My aunt died. My brother moved to America.On my wrist, the watch face glistened in the false darkness(the movie was being shown).This was its special feature, a kind of bluish throbbingwhich made the numbers easy to read, even in the absence of light.Princely, I always thought.And yet the serene transit of the hour handno longer represented my perception of timewhich had become a sense of immobilityexpressed as movement across vast distances.The hand moved;the twelve, as I watched, became the one again.Whereas time was now this environment in whichI was contained with my fellow passengers,as the infant is contained in his sturdy cribor, to stretch the point, as the unborn childwallows in his mother’s womb.Outside the womb, the earth had fallen away;I could see flares of l...