When they’d moved in together and she had nothing, that had really seemed like love to her. Mismatched dishes and silverware, received as gifts or stolen. Two stacked cardboard boxes from the supermarket, a rusty camping stove on top of them, and an old twin mattress where they’d spent the whole day. That was all. Nor did they have curtains, and when it got dark the ceiling was lit by the headlights of the cars outside. And she’d look up and watch as one wave of light after another grew and was extinguished, from one corner to the other in an endless undulation, like the ocean. And that surely had to be love. He was big and she was very small, and a twin mattress was enough for them. Then, when he got on top of her and was inside, she went on watching waves on the ceiling, waves all night long.

And also when it was hot out, when they walked down Monckeberg with the sun beating down on them, burning. He went ahead of her and they walked single file, one behind the other, keeping to the line of shade projected by the walls of the houses. She looked at his enormous shape and it seemed to her that more than sheltering her from the sun he carried the light, he went ahead of her and held the fire that lit the way. While they walked she would try to take his hand, which swung back and forth to the rhythm of his footsteps. And he didn’t turn around or notice at all, and she followed him, followed him always, playing until she caught hold of his fingers.

Last night I dreamed I was pregnant and I didn’t feel hungry, only thirsty. I was very thirsty, and I drank water and almost didn’t eat. My belly was about seven months along and when my water broke, it started to pour from between my legs, a torrent of water, a waterfall. I looked at the pool on the ground, my feet soaked in water, and I knew the baby was dead, that it had always been floating there, drowned inside me. When I woke up I realized it wasn’t a dream, that it had really happened; or at least it was similar to the story my mother told me not long after my dad left. “I didn’t see him,” she said. “They didn’t tell you anything, back then they didn’t explain a thing.”