woman I'm telling you about in our transatlantic conversation tonight will flower. Her body, this glass with the hot brilliance of a ruby, will become a softer color. Her breasts will become firmer, turning a milky pink. Her thighs will bear a swarm of beauty spots – the hallmarks of your impatient fingers… Speak of her, Utkin!

The closeness of the sea can be guessed at from the light on the ceiling. It is still too hot to go down to the beach. Everything is drowsing in this great house lost amid the greenery: a broad-brimmed straw hat, glowing in the sunlight on the terrace; in the garden, twisted cherry trees with motionless branches and trunks oozing resin. And then this newspaper, several weeks old, with its columns that carry news of the ending of our distant empire. And the sea, a turquoise incrustation between the branches of the cherry trees… I am stretched out in a room that seems to be tilting across the great glassy bay with its sparkling expanse of sea. All is white, all is sunlight. Apart from the great black stain of the piano, a refugee from rainy evenings. And in an armchair: she. Still a little distant – we have known each other only two weeks. A few swims together in the foam; a few evening strolls in the fragrant shade of the cypress trees. A few kisses. She's a princess of the blood -just imagine, Utkin! Even if she is royally indifferent to the fact. I am her bear, her barbarian, all the way from the land of everlasting snows. An ogre! This amuses her…

At this moment she is bored with the long wait of the afternoon. She gets up, crosses to the piano, opens the lid. The slow notes stir as if unwillingly, quiver like butterflies whose wings are weighed down with pollen, and sink into the sun-drenched silence of the empty building…

I stand up in my turn. With the litheness of a wild animal. I am quite naked. Does she sense me drawing close? She does not even turn her head when I embrace her hips. She continues to plunge her long, lazy notes into the air liquefied by the heat.