THAT AFTERNOON, at dusk, Helena wanted us all to go look at the sunset together from the balcony in my room. She was in a frightening mood, unnervingly merry, she got a bottle of Tsipouro, a pre-drink, she said, let’s do something nice together, actually it was best to be on the roof, she said, the view was better from there, but she was so scared of heights, she was too scared to climb the ladder. Hearing her talk about the roof made me feel exposed, and violated too, as if she’d trespassed on something that was mine. The site of a history she had no connection to, one that wasn’t hers to know. The juxtaposition was dizzying. It made me feel sick. I remembered the prospect that had struck me in the garden, that she might learn. I remembered that nothing was mine. Everything was hers. I hated her for it.

She led the way up the stairs, Olga came next, me last. Level with my bed she paused, as if she’d caught some smell. She turned to me, past Olga: the energy in here is just so different now, you can really feel it, isn’t it so cool how these things work, it doesn’t feel like my room at all anymore.

We stood side by side on the narrow balcony and regarded the roofs in front of us, the antennae and the telephone lines. My only photo from that time, the picture I never sent to Josef. My sole proof. I was there.

But it was the wrong direction for the sunset, and we never saw the sun come down, only the sky darkening, a deeper blue, pink beyond the mountains, the horizon disappearing and the lights from another city on another island coming on, setting it in relief in the emptiness. I had never noticed that island before. Olga shifted from one foot to the other and looked bored. I drank from my glass with liquor, no ice; it was lukewarm and sharp. I could have sworn, Helena said, that you could see the sunset from here. Maybe you used to be able to see it, though that’s impossible of course. I remembered it that way. Oh well.

And we went back down again.