That night I spun around on the bed like a whipped top. Insomnia picked at my brains with a heap of pointless questions: «And what if there are no eight million in nature? What if it’s all not as it seems? What if the business is crooked? What if it’s a setup?»
Answers, simple and clear ones, there were none. Fantastical suppositions piled up in my skull like towers of Babel and vanished without a trace… Pseudo-logical chains of a thousand links wrapped around me, squeezed until my bones ached, and vanished too… A million times repeated «Maybe it’ll pass» wrapped me in the cool sheets of calm, and a million times «Don’t count on it» jabbed me awake…
I kept leaping out of bed, wandering about the room, rinsing my face with water, ending up under the sheet again, and could not manage to relax or settle down. What was the matter?
Toward morning, around three, it dawned on me. I had found a simple explanation for the bad feelings! The day before I had walked around Hamburg far too relaxed. The serene year spent on sweltering San Marco was telling. And the German police, incidentally, will not soon forget a daring raid two years old. Surely I am still on the wanted list. Which means one must be careful. The bad premonitions are giving a signal: don’t slacken, stay on your guard.
Crossbow, keep watch!
The stone of insomnia fell away from me and I fell asleep instantly.