“Is his name Daoud?” wondered Mr. N. He thought to invite the man’s wife to have dinner with them too, but then he remembered the words of Miss Zahra, and checked himself in time. Was he really going to enter the life of this man he despised? In any case, he had begun to feel an aversion for everyone and everything that possessed a voice and, moreover, used it to speak. And yet … there were signs of a deep, weathered sadness in his neighbor’s eye as the man spoke that final sentence.

“Dante,” said the woman with the stained lips, as though she had arrived just that moment, “was my favorite poet before I died.” Then, like someone on stage, she recited:

We set off across the water, leaving the shore behind.

Sluggish, that ancient boat embarked,

Weighted on its passage as never before.

As we crossed that lifeless slough

The mud rose up before us—sorry—before me, and from within came a voice:

“Who are you, you who have come here before your time?”

“Even if I have come here,” I replied, “I will not remain.

But you, who are you, O fallen, unclean man?”

“I am one who weeps,” he replied. And I said,

“May you weep and wail forevermore … ”

“That’s Dante’s Inferno,” whispered Mr. N, stunned and fascinated by what the woman was reciting from memory.

Daoud, indifferent to it all, asked, “By the way, why were you yelling like that? Calling for Miss Zahra?”

Of course! Mr. N struck his forehead. He shot to his feet and stammered, “Someone stole all my papers, everything I’ve been writing for weeks.”

“You’re a writer? I’m very pleased to meet you! I’ve never come across a writer before. You’ll have to tell us more sometime about what you’re writing. As for your papers, it has to be Miss Zahra, no? There’s no one else, believe me. Take it from me: she often goes into our room when we’re sleeping to steal our things.”

Mr. N didn’t care to hear Daoud accuse Miss Zahra of petty theft. Besides which, he was upset with himself for forgetting such an important matter as the loss of his work. He excused himself, muttering, explaining his hasty withdrawal by saying he had important things to attend to.

He hurried to his room and closed the door behind him, chest heaving. His hatred for Daoud, the mute woman’s husband, was now complete. He knew his name! “To whom do you sing your psalms?” How dare he! Mr. N sat down on the edge of his bed before his knees could betray him. Why couldn’t Andrew be the thief, after all, seeing as he was always butting into things that didn’t concern him and peppering his guests with questions about things that weren’t his business? Surely he was the one who’d slipped in and stolen his papers. Mr. N would go find him and raise the issue. Yet, no matter how he tried, he couldn’t quite get the idea out of his head that Miss Zahra might be the thief. But why? Wasn’t she constantly encouraging him to get back to writing? Hadn’t she made clear her pleasure at seeing him write, watching his stacks of paper multiply?