ould consider the act of exchanging the manuscript a sort of just reward for the effort I'd made. As I stood by the unliving translation, this is what I thought of: payment of debt. I thought of something else: perhaps this was happening so the living manuscript of the translation could be stored in a safe place, or where no one would think of looking for it? Or more precisely, I thought, banging myself on the forehead, where it would serve as a lure, drawing attention away from the original living manuscript, the original book of sand, which could be in only one place: at the entrance to the Well. I looked at my watch, it was nearly eleven, I'd have to hurry, I took off my shoes, put on another pair, glanced at myself in the mirror, flicked a lock of hair aside, turned off the lights in the apartment, locked the door, and rushed down the stairs. I left the building, paused, looked to the left, looked to the right, then went straight to the quay, taking the same route I'd followed three months before. Then it was daytime, now it was night; then the promenade was full of people, now it was deserted; then the rides had been running at the playground, now the horses on the merry-go-round and parts of the train were shrouded under waterproof covers; then I was an apparently uninterested observer, now I was in the middle of something I couldn't properly define. How to describe hatred? How to explain prejudice? How to explain suicidal tendencies at the level of the collective, even of a whole nation? How to find the common denominator for events that belong to different categories, histories, and beliefs? Too many questions. On this last page or two there have been eight, if I count them correctly. I always thought that books began with questions and ended with answers, but in my case it's different, at least as far as questions are concerned, they seem to pile up at the end, while the answers are scattered all over, which is just fine, I believe, because this is not a book, I never meant to write a book, as I may have said before, though I may be mistaken, since no one who writes lengthy works, regardless of the subject matter, remembers every word he or she has written. There are times when I dream of parts of this document that I am sure have never crossed my lips or the tip of my ballpoint pen, but when I leaf through it later, I find them all there. Proof for me once again that every text, every document, every book, all that is composed of words, is made of sand or, better yet, of water. Nothing is less constant than words, yet nothing lasts as long as words do, and in that paradox lie the beginning and the end of all writing, and every human effort, I mused as I walked along the quay. Of course the action defines the man, but the same can be said of words. After all, words are the actions of the mind, aren't they? I turned, as if expecting a precise answer, and in the distance spotted three figures heading my way. It might not mean a thing, of course, and I calmly continued on toward the Venezia, but when I turned again, they were closer, and this prompted me to speed up and veer off from the quay into a street running parallel, where the shadows were denser and the doorways offered temporary shelter. I slipped into one, crouched behind a door with broken glass panes, and decided to wait a few minutes. I counted slowly, as if trying to determine how soon the thunder would follow after a lightning flash, and when I got to three hundred, which might have been about five minutes, I went back out. Nobody was there. The three men had disappeared, or if they had had anything to do with me, they had turned into one of the side streets, tricked by my ruse. I was near the elementary school, which meant I had already entered into the world of the Sephirot contained in the urban plan of the old part of Zemun between Glavna Street and the quay. That quarter is divided, roughly speaking, into nine blocks, which correspond to the Kabbalist Sephirot, though the tenth Sephirot, Malkhut, connected to the Shekhinah, is absent, and that absence, that asymmetry in the order, made it possible, at least as Margareta told it, to realize their plan. By renewing Malkhut, Margareta had said, the entire cosmos would be renewed, the balance of the divine powers would be reinstated, and, most important, the essential energy would be sparked for making the golem or protective shield or whatever it was they wanted to make. The Well was in the middle block, which corresponded to the Sephirah called Tiferet, or Beauty, and which on the human body occupied the navel and the heart. I kept going until I got to the corner of Zmaj Jovina Street. I should have wondered where the people were who were to write the essential prayers with their bodies, but I assumed they had accomplished that task, or, which sounded entirely plausible, they had taken their places in courtyards and apartments, hidden from curious and hostile eyes. I kept going, and the air around me seemed to thicken, slowing down my already cautious movements. On the left was the market, with stalls that had turned into greasy splotches of darkness, threatening, like nests from which wasps might come swarming out at any moment. I tried not to look at them, to pay no attention to the flickering shadows that played at the edge of my vision. When I passed the corner of the building that marked the beginning of the middle block, I stepped, or so it felt, into absolute silence. I looked at my feet, suddenly infinitely far from my body, and saw them as if in a silent movie, undulating and inconstant. They were mine, nonetheless, I thought, while I raised them with effort and steered them toward the goal, the old wooden gate that couldn't be far from here. And sure enough, sooner than I'd expected, I saw the heavy gate flung open, and the rectangular street lamp cast a path across the concrete that led into the inner courtyard. I stopped at the entrance, leaned on one of the wings of the gate, and looked at my shadow. How fitting that image is now, when I am no more than a shadow, slipping over things until it settles on the border between light and dark, in the narrow space between the real and the unreal. At the time, I was hoping for the silence to end so I could hear and recognize sounds and determine my next move. I stepped onto the path, reaching for my shadow, and of course, it fled from me. I took another two or three steps, and when it finally hid in the dark, I saw the familiar scene: the bench, the barberry bushes, the pump with the curving handle, the radiance that emanated from it as if it were coated in silver dust. I wanted to sit down on the bench, I was so drained by the effort of lifting my feet, but the instructions required the bench to remain empty until Malkhut and the Shekhinah were ready to sit on it together. Fine, I thought, here is the King, so where is the Queen? I sounded arrogant to myself, though I wasn't thinking anything that didn't correspond to reality, or at least the reality we had agreed upon. I played the role assigned me, and I certainly wouldn't be the first actor to identify with a character. Then I noticed that the twigs on the barberry were moving, though there was no breeze. Not a vigorous movement, just a gentle swaying that I spotted only because I was eyeing the rim of the flowerpot as a possible perch for my aching feet. Just then the silver radiance emanating from the pump shimmered, and as it twisted like steam wafting from a kettle in which water is boiling, I realized what was happening: the Well was open, and the vibrating and swaying were caused by a draft coursing between the worlds. What a paradox, I recall thinking, that in a country where drafts are considered one of the most alarming natural phenomena, they are the very signal marking the passageway to parallel space or a new dimension of existence. Let us hope, I thought, that some vitriolic old woman doesn't hasten to block the influence of the draft of air on her fragile health. I had to laugh, and as my laughter bounced off the walls and slowly dissipated, I heard church bells. I didn't have to count, I knew they were tolling midnight, which meant that Margareta was late, and if she didn't turn up before the last chime of the bell, everything would be ruined. Suddenly, like Faulkner's character, I wanted to stop time, or rush off to the church and stop the bells from tolling, but just as his character realized that time would not stop, even if he ripped the hands off his watch, so I had to make my peace with the fact that I'm no superman, and even if I were to make it to the bell tower and wedge myself between the clapper and the lip, nothing would change. I wasn't sure what to do. The ringing of the bells was coming to an end, and once the sound of the last chime had faded and Margareta still hadn't appeared, I could go home. I went over to the bench anyway, and when I was three or four steps away, I felt the gusting of air currents. My trouser legs billowed, my hair fluttered, the chill air brushed my ears and head. The sound of the last clang of the clapper died away, and silence reigned. I thought I heard footsteps, but when I turned, a single drop of water sped downward from the shining pump to the netting covering the mouth of the drainage canal. The drop, I said, sped downward, but in fact it dripped slowly, and it felt as if I was following its drawn-out fall for hours. When it finally landed, I braced for the thud, but it merely slid between the metal interstices, lingering for a moment on one, like a gymnast who at the end of a figure looks as if she will never pull away from the vibrating spindle. I stood there for a moment longer, and then, suddenly assertive, I walked over to the bench and sat down. In the past, when I'd sat there, a powerful stillness had enveloped me accompanied by music, nearly celestial voices, but now there was a quiet rumbling, the muted noise that comes from a transformer that converts one kind of electricity into another. Of course I'm not saying that the Well was a transformer, but something inside it was surely being transformed into something else. I thought maybe I should get up and go, no point staying here any longer, especially if it had all been for naught, and I felt an odd bodilessness, as if I had been emptied out and made into a shell, into something resembling the shell that some insects shed in the process of maturing and transforming. This made me feel so fragile that I dared not move. I sat on the bench as if glued to it, the air streaming around me, a crackling sound filling my ears, and the radiance of the pump and barberries growing brighter and sharper. Then I felt the empty shell of my body gradually filling, and I could see the level of the substance rise from my feet to my belly, chest, and neck. I should hasten to add that