Chapter 11.
It was two o'clock in the morning when I left La Petite Jérusalem. I was about ten minutes away from where I had parked the car. I had wanted to walk through open country to cleanse my lungs and brain from the scoria forming thick layers of despair on my whole being, a despair which becomes totally disproportionate when I am surrounded by walls, when I am in the dark, damp with sweat, fear and dread. When I sense, because of their closeness to me, the circling of hawks with human faces. I was breathless, a condition hitherto unknown to me–well, almost. It was made worse by the icy wind cutting through the skin of my face partly covered by Gustave's muffler that still had his smell, his warmth–his face against mine–a souvenir no longer comforting me, but causing irrepressible p
