And apparently still as lonely and unhappy.

“It’s not true!” I shouted.

And I woke up.

In silence.

The low ceiling of a cheap London hotel. In general the English live in tiny houses the size of postage stamps. Probably so that it’s easier to defend them—after all, “my home is my castle.”

Sunlight splashing in through the small window. Morning, although it’s still early . . .

I glanced at the clock—only seven a.m., local time.

Then I looked at Sir Erasmus’s wooden chalice standing on the bedside table. Maybe it was the beer that was to blame, or maybe it was the glass of cognac I added to it while I was watching the television before I went to bed, but when I wanted a drink of water I had unpacked the gift and drunk the water out of it. And not casually either, but in the profound conviction that I would then hear Darwin’s first prophecy.

It didn’t work, as far as Darwin’s prophecy was concerned. But now I’d got one of my own.

Or had I?

What was it—a very vivid and realistic dream produced by a mixture of alcohol, fatigue, and a host of new impressions?

A prophecy?

I can foresee the future, like any Other—like any human being, if it comes to that. Even better than many Others—at one time Gesar quite seriously recommended that I should specialize in predictions. But I have dreams that are simply stupid too, like anybody else.

Mulling this over, I went to the toilet and took a shower. (Everything was squeezed very compactly into two square meters—and these people reproached the Soviet Union for the “Khrushchev slums”?) I got dressed and walked pensively downstairs into the semi-basement, where the hotel’s small restaurant was located. The waitress who was bustling about there, pouring the guests coffee and clearing away the dirty plates, had such an everyday face that I greeted her in Russian. And I guessed right.

“Oh, hello,” she said, embarrassed for some reason. “Will you have tea or coffee?”

“Coffee,” I said with a nod, casting an eye over the food laid out on the table.

“The coffee’s not great,” the girl whispered quietly, leaning towards me.

“Even so,” I replied just as quietly. “I have to wake up.”

“I’d better make you some instant,” the girl suggested, and disappeared into the kitchen.

I took a yogurt, a piece of bread, a hermetically sealed plastic briquette of cheese (Cheddar is Cheddar) and scrambled eggs, which is the most outrageous insult to eggs that Europe has been able to invent.

But at least they were hot.

I sat down at a table in the corner and picked up a lump of the crumbling eggy mass with my fork, examined it cautiously and popped it into my mouth. It tasted better than it looked . . .