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and the fetus had begun squirming to get out at twenty-four weeks, we asked for Mrs. A.’s help, having learned that she was free since the day my father-in-law realized he could get by without domestic assistance. With my wife confined to bed, I had to show Mrs. A. around the house myself, doing my best to explain details that I wasn’t very familiar with: where to pour the fabric softener and the detergent, how toreplace the vacuum-cleaner bags and how often to water the plants on the balcony. Less than halfway through the tour, Mrs. A. interrupted me. “Go ahead, go! Go on, don’t worry about a thing.”
    In the evening, back from work, I’d find her sitting at Nora’s bedside like a guard dog, ears pricked. They’d be chatting, but Mrs. A. had already slipped on her rings and pinned the brooch on her cardigan, and her coat was settled on her shoulders. When she saw me, she’d get up with the energy of someone who wasn’t tired in the least, then lead me into the kitchen to explain what dishes she had cooked for dinner, how to reheat them so they wouldn’t dry out and where to put the dirty pots and pans afterward. “Don’t bother washing them. I’ll do it tomorrow,” she’d always add. At the beginning I disobeyed her, but when I saw that in the morning she redid the dishes I’d washed anyway, I gave in to her command.
    Such perfection could be irritating at times, and she herself hard to bear, with all her convictions and sensible but not-very-original pronouncements. Nora, having spent a good part of her day with Mrs. A., often vented her frustration at being trapped in bed forweeks by taking it out on her. “She’s an exasperating woman!” she complained. “Exasperating and especially pedantic!”
    The period during which we put ourselves in the care of another person—care we doubted we’d ever encounter or deserve again—was also the period when we came up with the first subterfuges to evade it.
    There was a restaurant where Nora and I went from time to time—not a real restaurant, actually, just a fish market that at night set some tightly packed tables with tablecloths and plastic forks and served fried fish in aluminum trays. We’d stumbled onto it when we were just married, and since then it had become our spot. Prior to venturing forth with my wife to that out-of-the-way corner, crustaceans and mollusks hadn’t appealed to me at all (before Nora, I didn’t like a lot of things), but I loved watching her eat them. I loved the concentration she applied to peeling the shrimp and then offering me half and insisting that I take it, I loved the way she dug the sea snails out of their shells and how she sucked her moist fingertips between one course and another. The fish market, untilit closed recently—leaving us deprived of another secondary but essential point of reference—was the scene of our most intimate, tribal rituals. Important discussions, momentous announcements, toasts to secret anniversaries—all took place there. Whenever we left, Nora’s hair and our clothes would reek of grease; we carried that smell into the house with us, as if to seal decisions we’d made, truths we’d come to.
    Mrs. A. wouldn’t allow Nora, in her condition, to eat even just a mouthful of “that garbage,” as she called it, frowning like a customs officer as she inspected the contents of the take-out meal that I’d picked up at the fish market. “And you either,” she added, pointing her finger at me. “I already made a meat loaf.”
    She bundled up forty euros’ worth of fried fish and personally made sure that it ended up in the Dumpster down the street.
    We learned to con her. When Nora showed an irresistible craving for batter-fried cuttlefish and calamari, I secretly visited our restaurant, then kept the package hidden in the car until Mrs. A. left. So as