Spasm is a better word, because it is reminiscent of deathbed convulsions, and in that ongoing end I was indeed dying, until I became a living corpse of sorts, bait swallowed up in the end by the dark. I don't remember how I got to Zemun: at one point I realized that I was in front of my building, but instead of going home I went on to Marko's apartment. I turned on the light, walked up the stairs, rang the doorbell. I could hear footsteps and laughter. Marko opened the door and squinted, as if trying to make me go away. Behind him, on the coat rack, hung a black hooded sweatshirt. From inside the apartment a man's voice asked who was there. No one, said Marko, and opened his eyes wide. We stared at each other for a few moments, then he slammed the door with all his might. Crumbs of plaster sprayed the floor, the light in the hallway went out, I sprinted down the stairs in the dark and didn't stop until I was back at my apartment. The next day all the papers carried the news about the sudden death of the painter Jaša Alkalaj. No reference to a tragic death, which was probably because the investigation was underway, but I knew it was a matter of time before the news media would broadcast the true story, just as it was a matter of time before the investigation would hear my message on Jaša's answering machine, or the woman from the elevator would remember the man with the hands over his ears. There was a fire that night in the book-filled apartment, and while I watched the smoke billow through the windows and listened to the sirens, I knew I had scant time left. I pulled out a small suitcase, packed up the basics, avoided anything that might resemble a memento, collected my money, passport, and a bag with some valuables that had been left in my possession after the last death in the family, awaited morning, and by noon I was on the minibus shuttling travelers to the Budapest airport. I shook like a leaf, I confess, as we crossed the border, even more so on the Hungarian side, and then, when the ornery Hungarian customs official waved for us to continue on our way, I could finally breathe. Everything that happened after that, all the years between me now and the events I have described, the distance set up between this place and that place, all must go unrecorded. The spot where I am now, by the window in whose panes I occasionally see a figure that is my own reflection, and where I was brought by the kindness of strangers, I will probably never leave. Finality has come at last to my door. It's not death I'm thinking of. I am thinking of how a series of events comes to a definite end and becomes destiny, while at the same time nothing indicates what a new beginning may bring, or whether there will be a new beginning. Perhaps that was why I wanted to tell this story, or write down all that had happened, for a person who talks to himself is considered crazy, while one who records a story is respected, thought creative, as if spoken words are not creation and as if the world was created by the written word, not a voice. As far as I know, God spoke while he created the world, he wasn't reading a document drawn up in advance. The sound of words is the sound of the world, its true face. Reading is an attempt at courting the creator, especially the way people read before they learned to read silently, when they whispered and their lips shaped the letters and words their eyes passed over. But now it is over and done with. When this pen dries up, I will place the last page on top, turn the manuscript over, and start from the beginning. Margareta, whose name I didn't know at the time, stood on the muddy shore waiting for the slap designed to be a trap for me. Don't worry, I will not tell the whole story again. What has been told once can never be repeated. And what happened once, happened once and for all. There is still something, however, that confuses me. Several times over these years, at unpredictable intervals, the image of a blazing gateway at the entrance to a lavish celestial palace comes to me, and I see myself walking along a path of clouds and going from one palace to another larger one, so large that the first palace is inside it, and the larger one is inside yet another, larger still, and so on, until I arrive at the last palace, in which there is a throne so grand that, no matter how far back I stretch my neck, I cannot see its end. If the throne is so vast, I remember thinking, how large is he who sits upon it? At that moment, crystal clear, I hear the trumpets announcing: The Lord is coming any minute now. Then I see myself on the way back and I gape, mouth open, at the arabesques on the walls. Where was I? Is it possible that I did follow Eleazar that evening, that we were on the verge of realizing what had been planned? I am sure I was barefoot, for as I was clambering over the entrance threshold of the last palace, I tripped and scraped the big toe on my right foot. The skin on the toe puckered up like a curly little cloud, exposing a deep wound that did not bleed. I leaned over to look at it, thinking I should urinate into it to disinfect it, then heard a voice within me, which was not mine, saying: Not to worry, in heaven there is no bleeding. Of course not, I thought later, angels aren't warm-blooded animals like us, to say nothing of God. Of course, if he created us in his own image and shape, wouldn't it stand to reason that he too would bleed? I ask that of my reflection in the window, but the reflection is silent, the pane doesn't hum, the night is still. I read once somewhere that our exterior is truly the image of God, but what is inside of us was created by someone else. It didn't say who. Perhaps I should have asked him while I was wandering barefoot around his palaces? More and more often I see our life as essentially consisting of a host of lost chances, with some exceptions. Again my pen records furrows instead of letters, just as life leaves gaps, the difference being that we can change pens, while life is like a blade that, once dull, can no longer be sharpened. A dull knife, that's me. All I can do is groan while I try to carve the sediment of memory into a series of words and sentences. Far away, where it all happened, no one is interested in these words and sentences anyway, and maybe it is best that I go out this very night, before I change my mind, and bury them in the woods, on a slope, under a birch tree, in a box. After that I'll do nothing but keep my silence. There, silent.