Even as she transcribes the flood of his words she notes his bruised arms, the prominence of his facial bones, the small glistening sores about his mouth. His curly hair has long since turned lank; each time it is shampooed by one of the orderlies it grows thinner, it seems to lose color. A new medication is being spoken of—a “radical” new form of chemotherapy. Or will he be transferred to another hospital after all? The Roswell Clinic in Buffalo, perhaps; Sloan-Kettering in New York City. Marya resists the impulse to flinch at the sight of the needle marks on his forearms—that papery-thin discolored flesh, so often violated. Always, the nurses are drawing out specimens of his blood; always they are monitoring his urine; he jokes that nothing is his any longer, it is simply being produced for the sake of the laboratory and its “inconclusive prognosis.”

Sometimes he loses the thread of his thought and requires Marya to read what she has written. On that afternoon of her final visit Marya reads, stumbling: “ ‘The tragic error of all previous commentaries has been to substitute mere word-concepts for. . . . The tragic error of all . . .’ ”

Father Shearing tells her to stop; she must be exhausted.

“You sound exhausted,” he says half accusingly.

Marya begins to protest but he silences her. For a long awkward moment—a very long moment—no one speaks.

Only the wristwatch’s ticking is conspicuous, and Father Shearing’s shallow erratic breath. He is angry with her; she has disappointed him; she shifts uneasily in her seat. Someone passes by the opened door but it is a stranger with another destination: Marya feels a sharp tinge of regret.

You don’t seem to understand—I will die in your place.

If there is a just God, if there is any mercy in Him, something more than wrath . . . accident . . . stupidity. . . .

“I suppose you resent this drain on your time and I can’t blame you,” Father Shearing says. His head is resting lightly on a pillow; his reddened eyelids are half closed. But he eyes her narrowly, suspiciously. “There must be an infinity of things you’d rather do with your time . . . you’re how old, after all? . . . seventeen? Or younger? Boyfriends, school activities. . . .”

“No,” says Marya uncertainly.

“A girl your age. . . . And I’m a foregone conclusion, after all. A poor investment. Not really worth abducting, spiriting away.”