When it began it was still winter in the white city. After the park disappeared and the lake froze the whole place seemed to lose its way. Everywhere you looked you saw leafless trees, their white arms petrified and still in the blurred air. The winter sun was cold and very low. Small starving birds came without sound to the feeding ground in our ghost-garden, which in time began turning into a graveyard. Ice had begun to form and unfurl its white foliage in gutters and hedges. Winter had begun in October and it was now July. As yet there was no sign of summer. Occasionally the snow would turn to sleet but then return again. The weather forecasters promised a warming but no one believed the weathermen any longer. Each day the blizzards got worse and each day the grey clouds were oppressively static and low. The temperature continued to drop sharply. One degree below freezing, five degrees, then minus ten. I had decided to pay Calypso and Hektor an overdue visit.
I had been in a state of confusion. A year earlier I had met a man who, even in my limited experience, seemed a little crazy. He both mesmerised and infuriated me. Yes, Raphael, I am talking about you! You were the person I was in danger of getting too involved with. Because I was training to be an artist, I’d started to draw you – but now I was fed up, on the verge of chucking it all in, moving to another country, and beginning again. Such was my uncertainty I thought I might confide in Calypso. But of course, because of what followed, that confession never happened.
On the day I speak of, Calypso had been walking back from the outdoor market, carrying two plastic bags bulging with vegetables. She felt lucky, for vegetables were getting harder to come by. With the scarcity of bees – no government had stopped the use of pesticides in spite of all the protests – some plants had died out. But on
