That was when the new fear gripped her. She had gone into the bathroom, switched on all the lights, and made herself confront the image in the glass. She could see, she made herself see, the physical effects of lack of appetite and sleep. She looked at the pale face in the mirror in front of her: she knew that Pascal found her beautiful, for he told her so often enough. She turned her face this way and that, searching for some sign of the woman he described, the woman he loved.

She could not see her. She felt a flurry of panic then. This woman he would scarcely recognize, and surely could not love. She had a thin, tense, secretive look; her eyes were secretive, shifting away from her own glance. One secret above all, of course; one confession that should have been made in Mostar, but was not. That secret she still nursed. If Pascal had walked into the room now, she would have longed to voice it, but feared to do so: the words would stick in her throat.

She spent a sleepless night; the next morning, febrile with new resolve, she did the sensible, the obvious thing. She consulted a doctor. It was a necessary step—and one she had been avoiding for two months.

The doctor was a stranger. His office had been closed over Christmas, and there was a backlog of patients. Gini sat in the crowded waiting room, an unread magazine on her knee. She tried to block out the sounds of fractious children and squalling babies. She was trying to decide how much to tell the doctor, and how to make her explanation brief.

She thought: I must be clear and concise. I must tell him I was in Bosnia. I must mention the hours we worked. I must explain that I thought I could cope, and I tried to cope, but I found it very hard to look at—death. Yes, she thought, that was the word. Just death. No need to be more specific than that. She jumped; her name was being called for the third time by an irritable receptionist. Clutching her purse, she rose to her feet.

She found the doctor in a room the size of a small cubicle, a young man of about her own age, with a harassed air, who said without preamble, “What’s the problem?”

Outside, telephones rang; a child shrieked. Gini fixed her eyes on an antismoking poster. It was immediately clear to her that she could not mention Bosnia to this man; she could not mention Bosnia in this place. It would be too long, too complicated; it would be too cheap.

The doctor was staring at her, tapping his pen.

“Symptoms?” he asked. “What symptoms are troubling you?”

“I—can’t sleep,” Gini replied. She was starting to sweat. The room felt airless; the pen tapped. “I’m having nightmares. I’ve been under—some stress. I’m not eating too well. I’ve lost weight—about fourteen pounds, I guess…”