ABSTRACT
As long as that doesn’t happen, what comes next is anyone’s guess. It was exactly two weeks ago today. Sophia opened the little concrete door onto the terrace of her flat. It was the middle of the night, around quarter to three. The last day of the week (Friday) was only a couple of hours old; it was the morning of the day you had so often come to spend the weekend with her. The moon shone bright, trying to outdo the other moon that draws our house towards it at night: the Eiffel Tower. It was cold outside, but the chill felt good in the wake of the early summer heat. Her breath rose in small clouds that quickly disappeared. She shivered slightly, looked up wearily, and extended the fingers of her left hand toward the balustrade for support. The window of my room wasn’t closed: I like to sleep with the windows open. She stood looking at my sleeping body for a long time. My left leg hung over the edge of the bed, my mouth was slightly open, I didn’t snore, my nightgown was pushed up to my thigh. It’s only a sleeping body that cannot disappoint. Then she went into the bathroom and closed all the sliding partitions, doors and windows. She filled up the bathtub and lay down in the warm water. That’s how it must have happened; that’s how I imagine it. You don’t have the right to question the accuracy of my information;
you’re not allowed to ask, ‘Why didn’t you wake up?’, ‘Was it really only quarter to three?’, ‘Why do you wear a nightgown?’ – no one who leaves has that right. You have to trust my pragmatism, my ability to allow things to be the way they are, my honesty, even if you know that my lies would be based only on good intentions. As long as you stay away, my words are the only thing you have.
