She literally rams into Beneventura. He is incapable of a response, incapable of movement, does not know what to do with himself. He just manages to stupidly ask if she needs something cold, and heads for the altar to get one of the candle sconces ...

The first time they take a bath together at Matilde’s, her upper lip is still black and blue and she still has no tooth. Matilde no longer knows how to fall in love, thus, for aesthetic reasons she would have preferred to wait a while, but Beneventura kept sitting on the stairs behind her door each evening. She thought it was unethical to debase God’s servant so; thus having to choose between ethics and aesthetics she chose the former. Besides that, he, being a young priest, was almost like someone out of Rosamunde Pilcher’s romantic films, which, when seen in convivial company with a running commentary, had made her roll on the floor from laughter with her cat. It is clear, however, that Matilde totally does not fit Pilcher’s parameters for an object of temptation that could be used to lure the priest away from God, with the crowning result being a family home in the Alps.

Nonetheless, for their first time, she lights candles everywhere to create romance. And why not? Never in her fifty years, and now without a front tooth, has she made love to a man twenty years her junior, who officially is forbidden such activity.

And what a night! Theirs is an elegant fit. In at least three of the five tried poses.

The first summer month passes hot and heavy. Matilde grows younger not by the day, but by the hour. They indulge in the most unimaginable manoeuvres, involving every inch of their bodies. Matilde becomes flustered when Beneventura, on finishing, grows effusive and blurts out lengthy, tender protestations of love, into which he usually patches various parallels from the Bible.

But sometimes, as she prepares breakfast, within her vibrates a barely audible, delicate lyrical note, one she would rather not hear.

On the last Sunday of July, Beneventura invites Matilde to accompany him to the Gaveiki Graveyard Festivities. He will tell the locals that Matilde is his older sister.

“Perhaps better – your sprightly young mom,” Matilde jokes back.

“No – vecuokuo muoseņa,” Beneventura says, insisting on “older sister.”

They spend three days en route to Gaveiki. At night, while swimming in a river, they see a fire-fly in the riverbank bushes. Beneventura swims to the bush to pick up the glow-worm, swims back and puts it in Matilde’s hair.

“Love me!” he says.

Matilde swims to the bank with the fire-fly on her head. The vibrating note within her becomes unbearably tender.