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called again and started running. She heard, turned around, gripping her gun. She stared at him, surprised, intense blue eyes slightly scornful, maybe because she was a little nearsighted. My name is Marilyn, she said. What do you want? She couldn’t have been more than twenty, but she spoke like someone accustomed to being in charge. I’m new, he stammered, I was in Greece. I work with the allies’ contacts, she said. I’m American. You can call me Captain – Captain Mary. Rosamunda suits you better, he said. Cut it out, she said. Who’s Rosamunda? A piece by Schubert, he said.
    Frau wanted to put the pendulum clock on the nightstand for me – at least then you’ll know the time, she says, just turn your head, and you’ll be less confused during the day – you’realways asking the time. I told her the tick tock was annoying, but she just won’t quit. No one can hear it when it’s under that glass bell, she says, not even someone with tuberculosis. Someone with tuberculosis, no, but me, yes, I hear everything … I can hear a worm gnawing inside the wardrobe, it’s unbearable, like a voice in a cave … the wardrobe’s chestnut, worms like chestnut wood, and the more seasoned, the better, I know all about these worms … that’s exactly what I told her, I know all about these worms, Renate, go on, take a look at my leg … and I know all about these sounds, too, I’ve got a direct line to down below, I’m hooked in, I can hear the ants crawling on little hair feet. You’re getting too much morphine, she snaps – ants, nothing – this is your third injection today, but if the clock on the nightstand’s annoying, then you’ll just have to be patient: now that you have someone here listening to you all day long, you can ask him what time it is – I’m too busy. Too busy … what she’s so busy with is a mystery, Agostino’s wife does the housework, we get our supplies delivered … what she’s so busy with is giving orders to anyone in reach. Does she order you around, too? Anyway, if I’m disoriented during the day, it’s better at night, there’s a plane – I don’t know if you’ve heard it yet – maybe not – you must be asleep at midnight, and it’s pretty high up, it sounds so far away, it’s the midnight plane, that’s what I call it … it’s punctual, maybe just slightly late at times, not much, it strikes midnight better than that stupid clock that doesn’t chime anymore, that just goes tick tock … you can see it from your bedroom window, but you have to wait for it: if you hear it, it’s already passed over, you’ll see it,two small blue parallel lights … that plane’s been passing over for at least ten years now, I first noticed it the same evening we came back to this house, we were exhausted when we got here, you know, we’d set out that August afternoon from a small square in Plaka where Daphne as a joke had started floating overhead by an orange tree, while I begged her not to make me go alone, and so we set off on our journey … that night I couldn’t sleep, which happens when you’re too tired, I was at the window, you know how it is, a cigarette … That plane comes from the South and heads west, and when it’s overhead, just over the house, it turns for the coast … and then he’s over the sea … I can see him, he’s over Sardinia, a traveler who probably sees the lights below from his small window and asks himself who’s living in those lights, who’s down there, in that house, that village … it’s impossible to know, just like I don’t know who this traveler is who’s asking himself this, and yet we’re both imagining this, he and I, and not knowing who we are, we’ve thought the same thing … and there he is, over Spain … maybe he’ll even pass over Pancuervo, and in Pancuervo there’ll be someone awake at midnight, staring up at that plane … and finally, over Portugal … and then it’s the ocean,