It has always been my conviction that the house that sheltered their love, and later my own birth, was much closer to the night and its constellations than to the life of that vast country they had managed to escape without leaving its territory. The country surrounded them, encircled them, but they were elsewhere. And if, in the end, it discovered them, hidden deep in the woods in the Caucasus, this was the chance outcome of a game of symbols.

For it was a symbolic tie that, in one way or another, linked every inhabitant of the country to the mythical existence of the master of the empire. In their mountain refuge they believed they were free of the cult the country, indeed the entire globe, had built up around an old man who lived out his days consumed by the fear that he had not killed those likely to kill him. Adored or hated, he had a place in everyone's hearts. By day he was acclaimed, when night fell he was cursed in feverish whispers. But these two had the privilege of never bringing his name to mind. Of thinking only about the earth, the fire, the swirling waters of the stream by day Of loving one another, loving the constancy of the stars by night.

Until that moment when the dictator, now almost halfway through the last year of his life, called them to order. Despite his morbid obsessions, irony was no stranger to him: he often smiled through his mustache. They did not wish to come to him? He would go to them. The mountain that towered above the narrow valley

where their house lay hidden reverberated with explosions. Was the construction of a dam that would bear his name being embarked on? An artificial lake created to his greater glory? A power transmission cable set up that he had decided should bring light to remote villages? Was a mineral deposit being uncovered that would be dedicated to him? They only knew that, whatever the nature of these works, the master of the empire was making his presence felt.