my tortured attention

On the first couple pages the scene is set - intellectual Warsaw during the war and what the thinkers discussed but I was thinking of the friend I'd just run into in the lobby who'd made a question of the sentence, "You knew I separated from B (?)." I'd answered "yes," censoring the pressing questions why and when and what else and the thinkers on page 2 were smoking heavily and debating God, art and the proletariat and I was wondering about the moment I'd run into this old friend, wondering whether you could call our embrace warm or spontaneous or perfunctory. I was uncertain about everything, including what arrangements would be made for the evening when a new character was introduced whose name I didn't catch though it didn't escape my notice that he'd come with four rabbit pelts (for what purpose?) and the sole of a shoe, and yet simultaneously I was wondering about my friend, who'd gone to her room to change. I was wondering what she was going to wear, whether she's dress up and if I were underdressed and suddenly I was on page 3, where the narrator and the rabbit pelt peddler (?) entered into a small and shady business which was to be short-lived and I was wondering if I, too, just by saying so could change into something else, something more comfortable, like clouds, say, or heavy smoke.