With that big nose and those small eyes, like a drug addict, he always walks at the bottom of the garden under the pine tree. Sometimes he bends over and looks under the tree. Anyone who sees him would think what a poor, harmless man to have been caught with all these lunatics. But I know him. I know that there, under the tree, three drops of blood have fallen onto the ground. He has hung a cage in front of his window. The cage is empty because the cat has had his canary. So he has left the cage hanging to lure the cats to the cage and then kill them.

It was only yesterday when he followed a calico cat. As soon as the animal went up the tree towards the window, he told the guard at the door to shoot the cat. Those three drops of blood are the cat’s but if anyone asked he would say they belong to the bird of truth.

Stranger than everyone else here is my friend and neighbour Abbas. It hasn’t been two weeks since they brought him. He has been warming to me. He thinks he is a poet and a prophet. He says every vocation, but especially that of a prophet, depends on chance and luck. People with high foreheads, for example, have it made even if they don’t know much. Whereas those with a short forehead, even if they are the wisest of all men in the world, end up like him. Abbas also thinks he is a skilful sitar player. He has put wires on a wooden board, making himself believe that he’s built a string instrument. He also has composed a poem which he recites for me eight times a day. I think it is for the same poem that they sent him here. He has composed a peculiar ballad:

What a pity that once more it is night.

From head to toe the world is dark.

For everyone it has become the time of peace

Except me, whose despair and sorrow are increased.

There is no happiness in the nature of the world,

Except death there is no cure for my sorrow.

But at that corner under the pine tree

Three drops of blood have fallen free.

Yesterday we were walking in the garden. Abbas was reciting the same poem. A man and a woman and a young girl came to see him. So far they have come five times. I had seen them before and I knew them. The young girl brought a bouquet of flowers. She smiled at me. It was apparent that she liked me. She had come for me, basically.