at himself, looking at his hands, his feet, his bent legs, amazed at their complexity, their beauty even. He turned
to look at the woman crouching beside him, finally seeing the beauty that shone through despite the layer of
grime on her face. She looked so alive...
There was silence outside the building. He couldn’t bear it any longer. He stood, putting his eye to the
window in the wall.
That moment when the bullet came spinning toward him, he suddenly saw all around him with awful
clarity. The secret police in their black suits, with their guns all pointed at him. He felt the cold stone of the wall,
centuries older than him press into his face, dig into the soft skin under his eye. And in that instance, that
heartbeat between the moment a bullet was fired and the moment it would reach him, he remembered. He
remembered who he was, who she was and his role in the scheme of things. Then he fell gently down onto the
cold stone floor.
She wailed out her grief. And as the bullets continued hitting the stone wall, as the bricks began to fall
and the wall started to crumble around them, over them – it seemed as if her tears were bringing down the wall.
* * *