Then he said what he would say many times, later jokingly, even later when he knew what was to happen, “You will live forever. Like Lenin.”
She suddenly stiffened. He felt it. In a silence filled with an emptiness, like when a nude model stops posing, Sasha got up and turned her back. Minutes, seconds tapped out a rhythm in his pain-strapped temples. Her panties slipped up. The petals of her bra fluttered up and assumed the form of hard buds closed tightly. Her crumpled favourite dress, also cast on the floor, untangled itself and, shadow-like, swallowed its warm-blooded mistress up to the throat like a piece of bait. Everything she had taken off, surrendered, put down, dropped when she came in as she performed the slow ritual so similar to the courtship dance of a bird, fuelled by some a
