‘Good morning, Bago.’

Ismene is sitting on the bed, her head leaning to one side, her hands clasped together and still warm from the night, smiling in the direction of Bago, as if he were a strong, protective father. She sits there listening. The bedroom smells of dreamt dreams, like wilted flowers. The only trace the dreams leave behind is this smell, and if the bedroom stinks in the morning it’s because we’ve had bad dreams. The morning light peeks through the blinds in stripes, shining like the rungs of a golden ladder through the drawn curtains. The furniture is a heavy shadow emerging from the pallor of the wall. Ismene’s undergarments glow white on a chair. A crown of light of unknown origin trembles on the ceiling, a halo within which the head of an angel might appear. But Billi is no angel.

What is Ismene waiting to hear? What does she hear? What did she hear?

(Ismene alights from the bed and races barefoot to open the window.)

Nothing echoed in the room, yet Ismene has still heard and is content. This morning she is more impatient than usual for the awaited voice, more happy that she has heard it. Today Billi is coming back from his long trip. Today more than other days Ismene needs to feel the presence and protection of Bago.

Now the room is bright, the smell of withered dreams has dissipated. Ismene lingers at the window; down in the valley some vapours are still floating. She is content. Beneath her nightgown her body turns pink, and darkens at the fold of her thighs and hips in a triangular shadow like the eye of a mysterious god. But who apart from Bago can see the skinny body of Ismene beneath the veil of her nightgown, like a big pink fish beneath a sliver of water? Ismene isn’t embarrassed by Bago … Yet she is. But it’s another kind of embarrassment. It’s the fear of doing something to Bago that shouldn’t be done to Bago. Before opening Bago’s doors Ismene stands there, unsure of herself, like when she was a little girl and was about to unbutton her daddy’s jacket and fish his pocket-watch out of his vest to hear it chime the hours and quarter hours.

Daddy, Mummy, Bug, Bago, Billi. Rutiliano was a name so different from those names, which seem to have been shaped deliberately by the mouth of a child, a stutterer, a weak little baby. What a strange name, Rutiliano!