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against the dangers of this woman who had re-emerged from out of the past.
    In order not to think about the waste of that morning, The Writer looked at the sheet of water in front of him, shining like the bottom of a steel pot left to dry in the sun. Suddenly, he recalled Latin translations he had done at school. Texts that recounted how, one day thousands of years ago, after a back-breaking journey, two immense armies had confronted one another by that same lake, strangers who had come to fight and die on those tranquil shores.
    “Why did you go to Africa?”
    “Because I wanted to do something good for people.”
    “You could have done something good for me. There was no need to go so far.”
    A pair of herons (
Ardea cinerea
) landed in the middle of a cane thicket like two inexperienced parachutists, stirring The Writer’s dark thoughts.
    After the ice cream, The Old Flame had suggested with touching candour (or was it deceit?) that they take the little boat that did a circuit of the lake and moored at one of the two small islands. The Writer had agreed, partly because of that half-heartedintention that had crept into his mind—and his pants—and partly out of weakness. And partly, too, because the thought, watered by the wine and fermented by the first sunshine of spring, that he had forgotten something was maturing in the dark cask of his consciousness, and was turning into the clear, bitter feeling that he had left the nest unattended and was now somewhere he shouldn’t be, in the company of someone he shouldn’t be with.
    These thoughts abandoned The Writer when The Old Flame smiled at him and took his arm as the boat left the landing stage, glided smoothly onto the waters, and set sail for a possible adventure.
    “Why did you leave me?” said The Writer when The Old Flame placed her head on his shoulder, but he said it so softly that the noise of the propellers and the wind covered his words.
    Years before, when The Old Flame had still haunted his heated fantasies, when she had appeared at the most inappropriate moments of the day in the form of an auroral ghost, when her white face had sunk in the deep waters of his dreams like a mermaid, The Writer would have taken advantage of a moment like this to throw her in the lake.
    The boat was empty apart from an elderly couple who were sitting in the stern, although inside the cabin for fear of catching cold, but they had got on a lot earlier than The Writer and The Old Flame and didn’t seem the slightest bit interested in them.
    It would only take a push, the noise would cover the screams, and the temperature of the water would do the rest. Of course, there would be witnesses (waiters and barmen), but he could always counter with his version for the police and the press: we parted after lunch, and that was the last I saw of her. Unfortunately, that version would be sunk by the ticket they had bought at the landing stage: a stupid stub in the bundle of a sleepy ticket-seller would land him in it. It’s incredible sometimes how the obtuseness of objects can threaten the most intelligent of minds.
    Anyway, alibi apart, there would never be a better moment. Courage certainly wasn’t lacking, quite the contrary. What had diminished in all this time, thought The Writer, wasn’t his courage , but the motive: so weak now, he couldn’t even remember it.
    That day The Old Flame had entered the little rented room where he lived, where they made love and studied for their exams and dreamt of growing old together, and, instead of undressing in the most natural way and getting under the blankets, had informed him with disarming candour of her sudden pitiless intention to dump him, The Writer had immediately thought of killing her.
    Strangling her, then and there. Throwing himself on her and choking her with his bare hands, pressing his mouth to hers, his lips on hers, squeezing her throat until those big eyes rolled backwards in their sockets like a tortoise on its