She only smiles a gently contained smile. And I smile back in the same way.

The game is not as trivial as it seems. It’s not as if we were grossly imitating each other-that would weary us both. Rather, we are communicating with each other. Sometimes, telepathically, it would seem, since Clarimonda follows my movements instantaneously almost before she has had time to see them. I find myself inventing new movements, or new combinations of movements, but each time she repeats them with disconcerting speed. Sometimes. I change the order of the movements to surprise her, making whole series of gestures as rapidly as possible; or I leave out some motions and weave in others, the way children play “Simon Says.” What is amazing is that Clarimonda never once makes a mistake, no matter how quickly I change gestures.

That’s how I spend my days…hut never for a moment do I feel that I’m killing time. It seems, on the contrary, that never in my life have I been better occupied.

Wednesday. March 16 Isn’t it strange that it hasn’t occurred to me to put my relationship with Clarimonda on a more serious basis than these endless games. Last night, I thought about this…I can, of course, put on my hat and coat, walk down two flights of stairs, take five steps across the street and mount two flights to her door which is marked with a small sign that says “Clarimonda.” Clarimonda what? I don’t know. Something. Then I can knock and…

Up to this point I imagine everything very clearly, but I cannot see what should happen next. I know that the door opens. But then I stand before it, looking into a dark void. Clarimonda doesn’t come. Nothing comes. Nothing is there, only the black, impenetrable dark.

Sometimes, it seems to me that there can be no other Clarimonda but the one I see in the window; the one who plays gesture-games with me. I cannot imagine a Clarimonda wearing a hat, or a dress other than her black dress with the lilac motif. Nor can I imagine a Clarimonda without black gloves. The very notion that I might encounter Clarimonda somewhere in the streets or in a restaurant eating, drinking or chatting is so improbable that it makes me laugh.

Sometimes I ask myself whether I love her. It’s impossible to say, since I have never loved before. However, if the feeling that I have for Clarimonda is really-love, then love is something entirely different from anything I have seen among my friends or read about in novels.

It is hard for me to be sure of my feelings and harder still to think of anything that doesn’t relate to Clarimonda or, what is more important, to our game. Undeniably, it is our game that concerns me. Nothing else-and this is what I understand least of all.

There is no doubt that I am drawn to Clarimonda, but with this attraction there is mingled another feeling, fear. No. That’s not it either. Say rather a vague apprehension in the presence of the unknown. And this anxiety has a strangely voluptuous quality so that I am at the same time drawn to her even as I am repelled by her. It is as if I were moving in giant circles around her, sometimes coming close, sometimes retreating…back and forth, back and forth.

Once, I am sure of it, it will happen, and I will join her.

Clarimonda sits at her window and spins her slender, eternally fine thread, making a strange cloth whose purpose I do not understand.