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difficult to keep clean without removing your clothes, so I hardly ever washed. Nor did I buy any new clothes, and I let my hair grow unkempt. Finally, I could sense that I smelled bad. I could smell it in my bed, and when I returned to the apartment after being out, my smell greeted me, stale and sickly sweet, putrefied. That’s when I made up my mind. I was supposed to be old. I was allowed to grow old. It was natural and obvious and nothing to grieve over, I just had to adjust to the new order of things. The threads of life had simply grown thinner, the weave had become sparse and brittle, and that’s what was visible in my body, that’s what my body was trying to tell me. The notion was almost liberating. I decided to allow life to run its course and told myself to stop hoping and fantasizing, to stop dreaming about change, mercy, and love – all those things that human beings cling to and refuse to let go. Now I was going to devote myself to concluding things, to folding up and sealing the past.
    In the last year, that’s how I’ve adjusted my thinking. In some ways, I have had to conquer myself. But I’m taking care of myself again. I buy clothes, take baths, and cut my nails. You have to be able to tolerate your own life. Day after day, you have to carry yourself through it.
    Kosti’s letter disturbed me. For the second time, he’s trying to disruptmy sense of order. Now I know. There’s nothing for me in Mervas. And I don’t want to see Kosti again. As far as I see it, he could just as well be dead. I mean, I haven’t known whether he was alive or not for the past fifteen, twenty years. He probably doesn’t know any more about my life after we parted than I do of his. He doesn’t know about the boy’s death. Most likely, he hasn’t a clue about the repercussions our love affair had on my life. How it threw me off course and into chaos.
    When life has become too torturous, when it has been infused with pain the way water can be infused with salt, you no longer want anyone to witness it. You don’t want to be seen. No, true suffering doesn’t want to be witnessed. It hurts too much. That’s why I’m content being as lonely as I am. No one can see me. I’m glad that ever since the boy’s death, the contact with my sister has been limited to a few phone calls a year. I don’t want Kosti to see me. Only idiots think it’s necessary to drag everything to the surface for show. Many things can only heal in darkness, out of sight. If they can ever heal at all.

December 21
    For the first few weeks after Kosti left for the Orkney Islands, I was at war with myself. The struggle between the Red forces, which wanted to swallow all pride and be reconciled at all costs, and the White forces, which refused to bend, was constant and ruthless. I was becoming an increasingly ravaged battlefield. Weeks could go by when I didn’t get out of bed in the mornings. I thought like the child I still was: He thinks I’ll come anyway. But I’ll show him. I’ll show him who he’s dealing with. I’m not going to come crawling back to him like a sorry dog and lick his fingers.
    I wanted to be strong and proud. To defend my honor and let the White forces win the battle.
    When the war was over and the Red forces had been conquered, I was powerless for a long time. A kind of fatigue that closely resembled an illness paralyzed me. I didn’t have the energy to think. If I even got close to completing a thought, I felt as if drugged with exhaustion. But I sensed, yes, I could sort of hear, that beneath this huge fatigue, my rage was whimpering. If I’d had the capacity to listen more attentively, I would have heard something else besides the rage. I would have heard my fear squeak. And the lamentation, the lamentation from someone who had just lost everything.
    But it was my rage that one night led me to put makeup on my face and