CHAPTER X. THE POISONOUS CONCOCTIONS OF THE COURT

   Protch didn’t lack courage that morning of Wednesday, February 16. He had taken Nike a coffee to the library, where he had led him that morning. And sitting next to him, he heard him finally sigh.

Alas - said Nike finally — how happy you can see them. My parents were very beautiful. Although I never met them. What they lived must have been worthwhile. That you can see in their faces: she is seen happy and he is seen spellbound. And they are escorted by my grandparents, my dear Thomas Martin and Deborah. Thank you for bringing them to Deanforest and place them where I put my parents.

─ Why in the library?

─Here I spent much of the day alone, reading and drinking a coffee and at the end, when I brought their portrait from Siddeley Priory, I placed them in the western wall so that they were surrounded by books and they continued living among words.

─It will be difficult to tell you their story

─Do not be afraid, Protch. You will be able. But begin further back.

─I will try to start with the first Siddeley. As I've been living with them, something I know, but I won't tire you describing you the luxury of Siddeley Priory or telling you again how the real lineage, although there were no doubt many generations before, really began with Thomas Siddeley, who met Luther and created a house from a priory where your family has lived for generations, and he called it Siddeley Priory.

─You can tell me about the famous Siddeley arrogance, which I also inherited, or about their cruelty.

─Even if your grandfather told me the entire history, generation after generation, I only remember Horace Martin Siddeley, great entrepreneur, who built a large textile industry, the Siddeley Co. But I started work in the family mansion when I was 20. Your grandfather was already married to your grandmother Deborah, and had two sons: Martin Washington, your father, who was ten years old then; and Clarence, his younger brother. But your grandfather had many brothers, and thus you have a legion of cousins. And your uncle Clarence had three...

─Michael, Edmund and Lydia. Edmund was always my favorite cousin, along with Nicole and Arwin, always concerned about those who have less, but Edmund has always been my favorite cousin and we spent hours in the forest of Dean, hunting, running, or talking about our stuff. In the forest of Dean we were the days and I don't know whether I could give him any relief, when her mother died. I hardly remember my aunt Brigitte, my uncle Clarence’s wife. He was widowed very soon. I was six years old, but I recall her telling me beautiful stories with her calm voice. I don't know whether I managed to calm Edmund and his brothers. I did the best I could. And please, Protch, before you talk to me about my grandparents, tell me something about you.

─I was a mad young man when I came to Siddeley Priory as a butler. And three months later you hired Maude Heath, who would steal my heart. But it is not a very original story, and in addition I'm not talking about your parents or grandparents.

─Protch, please. Maudie and you are a part of my life and one day you could be my friends, and I would love to know your story. Your wife I will also ask one day, when I see her, about the origin of my name. I believe that it was her and soon everyone forgot Nicholas and started calling me Nike, and thus I have always introduced myself to everyone I met. But I want to know how your idyll started.

─Well, Nike, because you're interested, I'll tell you. Maude Heath came to Siddeley Priory three months after I came. She was hired to deal with the cleaning of the many rooms of the house, but she aspired to be a cook one day. A close friend of Dora’s, do you remember Dora? She was very short...

─Yes, I do.

–But especially a friend of Ingrid Stiller’s. She was for us a matchmaker. Maude Heath came to me to consult me things very often for I was the butler. Now I know that she was already captivated by me. I stared at her when Leona opened the door. An impressive woman, tall and slender as if she were...

─ A Nordic goddess?

─Very similar, Nike, as a deity from other mythologies. She always spoke fondly to me, hiding what she felt for me. We started to see each other often, with any excuse, and surely Ingrid knew everything about us. One day your grandparents and your father went somewhere and servants were not necessary. But Ingrid convinced us both to take care of the house. We spent hours together, and in the afternoon, having tea, we started saying to each other everything, and at dinner, we were already a couple, and within a few days, we were engaged. We got married on June 30, our first year at Siddeley Priory.

─Always the two of you by my side, Protch, always loving that orphan Siddeley.

─I want to return to your story, Nike, shall I finally go to your grandparents?

─Try to also remember my maternal grandparents. And tell me about both of them. Some picture I brought of them too and they must still be here, in a room on the first floor looking east.

─There are still your maternal grandparents’ pictures. As for the paternal, when I met him, Thomas Martin Siddeley was already married. It is true that sometimes he fired a servant, Nike, and not always for reasons that seem reasonable to me, but I don’t know whether you are expecting me to tell you something worse. For me the word I would give him is pompous, but it is also true he was proud of the Siddeley luxury, because you have history and lineage. He liked to spend hours by the fireplace telling me the story of the previous generations down to the last detail. He boasted of knowing it very well and so he was transmitting it to me. In a costume ball he met Deborah Carter, from a traditional oil family, though she had no need to work. As none of the Siddeley. You broke that tradition. Your grandmother Deborah was his weakness. Certainly, as you know, and it is a pleasure to repeat it, your grandparents loved each other, and when he was with Deborah, your grandfather was transformed. He could be coming from a great anger with someone but he looked at her and was quickly soothed. He loved her dearly.

─My grandmother Deborah was a very special woman. She never lied to me, not even in delicate issues and she often told me that I was her vanity. I hope that if now she could see me, she would feel proud of the beggar who I am now. Of her I think it could be likely. Tell me something about my father.

─Martin Washington was growing almost at the same time I was. Somewhat disobedient and much of a dreamer. You never knew what he was going to answer to certain issues and like you, he was transparent, and became a man knowing that he was going to inherit the family business. But one day he met Alma Sheringham, your mother. She had an ethereal beauty, often focusing on one idea and she could spend several minutes absorbed. With clear eyes and blonde, I never doubted what your father saw in her. From your mother you may have inherited rebelliousness, because Alma, just like you, was never satisfied with things as they were, and wanted to do something on her own, and more than once tried to convince her parents to let her take care of any of the two industries she had inherited. Her father, Steve Sheringham, your maternal grandfather, was a renowned breeder of horses, and his family lived of it. The Sheringham race was well known, and many of the ponies in the Siddeley Priory stables came from there. Their horses sometimes crossed the huge wheat fields of the Murchison, and talking with them on one occasion, he met your grandmother, with the original name of Hedwigia. She had at least an occupation. She was in charge of some of her family’s hives and the honey collected by Hedwigia Murchison was famous. Once they were married, Steve and Hedwigia moved to Horseland, where your mother was born.

 -Tell me more about her, Protch. She was so beautiful. I only know her on photographs.

─I will tell you more soon. I don't know very well why your father went one day to Horseland. But I do know that both of them fell in love head over heels and one evening he introduced her at Siddeley Priory and all the servants received her joyfully. She was extraordinarily beautiful, and had a sweet and peaceful character that won our hearts. She got along especially well with Maude and never caused any conflicts and it was a pleasure to know that one day she would be the lady of the house. Your parents were engaged for two years. Alma often spent the evenings at Siddeley Priory, sometimes accompanied by her parents, and was already known as Lady Sheringham. But one August 5 your parents got married. All the servants went to the ceremony and we were engrossed watching their faces so in love. How luminous your parents were. What happiness to finally welcome Alma Siddeley to the same rooms that were now her home, with Martin Washington Siddeley, more of an ephebe than new Lord of the house. Now we had two masters and two ladies and the servants rejoiced in the new power at Siddeley Priory. And soon she announced that she was pregnant.

─ And then?

─Her time of pregnancy went by perfectly. Her husband, her in-laws and everybody did our outmost for Alma's welfare and the child she was expecting. Nothing foreshadowed what would happen on July 30. Are you sure, Nike, that you want me to tell you?

-I am sure, Protch as sure as I am that you also think I have the right to know at last what happened to my parents.

─Dr. Ivy was there all that morning of July 30, taking care of Alma. And about seven o'clock in the morning there we were many, waiting for Nicholas Martin's birth. Your parents had already decided how to call you.

─ And if I had been born a girl?

─You would have been Christine.

─Go on, Protch.

─There were your grandparents Thomas Martin and Deborah Siddeley, Steve and Hedwigia Sheringham, Dr. Ivy and I. Maude was absent for a few days and did not see your birth, but I was allowed to enter and I saw your arrival, worried about any need that your parents, your grandparents, or the doctor might have. The door was open, and by surprise, we saw that in came Lippincott. Do you remember him?

─The only dog I've ever had. Thank you for this detail that I did not know. Later my grandparents gave me many cats, aware of how much I liked them. I still remember Lipp, as I called it. Blackish and almost always sad, he was indefatigable but had no offspring that I know of. That day it was only a puppy. I lost it when I was 7, if I remember correctly.

─Suddenly your mother suffered great pains, she weakened, had fever, cried... The clock struck seven when we heard Lipp barking. Your face could already be seen. Nicholas Martin had arrived. Your mother held you proudly. At least half an hour she resisted with you in her arms. But she was still losing blood. Dr. Ivy started to see that little could be done. Your mother passed away in half an hour and she wanted to go with a smile on her lips.

─Thank you, Protch. I can't stop crying. Goodbye Alma Siddeley. I hope that your life was worthy. Thank you for life, mama. Still, Protch, what happened to my father?

─I will overlook the mourning which covered Siddeley Priory or your grandparents Sheringham's pain. Alma was their only daughter. They kept coming to see their grandson, but so much pain must have been unbearable. They accompanied you as best they could in your childhood and adolescence, until two tumors took them away.

─I was 15 years old when I lost them. But it was always merry for me to see my grandparents Steve and Hedwigia.

-For several days Thomas Martin and Deborah tried to console their son. And his brother Clarence was also by his side. What happened to your father was that he could not bear the pain. He never drank, but those days he did as best he could to forget. No one at Siddeley Priory knew what to do. Really worried we all were when on August 9 we all heard a gunshot. The sound came from the living room. We approached and discovered Martin Washington Siddeley's body. Impossible to describe the subsequent shock, or the state in which your grandparents were. A few days later guns were withdrawn forever. They had been of the Siddeley family for centuries.

─It is what I thought that happened to them. I was told that they were killed in a traffic accident, but I was guessing the truth slowly and I ended up finding a truth that only now I know for sure. Goodbye Martin Washington, dad, how much you must have loved her and emptiness must have been unbearable. Thank you very much, Protch, for daring to finally tell me the truth. Now I can already resume my story. But, please, I want to continue listening to you. I want you, as long as we are in the library, to interrupt me every few minutes. I return to the story, in reality to my prehistory.


 

   Once upon a time there was a beggar who was born in a golden cradle, because the spirits of the universe, many times indomitable and often indecipherable, wanted to confuse his birth and in the bed of fortune, an orphan, they laid him. It is well known that they do as they please, but it has to be believed that they know what they are doing; and wrote that he should start his life as a king. And thus was born the beggar king not knowing who he really was, in his golden cradle. Golden was my childhood and my four grandparents were like parents to me. Nothing I have to blame them for. But golden was also my first road, born to follow the Siddeley tradition, even educated in the belief that one day I must have a son whose name should be Martin Thomas. Gold and pageantry Siddeley Priory, an immense and wide mansion, a large manor, with profusion of rooms and luxurious furniture, with expensive antiques. But a cradle also has some bars and I lacked something and the feeling that I did not have it pressed on me: the blessed freedom that later in my life I acquired, to take my own decisions, to be myself. But none of this I knew and when one day my grandfather taught me to swim, I was also instructed in another way of prolonging my absences: competing, also being the first to win anything besides money or properties. With this lure I was growing, surrounded by cats, doing mischief with cousin Edmund. Almost always transparent and continuously rebel, look, Protch, all that I could have chosen: besides the Siddeley industry, I had the Carter oil, the Sheringham horses and the Murchison wheat fields or hives. I don't have memories that in that time I was an asshole. I was only a disoriented man. I hardly saw beggars at Siddeley Priory, and I can't remember what I thought of them, if something I thought.

   I was a horse enthusiast, not only those of Grandfather Steve. It was already necessary to create the Siddeley Priory stables and my family hired the first groom, called Simon Bonner. With few assistants, he was responsible for the main things. And the teenager Nike spent hours there talking to him. He was an expert in all kinds of animals, nothing of wildlife escaped him, and we spent hours talking about horses, cats and even pigs, because beside the stables were the pigsties. Actually the Siddeley family had everything. We always found subjects to talk. Simon, now that years have passed, I know that you were my first love, but my disoriented heart did not know. One day, without ever knowing why, my grandfather fired him and a few days later Horizon, the last pony Simon was responsible for, died and who can know whether it was out of nostalgia for his absence. A month later we had my grandfather’s first heart attack and we spent days in the hospital until finally he recovered. Sometimes there came guests who could have taught me many things in life. And once Mitch Heath, my beloved Maudie's brother, stayed with us and he used to often speak to me of birds. He knew all about birds. The arrogant Mr. Siddeley could have learned enough but hardly paid him any attention. And even if these days I've tried to recall your brother-in-law, Protch, unfortunately I hardly remember him.

   I do not know very well how the desire entered me of going to University. The Siddeley really did not need to. We were well off. I guess that the itch came to me when I saw cousin Cayron Siddeley, who would later become a doctor of geology, ended his bachelor’s degree. He gave me the idea, since one day I would inherit the entire Siddeley industry, of studying economics. It was troublesome to tell my grandparents, who wanted to convince me that I didn't have the need. It was on my first year of student, fortunately on holidays, when my grandfather had his second heart attack and died. And I was already finishing my studies when also Grandmother Deborah, the last survivor, died and I found myself empty and rootless, the owner of Siddeley Priory, but not the owner of myself. I will overlook my crazy college years in the Capital. I specialized in steel and soon I was hired by the Thuban Star Company, so I had to go to Hazington. My lawyers were responsible for finding me a luxurious property in the prosperous Newchapel district. In theory Mr. and Mrs. Woodward owned the house and it was called Mount Rushmore. I found a house that had been empty for eleven years, and named it Deanforest, thinking about the forest of my first games in my childhood Gloucestershire.

  But what future should I give to Siddeley Priory? By now the owner of all the gold of my cradle, I thought hard about what to do with all that. Until it occurred to me to leave the mansion in the care of cousin Edmund and to also leave the textile industry in his hands and his father’s, already a shareholder, my uncle Clarence. I just had to comment my move with the servants, and it was then when it shocked me to know that the most beloved ones, Maudie and Protch, decided to come with me to Hazington.

─ Why did you do it, Protch?

─My wife and I had spent half a lifetime with the Siddeley, who have always treated us with affection. We could have stayed with Edmund, who retained his servants, but we felt a lot of affection for the last offspring of the family, that child we trusted, by everybody known as Nike. And you would need servants in Hazington.

─I had the invaluable help of Victor Sheffield, who was your assistant and second butler, who knew how to do everything; of Karen Lindgren, head in the kitchen, with a multitude of kitchen helpers with her; of the cleaning of the house was responsible among others Agnes Moore, which I took long to discover; of my clothes took care Jack Stapleton and were always clean and shiny. And my first year in Deanforest, so that you can know when it was: Miguel was already on the street, I had the invaluable help from Maudie and my butler Herbert Protch. Busy with the many parties I organized, not yet drunk, they both were with me for a year. But a year later they left. And although I know why, Protch, could you repeat it?

─We thought my uncle Aurélien had a tumor. My cousin Rich, his son, was then in jail and could not take care of him. It was not difficult to persuade Maude to move to Orléans, where I spent my childhood and there, together with our cousin Louise, take care of those we thought would be the last years of his life.

─Thank you, Protch. And now I return to my story.

    Between Deanforest and Avalon Road I spent my first months. Only three years later I was promoted to the Board of Directors as director of economic planning. The Board of Directors was presided then by Harold Blessing, a difficult man with whom everybody had some problems, reserved and unsociable. There was the old Norman Wrathfall, the first president of the company, who seemed to come alive with the affairs of the company and with whom I did not have the slightest conflict. I then met Thaddeus Barrymore, whose views often moved away from mine and yet it was easy to deal with him. I was also then introduced to Walter Hope. It is difficult to describe him to you. Due to my surname and I hope also to my abilities I was promoted quickly, and Walter felt discontent with this situation.  He was an upstart and nothing was known of his origins and his relationship with me was impossible. But in the Board of Directors was also John Richmonds, I soon learned that he was the president's nephew, friendly and polite. It was a pleasure to chat with him. At his side always Anne-Marie Beaulière. I suspected that they were a couple, but she spent much time by my side and soon became a great friend.

  But before joining the Board of Directors, I had a first assistant, called Marcel Wright, whom you might remember, Protch, since he came many times to Deanforest in a time that he was my family. Black-haired and with pretty curly hair, perhaps a bit hippie, he ended up setting up a bar in his neighborhood of Fairfields. He was my first friend in the Thuban Star and after coming to some of the parties I organized in Deanforest, he took me to his house. Fairfields is a cheerful neighbourhood full of plants that even resist Hazington asphalt. But I met his sister there in his house, Alison Wright was her name, and fell as if in a spell before her long blonde hair, her eyes like Heatherling in a spring day, her look of clear sky, her serene soul, the light in her smile. She was then taking care of the garden, where she was proud of her bignonias, and in the center of the garden there was a tree that she called gingko biloba. We started to talk about plants and we immediately entangled in personal matters. She wanted to be a gardener and she put her heart in flowers; I had other concerns, but said to her that many times I felt empty, with no clear course in life. She liked me and soon we were a couple. Alison! My first partner. They were days of smelling the fragrances of Fairfields and disco nights. So I met her more than once in the city, but with her we used to go to Baphomet, in Alder Street. She never loved me, but it was evident how much I loved her, and I think... that I am not mistaken if I tell you that I really was in love with her, even not really knowing my heart yet. She ended up leaving me for another man, who she did really love. I stayed for the first time in the ice of indifference and even though I have lived enough, I still remember her.

   I soon became a friend of Anne-Marie Beaulière’s. We started talking about work issues, but with her talks easily diverted to any point, and soon we were real friends. Of a straightforward nature, she has always symbolized loyalty for me, and has supported me in my two lives after all. Due to her friendship I became a friend of the man I believed to be her partner, John Richmonds, and we went frequently all three together for a drink, to the cinema, to Deanforest... One night we had appointed to meet at the bar Starlight in Temple Road, but she did not go due to I don't remember what. I met only John and had to ask him what I had not dared until then: whether they were a couple.

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─ "She loves me but I don’t reciprocate her, Nike. She knows why it would be impossible."

─ "Do you love another girl?" – I asked candidly.

─ "I don't know whether you'll understand, Nike. My uncle Harold doesn't want this to be talked about. But you and I are increasingly good friends and I think you had better know and if I finally have your contempt, I will understand - and then he said it-. I like men, Nike."

   How did I respond in those moments? I was more taken aback than shocked, but started to say idiot phrases.

─ "Anne-Marie is a great woman. But if it is not her, then it will be a differente girl. But I guess what you have has a cure. It's just a bad time in your life. Nothing more."

─ "It cannot have a cure that which is not a disease. It is nature. When I was 13 I discovered it and up to now. Anne-Marie knows it. I have not cheated her. But it's much harder to make myself understood by men."

─ "I don't know what to say, John. Of course now I have a lot to think about. I could not expect this. Let me assimilate it. I don't know whether it is nature or debauchery, whether it can be avoided or you want to continue persisting in error. Tonight I will start to think about it. Come on, let's go now."

   As result of that night we began to speak less and less, just work conversations. Anne-Marie began to find us distant with each other and I excused myself whenever she had planned the three of us going out for a drink. I started to assimilate that Anne-Marie knew it but never talked about that; we simply dodged the matter. And one day in January, John surprised us all saying that he had fallen in love with a beggar and left his job. And the next morning I saw him again in the bar, hand in hand with that beggar who he introduced as his partner. And Richard in the bar as a witness I reached the blackest moment of my existence and insulted him. I began to poison myself then. In half an hour I had three whiskeys at the bar. I couldn't understand why I felt so sad. But John left forever; face to the future, his heart won back. We had been friends for a while. Later, if we were not enemies, at least we were hostile. And I lost him.

   One year earlier you had left Deanforest, and a week later I finished my love affair with Alison Wright. I was lost and rather than being the king of Deanforest, I was the Thuban Star jester. Lost days when I didn't know I was a beggar and not a monarch. If I saw some beggars in the streets, my memories are puzzling. I guess that like everyone else I imagined them lazy, indolent, and reluctant to work. In my confusion I don't even remember even whether I gave them alms. As soon as I saw them, I tried to move away from them and their lives and mine did not cross, even if I soon started to share bars with them, and some foolish conversations.

   So in January of our year 26 I began to intoxicate myself. More of a clown than a king in my solitary court, I experienced poisonous concoctions that blinded me. Drunk I came to work, drunk my servants saw me but told me nothing. For my butler Victor Sheffield I had a crazy gentleman's life, and he said nothing. I used to talk a lot with the gardener John Ellis, who always boasted of knowing the gossip of the neighborhood and the city. He contrasted with his nephew Tom, sober and efficient, a lover of gardening and something else, always involved in his own affairs. In the Thuban, nothing Harold Blessing said, but he looked at me with hostility. Actually my surname was important for him but he assumed that one day I would be all right. Anne-Marie watched me with pity, but could not do much for me. They were years of helplessness, in which I knew all the slums of Temple Road and the nearby Templar Village, in the company of prostitutes and criminals, with whom I spoke and talked nonsense, but did not make friends with. They were brothels full of smoke and alcohol, mazes without Ariadne. Nights accompanied by women entering Deanforest, girls who never were real conquests. With some of them I came in and not having them I felt so sad that I ended up destroying my own portrait in the living room. That’s why there is no picture of Nike at Deanforest, Protch. I destroyed it like a madman and not realizing that I was losing my soul, which I would take years to recover. But I thought: Luther protects the Siddeley. And he will finally guide me.


 

   From the throat down to the veins toxic concoctions entered which would end up poisoning Nike. Mind is shaded and then it is impossible to find your soul when also your heart is lost. All around there were ghosts, the outlines are blurred and even if you try to forget, alcohol makes you a servant of loneliness and in the hangover you are devoured by monsters and the man who had been born in a golden cradle, lay now on a bed of entelechy.


 

   It must have been the same month and almost the same day as Luke attended the football match and met the bald men when we learned a piece of news with surprise. An American man had got more than half of the Thuban Star shares and suddenly became our third president, the second for whom I worked. Samuel Weissmann he was called. It was rumored that he had convinced his family to move to this country and it was said that he had three children, now in their twenties, who did not rebel against the expatriation. If Harold Blessing felt bad for being without his throne, it is not known, but both men talked in a friendly way. I don't know what Mr. Weissmann thought of me. He was secretive and somewhat unmoved, as if he was man with no feelings, what was not wrong for me because he did not seem to suffer with the presence of his employee Nike, Nicholas for him, increasingly drunk and with a hangover in the early hours, and as hours passed, totally plastered. But he didn't seem to object. He knew John Richmonds's story, which was told in the Thuban in a legendary way, and I was for him a difficult employee, but a good helmsman who always knew where to steer the ship.

   Anne-Marie took me one day to The Wall Gardens, a bar with huge gardens in Churchway Boulevard, fortified and fragrant, next to Churchway Park, between the bus station and the lair of the bald men. The friendly conversation was leading to confidence and we talked about ourselves. And suddenly she confessed to me that she was in love with me. I could not tell her "I love you" and I started telling her the truth. She was however my guide, my essential banner, I needed her, and we could try. She knew me an alcoholic but helped me to not get drunk every day. And although we never got to pronounce the word, we left the place being a couple, and I still was her lover in July of the year 29.

   That was my month of holidays that year. I decided to travel to the north of Italy, where I was half of that month. A week in Turin and Milan, I stopped at a village called Gavirate and I moved to Venice. Upon my arrival the world was obsessed with the fall of the Skylab space station. No one knew where it would fall and it happened when I was in Venice, July 11. It finally fell in the Australian territory, at sea, and Earth regained its tranquility.

   That day I was in Piazza San Marco. I had been seeing the homonymous Basilica and I was engrossed watching the waters of the Adriatic. The Vaporetto was swimming there. Channels with its gondolas were calm, no wonder this town is called La Serenissima, when unconsciously I began to talk to the waters. Its liquid crystal hair seemed first to be congratulating me for having been half my life a conqueror of water. But it seemed to also tell me in this crazy imaginary dialogue: life is swimming, and you've always been fantasizing trophies at the end of the road, but living is not competing. You have to find the lane where to swing your arms, you swimmer, and at the end of each ribbon of water, you can start again the same route. I figured answering that I didn't know whether my life had a sense but perhaps one day I would find a different river or pond, a different glass. I came back to myself, kissed the Adriatic and I said goodbye to San Marco and four days later to Venice.

  Back in Hazington, I went out one night with Anne-Marie again, but on 26 July I decided to go alone to the Baphomet disco in Alder Street.

─And there, Protch, my prehistory ends and now my true story will begin. I have liked to tell you that part of my life here, in the library, where I still can see the portraits of my parents. But I've narrated the other seven sitting in the living room and I want you to know mine also there. It will take me several days to talk about the year 29.

─I'm in no hurry, Nike. I've known all your mates there and now I can name you, the eight, in chronological order. Then you are Mistress Oakes, Olivia, Lucy, Bruce, Miguel, John, Luke and Nike, but even so it is difficult for me to see you with them. Tell me everything unhurriedly.

   In the evening of that July 26 I have no memory that I could have gone somewhere previously. I went out in my dark grey suit, one of the best I had, walking towards Alder Street, to Baphomet. I didn’t take the car because I was supposed to return soaked in alcohol. The disco was crowded, smoke-filled. It was hot. As usual, and even if I was matched, I tried the conquest. But it was in vain. Women looked at me hostile noticing an increasingly drunk individual. It must already be July 27 when suddenly I felt like urinating. But all the toilets were occupied. Surely people consuming drugs. I had tried them all in those years but I was addicted only to alcohol. I made them no reproach but the urge was now increasingly pressing. Not knowing what to do, I looked for one of the doors and left.