SEPTEMBER 21, 1949

To the Grotta Azzurra with K. Very cluttered with rowboats, so certainly 50% of the light was obscured. What a shame. Caught the 4:10 bus back to Napoli. Then the parting. And the rushing. Grapes. And a last dinner with K. I in my white suit, which I’d wanted to wear the first evening with her. We dined—indifferently—at the vine balcony restaurant of our first lunch. K. often holds me, looks earnestly into my face, and kisses me on the lips. What does she wish me to say further? (I have said nothing.) She doesn’t wish anything. But mightn’t I? Plans—does K. want them? I know it is I who do not want them. That K. could more easily bear than I could say, I shall come to London next year and we shall live together. No, I don’t not know what I want. With perfect equanimity, I can contemplate nothing but brief affairs—promiscuous ones—in N.Y. And yet I hope for a jolt (of time, in time) to crystallize my desires. I long to write, and dream of its coming out easily as a spider’s web. Now I know why I keep a diary. I am not at peace until I continue the thread into the present. I am interested in analyzing myself, in trying to discover the reasons why I do such & such. I cannot do this without dropping dried peas behind me to help me retrace my course, to point a straight line in the darkness.