My old sweetheart Katie fled over there, and I have heard many tales and myths, like those of The Thousand and One Nights, about it. I have heard about lust in the eyes and molten gold in the earth, yet here I am in a room without heating. I change from one train to another under the ground. I work as a small employee in a small company and I wanted to marry the daughter of the director. I fell in love with her but she turned me down, and so I married a woman whom others had turned down before I met her. She is ten years older than myself and she has a flat chest, thighs thin as walking sticks, and no haunches. Her mind is hot and seething with things, but her womb is freezing. She gives birth to one book after the other, but when it comes to children she prefers test-tube babies. I said to her, ‘To my mind a great woman is the woman who gives birth to a great man, not to a great book.’ She said, ‘The Virgin Mary gave birth to Jesus Christ, but I lost my virginity when I was a child and no longer believe in Christ.’ I asked, ‘What do you believe in then?’ ‘I believe in my mind and in anyone who can relate to my mind, but not to my uterus,’ she said.
