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with a wave of the hand.
    Suddenly he leapt, throwing himself atop her like a ravenous animal. The girl disappeared almost completely beneath him and his weight bore down on her so heavily that she felt it crushing her chest. She tried to escape his grip, screaming, but he squeezed his nails into her arm and refused to let go. She fought back but couldn’t breathe and felthis fingers deep in her muscles. She planted her feet in his groin and pushed him away. His nails scraped along her arm until he was only holding her by her dress. It tore when she scrambled up onto her feet and suddenly shot free, hitting her shoulder hard on the jamb. She ran out onto the landing but saw the way downstairs blocked by her mother, who was coming to see what was going on. Behind her, in his study, her father jumped up now as well. Gala ran upstairs with the grown man following close behind. In the attic she leapt over boxes and old furniture—obstacles he cleared with considerably less ease—and reached the dormer, where she took cover behind a rafter. The sunlight shining in through the window scattered on the dust billowing up from the old bags and crates that Jan kicked out of the way one after the next. Gala saw the man approaching slowly through these shining clouds. Her breathing was shallow and the whole scene reeled before her eyes. When he was almost upon her, with just the rafter between them, she saw his lips quivering, and every quiver pushed more blood up out of a split in the corner of his mouth. It was as if his injury calmed her. As she imagined his pain, her tension drained away. She wanted to tell him she was sorry and that she loved him, but something in his eyes told her that it might be too late.
    In the same instant the man recognized his own blind fury in the girl. Was he really willing to hurt her to make her invulnerable? Suddenly afraid, his eyes made a small movement toward the window. Was he directing her thoughts or were her thoughts directing him? Almost at once Gala was up on the window seat, and two or three desperate kicks later the rotted window was out of its groove. The glass broke and a shard cut her leg as she stepped into the gutter. Her pursuer didn’t hesitate for a moment and followed her out. Gala heard her mother shriek and run downstairs, and a little later saw the woman running around in the garden with her arms stretched out as if to catch her. The gutter only ran to the corner of the house, where Gala had to choose between leaping to the flat roof of the pantry or clambering up even higher. Behind her she heard the dull sound of her father’s footsteps on the tin roof. She put a foot on the first tile—it wobbled but held—a foot on the second, until she felt the whole row slipping. She grabbed hold of a tile above her, but her weight made it tilt, just as she felt an iron grasparound her ankles. She lost her balance, smacked into the tiles chin first, and fell. She fell with her full weight upon her father, who wrapped his body around hers, and together they landed two meters below on the gravel of the pantry roof.
    Gala lay there in her father’s grip. Screaming with laughter, just as he was, she knew that he had distinguished himself forever from all the rest of the world’s fathers. His hands, broad, strong yet still soft, were holding her tight. A shudder passed through his whole body, and when she looked at him, she didn’t know whether his eyes were moist from relief or anger.
    â€œThat’s what you get,” he sighed, before his voice had time to properly gather itself, “when someone loves you.”
    A powerful smell wafted out over Gala when her father opened the door to the flower auction. She could smell millions of flowers and tried to imagine the hundreds of thousands of bunches arranged in vases all over the world by nightfall.
    Along the entire length of the complex, some two kilometers long, a catwalk was suspended above the