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Angela, I must say that I know perfectly well that she’s only a character. I’m absolutely lucid and can speak with some objectivity. But what I don’t understand is why I invented Angela Pralini. It was to deceive someone. Perhaps. The little popularity I have displeases me. And then there are my imitators. But what about me? What style should I turn to if I’ve already been so used and handled by some people who had the bad taste of being me? I’ll write a book so closed that it will only allow passage to a few. Or perhaps I’ll never write again. I know nothing. The future — as Angela would say — weighs down on me by the ton. I’m lost on this Sunday that’s neither hot nor cold, having already taken refuge in a movie theater.
    Could my fatal darkness be the promise of an also-fatal light? It so happens that I fear the fatal light and already have a certain intimacy with the dark.
    I’ve left the territory of the human and therefore left Angela too. I transcended myself with a certain degree of muteness and deafness: I’m living by a thread.
    I wished

AUTHOR: I am the author of a woman I invented and to whom I gave the name Angela Pralini. I got along well with her. But she started to disturb me and I saw that once again I’d have to take on the role of writer in order to put Angela into words because only then can I communicate with her.
    I write one book and Angela writes another: I’ve removed the superfluous from both.
    I write at midnight because I am dark. Angela writes by day because she is almost always happy light.
    This is a book of non-memoirs. It is happening right now, it doesn’t matter when this right now was or is or shall be. It’s a book like sleeping deep and dreaming intensely — but there’s an instant when you awaken, sleep fades away, and only a taste of dream remains in the mouth and in the body, only the certainty of having slept and dreamt remains. I do everything possible to write by chance. I want the phrase to happen. I don’t know how to express myself in words. What I feel is not translatable. I express myself better through silence. Expressing myself through words is a challenge. But I’m not up to the challenge. Poor words emerge. And what is the secret word? I don’t know and why do I dare? Do I not know just because I don’t dare say it?
    I am well aware that I am in the dark and feed myself with my own vital darkness. Is my darkness a larva that has inside it perhaps a butterfly? It’s so dark that I’ve gone blind. I simply can’t write anymore. I’ll let Angela talk for a few days. As for me I think . . .
    ANGELA: Living leaves me atremble.
    AUTHOR: For me too life makes me shiver.
    ANGELA: I feel anxious and afflicted.
    AUTHOR: I see that Angela doesn’t quite know how to start. Being born is difficult. Should I advise her to talk more easily about facts? I’m going to teach her to start in the middle. She must stop being so hesitant because otherwise this whole book will be atremble, a drop of water dangling about to fall and when it falls it divides in splinters of scattered droplets. Take courage, Angela, start without paying too much attention.
    ANGELA: . . . and I ask myself whether I’m about to die. Because I write almost in a death rattle and feel dilacerated as in a final farewell.
    AUTHOR: Is this ultimately a dialogue or a double diary? I only know one thing: at this moment I’m writing: “at this moment” is a rare thing because only sometimes do I step with both feet on the land of the present: usually one foot slides toward the past, the other slides toward the future. And I end up with nothing.
    Angela is my attempt to be two. Unfortunately, however, because of the way things are, we resemble one another and she too writes because the only thing I know anything about is the act of writing. (Though I don’t write: I speak.)
    I did a quick inventory of my possessions and reached the frightening conclusion that the only thing we have