mankind living at a specific time would not leave behind a vacuum. But was there any guarantee that in the magical demiworld in which he was living, computers would not be able to create their own experiences and record them as well? The line was poor and she couldn't understand a lot of what he said: but at least he was not drunk and selfpitying.
He wanted her to send him a lithograph of a hawk pouncing on a dove, a picture they had bought shortly after they were married, when they happened to visit an art gallery. A week or so later, she sent him the picture. It was about then she realised that he had started to contact his son again, albeit secretly.
Aron continued to appear on the horizon. She sometimes wondered if she would ever be able to erase his features and discard the assessment table she used to measure other men with – and which sooner or later led to their being condemned, rejected.
She phoned Henrik again. Every time the old wounds from her relationship with Aron were opened up, she needed to hear Henrik's voice in order to avoid being overwhelmed by bitterness. But once again her only response was the answering machine, and she left a message to the effect that she wouldn't phone again until she arrived in Visby.
Every time he failed to answer, she felt a twinge of childish unrest. For a second or two she imagined accidents, fires, illnesses. Then she calmed down again. Henrik was very careful, never took unnecessary risks, even if he did a lot of travelling and liked to probe the unknown.
She went outside the back door to smoke a cigarette. She could hear the sound of laughter from Mitsos's house. The man laughing was Panayiotis, Mitsos's elder brother. To the mortification of his family Panayiotis had won a fortune on the lottery and hence created the financial foundation for a life of idleness. Louise smiled at the thought, inhaled deeply and made a mental note that she would give up smoking on her sixtieth birthday.
She was alone in the darkness. The sky was full of stars, the evening warm, and there were no chilly breezes. So this is where I've ended up, she thought. From the melancholy northern wastelands of Sveg and Härjedalen to Greece and Bronze Age graves. From snow and ice to the warm, dry olive groves.
She stubbed out her cigarette and went back indoors. Her foot was hurting. She paused, uncertain of what to do next. Then she phoned Vassilis's number again. It was no longer engaged, but nobody answered.
At that moment Vassilis's face merged in her mind with that of Aron.
Vassilis was cheating her, he was treating her as a part of his life he could do without.
Feeling jealous, she phoned his mobile. No reply. A Greek female voice asked her to leave a message. She gritted her teeth and said nothing.
Then she closed her suitcase and made up her mind at the same moment to put an end to her relationship with Vassilis. She would wind up the cash book, close it down, just as she had closed her suitcase.
She lay down on her bed and stared up at the stationary ceiling fan. How on earth could she have entered into a relationship with Vassilis? It suddenly seemed incomprehensible, she felt that the whole business was distasteful. Not so much from his point of view, but from hers.
The fan was motionless, her jealousy had faded away, and the dogs out there in the darkness were no longer barking. As usual when faced with an important decision, she addressed herself in the third person.
Louise Cantor here, autumn 2004. This is where she leads her life, black on white – or rather, red on black, which is the usual colour combination on the fragments of urns we dig up from the Greek earth. Louise Cantor is fifty-four years old, she is not scared when she looks at her face or her body in a mirror. She is still attractive, not yet old; men notice her even if they don't turn round to look at her. What about her? Who does she turn round to look at? Or does she only look back in time to see the faces and traces of the past? Louise Cantor has just closed a book entitled Vassilis. She will never open it again. He will not even be allowed to drive Louise Cantor to the airport in Athens tomorrow