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her forehead and cheeks are damp, and her eyes glow with satiety, as though she has eaten a large meal. Mr. Burdoff, on the other hand, is overcome by melancholy.
    During the rest of the performance, Mr. Burdoff’s mind wanders. He tries to calculate the seating capacity of the hall, and then studies the dim frescoes on the underside of the dome. From time to time he glances at Helen’s strong hand on the arm of her seat but does not dare disturb her by touching it.
    Mr. Burdoff and the Nineteenth Century
    Late in their affair, by the time Mr. Burdoff has sat through the entire Ring cycle and The Flying Dutchman, as well as a symphonic poem by Strauss and what seem to him innumerable violin concertos by Bruch, Mr. Burdoff feels that Helen has taken him deep into the nineteenth century, a century he has always carefully avoided. He is surprised by its lushness, its brilliance, and its female sensibility, and still later, as he travels away from Germany on the train, he thinks of the night—important to the progress of their relationship—when he and Helen made love during her menstruation. The radio was broadcasting Schumann’s Manfred . As Mr. Burdoff climaxed, sticky with Helen’s blood, he confusedly sensed that a profound identification existed between Helen’s blood, Helen herself, and the nineteenth century.
    Summary
    Mr. Burdoff comes to Germany. Lives in a rooming house from which he can see construction. Looks forward to lunch. Eats well every day and gains weight. Goes to class, to museums, and to beer gardens. Likes to listen to a string quartet in the open air, his arms on the metal tabletop and gravel under his feet. Daydreams about women. Falls in love with Helen. A difficult and uncomfortable love. Growing familiarity. Helen reveals
her love of Wagnerian opera. Mr. Burdoff unfortunately prefers Scarlatti. The Mystery of Helen’s Mind.
    Helen’s child falls ill and she goes home to Norway to nurse him. She is not sure she won’t continue her marriage. Mr. Burdoff writes to her at least once every day. Will she be able to return before he leaves for America? The letters she writes back are very brief. Mr. Burdoff criticizes her letters. She writes less frequently and communicates nothing Mr. Burdoff wants to hear. Mr. Burdoff, finished with his course of study, prepares to leave for America. Alone on his way to Paris, he looks out the train window, feels weak, incapable. Helen sits by her sleeping child, gazes toward the bedroom window, thinks of Mr. Burdoff. Is moved to remember earlier lovers, and their cars.

What She Knew
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    People did not know what she knew, that she was not really a woman but a man, often a fat man, but more often, probably, an old man. The fact that she was an old man made it hard for her to be a young woman. It was hard for her to talk to a young man, for instance, though the young man was clearly interested in her. She had to ask herself, Why is this young man flirting with this old man?

The Fish
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    She stands over a fish, thinking about certain irrevocable mistakes she has made today. Now the fish has been cooked, and she is alone with it. The fish is for her—there is no one else in the house. But she has had a troubling day. How can she eat this fish, cooling on a slab of marble? And yet the fish, too, motionless as it is, and dismantled from its bones, and fleeced of its silver skin, has never been so completely alone as it is now: violated in a final manner and regarded with a weary eye by this woman who has made the latest mistake of her day and done this to it.

Mildred and the Oboe
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    Last night Mildred, my neighbor on the floor below, masturbated with an oboe. The oboe wheezed and squealed in her vagina. Mildred groaned. Later, when I thought she was finished, she started screaming. I lay in bed with a book about India. I could feel her pleasure pass up through the floorboards into my room. Of course there