The snake was still at a slight distance from her, but it was impossible for her to turn and run, because you couldn’t run on sand.

The snake was swaying. She was conscious of it swaying, though she couldn’t look at it directly – it was too repulsive. As though her vision had been smeared with something slimy. She looked at the sun, picturing the snake in its entirety. But it was impossible to shut her eyes.

Despite the presence of the snake in this desolate place where there was no one to rescue her, she was too young for the idea of death to present itself. She was only worried about the pain of being bitten. She tried to tighten her grip on the shell she was holding but it slipped out of her perspiring hand, gashing her soft palm as it dropped to the sand. She could feel the blood oozing out but she didn’t look down at it, keeping her eyes fixed midway between the sun and the hood of the snake.

She couldn’t have said how much time passed this way, but at some point she spotted a man on the sand hill.

Even out of the corner of her eye, she could see what the man was doing. He had taken off his shirt and, after a brief pause, was skilfully using it to whip the snake.

She ran. Trying to drag her feet across the sand instead of sinking into it, she tripped and fell on the brick steps of the music school, and began to cry.

The man appeared a little later at the spot where she sat weeping. Sand clung to his thin body. He had sand in his hair too. Looking at her bleeding palm, he said, ‘No poison.’ She sobbed loudly.

The man took her right hand, the uninjured one, and led her into the school. The floor had not yet been laid. Just bricks. Brick walls. A hole where the window was supposed to be. The room was dark. The air inside was moist, damp. Outside, the sun had set.

She saw a mosquito net rolled up in a corner of the room. A pitcher of water next to it. A shirt, trousers and a towel hung on the wall. The man had hollow cheeks, sunken eyes and a tangled mop of hair.

She didn’t like the man. She tried to free herself from his grip so she could go home, but he kept a firm hold on her, refusing to let go. Now she felt a different kind of fear. An unfamiliar fear, but still she couldn’t tell him to let go of her hand. The man rinsed her hand with water from the pitcher, and then made her sit down on the mosquito net. Looking at the hole that was the door, she wondered why she had run towards the school building.

‘I want to go home,’ she said. The man nodded. Then he pulled a book out from behind the pitcher and handed it to her. She was startled when she looked at it.