‘If that’s you, you little Spick, I’ll kick your goddamn teeth out.’

He opened the door and I saw a face clutched in the persistent fingers of sleep, the eyes grey and dazed, the hair in ruins across his forehead.

‘Hello, Sammy.’

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I thought it was her.’

‘She’s here,’ I said.

‘Tell her to screw outa’ here. I don’t want her around.’

She had retreated to a place against the wall of the hut, and I looked at her and saw her smiling away her embarrassment. The three of us were very cold, our jaws chattering. Sammy opened the door wider. ‘You can come in,’ he said. ‘But not her.’

I stepped inside. It was almost pitch dark, smelling of old underwear and the sleep of a sick body. A feeble light came from a crack in the window covered by a slice of sacking. Before I could stop him, Sammy had bolted the door.

He stood in long underwear. The floor was of dirt, dry and sandy and cold. He yanked the sacking from the window and the early light tumbled through. Vapors spilled from our mouths in the cold air. ‘Let her in, Sammy,’ I said. ‘What the hell.’

‘Not that bitch,’ he said.

He stood in long underwear, the knees and elbows capped with the blackness of dirt. He was tall, gaunt, a cadaver of a man, tanned almost to blackness. He padded across the hut to a coal stove and began making a fire. His voice changed and became soft when he spoke. ‘Wrote another story last week,’ he said. ‘Think I got a good one this time. Like you to see it.’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘But hell, Sammy. She’s a friend of mine.’

‘Bah,’ he said. ‘She’s no good. Crazy as hell. Cause you nothing but trouble.’

‘Let her in anyway. It’s cold out there.’

He opened the door and pushed his head out.

‘Hey, you!’

I heard the girl sob, heard her try to compose herself. ‘Yes, Sammy.’

‘Don’t stand out there like a fool,’ he said. ‘You coming in or ain’t you?’

She entered like a frightened deer while he went back to the stove. ‘Thought I told you I didn’t want you hanging around here no more,’ he said.

‘I brought him,’ she said. ‘Arturo. He wanted to talk to you about writing. Didn’t you, Arturo?’

‘That’s right.’

She was like a stranger to me. All the fight and glory of her was drained like blood from her veins. She stood off by herself, a creature without spirit or will, her shoulder blades humped, her head drooping as though too heavy for her neck.

‘You,’ Sammy said to her. ‘Go get some wood, you.’

‘I’ll go,’ I said.

‘Let her go,’ he said. ‘She knows where it is.’

I watched her slink out the door. In a while she came back, her arms loaded. She dumped the sticks into a box beside the stove, and without speaking she fed the flames, a stick at a time. Sammy sat on a box across the room, pulling on his socks. He talked incessantly about his stories, a continuous flow of chatter. Camilla stood dismally beside the stove.