Kirsten is dead. Or perhaps she had never been born.
I met her when I came to campus for preliminary registration, still feeling awkward in civilian clothes. I literally bumped into her as I was backing out of the registration office, leafing through the hefty package of meaningless forms. She made a polite sound of protest: a sure indication that she was foreign. She looked foreign too, which accounted for my attraction. She was not pretty. Her peaky face was dominated by bulging eyes. Her large mouth looked squashed rather than sensuous. Her only truly attractive—or truly abhorrent—feature, depending on your taste, was her milky-white skin, so uncompromisingly Aryan that the Mediterranean sunlight seemed to slide off her in defeat.
We sat on the grass while long-legged ibises stepped
