My brief sojourn into the world of theater was coming to an end; the theater company had disbanded, some having moved on to engagements elsewhere, others, like myself, passively awaiting a change in the wind of their destiny. Marianne and I were the only ones left in the big house we called “the Villa,” which a short while ago we had all occupied, on the hill at the far end of the long garden; the time of cherries had gone by; the hot bronze shadow of the large cherry tree flooded the mansarded windows on the first floor where we lived; in this fervent shadow, I slowly undressed Marianne, examined her in its blaze, threw her onto the blond floorboards baked by the torpor of the days. In the midst of these interplaying reflections, the too-rosy passages of her thighs took on the tones of one of those Renoirs where, violently displayed in a burst of sunlight but then withdrawn into the half shadow of a haystack, the mauve sculpting of the flesh springs more nakedly, shadowed with gold, from the purple wheat.
