You’re serious about this.

Yes.

You’d decided on all this even before the evening in question.

The evening in question. Yes. I’d known for years. I told him that I was all right with waiting. Then I started crying. I couldnt stop crying.

Did you really think that your brother would marry you?

Yes. I did. He should have.

And you would, what? Live in another country?

Yes.

Didnt you think that you could find someone else?

There wasnt anyone else. There never would be. There wasnt for him either. He just didnt know it yet.

How old were you when you realized that you were in love with your brother?

Probably twelve. Maybe younger. Younger. The hallway.

And you never looked back. As the saying goes.

It’s not so easy to explain, but it was pretty clear to me that there was not some alternate view of things to embrace. He was away at school and I only lived for when he would come home. At Christmas or whenever.

And on the night in question you told him everything.

Yes.

Didnt you know what he would say?

I didnt care. We had to make a beginning.

And the fact that he seemed to more or less reject you didnt change anything.

No. I asked him who it was that he thought I should marry but of course he had no answer. He kept saying that I was fourteen but I told him that he was the one who was talking nonsense, not me. What if one of us died? Who has forever?

How old was your brother?

Twenty-one.

Didnt he have girlfriends?

He tried. It never came to anything. I wasnt jealous. I wanted him to see other girls. I wanted him to see the truth of his situation.

That he was in love with you.

Yes. Bone of his bone. Too bad. We were like the last on earth. We could choose to join the beliefs and practices of the millions of dead beneath our feet or we could begin again. Did he really have to think about it? Why should I have no one? Why should he? I told him that I’d no way even to know if there was justice in my heart if I had no one to love and love me. You cannot credit yourself with a truth that has no resonance. Where is the reflection of your worth? And who will speak for you when you are dead?

I’m sorry. I didnt mean to make you cry.

You didnt.

Do you want to stop?

No.

What else?

I told him that I wanted to have his child.

You told your brother that you wanted to have his child.

Look. It’s no good you repeating these things to me as if to limn the horror and the lunacy of them. You cant see the world I see. You cant see through these eyes. You never will.

I’m sure that’s true.

I told my brother that I was in love with him and that I always had been and that I would be until I died and that it wasnt my fault that he was my brother. You could look at it as just a piece of bad luck. I told him that he should resign.