It took fifteen minutes to react. She sat there, watching it. She wondered what Pascal would say if he knew the truth, if she told him that she wanted it to turn pink, wanted it with her whole soul. What would he say if she confessed that the desire to have his child had taken hold of her the day of that hospital shelling, and that the desire, still acute, was with her still?

She covered her face with her hands. She had no need to imagine a reaction to an emotion she did not intend to admit: she knew what the reaction would be. She had seen it in that brown and orange hotel room, when she had explained that she had just missed her period; concern, then anxiety, then something very close to despair.

“You are still taking the pill? I don’t understand.”

“Yes. I am. I think it’s just overwork. Tiredness.”

“Gini, are you sure? You couldn’t have missed a day or two by accident?”

“No. I checked. Don’t worry, it’s just the stress—it’s happened to me before.”

He tried to embrace her then; he began insisting she see a doctor for a checkup. When she had done so, and it was confirmed that she was not pregnant, Gini found herself unable to meet his eyes. She was afraid to see the relief in them. She stared at the ground.

“Suppose I had been,” she said in a low voice. “What then, Pascal?”

“Darling, I don’t know…” He put his arms around her. “We’re only halfway through our time here. This was something you so much wanted to do—this work. Your career matters very much to you. You said you didn’t want children. A mistake like that, coming at a time when we’re both working all hours, always on the move, in danger to some extent—”

“A mistake?”

“Well, it would have been a mistake in one sense, darling, you know that. This is something we’ve never considered—the last thing we’d planned, coming now, in the midst of all this mayhem.”

Gini turned away wordlessly. She could hear the anxiety in his voice; she thought she could detect an undertone of impatience, imperfectly concealed.

He was right, she told herself; his reaction was sensible, pragmatic, responsible. She thought: he does not want another child; he does not want a child with me.

The pain was very great. Despite the pain, and the rationality of his arguments, the desire remained. She still wanted his baby, and she continued to clutch at the hope that she might be pregnant long after leaving Bosnia. She knew, of course, when that desire began. She could date it to the day, the hour. After Mostar. She had watched too many children die; now her body dictated—she wanted to feel a child grow within her; she wanted Pascal to watch this child be born.

The fifteen minutes had eventually passed. In that bathroom she had looked at a test-tube device, at a sample strip that reminded her of school chemistry lessons, years before. Its verdict filled her with desolation: as both feared and expected, the strip was turning blue.