“It had not rained in Wessendam for days on end: beneath him the stones were dry and gritty with dust. Autumn’s first dead leaves, which lay at the bottom of the gutter, crumbled under his palms, and the largest fragments stung his flesh like needles. To his left and to his right, the high houses of Wessendam leaned over him, as if calling down mute imprecations. The gutter was barely half as wide as his body, and the alley at whose centre the gutter lay was no more than three feet wide: a p...assageway necessary but ignored, if not despised, separating the back of a house on the Sommerstrass from that of its counterpart on the Herbstestrass. In accordance with this contempt, no windows opened in the back of the houses, save a tiny round aperture just below the roof and a pair of low windows, barred with black iron, a few inches from the ground. Impossible to beg help there, assuming help might have been granted. He would have to climb the alley to its summit—to descend would have led him straight to the icy waters of the Schwarze Kanal and the drowning that had haunted his nightmares since childhood.MoreLessRead More Read Less
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