It was almost sunrise when he set off back to his house. His colleague’s talk was still going round in his head.
So that was the explanation! That was the explanation of the loathing that his father had harbored for thirty years. That was why his father was afraid of him, and for that very reason he wished that his son were a horse so that he could put a bullet through his brain.
That was the explanation, then.
The brown mark, tinged with red, which zigzagged across much of his right side and back, a mark like the one that had covered Barq’s side, the victim’s blood, as the legend put it. That mark, which his girlfriend had been touching one day when she said: “It’s the biggest mole I’ve ever seen. But why is it reddish, like a patch of blood?” That was it, then. His poor father was afraid of him because he carried the mark of his victim’s blood on his side from birth, as Barq had borne his mother’s blood for years before he met her, crushed her skull, and pushed her into the river.
This, then, was what had tortured his father for thirty years and made him wish that his son were a horse, so that he would have the right to put a bullet through his brain.
An idiotic story, destructive of people’s lives. Idiocy in which his father had lived for thirty years. A barrier of fear erected between father and son. Why? Because Abu Muhammad did not know the simple medical explanation behind that perplexing riddle, a reddish-brown patch. Because his father …
All at once he stopped in the middle of the road, thinking:
“My father tried to demolish this myth. He wanted to challenge the superstition. And what was the result? It seems that Abu Muhammad was the winner. My father lost the battle, and the price he paid was heavy.
“A reddish-brown patch. We know what causes it, but we don’t know why it’s in one place and not in another. Mightn’t it be a sign of some kind? Abu Muhammad said that my mother was an excellent rider and very good at handling horses. Why did Barq kill her, then? Why did he specifically crush her skull and push her into the river, for no reason? Why all this insistence on killing her?
“Abu Muhammad won the battle, and my poor father lost it, and his youth with it. But now my poor father is embarking on another battle, with me this time. Which of us will win?”
He walked on a little, and then stopped again. A torturing thought had exploded in his head.
“I allowed that talkative, inquisitive doctor to perform the surgery, quite willingly, merely because I had been hurt by the patient’s raving. Can he have killed him out of negligence, because he was taken up with listening to him? If that is so, then I am the murderer. I was capable of performing the operation perfectly, in spite of the poor old man. What have you done, you fool?”
He stood still for an instant, then turned and began to race back to the hospital. The sun had begun to rise, and as his big feet struck the damp paving stones, the echo resounded like a horse’s galloping.