...of an unwelcome exchange

The portrait of a girl with short-cropped black hair and a long face had emerged for a moment from Ponko's little trunk; then he immediately hid it under an oilskin jacket. In the bedroom beneath the dovecote, which had till now been mine and from today on would be Ponko's, he was unpacking his things and arranging them in the drawers I had just emptied. I watched him in silence, sitting on my already closed little trunk, mechanically hammering at a stud that stuck out, a bit crooked; we had said nothing to each other after a grunted hello; I followed him in all his movements, trying to be thoroughly aware of what was going on: an outsider was taking my place, was becoming me, my cage with the starlings would become his, the stethoscope, the real Uhlan helmet hanging from a nail, all my things that I couldn't take with me remained to him; or rather, it was my relationship with things, places, people that was becoming his, just as I was bout to become him, to take his place among the things and people of his life.

[If On A Winter's Night A Traveller, Calvino, I.]