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been there. Now the entire hut revolves around him. On the few days when there is sun, our bed reflects the light like a mirror, and the silence piles up around the noises the boy is constantly making, either because he is crying, or is taken by surprise by his bare leg waving in mid-air, or the sight of the withered, weary cow that has replaced a hearth to warm our family. His gentle, rhythmic breathing helps ward off the loneliness which without him would vanquish me.
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    I found a mountain goat half-eaten by wolves. There was a lot of meat left on it, so today we will eat the remains. I’ve made a very mild soup from its bones and innards which the boy seems to keep down well.
    At this point there is a significant change in the handwriting. Although it is still very neat and tidy, it seems to be written in more haste. Or perhaps less steadily. Probably some length of time has elapsed.
    Would my parents recognise me if they saw me? I can’t see myself, but I imagine I am filthy and humiliated. I am yet another product of the war they tried to ignore but which flooded their stables, their starving cattle, their sparse crops with fear. I remember the poor, silent village of ours that closed its eyes to everything apart from fear. I remember how it shut its eyes when they killed Don Servando, my teacher, when they burned all his books and exiled all the poets whose work he knew by heart.
    I’ve lost. But I could have won. Will someone else take my place? I’m going to tell my son, who is gazing at me as though he understands, that I would not have left my enemies to flee with nothing, I would not have condemned anyone for being a poet. I threw myself into battle armed only with paper and pencil, and words gushed out of me that brought comfort to the wounded. But the comfort I gave also created bloodthirsty generals who were the reason for the wounded. Wounded, generals, generals, wounded. And there was I, stuck in the middle with my poetry. Their accomplice. And then there were the dead.

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    Here there is a sentence crossed out which is illegible. The text on this page is placed around the outline of an infant’s hand. Presumably he used his child’s hand as a stencil. He wrote on it:
    Time has passed. I have no idea how many days because they are all the same, but what most surprises me is how the boy grows. When I reread this notebook, I realise I no longer feel the same. And if I lose my anger, what is there left? The winter is a closed box which stores up all the snowstorms. These mountains still seem like the place where winter spends the winter. My sadness has also frozen with the cold. All I have left is the fear that used to make me so afraid. I’m afraid the boy might fall ill, afraid the cow will die because I can barely feed her by digging up roots or giving her the few shoots of grass still growing when the snow came. I’m afraid of falling ill myself. I’m afraid someone will discover we are up here on the mountain. I’m afraid of so much fear. But the boy is unaware of all of this. Elena!
    At night, the wind howls round the mountain with an almost human moan. It’s as if it were trying to show me and the child how humans should grieve. Fortunately, the cabin is strong enough to withstand all the storms.
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    Today I killed a wolf! Four of them came sneaking round the cabin. At first I was frightened, because their hunger gives them an almost human ferocity. But then I thought they might be able to provide us with food. When the biggest wolf came scratching at the door, I carefully opened it wide enough for him to poke his head in, then I quickly trapped his neck in the door’s edge. A single blow from the axe was enough. I hit him so hard his appetite spilled out with his blood. I’ll eat its flesh, and the entrails will provide the boy with nourishment. That is good, but the bad thing is I have smelled blood once more, I have heard again the sounds of death, and seen the colour of