Then she goes back into the kitchen to chop some herbs, Katharina leans on the doorjamb, can I help, no no, it’s fine. Rosa chops and talks and in between looks across at Katharina, then stops, Katharina sees the knife in Rosa’s hand, and Rosa looks at Katharina. Katharina takes a couple of steps to her friend, stops in front of her, looks at her expressionlessly, and Rosa looks at her, neither of them speaks, eye to eye, Katharina takes the knife from her friend’s hand and lays it aside, lowers her head into the hollow between neck and shoulder, blows out a little puff of breath, before she bites her friend, but her friend takes her by the hair, pulls her head up, and says: You know, I hate you sometimes for still being with Hans. Yes, says Katharina, I know. And then they fall down together. They sprawl in the corridor, then stagger into the bedroom, the referee counts to fifty thousand, but neither of them wants to end this fight which has no winner and no loser. All night, to breathe and to feel the other’s breath against her skin, or whose breath and whose skin is it? Running her tongue along the other’s teeth as against a friendly fence, feel out with her hands, her lips, her tongue what is dark and moist, listen all night to the sounds of the other, or are they her own? To know the other as herself. One being of flesh and blood joined to another, as by a key. To be one.