some time before i left london I happened upon the King. I saw him in the evening, in the turquoise twilight. He was standing at the park entrance gazing east, where a deep, blue haze was already ascending, while behind him the sky was still aglow. Moving out of the shadow of the bushes by the gate he took a series of short soft-footed steps to the edge of the green, above which, at this time of the day, the many ravens of the park flew in restless circles.

The King stretched out his hands and the ravens gathered around him. Several settled on his arms, shoulders and hands, briefly flapping their wings, lifting again and flying a short distance, then returning. Perhaps each bird wanted to touch him at least once, or perhaps they had no choice. Thus encircled by birds, he began to make gentle swinging and circling movements with his arms, as if they were haunted by a memory of wings.

The King wore a magnificent headdress of stiff, brocaded cloths, held together by a clasp adorned with feathers. The gold thread of the brocade and the clasp itself still gleamed in the declining light. He was attired in a short robe, with gold-embroidered edgings shimmering around his neck and wrists. The robe, which hung to his thighs, was blue-green and fashioned from a taut, heavy fabric with a woven feather pattern. His long black legs protruded beneath the cloth. They were naked, and on his bare, wizened-looking feet, whose wrinkles contrasted oddly with his youthfully slim and sinewy knees and calves, he wore wedge-heeled sandals. The King was very tall and stood upright among these birds, and as he let his arms circle and swing his neck remained straight and steady, as if he kept a whole world in his headdress. His profile stood out against the western sky, and all I can say about it is that it was regal, conversant with grandeur, but also used to desolation. He was a king turned melancholy in his majesty, far from his country, where his subjects probably thought of him as missing or deposed. Nothing about his figure was connected to the surrounding landscape: to the towering age-old trees, the late roses of a mild winter, the surprising emptiness of the marshland opening up beyond the steep downward slope at the edge of the park, as if this was where the town abruptly ended. In his stark solitude he had emerged as a king at the edge of a park that the great city had more or less forgotten, and these birds with their sooty flutter and fading croaks were his sole allies.

•••

I saw the King when I returned from my walks. Leaving the river behind me, I would climb the slope and there he would be at the top, on the grass plateau, or still on his way from the shadows by the entrance, like a sentinel. Without wanting or knowing it and certainly without noticing me returning from the river, he marked for me the moment of transition between a landscape abandoned to all kinds of wildness, and the city.

I did not come across the King in any other place, and had trouble imagining him in a flat in the dark red-brick building opposite the park entrance, or in one of the newer, rough-and-ready terraces along my short walk from the park to the loud main road I had to cross. I felt relieved never to have seen him emerging from one of the dark alleyways between the old blocks of flats, or returning to the pale cone of lamplight in the doorway of one of the box-like houses.