I’ve always had this urge to move forward… Ever since I entered college, my horizons expanded. I had energy, a desire to conquer the world. College was tedious. I learned some things, but my education was something I could have acquired on my own. I took what mattered — a diploma, a few meaningless friendships, a few meaningless relationships, and after a few years, I was knee-deep in the ocean of life. That energy, that drive of mine, kept pushing me forward.

I’m sixty years old, and I own a law firm on the 36th floor of one of those glass skyscrapers in New York. I’ve been married twice — two divorces and four children who became collateral damage of my career. I’ve had my victories and losses — more victories than losses; I suppose I can say I’ve achieved more in life than most people my age could even imagine.

When I was about to blow out the sixty candles on my cake, I wondered what I could wish for. Of course, I could expand my business, rent a few more floors, get married again, or simply retire somewhere until the end of my days. Strangely, I didn’t really want any of these things. I wanted to live — I had this insatiable thirst, but not the knowledge of how to satisfy it. My apartment was full of guests — maybe a hundred of them, probably wondering why I was taking so long to blow out the candles. Honestly, I didn’t care much about them, nor did they care about me. Who can have a hundred good friends? Maybe a few among the crowd? At that moment, even that seemed doubtful. They were just acquaintances — I had invited them, and they were there for my business connections. What a sorry pantomime. In the end, I blew out the candles, and the party went on.

After my birthday, I took a long break from work. The firm went on without me. I stayed home, feeling gloomy. I didn’t know why. At night, nightmares tormented me, waking me up. The same dream began to repeat itself in different forms. I dreamed of this Eastern guru, covered with a silver cloak, crouching. His face rose toward me — hairy, with a long beard and yellow animal eyes staring at me. They reminded me of my father’s eyes, who, drunk and mad, would come home late at night and beat me senseless — for no better reason than that he hated his own life.

I don’t know why this dream kept occurring and tormented me so much. I woke up sweating and trembling. I’m not a man who fears anything — least of all my own dreams. So I decided to face them. I began to travel, searching for something — an answer to my dreams, perhaps even the man from my nightmares. Initially, I visited numerous comfortable, glossy resorts in America and Europe. The dream continued. It seemed the man from my dreams didn’t belong there. Wandering those places was just a waste of time. I set out where I imagined he would be — eastward, to Asia, to exotic places like Tibet, India, Bangladesh. Initially, I hired guides to lead me, but I soon decided it was pointless. If I wanted to find the beast-like man, I had to do it myself. I started traveling alone, with a wad of money in my pocket. The luxurious hotels and elegant boulevards were replaced with damp, dirty rooms and muddy, unpaved roads.

One day, I was at a vast market on the outskirts of a large city. The traffic of vehicles crept through a crowd of strange people. Beggars — or maybe saints — crouched on the ground, eating what the poor around them could offer. As I walked along the muddy street, I saw a crouched man covered with a cloak of silver fabric. I looked at him, and he raised his eyes. It was him — the man from my dreams: the same beastly, hairy face and yellow eyes beneath long brows. I passed him by, stopped, and went back. I reached out and touched the silver cloak on his back. It fell to the ground. There was no one beneath it. The people around me looked curiously, then went on. I touched the money in my pocket and looked at my expensive Italian shoes, covered in mud. I don’t know why, but for the first time in my life, I wanted to change my clothes — to become one of the poor people passing by. I remained alone in the mud.