“He sleeps well?”

“Like a young lamb.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” I said. Of course it could hardly have been otherwise; Lamarckian genetics and the inheritance of acquired characteristics have been rather thoroughly discredited, and even Lamarck would have hesitated to suggest that my shrapnel-induced insomnia would be passed on to my children. Still, it was reassuring to know that chance had not visited this particular malady upon little Todor. That sort of idiosyncrasy could be more readily coped with by a Manhattan-based ghost-writer than by a Macedonian peasant and revolutionary leader.

“Evan? Will you be here long?”

“A few days and nights.”

“And then you return to America?”

I shook my head. “Not at once. I have business to the north.”

“In Belgrade?”

“Farther than that.”

“I wish you could stay longer, Evan.”

I stretched out on the dirt floor. She lay down beside me. Her sweater buttoned down the front. The buttons were made of dark brown leather. I opened them one by one and put my hands on her breasts.

“See what the little one has done to them? They are empty now.”

“They are magnificent, my love. My little bird.”

“Ahh…”

We lay side by side on the floor with our arms around one another. Her mouth tasted sweet and warm. My hands played merrily upon her lush breasts, and she giggled and told me that she knew now why Todor was such a fine nursing baby. “He takes after his father.”

“I told you as much.”

“Ah, Evan…”

Lazily, pausing for kisses and caresses, we removed our clothes in the flickering firelight. Childbirth had not harmed her body in the least. I touched the shallow bowl of her belly, the rich, sloping thighs.

“You have other women?”

“Some.”

“And other children?”

“No.”

“Todor is the only one?”

“Yes.”

She sighed, contented. We kissed and clung to each other. We parted, and she drew me over to her own straw mattress on the other side of the hearth from Todor’s.