sglit

Any moment now, I thought, he was going to wake up. Any moment.

I remember clearly the afternoon that she stood at the corner beside the door of the tourist centre in Gdansk.

The four of us got back into the car. In an instant, I distinctly heard a __oundless music_. It was the melody of friendship, the sound of a perfectly tuned quartet who got together by chance, four hearts playing in harmony.

They will try to ascribe a purpose to my death, as though it were a punishment, but don__ you do so, in order that I continue to live in all the shadows of your longing. I will always be in your sleep and your wakefulness. I will be with you praying, propitiating and yearning for you, in sadness, in sorrow, in dismay and in the most profound happiness.

Pak Karman hugged his wife__ gravestone tightly. __ou left without saying farewell!_ The whole of the graveyard was ablaze with light.

She tried to remember all the times she had spoken to him. She replayed every moment she could remember at the beach last week. Not once had she led him to believe that she liked him improperly. And yet, last night, he had appeared as if she had invited him. She had given herself so willingly, so lasciviously, that he must have thought she had desired him all along. Perhaps she had, or perhaps she had not realised how pleasurable intimacy could be.

I__ thought there__ be no winter in the desert, but winter arrived anyway__ilently, suddenly.

Mongkol, poor Mongkol, shedding tears.Thinking of his smiling, comical face, and his dreams of sending his son to university, I could only lower my head in silence.And the night continued, cold and dark, the wind frozen beyond the mountains.

If this turns to friendship, it only meansThat one of us will suffer.That when we meet after the worst of endings,There will only be this skein of words between us__ost of them for boredom, fewer for loneliness__ising out of our mutual space of breath, leavingBehind a bluer sky each moment of departure.And one of us will cling on to its blue,Hung on partings like a muted cloud, whileThe other rides on a wing of word away from here.