Working together, the two goons forced me to kneel. They took my hands and spread them on the tiles before pressing my head to the floor. I was no longer able to see anything. I was in the position of someone half-blind, prostrate for prayer. Mr. Joe approached and spat out, “Five thousand, you fucker? Even if you said a hundred thousand, you would still have gotten what’s coming to you!”

Then he swept down with a sharp blow on my right hand. I heard a pop as the bones of my forearm snapped. There was a second blow, even more violent, on my left hand.

I bellowed. My voice burst out like a foreign object, as though it were a sharp stake driven up my anus and all the way out through my teeth. The pain was beyond expression, beyond my ability to comprehend; it surpassed my capacity to endure. All the nerves in my brain failed, and I blacked out momentarily. But like someone who realizes he is in a bad dream and tries to wake up, I took hold of the delicate rope of consciousness, guiding myself by it and moving forward with difficulty until I was able to raise my head. Through the window leading to the balcony, I beheld Shaygha, her arched body swinging back and forth between the arms of the two goons who each held a hand and foot. She was so light, her body was so small, and they swung her like a limp doll. They swung her faster and faster, and then they threw her from the fifth-floor balcony onto the asphalt of the street below.

Shaygha flew up into the air before my very eyes, and then she disappeared from my field of vision. The sound of her hitting the ground was like a wooden door slamming. Yes, the door was slammed shut, once and for all, on her life, on her disappointments, on the years of her suffering, and on her constant striving for a better life. I didn’t stay awake for long. As my vision went black, I saw her again, this time with two enormous wings that spread and carried her above the buildings, high above the clouds.

III

Madness is a low balcony looking out at the sunset.

I am sitting there, watching time pass without passing, a stretch of putrid time, ailing time, with pitted limbs. Insects crawl on me, pressing their legs and their faces into my bare skin. I shake them off in disgust and see them disappear without falling to the floor or flying away. There is a big black one on my belly that doesn’t wander across my skin like the others, but crouches there, motionless, as though it’s planning something. Indeed, it is certainly planning something. I look around. I am in a white room. I can’t make out all the details because I am scarcely able to turn my head. I feel a desire to move, but my eyes are the only things that work properly. The rest of my body feels as though it were nailed fast to a wooden plank. Am I in a grave? Will our beloved Lazarus come soon to wake me?