The street. It was windy. The sky seemed to be composed of soaring panels of cast-iron. And exactly as it seemed for one moment yesterday, the whole world was broken up into separate, sharp, independent fragments, and each of these fragments was falling at full speed; each would stop for a second, hang before me in the air and disappear without trace. It was as if the black, precise letters on this page should suddenly move apart and begin to jump hither and thither in fright, so that there was not a word on the page, only nonsensical “ap,” “jum,” “wor.” The crowd seemed just as nonsensical, dispersed (not in rows), going forward, backward, diagonally, transversely.⁠ ⁠…

Then nobody. For a second while I was dashing at full speed, suddenly stopping, I saw on the second floor in the glass cage hanging in the air⁠—a man and a woman⁠—a kiss; she standing with her whole body bent backward brokenly: “This is for the last time, forever.⁠ ⁠…”