One

In deserted rooms in the inexhaustible city, passing from night to day, through half-ruined streets in yellow afternoons, basements with red-patterned wallpaper, large window frames, tinted glass and in the background industrial noise.
Or in deeper and more secret places like the places you can go to in movie theatres.
Monuments, fountains, vast unattainable cities of night.
Through these M. wandered, finding himself present in bookshops, arcades, over-horizon scenarios, markets and courtyards filled with afternoon light and red-blazing windows, filled with figures that now and then gesticulated to him, mouthing lines.
Drunken or sad he went with ladies into darkened living-rooms; there when quiet lamps were switched on he watched disinterestedly their glittering lips, the movement of their flesh, the fall of their hair. He saw the swell of breasts beneath fabric, he saw the flesh of knees and thighs. He saw all the phantom girls come alive and parade in front of him, mocking his excitement, and, falling in and out of shadow, bending and twisting and smiling, groping towards the final release, the final apex of desire, so urgent in its ferocity and yet so meaningless in its aftermath. Blonde women with well-fed faces warmed with blusher, smiling at his inexperience in the corners of garrets, dusky girls with pouting lipstick smiles that looked like grief, reclining in tight dresses. Flesh against flesh, touch against touch, daylight never intruding.