Anna continues...
	Now, I can show you the scars all over my body, as big and clear as they were on the day I got them. As I fully came to my senses, I felt someone remove my tailcoat, tearing it into pieces right before my bleary eyes. Then I found my hands and legs had been tied with a rope and a bunch of nettles had been stuck into my pants. The strong hand of a person I could not see thrashed me with a cudgel, and pulled my right arm out of its shoulder joint, letting it droop like a rag. That was all I could remember. I told Dancho the cop all the details of the shameful crime against me and he diligently put the evidence I gave him in his grey notebook. My attackers had evidently poured a pail of water over me, so I could see again the withered blades of grass around my head, but the first thing of importance I discerned was a necklace of yellow glass beads, swaying above my nose. Then the strong hand thrashed me again, this time with a long prickly stick and when I opened my eyes there was the same string of yellow beads dangling over my forehead. That was my complete sworn testimony. Dancho the cop left no stone unturned :  he looked for the yellow necklace all over Bulgaria, Macedonia and Greece, but it was nowhere to be found. People said later that a donkey had dragged me home stark naked, clouds of flies buzzing round me. "What's that stinky carrion tied on the donkey?" my father raved at the servants. "It'll give all my hens the pox! Throw it out!" It was no carrion on the donkey's back - it was me. On spotting my wounds, my father fainted and my mother dipped his head in a barrel full of water. First they washed me, then sent for a doctor. "The lad must be x-rayed, his joints are swollen and sprained. I'd say somebody did that on purpose to spite you, Sir!" the doctor's opinion was. Well, my parents couldn't get me x-rayed - I was wailing mad with pain and groaning, and whimpering, and even father didn't dare approach my bed. "Listen to me," my grandmother said, "let's send for Anna, she's good at swollen joints." "No!" my father roared, "never!" So I wailed for two more days, now gaining, now losing consciousness, screaming and sobbing in turn. Then another doctor from Sofia visited our house. He examined me, tut-tutting all the time, his final statement being :  "The young man must get some medical treatment in Switzerland, otherwise you'll lose him!" Father heard these words and locked the doctor in a small narrow room of our house. "You'll either cure him or your wife will lose you!" "I can't! I can't!" The doctor from Sofia came and did not even bother to cross the threshold. "I can't cure your son's disease - my speciality is different!" It was on the fifth day of my suffering that my father sent for Anna. He believed I'd die unless he hired a plane to take me to Switzerland. Anna examined me, thought for a while, then declared :  "Mr Ivanov, I shall cure your son. if on the fourteenth day of the treatment he is not able to tango with me, then, Sir, I'll stand at the door of the church on Sunday and let each person who enters or leaves kick me in the backside!" "Cure him then!" my father cried, "and I will pay you one thousand golden franks." "No!" Anna cut him short. "Two thousand!" "No!" Click here for the conclusion.