The figure in the corner strikes a match and lights a candle.

“Bad day?”

Yeah, my day’s been so-so. He’s still in the same graphite suit, shabby and wrinkled, his hair dishevelled, legs smeared with red clay. He chews betel. He’s sitting motionless, looking at me, masticating his cud and spitting saliva, red like blood, onto the floor. In the quiet of the sleeping monastery, it’s easy to hear the movement of his jaws and the rustle of the ants along their path.

It’s the professor.

“Where’s my rat?”

“Safe. Enjoying life.”

“Glad to see you’re also enjoying life. Hence the ropes.”

“I’m not. Why are you following me?”

“You have the name of the attending physician and his contact information written on your medical folder. I decided immediately to fly in as soon as they told me what had happened to you in order to give my recommendations on treatment.”

“That’s a lie. You couldn’t have got here so quickly. The flight from Kyiv takes at least 9 hours, 12 with a layover. I got into a crash just a few hours ago.”

“Is that so?”

He spits and observes me, smiling. In the light of the candle, his face becomes an unhealthy yellow. The darkness swirls around.

“You know, they still talk about you at the Institute.”

“Do they, now?”

“They reminisce about how you used to walk along the roof naked at dawn.”

“It wasn’t me.”

“You should see the CCTV footage.”

We laugh.

“They also remember how you fell asleep in someone’s room on the fourth floor.”

“My room was on the fourth floor.”

“Really?” He grins. “They also say that you went up to the head physician and demanded he call the mayor of Catania so you could reconstruct your family tree.”

“Is that all?”

“No, that’s not all.” He suddenly becomes more serious, and I’m thinking he’s going to say something about Petrovich, but he doesn’t. “At night you used to play piano in our old assembly hall. You played everyone one after another—Coltrane, Debussy, Tiersen, Peart, Beethoven, and the Somnambulist Quartet, not even pausing between compositions. They say these transitions were especially good.”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“The night guards.”

“I don’t remember that. I think they must’ve dreamed it.”

“Or you did.”

He spits out the remains of the betel nut chew and pulls another portion from the pocket of his jacket.

“You need to relax, Fryderyk. Perhaps let’s go back to Kyiv, after all?”

“Better let me sleep, instead.” I grumble. “Remember what the Buddha said: ‘If you love someone, let them sleep.’”

“The Buddha didn’t say that. That’s someone’s post off Instagram.” He hums. “Let’s go back to the laboratory. They’ll do an operation on you. There you’ll be able to do some real good or, at least, not do harm to yourself or others.”

“I’ve got a better idea.”

I try to reach for the gun in my backpack, but the ropes won’t let me.

Fuck.

I close my eyes tightly and open them again.