Skin. Sergio del Molino

question of hormones, which, like everything bad in life, self-correct with age. If sex were an intellectual pleasure, we’d give it up at eighteen out of utter weariness.

      The closeness between parents and children, when the children are small, is far more complex and poetic than any mythological account of rape and celestial coitus between Greek gods; the reticence that means a lot of parents fail to revel in it, in all its surging excess, is a mystery to me. Plus, it’s so short-lived that it melts away as quickly as childhood itself.

The child is slightly afraid of water. It doesn’t know how to swim, the world it inhabits is far from swimming pools and oceans. To go under water is a thrilling, terrifying prospect, one it will only go along with from the safety of its parents’ arms. The Alhama lake is deep for him, and I only dip my feet at the water’s edge, so we get a flotation noodle for him to use. To begin with he doesn’t trust the noodle as much as he trusts being held by us, but little by little he does relax. The water’s lovely, there aren’t any waves and the fish – in his case, yes – tickle. Once the preliminary minutes are over, the swim begins to take shape, rhythm and pitch, like it was a Mahler symphony building from a quiet, almost non-existent opening, and that bar by bar gradually awakens the orchestra. All that is hard, gloomy, and brown on the earth becomes harmonious and clear in the water. We parents and children understand one another better in the water than anywhere else.

      We go in deeper, don’t worry, I’m right here, grab the noodle, I’m here, I haven’t gone anywhere, it’s okay, want to see how deep we are? A moment comes when I’ll go down. See that? I went right down and stuck my arms up, and my hands didn’t touch the surface; it’s over three metres here. That isn’t super deep for a lake, but it’s great for swimming. Shall we go and duck Mama? Grab onto my shoulders, I’ll pull you along like a speedboat.

      There is no intimacy more sealed off or clear. In the water with your child, there’s a wonderful fusion of being and becoming. He is the child, we are the parents; any need for justification falls away. There’s no identity that needs defending, no story to construct (as a politician would say), no role to play or need to feel oneself part of a hierarchy or organisation. We just are. In an essential, simple way; no tragedy. This is what Stalin was looking for in Sochi with Artyom: the chance to truly be.

      This metaphysic will be better understood with the story I’ll come onto now. A story about the things parents do when their children aren’t looking.