women. A fourth straddled him as he lay on the ground in his own blood. The other three 
wore pieces of his skin. One had on his whole face and shoulders, her breasts sticking 
out from beneath the ragged hood. Another sat on the ground, wearing his arms and pulling 
on the skin of his legs like waders. The third, the queen of this quartet, was wearing 
what was presumably the piece de resistance, the flesh which the unhappy owner had worn 
from mid breast-bone to mid-thigh. She was cavorting in this garish costume like a dancer 
and, by some magic known only to the maker of the mystery, the usurped skin still boasted 
a full erection.
  	"Good God..." Zeffer said.
  	"I told you," Sandru said, just a little smugly. "And that's the least of it, 
believe me."
  	"The least of it?"
  	"The more you look, the more you see."
  	"Anywhere in particular?"
  	"Go over to the Wild Wood. Look amongst the trees."
  	Zeffer moved along the wall, studying the tiles as he went. At first he couldn't 
make out anything controversial, but Sandru had some useful advice.
  	"Step away a foot or so."
  	In his fascination with the details of the stadium, Zeffer had come too close to 
the wall to see the wood for the trees. Now he stepped back and to his astonishment saw 
that the thicket around the arena was alive with figures, all of which were in some form 
or other monstrous; and all unequivocally sexual. Erections were thrust between the trees 
like plum-headed branches, women dangled from overhead with their legs spread (a flock of 
birds, thirty or more, swooped out of the sex of one; another was menstruating light, 
which was splashing on the ground below the tree. Snakes came out of the scarlet pool, in 
bright profusion).
  	"Is it like this all over?" Zeffer said, his astonishment unfeigned.
  	"All over. There are thirty-three thousand, two hundred and sixty-eight tiles, 
and there is obscene matter on two thousand, seven hundred and ninety-eight of them."
  	"You've obviously made a study," Zeffer observed.
  	"Not I. An Englishman who worked with Father Nicholas did the counting. For some 
reason the numbers remained in my head. I think it's old age. Things you want to 
remember, you can't. And things that don't mean anything stick in your head like a knife."
  	"That's not a pretty image, with respect."
  	"With respect, there's nothing pretty about the way I feel," Sandru replied. "I 
feel old to my marrow. On a good day I can barely get up in the morning. On a bad day, I 
just wish I were dead."
  	"Lord."
  	Sandru shrugged. "That's what living in this place does to you after a while. 
Everything drains out of you somehow."
  	Zeffer was only half-listening. He was exhilarated by what he saw, and he had no 
patience with Sandru's melancholy; his thoughts were with the walls, and the pictures on 
the walls.
  	"Are there records documenting how this was created? It is a masterpiece, in its 
way."
  	"One of a kind," Sandru said.
  	"Absolutely one of a kind."
  	"To answer your question, no, there are no records. It's assumed that it was 
funded by Duke Goga, who had lately returned from the Crusades with a large amount of 
booty, claimed from the infidel in the name of Christ."
  	"But to build a room like this with money you'd made on the Crusades!" Zeffer 
said incredulously.
  	"I agree. It seems like an unlikely thing to do in the name of God. Of course 
none of this is proved. There are some people who will tell you that Goga went missing on 
one of his hunts, and it wasn't him who built this place at all."
  	"Who then?"
  	"Lilith, the Devil's wife," the Father said, dropping his voice to a whisper. 
"Which would make this the Devil's Country, no?"
  	"Has anybody tried to analyze the work?"
  	"Oh yes. The Englishman I spoke of, George Soames, claimed he had discovered 
evidence of twenty-two different styles amongst the designs. But that was just the 
painters. Then there were the men who actually made the tiles. Fired them. Sorted out the 
good from the bad. Prepared the paint. Cleaned the brushes. And there must have been some 
system to align everything."
  	"The rows of tiles?"
  	"I was thinking more of the alignment of interior with the exterior."
  	"Perhaps they built the room first."
  	"No. The Fortress is two-and-a-half centuries older than this room."
  	"My God, so to get the alignment so perfect-?"
  	"Is quite miraculous. Soames found fifty-nine geographical markers- certain 
stones, trees, the spire of the old abbey in Darscus-which are visible from the tower and 
are also painted on the wall. He calculated that all fifty-nine were correctly aligned, 
within half a degree of accuracy."
  	"Somebody was obsessive."
  	"Or else, divinely inspired."
  	"You believe that?"
  	"Why not?"
  	Zeffer glanced back at the arena on the wall behind him, with all its libidinous 
excesses. "Does that look like the kind of work that somebody would do in the name of 
God?"
  	"As I said," Sandru replied, "I no longer know where God is and where He isn't."
  	There was a long silence, during which Zeffer continued to survey the walls. 
Finally he said: "How much do you want for it?"
  	"How much do I want for what?"
  	"For the room?"
  	Sandru barked out a laugh.
  	"I mean it," Zeffer said. "How much do you want for it?"
  	"It's a room, Mr. Zeffer," Sandru said. "You can't buy a room."
  	"Then it's not for sale?"
  	"That's not my point-"
  	"Just tell me: is it for sale or not?"
  	Again, laughter. But this time there was less humor; more bemusement. "I don't 
see that it's worth talking about," Sandru said, putting the brandy bottle to his lips 
and drinking.
  	"Let's say a hundred thousand dollars. What would that be in lei? What's the lei 
worth right now? A hundred and thirty-two-and-a-half to the dollar?"
  	"If you say so."
  	"So that's what? Thirteen million, two hundred and fifty thousand lei."
  	"You jest."
  	"No."