The Affair - Hans Koningsberger

Do you belong to somebody? 

Have good wine and buy her flowers. Build a romantic scene, with style.
Take her home, ask to come in, kiss her. 
I don't believe in seductions by wine - you're dated.

The film love affair.
His flowers were there. She offered him a drink.

Aware of himself.

Clutter my thoughts.

Her mouth was large and soft.

He dreamed of women, imaginary women. He saw himself in harems & in medieval courts.

Somewhere out there, must be a woman desiring me, without fulfilment.

Kissed her in her hair.

To be ahead always of what she implied she wanted.

This is silly and like a film.

This was a dreamed and desired situation. 

Slowly felt for a button of her blouse.

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This morning was blue.

He saw her coming across the glittering street.
There was such precision in her beauty, that he felt a wonder in her directing herself towards him, and her once having accepted him seemed unthinkable, more unthinkable still having taken her.

...and felt a chosen man, walking among the people who were thinking of business, shopping, he coming from Catherines bed.

He wanted to speak to her, telephone her, say a few words, but then he did not, wishing to keep this thing, this feeling, whole, unexposed, in himself, nursing the thought without touching it.

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Calling the waitress mon petit chou without any reaction from her; Anthoni was walking a step behind, looking at her ankles which buckled a little over her grey shoes, slightly worn heels, and then breathing deeply in a sudden mist of heavy-heartedness. 

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Darkness falling outside.

And then the dream of the sea, the ocean, the green mass of water, so high, so high, and ships descending through it, bodies of sailors who had drowned from their torpedoed ships, who floated in midwater, thousands of feet of water over them and under them, enveloped in an endless ocean, the darkness of the undermost layers, silent monster fish, bones of the men who had drowned so long ago, knights in armour. The fear and yet the abandonment of drowning, submerging in one element.

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A violence, a primitive sentiment that force is more glamorous than ideas.

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He had to go back to his base first, think, wash, clean his shoes, a refuelling of vanity. It was not precisely that, it was an urge in him not to be anything less with her than the utmost possible- an acute awareness of himself, of how he looked, spoke; and he went to her after endless preparation. 

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Catherine was playing a record. 
...and a ribbon in her hair.

Her round shoulders in a nightgown with lace edges; and he had slept next to her.
...How lovely to share your nights with a woman. 

He felt himself, but unlonely and unafraid. He thought of his body and the intense and unknown awareness of it when he had been with Catherine. Lying with her had been the centre of the earth, a wild breath-taking thought, his being in a woman.

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He thought: If I could think in rhythms, write poetry...
...He wanted to write a letter, put in some lines from him, to Catherine.

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He should go to his room now first and read, work for two hours. But there was so much to think about.

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He started to make a loop on the l of the word love, making it into a d.
It did not look too messy. He wrote over love; desire.

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Love... I want to be lifted by it, love is not an inspiration, love is volition, Anthoni thought.

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Good for me. A new formula, no, you are certainly very bad for me, he thought. 

In a half dream. 

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Catherine was going to buy a new gramophone.
"I want a gramophone. I think I should buy a new radio too. Do you have Marathons?"
...In his present frame of mind such easy spending seemed romantically bold.
The salesman grinned at Anthoni with the conspiring smile of the technical-minded male.

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Her hair up, in her dressing-gown. 
Catherine came out of the bedroom in a dark blue dress, carrying a book, 
holding out her hand to be kissed.