“I don’t understand . . .” she begins softly.

“Understand what?”

“Why you should move me like this, when he loved me so much. So terribly.”

“It’s strange, isn’t it? This.”

She leans her head on his shoulder. “What are we to do?”

“Nothing.” He touches her hair. Then he says it again, in English. Nothing.

Nothing, she repeats.

“No-thing. Th-th-th. Put your tongue beneath your upper teeth.”

“No-thing,” Elfriede says again, paying particular attention to this English th, her Waterloo these past few weeks. In order to pass the anxious time while Wilfred lay in bed with his relapse—a friendly orderly passed the notes between them—she began to teach herself English with the books from the sanatorium’s extensive library. She hoped to astound him when he recovered. Good morning, she said to him, when they met at last on the wall of the infirmary garden, the exact spot where they had spoken their first words to each other. (This by design, of course, in a note passed that morning from the orderly’s pocket.) I hope you are vell. She remembers how he turned—she’d come up to him from the meadow behind—and how the sight of his face, pale but radiant, made her dizzy. How his smile, growing slowly across his face to expose his teeth, illuminated the universe. Well, he said. W-w-w. Well.

W-w-well, she repeated.

I am well, thank you. Are you well, my love?

I am wery vell.

Now it’s a joke between them, how wery vell they both are during these slow, beautiful hours together. How wery vell the sun shines upon them, how wery vell the air smells, the ground feels, the skin glows. How wery vell she’s progressing in her English lessons.

Nothing, Elfriede says again. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. We are doing nothing. How is zat?

“I’m being discharged,” Wilfred says in German.

But isn’t this why they’ve fallen in love, so suddenly and so utterly? Because of course Wilfred must go home when he’s better, because of course Elfriede and Wilfred must part. It’s so easy and so safe to fall in love when the universe is against you. Now, they haven’t quite said those words to each other—I love you, we’ve fallen in love—but Elfriede has no doubt they echo inside Wilfred’s head, in the same way they echo in hers.

I am wery vell, she said aloud, on the wall of the infirmary garden. Translation: I love you.

Come, let’s go for a walk, Wilfred replied, taking her hand. Translation: I can’t bear to exist without you.

And they walked, and they existed with each other, and in the touch of Wilfred’s hand Elfriede imagined the rest of him. When they sat to rest, Elfriede stared at their clasped palms in the grass, Wilfred’s large, white bones curled around hers, and a premonition of grief came upon her. But what will I do when you’ve gone? she whispered.