The night was restless, as was to be expected after everything I had been through.
I lay in my spacious bedroom, where heavy velvet curtains barely held back the gusts of wind that penetrated through the cracks in the window frames. The room felt like a cage, and the bed like a torture chamber where sleep refused to come.
My eyes were wide open, staring at the ceiling, decorated with moldings in the form of intertwining grapevines, which in the dim light looked like living tentacles reaching out to me.
I couldn't fall asleep for a long time, lying with my eyes open and listening to the sounds of the estate — the distant footsteps of the night guard, the rustle of the wind outside the windows, my own thoughts, which refused to subside. As soon as I closed my eyes, the dark yawning of the mine, the count's dust-covered face, and the dull sound of the collapse reappeared before me.
Too much had come together in one place at one time.
