He walks down the street. The asphalt reels by him.

"In an unremarkable room, in a nondescript building, a man sat working on very non-nondescript theories."

One morning near the end of October not long before the first drops of the mercilessly long autumn rains began to fall on the cracked and saline soil on the western side of the estate (later the stinking yellow sea of mud would render footpaths impassable and put the town too beyond reach) Futaki woke to hear bells.

Don Juan had always been looking for someone to listen to him. Then one fine day he found me. He told me his story, but in the third person rather than in the first. At least that is how I recall it now.

At daybreak, my face still turned to the wall, and before I had seen above the big window-curtains what shade of colour the first streaks of light assumed, I could already tell what the weather was like.

The twittering of the birds at daybreak sounded insipid to Françoise.

These shadows become carp rising slowly.

For a long time I used to go to bed early.

It is night, and our old house by the river is finally quiet.

 red is the colour of blood, and I will seek it: I have sought it in the grass. It is the color of steep sun seen through eyelids.