MargenI never saw my upstairs neighbour, but every night I heard his footsteps crossing the ceiling from one side to the other, slow, like someone pacing out a room that never ends.
I left notes under his door. I asked him, with all the politeness of insomnia, to walk more softly. He never answered, but the footsteps grew gentler, almost tender, as if someone had learned to pity me.
The night I stopped hearing them, I climbed the stairs for the first time. The door upstairs was open. Inside there was no furniture, no dust, no windows. Only my own ceiling seen from the other side, and on the floor, written in chalk, every note I had slipped under the door.
That was when I understood that for weeks I had been living on the top floor of a building that had only one.