That was his wish. They spent their days in their wooden house, high up, on a mountain. There was snow for four or five months of each year, and in the early morning when the sun shone they sat on the veranda admiring the expanse of white fields, and the pines that were weighed down’ with snow. Beyond the fields reigned mountains, great mountains. She did not feel lonely in the morning. But at night she sometimes sighed. Stabbed she would be by some small memory – a voice, a song, once it was by the taste of warm beetroot. These stray memories she had no control over, no idea when they might occur. They came like spirits to disconcert her. Even when making love they were capable of intruding. She sometimes asked herself why she had chosen a man who insisted on exile. The answer was easy: his disposition and his face fitted in with some brainless dream of hers. He was someone she would never really know. The only outsider that came was the village idiot, who cycled up to do the garden.
