Shame

pain in her lower back started up again. A sudden stab that almost made her black out.
    Yet she really didn’t want to know anything. She wanted to let Vanja remain buried in the past and let the dust she was stirring up settle again.
    She glanced at the kitchen clock. Not because they ever bothered to be punctual, but they should be coming in an hour or two. She opened the refrigerator again. It was always stronger when something she didn’t want to acknowledge was attempting to intrude on her consciousness.
    The compulsion to stuff herself in order to shut up what was screaming inside.

3
    H e claimed that he loved her. In fact, everything he said and did indicated as much. And yet it was so hard to accept the words. That she was the one he loved.
    What he tried to get her to believe was that he found her unique, that she of all the people in the world was the one he valued most, the one who was most important to him. The one he would under no circumstances ever betray and would always protect.
    It was so hard to accept the words.
    Because why should she be the one that a man like Thomas would love? Eligible bachelors were scarce when you started pushing forty, and you only had to take one look at him to figure out that he must be a desirable catch. Yet it was probably his mind that had captivated her first. His self-deprecating sense of humour that made her laugh in the strangest situations. Only a man who was so completely sure of his masculinity could laugh so heartily at himself. And only a man who had dared acquire some knowledge of himself would realise what was worth laughing at. She had never met anyone like him before. He possessed a curiosity and a voracious appetite for learning something new, understanding more. Always ready to abandon his entrenched views; if someone else suddenly seemed more reasonable, he would always try to look at things from new angles. Maybe this was one of the reasons for his success as an industrial designer, or maybe it was a consequence. His unusual talents and liberal way of thinking took their conversations to unexplored heights, and sometimes she even had to make an effort to keep up with him. She found it incredibly stimulating.
    Intellectually he was fully her equal. Men like that were scarce.
    So why was she the one he happened to fall in love with?
    There had to be a catch somewhere. But no matter where she searched she couldn’t find it.
    Of course there had been other men. There were plenty of brief relationships in her past; other ambitions had guided her choices, and she hadn’t put energy into trying to extend them. The long years in medical school had demanded her full attention. Getting a B on an exam was a failure, getting an A was a must to feel satisfied, and sometimes even that didn’t help. She would prefer her professors to throw themselves across their desks out of sheer rapture over her marks and her brilliance, but she had been forced to realise that this was not at all easy to achieve. There were many talented students. That’s why she had always been filled with a sense of inadequacy, that she wasn’t good enough. And this made her work even harder.
    One by one all of her contemporaries had vanished into marriage and family life, while she, to her mother’s dismay, had maintained her single status. It didn’t happen so often anymore, now that it was almost too late, but for years her mother had assiduously informed her of her great disappointment that she would never have any grandchildren. And deep inside, in that place where neither her mother nor anyone else was ever allowed, Monika had shared that disappointment.
    It wasn’t always easy to live alone. Whether it was a cultural thing or not was impossible to say, but somewhere in the human mystery there still seemed to be a basic striving for connection. Her body spoke its unequivocal language. After months in solitude it begged to be touched. And she had no obligations to anyone. So she could initiate a little love affair just to brighten up her life for a while, but she never let her emotions take over. She permitted herself only restrained pleasure, and the relationship was never given the opportunity to become very important. Not on her part at least. A heart here or there had probably been hurt by her actions, but she had never allowed anyone to come anywhere near the core where little Monika lived, where she scrupulously concealed all her fears.
    And her secret.
    Sex was easy. It