SHE  IS  A  MYSTERY  TO  ME.

            She is a mystery to me.
            I come from a world that may not be the world she comes from. We are surrounded by strangers who resemble us. But are they as much strangers to her as they are to me? That's the impression I get when I look at her but when I look away I'm not so sure. I'm scared.
            She speaks to me. What happens within her when she says those words? Is she transformed the way I am when I hear them? Are her words part of both of us, the way I feel them to be?
            She stops, sits; she gazes at infinity, they say. I can't take that kind of infinity. Is there any way back from it?
            She glances at me, now, very quickly. She wants - I don't know - I think she wants time to pass without her; I must be the one to hold her back. In the sun, where it's so hot, like before being born.
            The sea nestles on the beach with gentle but incomprehensible speech. I will never be more eloquent than the sea, with my human words.
            I hear them saying that the water's lovely, that there'll be a camp fire this evening. What is the point of these words that seem to me like mist, far off in the distance where the sea and the sky become one, where nothing is created?
            And yet these are the words she listens to - she laughs and sits up: "Are you coming in?" The water must be cold, as cold as having to cope on my own, without her. She is a good swimmer. She plays with the salt water that will presently leave powdery white traces on her body.
            Stretched out on the sand, she looks made to turn the eyes of the boys, who have finished swimming and are talking about themselves. About themselves or about what must naturally be said?
            I didn't know anyone here. My parents had sent me off to holiday camp. I had plenty of plans, school being silent for the summer, but no, I had to have a holiday. Just when I was free to think my own thoughts, I was pitched into the company of boys and girls who, given leave, had fled from their schools and now seemed like a fading echo of the intellectual tumult of their latest year in academe.
            I was disconcerted at having to leave; on the station platform, seeing the crowd I was going to have to go with, I tried not to get lost. She was standing slightly to one side, clearly visible. I moved closer to her.
            Now I was beside her, lying on the sand, still trying to answer the questions she never put.
            She had not left my side throughout the whole journey, saying little, talking about things that might well have been ordinary. We slept a little, and often stood in the corridor watching the invisible landscapes that the darkness brought.
            The night was neither long nor short, it was merely present and our sole companion. And yet the others were there also, sleeping or talking. Were we in the corridor or in the landscape outside?
            I asked her if she didn't want to put something on so she wouldn't get sunburnt. I didn't know exactly who she was or what school she went to. We just exchanged thoughts that touched on nothing that was visible. The conversation was disjointed but I felt that its thread was an unbreakable bond. Our talk was about us but in a strange way we were not its subject. The world of which we spoke - the world in which we were living - seemed to change whenever a thought from one of us invaded the other...