Maya appears behind us. She stands in the road, barefoot, in her swimming costume, her hands shielding her eyes from the sun. Mama? she says, Mama? Get inside the house, says Fred. For Christ’s sake, take our child and get her inside the house!

*

I imagine:

The two men up the hill.

Panting.

Their silent solemnity.

Their hands.

The sweat on Fred’s forehead, on his neck.

The soft sound of clods of earth falling on the dead body.

We leave that evening. Umberto gives us two bottles of wine as a parting gift. He picks Maya up and says: You’ll be too heavy for me next year. She throws her head back and stares at the bedroom ceiling. Fred sits behind the wheel; he’s determined to drive the whole way. We wave as we set off. Umberto shouts something unintelligible, then he’s gone. The night is warm. The sky is cloudy. Hardly any stars. The moon, from time to time. The roads are quiet, there’s little traffic. It’ll be all right, says Fred. Sure, I say. Everything in here smells of him, he says. Yes, I say, we should get the car cleaned, Kobielski’s offering a deep clean now. What’s that supposed to be, asks Fred, a deep clean? They do everything, I say, from the exhaust pipe to the floor mats. They even brush the crumbs out of the glove compartment. What crumbs, asks Fred. I don’t know, I say, crumbs or whatever. Fred turns on the car radio. How often have we heard this song, he asks. No idea, I say, have we ever heard it? He turns it off again. I open the window. The air seems completely filled with the chirping of crickets. Close it, Maya’s sleeping, says Fred. I close the window and clamp my hand between my thighs. The cut is hurting under the bandage. The pain is hot and throbbing. I close my eyes and lean my head back. Half-­asleep, I think: you deserve this, this is your punishment. But for what? I wake and see the lights of the night slip by. We drive on without speaking. Then suddenly Fred says: She didn’t ask a single question, do you realize that? She’s a child, I say. Since when do children not ask questions, he says, I mean, her dog was run over. Perhaps she knows there are no answers, I say; and besides, it was our dog. Sometimes you’re a bit too smart for me, he says, I can’t keep up. I say: Stop it.

Maya wakes with the sunrise. How much further? We’ll soon be there, darling. See those trees over there, they’re poplars, not cypresses. Poplars are the guardians of the fields. They watch over our potatoes. And the tomatoes? And the tomatoes, those especially.

I unwrap the bandage around my wrist. Leave it, says Fred, we’ll go to a doctor when we get home. The wound is dark and wet, the skin at the edges inflamed. I open the window and hold my arm into the wind. What’s that line, Mama? What do you mean, darling? The red line on your arm, look, it looks like a road. Yes, darling, you’re right, it’s a thin red road.