Chapter 1

You press the phone nervously to your ear and look at the moon beyond the window. Moonlit nights were made on purpose to torment people, weren’t they?

“Bring my wife home right now, you old freak!!!” you shout. “I’ll destroy you, I swear! You’re finished!”

Omar does not answer you. Instead, you hear him say off to the side:

“Why is Yuri yelling at me?”

He has clearly moved the phone away from his ear.

“I won’t just yell at you, I’ll roll you straight into a garbage can!” you strain yourself, trying to make yourself heard. “You ... old animal!!! Cough, cough...”

A fit of coughing breaks you. Your vocal cords, too tightly strained, cannot take it. What you feel is hard even to describe. The present does not fit into any words. The present makes you mute. Apparently, everything important that happens in life is beyond words.

Your wife has driven away in the middle of the night with four market men! You, whom they should fear like fire, are shouting, tearing yourself apart, and yet you are incapable of doing anything! Of influencing anything! It is as if you have been deprived of your masculine core.