable lead roof; and oh, how I also came to hate this city, which was falling to pieces, which was burying us under ever-higher walls and rubble and dust and noise and silence and shame.