were there, inscribed indelibly on the paper, exactly as I had written them.
Yet for Gracia, unseeing of the mind that had made them, they were non-existent. I had written and I had not written.
The story was there, but the words were not.
'What are you looking at?' Gracia cried, her voice rising as if frantic.
She was twisting one of the rings on her night hand.
'I'm reading.'
I had found the page I wanted to show her: it was in Chapter Seven, where Seri and I first met in Muriseay Town. It paralleled our own first meeting, on the island of Kos, in the Aegean. Seri was said to be working on the staff of the Lotterie-Collago, whereas Gnacia had been on holiday; Muriseay Town was a clamorous city, and Kos had just a tiny port. The events differed, but they had the higher truth of feeling. Gracia would recognize it all.
I separated the page from the others and offered it to her. She put it on the bed between us. She had it the wrong way up.
'Why won't you look at it?' I said.
'What are you trying to do to me?'
'I just want you to understand. Please read it.'
She snatched up the page, crumpled it in her hand and threw it across the room. 'I can't read blank paper!'
Her eyes were moist, and she had pulled the ring until it had come off.
Realizing at last that she could not make the necessary imaginative leap, I said, as gently as possible: 'Can I explain?'
'No, don't say anything. I've had enough. Are you living in total fantasy? What else do you imagine? Do you know who I am, who I _really_ am? Do you know where you are or what you're doing?'
'You can't read the words,' I said.
'There's nothing there. Nothing.'
I got up from the bed and retrieved the screwed-up page. 1 flattened it out with the palm of my hand, and returned it to its connect position. I began to collect the sheets, pushing them into their reassuringly familiar bulk.
'You've got to understand this,' I said.
Gracia lowered her head, pressing a hand oven her eyes. I heard her say, indistinctly: 'It's happening all oven again.'
'What is?'
'We can't go on, you must see that. Nothing's changed.' She wiped her eyes with a tissue. Leaving her cigarette to smoulder in the ashtray, she walked quickly from the room. I heard her in the hallway. She picked up the phone, and she dialled. After a moment she pushed in a coin, with that mechanical, money-box sound.
Although she spoke softly, as if her back were turned against me, I heard her say: 'Steve . . . ? Yes, it's me. Can you put me up tonight? . . .
I'm all right, really. Just for tonight. . . . Yes, he's back. I don't know what happened. Everything's fine. . . . No, I'll come on the Tube. I'm all night, really. . . . In about an hour? Thanks.'
I was standing when she came back into the noom. She stubbed out her cigarette, and turned to face me. She seemed composed.
'Did you hear any of that?' she said.
'Yes. You're going to Steve's.'
'I'll come back in the morning. Steve will drop me off on his way to work. Will you still be here?'
'Gracia, please don't go. I won't talk about my manuscript.'
'Look, I've just got to calm down a little, talk to Steve. You've upset me. I wasn't expecting you back yet.'
She was moving about the room, collecting her cigarettes and matches, her bag, a book. She took a bottle of wine from the cupboard, then went to the bathroom. A few moments later she was standing in the hall by the bedroom door, checking her purse for her keys, a supermarket carrier bag swinging from her wrist with her overnight toilet things, and her wine bottle.
I went out and stood with her.
'I can't believe this,' I said. 'Why are you running away from me?'
'Why did _you_ nun away?'
'That's what I was trying to explain.'
She wore a non-committal expression, avoiding my eyes. I knew she was making an effort to stay in control of herself; in the old days we would have talked ourselves into exhaustion, gone to bed, made love, continued in the morning. Now she had terminated the whole thing: the phone call, the abrupt departure, the bottle of wine.
Even as she stood there, waiting for me to let her go, she was already absent, halfway to the Tube station.
I held her arm. This made her look at me, but then away again.
'Are you still in love with me?' I said.
