The flames were confined to Rebbie-ji’s suite, but the entire hospice filled with black smoke. The devadasis and whoever else was in the building were herded out by Manika. I could hear her calling my name frantically, but I stayed hidden in my corner curled up around my bag of shit and these pages that I had been writing every night by the light of a memorial candle, which I had grabbed instinctively, to fuel the fire. Now let the whole house burn down with us its dead inside, I prayed in my corner. I prayed for liberation, there was nothing I desired more than for my story to come to an end.

Let me go to Shmelke to die together with him as I was born with him, I told myself, but I was vanquished by my own weakness and did not venture out of my cave to cut through the smoke like a thick web and make my way to my brother’s side. Instead, I lay there through the night as my bag continued to fill with the story of my life. When they found Rebbie-ji the next morning he was black and charred like a piece of wood consumed in a furnace where the martyrs are cast. Buki ben Yogli and the temple girl Devamayi were found on the floor melted together in an embrace from which they could not be prized apart. The status of the old lady on the bed in the next room remained the same, perhaps somewhat more withered and shrunken to the discerning eye, but still no final determination could be made whether she was dead or alive. The devadasis along with everyone else who had inhabited the House of Holy Healing, except Manika, had fled forever. It was a demonic place, cursed and desecrated from the days of Mother Teresa and the lepers from whom she had contracted her sainthood. It could never be cleansed.