I leaned over and searched her eyes. I caressed her lips and for the first time she smiled weakly.
“I thought you’d forgotten me,” she said.
“I tried.”
Her face was marked by tiredness. The months I had not seen her had drawn lines on her skin and her eyes had an air of defeat and emptiness.
“We’re no longer young,” she said, reading my thoughts.
“When have we ever been young, you and I?”
I pulled away the blanket and looked at her naked body stretched out on the white sheet. I stroked her neck and her breasts, barely touching her skin with my fingertips. I drew circles on her belly and traced the outline of the bones of her hips. I let my fingers play with the almost transparent hair between her thighs.
Cristina watched me without saying a word, her smile sad and her eyes half open.
“What are we going to do?” she asked.
I bent over her and kissed her lips. She embraced me and we remained like that as the light from the candle sputtered, then went out.
“We’ll think of something,” she whispered.
…
I woke up shortly after dawn and discovered I was alone in the bed. I sat up abruptly, fearing that Cristina had left again in the middle of the night. Then I saw her clothes and shoes on the chair and let out a deep sigh. I found her in the gallery, wrapped in a blanket, sitting on the floor by the fireplace, where a breath of blue fire emerged from a smoldering log. I sat down next to her and kissed her on the neck.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said, her eyes fixed on the fire.
“You should have woken me.”
“I didn’t dare. You looked as if you were sleeping for the first time in months. I preferred to explore your house.”
“And?”
“This house is cursed with sadness,” she said. “Why don’t you set fire to it?”
“And where would we live?”
“In the plural?”
“Why not?”
“I thought you’d stopped writing fairy tales.”
“It’s like riding a bike. Once you learn …”
Cristina looked at me.
“What’s in that room at the end of the corridor?”
“Nothing. Junk.”
“It’s locked.”
“Do you want to see it?”
She shook her head.
“It’s only a house, Cristina. A pile of stones and memories. That’s all.”