Ghosts by Daylight
by Janine di Giovanni
Before I reached the stairwell, I saw something out of the corner of my eye. A strange and beautiful man had dropped to his knees in front of me, unencumbered, unembarrassed. I stopped short. He was slender, almost Asiatic looking, wearing baggy combat trousers and a T-shirt. He was flirting, and then he was laughing at my reaction. There was not much for me to do but also smile...Janine and Bruno first fell in love as young reporters in the besieged city of Sarajevo. Years later - after endless phone calls, much of what the French call malentendu, secret trysts in foreign cities, numerous break-ups, three miscarriages, countless stories of rebel armies and a dozen wars that had passed between them - they arrive in Paris one rainy January to begin a new life together. The remnants of their separate lives, now left behind, are tentatively unpacked into their shared apartment on the Right Bank: Bruno's heavy blanket from Ethiopia, a set of long feathered arrows from Brazil, an...