Zlatko and I step out of the bar and onto the cobbled street. We are leaving behind us Gligor, Gligor’s sudden temper and the chair he has just thrown against a wall and broken to pieces. All the way back to Zlatko’s flat, we walk without talking about this or anything else. We dodge the mid-summer, late night crowds, Ohrid lakeside tourists and locals alike. We pass by the post office, the old telephone exchange, the new McDonald’s, a supermarket and the international bus stand situated across the road from Zlatko’s graffitied block. We enter and climb the bare concrete stairs, five floors of them, until we are standing outside Zlatko’s wooden door.

Without a key, he opens it. It’s never locked, for philosophical reasons, as Zlatko has previously explained. We take off our shoes before we cross the threshold. We leave them outside, as is his ritual, and then Zlatko hands me a pair of the thick, woollen, crocheted house-socks that he keeps in a stack for visitors just inside the frame. We wear the socks so that the almonds and walnuts that he has spread thickly on the floors don’t hurt our feet. Those nuts can be dangerous, especially the ones that have been husked. I put on my nut-protection socks and walk down the hall into the living room, in the dark. Zlatko doesn’t like electricity.