Chapter 8 The Second Disappearance

23:45

Professor Henryk Tamka lit a cigarette and slowly inhaled the smoke after a long day at the University. It was an ordinary day, some students engaged in hectic conversations about the political situation in China and Tibet, there were still some idealistic ones, ready to protest for the sake of people, whose civil liberties were taken away from them. He liked his job, but he had to admit: he felt unfulfilled. His academic career didn’t go as planned. It took him almost six years to finish his Ph.D. thesis. He was struggling with other stages of his career. It did take him a long time to gather his thoughts, to form a coherent chapter of any scientific sense. It also took him ages to get published in any scientific magazine of some prestige. He was somewhere in between: not really blossoming in between university gates, not entirely lost among the shelves of academic books. No wonder he looked for another form of expression. No wonder for some time now he engaged in other forms of work.

He called it work. It was exhaustive. It required precision and forced him to take care of himself: to eat better and to sleep longer. But he couldn’t say he didn’t enjoy it. Far from it, he had always had inclinations towards this kind of profession. His parents could have been surprised, maybe even shocked, but his parents were now living their pensioners' lives (which included supermarket sales hunting, enjoyable travels by public transport and park walks with sticks) and they didn’t really need to know everything. Not that he was ashamed. Far from it.

Being a university professor was not a dream come true. Students were rarely ambitious, they just wanted to slide through exams without proper preparation. He also didn’t put in all these hours. Sometimes it was him who was unprepared. Sometimes he forgot some dates, at times misspelled the name of some historical figure. Often he got lost in his train of thought. Often he thought about another weekend, another job, another busy day far from his university duties.

In the evening he decided to go for a walk in Skaryszewski Park, one of the biggest parks in Warsaw. He put on his new autumn coat, wore his new shiny shoes, took his decent umbrella.

When he was walking along the park, he appreciated all the physical activities, which he had been engaging into over the last few years. He was never out of breath, even though he was over fifty. His muscles were in great shape.

The park was almost empty. He decided to approach the pond. When he was looking at the shining surface of the water, he heard a voice.

‘Good evening, professor.’

By the time he turned around, he had heard a loud thud and felt an excruciating pain at the back of his neck. Then all went black.