We have one dream, and then each year we make it a little smaller, all the while saying to ourselves that it’s to be expected, after all. This little success will do. Then this smaller one. So I will not have professional success, but I will have a good home life; I will marry well. And then it is the next year, then it is several years later, I will not have professional success, if I have not found some willing applicant for love, I will seek pleasure in solitude. And so on and so forth.

I find I am brimful of thoughts like these. Gems of wisdom, each one riding like a wave on the back of another wave. Here I am in a narrow bed, low to the floor, in an unfamiliar room, sparsely furnished, with a single high window in the corner through which the morning light falls in fat bars across the thin brown blanket. On the wall is a framed picture of blue cartoon rabbits roller-skating. Not an interior decorating scheme that inspires much confidence, but when it comes to my thoughts, I am in an orchard and the fruit is ripe, I wander through the trees in a perfect light.

Stirring, I feel an unfamiliar warm patch against my thigh, and reaching down I am delighted to feel the soft fur and cold ears of what is unmistakably a cat. This is that black cat, the most obese of the three Van Gelder cats, I think, stroking it.

Ann and Gerry, I remember. This is their house. This must be their spare room. Here is the glass of water Ann left on the nightstand.

Through the walls of the house I hear the click of the front door opening, and Ann’s voice says, “Come in.” Early for a visitor, I think; judging by the light it could not be later than six or seven in the morning. Now here is Gerry’s voice, in its low register, joining in. Footsteps in the hall.

The door opens, and the light in the room has changed. It could be that it’s actually the next day, or the next. Keeping track of time has proven more difficult than it had initially seemed. Here is an old man wearing a well-cut gray coat, who sits down in a chair which has suddenly materialized beside my bed.

“How do you do?” I say, because it seems only polite because of where he is sitting; we are very close together.

He’s looking at me intently but does not respond. His eyes have a hooded, turtle-like quality to them, and very softly, as if they are very far away indeed, I hear a soft tinkle of bells. You know this man, the bells say. But I can’t place him.