The next day, the second act of the madman’s show was performed. As before, the Demon Hunters sat in a position overlooking the stage. Madman began spouting nonsense about being the one destined to save the world. Worse still, he descended to a level where he claimed he was none other than Jesus Himself, the divine Word of God.

He shamelessly twisted religious values and sacred revelations to prove his righteousness. And then, at one point, he went so far as to declare that he was now the only God.

That was when something entirely unexpected happened—Süleyman leapt from his seat and shouted at him:

“You’re a fraud! Who are you compared to Jesus? Clean your mouth before you utter His name!”

He then pulled a lump of modeling clay from his pocket and threw it toward the man. Mark had failed to stop him; his expression made it clear that what was done was done.

“If you’re really Jesus, shape a bird from this clay and give it life.”

For a moment, the man was speechless. After a brief silence, he replied:

“I can perform miracles only by God’s permission.”

Süleyman raised his hands and retorted:

“Yet just a moment ago you implied that you were the only God.”

Madman frowned and said,

“I am not obliged to prove anything to sinners like you. But I will teach you a lesson you will not forget. I want a volunteer to come on stage again, just as yesterday. But this volunteer must be one of the least sinful among you. Anyone who claims to be deeply sinful should stay away, because I cannot see the rotten souls already blackened by this man’s presence.”

He cast a harsh look at Süleyman and continued:

“You, man whose soul is enslaved by evil—choose one of the five volunteers who have raised their hands. And you will tell him what to do. I am giving you a chance to cleanse yourself of sin and move toward the light. You will have no excuse not to believe in me, because I will lend you my divine light for a brief time.”

Mark had decided not to intervene, at least for now. But the look he gave Süleyman spoke volumes:
“The man is confident. He must know something if he talks like this. Today will be very different from yesterday.”

Among the volunteers, Süleyman chose the elderly man with thick, white hair. He had so much hair it was as if he mocked the bald. He even wondered whether the man might be wearing a wig. Although the other volunteers also seemed well-groomed, this one—who introduced himself as Anthony—felt more sincere to Süleyman.

Just as the show was about to begin, the Demon Hunter called out to Madman:

“I don’t trust you. The volunteer will wear my headphones and listen to the music I choose.”

He tore off a strip from his black shirt and stepped onto the stage, blindfolding the volunteer with it. He did not return to his seat, but sat in the front row, two or three meters away from the man. With a remote control, he turned on the music playing in the headphones.

Mark also suspected that something might go wrong for Süleyman, because strangely, Madman had not opposed his demands. They were not wrong to think they had failed to prevent the trickery; the man was entirely at ease. There was no sign of concealed anxiety, nor any indication that he planned to escape through a back door.

Madman’s final remark had deeply unsettled Süleyman:

“You will give the command for what movement the volunteer must perform.”

Recalling his conversation with Mark from the previous day, the young Demon Hunter realized that their theory—that the volunteer already knew the commands and their sequence—was on the verge of collapse.

Süleyman drew a deep breath. He suspected that in just a few minutes, every breath he took would be filled with pain, for he had no doubt that the audience, who adored Madman, would look at him with anger and mockery. If Madman succeeded in his performance, he knew he would be booed. Who knew, he might even be lynched.

The more he looked at the spectators—rubbing their hands together, eager to cheer wildly for Madman with enchanted eyes—the more he intensified his own bleak predictions.

Süleyman decided to begin with a command that had not been issued the previous day. He thought he would outwit those who might be setting a trap for him.

“I want you to clench your fingers tightly.”

When the volunteer did not move, Süleyman briefly thought his fears had been unfounded—until, a few seconds later, Anthony clenched his fingers tightly. The audience erupted into applause, but not for Süleyman—for Madman.

Süleyman felt like a goalkeeper who had let a penalty roll through his legs—defeated and exhausted. He could not allow Madman to assert dominance over him. Though unwilling, he gave the second command:

“I want you to stomp the ground with your right foot.”

The deep silence was broken by the sound of Anthony’s right foot scraping against the floor, followed immediately by a storm of applause. In that moment, Süleyman wished he could sink into the ground. Counting the volunteer’s arms, legs, fingers, and head, there were roughly ten limbs he could move. If one also considered their possible directions—forward, backward, left, right—the number of possible motions exceeded fifty.

Amid this high probability, how could the volunteer correctly guess the command and coincidentally perform the exact movement? And not just once, but repeatedly.

Süleyman looked toward Mark with pleading eyes, but reading his partner’s gaze from among the angry spectators, he could almost hear him say:

“You brought this upon yourself. You acted impulsively and underestimated your enemy. As the Turkish proverb says, ‘They cut off the head of the rooster that crows too early.’”

Süleyman no longer felt like a goalkeeper who had conceded a goal, but like a lone spectator in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium, surrounded by fans of the opposing team. Yet the eyes of these spectators reflected not German tolerance and kindness, but racism and hooliganism. Hearing Madman’s voice reminded him that he was not in Berlin, but in a small-town performance hall.

“Yes, mister know-it-all, we’re waiting for the third command you will give.”

Süleyman frowned, ready to respond and put Madman in his place, but then he listened to his inner voice:

“This is not the time for foolishness. Don’t you understand? His goal is to make the audience angrier with you. Use your frontal lobe—the part that distinguishes you from animals and allows you to think.”

After the events they had experienced in Sarajevo and Pompeii ten years earlier, Süleyman and Mark had read extensively about the brain. The part that stuck with Süleyman the most was the frontal lobe, because according to some scientists, it was the neurons and connections in this lobe that set humans apart from animals, enabling reason and long-term planning.

And so, even knowing the result would likely go against him, Süleyman gave another command:

“I want you to move your right foot again.”

No one expected Süleyman to give the same command again. He was like a penalty taker who glanced at the right corner but rolled the ball to the left. Süleyman anticipated a surprise—but none came. Just as before, Anthony scraped and moved his foot across the floor.

The moment the volunteer moved his foot, the audience leapt to their feet and erupted into wild applause. Süleyman felt, perhaps for the first time in his life, so utterly humiliated that the redness of his face told the whole story.

After all, Madman claimed to be the Messiah. Therefore, he had to behave with tolerance and forgiveness—just as the Messiah would. The real purpose, of course, was to make the audience think, “See? He didn’t push the cornered sinner any further, so as not to humiliate him.”

Madman said nothing to Süleyman, yet his deep voice echoed through the auditorium as if to declare, “I rule this place.”

“By the spirit of Anthony, I command you: simultaneously extend your left arm forward, pull your right foot back, and move your head side to side.”

After a brief pause, the volunteer performed all three commands at once. Madman, already victorious, had delivered the final spectacle of the day.

Amid the audience’s jeers, Süleyman walked toward the exit, disappearing the moment he passed through the doorway. Mark, meanwhile, scanned the surroundings, trying to find any trace of Madman’s deception—but in vain. Apart from the madman’s disappearance, he saw nothing suspicious. Perhaps there would be something outside. He stepped out, crossed the road in front of the venue, and was about to call a taxi to return to the hotel when he heard the screech of tires behind him—a car skidding to a halt.

He saw a black limousine, and in front of it a woman accompanied by a young man. He assumed the car had braked to avoid hitting them. As he watched the elderly woman approach the open door of the limousine, he expected her to ask the wealthy passenger for help.

Mark was just about to leave when the words he heard from the old woman pulled him back:

“Lord, Divine Messiah, forgive my son for the wrong he has done to you. We have come to repent before you. You are the friend of the weak. Whatever wrong my son has committed against you, pardon him. Restore his health. He is weary of fighting against his own body.”

Mark could not fully understand what Madman had said from inside the limousine, because the young man beside the woman was pleading with those in the car the way a dog begs—uttering desperate, incoherent sounds mixed with crying and gestures whose meaning was impossible to decipher.

Anyone watching his movements would struggle not to feel fear. It looked as if two men were fighting—or as though a single body had split in two and its left and right sides were battling one another. When the right hand moved forward, the left hand grabbed it by the wrist; when the right hand tried to move backward, the left forced it forward again.

From the fragment of speech he could barely make out, Mark was certain the voice belonged to Madman:

“Tell everyone about the punishment I have given your son, so that all may take heed. Perhaps I will forgive him soon—or long from now.”

The limousine door shut and the vehicle sped away. But the old woman’s son shouted after it:

“Lord, I swear I don’t know what sin I committed against you! Tell me my fault, and I will correct it!”

Mark could make no sense of what he had seen or heard; he remained silently observing the woman and her son.

The young man’s left arm moved without cause. At times, his hand seemed on the verge of choking him; at others, it struck his stomach; sometimes it shot upward, throwing punches at the air without purpose—grasping at invisible objects or drawing shapes as if sketching.

Mark did not think he was insane. The man was not muttering nonsense, laughing, or conversing with imaginary companions. Apart from the left arm, he looked entirely normal. With his clothes and posture, he could pass for a gentleman.

Nor could Mark explain the movement as an epileptic seizure. People having such fits threw themselves to the ground; all their motor muscles tensed; and all limbs capable of movement convulsed. The drool at the mouth was another symptom.

Had this been inside the performance hall, he might have assumed fraud—an act designed to make a voluntary movement appear involuntary or imposed from outside. But Mark was certain that the woman and her son neither saw him, nor knew he was there, nor had any reason to perform for an unseen audience in an empty street.

Mark continued watching them. The shabby street had joined the main road. The woman stopped to speak with roughly every third passerby. What she said was almost always the same:

“My son was struck because he wronged our holy master and accused him of fraud. Half of his body has lost control.”

The expressions on people’s faces—caught somewhere between shock and fear—as they watched the young man’s left arm move uncontrollably made everything plain. Afterward, they would recite prayers in different phrases, all with the same meaning: “Holy Master, we have no doubt that you have returned among us.”

By the time the woman reached her home, she had spoken with dozens of people. Observing how she repeatedly told them that accusing the so-called Messiah of fraud led to punishment—just as it had befallen her son—Mark realized that Madman had achieved something far more effective through her than any expensive TV advertisement he could have paid for.

Even more curious were the bewildered words of the young man himself:

“Mom, I never called that man claiming to be the Messiah a fraud. I didn’t even know he existed. I still don’t understand why this happened to me.”

“When the Messiah’s charitable organization came to you, you not only refused to donate but behaved indifferently,” his mother replied, frowning.

“So what? Not giving money to his charity means I called him a fraud?”

“Yes, that is what it means. You must have thought he and his organization were fraudulent. That is why this happened. Be grateful God only struck your left side.”

From the conversation between mother and son, Mark understood that they too could not find a reasonable explanation for the uncontrollable movements of the young man’s left arm. He also recognized that the elderly mother, with Azrael hovering ever closer in her imagination and death constantly in her thoughts, was more inclined to believe in metaphysical causes. Thus, she interpreted her son’s strange condition as divine punishment.

Mark learned the address where the woman and her son lived. From the name on the door, he discovered that the young man’s name was Simone Enke. He watched them for a while from a café across the street. He witnessed the young man’s left arm move uncontrollably on numerous occasions. Mark was certain there was nothing artificial about it—but he still could not determine the cause.

He could accept that the young man had contracted an unknown illness. But he could not attribute its timing to coincidence, as the mother claimed—namely, that Simone had fallen ill because he refused to donate to Madman’s charity. According to her, the illness had come exactly as foretold in the assistant’s curse: “In the name of the Holy Messiah, may God curse your left side.”

Muttering to himself that there had to be some explanation for all this, Mark left the area and set off to meet Süleyman.