An extract of Swimming Home will be published by Dalkey Archive Press USA in Best European Fiction 2010 edited by Aleksandar Hemon with a preface by Zadie Smith. January 2010

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Photography | Amy Stein
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Swimming Home

He found the flame haired English girl on a cool spring morning on his way to buy two slabs of Marseilles soap, one made from palm oil, the other from olive oil, both mixed by the local soap master with sea plants from the Mediterranean. She was naked and talking to herself on a box of rotten plums the farmers had thrown out at the end of the day. He wanted to help her home but she told him she would make her own way home. When he asked her how, she said she knew her way. Her clothes were on the beach. He could have left her there but he did not do that. Instead, he offered to look for her clothes. She leaned towards him and whispered in his ear.
"Thank you."
He walked in the direction of the beach and when he thought she could no longer see him, he did not go to pick up her clothes. He called an ambulance.

Kitty Finch later told the doctors that the man who had offered to help her was a bear. He had wandered down from the mountains and got lost.

© Copyright Deborah Levy. 2009  All Rights Reserved  The above text may not be used in any other context either in part or in whole without the express written consent of the author.