— That’s so unfair, she said, — because I love all kinds of art, I’ve loved other Tarkovsky. But isn’t it a cliché, because the man is pursuing meaning and art and truth, and the woman only wants love and happiness? It’s somewhat more likely to have been the other way round, in real life: the middle-aged writer pursuing the attractive young woman, and her fending him off.

— That’s such an uninteresting way of thinking about the film, Alex protested.

— I believed it implicitly anyway, Lydia said. — There are men like that.

Zachary asked if Christine hadn’t loved the famous single shot of the writer carrying a lit candle the whole length of the empty pool, and Christine conceded wholeheartedly, with sudden emotion, that yes, that was so meaningful and moving, it had made up for everything. And then the children came screaming out of the darkness, flinging recklessly into the circle of grown-ups, hiccuping with fear and laughter, taking refuge between Christine’s knees and Zachary’s, the adults kissing them and hanging onto them, holding them safe, the children breathing in the fumes of drink and marijuana. They flung away again, into the terrors hidden in the dark. Sometimes Zachary went charging after them, growling like a bear, to their extreme delight although they shrieked with fear. He had put on weight, he had the authority of a substantial man these days, with his booming voice and laughter, his air of knowing where to find all the good things worth having. But he kept a quick concern in his expression from boyhood: the blinking watchful eyes following everyone with his enquiry into their well-being: were they all right? Did they have everything they wanted? They told him to stop fussing, relax, they were fine. Lydia complained that Zachary was always the enabler, concealing himself behind his attentions to others. — I don’t know what I want for myself, he conceded happily. — I’ve got everything.