Soon there will be a new landscape. The snow-capped mountains and blue sea, the clear sky and blazing sun, the dry hillsides and lean, umbrella-topped pine trees will melt away, and below me I will see a neat patchwork of green and yellow fields, dark clumps of trees, and roads pin-pricked with the headlights of moving cars. A world that functions. Perhaps I will return. Or perhaps, with the passing years, the distance will widen, as key by key and note by note, I edge my way into exile.
