I had come with such pain and labour to a place where emptiness had arrived before me. I was too late, something black and hollow had overtaken me and wriggled through the door.

The white cat Sal-al was lying on the straw matting in the empty conservatory. She looked at us with a wicked, conceited expression as if all her appetites had just been satisfied. She was beautiful....

I began to long, as I had before, for some special smell, some special music that would fill me, lift me up and carry me away, float me off the rocks of my body and...