Trains, refugees, military convoys in the dark. During a long sleepless night next to the woodburning stove, on Italy’s Eastern frontier, Paolo Rumiz senses the ill omens of a Europe besieged by wars and governed by the powers of a savage economy. He receives alarming signals from France, Germany, Spain, Greece, and the Baltic countries and wonders how to fend them off. Orwell has come to Brussels, the principles of the European Constitution are in ruins, barrier borders are coming back. All around, war against the human lives that are migrating, war of all against all, a heavy atmosphere of inhumanity and indifference. The man in the dark feels that barbarians could arrive at any time, and he understands that the word "fascism" is inadequate to define them. Behind fascism there was at least an idea of society, behind the barbarians there is only a false identity constructed by influencers and devoid of the sweet scent of the homeland. And it is at night that they get on the move, digiting words of hate on the web. The new barbarians are making better use than anyone of this perverse machine to fill the political vacuum created by the lightweight left, distant from the people and devoid of ethics. But just when "all the accordions of the night seem to be playing together", Rumiz discovers myriad points of light from the Atlantic to the lands of the East. In Germany, but also elsewhere, millions have taken to the streets against the sovereigntists. That’s when he feels the demon of irony and struggle growing within him, and at the same time his trust in the power of the word of which he feels himself the guardian. Then the sky clears, and the shadows flee into the nooks and crannies of the woods.