In a drawer, she found an old postcard-sized photograph, a document of an almost majestic unhappiness, the heraldic undertaking of an accepted defeat. She remembered the empty hours during the autumn in which she was terribly free; it made no difference to her if she stayed home or went out, if she was alone or with a friend. An acquaintance passing through town, a public park, an amateur photographer (who was he?), the latter a necessity because the inevitable is concretized in an image. The acquaintance chattered on unheard; adoring and adored, the puppy, on a leash, followed his temporary mistress with tiny steps. The shadows under the trees favoured, as in a half-sleep, tenuous hopes; perhaps the deal won’t stick, to deprive her of the animal would be too cruel. He had said: ‘Give him back to me whenever you want, sometime during the week before Christmas.’ She’d hoped he’d forget the whole thing; the wretched cling to anything. If he lets me keep Toby, we could meet again, if only to play with the puppy. She knew she was deluding herself, but didn’t dare deny herself this little reprieve.

She had sewn Toby a ruff made out of Scottish silk, a kind of Spanish golilla. ‘Adorable,’ people would say, stopping to admire and stroke him. She would never have guessed that those compliments were really a pretext for erotic adventure. She was out of that game, she no longer existed. She had been surprised when the young photographer asked her to pose on that rustic bench (‘Just you, please, something for me to remember you by, Miss’). And then she understood: the honour of becoming a stranger’s souvenir was the sum of her fate. She’d picked up the puppy and consented meekly to the request. At least in the photograph, she reasoned bittersweetly, the little Maltese dog would be hers forever. She sat down, hugged him to her chest and stared at the trees – the golden leaves, the sun’s rays at the very tops of the pines – with an almost religious devotion so as not to forget anything about this already memorable moment. The puppy was not all that mattered to her just then; she sensed that she had arrived at a unique moment of reckoning with herself, a reckoning with the ‘Miss’ who was about to sign away her future. She seemed to have inadvertently prepared for this ceremony: gone were the usual delicate colours, replaced by wisely appropriate dress, a dark suit trimmed with silk ribbon, almost a guarantee of professional seriousness. Her great mass of hair, however, was gathered beneath a cherry-red velvet turban, the one provocation she had permitted herself. Legs crossed and leaning slightly forward, she holds in her gloved hands the white Maltese, his mug hiding her neck. A disenchanted, slightly ironic smile, barely visible in the impending twilight, wanders across her face and says no to youth. Her lips thin, but do not part to reveal her teeth. From the depths of her wide eyes rises an ominous darkness that hides her emptiness, stills her sadness. ‘A masterpiece,’ exclaims the photographer. But she had stood up, saying one photo was enough.