In scarf, with hand before my eyes,

I’ll shout outdoors and ask the kids:

Oh tell me, dear ones, if you please,

Just what millennium this is?

BORIS PASTERNAK

2006

At the moment when Aman Baron, whom most people knew as ‘the Baron’, was confessing that he loved me — with heartbreaking intensity and unbearable lightness, but a love that was unhealthy, enfeebled, disillusioned — my twelve-year-old niece Brilka was leaving her hotel in Amsterdam on her way to the train station. She had with her a small bag, hardly any money, and a tuna sandwich. She was heading for Vienna, and bought herself a cheap weekend ticket, valid only on local trains. A handwritten note left at reception said she did not intend to return to her homeland with the dance troupe and that there was no point in looking for her.

At this precise moment, I was lighting a cigarette and succumbing to a coughing fit, partly because I was overwhelmed by what I was hearing, and partly because the smoke went down the wrong way. Aman (whom I personally never called ‘the Baron’) immediately came over, slapped me on the back so hard I couldn’t breathe, and stared at me in bewilderment. He was only four years younger than me, but I felt decades older; besides, at this point I was well on my way to becoming a tragic figure — without anyone really noticing, because by now I was a master of deception.

I read the disappointment in his face. My reaction to his confession was not what he’d anticipated. Especially after he’d invited me to accompany him on tour in two weeks’ time.

Outside, a light rain began to fall. It was June, a warm evening with weightless clouds that decorated the sky like little balls of cotton wool.

When I had recovered from my coughing fit, and Brilka had boarded the first train of her odyssey, I flung open the balcony door and collapsed on the sofa. I felt as if I were suffocating.

After sitting on the sofa and putting my face in my hands, after rubbing my eyes and avoiding Aman’s gaze for as long as possible, I knew I would have to weep again, but not now, not at this moment, while Brilka was watching old, new Europe slipping past her outside the train window and smiling for the first time since her arrival on this continent of indifference. I don’t know what she saw that made her smile as she left the city of miniature bridges, but that doesn’t matter any more. The main thing is, she was smiling.

At that moment, I was thinking that I would have to weep. In order not to, I turned, went into the bedroom, and lay down. I didn’t have to wait long for Aman. Grief like his is very quickly healed if you offer to heal it with your body, especially when the patient is twenty-eight years old.

I kissed myself out of my enchanted sleep.

As Aman laid his head on my belly, my twelve-year-old niece was leaving the Netherlands, crossing the German border in her compartment that stank of beer and loneliness, while several hundred kilometres away her unsuspecting aunt feigned love with a twenty-eight-year-old shadow. All the way across Germany she travelled, in the hope it would get her somewhere.

*

I met Aman in a little bar near my apartment. He was performing there with his band, a trio who called themselves ‘The Barons’. He played his own interpretation of ‘Cry Me a River’ in a drunken endless loop, and I realised that, after an eternity, I was actually feeling something; that, as he played, something had taken hold of me and wasn’t letting go. So much so that when he finished, I had to go up and talk to him, find out where he was performing next. He was nice, tipsy, and talkative. The bar had been half-empty, and most people disappeared quite quickly after the gig; we seemed to be the only ones left. It turned into a long conversation. Since his fellow band members had also gone, and by the time we finished talking he was so drunk he couldn’t find his way home, I decided to take him with me. And so he ended up on my sofa. The next morning, he was gone, having left without a word, and then, four days later, at two in the morning, he rang my doorbell again. I let him in, asked no questions, and once more gave him a blanket and pillows. So it went on for a few weeks. He came, slept, and disappeared early the next day.

One February evening — his visits had become a kind of normality for me and I had started leaving the sofa-bed unfolded — he arrived sober for once, sat down, and asked me if he could have a cup of tea. I made him one. Then I went to bed, but it wasn’t long before I was woken by the singing of his saxophone. I wandered into the living room in my old nightshirt. He was sitting there playing, oblivious to everything around him. I watched him and wanted to cry, but crying was something I had unlearned, so I just stood there. Eventually he looked at me, and we looked at each other for a long time and admitted the desolation we carried within us. It was a very honest moment. A moment that overwhelmed us both.

Then I disappeared back to bed, and he went on playing. After a while, he fell silent, and I waited for him to start again. I heard him taking a shower, I heard him in the kitchen, getting something from the fridge, and then suddenly he was standing before me, naked. I looked at him steadily. He lay down beside me and said I reminded him of someone, it made him so terribly sad, he was so infinitely sad, oh God how sad, so very sad, and without ceasing this talk of sadness, he embraced me, and I, still a little speechless, his melody still in my ears, finally gave in and opened my arms.

In bed, he told me his story. He told me that his mother now lived in Israel, that his father had left them when he was three and had broken off contact. He told me that he had dropped out of school and had passed the music-school entrance exam at seventeen and then quit that, too, that he didn’t have anywhere to live right now, that he hadn’t been able to fall in love for many years. And so on and so on.

The next day, he disappeared again. I woke up and he simply wasn’t there. But that was fine by me. The best thing about him was that he didn’t expect anything. That he came and went. That he made no demands. That he was content with a cup of tea, a shot of whisky, some chicken soup. That he was free. Free of wishes.

It went on like this for almost a year. We never went out, never went to the cinema, we did none of the things that people who like each other do. We didn’t arrange anything, we made no plans. Sometimes when I came home he would be sitting on the staircase. I never knew what he did when he wasn’t spending the night in my apartment, and he knew just as little about me.

*

After Aman fell asleep, I got up, went to the bathroom, sat on the edge of the bath, and started to cry. I wept a century’s worth of tears over the feigning of love, the longing to believe in words that once defined my life. I went into the kitchen, smoked a cigarette, stared out of the window. It had stopped raining, and somehow I knew that it was happening, something had been set in motion, something beyond this apartment with the high ceilings and the orphaned books; with the many lamps I had collected so eagerly, a substitute for the sky, an illusion of true light.

*

The following evening, I received a call from my mother, who was always threatening to die if I didn’t return soon to the homeland I had fled all those years ago. Her voice trembled as she informed me that ‘the child’ had disappeared. It took me a while to work out which child she was talking about, and what it all had to do with me.

‘So tell me again: where exactly was she?’

‘In Amsterdam, for goodness’ sake, what’s the matter with you? Aren’t you listening to me? She ran away yesterday and left a message. I got a call from the group leader. They’ve looked everywhere for her, and —’

‘Wait, wait, wait. How can an eleven-year-old girl disappear from a hotel, especially if she —’

‘She’s twelve. She turned twelve in November. You forgot, of course. But that was only to be expected.’

I took a deep drag on my cigarette and prepared myself for the impending disaster. Because if my mother’s voice was anything to go by, it would be no easy matter just to wash my hands of this and disappear: my favourite pastime in recent years. I armed myself for the obligatory reproaches, all of them intended to make clear to me what a bad daughter and failed human being I was. Things I was only too well aware of without my mother’s intervention.

‘Okay, she turned twelve, and I forgot, but that won’t get us anywhere right now. Have they informed the police?’

‘Yes, what do you think? They’re looking for her.’

‘Then they’ll find her. She’s a spoilt little girl with a tourist visa, I presume, and she —’

‘Do you have even a spark of humanity left in you?’

‘Sorry. I’m just trying to think aloud.’

‘So much the worse, if those are your thoughts.’

‘Mama!’

‘They’re going to call me. In an hour at most, they said, and I’m praying that they find her, and find her fast. And then I want you to go to wherever she is — she won’t have got all that far — and I want you to fetch her.’

‘I —’

‘She’s your sister’s daughter. And you will fetch her. Promise me!’

‘But —’

‘Do it!’

‘Oh god. All right, fine.’

‘And don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.’

‘Aren’t I even allowed to say “Oh god” now?’

‘You’re going to fetch her and bring her back with you. And then you’ll put her on the plane.’

They found her that same night, in a small town just outside Vienna, waiting for a connecting train. She was picked up by the Austrian police and taken to the police station. My mother woke me and told me I had to go to Mödling.

As I threw on some clothes, Aman stared at me wide-eyed, not understanding the world around him any more. Perhaps he never had understood it.

‘What niece, and where the hell is Mödling?’

‘I’ll be on the first plane at six o’clock. I’ll pick her up. Then I’ll get the flight back from Vienna at four and be here in the evening. The day after tomorrow I’ll put her on a plane to Tbilisi, and then we can talk properly, okay?

‘I could come with you, I could —’

‘No. I have to sort this out on my own. Please don’t be cross, it really isn’t a big deal. She’s just an adolescent runaway. I need to make sure I bring her to her senses.’

*

By midday, I had reached the little railway station in the provincial Austrian town. She was sitting there in the empty waiting room with a police officer and a station employee. I signed some form or other, apologised several times for the situation, and took charge of my niece.

I hadn’t seen a recent photo of her and was amazed at how tall she was. She didn’t look like any of us. She had a buzz cut and John Lennon glasses, and was wearing an oversized lumberjack shirt and ripped jeans. The only thing I recognised about her straight away were the black-on-black eyes that were still just as they had been when she was born. She had long, thick lashes, a very light complexion that reminded me of Daria, and rosy cheeks. Her face had a highly focused, serious look, as if she had never smiled in her life. Her drooping shoulders, awkward body language, and the restlessness in her limbs were the only things that gave away her age.

‘What do we do now?’ she asked me as we left the station building and I lit a cigarette.

‘What do you think? If I don’t put you on a plane soon and send you home, your grandmother is going to kill me.’

‘I’m not getting on a plane. I’m scared of flying.’

‘How did you get to Amsterdam? On a horse?’ This was going to be fun.

‘I can only fly if I have at least three people I know with me.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘That’s just how it is. If I don’t stick to the rule, we’ll crash,’ she said, as if it were an undisputed fact.

‘Are you taking the mickey? Because if so, you’ve chosen the wrong person. I don’t like it when people take the mickey.’

‘I’m telling you how it is. I always stick to the rules.’

‘Fine, but your rules are not my rules, and since I’m in loco parentis right now, I make the rules.’

‘I don’t want to go home,’ she said suddenly, in a soft voice, turning her eyes away.

I looked at her, disconcerted. She had a very particular way of speaking that I found slightly unnerving. I was already feeling overwhelmed and I wondered how I was going to deal with the next few hours in her company.

‘First, we’re going to fly to Berlin, and then —’

‘But I’ve already said I don’t fly. Not unless there are at least three people with me who know me.’

‘And I said this isn’t up for debate.’

‘You’re even more awful than I thought,’ she yelled at me, looking me in the eye with a piercing gaze. She started drawing invisible circles on the paving stones with the tip of her dirty trainer.

‘And you’re an ill-mannered, troublesome little girl who is really getting on my nerves right now.’

She shrugged and turned her back on me.

‘I’m hungry,’ she announced, and started rummaging in her rucksack.

‘You’ll get everything you want if you get on that plane.’

‘No.’

‘But I can’t possibly take you to Berlin by train, it’ll take forever and I have to … I’ve got things to do.’

‘You fly, and I’ll follow on the train. I got here by myself, didn’t I, so I can get back as well. By myself!’

I decided to change tack and be a little more sympathetic. I tried to persuade her, to convince her of the advantages of flying, promised to keep her in Berlin for two or three days, to explore the city with her. But she remained stubborn, gave me the cold shoulder, and wouldn’t hear another word about planes. Should I call Elene and ask her about the best way to deal with her? I could hardly drag her onto a plane; she was almost two heads taller than me.

I left her alone for a moment, took a few steps away, and fished out my mobile, which I hardly used. The battery symbol was always flashing because I never thought to charge it. I called my mother.

‘What is wrong with this child?’ I complained to her. ‘She’s crazy. She refuses to fly. I don’t have time to pander to her whims. I’m going to hand her the phone, and you need to make it clear to her that she’s getting on a plane to Berlin with me and —’

‘Oh, thank the Lord, I’m so glad you found her.’ I heard Elene exhale. ‘Yes, she can be very peculiar, Niza. She has her methods, and —’

‘Methods? What methods? I don’t have time for methods. I have to work. I have to get back to Berlin, and if she doesn’t do as I say right now I’m going to tie her up and —’

‘Oh, Niza, come on — think of yourself; what do you think you were like at her age? You drove me to distraction. In some ways, she’s very like you.’

‘She is not like me. She’s spoilt!’ I snapped at Elene, but before she could reply I heard a beep and the phone gave up the ghost. I swore and walked back over to my niece.

I decided to outwit her. At least she wasn’t refusing to get on a train.

We travelled to Vienna.

On the train, she bit her fingernails constantly, shuffled about in her seat, walked up and down the aisle, sat down again, then pulled a large notebook and an old Walkman out of her rucksack, put the headphones on, and started writing. I didn’t even make the effort to start a conversation. My brain was working overtime, planning how I could trick her into getting on the plane. In Vienna I found the closest café to the station and we had a meal. And there was another surprise in store for me. She proved to be a fussy eater, and explained that she only ate food by colour, and certain colours weren’t part of her diet. I bit my lip to stop myself screaming at her to shut up and eat what was put in front of her.

I steered her into a taxi, on the pretext of taking a look around the city, but she quickly cottoned on to my intention of going to the airport, screamed blue murder, and shouted at me and the taxi driver in such a way that he pulled over. She jumped out and stormed off, taking great, angry strides, bent forward under the weight of her large rucksack. After I had paid the taxi fare I had to run to catch up and make sure I didn’t lose her; then I placated her and gave her my solemn promise that we would take the train.

The sleeper from Vienna to Berlin didn’t leave until ten o’clock that night, so we had a few hours to kill. We went and sat in a station café. She drank three Fantas, one after another.

‘That’s terrible stuff — don’t you want a proper juice?’

She scorned my suggestion with a black look. After that, I decided to spare my nerves and leave her in peace. When I had got her safely back to Tbilisi, I would confront my mother and ask her what she was thinking, letting the girl turn into such a brat.

I bought some newspapers and immersed myself in them. When I glanced up, she wasn’t at the table any more. I panicked. The sleeper was leaving in half an hour. I searched the crowd for her gangly figure, her round glasses, her drooping shoulders. I called her name and swore like a trooper.

Finally, I found her in the ladies’ toilets. I went mad, screamed at her, what was she thinking, what did she think she was doing there — she could forget about playing her little games with me. She regarded me with indifference and went to the sink to wash her hands, entirely ignoring my rage. I stood behind her and stared at her in the mirror.

‘For god’s sake, what is wrong with you? Your behaviour is outrageous. Why did you want to come here, anyway? What did you want to do in Vienna? What was this whole escapade about, and why are you testing my nerves?’

She looked at me in the mirror for a while, calmly washed her hands, and said, as she walked past me, ‘You have a real problem, you know that?’

On the sleeper, she tucked herself away on the top bunk with her Walkman. I couldn’t suppress a smile; it felt like an eternity since I had seen anyone with a Walkman. I woke up every two hours and checked that she was still there.

When we arrived in Berlin, we took a taxi back to my apartment. She missed out every second stair on the staircase; it seemed she had an irrational rule about that, too. I refrained from asking why. I was too tired from the trip and too worked up for any more surprises.

I was glad that we didn’t see Aman. That spared me any further explanations. I got everything I had out of the fridge and prepared breakfast for her. Again, she began to sort through the food. I paid closer attention this time: she seemed to love everything yellow or orange. Fanta. Egg yolk. Oranges. She rejected dark green entirely. White appeared to be acceptable. Red was not touched, so the packet of salami was pushed to the edge of the table.

Watching her eat, I tried desperately to recall everything my mother had told me about her. She adored dancing. She hated it when people called her Anastasia. She wasn’t particularly academic. But she liked to read. She loved animals. Had some kind of allergy, but I couldn’t remember to what. She loved cartoons. She liked horses, ‘Like her mother!’ She didn’t get on with girls her own age. She was scared of thunder and lightning. That was the limit of my knowledge; I had to admit that I didn’t know her, that I couldn’t connect these facts, that I had no insight into her thoughts and feelings. We were strangers, and it seemed she was trying to emphasise this with every word she spoke to me, with every look and every gesture.

But why hadn’t Elene told me about the neuroses and phobias she seemed to have so many of? They were enough to drive you to distraction!

‘So what do we do now?’ I asked her, once she had managed to sit opposite me for a full thirty minutes, chewing and sorting, without giving me any more unpleasant surprises. She shrugged again in her ignorant way, and again I felt the urge to shake her. I tried to follow my mother’s advice and remember what Daria and I were like at that age, but nothing comparable came to mind. This was a long way outside my experience.

‘Shrugging isn’t going to get us anywhere. We have to agree on something, and in any case your grandparents are waiting for you, and worrying.’

‘Why? I mean, you’re their daughter. They know I’m in good hands.’

She chopped up a cucumber and painstakingly cut off the skin.

‘Why do you do that?’

‘What?’

‘This thing with your food?’

‘If I mix red and green, I’ll die,’ she said nonchalantly.

‘What on earth would make you think that?’

‘And what on earth would make you never visit us, not even once?’

The question floored me. I didn’t know what to say.

I went into the living room and made up the sofa-bed for her. I put a clean towel in the bathroom and a new toothbrush on the edge of the basin. I opened the balcony door and sat down at the little table with a cigarette. I urgently needed to think of a solution. Cunning and false promises weren’t going to work. She would refuse point blank to come to the airport. And even if I could convince her to get on a plane with me, there was no way I could fly to Georgia. The semester in Berlin was not yet over, and then I still had some things to work up for the Eastern Europe specialist, and thirdly, and fourthly, and so on. I wanted to pull the covers over my head and wait for things to sort themselves out.

Suddenly, she was standing barefoot in front of me on the balcony, complaining that there wasn’t even a television in the apartment.

‘There’s more to life than sitting in front of the box all day,’ I retorted, annoyed.

‘Such as?’

‘Going for walks. Reading. Thinking. Or working out how Madame is going to get home.’

‘I told you I don’t want to go home. At least, not right now.’

‘Okay, fine. So what do you want to do?’

‘I have to go to Vienna.’

‘Vienna. I see. And what does Madame intend to do in Vienna?’

‘I have to meet someone there.’

‘Who on earth do you want to meet in Vienna?’

‘A woman. You don’t know her.’

‘Listen, Brilka … Why such an odd name, anyway? Brilka. Why do you call yourself that? Your real name is so much prettier.’

‘I can call myself what I like. It’s nobody else’s business, least of all yours.’

Unfortunately, she was right. I hadn’t shown any interest in her for twelve years, and to demand any kind of rights now would be overstepping the mark.

‘Listen, Brilka. I have a life here, I have obligations. Your grandmother instructed me to get you back to Georgia as quickly as possible. As you may have noticed, this whole business has taken me rather by surprise, and just so you know, this isn’t particularly convenient for me, either. I can’t just drop everything and get on a plane with you. You’re not going to Vienna. At least, not now, and I won’t be able to look after you, either. So find another option.’

‘It wouldn’t be enough for you to get on a plane with me, in any case. There have to be at least three people I know. I’ve explained this to you.’

‘Now just stop this ridiculous nonsense.’

‘It’s not nonsense!’ She was suddenly shouting — then she turned her back on me and walked into the living room.

When I came in from the balcony, she wasn’t in the apartment. Her things were still there, but she herself had disappeared. I went downstairs and looked for her on the street, on the surrounding streets, went to Nollendorfplatz, looked for her in the U-Bahn station. My nerves were in tatters. I went back and called my mother again. I complained to her, accused her of not having brought the girl up properly, and demanded that she talk to Brilka and persuade her to go to the airport with me.

‘She’s behaving like a lunatic. I don’t know what to do with her.’

‘Well, then make a bit more of an effort, Niza. I’m afraid I don’t have an instruction manual to give you.’

‘But Deda, no, you can’t do this to me. Talk to her. Do something! You brought her up, you must know how to deal with her.’

‘Maybe you can convince her to go back to Amsterdam. She might listen, and then she can travel home with the group.’

‘I don’t understand why you let her get away with all this. You were so much stricter with us!’

‘Yes, but you had a mother.’

The words made me flinch. I decided not to say any more. I clung feverishly to the suggestion she had made about Amsterdam; that might be a solution. But it was already starting to get dark, and I still didn’t know where she was. I decided to go out again, but as I was putting my shoes on the doorbell rang, and she marched up the stairs as if nothing had happened and walked past me into the apartment. I could already hear her calling from the kitchen that she was hungry.

I wanted to protest, to bring her to her senses, but I realised I didn’t have the energy for it, and went into the kitchen. Since there was nothing left in the fridge, I suggested we go shopping. Suddenly she seemed excited by this — very banal — idea, and even smiled at me.

‘And can I choose what we buy?’ she asked excitedly, as if we were talking about her Christmas list, not groceries.

I admitted defeat.

The previous year, I had bought a turquoise 1969 Ami 8 Citroën, with a wonderful leather interior and a dual carburettor. It was my pride and joy, and I had even risked playing in another anonymous poker game in Schöneberg to afford the restoration work, which wasn’t exactly cheap. I went out to the car with her. Going for a little drive would kill some time; plus she would find it difficult to escape once we were in it.

She seemed to like the car. She touched every button and knob, and wanted to feel the steering wheel. What seemed to delight her most of all, though, was the old cassette player. Without asking if I wanted to listen to her music, she took the tape out of her Walkman and put it in. The songs were poor quality recordings taken from the radio, which broke off in the middle or faded out in certain places. But I had to admit that, for her age, her taste in music was well-developed and quite good. When I started to turn into the supermarket car park, she murmured plaintively that it was a shame we were there already.

‘You like driving, then?’

‘Yes.’

At least that was one thing we had in common.

‘Do you want to keep going?’

‘Yes.’

I accelerated again. She wound down the window and put her hand out into the warm airstream. I looked over at her tentatively. All at once there was something young, naive, girlish in her face. Something about the sight of her moved me, and I was ashamed of my inability to deal with her.

‘Is the old cherry tree still standing, in the garden?’

I don’t know why I thought of the cherry tree, of all things, but an image of her suddenly came into my mind, playing in the garden, running round the cherry tree, in the same spot where Stasia’s ghosts played cards, and I liked the idea.

‘Yes. It’s still there. But it doesn’t really flower any more. Elene and Aleko aren’t very good with plants. Stasia used to do all that.’

‘Do you remember her?’

‘Of course.’

‘But you were still very young then.’

‘She smoked filterless cigarettes and talked to ghosts. She wore green boots and dungarees. Her hands shook, and when she was younger she wanted to be a great ballet dancer.’ She was watching the street, the passers-by, the passing cars, and humming along to her songs. When a song came on that she particularly liked, she rewound the cassette and listened to it again.

‘What else do you remember?’

‘Everything,’ she said confidently, and once again I was at a loss for words. Something about the way she said it gave me the sense that she was right, even if I didn’t know what this everything covered. The certainty in her voice piqued my interest.

‘You mean absolutely everything?’

‘Yes, but I don’t remember you,’ she said, snippy again.

‘Well, that’s not exactly surprising. Shall we go back? I mean, the supermarkets will be closing soon.’

‘No, keep driving.’

We drove around aimlessly. Into the balmy summer night. Gradually, my tension eased. I stopped feeling so overwhelmed and harassed.

‘So, what do you remember?’

Brilka put her head out of the window and shut her eyes.

‘I don’t really like remembering.’

‘Why not?’

‘Maybe I just don’t enjoy it.’

‘Well, there are a lot of things I don’t enjoy, either, but I do them anyway.’

Once again, I was taken aback by her precocious manner. For a moment I wished she were a docile little girl who loved dolls, wore frilly dresses, and stuck pony posters on her wall. ‘What don’t you enjoy? Give me an example,’ I said.

‘Well, the fact that you fetched me back, for example. I mean, I knew Elene would phone you, and that you’d come and get me. I was just hoping I would make it before you found me, that I’d make it to Vienna. I don’t enjoy going to school, I don’t enjoy going to church with Elene, I don’t enjoy having to invite a load of schoolfriends to my birthday every year so Elene doesn’t worry about me. I don’t enjoy listening to stupid music, either. I don’t enjoy dancing the girls’ parts in our dance troupe. I don’t enjoy it when people answer my questions by saying: that all happened a long time ago, it’s of no interest to you.’

‘Aha. And what are the questions people give you that answer to?’

‘Most of them.’

‘For example?’

‘For example, whether my mother killed herself or whether it was an accident when she fell off the roof terrace.’

Luckily, we had stopped at a red light, otherwise that would have made me slam my foot down on the brake.

‘What would make you think that?’ I asked her, still looking straight ahead. ‘I mean, that she wanted to kill herself?’

‘Well, you don’t fall off a roof terrace just like that, do you?’

‘Did Elene tell you that? That she fell off the terrace?’

‘No, someone at school told me. Elene just said she’d had an accident. But my mother was the most beautiful actress in the whole of Georgia, did you know that?’ As she said it, her face lit up and her tone softened.

‘It was an accident. She didn’t want to kill herself.’

Somebody sounded their horn behind us. The lights had been green for some time.

Later, we went to a kebab shop, and I waited almost half an hour for her to start eating, because first everything had to be neatly separated and sorted into colours on her plate. Red cabbage and meat were immediately placed on a side plate and pushed away.

When she had finally fallen asleep on the sofa-bed, I crept into the living room and studied her soft face. Only my sister had slept so peacefully, so blissfully.