As he went home that evening, he kept being haunted by painful images. Maybe it was all connected to Strindberg? Everyone should avoid coming into contact with the fears of his countrymen. The beauty of the moment, the beauty of Natalie, all of it he’d seen as a final destination: one of devastation. There was beauty before him, looking him straight in the eye, like a foretaste of tragedy. Wasn’t that the epigraph in Visconti’s film of Death in Venice, that crucial sentence: “He who contemplates beauty is destined to death?” Well, yes, Markus could seem bombastic. And even stupid for having run away. But you need to have lived years in nothingness to understand how a person can suddenly become frightened by a possibility.He hadn’t called her. She who had loved his Eastern European side would now get the surprise of discovering once again his adherence to Swedishness. Not the least atom of Polish in him. Markus had decided to shut down and stop playing with the fires of femininity.
