an that a second question is an answer to the first, though sometimes it may seem that way, and besides, I am not a Jew and cannot claim as my own something that is not mine. I can only assume that some people manage to tell their story in such a way that it is understood as an answer, or as an opening to an answer, while others, among whom I clearly belong, turn the story into a question, or as Marko said, into evading an answer, as if they want to say to the person listening to them, or reading them, that the question is here, but that all the rest is up to him. Or her, if the listener or reader is a woman, and more likely it will be a woman, judging by the latest statistical data, which unequivocally confirm that women dominate as readers and that the number of men who read is rapidly declining. Hence, say the experts, the growing number of books of family chronicles, culinary novels, full of recipes and stories about a search for existence based on diluted Eastern philosophies. Even if I wanted to introduce a recipe into this text I wouldn't be able to because I never learned how to cook, and I am in such awe of Eastern philosophical teachings, as of all others, that it would never occur to me to abuse them in a novel or a short story. I have long since acknowledged that it would be better for me to occupy myself with something other than writing. If your heart is not in what you do, give it up. I don't remember who said that, but there is truth in it. I know that it is now considered old-fashioned to talk of the human heart, as if modern man no longer needs the human heart for anything but heart attacks. Whenever I mention the heart, someone pushes under my nose a cross-section of the striated muscle and asks if I see anything other than ventricles, atria, veins, and arteries, and I tell them that this is precisely what I don't see, even if the image were so large that it covered the entire surface of the sky in the west. I also know that many feel the heart to be the concern of the cardiologists, not the writers, and there is some truth to that, so it would be wisest to say that both are concerned with the heart, each in their own way, because all of us must accept certain limitations in the job we do and take care not to step over into another's territory. This sounds as if I see myself as a writer, since I'm certainly no cardiologist, but I would never go that far. I don't know whether I'd be able to define what a true writer is. Wherever I start from, I get lost halfway. Yet again a moment when Marko's advice would have been useful, but Marko wasn't around. I called him repeatedly: no one picked up. I went to his apartment: no one came to the door. One morning it occurred to me he might have left the country, so many people were leaving, why wouldn't he, though it seemed incredible that he'd leave without saying goodbye after all the years we'd spent together. Who knows, maybe it's best to leave that way, without a word, without a farewell, at night, sneakily, like a criminal, even when there was nothing anyone could blame you for. That was the way Margareta and I left the exhibition, I mean a departure without goodbyes. The police car was still in front of the hotel; the other that had been parked in front of the grocery store was gone. Several police officers, one of them a woman, talked and smoked in the hallway. There were two guns on a small table by the entranceway, gleaming in the feeble light of the stairwell. We went into the street and set out uphill toward Student Square. The air was not cleaner outside than it had been in the museum, but it was fresher, and an explanation from Margareta didn't seem nearly as urgent. I'd been struck by lightning, I could wait. We were among the first to arrive at Jaša's studio; we were also among the first to leave. There weren't as many people there as had been at the opening, but the crowd was too large for my taste. The commotion made any serious conversation impossible, and all talk was reduced to shouting single words in someone's ear. Isak Levi somehow managed to convey to me that the police had arrested the people who'd broken into the building of the Jewish Community Center and vandalized Jaša's paintings; they'd apprehended three minors and a young man of about twenty, he shouted, spraying tiny droplets of saliva on the curves of my ear. Then I saw Jakov Švarc heading over to us, which spurred me to ask Margareta whether she was staying or leaving. I put my hand between us to stop the spray and leaned close to her small, finely shaped ear, with a dot on the lobe. The hair around her ear was moist, and between the slender locks you could see the fragile whiteness of her skin. I had to hold back from pressing my lips on that whiteness and running my tongue along the curving paths of her ear. She merely nodded and pushed her way toward the exit, while I was imagining leaning my ear to her lips. The pushing took time; many people wanted to say hello to her, shooting questioning glances my way, and I stood there, shifting from foot to foot and grinning foolishly. In the end we gave up trying to find Jaša and made it to the front door. Some people stood on the landing by the door, others sat on the stairs, and making our way to the elevator required additional hopping over legs and arms. I pressed the button and the elevator appeared obediently. We got in, shut the metal doors, and started down. When the elevator stopped, it was dark. The wan cabin light left the entrance to the building in shadow, and behind the glass door, we could make out a silhouette. I could feel Margareta tensing. We stepped out of the elevator and slammed the door. The dark grew denser, the silhouette clearer, Margareta's breathing slowed, my heart was pounding hard. If she heard it, Margareta didn't react. The silhouette didn't react either, it turned out to be an acquaintance of Jaša Alkalai's, waiting for a taxi, which, he said, was to take him to New Belgrade. He offered to give us a ride if that suited us, and so Margareta and I found ourselves on the back seat of the cab, while Jaša's acquaintance got in front and immediately struck up a conversation with the driver. We had only gone halfway, and the two had covered the entire political scene, criticizing the government and leading politicians, they had agreed that everything was wildly expensive, that it was a true miracle, the taxi driver said, that people had anything to eat, then moved on to sports, to the value of the American dollar, to the fact that half of Serbia had moved to Canada, and here I stopped listening and dedicated myself to the little finger of my left hand, with which I was lightly touching Margareta's thigh. I didn't move the finger, I didn't steer it, I simply let it follow the jostling of the motor and the darting of the taxi. The Belgrade streets are full of cracks and bumps, and the taxi was lurching in fits and starts, with sudden braking and accelerating, so my finger was shaking and shifting, sometimes resting fully on Margareta's thigh. Meanwhile Margareta was dozing or else meditating, her eyes were closed, and only when the taxi crossed the Sava and my hand crept under her thigh did her eyelids flutter, and she stretched out her right hand and dropped it into my lap. I looked up at the rearview mirror, hoping the taxi driver was too preoccupied with the conversation to notice. Margareta's hand didn't move. It lay in my lap, relaxed, resting gently on the belt buckle. And just as I was wondering whether I should slide my hand under her thigh, Margareta leaned against the backrest, raised her body, and my hand slid deftly into the warm dip. I managed to flip my hand over before her body flopped down on the seat, my eyes anxiously on the rearview mirror. The conversation in the front seat was still in full swing, and they were now discussing delays in the payment of pensions and the scandalously low social welfare disbursements to invalids and other beneficiaries. While the driver was citing examples, Margareta wriggled and squeezed my hand with her buttocks. I moved my fingers, she sat up and spread her thighs, my fingers slipped between her legs. We're almost there, announced the driver, as Margareta increased pressure on my arm. The taxi turned toward the Intercontinental Hotel, then on to the Hyatt, and then it dipped into the web of New Belgrade streets and passageways where I could never find my way. When I first saw a map of New Belgrade, I was impressed by the relatively simple urban layout, the geometric structures of blocks and streets that intersected at right angles. In reality, this simplicity was lost when, on foot or by car, one ventured into the interior of individual blocks or started searching for a house number. Here is fine, said Margareta. The taxi stopped, and after a brief round of thank-yous, Margareta and I got out. I looked to the left, I looked to the right: I had no idea where we were. Zemun is over there, said Margareta, and gestured as if Zemun were somewhere in the sky. I wasn't sure whether this was a hint that I should depart, or whether it was merely information, an orientation of sorts, like the North Star or moss growing on a stump. Once you know where Zemun is, you know where everything else is. Who said that? I couldn't put my finger on it, though there are times when I see, with my inner eye, of course, a shimmering page with those very words inscribed on it. A page, like any page, that could come from any one of a thousand books, and all that is left for me is to hope that at some point in my life a certain detail will turn up that will take me to whoever wrote it. That won't change anything, of course, but why would knowledge always be tied to change? For example, one person might learn the names of the ten Sephirot in order from the largest to the smallest, so: Keter, Binah, Hokhmah, Gevurah, Chesed, Tiferet, Hod, Nezah, Yesod, and Malkhut, and remember them merely as a fact, while someone else, learning about the same ten Sephirot, might ascend higher and higher in his soul, and, ultimately, undergo the desired transformation. I was still standing next to Margareta, indecisive, as she ran her hand through her hair. Then I remembered that I hadn't finished the piece for