[...] Then, finally: “Look, I’ve been holding back for over half an hour. All I want to say is: I’m here to be abused. I’m fully at the mercy of your psychic power. I think you’re a tremendous woman”—Vera is taller than him, steadier—“and I want you to use me as you wish, to use me and then discard me. But we have to remain friends.” This is when the “deal” is made—it’s the moment Berengo is careful to stage at the beginning of each of his relationships. He believes that he is always acting in nothing less than good faith, but he is careful to stipulate an agreement: the boundaries of the exchange have to be established, the parameters of the playing field defined. What he believes he’s making clear are the boundaries of his involvement, the very grammar of their encounter. Certain lovers will later reproach him for holding back, for not pursuing a relationship with them, for being self-contained and unable to loosen up. At which point Berengo will remind them of what he said, of the way he denied the possibility of a love story from the very beginning. It is all, as far as he can tell, rather explicit. These statements are usually hyperbolic, and his lovers often confess, some time later, that they did indeed treat them as hyperbole, that they hadn’t taken them literally, even though they were key to their relationship. In this case, the abuse Berengo refers to in his original statement finds a form in their relationship: he and Vera develop a habit of engaging in Greco-Roman wrestling during their lovemaking.