of saying what I was feeling.
"Marie, let's suppose that two firemen go into a forest to put out a small fire. Afterward, when they emerge and go over to a stream, the face of one is all smeared with black, while the other man's face is completely clean. My question is this: Which of the two will wash his face?"
"That's a silly question. The one with the dirty face, of course."
"No, the one with the dirty face will look at the other man and assume that he looks like him. And, vice versa, the man with the clean face will see his colleague covered in grime and say to himself: I must be dirty too. I'd better have a wash."
"What are you trying to say?"
"I'm saying that, during the time I spent in the hospital, I came to realize that I was always looking for myself in the women I loved. I looked at their lovely, clean faces and saw myself reflected in them. They, on the other hand, looked at me and saw the dirt on my face and, however intelligent or self-confident they were, they ended up seeing themselves reflected in me and thinking that they were worse than they were. Please, don't let that happen to you."
I would like to have added: that's what happened to Esther, and I've only just realized it, remembering now how the look in her eyes changed. I'd always absorbed her life and her energy, and that made me feel happy and confident, able to go forward. She, on the other hand, had looked at me and felt ugly, diminished, because, as the years passed, my career - the career that she had done so much to make a reality - had relegated our relationship to second place.
If I was to see her again, my face needed to be as clean as hers. Before I could find her, I must first find myself.
ARIADNE'S THREAD
I am born in a small village, some kilometers from a slightly larger village where they have a school and a museum dedicated to a poet who lived there many years before. My father is nearly fifty years old, my mother is twenty-five. They met only recently when he was selling carpets; he had traveled all the way from Russia, but when he met her he decided to give up everything for her sake. She could be his daughter, but she behaves more like his mother, even helping him to sleep, something he has been unable to do properly since he was seventeen and was sent to fight the Germans in Stalingrad, one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the Second World War. Out of a battalion of three thousand men, only three survived."
Oddly, Mikhail speaks almost entirely in the present tense. He doesn't say "I was born" but "I am born." It is as if everything were happening here and now.
"In Stalingrad, my father and his best friend are caught in an exchange of fire on their way back from a reconnaissance patrol. They take cover in a bomb crater and spend two days in the mud and snow, with no food and no means of keeping warm. They can hear other Russians talking in a nearby building and know that they must try to reach them, but the firing never stops, the smell of blood fills the air, the wounded lie screaming for help day and night. Suddenly, everything falls silent. My father's friend, thinking that the Germans have withdrawn, stands up. My father tugs at his legs, yelling, 'Get down!' But it's too late; a bullet pierces his friend's skull.
"Another two days pass, my father is alone, with his friend's corpse beside him. He can't stop yelling, 'Get down!' At last, someone rescues him and takes him to the nearby building. There is no food, only ammunition and cigarettes. They eat the tobacco. A week later, they start to eat the flesh of their dead, frozen companions. A third battalion arrives and shoots a way through to them; the survivors are rescued, the wounded are treated and then immediately sent back to the front. Stalingrad must not fall; the future of Russia is at stake. After four months of intense fighting, of cannibalism, of limbs being amputated because of frostbite, the Germans finally surrender - it is the beginning of the end for Hitler and his Third Reich. My father returns on foot to his village, almost a thousand kilometers from Stalingrad. He now finds