That happiness: they want blood for it. I never had it before, so I never realised. She knew I was happy, so she wanted me to pay. It reminded me of something, the look in her eye when she finally extricated me from the bedclothes. Who did she remind me of?
– Yes, long ago, the narrowing faces of our Bloomsbury relations when they spotted us coming, twenty feet away, with Vanessa in her new uncorseted dress that showed her body; we were laughing together, her hair was loose, and her lips were red, and she had been kissing all afternoon. They nodded to me, the most minimal nod, we were arm in arm but they refused to see her. And ever afterwards, they cut us dead. With her happy body she earned their hatred.
Now suddenly I am bare as she was. Now the hard glances will come for me. I have to be humble. (But I am proud!)
Ahmet. How did we choose each other? What miracle made what happened, happen? Happen, happen, happiness.
I will keep those hours till the end of my life – this second life, my happy life.