Chapter VIYet it’s too late – isn’t it? – for regrets and condemnation. If it hadn’t been for Andrei… Well, if it hadn’t been for Andrei, I will admit that I don’t know how it would have been. He entered my life so seamlessly, furnished it with so many things as if it had been a deserted house, he blocked so many exits with his bulky frame, doors that could have lead towards something else, other people and other experiences, so that now, when I try to imagine how it could have been if he had never existed, all I can see is a great void. I don’t think I would carry inside me this exhaustion, this secret desolation that I shield from the world, but I can see nothing else beyond that, nothing that would have filled Andrei’s absence.
Sometimes I have tried – even last night, for instance, af
