Another dream is the dream of the desert island. The child is there playing with his wheelbarrow. He fills it with sand, transports the sand somewhere else, empties it again, and so on, for a long time. Then suddenly it is dark, it is cold, there is no one, anywhere, only the stars shine in their infinite solitude.

Another dream. The child wants to go back to Grandmother's house. He walks in the streets, but he does not know the streets in the town. He gets lost, the streets are deserted, the house is no longer where it should be, nothing is in the right place, Yasmine is calling for him, she is crying, but the child does not know which street, which alley to take in order to find her.

The most terrible dream is the dream of the dead tree, the black tree in the garden. The child is looking at the tree and the tree stretches out its bare branches toward the child. The tree says, "I am nothing but a dead tree, but I love you just as much as I did when I was alive." The tree speaks with Yasmine's voice, the child approaches, and the blackened, dead branches embrace him and strangle him.

Lucas chops down the dead tree, he saws it up and makes a bonfire in the garden.

When the fire goes out, the child says, "Now it is nothing but a pile of ashes."

He goes to his room. Lucas uncorks a bottle of brandy. He drinks. He is overcome with nausea. He goes back into the garden and he throws up. A plume of white smoke still rises from the black ashes, but then large raindrops begin to fall, and the shower finishes off the work of the fire.

Later, the child finds Lucas in the wet grass, in the mud. He shakes him.

"Get up, Lucas. You have to come in. It's raining. It's dark. It's cold. Can you walk?"

Lucas says, "Leave me here. Go inside. Tomorrow everything will be all right."

The child sits down next to Lucas; he waits.

The sun rises. Lucas opens his eyes.

"What happened, Mathias?"

The child says, "It's just a new nightmare."

5

The insomniac continues to appear at his window every evening at ten o'clock. The child is already in bed. Lucas leaves the house. The insomniac asks him the time, Lucas tells him. Then he goes to Clara's house. At dawn, when he comes home, the insomniac asks him the time again; Lucas tells him and goes to bed. A few hours later the light goes out in the insomniac's room and the pigeons take over his windowsill.

One morning, when Lucas comes home, the insomniac calls out, "Excuse me!"

Lucas says, "It is five o'clock."

"I know. I'm not interested in the time. It's just my way of starting a conversation with people. I just wanted to tell you that the child was very restless last night. He woke up about two o'clock, he went into your bedroom several times, he spent ages looking out the window. He even went out into the street, down to the bar, then he came back and went to bed, I suppose."

"Does he do that often?"

"He often wakes up, yes. Nearly every night. But it's the first time I've seen him leave the house during the night."

"Even during the day he never leaves the house."

"I think he was looking for you."

Lucas goes up to the apartment. The child is sleeping soundly in his bed. Lucas looks out the window. The insomniac asks, "Everything in order?"

"Yes. He's asleep. What about you? Do you never sleep?"

"I doze off now and again, but I never really sleep. I haven't slept for eight years."

"What do you do during the day?"

"I go for walks. When I feel tired I go and sit in a park. I spend most of my time in parks. It's there that I sometimes doze off for a few minutes, sitting on a bench. Would you like to come with me sometime?"

Lucas says, "Now, if you like."

"Fine. I'll feed my pigeons and come right down."

They walk down the deserted streets of the sleeping town toward Grandmother's house. The insomniac stops by a few square meters of yellow grass with two old trees spreading out their bare branches.

"Here's my park. The only place I can manage a moment's sleep."

The old man sits on the solitary bench next to a dried-up fountain covered in moss and mildew.

Lucas says, "There are nicer parks in town."

"Not for me."

He lifts his walking stick and points to large, beautiful house. "We used to live there, my wife and I."

"Is she dead?"

"She was killed by several shots from a revolver three years after the end of the war. One evening at ten o'clock."

Lucas sits down next to the old man.

"I remember her. We used to live by the border. When we came home from town we used to stop here to have a drink of water and rest. When your wife saw us from her window she would come down and bring us large lumps of potato sugar. I've never eaten it since. I remember her smile and her accent, and also her murder. The whole town talked about it."

"What did they say?"

"They said she was killed so they could nationalize the three textile factories that belonged to her."

The old man says, "She inherited those factories from her father. I worked there as an engineer. I married her and she stayed here. She loved this town very much. But she retained her nationality, and they were forced to kill her. It was the only solution. They killed her in our bedroom. I heard the gunshots from the bathroom. The assassin got in and out by the balcony. She was shot in the head, the chest, and the stomach. The inquiry concluded that it was an embittered employee who did it for revenge and then fled across the border."

Lucas says, "The border was already sealed, even then, and a worker wouldn't have owned a revolver."

The insomniac closes his eyes; he is silent.

Lucas asks, "Do you know who is living in your house now?"

"It's full of children. Our house has been turned into an orphanage. But you must get back, Lucas. Mathias will soon be waking up and you must open the bookshop."

"You're right. It's already half past seven."

Sometimes Lucas goes back to the park to chat with the insomniac. The old man talks about the past, about the happy times with his wife.

"She was always laughing. She was happy, carefree as a child. She loved the fruits, the flowers, the stars, the clouds. At sunset she would go out onto the balcony to look at the sky. She claimed that nowhere else in the world were sunsets as wonderful as in this town, were the colors in the sky so brilliant and beautiful."

The man closes his bloodshot eyes, heavy with sleeplessness. He continues in a different tone of voice, "After her murder, the authorities requisitioned the house and everything in it: all my wife's furniture, crockery, books, jewelry, clothes. All they let me take away was a suitcase with a few clothes. They told me I should leave town. I lost my job at the factory. I had no work, no house, and no money.

"I went to see a friend, a doctor, the same one I telephoned the night of the murder. He gave me some money for a train ticket. He said, 'Never come back to this town. It's a wonder they let you live.'

"I took the train, I arrived in the next town. I sat down in the waiting room in the station. I still had enough money to go farther, maybe even to the capital. But there was nothing for me to do in the capital, or in any other town. I bought a ticket at the booking office and came back here. I knocked at the door of a small house opposite the bookshop. I knew all the workers in our factories. I knew the woman who opened the door. She didn't ask any questions. She told me to come in, she led me to a room. 'You can stay here as long as you like, sir.'

"She is an old woman, she lost her husband, her two sons, and her daughter during the war. Her daughter was only seventeen.