“Yes. But don’t stop. I want to know the truth. I want to know everything.”

“The truth? My dear, there isn’t enough time in the world.” He lifts his hand to rub the corner of one eye with his thumb. “As you see, however, I didn’t die. Instead I spent most of my time learning how many things there are worse than death. Or rather, how many ways there are to be dead. Then, just in time, I would receive a dear little letter from you, like a cup of water in a desert, and for a moment or two I was glad to be alive.”

“Did they mean so much? They were so short. I never knew what to say. They were all just nonsense, I thought.”

“They kept me alive, whether I wanted it or not.”

“Then I wish I’d written a thousand.”

“A waste of time. I didn’t deserve them.”

She starts to protest. He paces forward and turns. She can’t see him in this darkness, can’t see the brilliance of his hair or the saturation of his eyes. Only the shape of that round, large head against the indigo sky.

“A thousand letters wouldn’t have mattered. You were lost to me, you see. You were married to another man. And I must tell you, in my despair, I often sought the particular kind of oblivion that carnal intercourse can give.”

“Of course you did. I never expected you to be chaste.”

“No? Well, I haven’t disappointed you, then.” The cigarette’s finished. He tosses it in the grass and scuffs it with his shoe. “Of course, I satisfied my conscience with the knowledge that you were doing the same. Now I realize I was the faithless one.”

“It doesn’t matter. You owed me nothing. I had no right to ask for a fidelity I couldn’t give you myself.”

“And yet you gave it.”

“Only by chance. Anyway, you had no way of knowing that.”

“Still, I can’t help feeling as if I should have known, somehow.”

Elfriede sinks into the coarse, short lawn. The Florida nights are anything but silent. The bullfrogs croak, the alligators groan. The birds chatter and chatter. “Was there any particular woman?” she asks softly.

“Particular? They were all particular, Elfriede. Each of them human beings, God’s creatures, like you and me.” He lowers himself into the grass beside her. “They were all the exact opposite of you. As if I were looking for an antidote. Maybe I was. But if she existed, I didn’t find her.”

He smells of cigarettes and orange blossom. Or is that the air itself? But also—yes, there it is! That other, queer scent, impossible to articulate. The particular flavor of Wilfred. She hasn’t smelled it since Switzerland. She lifts her hand and touches the stiff hair at the end of his moustache. “When did you grow this?”