Finally I ended up taking the stairs.

I was sweating when I reached the fifth floor.

At the gynecologist I had to wait for an appointment, but when I finally got in, everything went quickly. He called a clinic and scheduled the procedure for the next morning. Just one night, I thought, just one night, then it will be over.

That night I walked the streets. I passed the Royal Opera House, the National Gallery, walked across Trafalgar Square, but nothing made any impression on me. I continued walking past imposing buildings, all of them reminders of the Brits’ former grandeur, their ability to conquer the world. It’s just stone, I thought, the entire city is stone, red brick. It made me sick, this burned clay, this man-made material, precisely cut and stacked into houses wherever I turned.

I found my way to the River Thames, where the air was rawer, damper. I inhaled it with an open mouth, as if I were drinking it, and stood for a long time on a bridge watching the river flow by under my feet.

Then a boat appeared. I turned and watched it as it disappeared under the bridge and popped out again on the other side. It was going east, maybe headed for the ocean.

The river connected the city to the ocean, the ocean connected the country to the world. “All big cities have a river,” Daddy had once told me. It’s rivers that create big cities; rivers are the world’s most important highways. Daddy, I thought suddenly. What would he say if he knew, what would he say if he were here now? Maybe I should have told him before leaving, maybe he was the only one I should have said something to. I could have brought him with me, or let him bring me—we should have been standing together on this bridge. We could have talked about rivers, about the man-made nature that arises around all the waterways of the world, as has happened for thousands of years. He could have talked about the Euphrates, about the Tigris, created by the Sumerian Enki, the god of the seas, of the ocean, of creativity and creative power, who filled the landscape with running water—all Daddy’s anecdotes, all his words. No, I didn’t want them, wouldn’t be able to disappear into them. And Mommy, what would Mommy have done if she were here now? Taken me away, given me a bath? Would she have tried to talk me out of my decision?