When I was young I used to go mountain climbing, Aurelia says. Mountaineering is good for breathing. And it fortifies the will, Aurelia says.
In the coordinate system the parabola may hold an interesting position, Haya says. The ordinates of a parabola may be positive, plus and negative, minus, if the sign of the derivative of the parabola is only positive or only negative in a neighbourhood, then no extreme values can exist in that neighbourhood. Don’t mention mountaineering, that mountain discipline, Haya says. I do not like disciplines. I don’t even like cycling anymore.
11
The days do not unfurl, but neither do they trip over one another. Strangely, Haya does not get ill. Haya is a hale old woman. A small dental bridge with the upper-right first and second molars, (the other teeth are hers); cataract surgery on both eyes; her gall bladder removed; mild bronchial asthma (in spite of which she continues to smoke some fifteen cigarettes a day); a fractured tibia thirty years ago — that would be it. Of course, the functions of her body are slowed, diminished and brief, and a nasty itch plagues her in the early evenings: lower arm, upper arm, the left lower arm, then the right, Haya scratches and scratches and scratches, she holds her arms under a stream of cold water and looks, aghast, at the tracks of her fingernails on her thin, dry skin. Am I disappearing? she asks. Her sleep is light, her bloodflow inaudible, the beats of her heart short, like her steps; her vision and her dreams, yes, her dreams, are melting; only Haya’s wait grows and she is frightened that this wait of hers will spill over into nothing; that it will drain away, that soon it will whisper to her I am the wait that got tired, I am your lifeless wait and I’m off now, ciao.