Table of Contents
Part I The Crooked Finger
1 The car accident 3
2 People reluctantly on their way into the shadows 7
3 The great discovery 10
4 Quicksand 14
5 The future is hidden underground 18
6 The bubble in the glass 21
7 Last will and testament 25
8 The man in the window 30
9 Hagar Qim 36
10 The lion man 40
11 Ice 44
12 Turning time in a different direction 48
13 A journey into the nether regions 51
14 The young medical student 53
15 A magician and an imposter 58
16 A dream about a muddy trench in Flanders 60
17 The caves 64
18 The floating rubbish dump 69
19 Signs 74
20 The raft of death 77
21 All this forgotten love 82
22 Timbuktu 87
23 A different archive 91
24 The courage to be afraid 93
25 Paris 97
26 The hippos 102
27 A cathedral and a cloud of dust 108
Part II The Road to Salamanca
28 Shadows 115
29 Luminous teeth 120
30 Photographs 125
31 The way out 129
32 Paris in flames, 1348 134
33 How long is eternity? 139
34 Room number 1 145
35 The road to Salamanca, Part 1 149
36 The man who dismounted from his horse 155
37 While the child plays 160
38 Elena 164
39 The awakening according to Plato 168
40 Winter night 172
41 Relief 174
42 Getting lost 178
43 The road to Salamanca, Part 2 182
Part III The Puppet on a String
44 The earth floor 189
45 Moving silently from darkness to darkness 194
46 Mantova and Buenos Aires 199
47 The stupid bird 204
48 Who will be there in the end to listen? 209
49 Salt water 213
50 The buffalo with eight legs 218
51 The secret of cave painters revealed 222
52 The happiness brought by a rickety lorry in the spring 226
53 The war invalid in Budapest 230
54 A visit when something both begins and ends 234
55 The woman with the sack of cement 238
56 A winter in Heraklion 243
57 Catastrophe on a German motorway 248
58 Jealousy and shame 255
59 The twenty-eighth day 260
60 Meeting in an amphitheatre 264
61 A thief and a policeman 269
62 Youth 274
63 The dead body on the bench for the accused 279
64 A. violent north-westerly storm 284
65 A fictitious meeting in a park in Vienna, 1913 289
66 The puppet on a string 293
67 Never being robbed of one's happiness 296
Epilogue 302