It is May when I next find myself again in Dr K’s office in Saska Kępa, the same four flights of stairs, the same plants, Piłsudski still on his horse and Vicky in the chair by the window.
I do not.
For a moment I am a minor operative in a le Carré novel, East Berlin cover blown, networks rolled up, the joes rounded up or shot clambering over the Wall.
“You look tired,” he says.
I sit. “Yeah, a bit.”
For once, there is no preparation, no anecdote, no message to decode, no urgency to produce a version of events that might be meaningful.
“The promise,” I say, after a pause, “was the thing. The sense that something might arrive.”
Something catches briefly in my throat. As if a nut has moved. I cough and the dry splintered remains of a hazelnut splutter out, bits catching on my lower lip. I spit them out into the plant pot. Vicky watches disgusted.
“Sorry about that,” I say.
“The nut is released,” Dr K says, with that dimpled smile. “Here, have some water.”
Outside, a bus passes on Francuska.
“I don’t think a nut requires much explanation,” I say. “It’s just a nut after all.”
Dr K and Vicky stare at me and then at each other.
We sit in silence and then stand.
Dr K is much shorter than I expect.
Outside, Francuska continues.
Across the lake the old man is still walking anti-clockwise.
I start to suspect that he may simply be walking.
At the corner of the street I catch sight of myself reflected in a shop window.
Not entirely human.
But no longer entirely insect either.
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