Walter took flight, disappeared. Then I trudged cautiously up the stairs.

For a few days I sought him everywhere. In vain. There was nothing for it: I would have to go back to the cellar. But the vacant lot looked totally different when I got there: there were piles of rubbish everywhere and dead animals putrefying in the sun; the stench was horrible. I hadn’t noticed anything of the sort with Walter. I decided not to go to the cellar anymore. I never saw Walter again.

I got myself a feather, wrapped it in a scrap of newsprint, and kept it well hidden in my pocket. There were times when I thought I had made up the whole feather incident and Walter had never existed. Now and then I unwrapped the feather and stared at it. Its mystery was impenetrable. I would brush its soft, silky surface over my cheek and shudder slightly at the touch. It was as if an invisible but real person were caressing me with his fingertips. Then one fine evening, under quite extraordinary circumstances, I used it on someone else.

I liked staying outside as late as possible. That evening there was the heavy, oppressive feeling of a storm in the air. All the heat of the day was compressed into a stifling atmosphere beneath a black sky rent with lightening. I was sitting on the doorstep, watching the play of electric light on the houses—the streetlamps swaying in the wind, the concentric circles of the globes flitting along the walls, splashing like water in a swinging bucket—and the long sashes of dust that swept through the road and spiraled upward.

In the midst of all this turbulence I thought I saw a white marble statue rise into the air. No, I was as certain as I could be of anything: I had seen a block of white stone climbing rapidly, at an angle, like a balloon that had escaped from the hand of a child. In no time the statue was a simple white speck in the sky, no bigger than my fist. I also saw two white figures holding hands and gliding through the sky like skiers. My mouth and eyes must have been wide open because at that moment a girl stopped in front of me and asked me what I was looking at up there in the sky.

“See that statue flying through the air?” I said. “Look quickly! It’s about to disappear . . .”

The girl screwed up her eyes and looked long and hard but told me she couldn’t see it. She was a local girl, a chubby little thing with eternally scrubbed red-rubber cheeks and sweaty hands. Until that evening I had barely spoken to her.

“I know why you tried to fool me,” she said, standing there and laughing in my face. “I know what you’re after.”

And off she hopped. I stood and followed her. I called out to her from a dark alley, and she came of her own accord. There I lifted her dress. She let me have my way, docilely holding onto my shoulders.