Once, I was in Tamluk and had set out for a walk upstream along the water. That was when I felt how alone I truly was. I remember that only two days before, Norinne had become engaged and we had feasted the whole night; I had drunk heavily, danced until I was dizzy, kissed all the girls, and at dawn we had driven to the Lakes. We had even planned a pajama party, just like the one last March, when I had my conflict and boxing match with Eddy Higgering. I too had loved Norinne once, as we do at twenty-four; I would have held her in my arms, danced with her, and kissed her. That was all. And as I walked slowly, pipe in one hand and riding crop in the other—the sun had not yet set the plain ablaze and the birds were still chirping among those bushes that smelled of incense and cinnamon—I suddenly realized that something unusual was happening to me, that I was left alone and would die alone. This thought did not sadden me; on the contrary, I was calm, serene, at peace with all the plain around me, and if someone had told me then that I must die within the hour, I would not have minded. I would have lain down on the grass, placed my arms under my head, and, gazing at that ocean

the blue above me, I would have waited for the minutes to pass without counting them, without hurrying them, almost without feeling them. I do not know what natural and inhuman grandeur lived within me then. I would have done anything, though I desired nothing anymore. The taste of my solitude in this world of wonders had made me dizzy. I thought of Norinne, of Harold, of all the others, and I wondered how they had entered my life, what place I had among their so peaceful and, yes, mediocre existences. I wandered without understanding anything.

When I returned to the worksite, I came with a mad longing for solitude, for silence, and I rejoiced that I would remain here, in the tent, for another week, during which I would not read newspapers and would not see electric lights. The servant greeted me: — Sahib, you have a telegram from Calcutta. I thought it was about the reception of materials and did not hurry to open it. But when I read it, I remained for a few minutes surprised and disappointed. Narendra Sen was summoning me urgently to headquarters. I had to leave that very evening, and I regretted it as I looked from the carriage window at the plain with its mists, with pale shadows of isolated palm trees, which had received me in the morning so generously into the bosom of its life without beginning and without end. How much I would have wanted then to be free, to remain in my tent with the gasoline lamp and listen to the millions of crickets and