Something resided in these short and dense works that riveted the attention and fettered the soul; a powerful suggestion arose from these incisive compendium-like works – written in such a seemingly cold style, as if a reporter’s or a teacher’s – under which pulsated the fervour of a fanatic.

For Wrzesmian had believed in what he had been writing; for he had acquired as time went on the firm conviction that any thought, even the most audacious, that any fiction, even the most insane, can one day materialize and see its fulfilment in space and time.

‘No person thinks in vain; no thought, even the strangest, disappears fruitlessly,’ he used to repeat many times to his circle of friends and acquaintances.

And it seemed that it was precisely this belief in the materialization of fiction that caused a hidden flame to flow through the arteries of his works, for despite their apparent coldness, they penetrated to the core … .

But he was never satisfied. Like every creative artist, he was constantly seeking new means of expression and ever more distinct symbols that would represent his thoughts in the best possible manner. Finally he had abandoned the written word, scorning language as a too crude form of expression, and began to yearn for something more direct that would artistically and tangibly outdistance all that had gone before. It was not silence he sought – the ‘resting of the word’ of the symbolists; that was for him too pale, too nebulous – and lacking in sincerity. He wanted something else.

What that something would be, he didn’t precisely know, but he firmly believed in its possibility. A few facts garnered while he still wrote and published had strengthened this belief. He had convinced himself even then that despite the imaginary character of his creations, they possessed a particular energy that could flow out into the world. The crazy thoughts of Wrzesmian, coming out from the incandescent content of his work, seemed to have had a fertilizing-like power, and he saw their manifestations flare up unexpectedly in the acts and gestures of certain individuals, in the course of certain events.

But even this had not been enough. He desired creative realizations that would be completely independent of the laws of reality, realizations that would be as free as their source – fiction; and as free as their origin – dreams. This would be the ideal – the highest achievement, a complete, full expression without a shadow of insufficiency … .

Wrzesmian understood, however, that such an achievement might result in his own annihilation. Absolute fulfillment would also be a complete release of one’s energy, causing death through a surfeit of artistic exertion. Because the ideal, as is known, is in death. A work overwhelms the author with its weight. Thoughts fully realized can become threatening and vengeful, especially thoughts that are insane. Left alone, without a point of support on a real base, they can be fatal to their creator.

Wrzesmian had a presentiment of this eventuality, but he wasn’t swayed, nor frightened. His desire dominated everything else … .

Meanwhile the years went silently by without eliciting the materializations he longed for. Wrzesmian completely estranged himself from the world, taking up solitary residence at the outskirts of the city in a street that looked onto open fields. Here, enclosed in his two small rooms, cut off from society, he spent months and years in reading and contemplation. He slowly restricted himself to ever diminishing contact with daily life, to which he paid only minimal, unavoidable tribute. Besides, he was totally absorbed in himself, in his dreams and in longing for their fulfilment. His ideas, not projected on paper as before, took on strength and vitality; they grew through non-expression of their contents. Sometimes it seemed to him that his thoughts were not abstractions but something rich and substantial, that he could just about reach out and grasp them. But the illusion quickly blew away, leaving in its place only bitter disappointment.

Yet he didn’t lose heart. In order not to be too distracted by the sights of the outside world, he limited the scope of his perceptions, which constantly seen without change, day after day, gradually entered through the years into the well-knit circle of his ideas and became commensurate with their terrain. Eventually these perceptions merged with the world of his dreams into one particular area.

Thus, imperceptibly, some unreachable habitat was formed, some secret oasis to which no one had access except Wrzesmian, king of this unseen world. This milieu, imbued with the ego of the dreamer, appeared to the uninitiated as a simple place in space; people could only perceive its exterior, physical existence – but the internal pulsations of fermenting thoughts, the subtle connection these had with Wrzesmian’s own person, they failed to sense … .

By odd chance the place enveloped by the mind of the dreamer, and the one he transformed into the area of his dreams, was not his home. The oasis of his fiction arose opposite his windows, on the other side of his street, in the form of a two-storied villa.

The gloomy elegance of the house captivated him from the first moment he had occupied his new abode. At the end of a black double row of cypresses, their two lines containing a stone pathway, appeared a several-stepped terrace where a weighty, stylized double door led to the interior. Across the iron railing that surrounded the mansion, the wings of the house were losing colour. Sickly and sad walls, coated with a pale-greenish paint, peered out from inside.