I was so angry to be cast aside and I was lost in the city without her. I became depressed. I stayed with some other people for a while, in Mitte – artists, of course – but they all by contrast with Silvija seemed to be acting parts, and I have forgotten all their names. I knew that the sweet days of the summer had passed and it was time to fly away. Reluctantly, she came to the station on the morning I was to leave for the airport. She hugged me on the platform but so awkwardly; she fled instantly from the hug. She said she would email and that I could phone but six years have passed and never once did she reply to an email, never once did she answer her phone, and after a few months, the line was dead.

Which signifies nothing, necessarily, because Silvija changed phones all the time. And anyway I must believe that she is out there, somewhere among the dreaming cities of Europe, maybe in Trieste, or in Zagreb, or in Belgrade again. I must believe that she is out there, still beautiful, foul-mouthed and inviolate.

Copyright

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Epub ISBN 9781407086149

Published by Jonathan Cape 2012

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Copyright © Kevin Barry 2012

Kevin Barry has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

Portions of this work have appeared in the following:
‘Fjord of Killary’ appeared in the New Yorker; ‘Beer Trip to Llandudno’ appeared in New Irish Short Stories (Faber & Faber); ‘Ernestine and Kit’ appeared in Columbia; ‘Doctor Sot’ appeared in Best European Fiction 2011 (Dalkey Archive Press); ‘The Girls and the Dogs’ appeared in Sharp Sticks, Driven Nails (Stinging Fly Press); ‘White Hitachi’ appeared in the John McGahen Yearbook, vol. 2 (National University of Ireland, Galway)

First published in Great Britain in 2012 by
Jonathan Cape
Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA

The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9780224090582