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made him seem like a dethroned god—a genius. And besides, I already loved him.
    Today, I feel sorry for Daniel. After feeling helpless, not knowing what to do with myself, with no desire to go on with the same past of tranquility and death, and not succeeding, the habit of comfort, at mastering a different future—now I realize how free Daniel was and how unhappy. Because of his past—obscure, filled with frustrated dreams—he hadn’t managed to find a place in the conventional world, more or less happy, average. As for the future, he feared it too much because he was well aware of his own limits. And because, despite knowing them, he hadn’t resigned himself to abandoning that enormous, undefined ambition, which, when later it had already become inhuman, was directed beyond earthly things. Failing to achieve the things right in front of him, he’d turned toward something that no one, he guessed, could ever achieve.
    Strange as it seems, he suffered from unknown things, from things that, “due to a conspiracy of nature,” he would never touch even for an instant with his senses, “even just to learn about its material, its color, its sex.” “About its qualification in the world of perceptions and sensations,” he said to me once, after I went back to him. And the greatest harm Daniel did me was awaken within me that desire that lies latent inside us all. For some people it awakens and merely poisons them, as for me and Daniel. For others it leads to laboratories, journeys, absurd experiences, to adventure. To madness.
    I now know a thing or two about those who seek to feel in order to know that they are alive. I too ventured upon this dangerous journey, so paltry for our terrible anxiety. And almost always disappointing. I learned to make my soul vibrate and I know that, all the while, in the depths of one’s own being, one can remain vigilant and cold, merely observing the spectacle one has granted oneself. And how often in near-boredom . . .
    Now I would understand it. But back then I only saw the Daniel without weaknesses, sovereign and distant, who hypnotized me. I know little about love. I only remember that I feared him and sought him.
    He made me tell my life story, which I did, fearfully, choosing my words carefully so I wouldn’t seem so stupid to him. Because he didn’t hesitate to talk about my lack of intelligence, using the cruelest expressions. I’d tell him, obediently, small facts from the past. He’d listen, cigarette in his lips, eyes distracted. And he’d conclude by saying, in that singular way of his, a blend of the suppressed desire to laugh, of weariness, of benevolent disdain:
    “Very well, quite happy . . .”
    I’d blush, not sure why I was furious, wounded. But I wouldn’t reply.
    One day I talked about Jaime and he said:
    “Interesting, very normal.”
    Oh, the words are common, but the way they were uttered. They revolutionized me, made me ashamed of what was most hidden inside me.
    “Cristina, do you know you’re alive?”
    “Cristina, is it good to be unconscious?”
    “Cristina, there’s nothing you want, is that so?”
    I’d cry afterward, but I’d seek him out again, because I was starting to agree with him and secretly hoped he’d deign to initiate me into his world. And he knew just how to humiliate me. He started to dig his claws into Jaime, into all my friends, lumping them together like something contemptible. I don’t know what it was that, from the start, kept me from revolting. I don’t know. I only recall that for his ego it was a pleasure to dominate and I was easy.
    One day, I saw him suddenly get excited, as if the inspiration struck him as both fortuitous and comic:
    “Cristina, do you want me to awaken you?”
    And, before I could laugh, I already saw myself nodding, in agreement.
    So began the strange and revelatory outings, those days that marked me forever.
    He’d have hardly condescended to look at me, he made me realize, if I hadn’t