Unable to go anywhere, the girls travelled in their imaginations to Siamese temples or passed an old man with a leafbroom tidying a moss-carpeted speck of Japan. We ordered the same catalogues and, flipping through the pages, we hiked through passes with the girls, stopping every now and then to help them with their backpacks, placing our hands on their warm, moist shoulders and gazing offat papaya sunsets. We drank tea with them in a water pavilion. We did whatever we wanted. Cecilia hadn’t died. She was a bride in Calcutta. The only way we could feel close to the girls was through these impossible trips which have scarred us forever, making us happier with dreams than wives. Collecting everything we could of theirs, the Lisbon girls wouldn’t leave our minds. But they were slipping away.
