But I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say.
“I’m not going for ever. If you do this, you’ll make me feel like a worm.”
She had no sooner said these words than she regretted them. Maybe she saw the lost look on my face, or maybe she simply realized it wasn’t right. It may have been inevitable – she must have been thinking about it for a good many weeks – but it certainly wasn’t right.
She said some other things, too, her voice breaking. They sounded like apologies. Which is what they were.
And as she said these things I stopped listening to her, and the whole scene took on the unreal texture of a photographic negative, and that was the way it lodged itself in my memory.
1
I was waiting for the judges to enter the courtroom and my case to be heard, when I noticed a young woman sitting on the public benches. Oriental, but with something European about her features. She looked beautiful and slightly bewildered.
I wondered who she was there for, and several times I pretended to search for something on my bench so that I could turn and look at her.
I had the impression she was watching me, which was of course highly unlikely. A girl like that would never have given me the time of day, I thought, not even in the good old days. Then I thought, when the hell were the good old days anyway?
At least ten minutes passed like this. Then at last the judges emerged from their chamber, the hearing started, and I stopped having these stupid thoughts.
It was a trial for armed robbery and we were due to hear the principal witness: the victim. A jewel salesman who’d had his sample case stolen, along with the unused gun he carried with him.
Two of the robbers had been arrested soon after the crime, with the booty still in their car. They had opted for the fast-track procedure and had already received relatively light sentences.