The journalists are insisting that this is an historic moment, it’s the first breach in the wall between West and East, even if it’s just a test to see how the Russians will react.

That’s a foregone conclusion.

No reaction.

Gorbachev doesn’t care.

The only people it’s really bugging, judging from the TV, are the East German rulers. There are pictures of the big boss of the GDR, Erich Honecker, looking absolutely furious. In front of all the cameras, live from East Berlin, he goes on bawling, hand on heart, finger on the hem of his jacket, the visor of his cap between his thumb and his forefinger, a Stasi army nodding behind him:

The Berlin Wall will stand for another hundred years!

Die Mauer bleibt noch 100 Jahre!

He repeats those words.

Die Mauer bleibt noch 100 Jahre!

As if it’s a historical truth.

Something to remember, to recite, to carve in stone.

Die Mauer bleibt noch 100 Jahre!

In gold letters stamped in the great book of history’s mistakes.

* * *

He recited it again in his head, almost amused.

Die Mauer bleibt noch 100 Jahre.

26

19 August 2016, 9 a.m.

The heat in the bungalows was already almost stifling, from the moment the rays passed over the branches of the olive trees, warming the metal cube like a tin can abandoned in the blazing sun. Clotilde liked to cook like that, like cannelloni in a bain-marie. She liked lying in bed on her own, feeling the temperature rise until it became unbearable, until her body was dripping with sweat. All she needed was a shower or, even better, a swimming pool to throw herself into as soon as she got up.

Franck had gone running. Valou was still asleep, and her attentive father had let her have the room that was in shade until midday. His little darling.

Except that it was Clotilde who felt like an excited teenager. Her fingers slipped again over the key pad of her mobile phone. She reread the three lines of the message that had arrived during the night. At 4.05 a.m.

Happy to have seen you again.

You’ve become very beautiful, Clotilde, even if I preferred you as Lydia Deetz.

Probably because since then, I’ve learned to live with ghosts.

Natale.

She read and reread those three lines, weighing each word of her response.

Happy to have seen you again.

You’re still as handsome as ever, Natale, even if I preferred you as a dolphin-chaser.

Since then I’ve learned to live without ghosts.

Clo

She was lulled by a delicious feeling of euphoria. This Natale bore little relation to the man whose memory she had guarded so jealously, but strangely, the feeling of disappointment had faded, evaporated. As if one of her teenage idols, some singer with a perfect body displayed on a shiny poster, had come down from his billboard, and each of his imperfections made him even more charming. More human. More lovable.