Preoccupied with my virile thoughts, after a few days I had almost forgotten about her feminine pastime. But on Wednesday morning, when I took off my jacket before heading out, Aminta said goodbye, then added:

‘When you return in an hour it will be ready.’

‘What will be ready?’

‘Oh, the bathing suit.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, hurry back and you’ll see. It’s absolutely marvellous.’

When I returned home less than an hour later, a sliver of suspicion was still trying to insidiously act upon me. Was it possible that this little story concerning the bathing suit marked the start of a campaign to get me to take her to the seaside?

I went into my study where I heard her voice coming from the other side of the door to her room.

‘Don’t come in. I’m ready. Sit down on the couch.’

‘OK, I won’t come in. OK, I’m sitting on the couch.’

I stared at the door to her room.

When it opened a great light entered the study, and at the centre of that light Aminta stood wearing her bathing suit. My heart skipped a beat.

Aminta came towards me. She seemed to be lit up, propelled by all the light in the sky. Trembling in ecstasy, I didn’t move from where I was. Aminta stopped in the middle of the room.

It was truly marvellous. Pale-rose silk draped down from her throat accentuating her breasts, then gathered around her hips in a band of tiny pleats flaring into a short skirt that didn’t dare graze her flesh, the undulating hem quivering suggestively. Layered on top of the minuscule skirt’s pink material was a flounce of acute triangles, their colour emerald green. Aminta stood in the middle of the room; in the light cascading from her eyes, the pale rose of the silk bathing suit changed from minute to minute into a thousand mother-of-pearl reflections. The green of the flounce suggested a swarm of shiny scarab beetles flying across a sunset.

Amidst that effusion of tender colours, the white of her arms and legs became even paler. On her feet she wore two small green satin slippers. Aminta was laughing with all of her soft flesh, with her entire green-and-pale-rose bathing suit; she laughed and shook like a plant in a garden; and the room was filled with the scent of paradise.

I didn’t have the courage to move. Aminta was happy to be alive. Her laugh sounding like silver bells flying out the window and rushing up to heaven, Aminta sat herself down on the carpet in the middle of the room, her arms behind her and her white legs crossed, her torso reclining backwards and stretched out as if she were offering herself up to God.

Her gaze landed on me. I still hadn’t moved and I held my heart in my hands. At the sight of my emotion, she was touched with affection and gratitude.

Still trembling, I approached her. I sat beside her on the carpet and gently took her hand. I caressed her whole body with my eyes, then I timidly touched the pale-rose silk of her bathing suit with my forehead. Aminta’s eyes, full of smiles, were swelling with tears of affection. They contained a message for me. In a trembling voice, she said: