There was a picture of a naked girl on the green cover. The book was old and filthy. She dropped the book and tried to run away. But the man’s bony hand was like a pincer gripping her arm. She panted and sobbed. The man pushed the book back into her hands.

She opened the book. A group of naked boys and girls, standing, sitting, lying on their backs or sto­machs, seemed to come alive in the faint blue light. She realised that they were doing strange things with the places between their legs, and seemed to be calling to everyone to watch them as they did so. Her stomach turned, her heart was hammering, her throat was dry, but she couldn’t toss the book aside. Her hands were numb. Even the gash in her left hand no longer hurt. The man beckoned to her, and when she glanced at him, he signalled to her to look lower down. She did. She saw that his trousers were unzipped and that a dark, limp object was poking out. She recognised it right away. A comparison popped into her mind: it looked like a rotten, shrivelled jackfruit that had fallen to the ground. The man shook it a couple of times, and then looked at her.

He glanced alternately at her, the pictures in the book, and the limp thing. His eyes shone in expectation.

She managed to free herself and pelted straight out of the room. She looked back over her shoulder without slowing down. No, there was no one chasing her.

She never told anyone about this. Not about the snake, not about the man. She never went back to the music school. In fact, it was a long time before she would even leave the house. But she saw the man. She saw him standing under a drumstick tree a little way off, peering into a book. A book with a green cover. Or passing by her house, again with the book in his hands.

Tossing in her sleep, she reflected that for a long time she would see a dry, shrivelled jackfruit dangling in clumps of darkness whenever she shut her eyes.

The man had pursued her ever since, clutching the book with the green cover. She had run past crossroads, turns in the road, and broken walls, beneath dark trees in the courtyards of ruined temples – only to come face to face with him. She would recognise him immediately, and run away.

But today, in her sleep, instead of running away, she stopped in her tracks. With darkness falling, she hastened back to the music school where the man had sat with his trousers unzipped, his diseased penis poking out, and the book with the green cover open before him. By now she knew that very few people possessed the kind of penis that could reach as far as a woman’s desire, her womanhood. Then why be afraid? Why run away? She held the book open for the man. She turned the pages, displaying them to him, shaking the book in his face. ‘Erect, erect …’ she screamed sharply. And the man shrank back, spittle trickling from his mouth as he stared blankly at his inanimate penis.