There are times when I think of cutting my hair, times when I think of cutting my throat, and other times when I think of screwing out my eyes. Forgive me, Doctor, it’s just a way to talk about myself, and about Armance.

A sense of perplexity comes over me, I no longer know what to say; that is, in general, when one suddenly falls silent, thought wanders as though in expectation and then there it is – a novelty or a reflection.

I start thinking about all this on the train – since I know the landscape by heart it’s not hard to do. I always travel first class, and always sit by the window. I could just about be permanently lost in thought, given the frequency of my displacements.

I also have a habit of sitting on a rock by the river to read Stendhal or look at the river and the stones.

I have absolutely no parents, no friends in particular, my life runs serenely, sweetly.

A young woman has been living in my house for some time and I often meet acquaintances of hers to whom I offer drinks in my beautiful glasses. Miss Armance is very good company, she was born twenty years before me and wears her hair back, always neat. We met on the Milan–Gotthard–Zurich direttissimo train of the Swiss Federal Railways.

She was sitting almost directly in front of me and one noticed her right away on account of that strict look she has at all times; now that I know it, I hardly notice it anymore, except on rare occasions; though there was a time when I couldn’t help going to her room at odd hours of the night, to see whether she might have let herself go a little (or not at all), to hear a story, or to be caressed.

And she was so strict, so frightfully fierce. In the train compartment she had looked at me in such a mean way, and kept doing so. And so I took up my newspaper trick, I pretended to read, to look out the window in which her face was reflected, I smoked, blew my nose, picked up a book, looked up, and she was no longer there.

Naturally I thought once again, with a sigh of relief, that I have too much imagination. I don’t think much of the very silly, even gullible, person that I am. But one starts to conjecture right away through the entire length of the Gotthard Tunnel – about ten minutes.

She wears a kind of scarf I like very much – reddish, wide and comfortable – with a well-cut suit. Has it ever happened to you while on a train or a streetcar, or while riding a taxi, that you catch sight of someone you’d like to meet right away, just like that, or when you’re at a cafe, looking around, just so, I’d like to emphasize, for no particular reason?

I remember once, on my way to Lindau, on the Bodensee, a thin tall man with gray eyes came into my compartment, I was a young girl on my way to school and was reading a book in French that I didn’t understand. The man started talking to me, asking whether I understood that book, and it struck me – how experienced he was.

Then came the station, and I went back to school, crestfallen. Several years have gone by and I still think about it, like a wolf. I wouldn’t hide my desire to see him again (and to devour him).

Often when I look at swallows in flight I wish I could fly: I love the sky, I look at the clouds and have no taste for extravagance. Lately I’d heard a girl ten years younger than me recount her dreams, about hens and metamorphoses. Not that the dreams of others particularly intrigue me, but I can become perplexed at the majesty of certain dreams I’ve never dreamed. As soon as Armance bid me goodnight, I would wait until she had fallen asleep to find out what might happen to her; I go into her room and watch; every now and then she moves her lips, or becomes agitated, I start to hum, finding it absurd to see one person asleep and another one standing there.

I can never sleep in her bed, I absolutely detest getting tangled up.

Armance starts telling her tale again. She is slipping into a sea of lizards and experiences a frightful tickling in her feet. I immediately feel pins and needles in my feet and I’m awake. Oh well. Could I ever understand my Armance?

Out of coquetry, or a desire to compare, I look at myself in the mirror and I am decidedly determined to become more graceful, desirable, I spread sea-light pale blue eyeshadow on my lids and brush my hair a hundred times each day.

I remember a dwarf playing in the sand in Camargue with a friend, I would have liked to have been an angel, to run after them, suffocate them, then turn into a mole.

I detest Armance’s friends, I can’t stand them, I keep looking at my watch and they seem to never go away, and besides I’m not having a good time, and it seems ridiculous that I should have to wait for nightfall to have a conversation with her. I’m sure that in a few minutes she’ll smile at me simply because she is a bitch, and in one moment precisely everyone will smile at me; naturally I act as though nothing happened, maybe I’ve never been perfectly happy, but I know one shouldn’t be too patient.

I don’t wish to put anyone on guard, but careful. Arousing is not allowed.

Because then I can’t fall asleep. And what happens next is that since I am not sleeping I start thinking, scrutinizing my feelings, I go back to Armance, don’t say a word to her, adore her, go back to my room, drink a glass of milk and fall asleep again.

I wake up in the morning and ask to be taken to the beach, it’s hot, I drink white wine and we’re especially cheerful. Everyone’s drinking, it’s like a picnic, we’re all friends, I no longer need to plot anything.

How do I know whether I like the sea, how could I imagine that Armance can’t swim? And that all you need is a slip and you fall off a cliff ? Let’s rejoice.

Go without taking offense, so that I might go back to sleep and watch over Armance as she sleeps.

It’s raining, raining hard and I don’t think the weather will clear.

. . . ‘The first thing is to understand whether a person’s openness might be a positive sign with respect to another person.’ This is a problem I have in love.

Everyone has their moment. I don’t know what to do with this rainy afternoon. It gets the time it deserves.

The calendar. There are many calendars in my house. Miss Armance has been living in the other room for months. Gazing at the calendars I see a kind of balance sheet, a summary, no way out. On the 3rd of June I could have hit her I was so furious. Categorically. It’s a good thing I make a note of everything, otherwise she’d be right all the time. I don’t have a comeback all lined up, and don’t immediately realize what is going on, I mean that all you’d need is a distraction and I just know that these so-called friends would become – what? Brothers, maybe something more, lovers perhaps, Armance my dear, and all the while I bite my nails.

And today, a Tuesday, is another afternoon like the one before it. If they steal I devour, I’m alive and well, so why does Armance go on torturing me, and if she pretends to be as I want her, why doesn’t she take her so-called friends to tea at Babington’s or elsewhere, for instance? She’d come back at dusk more beautiful than ever.

The calendar says that from November of last year to today I have spent only one afternoon at home. Brooding.

My solitary afternoons, the movie theaters, the aimless taxi rides, what a nightmare when we won’t be allowed to smoke in taxis anymore, Armance, what will I do with my life then? And what of my afternoons?

One afternoon I picked scented roses from a vine, with all their little green leaves, and the petals so pale blue blown in the breeze, which is what happens when I look at the sky, with tears in my eyes I put down my Rozenkrantz.

Illustration by Fleur Jaeggy