The kitchen was filled with the fragrance of honeysuckle drifting in through the open door that led to the veranda. Dusk was falling. Not a single light was on.

When I stepped out onto the veranda, the scent was even stronger. Everything was quiet. The only sound was the faint buzzing of two or three wasps circling the delicate, enticing flowers. I sat down in one of the chairs and remained there, savoring that sense of inner peace.

Amid the various thoughts that came and went, occasionally interrupted by the pleasure of the honeysuckle’s fragrance, I recalled a sentence from a book I had been reading on the subway. It was one of those truths you have sensed and grasped intuitively but have never quite managed to put into words yourself (discovering that sentence gave me the same feeling of satisfaction I must have experienced the first time I successfully formed a complete sentence): “To know someone sexually, one must seek the source of their ghosts.”

That was what had happened between us, without either of us fully realizing it. We had found the source. And we had become intoxicated with freedom. That is why that love had been so powerful, so deep, so gentle, so fragile, so compelling, so seductive, so warm, so romantic, so impetuous, so consuming...

In that relationship, in that emotional and physical dependence, in that longing for emotional and physical union, even the slightest lack of attention from the other could set jealousy ablaze. In passions of that kind, it is hardly surprising to discover the killer sleeping within you. He is there. In that animal part of yourself. In that part that is also tied to pleasure.

As I drifted away from that reflection, my ears began to pick out the voices of birds coming from the surrounding foliage, though they sounded more like a kind of monotonous whistling repeated without pause. The fragrance of honeysuckle filled the air. Night was falling.