Summary

The use of present tense in the summary of this part of the book reflects the immediacy and energy of the narrative.

Section 1 – One night in February, the narrator is making himself dinner when there is a knock at his door. He knows who it is, commenting in narration that it has been almost exactly two years since he had last seen Mitko – in Varna. He describes having eliminated the means to communicate with him from his computer and his phone, saying that he “wanted to make it more difficult … to find him in a spasm of remorse” (106). He opens the door, and Mitko is indeed there, thinner and seeming even less healthy. The narrator invites him in, turns off the stove, and they start to talk.

Mitko reveals that he has been having a difficult time. Mitko has contracted syphilis...