I protected myself by writing everything down, by recording whatever I observed, when they went into the water and when they left the jetty. I noted it all down. Finally I began taking pictures of them. Now I could look at them at night too. This way they were always available to me.

I spent most of the time on my jetty and in my boat and in the rooms inside my house which gave a clear view of them. The reports on their daily routine complemented my own. They lay on their deckchairs, I paced back and forth at home watching them. The more I learned about them, the less I was able to tear myself away.

Ashamed at first, I only photographed them furtively from inside my house. I didn’t want them to see what I was doing. Then I swam along the shore, each time venturing a little closer. They didn’t seem to mind, although it was impossible that they didn’t notice me. But they let it happen. They pretended they simply didn’t see me, even when I rowed past and took pictures of them from my boat.

Before dawn, the man brought out the pot of lobelias and set it on the shelf. He plucked the wilted leaves and flowers and scattered them expansively over the lake. Then he brought out the deckchairs and placed them in their proper positions, and the woman covered them with blankets so that the jetty became an altar. The sun rose and the woman lay down on her chair, where she would spend this day too, and the man went down the steps into the water and waded through the reeds. After a while, he took a rake into the water and moved it back and forth over the bed of the lake as if he were ploughing a field. He raked the ground with devotion and straightened the reeds, though a single gust of wind would undo his work. When he had finished, he disappeared and returned with a child’s watering can. He filled it with lake water which he sprinkled on the pot of lobelias.

Exactly what kind of ritual I was witnessing I could not tell. Yet I was there every day, despite myself, craving the sight of it.