And perhaps, after all, that’s why the world goes on: because things happen. Overlapping, at the wrong time, at different times, in the wrong places. If everything were in order, as the angels command, if the angels said ‘don’t look’, and everyone obeyed, we would end up in Paradise with one blast of the trumpet. But the world goes on and life happens, because there’s always a person who peeks all the same. Someone forgets to watch the news, someone starts a quarrel when they shouldn’t, someone else just doesn’t feel like being good, and someone happens to be standing at the edge of the garden when a lump of ice falls. And that’s why we’ll never reach Paradise.

3

3

Krista is asleep on the sofa. Her trouser buttons are undone and her shirt is rolled up; her big, bare bump lies there in the middle. Blue veins pass under her skin like cables in a wall. Her belly button sticks up. Maybe it’s a button for lighting up an aquarium. The skin is so thin and so tautly stretched that if there were a lamp inside her belly, you’d be sure to see through it. Dark shapes float inside, in the cloudy water among the veins: liver, spleen, Krista’s guts and an embryo.

Krista sleeps but her belly doesn’t. According to the doctor, it’s a miracle that the embryo is alive. I think it’s miraculous how the whole, gigantic, white belly flops from left to right. And then does it again. There’s a mermaid inside Krista, I’ve heard Dad say so. Krista’s belly holds a half fish but it hasn’t got scales or legs. And we’re not allowed to talk about it.

Sometimes Krista rocks on top of a gym ball, sighing. She lets out sounds and gets into positions that make me feel embarrassed. She goes on all fours in the middle of the living room with her watery belly hanging like a sack between her legs and her arms. She lotions her stomach and picks off the hairs that have suddenly sprouted above her belly button. Sometimes she can’t reach them and Dad has to pull them out with tweezers. She does breathing exercises that make all the mounds of her body rise, and occasionally a fart comes out.

One day, a friend comes to visit Krista, and they sit in the armchairs in the living room, drinking tea and chatting. They’re talking about something to do with breasts; her friend’s pregnant, too. Then Krista suddenly says, ‘Can I show you?’ She undoes her shirt and takes out her breast. She squeezes her nipple and says, ‘Isn’t that crazy?’ Then they both laugh, because a drop of sticky milk has come out of Krista’s nipple even though no baby’s been born yet.