ABSTRACT

He had finished being born a man. But scarcely had he assumed his birth when he assumed also this weight in the breast: scarcely had he assumed his glory when an unfathomable experience gave him his first future wrinkle. Ignorant, worried, scarcely had he assumed masculinity when a new avid hunger was born, a painful thing like a man who never cries. Was he feeling the first fear that something was

impossible? The girl was a zero in that bus at the stop, and yet, as the man which he now was, the boy all of a sudden needed to bow toward this nothing, on this girl. And not even to bow at least from equal to equal, not even to bow at least so as to concede… But sunk into his man’s kingdom, he needed her. Why? to remind himself of a clause? so that she or another would not let him go too far and get lost? so that he should feel with a start, as he was feeling, that there was a possibility of error? He needed her with hunger so as not to forget that they were made of the same flesh, this poor flesh of which, in climbing into the bus like a monkey, she seemed to have made a fatal path. Hey! but in the end what is happening to me?, he alarmed himself.