But I wasn’t in the mood for sex, and I just sat there, drinking. You were in the couch opposite, flirting with the doctor. Then I noticed the spot on your left cheek. It was hidden by make-up, but it slowly emerged after some kissing and a cocktail spill. L. had a beauty spot at the same place. I couldn’t divert my stare from it, I was enthralled.

Just above the couch where you and the doctor were sitting, an African mask was displayed. Some kind of trophy. It was an inverted face. The cheeks were hollow, and the mouth was a perfect circle. I looked at it, and then at you, and I felt something I couldn’t put in words.

I went to bed, leaving you and Dr. Kustel and my fellow mourners to the joys of the flesh. I didn’t sleep that night though. I had had a revelation, and I didn’t know how to interpret it.

It took some time before I found the answer, but I soon reckoned that hope was stirring in me again. At last, it felt good to be alive. I was dreaming of faces now. Every night, endless faces blending one into another. The sequence would start invariably with you as L., gradually morphing into the face of the hooker, the last image being always that hollow African mask.

I knew there was something to unravel, but what? how? The enlightenment came yesterday, in the library, while I was reading the obscure verses of one L. Kolway.

"And your eternal face;

resurgent with history to come."

I sneaked out from the estate and hitchhiked to Frankfurt. I knew where to go. I cruised through the red light district and here I am. With a proposal. I want you to change mask again. Invert it. Your hooker’s make-up is a masquerade, as hollow as the African mask that hung above you that night back in Haupthof. The spot that you wanted to hide was unveiled after all. Maybe you didn’t notice, maybe you didn’t care, but it was a sign. Masks are not what they represent, but what they transform. And you are a professional transformer, aren’t you?