She even massaged it with a little olive oil, but to no effect.

She’d suddenly thought of your teeth. Surely, she thought, they would bring some relief. Closing her eyes, she had imagined her nipple being cared for in the cavity of your mouth. You were relieving her of her agony, slowly, using the sharpness of your teeth, your saliva, and the warmth of your mouth. She’d called you immediately afterwards.

‘I’m in pain,’ she said.

‘What’s wrong?’ you asked. ‘What kind of pain?’

‘I’m very lonely,’ she said.

‘I know that,’ you answered.

She began to speak, in part to herself. ‘Yes, I feel lonely. Terribly lonely. This loneliness gripped me in childhood. I lived in a dark house back then, a dark, damp house, like a cave in a hillside. And yet, just outside the cave were human dwellings, full of sounds, ups and downs, sirens, tears, laughter. But a wall of thunder and lightning and rain lay between me and these dwellings, impossible to breach. I imagined that the rain would end at some point and I would be able to run out among the houses, among the people. But that incessant, impenetrable rainfall went on and on. My jaw ached from having no one to talk to. I spent entire days just pacing from one room to another. Today’s strike means there is no dust, so smoke, none of the usual sounds. The emptiness is becoming more palpable. No call from you all morning, no call from you all afternoon. Why not? Was it deliberate?’

‘…’

‘Didn’t you think of me even once?’

‘Of course I did.’

‘Then why didn’t you call?’

‘No time.’

‘No time? Didn’t you shower? Didn’t you eat? Did work leave you no time for any of that?’

‘Don’t quarrel with me, please. I’m tired of quarrelling with you.’

‘No, I don’t want to quarrel. I only want you close to me.’

‘Now? There’s a strike. How will I get there?’

‘Last time there was a strike you made it just fine.’

‘I hadn’t let my driver off that day. I don’t feel like driving myself. And besides, I had no work that day. Listen to me, please, I’ve got to hang up now. I was just in the middle of sending an email …’

‘No, don’t hang up,’ she screamed in desperation. ‘Don’t hang up, talk to me some more. Talk to me. Millions of people all around me, so why am I such a beggar? Have I run out of companionship too? Even my death doesn’t draw a crowd, when I imagine it. No one follows my funeral procession. Not even you. I often run a fever these days, I throw up. This flat turns into a ship from whose deck I stare out alone into the darkness. And sharks come to the surface. Innumerable sharks … and when the ship strikes an iceberg and sinks, I go through two kinds of death at the same time.’

‘Be quiet, be quiet. You’ve gone mad.’