"We have to part ways!" he said, trying to avoid her desperate gaze. "My love, listen to me..." he continued, unable to hide his distress. "There is no other solution... We have to try to save them, at least one of the two! We owe them at least that..." At least one of us, at least one of the two of them... she thought, swallowing hard, unable to grasp the magnitude and meaning of this dilemma, feeling her soul competing in coldness with the polar temperatures to which they were all exposed – a handful of people in essence, battered and exhausted – for so long. She instinctively tightened the swaddled baby even more in her arms and closed her eyes to prevent, as much as possible, tears from flowing.
"We won't all make it together," he continued. "We have to..." "Stop!" she interrupted him. There was no need to convince her. She could smell his fear; she had learned this scent well over time, mixed with the damp earth. She distinguished it easily from the other smells of nature; it involuntarily became her daily companion. She knew very well what awaited them if they continued like this. She had seen with her own eyes how far human cruelty could go. Not once or twice, but many times. Every drop of innocence and hope had long since dried up inside her. Her previous carefree life, her childhood and teenage years in Thessaloniki, now seemed so distant, so fake, as if she had lived them in someone else, as if she had simply dreamed them.