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called?”
    â€œWhat is who called?”
    â€œOw, why’d you bite me?! I mean the lovers!”
    Without names it just won’t work. A name is always more than a body. Sasha licks a blade of grass and concentrates on tickling the inside of my ear. I squirm, dissatisfied.
    â€œSo are we going out with each other? And will we get married someday? And have children? Huh?”
    Who knows. Sasha never asks things like this. The worldaround Sasha stands still. I have a Young Writers silver medal and I know full well that the world is a story, a finger pointing somewhere else: a direction.
    â€œSo let’s make something up!”
    â€œWhy? I don’t want to.”
    â€œIf I make something up, will you play it with me?” Sasha doesn’t know. It’s all the same to her. She stops tickling me and starts single-mindedly squashing ants with her fingernail.

    The next day I’m in the garden at eight. Furiously I stomp outside the Zámskys’ ground-floor window. Sasha is sleeping and doesn’t want to get up, but I’m stomping like a real live elephant.
    I have a story! Last night I couldn’t fall asleep until two. A multitude of versions ran through my head. I’m as prolific as Adam in Paradise. I am amazed how easy it is to create new worlds. By the time sleep finally overtook me I had decided with solemn finality who Sasha and I really were.
    From the window, Mr. Zámsky threatens me with his cane; my noise annoys him. Sasha yawns. She takes ages eating breakfast. Finally we’re out behind the birch trees. Mumbling, I explain her role. I know everything, absolutely everything! I (he) am called Mount Everest. Sasha (she) is Kilimanjaro.

    There are two famous mountain climbers. They bear the names of the mountains they have climbed. Never in their lives have they met, but the world considers them merciless rivals. There is but one unconquered mountain left in all the world. It is the highest of them all and it has sent hundreds of climbers to their deaths. In the language of its country — Himalayan, I suspect — it is called theMountain of Mountains.
    Both decide to climb it. The whole world waits with baited breath to see who will be the first to raise the flag. The reporters are frantic, every transmitter is straining its ears. But shortly before they set out, a shock hits.
    At the foot of the Mountain, Everest discovers the astounding truth. The whole world thinks this is a battle of man against man. Except Kilimanjaro is not a man.
    Sasha: I only played this silly game for your sake. If you’d known I was a girl, you would never have competed against me.
    Mount Everest (horrified): Kilimanjaro, I warn you — the Mountain of Mountains is the end of the earth! At the summit there is nothing but sheer frost.
    The ascent begins. Step by step the way grows harder. The sky is like a white abyss and the world is so tense it forgets to breathe. The most frightening part of the Mountain draws near, the Wall of Death. No one, except Sasha and me, suspects the truth.

    From that day on, the game takes an unexpected turn. At the end of the garden is a steep hill. The ground here is perpetually moist, covered with brushwood. It becomes the Wall of Death. We press through the bushes on our bellies; a mountain hurricane rips us asunder, thorns catch on our sweatpants. The Young Writer has turned a fin-de-siècle stroll in the park into a military exercise.
    Most of all, our love is now different. There’s no more kissing, thank God. Love is no longer a perpetual dance in a circle. It’s a contest, it’s agony. It’s a finger pointing straight up — a direction! We crawl across the icy plain, exhausted. Embraces are out of the question, and anyway we are kept apart by layers of walrus skin. At these heights, a kiss without an oxygen mask spells death.

    My parents are just thankful I’m playing and not lazing around the apartment looking