...of amphilogy

'Convalescing?' asks Alissa.

Elisabeth Alione screws up her eyes to look at the woman listening so intently.

'I'm here because of a confinement that went wrong. The baby was born dead. It was a little girl.'

She sits up straight, runs her hands through her hair, smiles painfully at Alissa.

'I take things to make me sleep. I sleep all the time.'

Alissa has sat up too.

'It must have been a great shock?'

'Yes. I couldn't sleep any more.'

She speaks more slowly:

'And it was a difficult pregnancy.'

                  'Here comes the lie,' says Max Thor.

                  'It's still a long way off.'

                  'Yes, she doesn't know about it yet.'

'A difficult pregnancy?' asks Alissa.

'Yes. Very.'

They are silent.

'And you still think about it a lot?'

The question made her start. Her cheeks are less pale than they were.

'I don't know...' She corrects herself. 'I mean I'm not supposed to, you see... And then I sleep a lot... I could have gone to stay with my parents in the South. But the doctor said I ought to be quite alone.'

                  'Capital destruction will come first through Alissa,' says Stein. 'Don't you agree?'

                  'Yes. And do you agree that isn't altogether safe?'

                  'Yes,' says Stein. 'Alissa isn't altogether safe.'

'Quite alone?' asks Alissa.

'Yes.'

'For how long?'

'Three weeks. I came on July 2.'

A wave of deep silence passes over the hotel and garden. A tremor has gone through Elisabeth Alione.

'Was there someone there?' - she points - 'on the other side of the grounds?'

Alissa looks round.

'It could only be Stein, if it's anyone,' says Alissa.

Silence.

'Perhaps you needed to get a grip on yourself, on your own, without anyone to help you,' says Alissa.

'Perhaps. I didn't ask any questions.'

She looks as if she were waiting. She stares at the garden intently.

'Soon they'll all be coming back,' she says.

                  'She looks at the void,' says Stein. 'That's the only thing she looks at. But she does it well.'

                  'That's right,' says Max Thor. 'It's the way she does it that...'

['destroy...', Duras, M.]