Everyone was talking all around her, over her head, and the bitterness was overflowing without her being able to stop it, filling her mind and senses with poisonous steam. She didn’t understand why, and she had never felt like this before. She had always been so gracious in excusing him, and for months she had stood guard between him and the outside world. Kept her family and girlfriends at bay with all kinds of pretenses, sent friends away when they appeared at the door, endlessly empathetic: ‘Is he depressed again? Dear God, what that man is up against!’ She had even taken it out on Bent, when he’d been rambunctious: ‘Daddy needs peace and quiet!’

This wasn’t what she had imagined when they got married. But what that was, she wasn’t really sure. A girlfriend had brought them together: ‘A devastatingly handsome and smart guy is coming tonight; you absolutely have to meet him!’

The ‘devastatingly handsome guy’ was back now. He was talking with a pale young man whom Lulu didn’t care for, because he always asked with such earnestness if she ‘was doing well’, and after an affirmative answer, would turn away with a doubtful, knowing expression, as if no one, according to his definition, could go around ‘doing well’; and if it really were the case, he wasn’t the least bit interested. For his part, he had the look of someone who suffered from constant indigestion; Kai was speaking to this person fervently, bent toward and directly facing him, in the way that a child is completely absorbed with something nearby. ‘Psychiatrists won’t acknowledge the analytical method,’ he said, ‘but they will have to eventually, you can bet on that. Not one of them has the least grasp of what they’re dealing with.’

Lulu’s bitterness congealed into a small, hard knot, there, where her heart usually sat. She stood up all of a sudden, pale, and without looking at any of the others. ‘Do you mind if I head to bed? I’m exhausted,’ she said, loudly and clearly, and there was a brief silence in the room. Kai finally stared at her with an angry, cold, irritated, and somewhat confused expression in his eyes.

‘You’re tired?’ he asked, as if she had said something unseemly, unheard of, almost indecent. Then he wrinkled his forehead and brushed his hand through his hair, bewildered, as if he were seeking aid against an injustice that had been leveled at him. The men looked at the women; the women at the men. A kind of collusion sprang up among them, brushing Lulu aside, but she held herself erect and expressionless as they stood up and said goodbye.