When your letter came I was reading a Mickey Spillane. I’d already been interrupted twice, and was having trouble with the plot. There was this man Gardner, who for some reason always carted around the photo of a certain corpse. It’s true I was reading to kill time. Now I’m not so interested in killing time.

     It seems you have no idea of what’s been going on this winter. Perhaps you’re afflicted with a strange intermittent amnesia that wipes out me, my work, our apartment, the brown record-player...I assure you I can’t so easily forget this season I’ve passed without you, these long, snowy months with you so far away. When you left the first snow had just fallen on Montréal. It blocked the sidewalks, obscured the houses, and laid down great pale counterpanes in the heart of the city.

     The evening you left--on my way back from Dorval--I drove aimlessly through the slippery empty streets. Each time the car went into a skid I had the feeling of going on an endless voyage. The Mustang was transformed into a rudderless ship. I drove for a long time without the slightest accident, not even a bump. It was dangerous driving, I know. Punishable by law.  But that night even the law had become a mere ghost of itself, as had the city and this damned mountain that we’ve tramped so often. So much whiteness made a strong impression on me. I remember feeling a kind of anguish. 

     You, my love, probably think  I’m exaggerating as usual and that I get some kind of satisfaction out of establishing these connections between your leaving and my states of mind. You may think I’m putting things together in retrospect in such a way as to explain what happened after that first fall of cerusian white.

     But you’re wrong: I’m doing nothing of the kind. That night, I tell you, the night you left, I skidded and slipped on that livid snow, fit to break your heart. It was myself I lost control of each time the Mustang slid softly into the abyss of memory. Winter since then has armed our city with many coats of melting mail, and here I am already on the verge of a burnt-ivory spring...

     Someone really has to tell you, my love, that I tried twice to take my life in the course of this dark winter.