Back where I left the unfortunate bus on the spot where it had rammed with all its might into a cement truck, a cloud of cement dust hung like a miraculous umbrella over the dying. A Hapless passengers who were still alive and others who would not stay alive much longer were coming out the rear exit, cautiously as if stepping on the surface of a strange planet. Mom, Mom, you're still in there, butI got out. Mom, Mom, blood is filling my pockets like coins. I wished to communicate with them, with the avuncular man crawling along the ground, his hat on his head, a plastic bag in his hand; the fastidious soldier who was bent over carefully examining the rip in his trousers; the old lady who had abandoned herself to jubilant chatter now that she had been granted the chance to address God directly. I wished to impart the significance of this unique and impeccable time to the virulent insurance agent who was counting the stars, to the dumbfounded daughter of the mother who was pleading with the dead driver, to the men with mustaches who were strangers to each other yet holding hands and dancing for the joy of being alive, swaying gently like people who have fallen in love at first sight. I wished I could tell them that this unique moment was a felicity granted all too rarely to God's creatures like us, saying that you, O Angel, would appear only once in a lifetime in this wondrous time beneath the miraculous umbrella of cement dust, and ask them why it was that now we were all so very happy. You, mother and son clutching each other hard like a pair of dauntless lovers and freely weeping for the first time in your lives, you, the sweet woman who has discovered that blood is redder than lipstick and death kinder than life, you, the spared child standing over your dead father clutching your doll and watching the stars, I ask you: Who was it that oranted us this fulfillment. this contentment. this happiness? The voice inside me gave one word as an answer: Departure ... departure ... But I had already understood I was not yet to die.