The secretary was an old man with a long neck and a withered, sharp face. Thanakar’s shadow in the doorway caused him to look up and turn his luminous blind eyes.

“Good morning, Monsignor.”

“Ah, Thanakar,” said the old man. “Come in.”

He spoke as if the house was his. And in a sense it was. All things belonged to God, and he was God’s chief minister. The doctor moved his tongue around the inside of his mouth. The presumption made him angry. He came down into the room and limped across to yank open the curtains.

“Can I offer you a cup of water, Monsignor?”

The old man blinked in the sudden light and turned slowly towards the windows. “No, thank you. No water, thank you. I’m not thirsty. I just stopped in for a minute.” He paused, perfectly comfortable with silence. His eyes drifted around the room.

“Well, can I offer you anything?”

Again, the old man waited before replying. “I don’t think so, thank you. I would have taken anything I wanted. No, there is one thing. You can offer me advice, my son.”

“Whatever I have is yours,” responded Thanakar between his teeth.

“I know that, my son. I know that.” The old man sighed. Pulling his scarlet robes around him and stretching out his hand for guidance, he walked around the bed. Accurately, deliberately, slowly, he picked the princess’s wrist up from beneath her gauze sheet, and with the fingers of his other hand he opened wide the eyelids of his right eye, until it seemed to bulge out of its socket. Then turning towards the light and bending low, he raised her wrist up to his eye, until it was an inch away.

“What are these marks?” he asked.

“What marks?”

“These marks.”

At the window, the doctor screwed his face into a priestlike grimace. Crouching, he twisted his body into a mimic of the old man’s. “Injections, Monsignor,” he replied, and without meaning to, he allowed a parody of castrate gentleness to creep into his voice, so that the old man turned towards him curiously.

“Injections, my son? What for?”

“Vitamins. There aren’t enough in their regular diet. Not to keep them . . . healthy.”

The secretary stared at him, and under the fixed scrutiny of his blind eyes, Thanakar relaxed and stood upright.

“That is not your concern,” said the old man after a pause. “What vitamins?”

“B.”

“Vitamin B.” The secretary turned back to the princess’s wrist and rubbed it between his fingers before putting it carefully back down. “You are not,” he continued, “a religious man.” The words were phrased midway between a question and a statement.

Thanakar said nothing. “My son,” said the old man gently. “My son. This is not a . . . social call. Not completely. I have heard rumors about you that disturb me, for I knew your father well.”

Thanakar said nothing. His mother turned over on her side. She was naked under the gauze sheet. It pulled away to show her naked back.