"Don't thank me. There is no love and no goodness in me."

"That's what you think, Lucas. I'm convinced of the contrary. You have suffered a wound from which you have not yet recovered."

Lucas is silent. The priest continues. "I feel that I am leaving you during a particularly difficult time in your life, but I will be with you in spirit and I will pray always for the salvation of your soul. You have taken the wrong course. I sometimes wonder where you will end up. Your passionate and tortured nature can drive you to the worst extremes. But I live in hope. God's mercy is infinite."

The priest gets up and takes Lucas's face in his hands. " 'Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them…' "

Lucas lowers his head; his forehead rests on the priest's chest.

" 'While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain…' It's Ecclesiastes."

The priest's frail body shakes with sobbing. "Yes. You recognized it. You still remember. When you were a child you knew entire pages of the Bible by heart. Do you still find the time to read it sometimes?"

Lucas frees himself. "I've got a lot of work. And I have other books to read."

The priest says, "I understand. I also know that my sermons bore you. Go now, and don't come back. I'm leaving tomorrow on the first train."

Lucas says, "I wish you a peaceful retirement, Father."

He goes home. He says to Yasmine, "The priest is going away tomorrow. There's no need to take him food anymore."

The child asks, "Is he leaving because you don't love him anymore? Yasmine and me, we'll leave too if you don't love us anymore."

Yasmine says, "Be quiet, Mathias!"

The child cries out, "She's the one who said it! But you do love us, don't you, Lucas?"

Lucas takes him in his arms. "Of course, Mathias."

At Clara's house the fire is burning in the living-room stove. The bedroom door is open.

Lucas goes into the room. Clara is in bed, with a book in her hands. She looks at Lucas, shuts the book, puts it on the bedside table.

Lucas says, "I'm sorry, Clara."

Clara throws back the quilt covering her. She is naked. She continues staring at Lucas.

"It's what you wanted, isn't it?"

"I don't know. I really don't know, Clara."

Clara switches off the bedside lamp. "What are you waiting for?"

Lucas lights the desk lamp, points it at the bed. Clara closes her eyes.

Lucas kneels by the bed, opens Clara's legs, then the lips of her vulva. A thin trickle of blood comes out. He bends forward; he licks and drinks the blood. Clara moans; her hands grasp Lucas's hair.

Lucas gets undressed, lies on top of Clara, enters her, cries out. Later, Lucas gets up, opens the window. Outside it is snowing. Lucas returns to the bed. Clara takes him in her arms. Lucas shivers. She says, "Calm yourself."

She strokes Lucas's hair, his face. He asks, "You're not angry with me about him?"

"No. It's better that he left."

Lucas says, "I knew you didn't love him. You were so unhappy last week when I saw you in the bar."

Clara says, "I met him at the hospital. It was he who took care of me when I had another depression during the summer. The fourth since Thomas died."

"Do you often dream of Thomas?"

"Every night. But only of his execution. Never of Thomas happy, alive."

Lucas says, "I see my brother everywhere. In my room, in the garden, walking beside me in the street. He speaks to me."

"What does he say?"

"He says he is living in mortal solitude."

Lucas goes to sleep in Clara's arms. In the middle of the night he enters her again, softly, slowly, as if in a dream.

From then on, Lucas spends all his nights at Clara's.

The winter is very cold this year. The sun doesn't appear for five months. An icy mist lies stagnant on the deserted town. The ground is frozen, the river too.

In the kitchen of Grandmother's house, the fire is on all the time. The firewood runs out quickly. Every afternoon, Lucas goes into the forest to find wood, which he sets to dry next to the stove.

The kitchen door is left open to warm the room of Yasmine and her child. Lucas's room is not heated.

When Yasmine sews or knits in the room, Lucas sits with the child on the large rug made by Yasmine that covers the kitchen floor, and they play together with the dog and the cat. They look at picture books; they draw. Lucas teaches Mathias to count on an abacus.

Yasmine prepares the evening meal. They all sit on the corner seat in the kitchen. They eat potatoes, dried beans, or cabbage. The child doesn't like this food and eats little. Lucas makes him jam tarts.

After the meal, Yasmine washes up. Lucas carries the child into the bedroom, undresses him, puts him to bed and tells him a story. When the child falls asleep, Lucas goes off to Clara's house on the other side of town.

4

On Station Road the chestnut trees are in bloom. Their white petals lie so deep on the ground that Lucas can't even hear the sound of his footsteps. He is coming back from Clara's house, late at night.

The child is sitting on the corner seat in the kitchen. Lucas says, "It's only five o'clock. Why are you up so early?"

The child asks, "Where is Yasmine?"

"She's gone to the big city. She was bored here."

The child's dark eyes open wide. "Gone? Without me?"

Lucas turns away, he lights the fire in the stove.

The child asks, "Is she coming back?"

"No, I don't think so."

Lucas pours some goat's milk into a pan, which he sets to boil.

The child asks, "Why didn't she take me with her? She promised to take me with her."

Lucas says, "She thought you'd be better off here with me, and I agreed."

The child says, "I'm not better off here with you. I'd be better off anywhere else with her."

Lucas says, "A big city is no fun for a child. There are no gardens or animals."

The child says, "But my mother's there."

He looks out of the window. When he turns around his little face is contorted with sorrow.

"She doesn't love me because I'm crippled. That's why she left me here."

"That's not true, Mathias. She loves you with all her heart. You know that."

"Then she will come back to get me."

The child pushes away his cup, his plate, and leaves the kitchen. Lucas goes to water the garden. The sun is rising.

The dog is asleep beneath a tree. The child approaches him with a stick. Lucas watches the child. The child lifts the stick and hits the dog. The dog runs off howling. The child looks at Lucas.

"I don't like animals. I don't like gardens either."

With his stick the child starts thrashing the greens, the tomatoes, the pumpkins, the beans, the flowers. Lucas watches him without saying a word.

The child goes back to the house, he gets into Yasmine's bed. Lucas follows him, he sits on the edge of the bed.

"Are you so unhappy about staying with me? Why?"

The child stares at the ceiling. "Because I hate you."

"You hate me?"

"Yes, I've always hated you."

"I didn't know. Can you tell me why?"

"Because you're big and handsome, and because I thought Yasmine loved you. But if she's gone, it's because she didn't love you either. I hope you're as unhappy as I am."

Lucas puts his head in his hands.

The child asks, "Are you crying?" "No, I'm not crying."

"But you're sad because of Yasmine?"

"No, not because of Yasmine. I'm sad because of you, because you're sad."

"Is that right? Because of me? That's nice." He smiles. "However, I'm just a little cripple, and she's beautiful."

After a silence the child asks, "Where is your mother?"