In the beginning, when the world was new and nothing had a name, my father took me to see the ice. - Gabriel García Márquez

One night she came back from her daily walk stunned by the revelation that one could be happy not only without love, but despite it.

In all the houses keys to memorizing objects and feelings had been written. But the system demanded so much vigilance and moral strength that many succumbed to the spell of an imaginary reality, one invented by themselves, which was less practical for them but more comforting.

It had to be a mad dream, one that would give her the courage she would need to discard the prejudices of a class that had not always been hers but had become hers more than anyone’s. It had to teach her to think of love as a state of grace: not the means to anything but the alpha and omega, an end in itself.