The Fourth Circle by Zoran Zivkovic, Mary Popović Page A

stone tablet in front of the doorstep; they began to bounce with a metallic jangling, and some collided in flight, some only after they fell, not scattering very far but settling into a circle the diameter of which was not much greater than one pace, and there all movement ceased. Into a circle....
    I barely heard Kiane's shrill exclamation, full of glee at the result, for in the same instant as the last tinkle of the worn coins on the stone died, my mind was rent by a mighty flash, flooding its most remote corners with light, and in a moment, I saw everything—all for which I had sought in vain throughout my life and lost hope of ever finding. The circle was the solution—so obvious, so perfect!
    Not a spiral, nor those more complex forms on which I had squandered years. No, the simplest, most basic form, on which I had worked in my youth, the fundamental circle from which all else is derived. The Great Secret lay revealed to me in all its glory.
    Gripped by this enlightenment, I did not realize that Kiane had bent down to collect the coins. She already held several of them in her hand when I threw myself on the ground to stop her, but it was too late. Of the form that had appeared on the tablet before the threshold, only a fragment remained, incapable of inspiring any further vision.
    Although I did not utter a word, I must have worn an expression of infinite wrath since Kiane edged away from me, her eyes welling with easy tears, mumbling that she had told me the coins would all fall on the same side but that she would never again show me anything if I took it so hard that she had proved to know better.
    I opened my mouth to pronounce a curse on her knowledge and her coins but gained sufficient control of myself to just wave a hand and move several paces away from the entrance to try to repeat, on the sandy part of the street in front of my house, the form that Kiane had so idiotically ruined while it was still living before my eyes. I looked around and found a stick to draw with in the sand, but when I picked it up, Kiane gave a startled exclamation and hurried off down the street, afraid perhaps that I would use it on her.
    That saved her life, but not from me. For hardly had she scuttled around the corner and I begun to draw circles in the dust in the futile hope of renewed enlightenment, when the first company of Romans bent on murder poured in from the other end of the street, having breached the defenses of the city. Despite their raucous advance, I became aware of them only when they appeared before me.
    They could hardly avoid me, standing as I was, alone in the middle of the street.
I stared at them dully for several moments, not knowing what to say and wishing only that they would pass, but they did not, taking my attitude for one of provocative insolence, as so indeed it must have appeared to them. They formed a circle around me, undecided themselves at first what to do. We stood there for a while like statues, I with my stick still in the sand, eager to complete the drawing of the form I had begun, they out of breath, obviously thirsting to levy a reward of blood for their triumphant endeavors.
    This equilibrium could not last long: I broke it first, completing the circular line in the dust, the only reasonable action that occurred to me, which made the leader of the detachment contemptuously scuff the lines of my drawing. The sight of his dusty sandals with their worn leather thongs sending my drawing back into the nothingness from which it had only just emerged rekindled my anger.
    Shouting at him not to touch my circles, I fell upon him with my feeble hands and so rushed to my fate, which no order of Marcellus could now alter.
    Although acute, the pain lasted only for a short time—long enough for me to understand that I was dying, but not long enough to make me afraid. Just as I experienced no fear, so I experienced no surprise, either, when I saw myself with new eyes from a little height, lying in blood