There are many reasons why I must be grateful to you, Teacher, but perhaps the one I hold dearest in my heart is that you showed me how to reach him, my long-lost lover, who never was. There was so much separating us: those years in darkness, his “lost” years when he was still a young man, in a war he did not understand – if ever soldiers understand war – and the people he then met, all so far away, all strangers to me. 

You helped me to see that Sarah was the key, and not the enemy. For a long time, she was the girl I had seen, in the little town, triumphant at his arm… And I was afraid of her. She was alive, and I was not. Sarah, however, is my gate to Julian, and I respect and love her. I know now the depth of her feelings for him, and, now, only now, I know what it means to be loved by Julian. 

How different is this love from the soft feelings I recall, from the chaste friendship that I’d hoped to translate into passion, if only I could seize him… But I could not, whereas she possessed him when she wanted, as she wanted. He never knew how much I had wanted to be like her: the deep lover, the mistress, his owner. And I did not know how to tell him.

Now I have, and as he makes love to Sarah, he knows he makes love to me too. Slowly I have become her, and she me. When the three of us visit your home, Teacher, there there will be really only two of us. Sarah and him, for I am part of her. She knows how to navigate to you, as much as I know. And sometimes, I feel my life is really Sarah’s. As for him, Teacher, he’s accepted the evidence. His wife met him long ago, in those narrow streets, when she was still Melissa.

Picture © 2016 Honoré Dupuis

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