21

We ate fish and drank white wine; we played volleyball on the beach, which was usually deserted apart from a couple of backpackers or local kids. Ivo was distant, as if that afternoon in the sea had shifted, displaced something between us. I didn’t ask him why. I needed time to put all the stories in my head in order, and I chose to be alone. Enjoyed being alone. I read books and articles Ivo lent me about the recent history of the country, but I was always searching in them for Lado, his dead, pale, ethereal, Shakespeare-loving wife and their beautiful daughter, and the austere Salome, whose name I let dissolve on my tongue like rich ice cream. I searched in them for Buba and Theo. I searched for Ivo, myself, my husband, Salome’s husband, her son. And it was as if every figure concealed countless others behind it, like that Chinese army of the dead, standing in rank and file as straight as arrows.

At night, when Buba was asleep, we sat outside, smoking, drinking or passing a joint around, gazing up at the skies. Salome would usually sing then, with Lado accompanying her on guitar. I took Ivo’s hand and brought it to my lips. He allowed me to, but didn’t reciprocate my warmth. Then we lay down on our rickety beds, and I lay awake for hours, listening to Ivo’s breathing. He didn’t touch me. He ignored me, only spoke to me when absolutely necessary — he was far, far away from me, from this place, searching for something, I couldn’t tell what. I kept thinking about the photo. The photo of the house by the port.

Just once I crawled into his narrow bed and pressed myself against him. There wasn’t enough room for me beside him; we hadn’t pushed our beds together. So I lay half on top of him. He didn’t move. I knew he was awake; he was breathing heavily. I started to massage his legs, stroke his thighs; I pressed my breasts against his chest, touched his stomach. Still he didn’t move. How I hated that about him, this coldness, this controlled remoteness, this unyielding stiffness he was able to maintain so expertly whenever he was evading me.

‘Are you cross with me?’ I whispered, touching my lips to the tip of his nose, which was hot and rough.

‘I’m not cross with you.’

‘But?’

‘You don’t trust me anymore. You poke about in things that aren’t your business.’

I sat up and shifted away from his body. Had he found out that I’d been in his computer, that I’d found ‘S’?

‘You could at least tell me where your journey is headed.’

‘The essence of a true journey, Stella, is that you don’t know where you’re going to end up. That’s why we’re here.’

‘Ivo, what on earth is going on with you?’

He sat up and looked me dead in the eyes. The moonlight had transformed the little room into a mountain cave, sacred, reverently beautiful. I could see his eyes, tired, sunken, drowned in their own colour. I touched his cheek and he laid his face in my hand, suddenly yielding, and his eyes closed. He was back again, he was holding me tight, and I thought of how life consisted of moments like this, that they were what mattered; all the rest was just waiting. The little moments of closeness. Of forgetting, or remembering — perhaps they were the same thing?

‘It never used to be about competing, for us,’ he said suddenly, and kissed my shoulder. So it was that, after all: I had hurt him by swimming out on my own. Maybe that was it. In the past, I would never have dared to leave him behind. Perhaps Ivo had never been strong; perhaps he was only strong when I was weak.

‘It was just a bit of fun.’

‘No, it wasn’t. You know that.’

*

We drove to Batumi, the biggest port on the coast, and went dancing. We sat in a beach restaurant and drank cocktails and partied — as if the country were one big village full of neighbours, its almost five million inhabitants all friends from school or kindergarten. As so often, Lado bumped into some acquaintances who were determined to invite us to eat and drink with them, seeing as we were friends. In the past few weeks I had had to get used to constantly being hosted by people who were far less well off than me, and I had stopped protesting. I resigned myself, went along with it. You had to accept all the litres of wine, the hundreds of dishes, the presents, even if you could hardly move from all the eating and drinking, and you had to express delight and enthusiasm, which wasn’t always easy with such a copious amount of things on offer.

I knew that Lado just about managed to keep his head above water with a few composition commissions here and there; sometimes he even got commissions from abroad, which would keep him going for several months. I knew that Salome worked for an insurance company, but shared everything she earned with Lado and Buba. I knew that people were having to fight for their survival, that they lived for the moment, that words like planning and even security were alien to them, but nowhere had I met as many rich poor people as I had in Georgia.

‘Tulia would love it here, don’t you think?’ I asked Ivo, as we returned to our table after dancing together. He wiped the sweat off his forehead and laughed, so liberated, so relaxed, so carefree; and I was relieved to see him so light-hearted. We laughed and laughed; I didn’t even know what about. I glanced over at Salome, who had flopped onto a deckchair, and saw that she too was laughing. I saw the little lines dancing at the corners of her mouth, her dark eyes shining, saw her wrinkle her nose and the dimples deepen in her cheeks, and was glad.

The stars were twinkling in the sky, thousands of tiny glow-worms. They too seemed to absorb the joy of the evening, the way they glittered over the dark sea that stretched endlessly before us, and for a brief moment the whole world was bathed in happiness. Because I was happy, and could feel it with every pore of my skin. I was happy here, forgetting myself, forgetting everything, with these people who were so unfamiliar and yet, at the same time, so close. I ruffled Ivo’s thick hair and glanced over at Lado, who was performing an improvised sabre dance with one of his acquaintances. Salome pressed her palms to her cheeks, which were glowing with pleasure and heat.

‘What do you reckon, can the fish out there hear the music?’ I asked her.

Salome started giggling again, more subdued this time, but still with the silliness of a child.

‘Only Stella would ask a question like that,’ said Ivo, laughing as well.

‘Well, we are disturbing their normal sleeping hours!’

‘A very German observation,’ said Salome, winking at me.

The restaurant closed for the night, and we moved on. The sun was rising. Ivo put his arm around me and we strolled along the beach; the pebbles were cold, and I held my sandals in my hand. We saw ships in the distance; a few lonely lights shone on the water. The gulls screeched, and the little white houses on the seaside promenade looked harmonious and sleepy that carefree morning.

*

Buba’s head was resting on my shoulder as we drove up the steep road out of town, through the long tunnel that led to our quiet village. I touched my head against his, his thick, black hair, and heard him breathing slowly, rhythmically. I smelled the salty aroma of his skin. I touched my forehead to his, and remembered Theo, when he was still a baby, and how I would take him into bed with me, even though Mark didn’t want me to.

How he would start to crawl around on me, laughing at me. How he would fall asleep on my breast, and how, astonished at the sight of this marvellous creature that had emerged from my body and announced his arrival to the world with a mighty cry, I would lie motionless, afraid of marring his perfect happiness if I moved and woke him. Perhaps, ultimately, these are the moments that hold the threads together, the stories we should tell: not the battles, not who won and lost the world, not the cultural upheavals, the revolutions, the warriors and heroes, the kings and queens, the rulers and tyrants. No — perhaps, in school, they should tell us how someone laughed for the first time, screamed for the first time, what their first kiss felt like. Perhaps people should talk about and remember moments like the one when Buba dozed off on my shoulder and I felt happy and secure.

*

Later, I lay next to Ivo as he took a midday nap, and studied him: his face, his body. I tried to synchronise my breath with his, studied his fingernails, clipped so short it hurt just to look at them, his lips, his unshaven chin, his earlobes, his nostrils, the wrinkles on his forehead, his belly button, and thought that I wanted to commit him to memory for ever, wanted to remember for ever all that made him what he was. That I wanted to tell him how it felt to have his liver in my abdomen, his right lung, the left chamber of his heart; what it was like to have a twin. And I wanted to tell him that I had never regretted sharing everything with him, even if it was sometimes hard and I sometimes felt the lack of my own air, my own heartbeat, and my own pulse — but it hadn’t mattered, it absolutely hadn’t mattered.

I fell asleep and dreamed of a baby, of Buba’s hair, of Papa picking me an apple in our garden, of Mark’s hands warming my feet. Of Ivo’s fingertips, which turned into crocodiles, and of a woman standing alone by the sea reciting poems, the wind whipping her hair, wearing a wedding dress and veil that seawater had turned wet and grey. Who had watery eyes, and was so weirdly pale you could see the veins on her forehead. Who kept reciting lines, like a prayer, in a language I didn’t understand. Who had seaweed wrapped around her ankles. Who seemed to be waiting for someone; who was in despair. I dreamed that slowly, step by step, still reciting her lines and looking straight ahead, she walked into the sea. And I saw how, little by little, she was swallowed by the water until only her veil remained, floating on the surface. And when she had completely disappeared, I saw a little girl with unnaturally big eyes emerge from the water and call, ‘Mama, Mama.’

‘It’s okay, calm down, it was just a dream,’ said Ivo, putting a hand on my forehead. ‘You were moaning like crazy! And you’re dripping with sweat. Come on, let’s make something to eat; I’m starving.’

*

After seven days in the dry heat, we drove back to Tbilisi. Still, now, I was confronted from time to time with scenes from a world that had been bombed to pieces. I would reassure myself, especially when feeling almost overwhelmed by the heat, that my world was a world full of uncertainty, but it was one without bombs.

I went with Buba to the cemetery above the city, and walked with him through the narrow alleyways of the Old Town. I wrote emails to Mark and asked about Theo. He sent two or three taciturn sentences in reply. Only ever the essentials. Now and then I was allowed to speak to Theo in the evening, although Mark would usually invent some excuse or other as to why Theo couldn’t come to the phone.

Ivo disappeared every morning; he was working with Lado in the studio, he said apologetically, on the interview and the recordings. I didn’t ask questions, didn’t ask why he had once needed me here so badly. On the contrary: my time alone in this city felt like a gift.

I read, and lay in the rusty bathtub; I got to know the streets and their beggars, I got to know their stray cats and dogs. In the evenings I usually ate at the Kanchelis’. Salome and I never spoke again about the night on the beach. As if, after that night, there was nothing else to say, because nothing else could touch that story; as if she had said enough for both of us. I didn’t ask any more questions, not about where my journey was headed, or when it would end; I didn’t ask myself anymore. Only when I settled down on the veranda late in the evening to wait for Ivo, who was still off somewhere, always careful to cover his tracks, did I lapse into deep melancholy, because I couldn’t wholly suppress the fear I felt deep inside, or the yearning for my son. Those were the moments when I thought about the fact that Lado and Ivo would be travelling to Sokhumi in July.

Today, thinking back on those quiet days, I still wonder why I didn’t see what should have been apparent.

*

One very hot Wednesday, Salome called me and asked me to come to the Marriott. The bar was air-conditioned; a piano played quietly in the background. There was latte macchiato and Wiener schnitzel. Americans, Dutch, French, even a few Germans sat hunched over their laptops or reading the Financial Times. It was a place, removed from the life of the city, that was supposed to remind you of everywhere else in the world. Salome sat at a table, legs crossed, wearing a dark skirt and a blue satin top, and sipping a pineapple juice. She had put on a little lipstick; her dark eyes shimmered in the late-afternoon sun. From her appearance I guessed that she had come straight from work. Her thick hair hung straight as a curtain around her head, like an actress from the silent-movie era. She hugged me, and ordered two glasses of champagne.

‘What are we celebrating?’ I asked in surprise.

‘Us,’ she answered briskly, lighting a cigarette; she had asked the waitress to bring her a packet of Pall Malls as well. ‘Also, I’ve been promoted, and am now rich.’

She laughed, and her teeth shone, astonishingly white. ‘Enough to order champagne, anyway,’ she added, winking.

I still felt the urge to touch her. To stroke her hair, her long nose, her cheeks. I lowered my gaze; I felt uncomfortable, staring at her like that. I drank the chilled champagne and thought of nothing. She talked about her work and her demanding boss, about the Americans who owned the company. She asked me about Ivo, about me, what I was doing with my days, how I was feeling, and after a while I started to wonder whether she was really so cheerful because she had been promoted, or whether there was something else going on. Her questions became more pressing, more intimate. I tried to sidestep them.

Eventually I blurted out, ‘What’s the matter with you?’ — so loudly that a Dutch couple at the next table turned to look at us.

She fixed me with a searching gaze, as if she wanted to make sure I could handle it. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, the corners of her mouth turned down, she covered her face with her hands, and let out a deep, anguished sigh. For a while I wasn’t sure whether she was crying. Then she looked at me, and her cheerfulness, her smile, her euphoria had abruptly vanished, and fear and despair had taken their place.

‘I can’t do this,’ she murmured. ‘Whenever you look at me like that, I can’t help thinking … of that night by the sea. And today I just wanted to celebrate; work is so hard, and there’s no reward, not really, and so I thought I could enjoy a little moment with you, for no reason. But when you look at me like that, I realise there isn’t much to celebrate in my crappy life, that instead of sitting here drinking champagne I should just weep about it all.’

‘But what’s happened, Salome?’ I leaned in towards her across the table and looked into her eyes, which were indeed filling with tears.

‘It’s just all a miserable lie. I do try, as best I can, and now I’ve gone and fucked up.’

‘Tell me. Please.’

‘I don’t know. It’s all of it at once.’ She struggled to find the right words, speaking slowly, carefully. ‘I feel as if I don’t know what’s going on anymore. I’m so empty, and I don’t know what to do. I miss my son, who doesn’t talk to me; I’m a terrible mother, and Buba, who should have been my son, doesn’t want me; it’s as if he wants to punish me for his sister’s death. And his mother’s, and because I claimed the right to love his father. What would have happened if I’d vanished from the Kanchelis’ lives early on, if I’d looked to my own life instead of staying with them, instead of raising their child? If I’d just gone away, maybe they would still be together, maybe they would still be a family, and Nana would be alive, Maya would be alive. I can’t get it out of my head. Lado will always be thinking of Nana and needing me to preserve this morbid connection with his dead wife.

‘I let it all slip in the middle of a fight we had in Berlin. About Alexei, Nana, the years in Sokhumi. I reproached him, although … We never spoke of it again, until … until Ivo came.’

I lit myself one of her Pall Malls and stared at my fingernails — a little longer than usual, a little less bitten, a little pointy. I knew that I would never be able to forget what she was about to say, and I braced myself, asked my fingers for an answer.

‘We settled here. Lado rented the little house. He was working, and at least for a while it seemed his life wasn’t governed by his dead wife. I sensed that he needed me, that he was even prepared to give me a little of his constricted love. I was content; I couldn’t expect more than that, and I’ve never been short of patience. I thought things just had to carry on like that and then one day we’d be a family, a real family, the family I deserved in life, that he deserved. I mean, is that too much to ask? Then came the phone calls from Ivo. I knew they knew each other from New York, that Lado thought highly of him, they were friends, and ever since then it’s been different. Something in Lado changed — it changed, and I couldn’t put my finger on what, I didn’t understand it anymore. And then Ivo came here.’

‘When? When was the first time he came to see Lado?’

‘Last winter. In February. He stayed more than five weeks. Lado was like a little boy around him. And then Ivo started asking me lots of questions. He would meet up with me on my own, and I realised he knew a lot. About us. There were things Lado couldn’t have told him. He often talked about Nana; he kept on asking me questions. At first I thought it must be to do with one of his reports, but then it began to feel weird. Don’t get me wrong, I like Ivo, I know how much he means to Lado, how much he does for Lado, but it just felt kind of weird to me, all these questions. Although he was very subtle about it; he never asked directly, always in a roundabout way. And so to begin with I just told him stuff and didn’t think anything of it, but after a while I didn’t trust him anymore, and I realised there was something going on. Something they were keeping me out of …

‘I watched them, I listened to every word, trying frantically to think, to fill in the gaps, to guess what it was all about, but I couldn’t: I knew nothing, absolutely nothing; my head was completely empty.

‘Ivo was sniffing around like a bloodhound, like a man possessed, on the phone for hours, interrogating people. I didn’t know how much Lado was even aware of, how much of it was arranged with him, or at what point Ivo started acting on his own initiative. I tried to get something out of Lado, but he shut me out, acted as if there was nothing going on, or as if it had nothing to do with me. At some point I started to think that what Ivo was looking for here was something personal. I know, it’s not a feeling I can justify, but I haven’t been able to shake the suspicion.’

‘He knows exactly what he’s looking for,’ I replied. ‘He knew where the journey would take him before it even began, before he came to Hamburg to fetch me. It has something to do with him and with me. I can’t quite figure it out. He doesn’t usually get involved in other people’s stories like this. I’ve no idea who he’s trying to help, or if help is what he’s trying to do. I feel like I’m almost there, I’m about to make sense of it all, and then some crucial piece is always missing. Maybe I’ll be able to explain it to you soon; I really hope so. But I still need to understand myself why he’s so intent on having me here, what it is I’m supposed to see, to recognise.’

‘It’s frightening, isn’t it, how alike our worlds are in their differences,’ she said.

I wondered what she was getting at, but my brain had ceased to follow any kind of logic. We’d ordered more champagne.

‘But do you think this is about you? Is he trying to show you something?’ she began again.

‘What? What could he want to show me?’

I thought of the photo. Salome looked at me closely for a while, then said, firmly, ‘Think, Stella, think. What might he be looking for in our story? What might remind him of something? They’re going to go and find Alexei. Ivo is the impetus Lado needed to dare to take this step, to go and track him down. I really hope it’s to find peace and not to strengthen his anger — at himself, his dead wife, this messed-up world. We have to contact Alexei. He works in the Abkhaz government. He’s some sort of diplomat now. And he has a Georgian wife, I believe.’

‘Yes, that’s where they’ll go …’

‘Unless we can start another war,’ she said sardonically. ‘I’ll try to reach Alexei. I’ll try to explain it all to him. To warn him. Best-case scenario: they’ll talk, and Lado will be able to put it behind him one of these days. Worst case: they’ll come to blows, and then Ivo and Lado will definitely have major problems. Lado especially, I mean, with his history.’

I finished my glass of champagne as the balmy evening darkened outside.

*

We strolled down wide Rustaveli Boulevard. We walked on, on and on, until we reached Ivo’s apartment. Salome cooked for us. Ivo wasn’t there. We listened to Anita Baker, the only tape I could find.

‘You’re a very special person,’ I told her, sitting on the little veranda as the city glittered and shone.

Salome smiled at me and tilted her head slightly. Then she just nodded, as if she knew everything before I said it.

Then I asked her to sing me something, and, without replying, she began. Her voice enchanted me; it always said to me that no matter how lousy life was, it would still be all right in the end.

*

I heard a rustling; he was getting undressed. I was barely conscious and didn’t know what time it was or when I’d fallen asleep. He started unbuttoning my trousers; I was still fully clothed. He helped me out of my linen shirt and carefully set my bra aside. I opened my eyes and saw that it was already light.

‘You were sleeping so peacefully,’ he said. He wasn’t sober, but he hadn’t been drinking; it wasn’t alcohol — he didn’t smell of it. I moved over a little, and he got into bed, naked.

‘Are you on something?’ I murmured.

‘Turn around.’

‘We can’t spend our whole lives running away,’ I protested, as he pulled down my knickers. I was always amazed at how controlled he was, even on drugs. How rare it was for anything to throw him. How self-possessed he was, even though the high had made him sleepy.

‘We’re not running away, we’re here …’

He started kissing my body. Leaning gently over me, he moved downwards.

‘I don’t like it,’ I said, as he pushed my legs apart.

‘What?’

‘All this secrecy, the way you’re acting.’

His answer was to put his head between my legs.

*

I rolled aside, still taut, quivering, shaking, curled up like an embryo. I knew I had to pin him down, now, while he was stricken and fragile, if I was to catch him. He was breathing heavily, stroking my back. The first rays of sunshine pierced the sky and sliced across him. The fresh morning air streamed in through the window. I clutched the white sheet.

‘I found the photo.’

‘What? Which photo?’ he asked sleepily. He was lying on his back, naked, satisfied, awaiting his reward.

‘You and me, the day before your mother died. She took that photo. I remember now.’

As I said the words, the memory returned. Emma sneaking up on us and surprising us with the camera. I remembered that rainy day. I remembered every detail, every corner of the garden, every smell, every sound, because it was the last day I had spoken to Ivo. It was only after the trial that I had seen him again, in a paediatric clinic, where they brought me to him because he kept calling my name.

It was the day Ivo’s father came home. The day Papa went shopping and then we all cooked together. Vegetable stew and fried potatoes. Afterwards, Papa and Emma went upstairs as usual, to the bedroom at the end of the corridor. Ivo and I played in the garden with the dog, who was called Pidy. I had blanked out his name, but I suddenly remembered now that he was called Pidy. It had rained; the ground was muddy. We ran and hid, only to be flushed out by the dog’s barking. Me grabbing his black, shiny, damp coat, the smell of wet animal: I saw it all again in my mind’s eye as if it were yesterday.

‘The photo?’ He sat up and hugged his knees. ‘Where?’ He kept repeating the word, as if he couldn’t believe it. ‘Where?’

‘On your laptop.’

‘How did you get into my laptop?’

‘I guessed your password.’

‘You nosed around in my files!’

His voice was harsh; suddenly, he seemed completely sober. I leaned against the cool wall behind the bed and covered myself with the sheet. My nakedness made me vulnerable. His nakedness, on the other hand, was like armour. He pulled his knees in tight, bracing himself for the battle to come — for it would be a battle. His eyes shone in the morning light, his muscles tensed, and I recognised that peculiar, extreme concentration in his face. I recognised it from the moments when, blinded by his fury, he was prepared to fight the whole world.

He jumped up, grabbed a cigarette, hastily lit it; the glow of it in the dim room made the sight of him even more disconcerting, more aggressive.

‘You’re playing some sort of fucking game, for Christ’s sake. You know exactly where this is going; you’re playing with me. You come back after eight years, get me to walk out on everything, even my son, and then hide everything from me! Who do you think you are? You’ve ruined my life; and yes, I’m blind and stupid to have believed you. To have followed you yet again. You’ve determined my whole life, you bastard; you’ve always geared everything the way you wanted it, controlled things, as if you thought you were God. You’re not — I’ve told you that! I’m not playing along. Not anymore. My son is at stake here, and I love him, okay — even if, for you, love is an alien concept, I love him, and I don’t see why I should give up everything I love for more humiliations, more disappointments.’

‘Love, love — what are you talking about?’

‘Stop it! You don’t even know what love is. What you think is love is just a sick, egocentric addiction!’

As I grew louder and louder, he became more and more composed, quiet, thoughtful. He was listening attentively, mentally recording every word, and I didn’t know whether this was the calm before the storm or whether he was surrendering before even throwing his first punch.

‘And what crap is it that you’re trying to get to the bottom of here, Ivo? Tell me. I’m giving you everything, I’ve got nothing left, I’m even living off your money now — I’m basically a kept woman.’

‘Don’t degrade yourself. I hate it when you do that.’

‘Oh, really? And you know what I hate, what I hate about you? That you’re so bloody complacent! That you don’t give a shit how I am, how I feel. What about those eight years? What were you thinking?’

‘You took enough sleeping tablets to kill a horse, may I remind you. You wanted to die, Stella, and I can’t take on any more guilt. I can’t.’

‘I wanted you to love me, I didn’t want to die! How stupid are you? Guilt? Guilt — bloody hell! I’m the guilty one, you know that: it’s me. All my life I’ve been waiting for you to say so, openly, to judge me, punish me if you want, finally, once and for all, so there can be an end to this eternal back-and-forth!’

My heart was pounding wildly. I stood up, wrapped in the sheet, and went to the window to get some fresh air. I felt as if I were suffocating. The city, spread out beneath me, blurred before my eyes, and I had to cling on to the windowsill to stop myself from keeling over.

He came closer; I heard his bare feet on the floor. I stared out of the window. I would not survive his touch. I gripped the wooden sill so hard I got a cramp in my hand.

‘It wasn’t a punishment!’

He pressed his thumb against my spine, the tip of it damp and cold. I flinched.

‘I’ve never wanted to punish you. It’s never even occurred to me, you hear? You must never think that, never! I’ve tried everything, Stella, please believe me. I’ve tried.’

He tugged at the sheet, and it fell to the ground. I made no attempt to cover myself again. In the harsh sunlight, my white body — every vein, every pore, every scar, every scratch — was mercilessly exposed. He had known this body at six, at ten, at fifteen, at twenty, and now, at thirty-six. He knew its hidden places and its vulnerabilities, the bits that could drive me insane and the spots that calmed me down; he knew what my body attempted to conceal. It scared me that he was standing behind me, inspecting me, but I was firmly resolved not to lose this battle, not to let myself be appeased: this time, his touch would not change anything.

His fingertip crept along my collarbone. I began to tremble.

‘My love is just like this, and I am like this; I told you, back then, when you took off your clothes at the beach. This whole time I wanted to prove to us that we didn’t have to atone, that you didn’t bear any guilt; I wanted to prove it to you and to myself. All my life I’ve been looking for evidence of this. Why won’t you see it?’

He licked my earlobe and stroked my matted hair back off my face. His arm encircled my waist, and I looked down at his hand, his painfully short fingernails. I would get through this. I would not give in.

He put his hand on the back of my neck and pressed.

If I turned, fought back, he would hurt me. He bent me slightly forward and put his hand on my buttocks. I froze and held my breath. I felt a kind of nausea; I knew that his calmness, these deliberate movements, were not a good sign. I tried to breathe deeply to hide my fear.

‘Why did you come back to Hamburg? Why? You knew what would happen,’ I whispered, as he pushed my legs apart, gripping my head with the other hand so he kept pushing me further and further forwards, until eventually my torso was hanging out of the window. My nausea grew; I was afraid I might throw up.

‘I didn’t come back to Hamburg or anywhere else, not even here. I just came back to you, Stella.’

I bit my lip. I was determined not to scream. He was deliberately hurting me, and he knew I was fighting it. He was waiting for me to succumb, to soften. The windowsill was digging into my stomach and there were sharp pains in my ribs.

The sun shone at us, its light so merciless, so warm, so incompatible with my stiff back and my fingers, which had turned into rigid claws, with his cold hands and the unbearable pain he was inflicting on me. I didn’t fight against accepting this just punishment. I wanted to weep, to denounce the wretched sun for shining so proudly on my defeat, but I didn’t make a sound.

‘To you. Because … I … love … you. You’ll probably laugh. Because I’m saying it to you now. But maybe one day … I’ll be able to explain. I can’t yet. Not yet.’

He gripped my head, pulled at my hair.

‘Because. Because you wouldn’t understand. Yes, it’s true, it’s true, I’ve found something here that might be able to heal us one day — yes, when I say heal, I mean it, Stella. Because all this. All this is a sickness. That has … afflicted us … since … since the … afternoon my father came home.’

I felt no sympathy; as he was saying this, he was still pushing me further forwards, moving faster. Right at that moment, all I felt for him was contempt.

‘I’ll explain everything to you, everything. I didn’t believe you’d actually come here, that you’d give me another chance, and —’

‘Stop!’

‘No, we can’t stop. We’re going to see it through to the end, okay? We can do it; this time we can do it.’

He spasmed, and sank down onto me. His chest on my back. I bent my knees and ducked underneath his body. In the bathroom I got into the tub and let the cool water run. The cold made me feel even more awake than I already was, and I scrubbed frantically at my skin; I let the water wash it all away: the night, the sun.

He perched on the edge of the bath, as he had done so many times before, but I paid him no attention; I went on washing manically, as if the water would make everything all right.

‘It’ll be over soon; it won’t take much longer. We’re going there now, and when I come back, it’ll all be over. I promise you.’

I acted as if I hadn’t heard him.

‘I never punished you, you hear? Stella, look at me. I never punished you. If I punished anyone, it was myself.’

‘I don’t want to talk.’

‘Stella?’

He put his hand on my back, and for a moment I considered pushing him away.

‘I love you.’

‘You’ve already proved that on numerous occasions. Thanks.’

‘Stella.’

‘Ivo. I can’t help you if you won’t tell me what’s going on.’

‘I can’t yet.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you have to see it for yourself. To get there by yourself.’

‘But this doesn’t make any sense.’

I leaned towards him and held out my hand. He sat there, crushed, exhausted, red-eyed, his lips cracked, his eyes cold. He clutched my hand and held it to his lips, kissed it again and again. I pulled him towards me, and he got in the bath. I shared the water with him, at that moment the most precious thing I possessed, perhaps had ever possessed.

‘What are you intending do in Abkhazia? How will it help you?’

He didn’t answer. ‘I’d have given everything, to —’

‘Leave it, Ivo. Let’s go to sleep; I’m so tired.’

He covered his face with his hands and fell silent. I had got out of the bath and wrapped a towel around my waist. I stood in front of him, rooted to the spot, unable to move.

He just sat there, under the still-running water, hiding from the world like a little boy who holds his hands in front of his face and thinks he’s invisible.

*

I fell asleep and dreamed of the pale woman, who had often haunted my sleep in the last few weeks. Beside the sea, in Tulia’s house, in the unconverted attic. With the beautiful child. She and my sleep were becoming friends. Sometimes she looked like Mama, sometimes Emma, sometimes no one, and once she looked like me. But she always wore a wedding dress. The kind I would have liked to have worn, if I hadn’t been nervous of splendour. And I secretly envied her her veil, too, which was always slightly damp and slightly dirty.