60
TALES FROMTHE FUTURE
didn’t feel aroused the way he usually did when he glimpsed her half-naked
body. He careful pulled the coverlet up over the sleeping Inga. Quietly, so
he wouldn’t wake her, he got up and went to the kitchen.
He made some coffee and drank it. He lit a cigarette and, as if lost in
thought, began pacing back and forth across the spacious eat-in kitchen.
That dream! The unusual dream he’d had during the night had disturbed
his feelings. Yes, his feelings, not his thoughts. Victor dreamt that he was
walking along a shady path, intensely analyzing the feasibility of his latest
commercial deal. His bodyguards, whose presence annoyed him and preven-
ted him from concentrating fully, were walking in front of and behind him.
The continual noise of cars rushing along on the other side of the park fence
also made it hard for him to get his thoughts together. Then suddenly the
bodyguards vanished, and the noise of the cars faded. And he heard the
singing of birds and saw how beautiful the spring foliage on the trees along
the path and the flowering bushes were. He stopped, delighting in the serene
feelings that had arisen within him. And he felt better than ever before in his
life. And then he caught sight of a little boy running along the path toward
him from far away. The sunlight illuminated the boy from behind, creating a
halo around him, so it looked as if a little angel was running toward him
along the path.
In the next instant it dawned on him: running toward him was his little
son. The boy was running toward him, working his little arms and legs hard.
Victor crouched down and threw his arms open wide in joyful anticipation of
an embrace, and his little son threw his little arms open as he ran, too. Then
suddenly, once he’d run to within about three meters of Victor, the little one
stopped running. The smile faded on the child’s face, and the serious ex-
pression in the child’s eyes made Victor’s heart beat more powerfully.
“Well, come on, come to me!Come here, I’ll give you a hug, little son.”
Smiling sadly, the little one answered:
“You won’t be able to do that, Papa.”
“Why not?” Victor astonished.
“Because…” the little one answered, his voice filled with sadness. “You
can’t hug me, Papa, because you can’t hug a son who’s not been born. And
