“Very pleasant.” Gurgeh drank a little, watching the dancers arrange themselves onstage. “Even there, though,” Hamin said, “you are missing something. You see, we gain a great deal of pleasure from knowing at what cost this music is bought. You see the stringed instrument; the one on the left with the eight strings?” Gurgeh nodded. Hamin said, “I can tell you that each of those steel strings has strangled a man. You see that white pipe at the back, played by the male?” “The pipe shaped like a bone?” Hamin laughed. “A female’s femur, removed without anesthetic.”
