In my sixty-three years of life, it has never occurred to me to hire the services of a prostitute. If anything, I was the one who, as a young man, exchanged sex for favours—such as a good meal and a warm bed—when I went backpacking around Europe. You might say that it was Lili, my wife, who planted the seed in my brain with a passing comment that triggered a long chain of thoughts and actions. One afternoon, as we were walking through our neighbourhood down one of the deserted little streets adjoining our own, Lili pointed out a new business, although in fact all that was there was a very narrow door the colour of pink bubblegum, with little blue and green hearts painted on it in pastel tones. It looked like the door of a teenage girl’s bedroom. The afternoon was fading, illuminating the cobbled ground of the alley and its grey walls with a violet light, and making the colour of the door stand out with an unusual glow. I suppose it was this light that made us notice it.
‘Have you seen what’s over there?’ remarked my wife, excited as a child. She had stood up on her tiptoes to get a better look.
High up in the wall, two coquettish little windows were pushed open like sleepy eyelids. Rather than being designed to allow someone to see the outside, their function seemed to be to provide ventilation while preventing passersby from looking in. If you made an effort, however, it was possible to make out a few decorative objects that rendered the place even more perplexing. My wife pointed out the candelabra with beads of orange glass—or were they plastic?—hanging from the ceiling. On the wall, a long red balloon with a metallic sheen formed the word Love in English.
