Yvonne and the Consul were alone on the flying balcony.
From where they stood the house seemed situated half-way up a cliff rising steeply from the valley stretched out below them. Leaning round they saw the town itself, built as on top of this cliff, overhanging them. The clubs of flying machines waved silently over the roofs, their motions like gesticulations of pain. But the cries and music of the fair reached them at this moment clearly. Far away the Consul made out a green corner, the golf course, with little figures working their way round the side of the cliff, crawling... Golfing scorpions. The Consul remembered the card in his pocket, and apparently he had made a movement towards Yvonne, desiring to tell her about it, to say something tender to her concerning it, to turn her towards him, to kiss her. Then he realized that without another drink shame for this morning would prevent his looking in her eyes. "What do you think, Yvonne," he said, "with your astronomical mind—" Could it be he, talking to her like this, on an occasion like this ! Surely not, it was a dream. He was pointing up at the town.
"—With your astronomical mind," he repeated, but no, he had not said it : "doesn’t all that revolving and plunging up there somehow suggest to you the voyaging of unseen planets, of unknown moons hurtling backwards ?" He had said nothing.

(...)

"Haven’t you got any tenderness or love left for me at all ?" Yvonne asked suddenly, almost piteously, turning round on him, and he thought : Yes, I do love you, I have all the love in the world left for you, only that love seems so far away from me and so strange too, for it is as though I could almost hear it, a droning or a weeping, but far, far away, and a sad lost sound, it might be either approaching or receding, I can’t tell which.

Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

La dernière fois que je vois Y. Là-bas attendre pendant une heure deux gusses qui viennent pour emporter un meuble, le dernier. Assis par terre dans des murs vides en lisant UtV, et tout résonne dans ces pièces blanches. Le parquet craque. Hier avons frôlé combien de gigantesques blocs de verre avec dessus, en lettres fières, la trademark Natixis, craque, et c’est ces trucs qu’il faudrait plastiquer, je te jure, ou bien vider pour que les sans murs s’y foutent, vivent. Mais je préfère le plastique. Comme je préfère vérifier, avant le début du truc, jeudi soir à la soirée DFW, que la traduction de ce micro-chapitre est bien conforme à la mienne, gratuite, amateure, donnée quelques mois plus tôt, sauf qu’en lisant la vraie, l’officielle, celle de Charles Recoursé, bien sûr, je me souviens juste que je m’en souviens plus, de mon texte, et que je peux pas comparer, sauf bien sûr pour les tits, que j’ai sortis tétés, non, nichons, pour lui des seins, mais à part ça, non, peux pas voir if it fits, ce qui m’amène à me souvenir de l’expression drums on his own ribcage, de DFW encore, très certainement Infinite Jest, j’ai oublié le nom du héros, enfin du tennisman, ado, drums on his own ribcage, ribcage, la cage, la thoracique, un mot empli, je sais pas trop, d’une certaine profondeur, qui réveille des échos, mais pas le nom du tennisman, celui qui drums on his own ribcage, tout comme moi, ça reviendra, ça reviendra, ça résonne.