I stopped to
look at her, suddenly fascinated by her handsome naked flesh that shone
like brass.
Then she called out to me, in a jargon I could not understand, something
mocking and challenging. And her voice was raucous and challenging; I
went on, afraid.
In Lugano I stayed at a German hotel. I remember sitting on a seat in
the darkness by the lake, watching the stream of promenaders patrolling
the edge of the water, under the trees and the lamps. I can still see
many of their faces: English, German, Italian, French. And it seemed
here, here in this holiday-place, was the quick of the disintegration,
the dry-rot, in this dry, friable flux of people backwards and forwards
on the edge of the lake, men and women from the big hotels, in evening
dress, curiously sinister, and ordinary visitors, and tourists, and
workmen, youths, men of the town, laughing, jeering. It was curiously
and painfully sinister, almost obscene.
I sat a long time among them, thinking of the girl with her limbs of
glowing brass. Then at last I went up to the hotel, and sat in the
lounge looking at the papers. It was the same here as down below, though
not so intense, the feeling of horror.
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