STUDIO

Our wanderer Nubky roamed the sterile white plain, now dressed. He was looking for supplies he could take on his way to London. Something he didn't quite understand what had brought him here. It was an abandoned military camp. It had been hastily abandoned and recently. The embers on the stove were burning and the footprints had not disappeared with the blizzard. But the rush did not stop them from taking everything they could carry. The clothes she wore were thick khaki pants with suspenders, a white shirt and a brown leather jacket, and a hat with a bear fur lining. One of the aircraft left behind was a twin-engine Fokker F27, model manufactured in 1985. He used a tug to fetch gasoline in 100-gallon gallons from the aircraft fuel station about a hundred and fifty meters away.

He was amazed at how quickly technology had advanced since its time. Of what your brain had in time given the gift of remembering. Although so many demons disturbed him in his fevered mind, the gifts he had received surpassed any of the things he ignored. And even if he didn't remember flying a plane, he knew how and doubted he would ever have the chance to do so. Just like his destination, fixed like a tack on a map, would determine a route that he knew nothing about: London, England.

In the English capital, a few minutes ago, Ellen arrived at her apartment with the enigmatic guest, who she longed for to bring her answers to questions that had been asked for a long time and that had been left unanswered until then.

- Ah, yes, my studio. There's plenty of space here. You can settle down and rest. It was a difficult night. But at least he left that hospital.

- How did you get that photo? Asked the priest. On the messy table, in the midst of papers and photographs was the photograph in 15x25 format, Nubky beside his wife Gurnyeva. The expression of despair when looking at the image gave Ellen chills and she remembered things buried many years ago.

- My great-grandfather took this photo in Siberia many, many years ago.

- Where's your great-grandfather? Take me to him. I need to find this bastard, this monster. He is the incarnate demon himself who walks in disguise across the land.

- I haven't seen my great-grandfather in over twenty years and I believe he's dead. He never came back from Siberia. This photo I got in a museum. It was stolen from him by one of his crew's defectors who left him to die - Ellen went to the bar and helped himself to a scott. He offered it to the priest but he shook his head. They differed over Nubky's questionable existence. She questioned him about the year the photo was taken and that the Eskimo must have been around forty at the time and it would be impossible for him to still be alive.

- You don't know anything, do you? You don't know who he is. Who I am. Look this. - The priest abruptly took the scott bottle with whiskey in half, hit it on the table with extraordinary force and with part of the bottle in his hand made a cut on his neck. While he was bleeding he laughed and looked into her frightened eyes. - You can watch me bleeding to the end. It will not be more than that. I do not die. I've already been dead. If I tell you the way I died, you might be scared to death. It all has no end. Your great-grandfather knew. You need to tell me everything you know. You have to help me.

Ellen was staring at the pale man in front of her. Weak, with sunken eyes. He tied a cloth around his neck. What made her think that different from what he said, to scare her, surely, he still had to contain the minimum of blood inside himself to stay upright. She got up and went back to the bar. He opened a bottle of bourbon and overturned glasses and glasses with a strange ease for her. And it was like a flash, a lightning streak across the skies, that this unfortunate memory of that night at Reinaldo's house struck him. The book, the stories: Padre, Nubky, Atílio and Andrey. She didn't read the whole book and yet she absorbed the stories, as if they were water and her brain was soaked in her lungs after drowning. She didn't know how or why, but she knew that Reinaldo was in danger. She would have to go back to Brazil.