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The vineyard stood apart from busy routes and other farms. There was no-one else for many miles, and the Mentor didn’t allow me to go far, since I’d made my promise to him. To tell the truth, I had no desire to go anywhere. I came to enjoy the quiet and measured life full of village romance and fresh air but without any conventions, norms of behaviour, unnecessary questioning or false sympathy.

In my spare time, mostly in the evenings, I took a horse and rode around the area. The Mentor had five black thoroughbred horses. I fed and cleaned them and their stable. As a reward, the Mentor allowed me to ride. He taught me that as well. I discovered other passions too. Passions that I never would have imagined. In the living room there was a large bookcase with so many wonderful books hidden there! For connoisseurs of antiques, they were worth millions of Euros, but here they just gathered dust on the shelves. There were first editions of Shakespeare and Goethe, old maps of Europe, treatises of Greek classics. I’d never been a lover of books, but the Mentor’s library absorbed me. I spent hundreds of hours leafing through old, yellowed pages.