“The sound of a heavy train rolling slowly over old rails—a steady clack-clack—and I sensed it was carrying me away, someplace quiet. I knew that they were talking to me and that they were smiling behind their masks, though how I knew I couldn’t say. And through it all the sound of the train was very strong and very present in the theater. I tried lifting my head, craning my neck to watch the train go by. The train was gold, with a ridiculous wooden smokestack like something from a cartoon, but though I felt my head was raised, that I was watching that train, I hadn’t moved at all. I’m not sure if it’s possible to describe the feeling, but it was as if I were walking up a down escalator, moving or sitting in a waiting room where time itself had been switched off. That’s how it was for me, unable to move, unable to speak. Then someone put something over my face, over my nose and mouth, and said, ‘Count to ten.’ And I hadn’t counted at all, when suddenly… Tik! Tak!”

Alya paused for a moment, then went on.

“No, that was it exactly: Tik! Tak! They put me under and woke me up. Killed me and brought me back. Just like that. Tik! Then, tak! Like they’d pushed a button or something. Like I was a vacuum cleaner.”

She turned to me, “Do you think I’m a vacuum cleaner?”

I grinned despite myself.

“I do not.”

“No, that’s exactly what I am. They pushed the button twice. Killed me and revived me. Like gods, or God’s emissaries.”

She paused. What she said next was the sort of thing that Bahr would be telling me just two years later.

“But if they were sent by God they wouldn’t have come so late. Why didn’t He send them earlier? And if they were gods, why couldn’t they have been gentler with me? Or is it just that He or they don’t care?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t heard from Him in a long time. Maybe it’s you who should be telling me. You’re the one with supernatural talents. I’m the only earthling here.”

She didn’t smile. “We still don’t know…” she said, looking down at herself, her body beneath the bandages.

“I’ll leave here missing parts of myself. I wonder what else got pulled out with my womb.”

Another pause, like she was facing the truth all over again. I didn’t volunteer a response.