Then, putting the razor down on the edge of the sink, overcome with a warm, tremulous feeling, trembling all over, from emotions rather than from cold, I put my hands on my cold, sticky chest, and smeared the blood all over it, and then brought my bloody hands to my face, and rubbed it with them, feeling how, after a while, the blood began to dry on it, gradually turning into a tight, prickly mask; it did the same on my chest where it felt like a rough, rusty armor.

Unable to hold myself back any longer, with my eyes full of tears, I fell down on my knees, and, with my hands again on my face, gave out a long moan, and then began to speak in a loud and nasal (because of the tears) voice that didn't seem at all to belong to me but to some strange person:   "Oh my Lord!   How vast and powerful you are and what a miserable wretch I am!   You're so vast and so powerful that my mind can't grasp you. I can't even be sure you exist!   But you do exist.   And you always will.... So what can I give you as a sign of my homage to you?... Only this blood of mine...."

"So take it, my Lord!" I continued, lifting up my face and staring at the ceiling, my hands pressed together under my chin like a platter.   "Take it as the biggest offer I can give you.... As a sign of my endless love for you...."

I spoke like this for a long time until I felt completely empty, and, not thinking about what I had just done, as if nothing had happened, I got up, and opened the faucet again, and washed my hands and then the rest of me, and dried myself, and put a plaster on my neck where I had scraped off a big patch of skin, and, after finishing shaving, went out of the bathroom.   Having dressed, I went up to the window, and stood by it for a while, looking out into the street, and then, remembering all of a sudden that it was Maundy Thursday, my mind, like a mountain, split open by the memories from my childhood, memories of hours spent in the church in which there grew, like a giant cathedral, the singing of the choir and the sound of the organ, just as hurriedly as I had run the pervious evening to the light switch, I rushed to the door, and then onto the staircase, and down it into the street, not locking the door after me.

A soft and tender breeze, like a woman's hand, touched my cheeks as I found myself outside, and I ran through the streets clogged with cars and people toward the church (not the cathedral, but a small one) which I recalled stood not far away from where I lived, and, running, I came across two-wheeled carts packed with white and purple flowers, tied up in bunches, that stood on the sidewalk on corners of intersections, and, passing one of them, aware of the desire to buy a bunch which had arisen in me a while back, I stopped, and stuck my hand in my pocket to get the money, but, finding it empty, I remembered that I didn't take my wallet as I was rushing out, having left it in the pair of pants I wore the night before, and, forgetting my wish, even more excited than before, I resumed running in the direction of the church, and soon thereafter saw its stone spire, usually gray, but today golden in the sunlight on the background the blue sky, and slowed down gradually, so that it was walking at a normal pace that I crossed the street and climbed the brightly lit stairs to the door.

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