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Adam returned to his room early the next morning, his mind comfortably numb, his eyes still a little heavy with sleep. He would have liked to relax, perhaps even doze in the warm breeze. But, out of habit rather than necessity, he sat down in front of his computer and pressed the power button.

Among his emails, there was one he had been impatiently waiting for and immediately opened. Signed “Dolores,” it had been sent at about three o’clock in the morning.

My love,

I’m having trouble getting to sleep tonight and the loneliness is weighing on me. You have hardly been gone a week, but in the anguish of our empty apartment, I suddenly felt as though you had left months ago, and forever.

This isn’t the first time one of us has gone abroad without the other. But this separation seems different. You feel very far away. Not just far from Paris, from our home, our bedroom. You feel far from our shared world. I feel as though you have gone back to a previous world, one that I never knew and in which I have no place. The sheets on our bed seem suddenly cold, and the blanket is not enough to keep me warm. I need to rest my head on your shoulder, but you shoulder isn’t here.

It was clear that you were dreading this trip. If someone doesn’t visit his native land for a quarter of a century, it is not because he can’t make time. Plainly, you were worried about what feelings might be stirred up by seeing the places and the people of your former life. I could feel your anxiety last Friday, after the early morning phone call from your friend, but I still urged you to go.

For two reasons. The first, I told you at the time, being that when a friend, or even a “former friend,” asks for you on his deathbed, you have no right to hesitate. The second reason I did not mention, but it has been on my mind for a long time, perhaps since we first met at Pancho’s birthday party eight years ago and had that long conversation. When you confessed you hadn’t once set foot in your native land since you left, I found the idea strange and unhealthy. Especially as you’d made it clear that you were at no risk if you went back, you were not likely to be killed or arrested, it was simply a “position” you had adopted, because your country had let you down. I felt that your position was unhealthy, perhaps even slightly pathological and I promised myself I would “cure” you. More than once, I suggested we go there on holiday, so you could show me where you had lived, but every time you shied away, you suggested we go elsewhere and I didn’t want to insist—even though I was more certain than ever that there was something wrong.

Then you had that phone call at dawn. Suddenly, you had a valid reason to make the trip; in fact, given the circumstances, it was a moral obligation. Besides, you were on a sabbatical and your work on the biography of Attila had ground to a halt. If you were ever going to take the plunge, it was now, so I thought it best to push you.

Now, I regret it. I have the feeling that I’ve lost you. It’s as though I played at being the sorcerer’s apprentice, and I could kick myself. I wanted you to shake off this phobia, to have a healthy attitude not only towards the country you were born in, but towards your own past. But now it feels as though you are drifting towards another world, and that I will soon be no more than a distant voice, a fleeting image. Perhaps even a figure from the past from another of your former lives.

Then there was the incident with Sémiramis … I promised her that I would never reproach you, and I’ll keep my word. Because I am as responsible as the two of you for what happened. When I got that strange phone call, that strange request, I could have said no. I never in my life imagined that a woman would ask me to “lend” her my partner for the night. It was preposterous, it went against nature. Or at least against everything that, until that moment, I believed was common sense. But I chose to say yes. It was a free choice, and that’s why I want to say again that I will never reproach you for straying, either directly or by veiled allusions.

Why did I say yes? Firstly, because Sémi could just as easily not have asked me, she could have seduced you without my knowledge, and the fact that she included me in her decision made me feel as though I was not being entirely sidelined; besides, since the two of you were under the same roof and I was thousands of kilometres away, I figured playing the game would be the lesser of two evils; that way the indiscretion would occur with my blessing rather than against my will.

The second reason is that I wanted to prove myself worthy of your past life, of the youth to which you’re still so attached. I never experienced the sixties or the seventies, when so many taboos about sexuality disappeared. I don’t idealize that period, but I know that it means something to you and I wanted to show you that although I came into your life much later, I was prepared to take part in that risky game. Rather than seeming like a prude, I wanted to be your ally, your partner.

The third reason is linked to what I said at the beginning. I felt that, in a sense, you needed to exorcise your relationship with your native country, to finally come to terms with your unwarranted phobias and your nostalgia, and reliving this episode with Sémi twenty-five years later seemed to me to be therapeutic.

All the reasons I’ve just listed now seem pathetic and ridiculous. Tonight, I feel a little ashamed, a little cold, a little scared. I am happier with you than I have ever been in my life. And although I devote a lot of time to my career—a little too much time in recent months, I admit—it’s our relationship, our love, that provides me with the energy I need. If you were to stop loving me, I would not have the strength to get out of bed in the morning. I need your eyes on me, admiring and caressing; I need your advice to support and reassure me; and I need your shoulder to rest my head on at night.

I’m not writing this to try and ruin the rest of your trip. I’m not asking you to come home right now, I’m not on the edge of the abyss. I just feel very sad and a little insecure tonight. Reassure me! Tell me that everything that’s happened since you left has not changed your love for me, or your desire to come back to your little nest in Paris. If need be, I’m prepared to allow you to lie to me a little …

Adam was tempted to phone her straightaway in order to reassure her. But in Paris, it was not yet 7:00 a.m. He decided it was better to write.

Dolores my love,

I don’t need to lie to find the words to reassure you. You are not someone who needs lies, and that’s why I’ve loved you from the moment we first met. I loved you, I love you, and I will never stop loving you. You are not my latest partner, you are the woman I have been searching for, desperately searching for, the one I was lucky enough and privileged enough to finally meet.

It is rare to find such integrity in someone without a trace of prudishness. And this strange “pact” you made with Sémi is a powerful example of what I have just said. It took daring to make such a decision. You went against the prevailing “popular” wisdom of our time, and I want you to know that I will never make you regret your daring.

What you have said about your reasons more or less corresponds to my own feelings, and if there was something childish in my actions, yours were noble and generous, you have no reason to be ashamed. I say “childish” because the theories that so appealed to us in the sixties about couples being “open” to every experience were a recipe for disaster. I was just a kid, I was a sponge soaking up the latest fads imported from France or from universities in the United States, especially those that pandered to my adolescent fantasies.

I got over them later, as many people did. But there is something that I haven’t gone back on. Although I think the idea of a couple being open to every passing whim is childish, I have little respect for couples whose relationships are musty, and I have nothing but contempt for the old-fashioned couples where the woman is submissive to the man, or the man henpecked by the woman, or both. If I had to set forth my beliefs on the subject, I’d say: complicity, tenderness, and the right to make mistakes.

On each of these three criteria, our relationship seems exemplary, and what has just happened only serves to confirm my faith in its worth, its beauty, its durability.

I love you, my beautiful Argentine, and I gently enfold you in my arms so that your heart can be at peace. […]

He signed the email “Mito,” the nickname Dolores had given him, an abbreviation of Adamito, “little Adam.”