But the telephone persisted, its machine-gun ring-rings drilling his eardrums and lashing a brain tortured by its exquisitely cyclical, clinical brutality. He dared to. Slightly raised his eyelids, which he then shut immediately: the pain entered via his pupils and he simply felt like dying, although grimly aware such a desire would go unfulfilled. He felt very weak, with no strength to lift his arms, support his forehead and exorcize the explosion each malign ring-ring made imminent, until he finally decided to confront the pain, raised an arm, opened a hand and grabbed the receiver, slipping it from its cradle in order to regain the state of grace that is silence.

That victory made him want to laugh, but he couldn’t. He tried to persuade himself he was awake, but he wasn’t at all convinced. His arm dangled down one side of the bed like a severed branch, and he knew the dynamite lodged in his brain was fizzing furiously, threatening to explode at any moment. He was afraid, an all too familiar fear, although one he always quickly forgot. He also tried to complain, but his tongue had dissolved down the back of his mouth by the time the telephone mounted its second offensive. Go away, fuck you! All right, all right, he groaned, forcing his hand to grip the receiver, and lurching like a rusty crane, his arm lifted it to his ear and lodged it there.

First there was silence: oh, blessed silence. Then came the voice, a thick resonant voice he found awesome.

“Hey, hey, you hearing me?” it seemed to say. “Mario, hello, Mario, can you hear me?” And he hadn’t the courage to say no, no, he couldn’t or didn’t want to hear or, simply, that it was a wrong number.

“Yes, Chief,” he finally whispered, but only after he’d taken a breath, filled his lungs with air, set his arms to work around his head, his hands spread, pressing down on his temples trying to curb the dizzy merry-goround unleashed in his brain.