I caught up with her at the back gate of the cemetery, where she was gripping the grilles, shaking them as if they might miraculously open. But the lock would not be cajoled and the woman turned and collapsed against it, slumping to her haunches and burying her face in her hands. I approached her. “What’s the matter?” I asked, bending down onto one knee and touching her on the shoulder.

She looked at me as if for the first time, eyes sparkling with tears. “I have nowhere to go.”

Go here.

The Apartment

I WOKE TO find two coal-black eyes looking back into mine. The woman from the cemetery. The back of her fingers were stroking my stubbled cheek and she was murmuring something reassuring.

“You had a nightmare,” she said.

“Was I screaming?”

She nodded.

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right. You warned me.”

“I did?”

“You told me you have nightmares every night.”

“Yes, so I did.”

A full ashtray, two dirty glasses, and an empty bottle of calvados on the table. In the dull light of the bedside lamp, my one-room apartment was plunged into a deep, middle-of-the-night silence. I recalled inviting her to spend the night. I was in the armchair. She’d been sleeping in my bed in her black silk dress. I remembered the events that had brought her here—the cemetery, the raid, the shelter. I was surprised she’d accepted the offer. She’d told me her name: Madeleine.

She gave me a sidelong glance. “What were you dreaming about?”

“Oh, a jumble of things. I have a few recurring nightmares. They always seem to take place in the past. This one was on one of those old-fashioned three-masted sailing ships. I was the ship’s surgeon, and had to saw off a man’s arm with nothing more to numb the patient’s pain than alcohol and laudanum. That’s one I only get every now and then. There are others. In some, I’m on a tropical island. In others, I’m a woman raising a child during the Prussian siege, or Baudelaire, believe it or not, living an impoverished life with Jeanne Duval. The one element that seems to recur above all is…” I paused, somewhat embarrassed by what I was saying.

Madeleine, who had been about to light a cigarette, froze and looked at me with a curious expression, engrossed and terrified at once. The match’s flame lit her face in a soft orange glow. “What?” she asked.

“Eyes.”

She lit the cigarette and leaned forward. “What kind of eyes?”

“All kinds, in all colors, on all kinds of faces. All my dreams seem to end with me looking into the eyes of someone, and every time I get to that point I wake up screaming.”

“Why do you scream?”

“I have no idea.”

“And your accent,” she said. “Are you German?”

“Yes. I’m from Berlin.”