Chapter 4

The fat old man looks like a pot-bellied frog.

With astonishing deftness, the immigrant settles between your wife’s legs. Wet sounds begin -- wet, intimate -- and with a sickening, breathless pause you realize it’s also the sound of Anna’s own slickness. She trembles so hard there can be no doubt: with his filthy, secret work, Omar has aroused her. The untouched purity, the unreachable distance of your spouse has been violated by some treacherous, cunning method.

The room hangs heavy with the smell of sex. You understand that it’s your smell too: the smell of the cock you are jerking off.

Your eyes have adjusted to the dark; a little light also spills in from the living room. You can clearly see the stranger’s head moving between the legs of your beloved. He is energetic, impatient, greedy. He wants your Anna. He wants her madly, violently. So, this is whom you took in: a thief who wants to take what is yours. He is ... having sex with Anna. Oral sex is sex too.

Anna ... she begins to moan softly, as if in sleep. You tell yourself, of course, that she’s asleep, that she isn’t controlling herself, doesn’t understand what’s happening or who is stimulating her most private place -- yet still: every moan from your wife feels like a small betrayal, a small infidelity. It may be wrong to think that way, but that’s how you feel.

And she’s naked ... your Anna is completely naked. Fully opened to the lustful gaze of the immigrant. Like that -- like she should be only for you.

This night is full of dark magic; you know you’re losing your mind and you can’t resist. In spite of everything, it feels good. It’s wrong, illogical. But really -- were the Greeks right to unleash logic into this miserable world?

You -- heir to centuries of culture, steward of all that’s “proper” and “enlightened” -- you’re jerking off to an immigrant licking your wife. Is there any meaning in this? Did books ever teach you what to do in situations like this? No. You’re alone with the unknown inside yourself.