The roads leading out of the city are closed. There is a curfew. Dead bodies litter the deserted streets. Shops are empty. So are many houses, because their inhabitants fled while they could. Matthew has stayed behind to care for his sick mother, who is suffering from some mysterious illness. One day, the unexpected happens: Matthew's long-lost father, who had left the family, turns up. He wants to get his son out of the town, whose days are numbered.
Have I committed a crime? Lamm cannot answer this question. But maybe it doesn't matter. After all, a mistake has been made, and now he can leave town. He thinks not of the chandelier, not of the look on the executioner's face in the tavern, but of the woman who slapped him the night before, the woman who now lies motionless before the wall, as still as a pebble. Is that the punishment? Lamm was pardoned. But the punishment only begins now, now, when the dead city disappears forever into the woods.
Uninvited visitors disturbed an abandoned and lonely man's peace on his fiftieth birthday.
