I

A thousand accidents may and will interpose a veil between our present consciousness and the secret inscriptions of the mind; accidents of the same sort will also rend away this veil; but whether veiled or unveiled, the inscription remains forever; just as the stars seem to withdraw before the common light of day; whereas in- fact we all know that it is the light which is drawn over them as a veil, and that they are waiting to be revealed when the obscuring daylight shall have withdrawn.

—Thomas De Quincey

Mr. Pivner stepped out of his office building, to the street. He moved warily, for not long before he had almost been knocked down by a cab. The December sky was gray, and the air dissolved in rain. To the south, however, lay a small portion almost rectangular in shape and extravagantly blue. It was banded by an arrogant streak of purple. He walked into the street without disturbing himself to verify the color of the sky, exposing his face and the pinched knot in his necktie to the rain which he could hear drumming on the brim of his hat. At three o'clock in the afternoon Eddie Zefnic, the office boy who daily during summer observed Mr. Pivner's wilting collar with the greeting, —Hot enough for you Mister Pivner? stopped to brood beside one of the long office windows. He stared out on the city until Mr. Pivner reached that critical point in his signature, the capital "P," which he liked to make a figure of dashing individuality even on order forms. As the pen touched paper, —It's a real winter day out all right Mister Pivner, interrupted. He looked up, startled, botching the initial miserably. In other parts of the world, as unreal as New York was inevitable, the sky may have been sporting snow, sleet, cumulus clouds and thunderheads, the consoling pattern of a mackerel sky, or only itself, tenanted by a sun in the vastness of even blue so immense that it would seem darkness had never existed. But when Mr. Pivner returned to his signature, the sky was settled for him. It was a lowering but safely remote, dull and unconscious gray.

Consequently there was no reason for him to stand idly in the wet, looking about and questioning the sky, when he came out of that office building. Little good would it have done him had he bothered. Tons of concrete and other opaque building materials stood between him and that impudent portion of blue.

In the fragment of sky which the buildings permitted above him flags were being lowered. For the full day they had floated, as much as the rain would allow, heraldic devices of marvelous power, far more impressive than a fiery cross, or the six balls of the Medici. A great bell signaled a telephone company which was omnipotent. Three strokes of white lightning on a blue ground hailed an electric company which controlled the allegiances of an office force equal to the medieval duchy of Mantua. The whole scene was lit by electricity, escaping statically in incandescent bulbs and, in splendidly colored fluidity adding a note of metaphysical (Berg-sonian) hilarity to the air of well-curbed excitement, in tubes of glass cleverly contorted to spell out cacophonous syllables of words from a coined language, and names spawned in the estaminets of Antwerp. Any natural light which fell in from the sky, pale in impotence, was charitably neglected; but that sky, as has been noted, was a safe distance away.

Beneath these failing banners, these crippled ensigns depressing earthward under their own sodden weight, Mr. Pivner walked through the streets, head covered but bowed. Marvelous constructions passed him: a blackened truck with blackened men and pails hanging from every projection, dragging a cart bellied with open fire under a tub of molten asphalt, came almost over his feet. He barely glanced at it. The names AJAX and HERCULES borne in gold thundered by at an arm's reach, but Mr. Pivner did not appear to read. He stepped back, respectful as all ages of the expedition of heroes.

He had made this trip, a distance never measured in miles but in minutes, hundreds of times. Fortunately he had formed it as habit, for he accomplished it without thinking for a moment of where he was going, leaving his mind emptily cordial to the reflections of vacancy in the faces which stared with the same incurious anxiety at his own. If he had not rehearsed the trip many times, he might more easily have found himself among the flaming piles of rubble on a nearby city dump, which was a comparable distance away, far easier to reach, and whose central incineration plant had won a prize in functional architecture only ten years before.

Over and under the ground he hurried toward the place where he lived. No fragment of time nor space* any where was wasted, every instant and every cubic centimeter crowded crushing outward upon the next with the concentrated activity of a continent spending itself upon a rock island, made a world to itself where no present existed. Each minute and each cubic inch was hurled against that which would follow, measured in terms of it, dictating a future as inevitable as the past, coined upon eight million counterfeits who moved with the plumbing weight of lead coated with the frenzied hope of quicksilver, protecting at every pass the cherished falsity of their milled edges against the threat of hardness in their neighbors as they were rung together, fallen from the Hand they feared but could no longer name, upon the pitiless table stretching all about them, tumbling there in all the desperate variety of which counterfeit is capable, from the perfect alloy recast under weight to the thudding heaviness of lead, and the thinly coated brittle terror of glass.

The subway stopped under a river. It stayed there for minutes, while the occupants looked at one another, surreptitiously, appraising the company with whom they were trapped to meet disaster. One or two, not alone, started explanations for the delay, —Lines wet . . . —Somebody probly jumped . . . and stopped speaking, embarrassed at the sounds of their own voices. It stayed there for minutes, as though to iterate to their consciousness that they were unprotected, unknown, that they did not exist singly but only in aggregate, material for headlines. Mr. Pivner stared at an advertisement which, like 90 per cent of the advertisements he read, had no possible application in his life. He had no sewer; but with glazed attention he read, "Look, darling, he found my necklace," spoken by a lady, of the Roto-Rooter Service man, who offered to come "to Razor Kleen that clogged sewer . . . No charge if we fail . . ." The subway stayed there for long enough to send one woman (who looked foreign, they said later at dinner tables) into hysterics, moaning that her head was swelling, tugging the tight hatband away from it and running down the car to thrust her head into people's faces, couldn't they see it was swelling? And they •withdrew, abashed at this articulation of their own terror. Then the subway started and flashed its way into rock.

Mr. Pivner came out upon the street, to see a crowd gathering at the far corner. He turned his coat collar up again and pulled his hat down. When he reached the crowd, he looked where they were looking, up: at a man poised on a ledge eight stories above. Lights shone on him. Figures leaned from nearby windows. The crowd shifted impatiently. —Don't he know it's raining? I wish he'd get it done, if he's going to do it, a man said to Mr. Pivner. Mr. Pivner only stared. As he did, the rhythm of the crowd's voice took shape. They chanted, —Jump . . . jump . . . jump . . . and the figure above drew back. —jump . . . jump . . . jump . . . they chanted. A priest appeared at the window nearest him. —J U M P . . . JUMP. ..JUMP... The figure drew back, further, toward the priest. A young man leaning from the door of a car with a Press card in the windshield said to his companion, —The son of a bitch isn't going to jump . . .

Two blocks further on, Mr. Pivner stopped to buy a newspaper. There a man was arguing with the news-vendor, hatless, weaving slightly. He had started to leave, but turned saying, —Now don't start to get obnoxious ...

—Hello, Jerry, Mr. Pivner said, taking a paper. Jerry said, —Wet enough for you? Mr. Pivner said, —What's the matter with that fellow?

—Him? Aw, drunks get lonely sometimes. You know, he don't care what he says, he oney wants to talk to somebody.

—You're quite a philosopher Jerry, said Mr. Pivner, and went on, stopping in anxious habit at curbs, turning corners, glancing at passing shoe-tops, stockinged legs and trouser legs. Then with the city's suddenness someone was walking beside him. Their steps matched in a precise off-beat, ordained syncopation of doom on the wet pavement. Mr. Pivner walked faster, from fear was it? or revulsion? and still the man came on, beside and just behind him. Could he stop to light a cigarette? or for an untied shoelace? But the rain beat down around him and he walked on, again quickening his footsteps as they were echoed close upon him. When he turned down his street he looked back. The other continued straight, hat pulled down against the rain.

That street was quiet. There were no leaves dead and blowing in the gutters, because there were no trees within hope of the most boisterous wind. But there were forlorn bits of paper, candy wrappers, newspaper, paper bags, as satisfactorily dead and un-mercied as winter's brown leaves in any village side street.

Like the others, Mr. Pivner spent little time at ground level. He was usually moving rapidly beneath it, or taking his spurious ease some ells above. Up he rose in the elevator, out into the passage, and he opened his door with one of a number of keys he carried, a satisfaction no one can know who does not keep a secret and private self locked away from eight million others. He stood for a moment in his open doorway, as he always did, lighting the rooms with the button at his hand and looking through the rooms in that instant of anxiety which waited always to be expanded into full terror at finding the place burgled, finding under the hand of the careless burglar the intimate slaughter of his secret self. But everything was in order, silently waiting to affirm him, holding there the sense of the half-known waiting for eventual discovery in a final recognition of himself. He took off his hat and shook it (having hurried home as though his own coronation were waiting), and moved now with the slow deliberation of lonely people who have time for every meager requirement of their lives. He took off his coat, shook it, and looked at the spots he had made on the wallpaper.

The small apartment was as inoffensive as himself. Like the defiantly patternless botch of colors he wore upon his necktie, signal of his individuality to the neckties that he met screaming the same claim of independence from the innominate morass of their wearers, the apartment's claims to distinction were mass-produced flower-and hunting-prints, filling a need they had manufactured themselves, heavy furniture with neither the seductive ugliness of functional pieces nor the isolate dumb beauty of something chosen for itself: in matching, they fulfilled their first requirement, as did the hopeless style of his brown pleated trousers which matched his brown coat, double-breasted over a chest resigned to be forever hidden like a thing of shame, whitening to yellowness with the years so that to show it now would be indeed offensive. It was a part of the body which he had never learned to use, never having been so poor that he was forced to feel the strain and growth of its muscles in the expansion of labor; nor rich enough to feel it liberated in those games (requiring courts, eighteen-hole courses, bridle-paths) which rich people played. Totally unconscious of itself except when something went wrong, that body served only to keep his identity intact, and was kept covered, like this room, to offend no one.

He turned the radio on, and adjusted his hearing, so that he heard only a comforting confusion of sound. An electric reading lamp, capable at a turn of a finger of three degrees of intensity, stood (just out of reach) beside a large chair. Behind was a veneered secretary of anonymous century and unavowed design, holding protected behind glass an assortment of books published by the hundred-thousand, treatises on the cultivation of the individual self, prescriptions of superficial alterations in vulgarity read with excruciating eagerness by men alone in big chairs, the three-way lamp turned to its wildest brilliance as they fingered those desperate blazons of individuality tied in mean knots at their throats, fastened monogrammed tie-clasps the more firmly, swung keys on gold-plated monogram-bearing ("Individualized") key-chains, tightened their arms against wallets in inside pockets which held the papers prov- ing their identity beyond doubt to others and in moments of Doubt to themselves, papers in such variety that the bearer himself became their appurtenance, each one contemplating over words in a book (which had sold four million copies: How to Speak Effectively; Conquer Fear; Increase Your Income; Develop Self-Confidence; "Sell" Yourself and Your Ideas; Improve Your Memory; Increase Your Ability to Handle People; Win More Friends; Improve Your Personality; Prepare for Leadership) the Self which had ceased to exist the day they stopped seeking it alone.

—1 knew it couldn't work out. I knew he was too good. I should have known . . . said a girl's voice on the radio, O God, what have I du-un . . .

On the end-table stood a ship model, a square-rigged man-o'-war set with so much sail (it was all metal) that it would have tumbled stern-over-prow in the idlest wind, furnished with so many guns that one of its own broadsides would have sent it heeling over to the bottom. The telephone was here too, and it was here that Mr. Pivner suddenly appeared from the bathroom, to pick up the receiver. —Hello? Hello? There was nothing. He dialed. —What number were you calling, ple-as? —I thought I heard the telephone ring, operator. Did you ring my telephone? —Excuse it, ple-as. —Hello? Hello?

—then and only then do you decide. The decision, my friends, rests with you. First come, first served. Don't wait, don't delay, don't hesitate. And remember, you are under absolutely no obligation . . . said the radio.

Mr. Pivner returned from the bathroom with a bottle and a hypodermic needle, which he put down beside a photograph album. No one had opened the album for months. Shut in it were mean-sized prints, snapshots taken on vacations, of himself and other refugees. Some enclosed views of water, shreds of mountains, corners of sky, taken to remind him at moments like this of an outdoors whose wonders he was permitted to see some fifteen days in four hundred. But he had forgotten, not that sunsets did occur, but what a sunset was; or the flight of a bird; the movement of water against a shore; the freshness of air consciously breathed; distances seen over land; the sound of wind in a green tree; or the silent, incredible progress of a snail.

And his camera photographs, having cast these phenomena into static patternless configurations of gray, recalled nothing. They served, waiting locked up in undimensional darkness here, as witnesses: that he had had more hair twelve years ago; that he had started to wear (rimless) glasses nine years before; that his brown suit was seven, not five, years old.

—Ladies, now is the time to save and save. Women are flocking to ...

He sat down, and before filling the needle took a letter from his pocket which he put on the chair arm and did not read. He had read this brief letter enough times, at his desk and in the office lavatory, over coffee and over meals. He would read it again after supper, study his own name in counterfeit signature at the bottom. Otto wrote to say that he would call to arrange a meeting place; but gave no number where he might be reached. Therefore there was nothing to do but wait. Some months before there had been a call, a drunken boy's voice shouting for Otto, asking him who the hell he was anyhow. Mr. Pivner took up the bottle and read the directions. Diabetes is a serious disease. No one can afford to take chances; there is no reason to take them, when the marvels of medical science are worked out to the most minute point, making the notion of hazard contemptible, if only one follows the directions on the bottle. True, he had had four attacks in these past seven years, suddenly rendered helpless in public, going down with the reeling fall of a drunkard: but those had been moments of excitement. One had only to be careful, keep hold of one's self. That poor woman in the subway tonight, for instance . . . (he had for the moment forgot the man on the ledge). One had only one's self to blame for catastrophe, with Science concentrating its huge forces on bettering the human lot. (Had he not read, only the week before in a newspaper, of a new medicine which would prolong human life? Men might live to be two hundred years old, unclothed perhaps and unfed since there would be so many, but Science took care of details when they arose (had he not read only this week that very palatable foods were being made from seaweed, coal, and cotton? and clothing: the same article said that very durable cloth could be made from soy beans, meat extracts, and vegetable products). Two hundred years old! and, as he understood it, alive.)

After the injection, he picked up his newspaper. The Sunday edition, still in the rack beside him, required fifty acres of timber for its magic transformation of nature into progress, benefits of modern strides in transportation, communication, and freedom of the press: public information. (True, as he got into the paper, the average page was made up of a half-column of news, and four-and-one-half columns of advertising.) A train wreck in India, 27 killed, he read; a bus gone down a ravine in Chile, i American and n natives; avalanche in Switzerland, death toll mounts . . . This evening edition required only a few acres of natural grandeur to accomplish its mission (for it carried less advertising). Mr. Pivner read carefully. Kills father with meat-ax. Sentenced for slaying of three. Christ died of asphyxiation, doctor believes. Woman dead two days, invalid daughter unable to summon help. Nothing escaped Mr. Pivner's eye, nor penetrated to his mind; nothing evaded his attention, as nothing reached his heart. The headless corpse. Love kills penguin. Pig got rheumatism. Nagged Bible reader slays wife. Man makes own death chair, 25,000 volts. "Ashamed of world," kills self. Fearful of missing anything, he read on, filled with this anticipation which was half terror, of coming upon something which would touch him, not simply touch him but lift him and carry him away.

Every instant of this sense of waiting which he had known all of his life, this waiting for something to happen (uncertain quite what, and the Second Advent intruded) he brought to his newspaper reading, spellbound and ravenous. Man fights lion in zoo, barefisted. Cow kills woman. Rooster kills woman. Dogs eat Eskimo. As he turned the pages, folding them smartly back over the bulk of the newspaper, he relaxed a little at his comparative safety away from the news, drew comfort from the train wreck (he was not in it), the bus accident in Chile (nor in that), the meat-ax slaying (he had not done it), the headless corpse (not his), and so the newspaper served him, externalizing in the agony of others the terrors and temptations inadmissible in himself. Even though the evening paper repeated the news of the morning paper, he read attentively again, reworded, of the hunt for the unknown person who was releasing birds from an uptown zoo, of the discovery of two priceless art treasures, original paintings of Dierick Bouts, in a pawnshop in Hell's Kitchen, of the murder trial in Mouth, Mississippi, where just that morning the husband's heart had been exhibited in court. All of these civilized wonders were brought together, he was made to feel, expressly for him, by the newspaper. True, they kept him in such a state that he often bought late editions of the same newspaper, seeing different headlines than those tucked under his arm, only to read the story from column six suddenly elevated to a banner across columns one to four. True, often the only way he could know whether he had read a newspaper was to turn to the comic strips, where life flowed in continuum; and recognizing them, he knew that he must have read everything else closely and avidly, that nothing had evaded his eye, nor penetrated to his heart round which he had built that wall called objectivity without which he might have gone mad. As the tales of violence seemed daily to increase it hardly occurred to him that he was living in such unnatural density of population that it daily supported disasters sufficient for a continent. Added to this came the blood of the world, piped in on wires, and wireless, teletype, undersea cables, and splashed without a drop lost in transit upon Mr. Pivner, who sat, hard, patient, unbending, wiped it from his eyes, and waited for more.

Mr. Pivner elevated himself slightly upon one narrow ham and broke wind, a soft interrogative sound which went unanswered. Then he sagged and stared at the newspaper, untroubled by the notion that this might have been a demon leaving its residence inside him. Not only would he, albeit embarrassed, scoff at this medieval reality; but he could, in all reason, believe that even had he lived then, he would have scoffed. Incubae and succubae, the shriek of the mandrake root pulled from the ground which drove a man mad if he heard it, chloroform a decoy of Satan, smallpox a visitation of God: all those, and many more, he could believe that he would not have believed, but would have stood forth, as he was submerged now, in Reason. It was true, there were things he did not understand, realms where Science advanced upon the provinces of God, where he felt rather uncomfortable, looking forward, secretly, to the day when Science would explain all, and vindicate the Doubt which he kept hidden in case it should not.

His thumb over the headline, Campanile at Venice Periled, his eyes blinked closed behind the glasses which were steadily weakening them, until one day they might be as little good in light as they were now in darkness: his trouble had been diagnosed as nyctalopia, caused, he was told, by a vitamin deficiency (and not, "like people used to think," from sleeping in the moonlight). He had a shelf-full of bottles (labeled Afaxin, Pancebrin, Natola, Multi-Vi Drops, Vi-Dom-A Pillettes, and others) to help correct this condition; but he had got the glasses "just to make sure." Nonetheless, he still stumbled in the dark.

Now, the headlines had commenced to run together before his eyes. He had read the letters written to the editors (written by the editors), and the columns of the columnists, an assortment of aggressive ulcerated men, self-appointed authorities who wrote intimately of people they had never seen and places they had never been, or colyumísts with the "common touch," who simulated and encouraged the average reader's lack of intelligence, talent, and sensitivity. But now, Holy See Bans Psychoanalysis . . . , Giant Robot Runs Amok . . . , Lobotomy to Cure Man of Writing Dud Checks . . . , the black letters swam before his eyes, and he started to doze over the news that the bell tower of Saint Mark's was in danger of falling, cracked in the cool nights of summer after the scorching sun of the days.

—The Rootsicola Company now brings you the correct time. The time is six p.m. Have you tried Rootsicola? Rootsicola tastes better and is better for you, and remember, friends, Rootsicola keeps its flavor twice as long, and you get twice as much Rootsicola in the familiar big bottle . . .

(Better than what? he wondered faintly. Twice as long as what? Twice as much as what?)

—Rootsicola. That's right, friends. Remember the root. Rootsicola, for the smile of happiness . . . the uprooted voice went on, bursting with aggressive vitality, leveling Mr. Pivner's weariness to chronic decrepitude. True, he it was to whom they all appealed; and he did try, with all the attention his consciousness could muster under the attrition of the sameness of their words, to maintain his responsibility as a citizen. He listened to the radio during periods of political heat, the speech in which one senator told the truth about another (this was known as a "smear campaign"); and then the raucous gathering where people were paid in five-dollar bills to shout, clap, parade, and otherwise indicate the totally irrational quality of their enthusiasm for a man they had never met to take office and govern them. Occasionally, it is true, Mr. Pivner slipped into listening to these conventions in much the same spirit as benighted members of certain Latin cultures listen to the drawing of the National Lottery; but even when this expression disappeared he had as much difficulty reconciling his sense of public duty and responsibility with his feeling of total helplessness as a Central American Indian might, upon being told that he shared the responsibility for the number drawn in Panama on Sunday afternoon; and as far as that goes, the Indian could call in powers which Mr. Pivner knew nothing about, dreams and spells, magic numbers and meretricious deities, a seedy band to call in where Reason reigned, however staunch they might prove as allies there where the Indian sat silent with his radio on a peak in Darien.

Science assures us that "If man were wiped out, it is extremely improbable that anything very similar would ever again evolve." Threat and comfort: we need only turn the particle of the earth's crust read with such eager pride to make one of the other. Here in the foremost shambles of time Mr. Pivner stood, heir to that colossus of self-justification, Reason, one of whose first accomplishments was to effectively sever itself from the absurd, irrational, contaminating chaos of the past. Obtruding over centuries of gestation appeared this triumphal abortion: Reason supplied means, and eliminated ends.

What followed was entirely reasonable: the means, so abruptly brought within reach, became ends in themselves. And to substitute the growth of one's bank account for the growth of one's self worked out very well. It had worked out almost until it reached Mr. Pivner, for so long as the means had remained possible of endless expansion, those ends of other ages (which had never shown themselves very stable) were shelved as abstractions to justify the means, and the confidently rational notion that peace, harmony, virtue, and other tattered constituents of the Golden Rule would come along of themselves was taken, quite reasonably, for granted.

Retirement? the word shook him hollow, left him in a void where nothing remained to be done. With survival a triumph, the means themselves had become an end constantly unfulfilled; and now the specter of retirement formed its expression, leering within sight. He found himself surrounded by the rights of others who had ceased to grow more recently than himself, having earned that right the instant they mastered some fundamental technique of making a living, which they called education. Assured that they were under no obligation, and would do very well as they were, they advanced to take his place and relive his dilemma.

—and do you feel run down at the end of the day? that dull logy tired feeling that just seems to creep through you? Well friends, modern science has developed ....

It was to him that these voices appealed, siding with him in this conspiracy against himself, citing him splendidly satisfactory just as he was, heralding his privileges, valuing the mass of his concurring opinion with guarantee of his protection against dissenters, justifying his limitations, and thus proving, by their own successful existence, that he was obliged to seek no further than himself for the authority which justified them both, pledged at last to secure and defend him in all these things, which they called his rights.

The newspaper now lay open to a feature story (exclusive) on the imminent canonization of a Spanish child, a feature not because the little girl was soon to be a saint, but because she had been raped and murdered. He stared, started, and felt suddenly for the keys in his pocket, always terrified that, losing them, the finder would know to whom they belonged, what they guarded. The newspaper tipped in his hand, and lay quiet on his lap, as the tic which came in his lip when he was tired pulled his mouth out of line. His half-opened eyes met those of the two faces before him, both pictures indistinct because they had been sent by radio, not that there was any hurry, but to show that this newspaper afforded its readers the most modern news service possible. He summoned his attention to read the article, for it was in such "features" that he found the satisfaction which life never suggested, that of a beginning, a middle, and an end. (Though occasionally one beginning got confused with other middles and other ends, he knew that these events were really tak- ing place; and he even had the sense that he was slightly ahead of them, with evening papers out in the morning, and next morning's papers out that night.)

His eyes met the penetrating eyes of the murderer, fixed in a round face whose limp flabby quality was belied by a exquisite mustache and a sharp cleft in the widow's peak of black hair. He read the man's name, and that of his victim, confusions of foreign syllables which he did not try to align, and then details of the crime so rewardingly grisly and sharp that it might have happened the day before, instead of four decades. "Very soon after her death, the village of San Zwingli, its facades splashed blue with vine-spray, where the peasants live a mixed life with their goats, chickens, and burros, became the scene of a series of miracles. There were miraculous cures among sick peasants who insisted on attributing them to the little girl who appeared to them in visions, in a mist, carrying lilies of purity . . ." Even the criminal testified, " 'I see her against the light, coining to me with lilies in her hands. But when she offers them to me they become flames. It is in these flames that I find remorse and penitence, and peace! . . .' " Through his drooping eyes, Mr. Pivner stumbled on to an interview with the priest who had promoted recognition of the child's sanctity, "A candle gave an extra flicker and lit up his face, the color and texture of antique parchment, surmounted by the black satin biretta . . ." With a gesture of "his pale El Grecoesque hands . . ." he went on, " 'The Devil's Advocate took the information and after two years' study passed it to the Preparatory Congregation, which was held in the presence of the Cardinals. The following year, the Pope was present at the General Congregation, with his Cardinals, Prelates, and consultative Padres. They all cast votes in favor of the Martyrdom . . . We started without a single lira, and it takes a great deal of money to promote a saint. Apart from the expenses of bringing witnesses to Rome anj:I making out the documents, it costs 3,000,000 lire to hire Saint Peter's for a canonization . .

There the little girl stood before Mr. Pivner in long white stockings, and stared out at his dozing face wistfully, for the harsh newspaper reproduction, sent by radio, made her look cross-eyed.

—Friends, don't take our word for it. You owe it to your own health . . .

The newspaper slipped to the floor, and Mr. Pivner sat up as though called. A half-pound of ground beef waited in the kitchen, for his supper. (—Is it all beef? he had asked insistently; and assured that it was, did not ask how old it was, and so was not told that it had got its succulent redness from sodium sulphite rubbed into it when it had turned toxic gray the day before.)

—Exhaustive scientific tests have proved . . .

He breathed, a sigh, and sat back, his senses glazed, insulted and injured, a brave man, assailed on all sides, supporting with his last penny those things which tore from him the last sacred corner of his privacy, and with it the dignity which churchmen called his soul.

—Prominent medical specialists agree . . .

He looked at that letter again, on the chair arm, and his eyes widened as the stain of perfect metal in his alloy cried out for perfection.

—tastes better, looks better, smells better, and is better for you . . .

And that perfect particle was submerged, again satisfied with any counterfeit of itself which would represent its worth amongst others. As his eyes closed again, the letter slipped from the chair arm to the floor, and with it the precious metal of youth which it had suggested, alloyed in age with weariness, doubt and dread, circumstances constantly unpropitious to any approach to perfection. Gold was never seen, never passed from one hand to another, no longer currency, not only unexpected but against the law: only the compromises worn smooth which Exchangers do not even bother to ring but pass on, giving and receiving or losing and taking reciprocally their leaden counterparts.

Worth his weight in gold, Mr. Pivner would have brought seventy-four thousand and four dollars (at the official rate; $105,720 on the black market). But somewhere in the shadowy past, in that penumbra of Science called chemistry, lay the assurance that his body was worth ninety-seven cents: a faint sigh led him nearer sleep, a sound of anticipation, as though awaiting the strategic moment to sell out.

Even in sleep, he was waiting, a little tense like everyone waiting within reach of a telephone, for it to ring. And still, even in sleep, he knew there would be time. Adam, after all, lived for nine hundred thirty years.

Beside the empty cradle of the white telephone, a vase held erect against green six bird-of-paradise flowers, Strelitzia reginae, also called wild banana in South Africa where they grow naturally profuse, blue-tongued exotic orange protrusions from the deep purple-green bill, silently mating there among the native white pear, the red ivory, black stinkwood, and umzimbiti.

Mickey Mouse pointed to four o'clock.

—Am I in a state of Grace? But darling . . . Agnes Deigh paused, to reach beyond the oval-framed miniature of a young man in uniform, for the cigarettes on her desk. She got one and put it into her mouth at an extreme angle and, lighting it, listening, looked for that moment like a billboard picture into whose lips someone has stuck a cigarette. —Yes I know, that's sweet but I can't pray for you, she went on, the cigarette bobbing. —I know, darling, another time. But thank you for the divine flowers just the same.

When she'd hung up she sat staring for a moment at the news clipping one of the girls had sent in as a joke: Offer Husband's Heart in Evidence. A woman named Agnes Day of Mouth, Mississippi, was on trial for stabbing her husband to death. It was not funny. She crumpled it to throw in the basket, and rummaged in-her bag, took out a French enameled thimble case, set it aside, and looked until she found another pill box. Then as she poured water from the carafe, she stared at the miniature in the oval frame. It was her brother, whom she'd known only in the intent intimacy of childhood, before he ran away, before she was sent away to school; and she found herself again counting the months since he'd been listed missing in a war which no one spoke of but as a political blunder. She turned her chair away from the desk to take her pill.

Across the court from Agnes Deigh's office there were two windows she could look directly into. One, she was certain, was a psychoanalyst. The Venetian blinds were usually drawn, but she had seen the couch, and the sight of its familiar length upset her. Her own analysis had taken three years, under one of the best analysts (he had made a name for himself with a paper he had published on one of his patients, a nun, who became a bear trainer when he had done with her). But there were still moments, when she thought of her husband, or when she looked at the picture in the oval frame, when Agnes Deigh was unsure whether she had correctly reassembled the parts he had spread out before her, as when a novice dismantles a machine, and putting it back together finds a number of parts left over, each curiously shaped to some definite purpose.

The other window was a dentist. Late every afternoon he appeared there in an undershirt, to shave before the mirror hung in the window frame. For some reason she always thought of her husband, Harry, when she looked across at him. But he never noticed her, he never glanced across the court, never anywhere but the mirror, not even when, one day, exasperated at his sloven obduracy, she had stood at her window with her blouse undone, pretending, as a breast slipped into conspicuous sight while she watched him from her eye's corner, to be adjusting an undergarment. He'd neither looked over nor seemed consciously to keep from doing so, but went on to shave, the flesh of his arms hanging loosely, suspenders dangling to his knees. Every time she looked up he was there, absorbed in some activity of the body, his own or someone else's, now washing his hands, now drying them, talking to someone unseen.

She returned to her desk to put down the glass of water, took a macadamia nut from the jar there, and sat exposing a face where time weighed out unconscious of exposure, a face even she herself had never seen in her mirror. Then her telephone rang.

—Yes? she whispered, and then, getting her voice, —Send him in.

Otto had left a copy of his play for her to look at (one of four made at alarming expense by a public stenographer, which he carried in a proportionately expensive pigskin dispatch case). When he arrived late that afternoon, he could hear her voice from an office or two away, ringing from the dark green walls, ricocheting off the white plaster approximations to tropical plants which were the indirect lighting fixtures, glancing from one unsympathetic modern surface to another, skipping across the edges of other sounds to attempt escape through the jalousies of the Venetian blinds, caroming off the absurd angles of the hats on other women who infested the place and who, themselves, rebounded among telephones. The whole scene, on the long-piled dark green carpet bore grotesque parody to those earlier caricatures of Nature sponsored by shades of the Sun King, where women of exhausted French sophistication dressed as shepherdesses to toil weary sins in new silks across carpets of false grass.

—Simpotíco, came that voice, —I say they're so simpótico . . . what? Harry? Oh God no, not for months, he's still in Hollywood where they're filming his novel . . . yes, it was changed a little. What? . . . yes, the homosexual boy to a Negro and the Jew to a cripple. Sensitive minorities ... Of course I'm interested in politics . . . Don't be tiresome, I couldn't care less about Harry using me in his ghastly book, but giving me a name like Seraphina . . . No, of course I don't need the money, I'm just suing him because money is the only language he understands . . .

—She's frightfully busy, said one of the hats to Otto. —She's on the phone, and she has someone in there now. Have you an appointment?

Some minutes later, during which Otto almost set fire to his sling trying to light a cigarette, Agnes Deigh appeared with an immaculate boy before her, saying to him, —But you will hurry with it? Buster Brown's third book will be out in the spring, and he's only twenty-three.

—Buster twenty-three! Agnes, he's twenty-eight if he's a day. And really, how can he pretend to write about depravity, why I told him myself about Leda and the swan, do you know what he said? Human beins cain't copulate wif bihds, silly . . . Really, he's a very wicked boy. You're coming to the party tonight? I'll tell you who I'm going to be or you'll never know me, Cleopatra! . . .

Otto followed her into her office, after her incurious smile and a glance, not at him but his fading suntan. Hers glistened richly. —Now . . . she paused behind her desk, —what was it? You are . . .

— The Vanity of Time, my play, my name . . .

—Oh yes. Sit down? She found it, under things, and sat a long silence staring at it. When he cleared his throat to speak, she said, —Well / liked it a great deal, you know ... as though to indicate that no one else had. —But we've talked about it ... Apparently no one else had. —It's not really that it isn't a good play, you do have an admirable eye for dramatic situation, and some very sensitive perceptions. But . . . possibly the theme is a little ambitious for someone your age? When you've really lived these things ... as they happen ... it isn't really topical, you see. If you look carefully at the plays and novels that are successful now . . . The white telephone rang. —Yes, Monday? sixish? Just drinks, yes, I want to talk to you about it. He left a moment ago, he said he'd have a copy for you in two or three weeks, and frankly I think it's worth ten thousand simply in pre-publication advertising, after all he is just the sort of thing we've made popular. I? ... no, I haven't had a chance to read it yet myself.

As she spoke she twisted forward, looking past him, lips distorted to accept the cigarette he offered round the Strelitzia ambush. But before he could manage to light it, she'd hung up and held a flaming silver machine across to him. —There is something else I should mention, she went on-as he sank back. —All of us had the feeling that parts of it were familiar, I hardly know how to say . . . She coughed, looked at the cigarette, and put it out. —No, I didn't mean to say you'd stolen it, not at all, but there was the feeling . . . some of the lines were familiar . . . The telephone rang. —Thank you for letting us look at it, she said lifting the telephone, and then lowering her eyes to vacancy as he stood. —Of course I have your key darling, the one to your box? . . . but you told me I wasn't to let you have it ... She smiled down at space. —Oh, for the party tonight? . . . She looked up, and spoke around the telephone mouthpiece, —But you'll show us anything else you do, won't you . . . ? her voice followed him, out the gate, across the greensward among those shepherdesses gesticulating their telephone crooks, up the garden path.

One of them passed him, carrying a letter to" the office he'd just left, a letter which quivered, open, in Agnes Deigh's hand a few moments later. It was from the War Department, to inform her that the body of her brother had been recovered and identified. Did she want it? Please check yes or no. —Darling, is something the matter? —Please . . . just ... -What . . . ?

—Leave me alone . . . for a minute. Then the slight sound of the letter quivering in her hand roused her from the numbness which had diffused itself through every sensible part of her body. —Not so cruel, she murmured, —but . . . how can they be so stupid? . . . Then she let go the paper and swung her chair away abruptly to face the window, to deny the familiar room, and the picture on her desk, seeing her wipe her eyes. She did that; and sat staring through the glass. Check yes or no

Although she could not hear across the court, it was evident that the dentist was shouting. She could make out a girl of about twenty. Then Agnes Deigh leaned forward. She got up and went to the window and stared. He had hit her. He had hit the girl and he hit her again. He had the razor strop in his hand, and he brought it down against the arms protecting her bosom. Agnes Deigh's hand shook with excitement as she turned and lifted the white telephone, opening the directory with her other hand, to say, —Get me Spring seven three one hundred . . . Hello? Yes, I want to report a case of malicious cruelty. Or sadism. Yes, sadism. What? Of course, my name is Agnes Deigh . . .

As she spoke she stared at the Strelitzia; and as she spoke the words of an earlier conversation rehearsed in her mind. —Your flowers are lovely, are they for Christmas?

(—Yes Agnes but I sent them because I knew they'd amuse you, aren't they sweet, they're so obscene, but Agnes darling you know I'm mercenary, really quite venial, and I want someone to pray for something for me, darling are you in a state of Grace . . . ?)

Immediately she had hung up she stood, put on her hat slowly, her coat quickly, and went through the door. Check yes or no In how many years? she thought, no one has sent me flowers for love.

She'd gone direct to the bank of elevators, but turned suddenly to the figure behind a near desk, and brought out, breathless, confused, not the words she expected, not, Are you Catholic? but, —Do you believe in God?

—Why yes, darling ... in a way . . .

—Will you go to Saint Vincent Ferrer? . . . and have them say . . . you, you can go tomorrow, yes, go on your lunch hour? . . . The elevator doors opened behind her, and she said more clearly over her shoulder as she turned, —And put it on your expense account.

In the street she walked briskly, not a stitch or line out of place, her make-up set in a mask. An unshaven cripple, who'd come forth with an open hand, to be charitably avoided by a turn of her hips, retired saying to a passer-by, —You couldn't take her out in the rain.

She went into a bar, and ordered a martini.

—With pumpkin seeds in it?

She just stared at him. The girl next to her had one beside her book. She was reading The Compleat Angler.

"What is mine, then, and what am I? If not a curve in this poor body of mine (which you love, and for the sake of which you dot-ingly dream that you love me), not a gesture that I can frame, not a tone of my voice, not any look from my eyes, no, not even now when I speak to him I love, but has belonged to others? Others, ages dead, have wooed other men with my eyes; other men have heard the pleading of the same voice that now sounds in your ears. The hands of the dead are in my bosom; they move me, they pluck me, they guide me; I am a puppet at their command; and I but reinform features and attributes that have long been laid aside from evil in the quiet of the grave . . ."

The dead lilies stood beside her in a fruit jar, where she read, slowly as though bringing these words into concert for the first time herself.

The sign pinned to her door said, Do Not Disturb Me I Am Working Esme: and she had closed that door and bolted it, delighted to be alone. But as the afternoon passed, she moved less excitedly and less often. For a few minutes she sewed at a dress she was making, singing one of her own songs. Then she got up, with a cigarette, and walked about the double room, replacing things. Then she sewed again, sitting like a child of five sewing, and like a five-year-old girl singing unheard. But before that sewing was done she was up, rearranging her books with no concern but for size. There was, really, little else their small ranks held in common (except color of the bindings, and so they had been arranged, and so too the reason often enough she'd bought them). Their compass was as casual as books left behind in a rooming house; and this book of stories by Stevenson, with no idea where she'd got it, she hadn't looked into it for years, now could not put it down, and to her now it was the only book she owned. Even so she had never read for the reasons that most people give themselves for reading. Facts mattered little, ideas propounded, exploited, shattered, even less, and narrative nothing. Only occasional groupings of words held her, and she entered to inhabit them a little while, until they became submerged, finding sanctuary in that part of herself which she looked upon distal and afraid, a residence as separate and alien, real or unreal, as those which shocked her with such deep remorse when the features of others betrayed them. An infinite regret, simply that she had seen, might rise in her then, having seen too much unseen; and it brought her eyes down quick. It was Otto's expression, when his cigarette had burnt a cleft on her table, and he recovered it and looked up sharply to see if she'd noticed. It was Max's expression, when he'd taken a paper with her writing on it, whatever it was, she didn't know, but taken it from the table and slipped it into a pocket away from her, looking up with his smile to see if she'd seen him, his smile fixed and barely breaking as he started to talk hurriedly, looking at her with eyes which sent hers to the floor lest she weep for the lie in his.

The sole way, it seemed to her often enough when she was working at writing a poem, to use words with meaning, would be to choose words for themselves, and invest them with her own meaning: not her own, perhaps, but meaning which was implicit in their shape, too frequently nothing to do with dictionary definition. The words which the tradition of her art offered her were by now in chaos, coerced through the contexts of a million inanities, the printed page everywhere opiate, row upon row of compelling idiocies disposed to induce stupor, coma, necrotic convulsion; and when they reached her hands they were brittle, straining and cracking, sometimes they broke under the burden which her tense will imposed, and she found herself clutching their fragments, attempting again with this shabby equipment her raid on the inarticulate.

So for instance she stole comatulid, and her larceny went unnoticed by science which chose it to mean "a free-swimming stalk-less crinoid . . ." and crinoid: lily-shaped (though this word belonged to the scientists too, Crinoidea, a large class of echinoderms). And the phylum Echinodermata she left far behind, left the starfishes, the sea urchins, and their allies to grope in peace in the dark water of the sea. Comatulid lay on the paper under her pen; while she struggled to reach it through the rubble amassed by her memory.

It was through this imposed accumulation of chaos that she struggled to move now: beyond it lay simplicity, unmeasurable, residence of perfection, where nothing was created, where originality did not exist: because it was origin; where once she was there work and thought in causal and stumbling sequence did not exist, but only transcription: where the poem she knew but could not write existed, ready-formed, awaiting recovery in that moment when the writing down of it was impossible: because she was the poem. Her hand tipped toward the paper, black stroke the pen made there, but only that stroke, line of uncertainty. She called her memory, screamed for it, trying to scream through it and beyond it, damned accumulation that bound her in time: my memory, my bed, my stomach, my terror, my hope, my poem, my God: the meanness of my. Must the flames of hell be ninety-story blazes? or simply these small sharp tongues of fire that nibble and fall to, savoring the edges and then consume, swept by the wind of terror at exposing one's self, losing the aggregate of meannesses which compose identity, in flames never reaching full roaring crescendo but scorch through a life like fire in grass, in the world of time the clock tells. Every tick, synchronized, tears off a fragment of the lives run by them, the circling hands reflected in those eyes watching their repetition in an anxiety which draws the whole face toward pupiled voids and finally, leaves lines there, uncertain strokes woven into the flesh, the fabric of anxiety, double-webbed round dark-centered jellies which reflect nothing. Only that fabric remains, pleached in the pattern of the bondage which has a beginning and an end, with scientific meanness in attention to details, of a thousand things which should not have happened, and did; of myriad mean events which should have happened, and did not: waited for, denied, until life is lived in fragments, unrelated until death, and the wrist watch stops.

The pen quivered over the paper, added inae to comatulid, and then carefully crossed out that free suffix; and then brought comatulid into the tangle of black ink, as she moved toward that world not world where the needle took her. It was the uncircumscribed, unbearable, infinitely extended, indefinitely divisible void where she swam in orgasm, soaring into a vastness away from the heaving indignity of the posture she shared; the world of music so intensely known that nothing exists but the music; it was the world of ecstasy they all approximated by different paths, one world in which temporary residence is prohibited, as the agonies of recall attest: "Love's dart" that wounds but does not kill; the ill complained of, but prized above every joy and earthly good; "sweet cautery," the "stolen heart," the "ravished understanding," the "rape of love": in Provencal, conoscenza. Thus Saint Teresa, quadrupedis, "dying of not being able to die."

What did the devil teach Gerbert, Archbishop of Ravenna, in exchange for his soul which Gerbert bartered to learn all, and become Pope? The devil taught him algebra and clock-making, for a world where there is no space, only distances; no time, only minutes and hours; where things are numbered, and even Christ bowed with finite care when he gave SS Elizabeth Matilda Bridget a written account of the kicks, blows, and wounds he had received, numbered the skull fractures 100, the drops of blood 38,430 (though another girl was later to receive a letter through her guardian angel numbering those drops of blood 3,000,800). The world in which the Virgin's titles number 305; and Sir Arthur Eddington decides that the electron is not subject to scientific law. The cosmos of Sir James Jeans, reigned over by a deity whose symbol is the square root of minus one, where in closed rooms they argue the weight of the crucified man sufficient to cause strangulation, and the Irish mathematician Sir William Rowan Hamilton calculates that Jesus in assumption, being drawn up through space at a moderate rate, would not yet have reached the nearest of the fixed stars.

When the devil appeared to Gerbert, to claim his soul, Gerbert resisted; and disappeared in a fork of flame.

The tracking point of the pen moved on the paper, and it was gone, Esme had lost it, and lay in the agonized exhaustion of this recovery of her temporal self. Still, on the edge of the chasm into which she could not fall, Esme quivered with anticipation of a sound which would interrupt, waiting fearfully for the signal to recall her from that edge. In the silence of waiting, she recovered herself; slow, she stepped back; silence, she began to talk with herself; stillness, she moved with exaggeration as though she were being watched, needed to be watched suddenly, to have another consciousness present, aware of her, containing her, to assure her of her own existence. There was no one. Even her voice sounded with a disembodied quality which frightened her. She sat there quiet again with the pen over paper, reduced in despair, her face expressing nothing but empty misunderstanding at being alone.

Across the air shaft from her closed window a woman ironed on a board. A man in underclothes appeared to stand beside her for a moment, talk silently and disappear. Then with no change in her expression Esme was crying and she turned her face from the window where she had been watching unbeknown. On the paper she wrote,

In a nicely calcimmed

Apartment is a left-behind Opera chair against the wall Masquerading for a ball, an exercise as significant as those ceremonies carried out at the insistence of the people during papal interdicts in the medieval Church, when saying the Mass was forbidden, but "the brethren had only to ring their bells, and play their organ in the choir; and the citizens in the nave were quite happy in the belief that Mass was being said behind the screen." Esme wrote regretfully, pouting,

Your name is said in a far-off place By someone alone in a room You do not hear it but it was spent. And the miracle of transubstantiation? only a glimpse; and only the fragrance of its death remained, the heavenly fragrance, as of lilies, which rose from the body of Saint Nicolas of Tolentino, after he had reproved his sorrowing brethren who brought him a dish of doves on his sweltering deathbed, and with a pass of his hand restored their plumage and sent them flying out of the window of his cell; only the scent of lilies, rotting in the fruit jar beside her.

She lit a spirit lamp, and sat beside it for a moment before finding a teaspoon in which to liquefy an injection of heroin, staring into the flame, and the lilies beyond it. —If I am not real to him, she said aloud, staring at the dead lilies, —then where am I real? And the book of Stevenson, which she had laid open on a pile of books beside the lamp, threatened to catch fire. She took it down, and read there, again, "You are a man and wise; and I am but a child. Forgive me, if I seem to teach, who am as ignorant as the trees of the mountain; but those who learn much do but skim the face of knowledge; they seize the laws, they conceive the dignity of the design—the horror of the living fact fades from their memory. It is we who sit at home with evil who remember . . . and are warned and pity . . ."

knock knock knock sounded on her door, in ruthless precision of recall to time in its aseptic succession of importunate instants. Her lips tightened. —Who is it? she called.

—Chaby.

—Jesis Christ why don't you put some lights on? he said when she let him in. He walked past her to the light cord.

—Because I'm alone, Esme said. Her weight hung on him, and without a word he bore her down.

As the afternoon ended, Otto was walking alone, south, on Madison Avenue, his own face expressing an extreme of the concentration of vacancy passing all around him, the faces of office messengers, typists turned out into the night air, dismally successful young men, obnoxious success in middle age, women straining at chic and accomplishing mediocrity who had spent the afternoon spending the money that their weary husbands had spent the afternoon making, the same husbands who would arrive home minutes after they did, mix a drink, and sit staring in the opposite direction. With his dispatch case, and an unkind thought for everyone he knew, Otto carried his head high. Affecting to despise loneliness, still he looked at the unholy assortment streaming past him as though hopefully to identify one, rescue some face from the anonymity of the crowd with instantly regretted recognition, and so rescue himself. He even strongly considered conversation with strangers; and with this erupted the thought of his father whom he had arranged to telephone, and appoint a place for their first meeting. With this, Otto took sudden new interest in every very successful middle-aged man who passed, coveting diamond stickpins, a bowler hat, an ascot tie, and even (though he would have been shocked enough if this were "Dad") a pair of pearl-gray spats. It was a problem until now more easily left unsolved; and be damned to Oedipus and all the rest of them. For now, the father might be anyone the son chose. The instant their eyes met in forced recognition, it would be over.

—I must call the Sun Style Film man, he thought suddenly. —Peru, and northern Bolivia . . . Someone beside him was asking him how to get to Vesey Street. Otto held the impatient man with long and intricate explanation, two sets of alternate routes and was commencing a third when the poor fellow retreated down wind, thanking him, retiring to a policeman to ask directions for Vesey Street.

On the corner a tall black man with an umbrella towered in a hat of unseasonal straw, though on him no more out of season than the permanent attire of a statue. He stood as far as possible from the black poodle dog as their leash would allow, atolls of a formidable reef casting the white-caps to one side and the other. —He's very handsome, Otto said of the strangely familiar animal.

—I takin her to the veterinary, said Fuller, not looking at this young man whom he did not know but at the dog. —Seem like she sufferin with the worms, he added with relish, looking at the dog which ignored him.

—That's a shame, said Otto. —Beautiful dog.

—Yes, mahn, said Fuller, looking up and back at the poodle, —seem like she sufferin from the worms, he repeated, watching her face as though hoping to see discomfort and embarrassment cloud it.

The light changed, and the sea moved reuniting its currents, bore the reef away north and Otto south toward Esme. He had left her late the night before after what might have been an argument, except that he found no way to argue with Esme. He had worked for so long to develop his weak capacity for dialectic into equip- merit for a sophistical game that he was useless now against her blank simplicity. When she had asked him not to spend the night with her there, —because it's so Greenwich Village ... he realized that none of his cleverness would change her mind. Still he was jealous enough of her: she had a way of bending one shoulder down almost upon the table and looking up across at him, laughing, which rose into his mind now, and he hurried toward the pit of the subway.

—Wait a minute, Esme called, after he had climbed her stairs wearily. Chaby was still fastening his clothes when he knocked.

Otto and Chaby did not exchange any greeting. They had come to behave together like two animals of different zoological classes in a private zoo, each wondering at their owner for keeping the other. Otto made it evident that he was waiting. Esme treated the three of them together as though they were well-met friends, or as happily, thorough strangers, while Otto smoked industriously. Chaby left, after keeping Esme at the door in a conversation audible enough to drive Otto to turning on the radio, which he did with an air of long habit. After Chaby had gone, Esme sat down beside the truculent smoker on the daybed. He suggested' that they go to dinner, making the invitation in a tone tired but duty-bound, as a gentleman, a concept which labored mightily in his mind as it does in many, who find it the last refuge for in-sipience.

She agreed readily; at which he sulked more oppressively still. When she drew off her dress to change it, he tried to put his arms around her. —You don't do that to ladies who are dressing themselves, she said to him. —Besides your funny bandage gets in the way.

—I may have to go to Bolivia and northern Peru, Otto said soberly, and as though in direct answer. —Soon enough, he added, somewhat menacing. While she sought another dress, he opened his dispatch case and took out the play with business-like aversion. He separated the pages quickly to Act II scene iii, and immediately found the line. Enough times he had found it with a fond smile. Now he took his pen and drew it blackly through priscilla (with tragic brightness): But don't you understand, Gordon? These are the moments which set the soul yearning to be taken suddenly, snatched out of the heart of some fearful joy and set down before its Maker, hatless, disheveled and gay, with its spirit unbroken.

He wrote in:

Don't you understand the sudden liberation that's come over me? and sat pouring smoke down on the wet ink. 3°4

Out on the street, Otto said, —How does it feel to be with a gentleman for a change?

—Ot-to.

—But he is such a ratty little creature, Chaby. How can you stand him.

—Isn't he bad? she said laughing, on Otto's arm. —Do you know what he did when I first knew him? He had something in his hands, and he told me to reach into his pants pocket and get some matches, and I reached in and he'd cut the bottom of the pocket off, my hand just went in and in. Wasn't that bad?

—Yes. What did you do then?

—I didn't do anything.

—Well what did he do?

—I don't remember.

—Where do you want to have dinner?

—At the Viareggio?

—Esme, that place is always so full of ... well, I don't know, all the rags and relics below Fourteenth Street. It's like Jehovah's Witnesses when you sit down at a table there, everybody comes over. Why do you go there anyhow?

—I don't go there.

—Esme!

—People take me there, she said. And by now they were at the door of the Viareggio, a small Italian bar of nepotistic honesty before it was discovered by exotics. Neighborhood folk still came, in small vanquished numbers and mostly in the afternoon, before the two small dining rooms and the bar were taken over by the educated classes, an ill-dressed, underfed, overdrunken group of squatters with minds so highly developed that they were excused from good manners, tastes so refined in one direction that they were excused for having none in any other, emotions so cultivated that the only aberration was normality, all afloat here on sodden pools of depravity calculated only to manifest the pricelessness of what they were throwing away, the three sexes in two colors, a group of people all mentally and physically the wrong size.

Smoke and the human voice made one texture, knitting together these people for whom Dante had rejuvenated Hell six centuries before. The conversation was of an intellectual intensity forgotten since Laberius recommended to a character in one of his plays to get a foretaste of philosophy in the public latrine. There were poets here who painted; painters who criticized music; composers who reviewed novels; unpublished novelists who wrote poetry: but a poet entering might recall Petrarch finding the papal court at Avignon a "sewer of every vice, where virtue is regarded as proof of stupidity, and prostitution leads to fame." Petrarch, though, had reason to be irritated, his sister seduced by a pope: none here made such a claim, though many would have dared had they thought of it, even, and the more happily, those with younger brothers.

—Is that really Ernest Hemingway over there? someone said as they entered. —Where? —Over there at the bar, that big guy, he needs a shave, see? he's thanking that man for a drink, see him?

—I suppose you'd call me a positive negativist, said someone else.

—Max seems to have a good sense of spatial values, said a youth on their right, weaving aside to allow Esme to pass, —but his solids can't compare, say, with the solids in Uccello. And where is abstract without solids, I ask you?

While Otto looked dartingly for Max, Esme entered with flowing ease, and pleasure lighting her thin face as she smiled to one person after another with gracious familiarity. —There he is, Otto said, as they sat down. The juke-box was playing Return to Sorrento. Otto adjusted his sling, and smoothed his mustache. Esme sat, looking out over this spectral tide with the serenity of a woman in a painting; and often enough, like gallery-goers, the faces turned to look at her stared with vacuity until, unrecognized, self-consciousness returned, and they looked away, one to say, —I know her, but God knows who he is; another to say, —She was locked up for months, a couple of years ago; and another to listen to the joke about Car-ruthers and his horse.

At Max's table, among his and six other elbows, a number of wet beer glasses, a book titled Twit Twit Twit and a copy of Mother Goose, lay The Vanity of Time. Max rose, and came over with it.

—What did you think of it? Otto asked, pleasantly, not getting up. He rescued the pages, and wiped off a couple of spots which were still wet.

—Well Otto, it's good, Max said doubtfully.

—But what? What did you think?

—Well, I'll tell you the truth. It was funny sometimes, reading it. Like I'd read it before. There were lines in it ...

—You mean you think it's plagiarized? Otto named the word.

—Well, Max said, laughing like a friend.

—Look, you had it out, I mean, at the table. Did they ... I mean, did all those other people see it?

—They were looking at it. I didn't think you'd mind, and you see, I did want to ask them what they thought, about . . . recognizing it.

—Well? Otto opened his dispatch case, turning it away from view so that it was not apparent that the play went in to join its duplicates. —What did they think? Pretty much the same thing, I think, Max admitted. —George said he felt like he could almost go right on with one of the . . . one of the lines. And Agnes . . .

—Agnes Deigh? You mean you talked to her about it?

—Well, it came up in conversation. I was up at her office this morning, talking with her about my novel. It's coming out in the spring. She's trying to arrange the French rights now.

—But what did you think it was plagiarized from, if you're all so sure I stole it.

—Nobody said you'd stolen it, Otto. It was just that some of the lines were a little . . . familiar.

—Yes but from what?

—That's the funny thing, nobody could figure it out, one of us would be just about to say, and then we couldn't put our finger on it. But don't worry about it, Otto. It's a good play. Then he straightened up, taking his hands from the table where he'd rested them, and said, —I'm showing some pictures this week, can you come to the opening?

—Yes, but ...

—Thanks for letting me read it, Otto ...

—There was one line I borrowed, I mean I put it in just to try it out . . . Otto called after him, but Max was gone to his table, where he talked to the people seated with him. They looked up at Otto.

Esme ate quietly, across from Otto's silent fury, weighted now to sullenness with four glasses of whisky, before his veal and peppers had appeared.

—Hello Charles, Esme said looking up, kindly. —You look very well tonight. Charles smiled wanly. Silver glittered in his hair. His wrists were bandaged, his glass empty. —Do you want my glass of beer, Charles? Because I can't drink it. She handed it to him, and murmuring something, without a look at Otto, he left.

—Really, Esme.

—What is it, Otto? she said brightly.

—Well I mean, I can't buy beer for everybody in the place.

She smiled to him. —That's because you don't want to, she said.

—You're damned right I don't, he said, looking round, and back at his plate.

—Of course I know it's near Christmas, said someone behind him. —For Christ's sake, what do you want me to do about it, light up?

There was a yelp from the end of the bar; and a few, who suspected it of being inhuman, turned to see a dachshund on a tight leash recover its hind end from a cuspidor. The Big Unshaven Man stepped aside. —I'm God-damned sorry, he said. —Oh, said the boy on the other end of the leash, —Mister Hemingway, could I buy you a drink? You are Ernest Hemingway aren't you?

—My friends call me Ernie, said the Big Unshaven Man, and turning to the bar, —a double martini, boy.

Though the place appeared crowded beyond capacity, more entered from the street outside, crying greetings, trampling, excusing themselves with grunts, struggling toward the bar.

—Elixir of terpin hydrate with codein in a little grapefruit juice, it tastes just like orange Curacao. What do you think I was a pharmacist's mate for.

—When I was in the Navy we drank Aqua Velva, that shaving stuff. You could buy all you wanted on shipboard.

—Yeah? Well did you ever drink panther piss? the liquid fuel out of torpedoes?

The juke-box was playing Return to Sorrento. A boy with a sharp black beard sat down beside Esme. —Have you got any tea? he asked her. She shook her head, and looked up at Otto, who had not heard, had not in fact even noticed the person sitting half behind him. —Sometimes I really hate Max, he said, then noticed the beard. —I mean, I mistrust him. There were no introductions. —That poor bastard, said the beard. —He's really had it, man. So has she.

—Who? Otto asked incuriously.

—His girl, she's getting a real screwing. She wanted to marry him last year but she wanted him to be analyzed first. Max didn't have any money so she paid for it. Now his analyst says he's in love with her for all the neurotic reasons in the book. It don't jive, man. He's through with her but he can't leave her because he can't stop his analysis.

—Does she know it?

—Who, Edna? She ...

—Edna who?

—Edna Mims, she's a blonde from uptown. He used to bring her down here to shock her, and then take her home and ball her . . .

—Edna? said Otto, unable to swallow. —With him?

Everyone silenced for a moment at a scream of brakes outside, anticipating the satisfaction of a resounding crash. They were disappointed. Instead, as their conglomerate conversation rose again, Ed Feasley rode in upon its swell. Behind him a blonde adjusting a garter followed with choppy steps like a dory pulled in the wake of a yawl on a rough sea. —Get a drink, was all Ed Feasley could say, as he sat down at Otto's table.

Mr. Peddle was there. He stood with difficulty, his hand on the hip of a tall light-haired girl, her delicately modeled face and New England accent manifest of good breeding. —His mother is the sweetest little Boston woman, she said, — awfully interested in dogs, awfully anti-vivisection. They were looking at Anselm, who looked about to drop to his knees. Behind her, Don Bildow said, —He is an excellent poet, when he tries. He's been taking care of my daughter when we're out, my wife and I. I haven't looked at another woman since we were married. Then with his hand on the man's-shirted shoulder of the light-haired girl, —Do you find me attractive?

The beard at Otto's table said, —Is that Hemingway? Ed Feasley looked over at the Big Unshaven Man, who had just said, —No queer in history ever produced great art. Feasley looked vague, but said, —There's something familiar about him.

—That's the damnedest thing I ever heard, Otto said, looking at Max, partially recovered. He motioned for another drink. When he had finished it he said, —I've got to make a phone call. I may have to go to Peru and northern Bolivia.

—Tonight? said Feasley. —You going to fly down? I'd like to go with you, but . . . say, if you can wait until tomorrow afternoon

. . I've got to go to a wedding tomorrow, but ...

—No, I mean I've just got to call my father now, Otto said casually as though he had known that man all his life.

—Say hello to the old bastard for me, Ed Feasley called after him.

Otto called, made a rendezvous for a week later with the anxious voice at the other end of the line. They would meet in the lobby of a midtown hotel, at eight (—If you'll wear that green scarf I sent you for Christmas two years ago, Otto, I have one just like it. We'll know each other that way. And I wear glasses . . . said the voice, murmuring, after the telephone at the other end of the line was hung up, —Should I have said rimless glasses?). Otto had agreed quickly, he didn't know where his green muffler was but to push the thing further would have been too much, bad enough to need recourse to such a device to know your own father.

There were seven people at the table when he returned to it. The painters could be identified by dirty fingernails; the writers by conversation in labored monosyllables and aggressive vulgarities which disguised their minds. —Yeh, I'm doing a psychoanalysis of it, said one of them, tapping Mother Goose on the table.

—I tell you, there's a queer conspiracy to dominate everything. Just look around, the boy with the red hunting cap said. —Queers dominate writing, they dominate the theater, they dominate art. Just try to find a gallery where you can show your pictures if you're not a queer, he added, raising a cigarette between paint-encrusted fingers. —What do you think women look so damned foolish for today? It's because queers design their clothes, queers dictate women's fashions, queers do their hair, queers do all the photography in the fashion magazines. They're purposely making women look more and more idiotic until nobody will want to go to bed with one. It's a conspiracy.

Near their table, the tall dark girl who had been talking with Anselm said to someone she knew, —Do you know that girl? I want to meet her.

With his hand on Esme's shoulder, Otto leaned down to say, —Let's get out of here. Ed Feaslëy looked up to say, —You want to go to a party? A big ball a bunch of queers are giving up in Harlem.

—Drag? someone asked.

—What's drag?

—Where they all dress like women.

—This ball is drag, someone else said. —High drag.

There was a loud yelp. Anselm, on all fours, had met the dachshund, and had one of its ears in his mouth. The tall dark girl looked up at the doorway to see a timid Italian boy with no chin start to enter, and get pushed aside. —God, she said, —there's my stupid cousin. I'm going next door. —I've got a doctor for her, a young man was saying. —He'll do it for two hundred and fifty, but I can't get hold of her. Every time I call all I get on the phone is Rose, her crazy sister Rose.

Otto and Ed Feaslëy, with Esme between them, moved toward the door. The Big Unshaven Man turned away when Feaslëy passed. —Of course I know him. A damn fine painter, Mr. Memling, he was saying, as he took a quart flask out of his pocket. —Would you mind filling this up with martinis? Yes, what you read about me is true, I like to have some with me. Sure, I'll look at your novel any time, he finished, as the boy handed a ten-dollar bill across the bar.

—I sure as Chrahst know him from somewhere, Feaslëy said.

—That's because he's Ernest Hemingway, said a voice nearby.

—Paris? said the light-haired girl. —I wouldn't reach up my ahss for the whole city.

Mr. Feddle was being pushed out the door ahead of them. There they met Hannah. —Is Stanley in there? she asked. —Haven't seen him. —He had to go to the hospital to see his mother, said Hannah. —She just won't die. Then Hannah melted into the stew, where the juke-box was playing Return to Sorrento.

—Where's Adeline? Otto asked.

—I don't know. The hell with her, Feaslëy said.

They found Adeline asleep in the car. Fortunately it was a new model, with a low chassis and a low center of gravity, which saved it from overturning at the corners. They had some difficulty getting in to the party, when Ed Feasley offered to fight anyone who kept them out. They were saved when a crapulous Cleopatra appeared, waving a rubber asp at Esme and Adeline, thought it knew them, squealing in rapturous welcome that their costumes were divine.

It was quite a party. There must have been four hundred.

They arrived as a beautiful thing in a strapless white evening gown finished a song called I'm a Little Piece of Leather, followed on the stage by a strip-tease in two parts. The first performer was all too obviously a woman, gone to fat. This tumbled about in the spotlights, wallowed a great unmuscled expanse of rump and bounced a mammoth front at the audience, jeering with laughter, railed off the stage in grisly flounces of flesh. Then towering loveliness appeared, bowed to thunderous applause, and moving with perfect timing slipped off one after another garment to reveal exquisite limbs (hairless but a trifle muscular) with long gathering motions of blond hair to the waist, serpentine caresses rising over the spangled brassiere. Ed Feasley, who had muttered with virile disgust at the first, watched this exhibition with wondering pleasure, until, in finale, the brassiere was waved aloft leaving a chest uninhabited, leaving Feasley sitting forward in astonished indignation, leaving, the stage through a curtain of wild applause.

—Are you really a girl? a young Bronzino in velvet asked Esme, punching in disbelief at her small bosom. She laughed, and Otto turned to brandish his sling; like Infessura, perhaps, writing of the papal court of Sixtus IV, "puerorum amator et sodomita fuit," he ordered a drink.

There was, in fact, a religious aura about this festival, religious that is in the sense of devotion, adoration, celebration of deity, before religion became confused with systems of ethics and morality, to become a sore affliction upon the very things it had once exalted. Quite as festive, these halls, as the Díonysian processions in which Greek boys dressed as women carried the ithyphalli through the streets, amid sounds of rejoicing from all sexes present, and all were; glorious age of the shrine of Hercules at Coos, where the priests dressed in feminine attire; the shrine of Venus at Cyprus, where men in women's clothes could spot women immediately, for they wore men's clothes: golden day of the bride deflowered by the lingam, straddling the statue of Priapus to offer her virginity to that god who, like all gods, even to the Christian deity who exercised it with Mary in the form of the Holy Ghost, had jus primae noctis, and no subterfuge permitted. So enough of these young brides had backed up upon the Priapean image and left their flowers there. So a voice said now, —Then let's go to Vienna, they've announced that you can wear drag in the streets if you don't offend public morals! Isn't that sweet? To which a dark-haired person in an evening gown of green watered silk said, — More than once I've dressed as a priest, just so no one would be troublesome about my wearing skirts. Sometimes I just can't breathe in trousers.

So priests down through the ages, skirted in respectful imitation of androgynous deities who reigned before Baal was worshiped as a pillar, before Osiris sported erection, before men knew of their part in generation, and regarded skirted women as autofructiferous. When they made this discovery, the sun replaced the moon as all-powerful, and Lupercalia came to Rome, naked women whipped through the streets around the Palatine hill, and the cross became such a glorious symbol of the male triad that many a religion embraced it, so notorious that when the new religion which extolled the impotent man and the barren woman triumphed over a stupefied empire, the early skirted fathers of the Church forbade its use.

So even now, under a potted palm with silver fronds, a youth making a solemn avowal held another youth by that part where early Hebrews placed their hands when taking oaths, for it represented Jahveh.

Ed Feasley had a hand on a smooth chocolate shoulder which rose from a lavender evening gown in organdy, standing in the less-lighted shelter of a pillar.

There were women there. At a large table near the dance floor one sat, with broad tailored shoulders, flat grosgrain lapels, shortcut hair and heavy hands (she looked rather like George Washington without his wig, at about the time he married Martha Dand-ridge (Custis) for her money), recently in trouble, someone said, over kidnaping a seal for immoral purposes. She had not spoken to a man for sixteen years. Somewhere submerged in childhood lay a little girl's name which had once been hers. Only her bankers knew it now. Friends called her Popeye. Now she was saying, to an exquisitely pomaded creature whom thousands knew as a hero of stage, screen, and radio, —I wish I were a little boy, so that I could dance with you. They were interrupted by Big Anna, in dinner clothes. —Have you seen Agnes? said the Swede. —My dear she has the key to my box, and simply everything's locked up in it. The most delicious gown Jacques Griffes made for me especially to wear tonight, and I've had to come in this silly tuxedo suit, simply everyone thinks I'm a woman . . .

The second in order of the strip-tease performers stood beside them, dressed now in silver lame. —Rudy! the Swede said, —your dance was excruciating.

—I feel simply ghastly, Rudy said. —I've been having hot flashes all evening. What divine perfume. Have you seen a book of mine?

—It's only My Sin, I borrowed it from Agnes. Is this your book? Rudy reached for it. —But what are you doing reading Tertullian?

—For my work of course. I'm designing sports costumes for an order of nuns, and I've been told that their ears simply must be kept covered, by a very dear friend. He lent me this book, Rudy said, fondling Tertullian. — De Virginibus Velandìs, on the necessity of veiling virgins. Val told me the most divinely absurd stories this afternoon. Do you know why nuns must have their ears covered? My dear, so they won't conceive! The Virgin conceived that way, the Logos entered her ears. I have no idea what a logos is, but it doesn't sound at all nice does it. Val quoted Vergil and all sorts of dead people. Why, they all used to believe that all sorts of animals conceived that way. They thought that mares were made pregnant by the wind. And so I have to read this to really know what on earth I'm doing, covering their ears, because evil angels are waiting to do the nastiest things to them. Can you imagine conceiving on the badminton court?

—It sounds really celestial, said Big Anna. —But what perfume are you wearing?

—I can't tell you, ically. A very dear friend makes it himself. Fuisse dearn, that's what he calls it. An aroma remained, you could tell a goddess had just appeared, Rudy said, waltzing toward the dance floor.

—I'd prefer French, Big Anna muttered, looking bitterly after Rudy's silver lame. — Where is Agnes, he said, wringing his hands.

Otto was trying to order another drink. He stared on the festival with glazed eyes, and had decided for safety's sake to sit still until he could summon energy to leave. He waved with a heavy hand at a passing mulatto whose black hair stood out four inches behind his conical head in anointed streamlining, and that one was gone with his tray. Instead Cleopatra fluttered up to ask him for Maude Munk's telephone number, —because she's getting the most gorgeous baby by air mail from Sweden, and we want one so much . . . With the concentration of applied memory, Otto invented a telephone number. —Do you want to dance? Cleopatra asked him. Adeline returned to the table alone. —I was dancing with some guy and he suddenly let go of me and said, You are a girl, aren't you, and left me right in the middle of the floor. See him, that big handsome boy, he looks like he went to Princeton.

—He probably did, Otto mumbled. Then he swung around at Cleopatra. —Will you get that God-damned thing out of my sling? he said, and the queen removed the asp, alarmed. —That's the cutest disguise you wear, said Cleopatra, and then, abruptly, and as indignant —Aren't you queer?

—Of course not, Otto said, indignantly unoriginal.

—What a shame, said Cleopatra. —I must find my barge.

Otto looked for Esme, did not see her. He looked for Feasley, did not see him. He was about to speak to Adeline when she left the table and went toward the dance floor saying, —I see a gentleman.

A voice said, —I've never seen so much bad silk on so many divine bodies. Another said, —Let's elope. And another, —You can't touch me, because I'm in a state of Grace. I'm going to be received tomorrow, only think! Tomorrow . . .

—Pony boy, a voice crooned.

—But I thought Victoria and Albert Hall were going to be here. Have you read her book? Have you seen his play? Where are they? said Big Anna, looking, as he had each minute of the evening, nearer to weeping. —Oh Herschel! Herschel! Will you stop that singing and console me?

—What is it, baby?

—It's Agnes. She has my key.

—Yes, baby, Herschel said. He was almost immobile, but still standing. —I have to get home to work, he said in a voice which was more a liquid presence and barely escaped his throat. —Work. Work. Work.

—What work?

—Haf to write a speech. Have you ever read The Trees of Home? It stinks, baby. It's a best seller. I've been writing speeches for the author of the best seller Trees of Home, baby. Moral regeneration, insidious influences sapping our very gzzzhuu huuu I'm going down to Dutch Siam yes I am ... he sang.

—I haven't seen you since the boat docked! At this, Big Anna turned around. —Victoria! Where's Albert? I'm so glad to see you baby.

—He's dancing with an archbishop. But darling tell me have you seen a tall dark girl here? Her name is Seraphina di Brescia, I just hoped she might be here, I know she's in New York. I met her at the Monocle in Paris ...

—No, but have you seen Agnes? Agnes Deigh?

—You're joking, darling. Tell me, did you ever get your little what-was-his-name over from Italy?

—Little Giono! said the Swede, wringing his hands again. —No, and I've been after the immigration people, but they won't help. Why he'll be Mteen by the time I can get him over here, and he won't do for a thing. I'm going to have to adopt him, it's the only way out. But before I adopt him I have to join the Church my dear, think of it. He has to have a Catholic parent. I'm going back next week.

—To Rome?

—Oh yes, I can't bear it here a moment longer.

Otto, seeing Feasley approach, struggled to his feet. —Let's get out of here, he said. —Where are Esme? and Adeline?

—The hell with them. Just wait a minute. There's a little colored girl here I want to take along. See if you can find her while I go to the head. She's in a purple dress.

—We met in Paris, someone said, —in the Reine Blanche . . .

—In the Carrousel ...

—In Copenhagen . . .

—The Drap Dead ...

—The Boof on the Roof ...

—Seraphina? The one they call Jimmy? I know she has money, but what does she spend it all on? —Don't be silly. She spends it on girls.

—Yes darling, said Adeline's dancing partner into her blond hair resting against the grosgrain lapels. —We have to follow Emerson's advice to treat people as though they were real, because, perhaps they are . . .

From somewhere in the middle of the floor, in a quailing voice, —Baby and I were baked in a pie, the gravy was wonderful hot . . .

—Of course there's time, Agnes Deigh's voice said, —just take the key and hurry. And don't let me forget to give you my mother's address in Rome . . .

—And the address of Monseigneur Fé, he has his own chapel right near the Vatican where he performs the most divine marriage ceremonies . . .

So they danced, as though ridden with the conscience of the Tarahumara Indian, whose only sin can be not having danced enough.

Feasley said, —Come on, let's get out of here, not stopping as he passed the table. —Chrahst, I found her, the girl in the purple dress. Standing right beside me at the next urinal . . .

—I hate women, a voice said. It paused. Then, —I hate men too.

And so, as the Lord prophesied through the Greek Clement: / am come to destroy the work of the woman, that is, concupiscence, whose works are generation and death.

It broke up and spread itself, in couples and threes and figures of stumbling loneliness, into the streets, into doorways, they all went into the dark repeating themselves and preparing to meet one another, to reassemble, rehearse their interchangeable disasters; and the place looked like a kingdom stricken by papal anathema, as when Philippe Auguste, cunning pitiless monarch of France, was excommunicated for marrying Agnes while his wife Ingeborg still lived, and in his kingdom under the interdict there was neither baptism, marriage, nor burial, and corpses rotted on the high road.

—Wasn't it fun, said Agnes Deigh leaning against a garbage can. Herschel, scratching the sotted front of an evening shirt beside her, agreed, with the sound of a thing drowning. He excused himself, and when he had thrown up in an empty doorway returned singing. No doubt about it: tonight he was going to manage it. —Your strip-tease danse was shocking, Rudy, he said. —Where's Tertullian? I can't lose him, Rudy said, and slipped a white hairless arm through Herschel's, pulled the evening cape tighter and with almost masculine ex?speration thrust the long blond hair out over the fur. —Call a cab, baby, for God's sake. I feel awful. I feel like I was going to have a miscarriage.

Agnes Deigh returned a moment later, from between two parked cars. She was talking. But there was no one to talk to. There was no one there at all. The sound of thunder approached from the street's corner, a Department of Sanitation truck stopping every ten or twelve yards to open the huge maw at its back and masticate the immense portions left out to appease it with gnashings of reckless proportions, glass smashed and wood splintered between its bloodless gums. Agnes, leaning alone there, was suddenly frightened less than ten bites away. She was, as much as her haze of consciousness would allow her, terrified, and set off up the street in the opposite direction, loping in frantic steps as though dodging among trees, an injured doe in a landscape of Piero di Cosimo fleeing the patient hunter. She reached a lighted doorway, struggled into the vast and empty interior, and collapsed into a pew.

Ed Feasley and Otto were moving at seventy-three miles an hour. But neither of them wanted to go to Connecticut, and when they realized that they were taking that direction the car swung about with a scream, and was saved from what might have been a fatal skid by hitting its sliding rear against a lamppost. It headed south. —I want to see how fast I can make that ramp around Grand Central, Ed said, full of spirit. As long as he was conscious, he liked to have a good time. He had been having one, continuous, for years, and never a moment of craven doubt in any of it. He was not afraid: not a grain of that fear which is granted in any definition of sanity. In college, he had entertained himself and others, quiet evenings in his rooms when his allowance was cut off, by beating the back of his fist with a stiff-bristled hairbrush, then swinging his hand in circles until the pressure of descending blood broke small capillaries and spotted the rug and ceiling with spots turned brown by morning; or standing before a mirror with thumb and forefinger pressed against his carotid arteries until his lace lost all color and he was caught by consciousness as he fell; or dropping lighted cigarettes into the trouser turn-ups of a friend's two-hundred-dollar suit; or setting fire to his hand dipped in lighter fluid; or setting fire to the extended newspapers of people in subways just before the doors closed, leaving him on the platform overcome with laughter at the fugitive conflagration. He liked a Good Time.

The car stopped so suddenly it might have hit a wall. Otto straightened up from the dashboard holding his head. They were in front of a hospital. —What is it? he asked, brushing at a spot on his sleeve until he realized that it was a band of light from the streetlamp above.

—I've always wanted to pat a stiff on the head. They shave them, Ed Feasley said. A minute later they were in a basement corridor of the hospital, talking to the watchman. He was lonely. They just wanted to know how to get to Connecticut. They were told. The watchman left on his round.

In a large refrigerated room, Ed Feasley raised a sheet and stroked a smooth pate. He groaned with pleasure. Otto opened drawers, and closed them. Then he turned with his prize. It was a leg, small enough to be a woman's, quite old, slightly blackened around some of the toes and its detached end neatly bound with tape. But Ed's felicitous imagination had been busy too: with some effort, he had brought together two lonely corpses of opposite sex, erected now in the act of life. But even that mortal pleasure failed to change their expressions, leveled into disconsolate similitude by their shaven heads.

Otto was having trouble keeping the leg wrapped. —You ought to get rid of that sling, Ed Feasley said. —It's just a gag anyway, isn't it? Here, give me the leg, and he left with it partially wrapped in the bit of blue cloth under his arm.

The car roared south in the dawn's early light. —We have to do something with it, said Feasley, nodding back at the fragmentary passenger in the back seat. —We ought to give it to somebody. Somebody who needs it.

—There's a girl I'd like to give it to, Otto said. —I'd like to give it to Edna Mims, God damn it, in a box, a nice long white flower box from Max Schling.

—That's it! said the driver. —She's the girl you used to go around with in college? She's a good lay. We've got to get the box now.

The sudden light of Madison Square showed day approaching rapidly, though the sky was not yet colored with dawn; but with this clearing sky above, and the knock he had got on the head, sobriety and trepidation descended upon Otto. —We'd better not, he said.

—No, come on, it's a fat idea.

They thundered into Washington Square. Otto tried desperately to think of an alternative, something safer, someone defenseless. Then he said, —Stanley.

—Stanley?

—We'll tell him it's a relic. He's a Catholic, and he must want a relic. We'll give him the Pope's left leg.

—He won't believe it.

—He'll believe it.

—I wouldn't believe it, even if I was Catholic.

—He's a Catholic. He'll believe it. How does he know what the Pope's leg looks like?

—How does anybody know, except the Pope?

—Except the Pope. There's more than one pope.

—The rest are dead.

—All right, they're dead. This is from a dead one.

—Well then he can't have been dead very long.

—Look, we don't have to tell him it's a pope's leg. Stanley lives in a basement apartment. All we have to do is break the lock on the grating, we can do that some way, and slip it into bed with him. He'll wake up and think it's the Pope.

—The Pope in bed with him?

—But then he'll find that there's no one attached to it. Then he'll know.

—What'll he know?

—Why then he'll know that the Pope is dead.

The car turned toward Sixth Avenue.

At four in the morning, the nurse told Stanley that his mother was sleeping well, that he had better go home and get some rest, they would get in touch with him immediately if anything happened. Mother lay in one of those bed machines which can be cranked and warped in any direction, to accommodate whatever vagary of accident or human ill. But even now, though the black beads lay quiet in her fingers, she was not asleep. Not at all. After a reassuring look at her teeth in the glass she had closed her eyes and pretended sleep, so that they would go away, mortally tired she was of all of their quietened voices in hope that she would live, their faces drawn in dolefulness trusting that she would not die when that, in unequivocal reason, was all she wanted.

For one thing, she was certain that somewhere along the way they had left a pair of scissors inside her. For another, they had played music to her when they made the amputation (this was called therapy), and she could not get the tune out of her head. When she thought of her missing limb, she remembered the tune; then as her weary unmusical mind dragged her helpless through that tune, she remembered the leg, which would at this point begin to itch. When she inclined to scratch it, it was not there. And as she bent her body, the scissors would shift. Then the tune would commence again. Could she wait? while one after another of her parts was carried away, in a bottle, in a glass, on a tray. What shabby presentation would she make, when she appeared at her final Destination? Her thumb twitched on the crucifix, and a lonely movement of the sheet toward the end of the bed betrayed her wakefulness, where her foot tapped against a metal rung. No one noticed it. Stanley went home.

He let himself into his room, bolted the door and fixed the chain, and lay down on his back, fully dressed, staring at the crack in the ceiling above. At first, he had only measured that crack once a week, but in these last few months he measured it every evening, and since the beginning of December, two ways: along its broken length, and the straight distance from the corner of the room to the end of the crack. In twenty months it had lengthened one and five-eighths inches. How long could it go on? before that ceiling, with the sudden impatience of inanimate things, would yawn open over him, and fall with the astonished introduction of the lives above into his own. Who could live in a city like this without terror of abrupt entombment: buildings one hundred stories high, built in a day, were obviously going to topple long before, say, the cathedral at Fenestrula, centuries in building, and standing centuries since. A picture of that cathedral hung on the wall across the room, and when he lay down it was either to stare at the ceiling, or, on his side, at that print, the figure which seemed to be gathered toward heaven in the spired bulk of the cathedral. Fenestrula! If ever he should get to Italy, it was in that cathedral that he wanted to play the organ; a lonely ambition, solitary epiphany. Meanwhile he carried concealed a small hammer and chisel, escape tools, and tried to avoid travel underground.

On the ceiling grew the graph of Stanley's existence, his central concern: Expendability.

Everything wore out. What was more, he lived in a land where everything was calculated to wear out, made from design to substance with only its wearing out and replacement in view, and that replacement to be replaced. As a paper weight, on the pile of lined music composition paper tattered by erasure, lay a ceramic fragment from the Roman colony at Leptis Magna in North Africa. was slightly conical, a triangular shape, dull, unglazed, and thumb prints were almost discernible in the scalloped edge: valueless as objet d'art, it had what might be credited as tactile value, and little else, except that it had been made to last. And Stanley, eating in the neighborhood with pressed metal cutlery, drinking from paper cups and plastic cups, often sat silent at table for minutes, weighing the dishonest weight of a plastic salt shaker, considering Leptis Magna, still standing on the Libyan shore of the middle sea. Phonograph needles? razor blades? thrown away entire, when their edges and points were worn. Automobile batteries? someone had told him that batteries in European cars lasted for years, but here companies owned those long-life patents, and guarded them while they sold batteries to replace those they had sold a year before. But there was more to it than gross tyranny of business enterprise; and advertising, whose open chancres gaped everywhere, only a symptom of the great disease, this plague of newness, this febrile, finally paretic seizure dictated by a beadledom of time monitored by clocks, observatories, signals on the radio, the recorded voice of a woman (dead or alive) who dissected the latest minute on the telephone when you dialed NERVOUS.

Stanley looked at his wrist watch. He was almost never seen in any but frayed and soiled clothing, but he owned others. In the closet at his head, which was locked, were three suits, two almost new and the third never worn. There were two pairs of shoes, brown and black, which he took out and dusted every week. He had two hundred new razor blades, and a porous stone on which he could get old ones almost sharp, which accounted for his half-shaven look. (Some day he hoped to own a Rolls razor; but he understood their sales were discouraged here by American razor blade manufacturers.)

Those were the outward signs. But like every legitimate terror, this obsession with expendability ran through every instant of his body's life. Stanley had haircuts infrequently, and even then only a trim. He did not wash often. People must suspect this. What did they think? But better, perhaps: let them think what they would. Every abrasive contact with the wash cloth and caustic soap must wear down the body a little. But here came another enigma: if washing wore things out, what of clothes? He always wore a shirt just one more day, not only making it last but keeping his supply of clean ones (and some never worn) ready. But when, eventually, the one he wore went to the laundry, wasn't it necessary to use the most harsh soaps and treatment to get it clean? Therefore wasn't it wearing out faster?

Still, he was most upset in these calculations over the prospect of the Last Moment. Would he have time to wash himself to perfect newness, dress in unworn, uncreased garments? Perhaps not. Perhaps he would be snatched up as he was! a picture so discomfiting that when it really came upon him, he would surprise everyone by appearing spotless for a day or two, leaving unanswered (except in his own apprehension) the cordial question, —Where are you going, Stanley? Perhaps what had happened to him when he went for an army physical examination was meant to be a lesson: told to undress, he was so mortified at the dirt on him that he went to the bathroom where the only place he could find to wash in privacy, in secret if you will, was the toilet bowl itself. Would he have time?

The perfect naked death of a baby (right after baptism).

What of Saint Catherine? appeared in pieces, did she? rolling that wheel before her. But there, she had that wheel, Saint Lawrence the gridiron, as witness to their unseemly appearances. But not in this world: things wore out, and you lost them in a thousand ways, preposterous and unconnected with any notion of devotion, martyrdom, sacrifice . . . What of Mother? a thought which had been running under the surface of all these others. What of her?

And at that moment a stab of pain penetrated a tooth, and slowed to a blunt ache as he turned his face to the wall, and his eyes to the crucifix there. The dull throbbing persisted, he took his jaw in his hand of cold thin fingers and turned his face again. On a low table near his head, under gathering dust and black flecks from the river and a railroad shunting track, were newspaper clippings, sequestered for no reason but to avoid throwing them away, un-matching pictures and unrelated information one shred of which might, at some extremity, be demanded. On top lay the most recent, the feature story on the Spanish girl to be canonized in the Easter week of the year ahead. The pain in his jaw subsided as he stared at her picture upside-down hanging from the table's edge, and his mind confused its thoughts and images, more vivid and irrelevant, as it did always when he lay this way, as unable to sleep at night as he was torpid during day.

He shuddered at Esme, seduced by an apprehension in a world real enough to her: appalled one day when an airplane moving with the speed of sound had disemboweled the heaven above them and eviscerated its fragments in nausea from their bodies walking below. Alone, he might have thought nothing of it, but shut it out as he did all the frenzied traffic of the world. But her terror shook him; and she was right. And if on the other hand, they'd met that early Jesuit Father Anchieta in the street on a sunny day, sheltered under the parasol of birds he summoned to hover over him and keep pace, she would have appreciated such resourcefulness without profane curiosity, probably not have repeated what she'd 'seen to a soul. But the airplane! Had she met Saint Peter of Alcantara, Saint Peter Nolasco, Saint Peter Gonzalez, walking, as they did, upon the waves of the sea, why, there was more reason in those excursions than that streak of cacodaemonic extravagance sundering the very dome of heaven.

Stanley moved suddenly, sitting up as though to break a spell. He sat rigid on the edge of the bed, clenching his teeth as though to discipline the activity of his mind, which he could hardly stir during the day when he tried to work. How could Bach have accomplished all that he did? and Palestrina? the Gabrielis? and what of the organ concerti of Corelli? Those were the men whose work he admired beyond all else in this life, for they had touched the origins of design with recognition. And how? with music written for the Church. Not written with obsessions of copyright foremost; not written to be played by men in worn dinner jackets, sung by girls in sequins, involved in wage disputes and radio rights, recording rights, union rights; not written to be issued through a skull-sized plastic box plugged into the wall as background for seductions and the funnypapers, for arguments over automobiles, personalities, shirt sizes, cocktails, the flub-a-dub of a lonely girl washing her girdle; not written to be punctuated by recommendations for headache remedies, stomach appeasers, detergents, hair oil . . . O God! dove sei Fenestrula?

Still he did not get up, but sat staring toward the dim shape of the print of the cathedral. Beneath it was the table where he worked, a cardboard practice keyboard in the center, piled at both ends with papers in uneven stacks, one weighted with the ceramic fragment, another with the Liber Usualis opened upon the Missae pro Defimctis, his own cramped scribblings in the margins of majestic words between the bars, —Quántus tremor est futúrus, Quando júdex est ventúrus . . . And one page was marked with a tattered piece of notepaper. It was a Misereris omnium, and on the paper was written this piece of verse by Michelangelo, and beside it Stanley's broken attempt at translation:

O Dio, o Dio, o Dio, O God, O God, O God,

Chim'a íolto a me stesso Who has taken me from myself from me myself

Ch'a me fusse piu presso Who was closest (closer) to meO piu di me potessi, And could do more than I most about me

che poss' io? What can I do?

O Dio, o Dio, o Dio.

Specks of dirt on the floor caught his attention from the corner of an eye, and, as was his habit he reached out and flicked at them, to see if any moved of their own volition. The tooth throbbed; and as he lay back he thought again of his mother, to whom his work was to be dedicated when it was finished. He looked at his \vrist watch, turned off the light, and in closed eyes embraced a vision of the antiphonic brass of Giovanni Gabrieli pouring forth from the two choir lofts in Saint Mark's, to meet over the heads of those congregated below.

His work, always unfinished, was like the commission from a prince in the Middle Ages, the prince who ordered his tomb, and then busied the artist continually with a succession of fireplaces and doorways, the litter of this life, while the tomb remained unfinished. Nor for Stanley, was this massive piece of music which he worked at when he could, building the tomb he knew it to be, as every piece of created work is the tomb of its creator: thus he could not leave it finished haphazard as he saw work left on all sides of him. It must be finished to a thorough perfection, as much as he humbly could perceive that, every note and every bar, every transition and movement in the pattern over and against itself and within itself proof against time: the movement in the Divine Comedy; the pattern in a Requiem Mass; prepared against time as old masters prepared their canvases and their pigments, so that when they were called to appear the work would still hold the perfection they had embraced there. Not what was going on around him now, a canvas ready when it had been stretched and slavered with white lead, or not prepared at all, words put on paper, flickering images on celluloid, with no thought but of the words and the image and the daub to follow. (Stanley's work was done on scrap paper which he ruled himself and on envelope backs, old letters, or old scores which he had erased. He was saving a pile of new paper for the final composition.)

As dawn neared outside he was still fully awake, lying under the crack in the ceiling, under the yellowed ivory (thirteenth century) crucifix over the bed. He heard the truck collecting rubbish at the far end of his block. Christmas so near, again? Suddenly he looked at the watch strapped to his wrist, a rage of figures battling through his mind. He saw Anselm, and shuddered; Esme, and moaned: what unholy thing was that? what knowledge of evil did they share? for so they did, antipodal, but embracing in his mind, images profaning his love in their coupling. He stretched his arms above his head. Did one wear a watch in the tomb? A long walk, he decided; and then he would go to Mass. Why had Agnes Deigh refused to go to Mass with him, one day when they had met; it was just time, and near enough. —I've got to have drinks with someone, business is business darling, he could hear her voice again. Then her profane images shouldered his missionary intentions aside, and the more he thought of her.

He had turned his face to the window just above him, where uncertain light entered to show things as they had been left in each other's shadows the night before, shadowless now, older, wearing out separately and all together. This window he had to keep open in summer, so that passers-by could look in, upsetting to him, as though the friction of their glances might wear things down further; the window open in summer so that things might be thrown in, as some children one day, playing, had thrown something a dog had done on the sidewalk in behind the radiator.

There was a slight tapping on the door, as though someone were knocking who did not want to be answered to, knocking to find no one instead of someone there. Stanley sat up on the edge of his low couch, the door handle turned a slow quarter-circle, and back.

—Who is it? he cried out. —Who is it out there?

—Stanley? A girl's voice: it was Hannah, he let her in. —It's so cold, she said, —I'm sorry, but can I sleep in your chair?

—Stay here, he said. —Lie down, Hannah. I'm going out.

—But no, don't leave for me. Go back to bed. But you're all dressed?

—Yes, stay here. I'm going out.

—Is everything all right, Stanley? Has anything ...

—Nothing has changed. Go to bed here, Hannah. I'm going out to Mass.

In the hall, where he stopped in the communal toilet, he was troubled again by the problem in arithmetic penciled on the wall there. Someone had multiplied 763 by 37, and got 38,231. He had checked it, idly, two years before; then carefully, at every sitting since. Who had made the mistake? Was it too late to find them and tell therii? 10,000 . . . what? Had that person gained it? or lost it? Was it too late? Stanley looked at his wrist watch. He walked out into the cold morning asking himself this heretical question: Can you start measuring a minute at any instant you wish?

—I'll go in and try the door first, said Otto.

Feasley got out to follow, returned to get the leg out of the back seat, and rejoined him. The door was locked. —There's somebody awake inside, Otto said. Out on the sidewalk, he twisted the lock on the window grating. Feasley said, —I'll get a wrench, handed the leg to Otto and went back to the car. Suddenly the window shade shot up in Otto's face, the sash after it.

—What are you doing here?

—Oh, I ... Hannah, I ... I mean we ...

—What are you doing here at this window anyhow?

—Why nothing I ... Hannah was dressed only in a shirt, for all he could see. —We just . . . well, so long Hannah. See you later, he called as he heard the car's engine racing behind him, and he ran toward it, the bare foot waving his goodbye to Hannah from under his arm.

—He's got a girl in there, Hannah's sleeping with him, said Otto as they roared away. —Say listen, he said looking round him, —have you seen a little tan bag, a pigskin dispatch case? Suddenly frantic, he turned to look behind them in the car. The car slid around a corner, leaned to one side in a skid, recovered, skidded in the other direction, and Feasley was cursing as it went head-on into a pole. They got out. Otto looked, found nothing but the leg. —Come on. The hell with it.

—But what about this thing? Otto said, wrapping the cloth around it more tightly as they walked fast up Little West Twelfth Street.

—O Chrahst put it in an ashcan.

He started to, but three men rounded the corner, and he tucked it back under his sling. They got a subway, vapidly curious people appearing on all sides around them.

Stanley had taken a long bus ride, returning to the neighborhood of the hospital, and been walking for some time, it seemed, when he heard six o'clock strike nearby. Following the direction of the bells, he found the church and went in, mind seething as he stopped and genuflected. He moved toward a pew in the back, and had almost knelt beside her when he recognized Agnes Deigh. He clutched at her wrist. She started in terror away from him, awakened.

—Stanley?

—You're here, he whispered.

—Oh God. Her head lolled forward and away from him. —Take me home.

—But you're here, at Mass.

—1 know it. Take me home. Stanley, now.

—Look, we can't carry this thing all over town in broad daylight. It's beginning to smell, too.

—Let's have a look. Chra-ahst, it's turning gray.

Across from them a woman stared, but did not see them, her mouth working, her fingers working at her beads. It was the first car of the train, and at stops a voice rose, where at the glass which looked forward into the tube a woman talked, so close to her own image in that glass that it was steamed hy her breath. —They told us all about it, there it is in letters where anyone can read it, everyone knows, they're killing each other, boys killing each other millions of American boys are being killed you can read all about it ...

The roar of the train drowned her out.

—What shall I do with it?

—Leave it on the seat, there in the corner. We'll get off at this stop.

—he cut them both up and put them in suitcases and those are the people who travel on airplanes . . . The doors clapped to behind them, and they waited on the platform for another train. —My old man's going to get me this time, for mucking up that God-damned car again.

A girl stood in front of them, waiting for the next train, on her way to work in a chewing-gum factory: Hestia, Vesta, virgin-sworn, the hearth and the home (a cheap fluff of a jabot she wore, imitation coral earrings, crippling shoes, under a thin elbow a tabloid catalogue of the day's misinformation). —Chrahst, I don't know whether it's a boy or a girl, after that little nigger at the party last night. Hey honey, do you want to make thirty-five cents?

—No, I'm really not a Catholic any more, I just put that picture of Cardinal Spellman up there because that corner of the room needs a little red, said Agnes Deigh, almost recovered. —Do you want a drink?

—Now?

—Stanley, you look exhausted too, she said. —Here, drink this, it will warm you. She handed him a glass of port, and swallowed down, herself, almost choking, some whisky. —What a God-awful mess this place is. He must have got here. Agnes looked around, at her own underclothing scattered broadcast in the living room. One of her best gowns was hung over her sunlamp, which was turned on.

—It is warming, Stanley said, drinking, —I can feel it all through me.

—God, I'm so tired, she said, beginning to undress. —Will you help me? He followed her into the bedroom. —Thank God you found me.

—What's this? Stanley said, aghast holding up a card he'd taken from the table, reading in a whisper —"Christ has come!"

—Oh Stanley, you're not supposed to see that. It's a Christmas card.

—Christmas card! But who . . .

—Don't be upset, Stanley. From that Swedish boy they call Big Anna.

—But it's . . . disgusting, this picture . . .

—I know, Stanley. But these things happen in the world. Throw it in the wastebasket. No, don't tear it up, just throw it in the basket.

—But . . . why do you know those people?

—Oh Stanley, she said, and paused bent double over a rolled-down stocking. —Don't you see, Stanley, sometimes people like that are . . . are easier for a woman. They're safer somehow . . . She had taken off her stockings then, in the pause, and stood up dressed only in her slip. She picked up a plant, and carried it into the other room. —I just can't stand to have anything living and breathing in the same room where I'm trying to sleep. She sat down on the bed again with a glass of water, and laid two sleeping pills beside it. —God, what a smell of perfume he left in the place. He must have dropped the bottle. Oh, come Stanley, sit here. You do understand about people like that don't you? Just don't think about them. You've got to be philosophical, darling. Thank God you found me in that church.

—Yes, thank God, who led you there.

—But Stanley dear . . .

—You were at Mass, he said.

—I'm not a Catholic any more, I tell you.-

—You will always be a Catholic. It is not for you to say. But why have you strayed so far? he asked, sitting beside her.

—Even when I was a child, I was frightened out of it, it seemed. Once in my convent school, I remember when we were all sent to look at a reliquary. It was ... I don't know, a splinter of the Cross, or a crumb of something. They even had one that they said contained a bit of the original darkness that Moses called down on the world, imagine. Yes, I think it was a crumb, from the biscuit that bled when it was trampled by Zwingli's soldiers. But I didn't go, I went to a movie instead. The next day in class I was told to get up and describe the reliquary, and I gave a wonderful description, about it being big and fancy and gold, with a peep-hole and a magnifying lens so you could see the speck inside. Then they whipped me, and told me that it hadn't even been on exhibit, it was away being cleaned . . .

—But these things are our trials as children to prepare us ...

—And I used to chew the wafer, she went on, almost somnilo- quent, in an arrested whisper. —I couldn't hold it in my mouth without chewing it. The more I knew it was sinful, the more I chewed His Body, I had to chew it ...

—These sins we commit as children . . .

But now Agnes had breathed deeply and sat back. She glimpsed her face in a boudoir mirror and said, —Don't I look awful, my eye ...

—What happened to it?

—At that party, that terrible party, in the ladies' room, another woman hit me with her hand bag. This has gone far enough, she said. She didn't think I was really a ... she thought I was one of the people in costume. Agnes was staring at the floor. Then she sniffed and turned to Stanley with a smile forcing her lips. —But analysis is safer, and you have the same confessional.

—But don't you understand what happened this morning? he brought out fervently. —You didn't know you were coming to Mass, but you were directed there, as I was, as He led me there to ...

She put an arm around his shoulders, and her strap came undone. Mickey Mouse pointed to 6:45. —Stanley, she said. —You're such a boy.

Dawn, somewhere beyond the incinerator plant which had won first prize in functional architecture a decade before: Fuller was busy in Mr. Brown's bathroom, picking up every piece of Mr. Brown's hair he could find and putting it into an envelope. Esme wakened for a moment in a strange bed, looked at the arm round her, could identify neither its owner nor its sex, and went back to sleep. Esther woke, hearing sounds which seemed to have been going on for a long time; as though she'd heard a key turn in the lock hours before, and footsteps, and the sound of a voice, or voices. But she lay still, and closed her eyes, as she did always on the dull sounds of Rose's dreams. In the street below, young policemen raced the engines of their motorcycles to arrogant pitch, and roared to duty. In the East Fifty-first Street station-house, Big Anna sat on a bench weeping. —But nobody even saw my gown, he cried. —We saw it, Jack, said the man behind the desk, turning to another policeman in shirtsleeves, —Is he known? Anselm was descending the steps of the I.R.T. West Side subway, on all fours. Adeline had just closed a door behind her, having wakened beside someone with short-cut hair and heavy hands, whom she remembered having taken for a man the night before. Herschel was not to be wakened until some hours later, by two sailors in a Chelsea hotel room, where he lay bandaged over chest and back, the protective gauze of Dutch Siam, tattoo artist.

Dawn, just as it came to Australian skies, a woman of bad character in a cloak of red possum skins.

What Stanley marveled at most was the wealth, of her that had appeared as her garments came off. There was so much of her. She stood, wiping the make-up from her face turned away, and he stared at her thighs from behind, as a collector stares at the fine patina glazed over the courses of worms, for those vast vermiculated surfaces were furrowed so. Terror struck him. He started to rise from the bed and reach for his shirt. Too late. She was there, tumbling the marvelous cucumiform weights down upon a chest which looked as though it would cave in under such manna. —Look, she said, joy of this world recovered, raising herself so that her front swung pendulant over him, unequaled, and unequal lengths untouched by baby's hand, —you can play telephone with them.

Trains from great distance over barbarous land, ships from civilized shores and airplanes from nowhere aimed at the island, dived at it, into it, unloaded lives upon it. Far uptown Mr. Pivner lay, unconscious arabesque in nervous imitation of sleep (he was, in fact, enduring a train wreck in Rajputana), that part of him already vigilant which would reach the control of the alarm clock an instant before it went off.

In Harlem, walking alone, Otto looked at his watch, forgot to see the time and looked again, as he sought the scene of Saturnalia where he hoped to recover the pigskin dispatch case.

The streets were filling with people whose work was not their own. They poured out, like buttons from a host of common ladles, though some were of pressed paper, some ivory, some horn, and synthetic pearl, to be put in place, to break, or fall off lost, rolling into gutters and dark corners where no Omnipotent Hand could reach them, no Omniscient Eye see them; to be replaced, seaming up the habits of this monster they clothed with their lives.

The newspaper quivered in Basil Valentine's hands, clasped behind him. Music, from another corner, plucked at his back. It was a pavan by a dead Spaniard.

Hungary to Sell Famed Paintings . . . Vienna . . . Diplomatic sources here said today that Hungary was attempting to sell in the West masterpieces from Budapest's National Art Gallery. The Gallery included paintings by Raphael, Tintoretto, Murillo, and others collected by the Austro-Hungarian emperors and princes. The informants said some of the paintings were being shipped to the United States as diplomatic luggage in the hope o£ interesting American art collectors.

He brought the newspaper up before him and read that again in the dull light of the dawn where he stood at the windows.

The desk in the far corner of the room was still littered with the papers he had spent the night over, finally snapped off the light and sat in a deep chair with his fingertips resting against his eyelids, and his head erect. The Vulliamy clock on the mantel had struck three times gently, at regular intervals, before he moved; and then, only his fingers moved, to remain arched before his face, meeting their tips in gothic contemplation, his eyes clear as though he'd done no more than blink them.

Now he gave an impatient sigh, dropped the newspaper on the window shelf, and stood looking straight out at the gray sky. —Another blue day? he murmured, as the stately strokes of the harp came to an end, and he turned from the window.

The letterheads among the sheaf of papers on his desk witnessed important oppositions in the world, languages as various as the devices and crests which adorned them. He sat down and hurriedly checked over a coded message against its original, —Put Inononu in touch immediately, have received necessary information . . . which he crumpled in his hand. He slipped the rest of the papers into a dispatch case, and was gone for a moment into the bedroom to lock it in a wall safe behind the chest. Then he went to the bathroom, dropped the crumpled note into the basin and put a match to it, washed the ashes down the drain, washed his hands slowly and with care, and went in to make tea.

There was exquisite correspondence between the Sevres cup and the back of his hand, where blue veins showed making the flesh appear translucent: it was not a reflection of mutual fragility, but rather the delicacy of the porcelain completed a composition enhancing, as it did, the tensile strength of the hand which raised it. In the other, he opened a book, and read. Now and then his lips moved, as he turned the pages of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises which he had, contrary to habit, lent out (for this was not the only, certainly not the nicest copy he had). A fly landed on the print, and he struck at it. The fly rose and crossed the room to settle busily upon a golden figure, a bull lowering its jewel-collared head to thrust with its horns at the egg floating in the rock cavity before it. The figure was small, and stood on a column at the end of the couch.

He turned another page. A fine-sprung coil of brown hair lay in the inner margin. Basil Valentine leaned down to blow at it. The hair did not move. He made a sound with his lips, and flicked it away with a finger. Then he read for less than a minute more, closed the book abruptly and bent down, searching the floor for the coil of hair. He found it on the carpet, put it into an ashtray, opened the book again and gazed at the page. There was a faint hum, from the corner where the phonograph had shut itself off. His gaze shifted to the ashtray. Then he moved quickly, to stand, take the coil of hair from the ashtray, into the bathroom and drop it into the bowl. He flushed the toilet and washed his hands, studying his face in the mirror as he did so.

The expression of anxiety which he had worn all this time did not leave him as he returned to the living room, tightening the cord of his dressing gown, and taking the gold cigarette case from its breast pocket. Snapped open, without taking out a cigarette he snapped it closed again and stood looking at the inscription worn almost smooth on its surface. —Damn him, he whispered. —Damn him. He turned to look at the Vulliamy clock. It was adorned with a cupid. He loosened the cord of his dressing gown.

A few minutes later Basil Valentine had exchanged his black pumps for a pair of equally narrow black shoes, the dressing gown for a blue suit, and he returned pulling at the foundations under his trousers. Among the books at the back of his desk, he pushed aside La nuit des Rois and quickly found the copy of Thoreau. He pulled on his coat, and on his way out opened a panel closet and took out a large flat envelope. He paused in the doorway to look the room over quickly, and then locked the door with two keys, leaving the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola open on the desk, where the fly had already alighted before the second key turned in the lock.

In the street door below, he paused to look in all directions. A slight drizzle had commenced. He came forth damning the wind, the hand with the gold seal ring holding his hat on as he hailed a cab with the other.

The wind from the river was quite strong. It was, in fact, strong enough to support a man; and this, at a corner on Gansevoort Street, is exactly what it was doing. The man himself, on the other hand, did not seem grateful. He was talking to the wind; and, as occasional words took shape from the jumble of sounds he poured forth, it became evident that he was calling it foul names. At this, the wind became even more zealous in its attentions to him. He hit at the skirt of his tattered coat as it flew up around him, addressing it somewhat like this, —Gway gwayg . . . yccksckr . . . until, its caprice satisfied, the wind flung him round a corner and went on east. Abandoned, he swayed, and fortunately found a wall with the first throw of- his hand, instead of the face of the man who approached, for he had struck out at just about that level.

—Here, my good man. Could you tell me whereabouts Horatio Street . . . good heavens.

Thus called upon, he took courage: the sursum corda of an extravagant belch straightened him upright, and he answered, —Whfffck? Whether this was an approach to discussion he had devised himself, or a subtle adaptation of the Socratic method of questioning perfected in the local athenaeums which he attended until closing time, was not to be known; for the answer was,

—Stand aside.

—Here, don't goway. Here, how do youfffk . . . He licked a lip and commenced again, putting out a hand. —My name Boyma . . . he managed, summoning himself for the challenge of recognition. —And you must be Gro ... go ... raggly!

He seemed to have struggled up on that word from behind; and he finished with the triumph of having knocked it over the head. He did in fact look down, as though it might be lying there at his feet. It was such a successful combat that he decided to renew it. —Go . . . gro . . . gorag ... His hand found a wrist, and closed thereon. Bells sounded, from a church somewhere near. —Go . . . ro . . . grag . . . But the sharp heel of a hand delivered to the side of his head stopped him, and he dropped against the wall with no exclamation of surprise whatever.

The door was opened to the length of a finger.

—You ... 1

—I ...

—How . . . how did you find me?

—It hasn't been easy. You might put Rouge Cloltre out here on your bell, at least.

—Rouge . . . put what?

—The name of the convent that took van der Goes in, you know. May I come in?

—Oh, why . . . yes, yes come in.

—I'm not disturbing you? Basil Valentine asked, entering the room. —Coming at such an odd hour?

—Yes it is, but no, not if ... you don't need the sleep?

—Unfortunately I do, I need it badly, Valentine answered with a smile. —Here, I brought down these van Eyck details. And your Thoreau. I went off with that quite by mistake.

—That, thank you for that. And you . . . your . . .

—My coat? Yes, it's wet. I'll take it off in a moment. First I'd like to wash my hands, Valentine went on, turning toward a door, —I had a rather disagreeable encounter on my way here. The room was the kitchen; and with one look at the sink, he returned to say, —Are you aware that there's something growing in here? A delicate plant, growing right up out of the drain?

—Oh no, but that, it must be a melon then. Some melon seeds washed down . . . here, here's the bathroom here.

A minute later, Valentine's voice came from there. —A towel?

—Yes, here, use this.

Valentine came out, drying his hands on a wad of cotton waste. —It's pretty stuff, isn't it, he said smiling again, and threw it into the fireplace. —And tell me, it's your habit to cover up mirrors? as they do in a house where someone's died?

—The one in the bathroom? it's only . , . something drying. But you, he asked Valentine suddenly, —don't you get tired of the image you dodge in mirrors?

—I don't dodge. Valentine had not lost his smile. He took off his coat, and put it with his hat on the bed, where he sat on the unmade edge and leaned back against the rumpled covers, hands clasped round one knee. —So, you're working, are you? he said agreeably. —You've been at it all night?

—All night, I've been working all night. I just finished it.

—What? could I see it?

—It's this one, this big one here.

Valentine got up to help him move it out from the wall, and stand it face out against the inside of the door. He offered his cigarette case, lit their cigarettes, and studied the painting for some time before he said, —Brown won't like this, you know. The face there, how badly you've damaged it.

—But the damage? It isn't as though I'd done that. A hand was flung up before him. —The painting itself, the composition took its own form, when it was painted. And then the damage, the damage is indifferent to the composition, isn't it. The damage, you know, is ... happens.

Valentine shrugged. —I know, of course, he said. —But I doubt that Brown will. It will cut the price down badly.

—The price! What's that to do with . . .

—Good heavens, I don't care about it. But your employer is rather sensitive about those things, you know. After another pause, without taking his eyes from the painting, Valentine stepped back, and the figure behind him moved as quickly as his own shadow in the glare of the bare light above them. -It's magnificent, isn't it, Valentine said quietly. He stood entirely absorbed in it, and when he spoke murmured as he might have talking to himself. —The simplicity . . . it's the way I would paint ...

There was no sound after his voice, and nothing moved to move him; until his eyes lowered to the shadow streaking the floor beside him: at that Basil Valentine turned abruptly and cleared his throat. —Yes, a splendid sense of death there isn't there, he went on in the tone usual to him, more forceful and more casual at once. —Death before it became vulgar, he went on, walking down the room away from the painting, —when a certain few died with dignity. And the others, the people who went to earth quietly like dung. Eh? he added, turning. He threw his cigarette into the fireplace, lit another without offering one, and blew the thin smoke out compulsively in a steady stream. —Yes, there is what you wanted there, isn't there, in this painting? —Almost ...

—Almost? Valentine repeated. He brought up the rold brilliance of his own eyes, to drive the feverish stare fixed upon him down to the floor between them. —Almost what?

—The . . . strength, the delicacy, the tenderness without . . . —Weakness, yes. Valentine kicked a book on the floor at his feet. —Pliny? what, for his discourse on colors? Yes thanks, I wouldn't mind a little of that myself, cognac is it? He held out the unwashed glass he was given while the bottle-neck clinked against it, but still looking at the damaged painting. —You do work fast, don't you. Yes, van der Goes was a fast painter himself, but one, the Portinari triptych I think it was, took him a good three years. But after all this is rather different isn't it, you know where you're going all the time. None of that feeling of, what was Valéry's line, that one can never finish a work of art? one only abandons it? But here there's none of that problem, is there. Eh? What's the matter.

—If one minute, first you say, or people say It's beautiful! and then if, when they find out it isn't what they were told, if it's a painting when they find out it was done by, or rather when they find out it wasn't done by who they thought . . .

—No, no, not this evening, or not today is it? No, really, we won't settle that here now. It's not . . . not the point, is it. Drawn by his eyes, Valentine faltered for the first time. —Or if it is the point? the whole point? And he looked away, to the damaged painting.

—What you said, about signing a picture? About that, that being all they care about, the law . . .

—Modern forgeries, forgeries of modern painters, Valentine dismissed him quickly, but looking about the room found only the man and the damaged painting to draw his eyes. —And be careful, he said, forcing the ease in his voice. —If Brown should decide that there's as much money in modern painters as there is in his old masters, no, it's not funny, he's already threatened you with van Gogh . . . He had commenced to pace the room, and paused to draw to him, with a toe of a black shoe, a detailed drawing which he picked up and studied. He held it up between them and said, —A remarkable likeness.

—A study, from the ... last work.

—Yes, I see. And reversed, the mirrors? Backwards, like a contact print. Exactly like, and yet a perfect lie. The thing dropped from his fingers and he laughed. —You? the, what was it you said, the shambles of your work? What a pitifully selfish career! being lived, as you said? by something that uses you and then sheds you like a husk when its own ends are accomplished?

—Yes, but if the gods themselves ...

—Is it worth . . .

—If they cannot recall their . . . gifts, to ... redeem them, working them out, do you understand? living them through . . . ?

And Valentine turned quickly from those eyes back to the damaged painting leaned against the door, to murmur, —On second thought I believe I would have put another figure or two there in the lower left, the sense of ascendance in the upper part of the composition would gain a good deal ...

—You?

—and the blue is rather light isn't it. I think if I'd done it myself I would have used a more . . .

—But you didn't.

Basil Valentine turned on him slowly, and studied him for a few moments before he spoke. —My dear fellow, he brought out finally. —If you are this sensitive to any sort of criticism, I didn't come down here to ...

—Why did you come down here?

—I came down to ask a favor of you. But if you are so painfully sensitive to criticism, such a self-conscious artist that . . .

—No I, it's just, listen, criticism? It's the most important art now, it's the one we need most now. Criticism is the art we need most today. But not, don't you see? not the "if I'd done it myself . . ." Yes, a, a disciplined nostalgia, disciplined recognitions but not, no, listen, what is the favor? Why did you come here?

Basil Valentine had dropped a cigarette on the stained floor; and stooping to get it, a suspender button at the back of his trousers came off, and he straightened up feeling half his trouser-seat hanging and the other half binding high. —That Patinir? he said. —The painting that Brown has just inside the door, hung opposite that idiotic portrait. I wanted to ask you if you'd mind making a copy of it for me. He put his hands in his pockets, to hitch his trousers up square, and spoke rapidly. —It wouldn't even have to be a perfect copy, you know, since the original doesn't exist. You didn't know? Brown had the painting heavily insured, and it was destroyed in a fire. At least he had the evidence that it was when the insurance company's experts came. He'd sawed off one end of it and he showed them that, pretty badly charred but not so much that it couldn't be identified as all that was left of the original, which he's waiting now to dispose of again, "in secret" of course. Yes, what's the matter? what's funny?

—These. I've done the same thing with these.

—What do you mean, the same thing? sawed the ends off and . . .

—Kept them.

—What? What for?

—Proof.

—Proof? Basil Valentine stepped aside quickly as he passed, and watched him pull canvases away from the wall.

—This! he said holding one up. —Do you see? It was going to be a study, it was a study for this . . . this new work, this van Eyck.

—But what? The Annunciation? Valentine hitched up the sagging side of his trousers. —And it's not turning out what you wanted? But it's an old thing. On linen? What is it? and this, these, earrings? Who is she? These old Byzantine-looking hoops, what is it? Who is she? This? a study for a van Eyck?

—No, but for what I want.

—What are you talking about? And this, what is it? It's exquisite, this face, the reproach, like the faces, the Virgin in other things you've done, the reproach in this face. Your work, it's old isn't it, but a little always shows through, yes something, semper aliquid haeret? something always remains, something of you. But what are you talking about? Valentine found the feverish eyes fixed on him. —Here, this . . . I've brought down these pictures, these photographic details of, here, if you're going to bring the critics back to believing in Hubert van Eyck? And the, why we may enshrine your arm in a casket right over the door here? in Horatio Street? like Hubert van Eyck's right arm over the portals of the church of Saint Bavon's in Ghent? But what is it? what's the matter? what are you talking about, this proof? to prove what? Valentine demanded.

—Listen, this, if I wanted to go on with this work, myself? And to clear up the other things I've done? The Bouts, the van der Goes?

If I want to tell them, and I have the proof, off every one of them, a canvas or a panel, I cut a strip off the end when it was done, and I have them.

—Where? Valentine asked quickly.

—Yes, they're safe.

—Where? Valentine repeated.

—And that will be proof, won't it.

—Proof? Valentine stood up. —Do you think it's going to be that easy? Yes, do you think they want to be told? Any more than Michelangelo's Cardinale di San Giorgio? Yes, he'd kept aside an arm from his "antique" cupid, and he went to get the Cardinal's help starting his career, showed him the arm from the statue to prove he'd done it, do you think the Cardinal thanked him? Valentine picked up his glass and finished it. —Do you think it's that simple? Why . . . He put a hand out to the shoulder before him. —That you can do it alone, that simply? He withdrew his hand slowly. —But you're wet, your jacket's damp. You've been out?

—Earlier, just before you came, for a walk . . .

—But you told me, when I came in you said you'd been working here all night.

—Yes, but, I went out, I'll tell you, I went out, I took those fragments, those strips from the ends of the paintings, where they'd be safe.

—Where? Valentine demanded.

—I took them up ... where I used to live.

—Where you haven't lived for, two years is it? To your wife, your wife, so you trust her? You trust your wife to watch over them?

—She doesn't even know. She wasn't there. Only her sister, yes her sister, we hid them.

But Basil Valentine had turned from him, to pace to the end of the room, where he stood looking at him, at his impatient eyes, and the crumpled damp black jacket hanging from his shoulders. —Your wife, eh? He paused, but spoke more rapidly as he went on, —The Rouge Cloître? Yes, and where's the mother superior? Who keeps house for you here, then? This floor, how do you keep it so dirty? Why ... so you trust her with it, do you? these fragments that are so important. And here, this van der Goes, what happens to her face in that, eh? All the rest of them, yes, the men, you out of your mirrors, you're there half a dozen times, backwards? Drawing death and modeling it under your own hand, but what happens to her face? Oh, the damage doesn't respect the composition? No, not a bit, not a bit of it. He stopped; the vein stood out like a bulb at his temple. He touched it with a fingertip, dropped his shoulders back against the empty irregular brick mantel, and lit a cigarette. Immediately the draft caught its smoke and drew it up the flue behind him. —And this, who's this in this study on the easel? It's old, isn't it. Your wife?

Standing under the bare bulb, facing Valentine, he started to speak, but all he said was, —She . . .

—Yes, or your mother?

—Yes. My mother, he admitted in a whisper, looking back at the picture on the soiled gesso, his face drawn up in lines of confusion as though he had just remembered.

—Yes, is it? Valentine muttered. —The Visitation, then? He laughed. —A Stabat Mater? No. No more, thank you. Suppose . . . like Nicodemus I come down here? Yes, the Pharisee Nicodemus in Saint John, that . . . least reliable of the gospels? "Except a man be born again"? Yes, verily, ". . . Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born?" Valentine coughed and cleared his throat. He'd snatched up his coat before he seemed aware of the clouding of anxiety which had risen in the eyes fixed on his sudden movements, an expression near a wince drawing up the face, and the figure seated unbalanced on a high stool, retreated there from avoiding him with the alert caution of a shadow, the crumpled shoulders sunk unevenly and still. Nonetheless Valentine pulled on his coat, but slowed, and his voice recovered its sharp ease. —You want to get on with this work, don't you. But we might go up together sometime, and have a look at that Eden? The snake there, he laughed, gripping his lapels and lifted his overcoat into shape at the front. —The snake of consciousness? And there she is, Eve, the woman. The same woman, personalizing everything. Good Christians, good targets for advertising, because they personalize everything. A deodorant or a crucifix, they take it and make it part of them. He picked up his hat, dropping his voice to an irritating monotone. —What was it, in Ecclesiastes? God hath made man upright, but the women have sought out many inventions . . . ?

—Wait . . .

—Eh? —Do you think . . . here, do you want some more brandy?

—I'll get along, I don't want to keep you, Valentine said, in his voice a tone of cordial deference; and back a step, something rolled away from his foot, and he stooped to retrieve it. —Rose madder? he read from the label.

—Oh that, it's nothing. Rose madder, it's too late.

—Too late? Valentine looked up pretending surprise at the eager distress in the voice, and the unsteady hand where he surrendered the packet.

—I got it for a Bouts, the first Dierick Bouts, but these colors, . . . madder lake wasn't used until the sixteenth century. And Bouts was dead. Dierick Bouts, he ... he was dead. Wait . . . listen, do you think something might go wrong?

—Go wrong?

—If I try to tell them, about these pictures?

—Have it your own way, Valentine shrugged. —If you think you can do it alone.

—But the proof? even with that?

—You're sure they're safe? Valentine's lips drew to a thin smile.

—Well, wait then. Wait. If you . . .

—I? If I could help you?

—Yes, these fragments . . .

—Bring them along, then, if you like. We'll work this thing out. Basil Valentine put on his hat; and his eyes, gone hard under the black brim, were drawn over the wrinkled shoulder from the lined face before him to the clear face on the easel, as he added, —Bring them up to my place, then. Do you hear? There's no room for mistakes. He stood like that, staring at the picture up on the easel whose unsurprised eyes looked beyond him; and finally, murmuring, —Your mother, eh? he took his eyes from it with abrupt effort. —A Stabat Mater? Not a girl, not a woman at all.

He turned on his heel and pulled open the door. —It's going to smell strange out there, after this . . . odor of sanctity? The gold seal ring shone against the edge of the open door, glittering softly in the light of the bare electric bulb, as the slow light of day entered behind him with the sound of bells. —Hear Saint Bavon's? Another blue day. I'll be waiting for you. And many thanks for the cognac.

There was not a cab in sight.

—Blood is all they know, every hour boys being killed, an airplane just crashed and who was surprised, forty-one people killed, though there is some hope that the stewardess, who survived, will be able to tell police, because it is all there in the newspapers that anyone can read . . .

What was it?

Stanley sat down. Across from him a woman stared into his face, lips moving, fingers moving on her beads. He clutched the chisel in his pocket, the first time in years he had been on the subway, as though overcome with the necessity to dive down into darkness and not emerge until he reached home. He was not shivering from the cold, though it was cold in the subway. He was still buttoning his shirt. What was it she had cried to him when he asked her to kneel beside him, beside the bed; and then as he retreated through one door, fled toward another, escaped naked with all of his clothes in his hand, out into the hall where her voice died but the smell of her perfume followed him. He pulled his necktie's knot to his throat. The train roared into its rock firmament where lights twinkled in warning ahead of this front car and the woman's voice disappeared while her lips still moved, steaming the glass before them, and Stanley realized that he was on the wrong train, going in the wrong direction.

He looked up anxiously; as though another passenger might have made his mistake and, confirming him, prove everyone else misguided, misdirected. (It was an expression Stanley wore much of the time.) Standing across from him, gazing as though able to see through the dirty glass, a tall man stood with a handkerchief held to his nose and mouth. Gold glittered at his cuff. Then a woman of an uncertain age and massive shifting proportions trod on Stanley's foot, and swung, with grand inertia, into a white pole.

—You never see Jews drunk like that, said the person next to Stanley.

—Yehhh? the woman shouted, turning to them. The train was nearing a station. Stanley got up and went to the door where the tall man stood with his handkerchief to his face, turned, now, to the car. —Yehhh? the woman shouted, swinging round with Stanley. Both her hands were free. —Is that what you want? That's what you want is it? she cried, and as she did gripped the hem of her dress, and it became immediately apparent that it was the only garment she had on.

Stanley staggered into the tall man with the handkerchief, whose eyes had frozen in a cold blue horror, who whispered, —Good God! . . .

—Here! Come and get it! Come and get it!

Then a commotion started in the other end of the car, where a shabby old man had found something: but the commotion was his, only two others got up to look; the others stared in dreadful scorn, just as these seated near Stanley stared, not at the woman, but at him and the man beside him.

—Come on, both of you, you scared . . . ? The train lurched, approaching a station, and her skirt sagged and dropped as she caught a pole. The doors opened, and she kept shouting after them, —Come on, come on, you . . . throw a toilet seat around your heads and we'll all use it ...

HE WAS WOUNDED for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities:

. . . and with his stripes we are healed, read the placard against which the tall man steadied himself. Across the top someone had scribbled, Jesus a comunist. He stood there with his handkerchief covering his face, and Stanley stopped, himself beside a placard which called public attention to a lower East Side knishery, where someone had penciled, Hitler was right. The handkerchief came down slowly, and the man caught a glimpse of a dirty shade of himself in the mirror of a chewing-gum vending machine. —Excuse me . . . are you all right? Stanley ventured.

The handkerchief was withdrawn, and he said in a level voice to Stanley, —Those, my dear young man, are the creatures that were once burned in witch hunts.

When Basil Valentine got home, he ran his bath immediately; and as the warm water closed over his shoulders, and one dry hand supported a cigarette, he exhaled, looking up at the clean ceiling, and his lips moved as though, all this time since he had taken his fingertips from his eyelids, seated out there in the big chair waiting for the dawn, he had been talking to himself.

Trucks were moving, loaded, toward the docks, and loaded away from the market as Stanley hurried toward his locked place, already assaulted. Why had he let Hannah stay? the last person he wanted to explain to now: even running, the odor of perfume from Agnes Deigh's nakedness rose to him. Birds clustered loudly at a horse trough. It was daylight.

His room was empty when he got there. Immediately, he noticed that the window over the bed was open, but he had no strength to pull it down. He dropped on the bed and lay still in the cold. What was it she had cried out as he ran, the cry and the voice of her a thing almost tangible hurled through the air between them, which entered and froze him in flight, as though an eternal abstraction were materialized in cast metal and bone, and Love showed its scarred steel jaws edged with broken teeth.

What was it? With his ear against the mattress, he stared at the cathedral of Fenestrula; and the beats of his heart were magnified in the bedsprings and sent back to him with the regular clattering resonance of snare drums. Crang, crang, crang, they went in regular familiar rhythm, missing a beat, or doubling one, in faithful accompaniment to something.

On the walk outside, a man approached unsteadily rubbing a rough cheekbone with a rough hand. The lucidity of the blue day rising over him seemed to prompt him to clarify the immediate issue of that turbid pool which, if questioned later on, he would call his memory, but found now resident in his cheekbone, where the blood was already dry. —He was Boyma, the man muttered, —then I must be Go ... ro ... gro ... go ...

Crang . . . crang . . . crang What was it? With his last breath of consciousness he realized that he had left his glasses on the table beside her uptown bed. Crang crang crang came the drums over the hill and into sight. They were playing Onward Christian Soldiers.

Two feet away from Stanley, the man stopped in the shallow covert that the window afforded to commit a nuisance, never glancing down at the face which lay in exhaustion under the open window at his feet.

II

This is as if a drunk man should think himself to be sober, and should act indeed in all respects as a drunk man, and yet think himself to be sober, and should wish to be called so by others. Thus, therefore, are those also who do not know what is true, yet hold some appearance of knowledge, and do many evil things as if they were good, and hasten to destruction as if it were salvation.

—The Clementine Recognitions, Book V

—I mean to tell her about the toast, this morning putting butter upon his toast, and the toast spoke with me, Fuller said, his voice in the near-inaudible confidence of intimacy. —But though I pause to listen very close, the toast conversed in a language with which as yet I remain unacquainted. Perhaps it was instructin me? he added, and his hand stopped its motion, the dirty polishing rag came to rest on the lance-rest, and he peered into the dark eye-slit of the helmet. Nothing moved. The armor stood at attention to his confidences, as it had been doing for some years. Polishing every hinge and joint, every plate and vent, had long since established his close informal acquaintance with this figure which, on first meeting, had posed no such possibility. It was some time before Fuller penetrated the cold reserve, and gained the ascendancy over the formidable hauteur with which it had greeted his reluctant advances. Left to himself, he \vould certainly have avoided it, and at best passed it with that respect inspired by mistrust, regarding it as his oppressor's ally. But as so often happens under the hands of tyrants, it was Mr. Brown himself who had brought them together. In his insistence that this, his favorite, be kept spotless and irreproachable, Mr. Brown had fostered a conspiracy right under his own nose.

—I already tell Adeline that the drawer method apparently destined to no great success, he went on, as the polishing rag moved again over a palette. He was recounting a recent visit to a woman of his own age, color, and forebears (but substantially heavier) whom he consulted, hands extended but not touching across a polished wood tabte top, concerning his affliction. Adeline, in turn, consulted her daughter Elsie, who had died when only three and was now going to school on the other side, but willingly played truant in this good cause. —I assure her, every time I enter my room I write his name upon a piece of paper and secrete it in the drawer. But when she learn that I spell his name in a variety of ways, there lies the hindrance. Perhaps you already brought misfortune to others whose names you spelt unwitting, she reprimand me.

The polishing cloth had by now reached the breastplate, which Fuller saved until last because of its flat accessibility, the directness of the encounter it permitted, and the rewarding way in which it shone. —Next we contemplate tryin the hair method, he continued, sounding slightly troubled. —She direck me to gather an envelope of his hair, which Elsie will proceed to treat the secret way, and return to me to burn sayin over it certain words from the mysteries she resides party to. Fuller rubbed hard, showing severe vexation in his sudden energy, bent lower, addressing now not the patient helmet but his own darting reflection in the breastplate. —I suggest perhaps this method reek of a kind of magic, I hesitate to do an unchristian act even upon him. But she hasten to assure me this method is Christian because I employ it against the forces of evil. Then she proceed to recount to me what Saint Louis instruck, this in the olden time of course, when a Jew have the best of you in controversy, to thrust a sword into his belly right up to the handle. He stopped and stood back to look at his work, but added, —Seem when Elsie die, ten thousand people die that same moment, nine thousand nine hundred ninety-five depart to hell direckly, four to the purgaratory, only Elsie carried straight to heaven. Thus she appear highly recommended, he reassured the impassive figure before him. They faced each other silently for a moment. Then darting the rag forward for another quick rub at the beaver, Fuller said, —I must hurry, to return in ample time, and he straightened up, and went to his room.

On his way back, the thick envelope deep in an inside pocket, he peered round the door onto the balcony, first to the head of the stairs, to see if the black dog were watching. He ventured to the rail, and there it lay below, a still blot on the Aubusson roses. With a glance of intrepid calm at his lustrous confidante, he turned to the stairs looking somewhat harried, but satisfied. Fuller was a good head taller than that suit of armor; and surely, on short acquaintance, his heart would have filled with foreboding suspicions toward one so anxious at his own safety, so apprehensive of others, that all his beauty lay in his defense. But year by year, polishing every plate and vent, every joint and hinge, Fuller had discovered every weak link in the mail, every chink in the armor, and he saw it now as a weaker demonstration of his own more elastic resistance, a hollow hope, but one which held its gauntleted hand forth, and a face which no longer glittered with disdain, but where, in their moments of confidence, familiarity had bred content.

Some time later Fuller entered with what he considered great stealth. He had not got far in the dark front hall, however, before he tripped on something. The large flat package fell flat on the floor. Fuller remained suspended before it. Then he saw two black eyes fixed upon him. The moment he looked up, the dog turned and trotted away. —You goin to write it down in your report, Fuller muttered, and straightened the package up again. —Some day I goin to discover where you keep it and destroy every page, he went on. —Rescue many good people from grief and vexation. Notably myself, he finished, entering the vast living room.

There, rising from one of the chairs before the fireplace, he saw a thin column of blue smoke. He retreated, put the straw hat in a very small panel closet in the hall, and approached again. Then, with great relief, he said, —Oh, it is you, sar. Good afternoon.

—Yes, it is, Fuller. For the moment, anyway. Who did you think . . .

—I take for granted maybe it's goin to be Mister Valentine, sar. I fallen into the habit of expectin the worst durín my residence here.

—We all have, we all have. Bring me some brandy, will you Fuller? Bring in the bottle of cordon bleu. The bottle with the blue ribbon on it.

—Yes sar, but Mister Brown, sar . . .

—When he sees me drinking the best he's got, I know it. Bring it in anyhow.

—Yes sar. A few minutes later, Fuller came in with ice and a glass, siphon, and the bottle of cordon bleu. —Could I mix somethin up for you, sar? he asked from the pulpit, where he stood, white-gloved. Given permission, he came across the carpet bearing a tumbler of brandy and ice in one hand, the siphon bottle in the other. He stepped with care. —A curious thing, he said upon arrival, —seem I always inclined to avoid steppin upon the flowers. Though he got no response, he continued to stand there, white hands swinging slightly above the table of the Seven Deadly Sins. Finally he said, — Thahss your package I encounter in the hallway, sar? and brought his eyes about in what he considered a surreptitious glance, if only because of the oblique angle of the steady stare which he lowered upon the face before him. —I trust I not responsible for any damage to the contents when it fall downward at my feet. We have a small collision there in the darkness. After another prolonged pause, Fuller said, —Upon my enterin the room seem like there not a soul present but myself. Mister Brown still occupied at the office, I presume.

Siphon was blown into the glass; and at last the voice said, —What is it, Fuller? What have you got on your mind?

Fuller's chest rose; at the same time his voice lowered to a tone consonant with the commonplace topics through which he planned to approach his question. —You tell me then, sar, is there such a thing as octopus?

—Yes. Of course.

—You have really observed one, sar?

—Well, I ... not actually, no. But enough pictures of them, photographs.

Fuller looked at him with respectful disbelief. —Yes sar, I encounter the pictures myself upon occasion. Sar? Does there exist such a thing as mermaids, sar?

—That's legend, Fuller. They don't really exist, no.

Fuller looked at him with respectful disbelief. Nevertheless, he went on, —Are you acquainted with Saint Louis, sar?

—I've never been there.

—No sar, this one to which I refer is a mahn, sar, a kind of ghost-mahn they havin in the church. Fuller paused, and was rewarded with what appeared to be a look of reminiscence.

—The Crusader, who bought the original crown of thorns.

—Most likely the very same gentlemahn, Fuller said, raising his white hands. —Sound very reliable.

—For what purpose, Fuller?

—For wise counsel upon the problem I been rackin my under-standin some time now, sar. If a mahn try to lead the good Christian life, and he find his path vexed by what he consider evil, sar, . . . can he righteously and justly have a recourse to the bahd method to combat the adversary?

Fuller waited eagerly. He even added —Sar? in encouragement. But his answer was simply, —Fuller, that is one of the oldest questions in the world.

—Yes sar. So it seem to me very old when I contemplate it. So the answer got to be very old too, no question but have his answer, for if you have got no answer you have got no question.

—Fuller, this is dialectics you're getting into.

—Yes sar, Fuller answered and withdrew a step. -These problems continue to vex me, sar, he went on. —Like the mermaids, sar. —Fuller, Fuller . . . keep your mermaids, if they please you.

—Yes sar. But it remain complex, sar, for if they mermaid womans they got to be mermaid mahns too. For the first time the face which Fuller was, by now, staring directly at, turned to him with a smile.

—I suppose you're right, God knows, Fuller.

—Yes sar. God keep Himself very well informed upon these sub-jecks.

—Fuller . . . ?

—Sar?

—You . . . you've never seen a picture of God, have you Fuller?

—No sar. If some artist paint His picture it become quite a hindrance to the faith, sar.

—Yes, yes, Michelangelo tried it.

—What appearance he give to Him, sar?

—An old man.

—Seem like the foreign people find a comfort makin these pictures . . . Fuller took a quick step back, and almost fell over the table, when the figure suddenly rose from the heavy chair. —I don't mean to disturb you, sar, comin forward with my vexations when you sittin quiet and peaceable enjoyin you . . . refreshment. Fuller took a step toward him, in the middle of the room.

—No, Fuller, it isn't . . . damn it, if these were just your problems we could lock you up and forget you.

—Yes sar, Fuller said, taking the step back. —That eventuality I preparin myself for daily.

—No, no, I didn't mean ... I simply meant that ... we all have the problems you ask about.

—Yes sar, Fuller said, looking relieved. —It seem an impractical measure, to lock up the whole world.

—Yes, but . . . you lock it out. You can lock it out.

—Can you, sar? Fuller looked up at-the face suddenly turned upon him. —Seem like such a measure serve no good purpose, sar. Then the mahn lose everything he suppose to keep, and keep everything he suppose to lose. Fuller stood still, a conscious stolidity, as though to offset the movement before him, the shoes stepping heedlessly upon the roses. —It seem a very general inclination to contemplate God as an old mahn until the mahn become old himself, he said to the moving figure.

—I suppose it does, was all the answer Fuller got; nevertheless he went on, —Seem like the foreign people find a comfort makin these pictures.

—And you find them unnecessary, do you?

—If it give them comfort and sustain them . , .

—No, but for you. For you. —No sar, it make itself an obstacle for me.

—And you just believe God is there.

Fuller answered, —We don't see him, sar, but we got to believe he there. And Fuller made wild anxious motions with his white hands in the space between them, like someone waving farewell to a friend on a departing ship, a friend constantly obscured by the waving arms and figures of other people. —So the preacher say . . .

—The preacher?

—Sar?

They were both silent. Fuller's hands fumbled in the white gloves, at his sides, as though in caricature of the hands he was watching, opening and closing on nothing. —The preacher, sar, the Reverend Gilbert Sullivan, thahss the preacher whose meetin I attend upon occasion. Finally he become a hindrance too.

—Reverend Gilbert Sullivan?

—Yes sar. The Reverend Gilbert Sullivan a very highly trained preacher, but it seem like when he acquirin his high trainin he lose somewhere along the way the first thing he require to be a preacher to us. Fuller had pulled the white hands together behind him, and stood with his eyes lowered, as though finished. But then he looked up anxiously to add, —Not that I presume to make the judgment upon him . . .

—But what requirement, Fuller? What requirement?

—Why sar, requirin the Reverend Gilbert Sullivan to believe he the mann for whom Jesus Christ died.

—And you . . . you can believe that, Fuller? With no trouble, just that simply, you can believe it?

—Oh no, sar. It remain a challenge to believe, always. Not so simple to accept, like the mermaids.

—The mermaids . . . the mermaids . . .

—Yes, sar.

—And you can . . . accept the mermaids, without much difficulty?

—Yes, sar, though they remain the complication of the mermaid mahns.

—Yes, there does. There does.

—But the mermaid womans . . .

—Yes, the women . . . you can believe in the women . . .

—Oh yes sar, Fuller said, and then after a pause, —Woman bring you into the world, you got to stick with her.

—Wasn't it woman brought evil into the world, then?

—Sar?

—Yes. When she picked the fruit from the forbidden tree; and gave it to the man to eat?

—So the evil already there provided, and quite naturally she discover it.

—Yes, yes, and she gave it to the man ...

—She share it with him, sar, said Fuller. — Thaht the reason why we love her.

The black poodle, which had been biting its nails, raised its head, then got up and went toward the hall doorway. Fuller looked at the back turned toward him, silent. Then he straightened his lapels, and followed the dog.

—Effluvium? Brown muttered, under his breath.

Sweet Norah Winebisquit bedewed with sleep Swept down through sooted flues of chimney-sweep. And where? she cried, can be this sceptered rod That men call Recktall Brown, and I call god. Straight through a frosted glass-partitioned door They led her, and she doubted now no more. (The fair, the chaste, and unexpressive she) Might no more question wherewithal of he: Dreadful he sat, bastioned in golden oak, The humanizing of some dirty joke The gods tell one another ere they stand To attend the last obscenity, called man.

His wide sleeve covered the rest of this work on the clear mahogany surface where, their right hands extended but not touching, the thin yellow hand shifting nervously, his own couching the weight of the diamonds, Recktall Brown faced a wild-eyed youth with one arm in a sling, who said —I hope you do find it, I mean find a copy, I need it, if you don't need it, I mean if you don't think you can use it? ... There was hope in that last.

Brown raised his eyes from the poem, still muttering, the pools behind the lenses disturbed as he brought his attention up. —What are you asking me about a copy of it for? What makes you think you sent it to us? Ask the secretary.

—But I sent copies to ... I know I sent one here, your secretary . . . and your secretary isn't here today, she . . .

—We get things from agents, and send them back to agents. Ask your agent. Then Brown appeared to notice that the reddened eyes of this young man, who looked enough in keeping with that stereotype of disheveled insanity suddenly assembled so often associated with genius, eyes strained open to abnormal width, were fixed on the scrawled page protruding from under his sleeve. He pulled some papers toward him, partially covering it, to return to the day's business correspondence. But the voice went on, the words coming out brokenly, —Yes sir, but, since I'm here ... A new intensity brought Brown's eyes up again. —There's one thing, something I want to know, if I could ask you what you thought, because some people have said, or I mean they've intimated, that they think I've . . . well that it really isn't mine, that I'd used some other . . . that I'd . . . plagiarized it.

—Plagiarized? Recktall Brown sat back. With a quick look over his desk, locating a manuscript, he pushed it forward with one hand and took off his glasses with the other. He fixed the figure across from him with his sharp eyes, and laughed. —Take a look at this, he sai'd, as the quivering yellow fingers received it. —This is lifted. The whole God-damned novel is lifted. One of our readers spotted it the first thing. A lawyer went over it, and it's safe. A couple of things changed around, it's safe and it's good, and it will sell.

Wild Gousse Chase, Otto read on the title page.

—So you picked up a few things here and there for yours, what the hell? What hasn't been written before? You take something good, change it around a little and it's still good.

Otto was staring at Max's name on the title page of Wild Gousse Chase.

—You just take the words and string them around a little different, Brown went on, raising his glasses again.

—But . . . but words, Otto murmured helplessly. He looked up. —Words, they have to have a meaning.

—Let me give you some advice, boy, Brown said, standing. —Don't you worry about that. It's right when the idea's missing, the word pops up. You can do anything with the same words. You just follow the books, don't try to get a lot of smart ideas of your own. Brown pressed a button under his finger. There was belligerence and triumph in his voice; but it was belligerent solicitude as he finished, —It's all right there, you just take it out and write it down as though Jesus Christ himself dictated it.

—But this play, the retreating figure kept on, —it can't be lost, I'm sure a copy came here, she ... it isn't plagiarized, I didn't steal it, I wrote it myself . . .

But Recktall Brown was seated again; and, when a secretary appeared, already returned to muttering over the rest of the open scrawl which his sleeve, drawn to him, had uncovered.

Heaven's crown, brown-bought, fell lightly on his brow,

Lay heavy on her perspicacious Now.

(Still on the dreadful teeth of time she trod,

And marveled at the maleness of god.)

Sweet Norah Winebisquit, bedewed with sleep,

Awoke this decorated painted heap

Of present woman: could she doubt her sin?

Sought furiously for the flame within,

Presented in a naked leaping cry

The burning plunder of the present I.

Pride drew her garments up, and swathed her face

In lineaments incapable of disgrace.

Slipped then away, her face bedewed with do,

Beyond the glass, and knowing all, she knew

That the immortals have their ashcans too.

—Yes sir?

—What is this thing? Where the hell did it come from? Brown demanded, waving the paper in the air. He held it out to her.

—I don't knew, sir. It was in your mail this morning, I thought it might be something . . . literary.

—And him, how the hell did he get in here?

—I'm sorry, sir. Miss Mims is away this week, and . . . She cleared her throat. —Mister Valentine to see you, sir, she said, retreating.

—Friends? Otto heard as he came out. The tall man in gray pinstripe gave him barely a glance, from a face entirely empty whose eyes affirmed, clearly and immediately, that they did not know each other. —Of course, choose your friends with as much care as you choose your clothes, the man continued, speaking to someone no more than Otto's age. —Infinite care at the outset . . .

In the outside hall, the pencil scribbling Chse frnds Ik clthes suddenly stopped: he had just seen Gordon, and he had no place to put him.

Down below, Otto came out upon the street muttering imprecations of a general, pointless nature, until the wind hit him, and provided an object for his curses as it blew him along, mussing his hair from behind.

—Did I hear you giving some future Menander advice? Basil Valentine asked, entering. —And did I hear the word, plagiary?

Brown finished trimming a cigar before he answered, —You heard it. You can hear it again.

—Again? Valentine had not sat down. He commenced to idle up and down the room. —How do you mean?

—I mean I just saw an advance review of your art book, some half-ass critic takes it apart.

Valentine paused, lighting a cigarette. He held the match before him, looking at the name. Then he blew it out. —How do you mean, takes it apart?

—He takes your own words out o£ it, and quotes them to ...

—Yes, to condemn me. 1 see what you mean, Valentine said coldly. —He does sound rather . . . hal£-assed, as you so graphically describe him.

—Not only that . . .

—My dear Brown, nothing amuses me more than that, exactly that, Valentine interrupted. —Why do you suppose I put them there? To give your . . . halE-assed reviewer opportunity to expose his own total lack of resources, in what he considers an exemplary demonstration o£ his own cleverness. Can you imagine the satisfaction that gives someone who has never done anything himself? Our great half-assed priesthood, so to speak, he finished with asperity, turning on Brown, or rather the cloud of cigar smoke that rose between them.

—Not only that, Brown went on with belligerent satisfaction as Valentine paced the floor away from his desk. —He says you plagiarized just about the whole thing, that you lifted . . .

—Plagiarized! Valentine turned, and controlled his voice with a thin smile. —You make me feel like Vergil, when someone saw him carrying a copy of Ennius, and implied . . .

—He says you lifted . . .

—I'm simply plucking the pearls from Ennius' dunghill, was Vergil's answer.

—If you think you can lift whole parts out of somebody else's . . .

—And now what? Valentine brought out quickly. —Making me out another . . . Chrysippus? Seven hundred five volumes, he went on, recovering the forced dilatory calm of his voice as he spoke. —But the work of others pleased him so, that one of his books contained a play of Euripides almost entire. The . . . drudgery of such a career would be appalling, he added in a mutter and turned away. Brown watched his nervous tread, and noticed a gesture familiar elsewhere: Valentine's hands, opening and closing on nothing at his sides. At the far end of the office, Valentine stopped, looking over the array of books and magazines on the table there. The slow-rising clouds from Recktall Brown's cigar seemed to accentuate the silence between them, and finally Valentine turned holding up a small stiff-covered magazine. —A symposium on re-ligionl he read from the cover. —A rather old issue. I gather you've bought it?

—Where'd you hear that?

—The only possible reason you could have a copy lying around. You must be buying the whole thing.

—It's no secret, Brown said. —I picked it up for nothing.

—It's about time you breathed some life into it, I suppose, Valentine said, dropping the thing on a chair by his coat. —It's become quite a dismal affair, a frightened little group who spend all their time criticizing each other's attempts in terms of cosmic proportions, and then defend each other against the outside world. Even the fiction, the stories they write are about each other, they don't know anyone else. A sort of diary of dead souls.

—A bunch of second-hand Jews . . . Brown began, if only to interrupt.

—I doubt the windows of their editorial offices have been opened in decades, Valentine went on, in a monotone whose only purpose was to establish its authority to continue. —If there are any. What future do you plan for these . . . critics?

—Critics! Brown muttered. —They call themselves critics just because they never learned how to make a living. It's got a lousy circulation of about five thousand, but it's got a reputation. Intellectual. I'm going to bring it around to where even a half-wit can feel intellectual reading it. The circulation will be twenty times what it is now.

Valentine laughed quietly, walking away again; and only when his back was turned did Brown, shifting in his chair, show impatience. He seemed prepared to let Valentine go on, wasting time until whatever had brought him here, and strained his nervous presence now, broke forth.

—Like that incredible book you published, what \vas it? Valentine went on, looking over the array on the table. —"Soul-searching" the reviewers called it. By some poor fellow who joined a notorious political group, behaved treasonably? And after satisfying that peculiar accumulation of guilt which he called his conscience by betraying everyone in sight, joined a respectable remnant of the Protestant church and settled down to pour out his . . .

—It's already sold half a million, Brown said patiently. —That's what people want now, soul-searching.

—Soul-searching! Valentine repeated. —People like that haven't a soul to search. You might say they're searching for one. The only ones they seem to find are in some maudlin confessional with the great glob of people they really consider far less intelligent than themselves, they call that humility. Stupid people in whom they pretend to find some beautiful quality these people know nothing about. That's called charity. No, he said and shrugged impatiently, turning with his hands clasped behind him. —These people who hop about from one faith to another have no more to confess than that they have no faith in themselves.

Brown watched him carefully through the thick lenses, ambling slowly with head lowered, a slim hand raised to the strong profile of his chin, to stop again at the table and flick open the cover of a book there. —In Dreams I Kiss Your Hand, Madam, he read. —Really . . . "Selected and edited, with an introduction by . . ." yourself? All the world loves . . .

—There's no plagiary in that, Brown said. —Everybody who wrote something's got his name on it.

—You couldn't have sold a single copy if it weren't. But here, Esnie? who the devil . . . ?

—Who?

—"To esme, whose unerring judgment is responsible for whatever value this book may have . . ." Your humility is really quite touching.

—Some girl in the office pulled those together for me, Brown said, drumming his fingers more rapidly, as his lowered eyes caught the edge of the poem scrawled under his sleeve. —Now what . . .

—Your modesty is overwhelming, as always.

—You came up here to talk about my modesty? Brown broke out at last.

—Hardly. Valentine turned on him. —I dropped in to talk to you about your . . . most successful protege. He smiled.

—What about him? What have you been up to with him?

—I? Nothing, nothing at all. If Valentine's composure had seemed to suffer, it was totally recovered; but Brown continued to look at him, hands splayed on the desk, as though nothing were more familiar than composure which was serene only when it had something to dissemble.

—You've seen him? What about?

—Let me see, Valentine answered vaguely. —As I remember, we discussed the Lex Cornelia, an ordinance against Roman matrons who poisoned . . .

—I told you, I wasn't going to have any of your crap interfering.

Valentine raised his eyebrows. —My what?

—Yes, God damn it. I've allowed you a lot of things, but this time . . . Look here, there's a lot of things about you I know, that maybe you don't know I know, Recktall Brown said leaning forward over the desk, looking at him with the centerless eyes in those thick lenses.

—My private life is hardly any concern . . .

—Not just your private life. A God damn lot of other things.

—Other things? Valentine repeated blandly. —What about a trip you made to Paris about six months ago? For a week in Paris. Where did you go from Paris?

—The Midi, as I told you. A pleasant town near . . .

—Midi hell. Do you want me to tell you where you went?

—Not especially, said Basil Valentine, tapping his chin.

—I could tell . . .

—But you wouldn't, would you, Valentine said, resting the finger on his chin, and looking up, as Recktall Brown looked down.

—I told you the day you met him, Brown repeated, —I don't want any interference from you.

—You know, I believe you rather like him. It must be an odd sensation for you.

—We're in business.

—Tell me, just how interested in him are you?

—Right now, a quarter of a million dollars. I'm not going to lose interest, either.

—I suppose not, Valentine said, taking out another cigarette, and pausing until he'd lit it. —Tell me, suppose something happened to sever this partnership of yours?

—Something like that over my dead body, Brown said evenly.

—And if these forgeries were discovered?

—What do you mean, discovered.

—I might have said, exposed.

—So that's it! Brown stood up, his hands remained planted on the desk. —You know God damn well, nobody could prove a thing.

—But if he ...

—He?

—As you've told me, one cannot insure against inherent vice.

—What do you mean?

—Never mind, Valentine said. —I'm glad I understand you. Yes, for you he doesn't exist except as an investment?

—And for you he doesn't exist except as ...

—We've had quite enough of this, Valentine cut in. —Now, this joint bank account you put his money into for him . . .

—It's safe enough, Brown muttered, sitting down. —Nobody even knows about it, nobody could touch it but us, you and him and I. Then Brown looked up. —That's what you're thinking? to reach in there and take out . . .

—Good heavens, Valentine laughed. —You know me better than that. All I could do would be to stop payment anyway, you know. But he ... Valentine stood looking down at the reflection of the diamonds in the mahogany. —With his genius . . .

—With his genius and your ambition, I'd have . . .

—Why, Valentine interrupted again, looking up at him. —Per- haps you should settle down and raise a family. I can't imagine a prouder father than you might make.

—Listen, Recktall Brown said standing again, —we're not going to have any more of this. You're going to forget all this crap about exposing these pictures and ruining him.

—Him? But suppose . . . suppose it were he who had this notion himself?

—You think he's crazy? Maybe in other ways, but . . .

—But you cannot imagine anyone being crazy when it comes to making a million dollars. Basil Valentine picked up his coat. He stood looking round the large office as he pulled it on. —You know, you might start a novel factory here, he said. —It's been done before. And after the success of that "soul-searching" book. And that remarkable abomination, The Trees of Home was it? A regular assembly line. Incidentally, he went on in an agreeable tone, pulling up his lapels, —what ever happened to that boy who was up here with a book of poems to sell you? The one with a rather bad case of acne, whom I stumbled on sandpapering his cheeks in the lavatory? Arthur something . . .

—He's still around, with his God damn poems. Religious poems.

—They weren't awfully bad. You might allow him some money on them, you know, some chance to live like a human being.

—Do human beings write poetry? Recktall Brown demanded, looking up. Then his pointless gaze fell to the paper under his cuff. —Poets do.

Basil Valentine stood looking at the heavy bowed head for a moment. Then with his hat he picked up the stiff-covered little magazine from the deep chair. —I wish you luck with this, he said, tossing it over before Brown's hands on the desk, where it slid toward the mass of hand mounting the diamonds, which withdrew with instant volition. The cigar had almost gone out in the ashtray, but continued to give off a faintly noxious emanation. Brown did not look up. He stared at Effluvium and mumbled something about how popular religion was now, and something about —those poor intellectual bastards.

—Perhaps they all ought to be crucified? Basil Valentine suggested, pulling the door open behind him. —That might give them some idea of religious experience.

—But this book is about religion, said a sub-editor, standing aside for the tall man in the black Homburg to pass. —It's Buddhism.

—But it's by a Jew, said the other, standing aside.

—Well, I've told him if he'll change his hero from a Jew to a homosexual, we might accept it.

—But that's the way it was in the first place.

Recktall Brown entered to demand, —Who the hell is the Reverend Gilbert Sullivan, and what the hell does he want here? When he got no answer (though he paused no longer than it took to shift himself from the outside door to another) Recktall Brown entered a large roomy closet, and hung his coat among many others of the same size, and shape, and style. The dog, moving its stump of a tail slowly, met him, and he reached down to give it a single pat on the head which seemed to please it greatly.

—Sar . . .

—Why the hell don't you answer the door, Fuller? Recktall Brown said, advancing. —Instead of ... who is this Reverend Gilbert Sullivan, what . . .

—Oh no sar, Fuller said, backing into the room before him. —The Reverend not present here, I alone here . . .

—Then why the hell don't you answer the door instead of talking to yourself.

—Oh no sar not exackly alone sar I ...

—Well who the hell . . . Well, my boy. I'm glad to see you. God damn glad to see you. Fuller, bring me the pitcher over here. Recktall Brown stood by the chairs before the fireplace, watching Fuller get across the room to the pulpit.

—Fuller? he said suddenly.

—Sar . . . ?

—What have you been up to, Fuller?

—Sar? Nothin, sar. I been most peaceable and quiet of late.

—See you stay that way. Recktall Brown glanced down at the table, and Fuller glanced down at the dog.

—Fuller?

—Sar?

—Isn't there any more regular brandy?

—Yes sar but . . .

—I told him I wanted this. You can take it out of my next check.

—It's all right my boy, relax. I just thought that dumb nigger made a mistake. He gets vexed by liquor, he says, don't know one from another. Recktall Brown settled down in a chair, and looked across the table. —You look tired, my boy. Tired as hell.

—Little dogs in the street bark at me.

—What the hell, my boy. What the hell. You can't blame them.

—You mean if you were a little dog in the street, you'd bark at me? —Now listen, my boy, what the hell . . .

—That damned congenitally damned glowing fiend of a dog of yours is the only one that doesn't bark at me. This is good cognac.

—Listen, my boy, I want to talk to you. Now what about this picture you're working on?

—That's why I'm here. It's out in the hall.

Recktall Brown had been sitting forward in the big chair with his hands turned in upon his knees. He shifted so that flesh rolled over the back of his collar, and shouted, —Fuller!

—Sar?

—Bring in that big package in the hall, bring it in here. Is that it, my boy? he asked, turning. He got no answer, and shifted again to watch Fuller advance, carrying the thing, picking his way among the roses.

—Hurry up, Fuller. What the hell are you doing, playing hopscotch? Now lay it out here and open it and be careful, be God damn careful. As the brown wrapping paper came away Recktall Brown was saying, —I told you not to bring these God damn things up here on the subway. I told you to call me and I'd send a car down for it. Look at here, you already banged up a corner. Then he stopped speaking, and gathered his breath to say, —What the hell!

Fuller had taken three careful steps backward, and stood now staring with a look which another face might have refined into anxiety, but on his was simple expectant terror. The explosion was not for him, however; but however, he remained bound.

—Where the hell is her face?

—Sar?

—I'm not asking you, Fuller, God damn it. Where the hell is her face?

—Appear she deprived of it by the many centuries passin respectfully over ...

—Fuller! By God, Fuller! Have both of you gone crazy? Get out of here. The pools behind the thick lenses quivered like water disturbed by wind. —This is ... by God. Now here. Tell me where the hell is her face.

—As Fuller says, it appear she deprived of it by the attrition of many respectful years passing their loving hands . . .

—Stop! Recktall Brown lowered his voice, and then his bulk into a chair. He was perspiring. —I'm tired too, God damn it. Now just tell me simply why the hell you damaged it like this. Fuller, I told you to get out of here.

—Yes sar.

—Ah, to dictate to the past what it has created is possible; but to impose one's will upon what it has destroyed takes a steady hand and rank presumption. My wife told me once, that I looked like a criminal.

—What you've done to this picture here, it's a crime.

—A supralapsarian criminal.

Recktall Brown sat forward gripping his knees. —You mustn't laugh like that, my boy.

—Why not? Tell me, tell me. Some time I haven't laughed.

—It just don't sound right, Recktall Brown muttered, and looked down at the damaged picture. Then he looked up again. —Are you all right, my boy?

—Yes, well. There is often now the sensation of weightlessness, or weighing very little. There. Weightless but well. When you live where I do, upsets of the liver are seldom occurrences.

—It wasn't your liver I'm thinking about, Recktall Brown said looking down again. —Look, you got to paint this face in here again, the face on this woman. Ten thousand dollars you've taken right off the price right there.

—And dishonored death into the bargain, so they tell me. Could I have a cigar?

—You?

—A cigar.

—My boy . . .

Recktall Brown watched him tear the cellophane cover away, and commence to trim the end with his thumbnail. —Here, take this, he said and offered the penknife. —Don't just stare at it, my boy. Trim the end of the God damn cigar with it.

—Indeed.

—My boy ...

—Nothing moves in this room. If you had music ...

Nevertheless, the smoke rises.

—There! something moved, intimate movement there on the far wall . . . He recovered with a shudder, to draw a hand over his eyes and whisper, —Never mind. I thought I saw Patinir hanging there, I keep forgetting he's in mortmain, gone home and taken his wages. You see how the prospect draws us on? Making perfect dice. They have to be perfect before you can load them. Goodness! what beautiful diamonds. How their impurities dance with life! Not deceit just skin-deep, like this intricate, cunning field full of fraud separating us here, seven and deadly. It's not even a very good copy. He stared unblinking at the table, and suddenly came forward to pick at the edge of it with the penknife.

—Here! Brown lunged his naked hand out. —It's real, this table picture, stop scratching it. Don't worry, right after Valentine shot his mouth off about it I had some real experts look it over. Don't worry, Brown grunted belligerent satisfaction, looking down at it. —It's the genuine original.

—I can see, it is not, came the whisper distinct across the table of the Seven Deadly Sins. —Christ! to have copied a copy? and that was how it began!

—My boy, says Recktall Brown, and stands to his feet to light his own cigar and jam it among uneven teeth. The youthful portrait hangs still as he approaches it, and perhaps, as Basil Valentine remarked, serves in some measure to humanize the fragments of motion which compose his progress toward it. Immediately upon arrival there, Recktall Brown turns his back upon it, a gesture which leaves its expression unchanged as he obscures it with the one which has superseded it. —Maybe you need a girl.

—A girl?

—How long is it since you've had one?

—Had one?

—I don't mean a God damn wife hanging around all the time. I mean just a girl. You can't go around month after month with all this piling up inside you. Of course, hell anybody can see that will drive you crazy as hell. You got to release that once in a while, or it drives anybody crazy. Do you want me to send you a nice girl down there for a couple of nights?

—But the cost.

—The cost? Each foot planted upon a rose, Recktall Brown's laughter might seem to rise the entire distance of his frame, a laborious journey, complicated by ducts and veins, cavities and sedulous organs whose functions are interrupted by the passage of this billowing shape which escapes in shambles of smoke. —You can pay for anything in this town.

—Barefoot on that vast acreage, for love or money.

—God damn it, my boy. God damn it ...

—Without love?

—Do I fall in love with the barber when I get a haircut? God damn it, my boy.

—Reverend Gilbert Sullivan . . .

—God damn Reverend Gilbert Sullivan!

—Exactly.

Recktall Brown starts to turn away; his reversal is remarkable for its quickness, a feat of muscular co-operation which happens before his eyes can contain the reason. They do, though; his voice too. —Put that damn bottle down now and sit down.

—A hindrance to the working of reality. Ah, Brown, Brown, your daughters all were fair. But the youngest . . .

—Are you getting anything from Esme?

—There remains the complication of the mermaid men.

—Sit down. We're both going to sit down and figure this out. Did he put you up to all this crap?

—I hear singing.

Sinking, on heavy tones into the depth of the vast room, come these weights, —Littel girl

—My bachelor room

—Fuller!

—Sar? drops from above.

—Stop that God damn noise.

—You and I, Brown. You and I. You are so damned familiar.

—You've got to get hold of yourself, my boy.

—If we are, as he says, projections of his unconscious. Then the intimacy is not at all remarkable, is it.

—Stop it. You got to stop talking this way. Valentine does the same God damn thing to me, he tries to wear me down. Did he ... has he been bothering you, my boy? Now damn it talk to me, let's get all this straight. What's on your mind?

—The equation of x to the power of n plus y to the power of n has no nontrivial solution in integers for n greater than two.

—Sit down.

—That is Fermat's last theorem.

—Sit down. What the hell's the matter, is there . . . have you got a pain in you? The motion reflected on the thick lenses (and entering through aqueous chambers to be brought upside-down and travel so, unsurprised, through vicreous humors to the confining wall of the retinas, and rescued there, and carried away down the optic nerves to be introduced to one another after these separate journeys, and merge in roundness) emerges upon his consciousness in the constraint of slowed motion. —What are you grunting for?

—I'm pretending I weigh three hundred pounds.

—Sit down. Stop this. Give me that God damn bottle.

—It isn't difficult.

—Sar?

Nothing moves but the intimate landscape of Patinir, a self-contained silent process which demands no attention, for the prevailing color there is blue.

—Sar? What I goin to do with these relics?

A full dozen of crosses lie massed in Fuller's arms.

—Fuller, says Recktall Brown, with stolid deadly patience, —you take those little men you been rubbing and nail each one of them on a cross, and get them right side up, and do it quietly, and get the hell out of here, now. —The little Jesus-men, sar?

—Get out. Get out. Get out.

—Saint Peter, upside-down. Wait, Fuller. Confirm me. Isn't there, in every one of us, a naked man marching alone down Main Street playing a bass drum?

Recktall Brown limbers the heavy extensions which support him, and rises. —Did you hear me, Fuller? Are you crazy too? Did you hear me?

—I think perhaps in the condition he enjoyin now sar he can understand the language the toast . . .

—Get out!

Fuller and Recktall Brown diverge. The old crucifer treads with care and mounts the hill of stairs. Recktall Brown reaches a corner, where he takes off his glasses, and from eyes sharp and open as those of undersea he stares into the soft diffusion of the room. —No, he says toward the fireplace; and then pursues his word. —You can't do this, my boy. You can't go crazy on me now.

—Now? Now?

—God damn it, my boy. Not before you finish this Herbert picture. Wreathed in smoke, he stands above his property. —How's it coming along?

—Beautifully. Excitingly. Wondrously.

—Good. Good, my boy. Good.

—But not van Eyck.

—What do you mean?

—Not Hubert.

—What do you mean, my boy? What the hell do you mean? The smoke itself hung on diffracted planes, and Recktall Brown sat down. —You want the credit for it, do you? Is that it?

—But not from you, and not from them, from the thing itself.

Recktall Brown rolled the cigar between thick fingers. Then he put it to his lips, and without relinquishing hold upon it, rolled it there. —You can't do this, my boy. He paused. —You know God damn well if you tried to sell one of these pictures as your own it's worth about forty dollars. Now wait, my boy. Don't laugh like that. It don't sound right.

—Suppose ...

—God damn it, my boy. Did we make a bargain or didn't we. We're in business, you and me. Do you see that book over there on the shelf there, the yellow one? The Trees of Home. That guy is in business, and he's in business with me. And you . . .

—I ...

—You knew when you started, said Recktall Brown, —you couldn't stop.

They were silent. The lines of their stares formed two sides of a triangle, that was all.

—God damn it, my boy, if it wasn't for being in business with me, you'd float away. This God damn world of shapes and smells you say you live in, you'll turn into one of them. Look at you, you almost have already. By God, Recktall Brown said, standing, so that the look from his eyes no longer needed cross the distance between them, seated, but fell like a weight with his words, —you can't go crazy now. I won't let you. He threw his cigar into the fireplace; and took out another. —Do I have to send Christ down there to model for you? His voice was rising again. —Do I have to send the Virgin down there to spread her . . .

—It's too late now.

—Too late for what. Go on. Talk to me. I feel like I'm talking to myself here.

—The Steenken Madonna. Well there. When Hubert van Eyck painted that, it wasn't just a man, painting a picture, of a woman.

—Well then what the hell was it, tell me.

—Feeling? Belief? Say sensation, then. Ask Caligula.

—Belief necessary? So is money, and look how many people have it, for Christ sake. You leave feelings to other people, you do the thinking. Look at them. They'd rather feel than think, and look at them. You let them do your feeling and believing for you, and you do their thinking for them, or you'll end up the same creek all of them are. In his throat, the two veins, either of them vital, pulsated under rolls of flesh. The two before him stood out in invitation to any passing blade.

—It is too late now. "The finest painting, and perhaps the culminating achievement of the fifteenth-century genius Dierick Bouts." You see? I have to tell them.

Recktall Brown lowered his voice. —Like you say, my boy, It isn't that simple. Do you think they want to know? Recktall Brown did not take out his penknife, nor even look for it in the pockets swung against his belly, where it was a familiar tenant. He bit off the end of his cigar, and began to pace before the fireplace. —Eminent scientists agree, after exhaustive tests, that a fifteen-cents-a-gallon chemical in a fancy bottle with a lot of scientific words on it is proven superior. So they pay a dollar a bottle because they want to. These pictures of yours, do you think you could get two hundred dollars for one? No. But these poor bastards crawl all over each other trying to get them away from me for prices in the thousands. They don't know, they don't want to know. They want to be told. This guy whose picture you print with a stethoscope in his hand, he's the same as your half-assed authorities. They want credit for discovering one of these old pictures. So just like the people who are proud to pay a dollar a bottle for this chemical, the same God damn people are proud they can hire an eminent authority to tell them what they ought to buy for art. If there aren't enough pictures to go round . . . —We sanction Gresham's law.

—Don't talk to me now about law, just listen to me. Who would gain anything if you ran around telling people you painted these things? They'd all be mad as hell at you, most of all the people who bought them. Do you think they'd even admit they paid forty or fifty thousand for a fraud? Do you think anybody would thank you?

—I'll trade my cigar for that bottle of brandy, that bottle of cognac for this half-smoked Havana cigar which I am not enjoying.

—Do you think they'd even believe you? They'd lock you up, my boy. You could get up there and paint these things all over again, and they wouldn't believe you. They'd think you're crazy. That's what they'd want to think. My boy, you've fooled the experts. But once you've fooled an expert, he stays fooled. Wait a minute. Sit down. I'm not finished. Who put you up to this?

—The midget who married the tall woman. Have you heard that one?

—Valentine's doing this, is he? Answer me. I warned you about him, didn't I? God damn it, I warned you about him. He's jealous of you, my boy, can't you see that?

—You and he are very close, Mister Brown and Basil Valentine.

—I know him, Recktall Brown said, looking down at the cigar in his hand. Its leaf had started to unroll, and he threw it so into the fireplace. —It's a long time now I know him, and the one thing I know, he went on looking up, —you can't trust him. Nobody can. He's mixed up in a lot of things. Brown was fumbling in his pocket down front. —In God damn near everything. He's too smart for his own good. Have you got that knife? Don't get up, don't get up, just hand it to me here.

—A brilliant man?

—He's got the best education money can buy, I'll tell you that.

—If we are priests, conspiring against you, do not be surprised.

—I ... God damn it, I told you not to laugh that way.

—What is laughter?

—It makes me nervous.

—You don't think about me when I'm not here. Well, should I be surprised at that?

—Where are you going now?

—To be with my wife. Sheer enterprise, as you will understand. I wonder, when I step out of doors, how the past can tolerate us.

Recktall Brown came round the chairs, and their paths converged. He raised his arm, and it came to rest. —I can feel your bones right through your shoulder. Don't you eat anything?

—Your reassurance strengthens me, for I have sensed I felt them there myself. But no one has confirmed me in some time. Would it have been beyond temptation then, to take a knife and dig for them, and prove they're there?

—Christ, my boy, you've got to get hold of yourself.

—Small choice, then, to take what others leave.

—You feel better now, do you? Take a rest. After this Herbert picture, take a rest. And just forget these crazy things you've said. Hell, you can paint this picture and you know it. And as for what you said about . . . well hell, we'll just forget the other things but don't forget, just keep away from Valentine.

—You are so damned familiar, Brown.

—Why Jesus Christ, my boy, I've known you quite awhile now. I want to watch out for you. And keep away from him, do you hear?

—So damned familiar.

—I'd trade him for you any day. Now take care of yourself. You'll feel better when you get yourself back to work.

In the hall doorway, the weight of the arm remains extended for another moment, and the cumbrous diamonds, hanging beside the rough cheek. Behind, the dog lay licking her belly. Beside hung the portrait, udder-like hands to the front. The weight of the arm and the diamonds, the milkless mamma, malfeasant, even at pen-dulant rest, that and the sound of the dog, licking, licking, in pestilential heat, as inertly oppressive as the hand, shaded in insensible intimacy to suffocation; and had Recktall Brown not, just then, patted the shoulder which he released, saying, —Get hold of yourself and finish up this last one, my boy, and then take a rest. You just need a rest . . . the shadow which united them, after an instant's complication, might have been simplified by one-third.

—Hi, gang! Your friend Lazarus the Laughing Leper brings you radio's newest kiddies' program, The Lives of the Saints, sponsored by Necrostyle. Before we hear from your friend Lazarus, just let me ask you a question. Does Mummy have trouble sleeping? If she does, and ha ha what Mummy doesn't, ask her if she knows about Necrostyle, the wafer-shaped sleeping pill. Remember the story Laughing Lazarus told you last week, kids? About the saint who didn't sleep for the last eight years of her life? That's right. Agatha of the Cross. But Mummy's not a saint, is she. Mummy needs her sleep. Tell her about Necrostyle, if she doesn't already know. Don't forget, kids, Necrostyle, the wafer-shaped sleeping pill. No chewing, no aftertaste . . .

—Ellery, Esther interrupted.

—Just a second. Ellery sat forward with a newspaper rolled in his hand, his head down, listening to the radio. —This is a new account.

your friend Laughing Lazarus will be here in just a minute, but listen kids. Here's one real confidential question I want to ask you first, just between us. Do you have enough brothers and sisters? I know, you love big brother or little fancy, don't you. But too many can spoil your chances. Look at it this way. When you have pie for dessert, how many ways does it have to be divided up? Do you get your share? If you have enough brothers and sisters, or even if you don't have any and don't want any, tell Mummy about Cuff. Cuff, the new wonder preventative. Cuff is guaranteed not to damage internal tissues or have lasting effects. But you don't have to remember all those long words, just tell Mummy to ask about Cuff next time she visits her friendly neighborhood druggist. Remember, Cuff. It's on the Cuff.

—I feel ill, Esther said.

—Listen.

—and Zap. But I'll be back to tell you more about Zap later on. Now, here's your friend Laughing Lazarus, ha ha, who's going to tell us about what happened to Blessed Dodo of Hascha, when he ...

—Can you turn it off now? Esther asked, resting her head back, her eyes closed.

—Rose wants to hear it. I'll just turn it down, Ellery said. He walked over to the radio with the laborious movements of a football player demonstrating that simply the act of being physical is one of high achievement. Ellery was lithely, easily built. He handled himself and everything round him with an air of clumsy familiarity. When he walked it was with an air of patient indifference to where he was going, though he never arrived anywhere else. Clothes looked well on him: he was what tailors with a sporting bent had in mind when they designed loose-fitting jackets and pleatless narrow-legged trousers. Cigarettes smoked from between his fingers lifelessly, forgotten, leaving him unresponsible for the ashes which dropped to the rug when they grew heavy enough. Smoking, he blew rings heavy with disdain which seemed to jar wherever they hit. He looked at things and at faces with patient boredom, and he shrugged his shoulders. Sometimes he winked, as he did now at Rose who sat on the floor, cowered against the loud-speaker of the radio. Ellery turned the volume down. Rose stared at him.

So did Esther. —Sometimes ... I hear those things and I just can't believe them, she said.

—It's a big account, Necrostyle Products. That's the way to get at them, through the kids.

—But it ... how can it be so vulgar? She breathed that last word heavily. She had opened her bloodshot eyes to stare at the ceiling.

—Vulgar? That's what people like. That's what vulgar means, people.

—Ellery, but I don't see why ... I don't see why . . .

—You told me that yourself. They didn't teach Latin at Yale.

She lowered her eyes to look at him. In her lap, Esther held the kitten too close, threatening the strain of life in it with her attention.

—Not that I ever knew of, anyhow. He shrugged his shoulders. —How many people have you got coming to your party?

—Twenty or so, she said wearily.

—It's a hell of a time for a party. For you to give a party.

—I know it is, do you think I feel like it?

—Why don't you just call it off, then? Because you've already invited this great poet you've always wanted to meet. I know why, too, honey. But believe me, it won't help your writing any.

—I wish . . . She was staring at her typewriter and its silent litter.

—Isn't one enough?

—I wish you wouldn't talk this way now, please. We've got to find a doctor, Ellery, quickly.

—There's a call I have to make, he said, and went into the bedroom where the telephone was with the newspaper rolled in his hand. His voice broke above the radio. —Just a second, operator. It's 'the Hospital of the Immaculate some damn thing, hang on a minute . . . He opened the newspaper on the bed.

Rose turned from Blessed Dodo of Hascha. —Someone is at the door, she said to her sister. —Blessed Dodo, Blessed Didée, Blessed Bartolo of San Gimignano ...

—Rose!

—Or even Doctor Biggs of Lima Peru.

—You . . . ? Embracing his weariness in her own voice, Esther opens.

—Don't disturb, don't disturb. Only to find some things I left here, for safekeeping, they say. I enter sparingly. —And Rose? says Rose. —Rose.

—Rose of Lima, Peru. Saint Rose of Lima. Then you . . . Don Diego Jacinto Paceco . . .

—Rose, now, that's enough, says Esther. —She is ... but you . . . ?

(—Yeh, that's the guy, honey, he jumped out a window but the newspaper says he only broke a few ribs . . .)

—My wife God love you, even now some Mozart especially. Symphony Number Thirty-seven especially. Four four four.

—But you, you . . . here you are.

—Kind words then, while it's still daylight. Have you kept my secrets, then? I've come to get them.

(—Visiting hours, two to four and seven to eight. Thanks honey.)

—You look . , . are you ... is everything all right? Esther comes alive; even her eyes seem to clear. —I have so much . . . there must be some way to ... is it drinking has you this way?

—Its powers of magnification embrace us all, do they not, or do they not. Well, into the study, for I've trusted you there.

—Well you . . .

—I ...

—Oh, this ... is my husband, Ellery?

—How do you ...

—This is a ... friend, Ellery.

Lighting a cigarette with the hand he had used to shake the hand he had been offered, Ellery sat down. —I fixed it up, he said to Esther. —It's a cinch.

She looked at him, her eyes wide, daring relief. Ellery drew heavily on his cigarette, and then sent a smoke ring rolling toward Rose curled before the radio. Rose cringed at its approach. —She's like a kid, isn't she. I could probably get a good audience reaction from her on this program. Ellery picked up a magazine. It was an issue of Dog Days devoted to Doberman pinschers which had been here when he came.

§ announcement § As a Token of his Appreciation

To every bitch who presents him with a Champion heir

Dictator will give an additional service with his compliments

Ch. Dictator von Ehebruch was offered at stud ("to bitches for whom only the best is good enough") for one hundred fifty dollars.

—My eyes. May I show him my eyes?

—Sit down, Rose. Rose has been upset, Esther said, standing with the kitten. —She had a job in Bloomingdale's for the Christmas rush, and she was victimized. They fired her. Let's ... sit down?

—Somebody pulled the old twenty-dollar-bill switch on her, Ellery said looking up from his magazine. —Somebody comes in and pays for something with a twenty with the corner torn off, then another guy comes in and pays with a buck, and when he gets change for only a buck he raises hell, see? He says he paid with a twenty, and he's got the torn corner to prove it, he got it from the other guy outside . . .

—It's a shame, Esther interrupted. —All she could tell police about the first one was that he had a hair-line mustache.

—And his hair! Rose burst in, —that he wore like a hat. She stared at them, and then returned to the radio and left them there abandoned to each other's vacancy like three children met in a summer bungalow colony where the plumbing in each ugly cottage is the same, the beds sagged in discouragement, used only for supporting sleep, where the heat of the sun serves only to excuse the appearance of white-skinned parents in offensive states of undress while they pretend that there is something new under this sun and they have come to find it; while the children know that there are no new secrets, and so they are satisfied to keep the old ones from each other.

—What day is it? Esther asked, pushing the switch on the table lamp beside her.

—Wednesday.

—Thursday, Ellery corrected, damning a day later, and she winced.

—What is it, Rose?

—How old you all looked, when the light went on. How quickly you grew up together, Rose said from shadow.

—I just read the Pope uses an electric razor, said Ellery. —I wonder what make it is, how much do you think he'd take for a testimonial.

Looking across the room Esther said, —But . . . can I get you something? Are you all right?

—Just for a minute, I was dizzy just for a minute. But here, I've come for other things . . .

—Are you . . . have you been working lately?

—Not lately, no. Not lately.

Ellery got up suddenly, dropping Dog Days; and he picked up another magazine as he crossed the room. —Esther tells me you've done a lot of painting, and I've got something for you if you want something like this. He held forth a page of advertisements. —This here, this is one of our accounts. He indicated the largest. Over a saccharine line drawing of a woman, her head covered, eyes raised, YES, the Mother of God WILL relieve Your Pain, Disease, Distress . . . The name of the Virgin Mary is making the headlines in today's neivspapers . . . Write today for your free copy . . .

Beneath, another ad said, stir up your liver bile

Beneath, another ad said, Are YOU troubled with sticky hot

SORE FEET?

—I just thought of this, Ellery went on. —I'll bet you could do it, and it would pay you good money. They're spending a hell of a lot on publicity. See, at first here we were going to have reproductions of some old masters, you know, pictures of the Virgin Mary like you see in museums. But this is better. It's more modern, catches the eye. And if you could paint a couple of pictures for us, the Virgin doing . . . something, whatever the hell she does, but a real arty picture . . .

—Ellery, please . . . Esther said weakly.

—They've got a lot of money behind them, religion's getting popular all over again. It would be a good deal for you, and I can ...

—Ellery, wait. Let him go, Esther said. —It isn't ... he wouldn't . . .

—All right, the hell with it, Ellery said, returning to his chair. —I just thought maybe he could do it, but he didn't need to be so damn rude did he? Ellery picked up Dog Days again, watching the door to the studio come half closed. —I just thought maybe I could help him out. He returned to Ch. Dictator von Ehebruch, and his chest filled as he studied the Doberman.

Esther did not hear; but sat staring at the door half closed upon her: Persephone then, and Proserpina now, the same queen in another country, she stared at the doorway to his kingdom and faltered forward.

—What is it? Can I help you? she asked, entering. —Rose has been sleeping in1 here, that's why it's different.

—Well, I trust Rose then. What are these marvelous things?

—Oh, those are pictures of eyes. Rose does them. She likes . . . eyes.

—Somewhere, strips of canvas, somewhere strips of wood, painted upon. Hidden, Rose helped.

—Then you were here? You were here last night?

—Or was it?

—Because she said, Rose, said, she'd seen you in the mirror. And we ... I didn't understand. I was worried for Rose.

—The mirror, there?

—I've seen you in it too.

—To correct bad drawing. There.

—Under here? She put the kitten on the floor, stooping, reared the long lines of her thighs, and recovered a package wrapped in newspaper. —This?

Then face to face so abruptly that she startled back, her lips move before she can speak. —You don't look well, is all she finds to say.

—Not myself?

—Not yourself? When you loved me, then . . .

—When you loved me?

—I was a whole dimension larger then, and now . . .

—This is where I sleep, said Rose putting her head in the doorway. —Because it smells so nice in here. This is where I sleep.

—Goodbye, for I have to leave.

—This is ... you've got what you want? Esther asked, following him. —What you came for?

—And can carry away.

—Hey wait a minute, before you go, Ellery said, standing, —there's a book here I wanted to borrow but Esther said it was yours.

—Ellery, don't . . .

—It's all right, here, Ellery said, raising Aunt May's copy of the Book of Martyrs. He read from the title page, —A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs from the Introduction of Christianity to the Latest Periods of Pagan, Popish, and Infidel Persecutions . . .

—But in the name of God . . . ?

—Another program like this one, see? Ellery waved his hand toward the radio. —But for different denominations, like Catholics and Protestants. Stuff like this. Listen. "In Arethusa, several were ripped open, and corn being put into their . . ." wait, here . . . "scourged, put to the rack, his body torn with . . ." here, "Martha Constantine, a handsome young woman, was treated with great indecency and cruelty by several of the troops, who first ravished her, and then killed her, by cutting off her breasts. These they fried, and set before their . . ."

—Esther, goodbye, please God . . .

—Here, there's another about the guy they tie little bags of gunpowder . . . it's for kids, this is what kids like.

—Esther, please God, this man is mad and dangerous.

Ellery came forward with the book. —What, is he gone? Is he gone already?

—Yes. Yes, gone.

—Well what about this book. He is a weirdy, all right. Drunk?

—Oh take it, take it, take it.

Ellery returned to say, —Turn the radio up, to Rose, who sat immersed in the sounds it shaped from the silence she maintained.

—What was it, that phone call, Ellery. You said it was all fixed up. You found a doctor?

He looked at her, vaguely, shoulders hunched unevenly like a man deformed from holding a plow down in a thousand furrows. —A doctor? Oh, that call, no, I meant it was all fixed up about this guy who jumped out a window.

—What . . . ?

—Never mind, it's something for a TV promotion stunt.

—Ellery, you've got to find one.

Ellery put down John Foxe's Book of Martyrs. He scratched the back of his head and looked uncomfortable. As he sat down he picked the book up again and said, —Martin Luther was struck by lightning, did you know that? He was knocked down and this guy with him was killed, that's why he entered the hermits, see? Imagine that on TV, the Combined Electric program . . .

—Ellery, for the love of God . . .

He looked up at her, then. —Don't worry, he said, hunched, perhaps, now like Blessed Catherine de Racconigi, suffering curvature of the shoulder from the blessed burden she was allowed to wield. —Listen.

—Zap, approved by doctors everywhere. Tell Mummy about

Zap, the wonder-wakener, one Zap first thing in the morning and she'll zip into the day. So don't forget, gang. Tell Mummy about these new scientific aids to modern family living. Necrostyle, the wafer-shaped sleeping pill, swallowed just like a wafer, no chewing, no aftertaste. Zap, the wonder-wakener. And Cuff. Remember, it's on the Cuff.

—Spelled backwards. Spelled backwards, of course, the Holy Sacrament turned inside out, you know. Basil Valentine stood with his eyes closed, the telephone resting on his shoulder. —Yes, the redemption of women, if you like, he went on, forcing a wearied patience in his voice. —Eve, the curse Christianity had put on her. What? . . . Yes, the priestess and the altar too, the Mass performed on her open loins, I've come across something about the bread being baked on her loins, the wafer for profaning the Eucharist, but what in heaven's name do you want to know this sort of thing for? A novel? But . . . yes, perhaps he can, if he thinks it will do any good. But you can tell your friend Willie that salvation is hardly the practical study it was then. What? . . . Why, simply because in the Middle Ages they were convinced that they had souls to save. Yes. The what? The Recognitions? No, it's Clement of Rome. Mostly talk, talk, talk. The young man's deepest concern is for the immortality of his soul, he goes to Egypt to find the magicians and learn their secrets. It's been referred to as the first Christian novel. What? Yes, it's really the beginning of the whole Faust legend. But one can hardly . . . eh? My, your friend is writing for a rather small audience, isn't he. Incidentally, the next time you borrow Loyola ... So I gathered, but that's hardly the place to read Loyola. Do they have what in the Vatican? A mold for fig-leaves? . . .

He stood for a moment, his eyes closed still, after he'd hung up the telephone, and murmured, —What can drive anyone to write novels? but thinking not of novels nor the Black Mass nor even the mold for fig-leaves kept in the Vatican museum; thinking instead and vainly of the dream which this telephone call had broken, though he could not recapture it, re-enter it, could not alter, even in that wishful fabric, events of a quarter-century before.

Eyes closed, attempting to revive the dream, it shut him out, escaped him; eyes open, he walked into the front room to stare at the face of the Vulliamy clock on the mantel, the gilt cupid atop oriental alabaster, and the dream pursued him. The shade of the boy whom he had not seen since they were boys together (Martin was Father Joseph's "suck") lived on the air as though they had parted only minutes before. —It's true then? We're not supposed to understand? Whether thirty seconds or thirty years ago he could not tell; and only memory rehearsed his own words spoken in childhood's shadows under the tower of Saint Ignatius where they met daily, met for the last time when he said, —Weeping will not help you. There is no place for weakness among us. You will grow up to be a fool, Martin, but I shall not. Obedience is the first servant of love. It was for love I did it.

Basil Valentine forced his feet into the black leather pumps and drew his dressing gown tight. He went into the bathroom where he washed his face with cold water, and stood for a moment looking into his own eyes reflected in the glass as the soft towel revealed them. The clock struck in the other room, and he dropped the towel and returned to the papers spread on his desk. —Idiots, he murmured, gathering papers together. —Ten million babbling idiots. He thrust the papers into a dispatch case and was standing with a cigarette unlit, looking at the gold case absently, when a sharp continuous bell severed the sentence, Much I ponder . . . Basil Valentine muttered, and crossed the room to the telephone connecting the downstairs entrance. —Who is it? he demanded. —The Reverend Gilbert Sullivan? Yes, my dear fellow, come right up-Then at the door he said, —Good heavens, come right in. Where have you been?

—I? With my dear wife, listening to Mozart. Sie kocht schlecht, my wife. It is some time since I have heard music.

Basil Valentine stood lighting his cigarette, watching the motion before him carefully; care, that is, which extended from every part of himself, to correspond with the movements he repeated, bearing them out, as he followed into the room, weighing the cigarette which distinguished him.

—I have been in the rotting room, to tell heaven's truth. The pudridero, where Charles the Second sits out his last days surrounded by his dead and Spanish family. Good God, now, some preservative is indicated.

—Sit down, my dear fellow. Cognac? Valentine glances at the irregular newspaper-wrapped package laid on the marble top of the coffee table; and hands over the decanter.

—Precision of shape and smell, and the sixth heaven all enclosed. Basil Valentine watches the decanter tipped over the crystal globe, seconds too long, and his right hand shifts, stopping it; while it continues to pour. —Not the seventh, of shining light, but a cigar, perhaps, to weigh me down.

—And perhaps some music? Here, do sit down, where I can see you.

—Music? To leave my heels swinging free in the air? No. I'm obliged to take refuge in fabrication as it is, where I can see you. It's the accumulation, you see. The accumulation. We are all in the dumps, for diamonds are trumps, the kittens have gone to Saint Paul's, do you remember that one? The babies are bit, the moon's in a fit, and the houses are built without walls. Well, you wouldn't remember it, without a childhood you wouldn't. As for me, I've just left a round dozen of crucifixions. Allegro ma non troppo.

—Do come over here and sit down.

—There's nothing I'd rather do, but it doesn't help. Here, would you believe me if I told you that Martha Constantine . . .

—Please, don't touch anything on that desk.

—And do you fall in love with the barber when you go for a haircut?

—My dear fellow . . . Valentine crossed the room quickly. —Put down those papers.

—Here, here, Hungarian . . .

—Give me that book. —Magyar, isn't it bad enough without coding it?

—This ... a dictionary, obviously, Basil Valentine said, taking the plain-cover book and jamming it into the dispatch case with the papers.

—Transdanubia ...

—Do go over there and sit down, now. Valentine snapped the lock on the case.

—Buda Pest, they tell me, was the most civilized city in the world. And within living memory.

—And they are right, Valentine said curtly. Close upon the figure before him, he followed as though to enclose and drive it before him toward the couch. —Now sit down and tell me what you've been up to.

—Down to, consorting with mermaids in the bottom of a tank where the troll king lives (here a cough interrupted; and Basil Valentine held his breath)—God love him. I had willingly fastened the tail to my back, and drank what he gave me, you know, but there, when he tried to scratch out my eyes. "I'll scratch you a bit till you see awry; but all that you see will seem fine and brave."

—So you've been to see Brown, have you? Basil Valentine leaned down and pulled open the loose newspaper package. —And this?

—There they are, from A to izzard, from under the watchful eyes of Rose . . . protected, cautious, circumspect, eyes in every variety, but mostly those of children.

Valentine looked up from the painted fragments, and poised, the lines in his forehead wove concern. —What's the matter, what's the matter? he said suddenly, —groaning like that, what is it?

—I'll explain ... as soon as I ... yes . . . get settled . . .

—My dear fellow . . .

—It's a liberty I'm taking today, pretending I weigh three hundred pounds. Damn it, will you allow it? "I min Tro, i mit Håb og i min Kjærlighed" . . . eh? No, it didn't work out that way, I tell you. There's Solveig locked up with a dangerous man, human and industriously mad, he may save me yet like Luther saved the Papacy. Good God, today I dishonored death for ten thousand dollars. I'll die like Zeno then, strangling himself at ninety-eight because he fell and broke a finger coming out of school.

—Now relax a bit, my dear fellow. Tell me, what did Brown say to you.

—Took the bottle away from me just like you're doing, and he swore if he were a dog he'd bark at me in the streets. Then he went on to ask me about my liver, and he offered me work selling a bottled chemical in the streets to some lowland consumers dead four centuries. But good God, I'd just come in from the streets, you know. The streets were filling with people like buttons, and you can't sell anything to them. Someone once told them the best things in life are free, and so they've got in the habit of not paying. So I simply warned him and came on my way. He was so kind and fatherly, I left him with a warning and came away.

—Tell rne what you mean, you warned him.

—Oh yes, yes. Warned him the priests are conspiring against him, and he hasn't a chance. You, and I, and the Reverend Gilbert Sullivan.

—Now wait a moment . . .

—What chance has he, old earth, when hierophants conspire. Especially three like you, and I, and Reverend Gilbert Sullivan. He believes us three, at any rate. How he will dance when he finds that we are projections of the Reverend Gilbert Sullivan's uncon-science. You and I.

Basil Valentine had been seated. He stood up now, his hands clasped behind him and walked toward the window, his head down (watching the toes of his black shoes on the plain carpet) and back. As the voice sounded he would raise his head, and lower it again immediately.

—Or like Cleanthes then? Gums swelling, and two days' laying off from food, the doctors' orders. With leave to return to his diet, I'm far along on my journey now, he says to them, and starves. There's dieting to extinction, that's the thing. People stop too soon. Doubled in one century, from a billion to two. We're being devoured. Here, let me walk up and down the room with you. We'll see better that way.

—Sit down, Basil Valentine snapped, behind him.

—I've brought my report. In the year two thousand and forty, four billion. Twenty-one forty-one, eight billion. Twenty-two forty-two, sixteen billion. Those are statistics. What are we to do to civilize them? Centuries of art and celibacy, plagues and wars and abusive acts of God, religious ascetics howling in the desert and cultured mermaid men whispering sweet absolutely nothings on the beach, and good God they won't learn they're not wanted. One pair of human beings, there, a man and a woman at the rate of love of one per cent per annum, could equal our population in nineteen hundred years. Our work's laid out for us. Stamp out polygamy, I say. That's the first thing. Our exemplary African missions have shown us the way. Why, good God, as a result of their fine work we're able to spend twenty thousand pounds sterling on syphilis in the Uganda alone. Perhaps we should have been doctors then, you and I, instead of what we are. Cardinal Richelieu drinking horse dung in white wine on his death bed, it's not hard to see why France is first son of the Church. And in Egypt . . .

—My dear fellow ...

—We treated sore eyes with the urine of a faithful wife. Today of course we're forced to buy drugstore make-shifts.

Basil Valentine had walked down to the windows and returned to the couch from behind, the fingers of one hand tapping the palm of the other: there was more to it than the agitation his face betrayed, for every moment he seemed to become more aware of his own physique, and the weight of its members extended in space. Most oppressive, however, became the respiratory system; not a sense of constriction (though it might amount to that if it went on so) but an acute sense of what was going on there, among fibro-elastic membranes and cartilaginous rings. He was having difficulty in swallowing. He put his left hand to his throat, manifesting in gold the cricoid cartilage within, its seal turned behind. There was no one on the couch. Basil Valentine swung around. —What . . . what are you doing prancing behind me here. Good . . . good heavens, my dear fellow, come along now, and sit down again.

Basil Valentine turned a light on, and herded the figure before him like a shadow. —Put your feet up and relax, if you like. But I want to talk to you seriously.

—Seriously? Then talk to Richelieu. I've only been ordained a matter of months. Or years, is it? I can't distinguish now, I've come so far, tempted by the daughters of Mara disguised as beautiful women. That was before Buddhism was corrupted by idolatry. Where is that good cigar you gave me?

—Take one of these and sit down, Valentine said, holding out the gold case.

—Varé tava soskei . . . soskei ... I can't sit down with one of these things. I'd float away. Here, what's this thing over here, this gold bull busting an egg.

Basil Valentine breathed more easily as the figure before him seemed to weary and wither a little. —An altar figure, my dear fellow.

—Well that's apparent, that's apparent.

—A small copy of one that stood in the Miaco pagoda, in Japan, Valentine went on, watching the hand stroking the gold of the bull's back. —The time of Chaos, you know, before creation, and the world concealed in an egg floating on the waters. And the bull here, the symbol of creative force, breaking the egg to give birth to the earth.

—Is that what the Jesuits are teaching now? Good God! How far back do you go, anyhow? Before death came into the world? Be- fore the time of Night and Chaos? Before good and evil, before magic, before religion. There, religion is the despair of magic . . . no, that's not you Jesuits, is it. Religion is the mother of sin. I like that. That's Lucretius. You do keep occupied, don't you. Books, papers, a griffin's egg? You can't manage without one of those. All the churches had griffin's eggs hanging around. Hung them on the lamp ropes so the rats couldn't get down and eat the oil. Exterior brown and hairy, white inside and the yolk a clear liquid. Tell them about the egg that Leda laid, and make them laugh.

—My dear fellow, Basil Valentine said, approaching, with his arms extended (triceps, biceps, semi-lunar fascia all conscious), —this is enough, you know. You must . . .

—Let me loose. Just give me a good book to read, and I'll improve my mind while you're out preaching. Here we are, Die Geschichte der fränkischen Könige Childerich und Clodovech. Christmas day, the year four hundred ninety-six, and Clovis is baptized in Rheims. A white dove flew down from heaven with a vial of holy oil for that express purpose. Did you know that? His wife converted him. Clotilda. That's exactly what she did. She brought him round, in the middle of a battle. He gave up the sun for that. Mithra, the sun god, and Clovis threw him over. Why, even the Stoics believed the sun was animated and intelligent, and Clovis throws him over eight hundred years later, just like that. Why I remember, a child in church (the voice went on, as Basil Valentine gently guided the shoulders before him back toward the couch)—sitting reading the Pilgrim Hymnal. "Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, the God of my salvation," my father reads out. "For Thou desirest not sacrifice, else I would give it," we all shout back at him. "For Thou delightest not in burnt offering," he goes on, "the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit." "A broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise," we agree.

As the weight, at which Valentine was surprised, lowered to the couch, he noticed that the eyes before him were closed. —But what I remember is the countryside then, the brilliance of outdoors and outwindows, and the sunlight streaming through the lozenge shapes of glass, and we were locked away from it, locked inside to worship. And there was the sun out there for everyone else to see. Good God, tell me that Clovis wasn't lonely at dawn. Tell me he wasn't sick at the sunset.

—But what is it? What is it? For heaven's sake tell me, Valentine said, and his own shoulders quivered too, —instead of this . . . babbling, what is it? What is the matter?

—Thank God you love people. Thank God you love people. Thank God you love people. —I?

—But the night you caused that cab crash . . . why didn't you go down and look. I've wondered. I've wondered.

—Caused? I caused it?

—As sure as Mother Shipton. Good God, are prophets guiltless?

Basil Valentine sat back with his cigarette. He spoke with some strain, as though to convince and repress some part of himself. —If one pauses to enjoy vulgar satisfactions, you know, one loses sight of one's objectives.

The eyes were raised to him. —I know why you don't like them. They have too many hands, is that why? For each heart there are ten thousand hands, is that it?

—Precisely, Valentine said, and crushed out his cigarette, and stood. He walked toward the windows again, each step more composed, and each word, as he spoke, more calm. —Hands, hands, hands, he said. —Dirty hands picking things up, and dropping them, beautiful things, defiling them. Hands pushing, hands grabbing, hands outstretched, hands knotted up in violence, hands dangling in helplessness, hands ... on you. He stood at the window, looking out on the city. —Hands ... he repeated.

—Yetzer hara, the evil heart, were Adam and Eve in love? What I mean is, do we only know things in terms of other things? Well then, I'll die like Socrates, there's dignity .

—Will you now? Valentine turned his back to the window, though he remained there, and almost smiled. —A condemned felon. Do you think they'll let you? He turned to the window again. —Hands dropping pennies at the newsstand, in exchange for a picture of a man strapped in the electric chair, the faces gaping over the papers in the subway until every car looks like a traveling asylum. Thick heads bent over the radio, waiting for the news that the switch has been pulled in the death-house.

It was silent; and remained so some minutes. Basil Valentine stood looking out the window, as it was his habit when alone.

—Tell me, have you ever fallen in love with someone already engaged away, and then won the beloved away from your rival? And then as time goes on, you begin to suspect that you look like him? Him whom you hated and found ugly.

—No, my dear fellow, I can't say I have, Valentine said, sauntering back to the couch.

—Well, let me tell you what happened to me. When still a boy I read Novalis, and there was great appeal, you know. But after a few more years of study I understood the mistake I'd made, the romantic mistake I'd almost made, I saw eventually how Novalis had appealed to all the most dangerous parts of me, all the ro- mantic and dangerous parts, so I settled down to extinguish them. After two or three years I emerged triumphant, to tell the truth quite pleased with myself, to be rid of all those romantic threats which would have killed me if they had taken me unawares. Thus cleansed, I went on in the rational spirit, easily spotted romantic snares and stepped aside. One day I picked up the work of a man named Friedrich von Hardenberg, and my rational mind became quite inflamed, with the logical answers to just the things I'd been questioning . . . since I'd turned my back on Novalis, and all he stood for.

Valentine sat down. He tapped a cigarette, commenced to smile, and look up, and say, —My dear fellow . . . when the figure before him leaped from the couch.

—Damn it! Damn it! Good God, can't you see what I mean? When you see yourself . . . when you see yourself . . . The hands before him quivered in the air, the fingertips almost touching. Then one hand seized the other. —And you know you'll do it again . . . and again.

Before Basil Valentine could stand, he found himself alone. He held the unlit cigarette, tapping it with his index finger, and heard a crash in his kitchen, and footsteps, and the bathroom door. He paused only to light the cigarette, and then quickly picked up the loose newspaper-wrapped package, and his dispatch case as he passed the desk on the way to his bedroom. He'd got them both in the safe, and was back, standing before the windows, before he heard another sound.

—They tell me there's no scene in all Greek literature should make us more ashamed of our Christian culture, came in a calm voice behind him.

—And they are right, Valentine said, turning, to see him sitting nonsensically on the empty marble top of the coffee table. —Now, my dear fellow, let's be sensible, Valentine said, approaching. —You look better, a good deal better than when you arrived. Now sit down and tell me just what you propose to do with yourself.

—Play The Stars and Stripes Forever and I'll march up and down the room. Play the Thunder and Lightning Polka. I'll dance.

—What did you say to Brown?

—I asked him, What's laughter.

—And I suppose he told you it distinguishes us from beasts.

—He said, It makes the present. He said, it must be shared, and being so, makes the present. Laughter.

—I imagine, Valentine muttered. —But . . . what did you and he ...

—We laughed. Brown and me, and that damned, congenitally damned ... He sat muttering to himself, then he looked around slowly, and had begun to subside when something caught his eye. —What's that? He half rose, pointing to a painting on a corner wall.

—That? Valentine repeated, and smiled. —Valdés. Juan de Valdés Leal. You know him?

—Where'd you get it?

—It was among the worthless pictures that Brown got in that country house. I asked it of him, because we are such . . . friends.

—And he gave it to you?

—Of course. Since Brown was assured it was worth no more than twenty dollars, he gave it to me for fifty . . . Watching the eyes staring fixed on the Valdés painting, as though it recalled something, Valentine pursued calmly, —And now, getting back to work are you? Have you thought any more about that favor I asked of you? The Patinir?

—It's all over, he shuddered. —I swear, by all that's ugly it's done. But you . . . He'd suddenly begun pinching up rolls of flesh on the back of one hand. —Why are you doing this to me? he demanded without looking up. —When you know it doesn't exist? to ask me to copy it? Like he ... restoring an empty canvas, yes. He scratched me a bit, I'll tell you. Until today, God! that damned table. God's watching? Invidia, I was brought up eating my meals off envy, until today. And it was false all the time! He spoke with more effort than he had yet made to control his voice. —Copying a copy? is that where I started? All my life I've sworn it was real, year after year, that damned table top floating in the bottom of the tank, I've sworn it was real, and today? A child could tell it's a copy, he broke off, wrenching at the folds of flesh and veins on his hand, and he dared look up.

Valentine was watching him closely, the watery blue of his own eyes hardened, the narrowed lids sharpening interest into scrutiny: he saw what appeared as a weak attempt at a smile, but no more, a quirk on that face and it was gone while the voice picked up again, —Now, if there was no gold? . . . continuing an effort to assemble a pattern from breakage where the features had failed. —And if what I've been forging, does not exist? And if I ... if I, I ...

—Perhaps if you could listen to me for a minute . . .

—Listen! He was bolt upright, broken through by a shudder and left rigid there, as lightning freezes motion. —Do you hear? he whispered. Nothing moved. Valentine stared, until he saw the lips commence to tremble in sharp tugs, -two, three-four-five, sixseven . . . hear? you, you're wearing the watch? hear it? racing with the clock, hear them racing? tick, tick-tick-tick, tick tick . . . there! the watch is ahead. Is it? listen!

—Now really, if you can't . . .

—Listen! I say . . . And then he sank back slowly. —No, it's over. You ruined it, interrupting. But didn't you hear them? racing? Tick. Tick-tick. Zeno wouldn't have, Zeno . . . what I mean is add one, subtract anything or add anything to infinity and it doesn't make any difference. Did you hear? how they were chopping time up into fragments with their race to get through it? Otherwise it wouldn't matter. But Christ! racing, the question really is homo- or homoi-, who's who, what I mean is, who wins? Christ or the tortoise? If God's watching, . . . Christ! listen, O my sweet gold! why were we born so beautiful? That's why we're here, an alchemist and a priest, without blemishes, you and I. It's true? You've never seen a cross-eyed priest? an ordained amputee? No, never! By all that's ugly, it's done! He sat, pinching up folds on the back of his hand. —Now, remember? Who was it, "gettato a mare," remember? an anchor tied to his neck? and thrown, caught by kelpies and martyred, remember? in the celestial sea. Here, maybe we're fished for.

Valentine muttered, —What are you trying to ...

—Making a mummy, but, what I mean is which came out first? the heart or the brain. Why, the brain with the optic lobes, pulled out through the nose by the nates . . . But the heart, didn't come out till very late. He sat quivering, lips still moving over that last, —Very late. He paused; and then his lips scarcely appeared to move when he took up, —By the damned, I mean the excluded and . . . keeping the path to hell clean, to fool good people. Fished for? •why, fished for . . . Have you read Averroes? What I mean is, do we believe in order to understand? Or understand in order to be ... be fished for.

Basil Valentine stood over him a moment longer, then shrugged, turned away, and spoke both humoring and impatient, —If you remember Saint Anselm, Credo ut intelligam . . .

—Yes, yes, that's it. That's it! Flesh, remember? flesh, how thou art fishified. He'd jumped to his feet. —Listen, do you understand? We're fished for! On this rock, remember? and I shall make thee a fisher of men?

—Where are you going?

—Philippi. Yes, the first . . . with Paul, to Philippi.

—You're not going anywhere. Sit down and tell me what you propose to do. If it's a rest you need, there's money.

—Ish Kerioth bought a cemetery with his ... thirty pieces, do? do? he went on loudly. —While there's still time, we ... follow our training, there's no way out. I'll go to North Africa, and tempt Arab children to believe in the white Christ by giving them candy. That's accepted procedure. They're prejudiced. They accept Him as a prophet of their own Prophet. That's worse to fight than if they never heard of him at all. Charity's the challenge.

—If it's simply some childish obsession with the priesthood . . . ?

—And you? for you the priesthood is just, spreading damnation?

—Nothing can be given, which cannot also be withheld.

—By all that's ugly . . . yes, if they had but one neck? Do you remember the seventeenth-century messiah Shabbetai Zebi, but . . . he faltered, backing to a doorway, —What's that to do with . . . Dominus ac Redemptor.

—What's that? Valentine asked quickly, surprised, but he sat down.

—Yes, Clement the fourteenth, his brief suppressing the order? Remember? I know . . . the Church must punish, to prove it has the power to punish? But you . . . you . . . ?

—You remind me of a boy I was in school with, Valentine said quietly. —You and Martin. The ones who wake up late. You suddenly realize what is happening around you, the desperate attempts on all sides to reconcile the ideal with reality, you call it corruption and think it new. Some of us have always known it, the others never know. You and Martin are the ones who cause the trouble, waking suddenly, to be surprised. Stupidity is never surprised, neither is intelligence. They are complementary, and the whole conduct of human affairs depends on their co-operation. But the Martins appear, and cause mistrust . . .

—There's Lent! Martin's? Martins? you killed him with much cherishing?

—I was a syndicus then. Martin was below me. In such a school the first thing one learns is obedience. Not encouraged to think for one's self, because one is not yet ready to do so. And you understand, one is encouraged to report the . . . breaches committed by others.

—A spy system! ac redemptor, I know. And you! he cried out from the doorway where he stood. —For you, if you hate their hands, and you hate their faces, and you hate their suffering . . . and you a priest! You . . . you . . . yes, a pope ... a pope's ...

The telephone rang behind him.

—Ici Castel Gandolfo ... A Mister Inononu calling the SS Basil Valentine . . . hurry . . . the forty days is almost done . . .

Basil Valentine wrested the telephone from him, and he went through the doorway taking the lamp to the floor with him. The phone was dead in Valentine's hand, but he stood holding it, staring in the dark. .

— The Triumphal Car of Antimony. Now I remember your name, Basil Valentine, the alchemist who watched pigs grow fat on food containing stibium, wasn't it ... you tried it on some fasting emaciated monks and they all died . . .

Valentine dropped the telephone into its cradle, and the figure retreated before him, its back to the window.

—And so they named it antimony, anathema to monks . . .

Basil Valentine stood still in the near darkness, feeling every physical detail of his body, every one but his eyes; for the figure against the window was indistinct, its shape and size ambiguous, but for the eyes. —Preach to them, then, my yetzer hara, speak to them, then, my evil heart. While I fly like a piece of cloth on the wind, or the color itself, the street is filling with people like buttons in Galilee. Speak to the Am-ha-aretz, preach to them, pray. Tell them, as the composer predicted, there's nothing left but knowledge and evidence, and art's become a sort of tailbone surviving in us from that good prehensile tail we held on with then. Tell them that Peter died an old man, and right side up. Tell them that Mary broke her vows to go off with a soldier named Panthera, and wandered away to give birth to his son. Tell them, the ones who are conscious of what happens to themselves only in terms of what has happened to themselves, who recognize only things they have seen with their eyes, tell them the whole thing hangs on a resurrection that only one lunatic saw, one and then twelve and then five hundred, for visions are contagious, and resurrections were a stock in trade, and the streets were full of messiahs spreading discontent, that Jesus Christ and John the Baptist would both be arrested on the street today, and jailed, and for the same reason. Tell them the truth, then, that Christ was thrown into a pit for common malefactors, tell them the truth, then, not that power corrupts men, but men corrupt power. My yetzer hara, speak to them, preach to them, my evil heart, to the ones who look out the window and are not surprised to see the sun, burning itself out, ninety-three million miles away, the ones who dream of the dead and expect themselves to be dreamt of, the Am-ha-aretz, filling the streets and seeking authority and no further, write with a brass pencil on a clean tin plate, I A O, I A E, corruption is no more than knowledge that comes too soon, tell them of Atholl's coronation with a red-hot iron crown, and of how the Egyptians burned red-haired men and scattered their ashes with winnowing fans, tell them of Justinian's pavement made like an ocean and destroyed when the roof of Saint Sophia fell in, and of the son of the ruler of Cairo, Ibn Tulun, sleeping on an in- flated feather-bed on a lake of quicksilver, tell them of Antiope and the goat, of Pasiphaë and the bull, and the egg that Leda laid to make them laugh if they'll listen. The Am-ha-aretz, whose memories include nothing but their own failures, tell them their suffering belittles them, tell them that, my yetzer hara, tell the ones who trade only in false coin where they can buy clothes to wear when they are alone. That is all, and Gresham's law, and Gresham's law, and Gresham's law for love or money. Go out among them and tell them that their nostalgia for places they have never been is sex, the sweating Am-ha-aretz, and when they hear music, tell them it is their mother, tell Nicodemus, tell him there is no other way to be born again, and again and again and again of a thousand other mothers of others-to-be, tell him, my yetzer hara, tell them, tell them my evil heart, that they are hopeless, tell them what damnation is, and that they are damned, that what they have been forging all this time never existed.

On the couch, Basil Valentine rested a hand on his forehead, and moved it gently. —You are feverish, he said. He got up to turn on a soft light near the windows, and returned to the couch. —Just lie still, he said. —A little cognac . . . there . . .

—Yes, you see . . . ? You see?

—Don't try to talk now for a minute. And close your eyes. Basil Valentine held the hot squared sides of the skull between his hands, and rested his thumbs softly on the eyelids. —There's no need to say a word. You're safe here.

—You see, if ... I became the one who could do more than I could.

Valentine moved his fingertips gently against the temples throbbing beneath them. He shifted slightly; and loosened his dressing gown. —And the one you left behind? he whispered, —the one you lost?

—Yes, yes, came the answer in a whisper. —Yes, I miss him . . .

Valentine lowered his face slightly, out of the light from over the back of the couch; and both his hands moved against the skull. —We're safe here, he said.

The telephone rang. Basil Valentine's hands drew together for an instant, pressing the skull between them. He raised his hands, and the eyes remained closed.

He got over to the telephone quickly, glanced back round the corner of the door, and picked it up, talking in a low voice, facing the wall directly before him, his eyes lowered. —Yes, it's all right, he said, —but . . . this telephone? Of course it may, no private telephone is safe . . . Meg van az informacio ami kell, itt vannak a papirok. Eh . . . ? nem most, hivjon holnap reggel . . . At that he hangs up, and stands for a moment with his weight resting on the instrument. Then in to wash his hands, where his face and the one in the glass exchange confirmation at the speed of light, as palms abrade knuckles and thumbs fret cuticles under warm water.

He walks back slowly, registering resolution in his steps, watching them placed before him in a path between there and the windows, does not raise his head until he stands looking out, movement compassed by the soft lamp in a black leap on the ceiling. —Even down among them, he says, —the stupid, thick-handed people, is there any one of them who doesn't know him, who has not suffered the indignity of his stare, and heard the mockery of his laughter, this other self, who can do more, who always escapes, but . . . now you are here, my dear fellow, and we ... Basil Valentine pauses, to seat half his weight on the window shelf. —Would you be surprised, if I told you about myself, as much about myself as I know about you? Why I know that I hate them, where you wish you could love them. Direct in his view, ascendant in lights, the Empire State Building rears its stiff glans fourteen hundred seventy-two feet above the street. —There is their shrine, their notion of magnificence, their damned Hercules of Lysippus that Fabius brought back to Rome from Tarentum, not because it was art, but because it was big. S P Q R, they all admired it for the same reason, the people, whose idea of necessity is paying the gas bill, the masses who as their radios assure them, are under no obligation. Under no obligation whatsoever, but to stretch out their thick clumsy hands, breaking, demanding, defiling everything they touch.

Though his tone remains calm, he raises his hand to his temple and finds the vein standing out there, suppresses with two fingertips the life pulsating through it, and lowers his hand to his knee rearing half his weight in the window.

—We live in Rome, he says, turning his face to the room again, —Caligula's Rome, with a new circus of vulgar bestialized suffering in the newspapers every morning. The masses, the fetid masses, he says, bringing all his weight to his feet. —How can they even suspect a self who can do more, when they live under absolutely no obligation. There are so few beautiful things in the world, Basil Valentine says, taking a step toward the back of the couch, where it is quiet, where he has not yet raised his eyes, —that they must be protected. He stands looking down, to say the few more words, as though they were simply that, appended, when all this time he has been making toward, —The pity which none shall have who demands it. I called your work calumny once, so it was. But the face of Christ in your van der Goes, no one could call that a lie. And now, he says, advancing again, —here you are, and I shall teach you, I shall teach you the only secret worth knowing, the secret the gods teach, the secret that Wotan taught to his son . . . His hand reaches for the gold cigarette case and finds the pocket empty. When he looks up he notices first not the empty couch, but the empty pedestal where the gold bull stood: the egg is still there, unbroken.

Then Basil Valentine put a hand to his throat, as though to stem the rising nausea; and he leaned forward, still with the hand to his throat, the hard rings shifting on nothing in a rise and a fall between a thumb and a finger, swallowing, while the shadow on another wall and clear because unobserved, figures a steady hand pouring cognac.

A swallow of the stuff crystal-bound in his hand, and he clears his throat with abrupt loudness. —Of course the Athens of Socrates was a phenomenon, he says, glancing at the couch he passes, —the most civilized thing that has ever happened on earth, while the rabble of the Roman Republic, he goes on, nearing the windows, —Rome, you know . . .

Three stars in his belt, Orion lay out of sight beyond tons of opaque building material now dissolved in darkness, serving only to support fixed points of light, the solid firmament of early Jews where stars were nailed lest they fall; beyond, the flight of seven doves Orion hunts, out of sight.

Look darling he found my necklace

(The capacity of this bus

The new Wonder Gems Developed in the laboratory

(Please do not speak to driver while bus is in motion

More brilliant than diamonds

(Expectorating in or from this omnibus is a punishable offense

(Step down to open doors

Above hung the cliff that Alexander climbed in India, the cliff studded with diamonds, hung with chains of red gold, five hundred steps to the house of the sun, to paradise.

Though Sir John Mandeville (in his Travels, among the earliest and most heroic of plagiaries in the French) confessed, "Of Paradise I cannot speak properly, for I was not there": what matter? Here above, the concrete cliffs had disappeared, only their lights studding darkness which posed as space and postured firmament.

—John!

—You? . . . bumping into you again on the street like this? But I have to hurry, I have to get a train.

—Yes, a train, a train.

Lights flashed past, their beams tangled in darkness to confirm it. —Are you all right? What's that you're carrying? is it real gold? Where are you going?

Through the world of night, lost souls clutching guidebooks follow the sun through subterranean passage gloom, corridors dark and dangerous: so the king built his tomb deep in earth, and alone wanders the darkness of death there through twenty-four thousand square feet of passages and halls, stairs, chambers, and pits. So Egypt.

—Back.

Red in the west as it set, because of the fires of hell says the Talmud: red in the east from the roses of Eden.

—Back where?

—Can we stop for a minute? a glass of brandy?

—I have to make this train.

—Gentlemen . . .

Few anywhere disagreed, but that the sun and the moon and the planets issued from a hole in the east, descended into one in the west and returned, by night, through a subterranean passage.

—Gentlemen, I have a religion too. I'm a drunkard.

Raging up and down the sky like a beast in a cage, says the Talmud, and unable to escape, enclosed in the firmament, the gates of its entrance and exit only at opposite ends.

—All right, yes, a train. Wait.

—Gentlemen ...

—Hurry . . .

Down: down went Tammuz (slain by the boar's tusk), entering at Babylon, the center of the earth, for there was the lid-stone to the lower world.

Thus the Assyrians invoked the bull who guarded the gates: O great bull, O very great bull, which stampest high, which openest access to the interior . . .

Please show your ticket at gate

—Leaving on track seven

Their death pursuing its descent, the Piute Indians followed the sun to that hole where it crawled in at the end of the earth, creeping constricted to earth's center, there to sleep out the night, and to waken and creep on to the eastern portal. The sun emerges, eating the stars its children as it rises, its only nourishment; and those on earth at the dawn see only its brilliant belly, distended with stars.

This ticket is your receipt and baggage check. Please keep it with you until you reach destination.

May the bull of good fortune, the genius of good fortune, the guardian of the footsteps of my majesty, the giver of joy to my heart, forever watch over it! Never more may its care cease.

(So reads the inscription of Esar-Haddon, whose father, the murdered Sennacherib, had destroyed Babylon; and he, the son, returned to restore the sacred city, to rebuild the temple of Baal, and refurbish its gods.)

Thrown open, the gates on the eastern face of the temple meet the dawn as the golden tips of the obelisks burn, and the red rim appears from the underworld. Those on earth prostrate before it, and the gates close upon Baal, Who has entered His Temple.

III

It was a man, sure, that was hang'd up here; A youth, as I remember: I cut him down. If it should prove my son now after all-Say you? say you? —Light!

—Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy

Above the trees, the weathercock atop the church steeple caught the sun, poised there above the town like a cock of fire rising from its own ashes.

Few witnessed this inviolate miracle, for reverence here subscribed to roofs: worship was, as childhood had noted, an affair of defensive indecent enclosure, and few indeed the eyes raised on high unless assured the protective embrace of beams. As a matter of fact few eyes were ever raised at all, but rather lowered in consecrated embarrassment, finally closed in severe chagrin as the voice intoned, —The Lord's mercy is from everlasting to everlasting unto those that fear Him.

When the eyes opened it was to stare at the back of the neck of another similarly occupied; and if the eyes were raised no further, the voices were: O God be-neath Thy guid-ing hand Our ex-iled fa-thers crossed the sea, they sang under that roof which rose to the level of the treetops outside, mounting New England gothic toward the white spire alerted by the weathercock which caught his eye, as he climbed the hill toward the Post Road. But even he, when he reached it, walked with his eyes lowered up the silent nave.

On either hand, the visages of the houses watched him pass, self-contained facades indifferent to his presence, but watching still, guarded, as he passed immediately before the panes and fanlights; and when with seven more steps he escaped their line of vision, they did not turn in indecorous curiosity but continued to stare out straight ahead. Unconcealed by walls, or coy behind hedges, sober-mouthed some of them with columns Ionic and Doric (with never the cheer of Corinthian), these miens of narrow clapboard and eighteenth-century brick looked upon the passer-by without deviation or interruption, with stares neither crooked nor circuitous, the lineal stare of propriety.

(Beyond, there were, to be sure, occasional cupolas, sportive relics of nineteenth-century profligacy.)

He passed the Civil War monument which thirty years before had spiked the sky, and stood now dwarfed in deference to greater wars. (And the resolute iron cannon at its foot was replaced by a mobile 75, albeit crippled by loss of one of its wheels.)

As he reached the transept, the spire behind him burned at its tip with the light of the sun, and from it the bell labored the early hour. Beyond the lucent spire the sky was patched with small clouds which did not move, no more than the ragged-edged patches of snow, reflecting here that celestial course of the sun which he trod on earth.

Past the highway's curve (and the arrow there, pointing the wrong way to delude barbarians), the mile from the railway station, and he had not paused; nor so much as raised his eyes but once when they were raised by the transfiguration of the gold cock in the sun. Mirabile dictu: another blue day. What a narrow chin in his hand, when he raises his hand there, then taps two fingers on his lips and looks over the shoulder quickly. Bells, from far down the nave there. —God of our fa-thers, known of old, Lord of our far-flung bat-tie line (fingers stifle the lips) hymn no 383. Singing way, over the shoulder elders from preference heard no music, alarm it was for it set something living in them, and would that their children believe no such thing existed, to hang their heels on the air. But they heard, they heard and what's more without humility and nor lightened nor lost set instanter to compose, whipped their children to practice as they'd been done for discovery. The bell again. Again. Adeste —ad esse fidelis: hymn no 223 larynges distended A,M,D,G, infra dig dominocus: Oh for a Faith that Will Not Shrink.

Demons the motes in a sunbean, said Blessed Reichelm (though serious statisticians precisely populated hell's habitant host at 1,758,064,176): the Saxons driven through a river blessed upstream by bishops (kept their sword-arms dry). Blessed Leo X, could nicht anders, the 95 Thæces stuck to the door, in the beginning this end:

Town founded 1666 annus mirabilis Oh gosh Oh gee h-Holy Cowrist w-We got a big job ahead of us interdenominational infra supra sub threw the inkpot: Nunnery lecture, illustrated, Pagan ceremony, robed priests, Nuns, high altar, &c. A wail from the tomb. See girl in dungeon. Uncle Sam to the rescue. Public invited. Collection 50cent leadeth us not into temptation.

Surprise! to be kissed on the cheek so. After all that time. There, over the shoulder describe necessity without touching me. Ab-scondam faciem meam white Christ the fugitive. Consider me with my nose gone, knock on wood, —or ask Helen for a piece, she found it: rub it, Aladdin, Constantine, Nicodemus blown back by the wind from the river m-Mthrfckr et considerabo novissima eorum (sic)

The birth of a nation. Let in the light Open the nunneries And save the girls. Free lemonade, Mineral water, Shower baths Coming! to Haggard's Gospel Tent A drama of eighteen live people This is a clean high-class lecture exposing the whole Roman Catholic Religion from the Confession Box to the Nunneries, High Priests, Mother Superior, Altar Boy, Six Nuns, Holy Altar, Holy Candles, Holy Water, Holy Gods Just as it looks in Catholic Churches everywhere. With the mother giving her daughter to the church for a supposed more holy life, daughter taking the Carmelite nun vow (Black Veil) buried alive, thrown into a dungeon and how are they to be rescued

He stopped to cough, and courteously caught the cough away from the air in his open palm and walked on again. Courteous, to this flood of unspeakable hyperduliacs, and why? to be rescued and wear a stinking merkin for a beard? If she is only a woman (but a good cigar is a smoke) with Eve caught by the furbelow, Hae cunni (the oldest catch we know): Dido a dowdy, Cleopatra a gypsy, Helen and Hero hildings and harlots, praebeat ille nates (I seem to mean usefulness), but Thisbe's gray eye on Alfonso Liguori —There is no mysticism without Mary. Stabat Mater shrouded in the decent obscurity of a learned language, fœmina si furtum faciet mihi virque puerque: dolorosa while Origenal sin wields the blade. Carnele-varium (the heart came out very late) reveling in lavish polymastia (Zwei Brüste wohnen, ach! in meiner Seele) now, in Martinmas, Saint Martin's given or only Lent to SS Pelagia & Mary of Egypt, thence to Thai's, Kundry, Salome, and even Saint Irene; Costanza (Ds ac Redemptor, S.J.), Valeria Messalina, Marozia in the garden, in the Garden, Messalina in the gardens of Lucullus hic jaceted age 26 years, Thrawn Janet's black man gone down the garden wall, and the men et ardet: Anaxagoras pre-empted in contemptu Chris-tianae fidei; Lucretius (dead of an overdose of love philter) preempted, —Religio peperit scelerosa atque impia facta. I.e., ex-homologesis (c. 218) by Calixtus I. Pelagic miles distant, on the Rock, resident Barbary apes pelt stones at the local Y.M.C.A. In Spain Ignatius' militant limp and Xavier 4'6" exhomolojesuis abhor the shedding of blood, and the Inquisitor De Arbues describes Love ex hac Petri cathedra without raising a Welt. Amor perfectissimus explaining what is dark by what is darker still: Who then was the gentleman? (I mean the excluded.) Not Philo, De Exsecrationibus! not Philo, certainly not Aristobulus busy-handed Alexandrine Jew to prove plagiarism: Pythagoras Socrates Plato Homer & Hesiod, all plagiarized from Moses, one and all. Pues dime Sigismundo, dí: El delito mayor del hombre es haber nacido. Calixtus, then, after all? Politicking, No, no, don't listen to them 1870! Nono the winner: infallible (what is that racket?). The College of Cardinals turns to look. —It's Arkansas, crying Non placet.

The snow had hardened into reefs along his path and he narrowly avoided falling a number of times, even though he looked nowhere now but there where he walked. Schizophobic, how near the edge can he approach? how much longer disdain simple ruses? —Give me force and matter, and I will refurbish the world! Blame Descartes, then! resisting with some fortitude the purchase of a bowler hat, and wearing a cigar, and even then preferring perhaps a dry Brazil-filled, Java-bound, Sumatra-wrapped panatella: but soggy all-Havana is more weighingful, and; temptation to stop along the way, weary, damned weary, damned weary of it passing the campfires so many tents pitched with such care to the pegs insisting permanence when (God blind me) by their nature they are tents and Lord love me by the nature of things they will blow away, by the nature of force and matter blown away and the God-damned Cartesian with them. Mauled by luxuries, asking now no more than some well-chronicled illness to stir the viscera into affirming its existence within, the member without. Caveat: —On which side do you dress, Job? Mauled by luxuries, Oh doctor Æsculapius found out the hard way lightningstruck. Reality defined by the (luxury) gratuitous crime. Peace by (luxury) war. Love by (luxury) mugging, rape, Senta retires with Sabine smile of satiety, Thankyou ma'am. —E ucciso da una donna! M'hai tu assai torturato?! Su! Parla! Odi tu ancora? Guardami! . . . Son la Tosca! Son la Diva! . . .

Arsk Saint Bernard about women, their face is a burning wind, he'll tell you, arsk him, their voice the hissing of serpents, he'll tell you.

(fa un ultimo sforzo:) Soccorso! . . .

In rehearsal: Chrysippus. Cleanthes. Zeno. Pyrrho. Again, the story of Hipparchia's courtship, spare no details (the dress of Telephus and Crates then the groom are especially amusing) but one: —Kissed on the cheek after years, was it? A,M,D,G, sequence of unsurprise (Lao-tse's 84-year gestation), right Nicodemus? right? under a burning bush (I lost my wife) Ad Mariam Dei Genetricem, dixlt, pinxlt.

Sang, —Varé tava soskei . . . soskei . . . Mermaid mahn stole my heart away.

(verso:) Ti soffoca il sangue? . . . il sangue? . . . Configuring shapes and smells (damnation) sang —Yetzer hara, in the hematosé conspiracy of night When they shout gfckyrslf Come equipped her morphidite.

Arse Alexander VI for a loan of his concave emerald, watching the rape of (Christian) girls through it. —Ah! è morto! . . . Or gli perdono! . . . E avanti a lui tremava tutta Roma!

Then he fell. He fell twice. The first time, a stone turned under his foot as he reached a slope of the east lawn of the parsonage. He went down on one knee, got up immediately and three steps later he slipped again. The ground was hard, and he caught himself on the back of a hand, and remained, down, for a good half-minute, looking at the back of his hand where he'd torn it, not badly but enough to bring blood. He sat until he'd got his breath; and the bull on the ground, its gold dull in the dull light, held his eyes, glistening themselves no more than the dulled jewels of its collar. For the first time, the sharp edge of the air startled him deeply, cutting his lungs as he breathed it. The hand with the blood to mark it he reached to the bull and rested it there; and his other he rubbed over his dry face, then to his bare head. That hand stopped there and the fingers drew together against the skull as though to wring out the occupant brain. He had a bad headache. It seemed to have been going on for some time, throbbing with permanence. His hand reached the back of his neck and closed again there, squeezing the muscles and tendons in its hold. They were sore. He spat on the ground. Then he coughed. The air was still. Cold came to him evenly. Again he hastened to get up, for his body was drawing the cold right up out of the earth.

His expression, which all this time had been one of confusion, drew gradually together as he rose, bringing the gold bull up with him, and under his arm. As the diffused look of bewilderment left him, his features lay in a concentration of anxiety, staring up toward the house. The sun had just touched the peak there and begun to descend; and again, for the first time, the sounds which he distinguished seemed to have been going on for some time. As long, that is, as he might have been within earshot: a regular ka-klack, ka-klack, ka-klack was the least sound, coming apparently from the house itself, and an irregular series of hammer blows from beyond. It was the voice, however, which arrested him. It was neither sharp nor loud, but lingered, and was gone, and rose again on this cold air, leaving off and rising like the smoke of a boat gone under a bridge, and emerging.

—Jupiter. Ammon. Adonis. Chemosh. Hercules. Osiris. Dionysus. Phoebus, Bacchus, Moloch, Baal ...

The light of the sun spread over the face of the house, and its margin verged steadily lower toward the figure exposed on the open porch. The words lingered and were gone, leaving an emptiness which the silence rushed from all directions to fill. Then when he went on speaking his voice was lower, a tone of admonition which the silence retired before, but no great distance, as it had before the names of the sun. Now the silence withdrew barely to the point where the figure approached up the slope of the lawn, advancing with him, but hesitant, before then behind him, breaking the stream of the words, —man or woman . . . wickedness . . . transgressing his covenant, And hath gone and served other gods, and worshiped them, either the sun, or the moon, or any of the host of heaven . . .

Then as he climbed nearer the silence no longer infringed, but followed and closed in behind on the cold air, —And lest thou shouldst lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldst be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the Lord thy God . . .

Reverend Gwyon was a big man. And, as the increscent light of the sun reached him and covered him, and he broke off speaking and stood exalted in the light, the sunlight and the silence seemed to augment him, actually to make him larger, standing alone up on the porch. Abruptly he cried out to the figure approaching him, —Turn around. There, turn around!

The sun stood emerged, glowing its great belly, motionless with the effort of emersion accomplished, paused, over the earth's rim, in confident prospect of the journey of the day. Suddenly breaking his own pattern of stillness Reverend Gwyon clattered down the porch steps, and stopped where he could get a full view of the sky. —A bad time of it, he muttered scanning the sky from one end to the other and back, east to west, to east and the sun itself. —A bad time of it today.

—Bad time of ... what?

—Why there, the dirty sky, Gwyon said flinging a hand up. —He has a dirty path before him today. As he spoke he lowered his eyes, and what might, on a smaller face, have passed as a look of surprise, settled upon his own as one of curious, even inquisitive abstraction, a look which summoned every battery of history to bear simultaneously upon the immediate problem at hand.

Reverend Gwyon was a tall man; but it was his stance made him appear indomitable, that and the sense of a full meter of silence surrounding him which only he could penetrate, or roll back with the invitatory ardor of his own curiosity. His face was heavily lined, but lines in nowise the fortuitous tracings of disgruntled weariness with which one after another generation proclaims abrogation of responsibility for the future, and liability for the past. Venerable age had not, for him, arranged that derelict landscape against which it is privileged to sit and pick its nose, break wind, and damn the course of youth groping among the obstacles erected, dutifully, by its own hands earlier, along the way of that sublime delusion known as the pursuit of happiness.

Not to be confused with that state of political bigotry, mental obstinacy, financial security, sensual atrophy, emotional penury, and spiritual collapse which, under the name "maturity," animated lives around him, it might be said that Reverend Gwyon had reached maturity.

It must also be noted that, though his position in the community was appointed to justify the accumulated clutter of the things of this world in the eyes of the next, neither was there present in his face that benign betrayal of total incomprehension of the designs of eternity, and the concomitant suspension of the intellect, which so carefully separates this world from the next on Sunday mornings all over the country and, in asylums all over the world, every day of the week.

Gwyon's face was creased with lines of necessity. They sprang away from the eyes he lowered down from the clotted sky and right past the face before him, a face lined itself whose every lineament watched him anxiously. —Ahh, Gwyon said, —you've come . . . and his gaze settled on the gold bull. Then as Gwyon reached forth a resolute hand and rested it on the head of the bull figure, an unsteady and blood-streaked hand came up and took his arm and they stood like that, each looking at the hand of the other, when the sun was suddenly blotted out and they were left standing shadow-less on the lawn.

The sky was becoming littered with fragments of cloud. They were being fed across it from a great bank in the north. The cloud bank was gray and motionless, and it did not diminish.

Gwyon shivered suddenly under his hand, and looked up at the impaired sunrise with an expression of severe indignation. Then the bull figure was lifted decisively from under his arm, and with it Gwyon turned before him and made with long strides for the house.

By the time they reached the porch the sun was unencumbered. It had already commenced to diminish in ascent, and to lose the fierce coloring of its violent entering into the sky.

At the top step Reverend Gwyon halted in front of him so abruptly that he almost lost his balance. —There, Gwyon said, making a sweeping motion with his free hand which included the porch and the sun behind them, —any fool can see what the churches lost when they put the entrances around facing the setting sun. His tone rang with the same direct and peremptory appeal that his face had reflected a moment earlier; but as he went on, rearing his great head to the presence he'd apparently expected to find beside him, surprised to find it moving unsteadily round behind, Gwyon's voice lowered as though talking to himself, and as though in the habit of so doing. —The Christian temple at Tyre, he muttered. —The propylaeum faced the rising sun, of course. Attracted passers-by with its glitter that way. Then he glanced quickly as though to secure that he was being followed in.

The hammering began again from the other side of the house, down in the direction of the carriage barn, clear sharp blows from a great distance it seemed; otherwise all was very quiet but for the heavy footfalls of Reverend Gwyon crossing the porch ahead of him. The muffled ka-klack ka-klack had ceased some time earlier. Watching Gwyon stoop before him to open the front door, he was inclined to do so himself, once inside the house, where it was darker and he had only the gold tail of the bull figure to guide him. Surely there was no danger of bumping a doorframe with his head nevertheless childhood still obtained and every portal was lower, and hallway more narrow, every turning closer and room smaller. Thus he hunched, past Olalla as though with cold and past the cruz-con-espejos into the dining room. The house was cold at that.

For some reason he went straight round to Aunt May's place at the dining-room table and sat down there. Gwyon poured two glasses of sherry wine. It was rich dark oloroso, a fresh bottle though the cork had been pulled. He put the bottle down between them and remained standing, one hand on the bull figure which he had not relinquished.

—What a trip, getting here.

—Yes, yes, Gwyon affirmed immediately, agitated. He emptied his own glass quickly and then, a moment later, looked down at it in his hand as though it were an unfamiliar object and he didn't know how it had got there. He put it on the table carefully. —You've come a great way ... a great distance, he said looking up again at the figure seated there much, perhaps, as he might have looked upon the incarnation of some abstraction conceived long before, disturbed less by the actual epiphany and its haggard unsteady appearance than by its abiding and familiar permanence, in spite of the transient air it had assumed immediately he gained the weight of the gold bull figure into his own hand. Gwyon stood, with one hand still, heavy on the bull figure, the other busily contriving upon nothing at his side, configuring recourses in the air.

For this moment he seemed bound there, standing at his place at the head of the table. The sun by now was coming through the dining-room window which faced to east where the porch left off on that side of the house. —Here, this : . . Gwyon said to him, sitting there with his left side to the exposure where the sun entered, —for safekeeping, this had better be put away for safekeeping. Gwyon flourished the gold figure in a strain of sunlight and left him sitting there in the sun, his back to the buffet, looking at the empty place across the table. He looked up when Gwyon turned out of the room, but too late to see more than the departing back, that most prominently distinguishing feature of Reverend Gwyon.

He sat still for a moment, then raised a hand to his forehead and found it smooth. Inside, the headache persisted, its insistence ignominious, calling attention to tenancy and no more, devising, perhaps, a quantum theory of memory upon the departure of the old man gone, step by step, ushering the gold bellowless bull, Oorooma way? Gone Krakatao and the yellow day in Boston, the Grand Climacteric and Valerian, Ballima way? while he sat here in the full of the morning sun warming Aunt May's side of the face at the breakfast table, looking as she did never across at an empty place. (To right was the dark corner where all Good works were conceived.) —Cave, cave, he got to his feet, —dominus vulgus vult. His eyes were cooled; the sun itself did not warm them, lowering them from the glory there through the window to the low table beneath, and the faded figure in the table's center shivered for an instant, underclothed, and remained still as he passed, shoulders drawn, listening, under surveillance, abruptly considering Tyn-dale strangled and burned for his labor of love. —The devil finds work for idle hands, here, without music, where reverberations of the human voice weary in recall with generations of fruitless exhaustion, denied the very possibility of music. .A sharp unfriendly sound from the kitchen confirmed the silence and the vigilant conspiracy of inanimate things, watching for any break in the pattern. A movement broke it, his hand reaching forth to put his glass at his place at the table; and he stood in suspense sustaining the trust thrust upon his frame by the static details of dark woodwork, maintaining the inert vigil which belied music: music as ideal motion, a conceit in itself manifestly sinful, as the Serpent, gliding in the Garden, moved with unqualified motion, as the sound of a lute, struck here now, would move upon undulant planes never before explored, to be cornered and quickly killed by the ruthless angles of the room, proving that those planes had never existed, affirming, in sharp consentaneous silence, the illusion of motion, the sin of possibility, the devil-inspired absurdity of indetermination.

Above, another blue day, (upstairs) the room papered with green-capped pink-faced dogs, and the button drawer, only apparitions move to perfection, there! Pray the Lord to keep you from lying, there, O spectral stabat mater may I go out and play the violin outside to the town wearing its sinside inside and not a soul in sight. Church bells inspissated the air, dropping it in sharp fragments. He sat down in his place at table, excused by the falling weights of the bells, and motionless when they had done. There, old vicary, congratulate my refuge, the saneside outside sheltering the insane inside: to present the static sane side outside to another outside sane-side, to be esteemed for that outsane side while all the while the insaneside attacks your outsane side as though we weren't both playing the same game, and gone down Summer Street (singing unchristian songs) the inane sinside, pocketing a cool million wearing the shoutside outside and the doubtside inside, the vileside inside and the violinside outside skipping dancing and foretelling things too come all ye faithful, of thine own give we back to thee.

He swallowed some of the oloroso sherry, and its warm course sent an imbrication of chills over his back. Still, there under the window, the low table looked to be faded, a parody of perfection more Bosch than Hieronymus, the seven deadly sins in meddy-evil indulgence, painted with damning care round the maimed hand upraised in the caveat, as below the brown wainscoting, and the fabricated angles above where the molding met in soiled beaded intimacy, the uneven patches faded on the walls between, and even an unfamiliar floor lamp standing beside him with the cold intent-ness of an unknown sentinel, watching, patient at all events with his prolix presence now the years of waiting were done, rewarded to find him twice-size, twice as difficult of concealment. No part of the room he could not see now, points and attentive angles he had never seen from his chair, saw him now.

He raised his glass. The streak of blood on the back of his hand was dried to a hard ridge of dirt's appearance, hypostasis on the outside and the skin drawn to it in mortal amends, a clot of the essential sediment crusted on the surface, hypostatic scab of the world of shapes and smells provided force and matter to touch a line without changing it, here, untormented by music, where as everywhere matter whetted its appetite for form and was easily pleased, circumspice, low levels of perfection issuing the remorseful timbre of the monogenetic voice, The prosperity of the godly shall be an eyesore to the wicked, Psalm 112, —Wealth and riches shall be in his house: and his righteousness endureth forever, moaning, lowering over the printed page (head bowed), Psalm 112, —GLORIA! sings Handel's soprano, —Gloria! across an ocean and centuries, gloria! far away.

A sharp bell from the kitchen shivered the air for an instant. Then as his fingers loosened on the emptied glass and he rested his elbow on the table and with it his arm and his shoulder and that whole side of him, one after another disposal of muscles went out or use, and contrary to usual sense of awareness in flex and strain (so the man chopping wood the first time in his life, a hand clutching tight right up under the ax-head, measuring the length of the haft between closed hands, right down it goes, neither hand moves on the haft so smoothed from sliding hands, the blade strikes a knot, the end of the haft his knee, and he looks up, pleased though, to say, —Say, using muscles . . . (by that night he'll have pulled a tendon in some unconcerned part of his body he'll tell you and not unproudly) . . . using muscles I never knew I had . . . and not in the stroke but recovery he finds them), so now right down from the neck muscles and tendons recovering from usage so long fell in unusual awareness one after another and one after another satisfied now he was asleep.

Reverend Gwyon returned to the breakfast table empty-handed. He startled slightly upon seeing the empty chair to his left, and looked no more composed upon seeing the one to his right occupied. So Reverend Gwyon sat alone there at the head of the table as he did every morning, with a second, a third, and a fourth glass of the dark oloroso from Spain and the look on his face of a man who's just come on a bone in a mouthful of fishmeat.

—"Ah, that dear old mother's Bible, Wherein my name she wrote, And marked me many sacred texts, Which once I well could quote . . ."

These words, rising on the clear New England morning air, were neither loud nor clear, for the Town Carpenter was absorbed in his work, and the five ten-penny nails he had clamped between his gums did not serve song as teeth, even so few, might have done. He continued to hammer, and word by word the next stanza became clearer, as nail by nail was taken to be driven into the wood. By the time he reached the last stanza, and stood back to look at his work, his mouth was quite empty of anything but song, which came out quite clear, and the small dog lying there raised its head to attend,

—So who'll bid for a Bible? A purchaser I crave.

Live while we may, we'll drink today:

There's no drinking in the grave.

With that, he threw his hammer in the dog's direction. The dog moved as fast as the hammer, gained its feet, and followed him up the lawn wagging its tail.

Janet was there in the kitchen, older, square-shouldered, her face dark about the chin and faintly blue the rest of it from that mercuric compound of Aunt May's prescription renewed year after year. She strode to the stove, where two pots stood over the fire. The one she stirred, with a large spoon worn off square with stirring, was Scotch oatmeal. The other pot bubbled on, and Janet paid it no attention but to sniff the rising steam and turn away the large features of her face, drawing down her upper lip so that that gum was almost covered, and appearing not to breathe, careful and troubled about many things.

When the Town Carpenter arrived she was to her knees on the floor there and he, hearing the sharp tinkle of a bell as he got near, had slowed his uneven pace, and paused in the door respectfully. He waited for her to rise before he advanced into the kitchen with, —"Nymph in thy orisons, be all my sins remembered," crossing then to the other pot on the stove, —as Tom Swift has it, he added.

—Not that fork, not that fork! Janet said, coming to take away the fork he'd picked up.

—There . . . now, he said to her, looking helpless until she thrust a piece of lath in his hand where she'd got the fork from.

—But this, it's got paint on it, he said waving the stick in the air.

—Old old paint, years and years old and hard and dry and it was white, she said sounding weary, speaking dry and low in no effort to make herself heard but giving him anyway the satisfaction of seeing her lips move. Then she turned away, stooped, cumbered with much serving.

He bent absorbed over the other pot; from it he raised a steaming length on the end of the stick. —There now, he muttered, let it drop back and stirred it a bit. —A month of underwear can't come clean in a minute.

—Four days it's been there, Janet said absently, —four days in the year, lamenting the daughter of Jephthah four days in the year . . .

He continued to stir at his pot. —You were late this morning, he interrupted finally, as she drew breath to go on and fight the battles of Ammon and Gilead, to follow the daughter of Jephthah bewailing her virginity in the mountains. She did. not answer but with three sharp raps of the spoon on the rim of the saucepan.

—Three minutes late when I heard your press commence this morning, the Town Carpenter went on, to the square of her back. —How many pages did you print, tell me. —You don't print them one two three four five, she answered not turning, —six seven eight nine ten eleven . . .

—How many? He tried to see her lips as she reached a bowl down.

—Eight one five four at a time, Janet said in the same dull tone, —two seven three six at a time . . .

—There now, he mumbled, shaking his head and looking back into his own pot on the stove. —We all have our work to do.

—The Lord keep us, until we finish it, Janet said.

The shape of those first two syllables on her lips seemed to strike him, familiar; and the Town Carpenter drew his own lips close, bridling the argument which lay impatient behind them, not, however, before its invitation had escaped. —A man ...

—The Lord . . .

—A man takes his own chances, he got out quickly. Janet looked at him, her brow and lip drawn up, troubled.

—There now, I meant nothing. No disrespect to you, he said, twice her age but no more serious for all that even now, turning slow with his arms hung down and the top button of his underwear standing out like a creased stud against his informal attire. —After it all, he brought out soberly, —after your healing miracle then, restoring me the use of my legs, well, there now, I couldn't be disrespectful to you after that.

—Not to me, but to our Lord He healed you.

—There now, he mumbled in assent, —not after that.

—You must not talk so about these things, she said. —You must not, he must not, they must not . . .

—Do you recall the queer little salesman selling brushes, the Town Carpenter began, opening a new conversation since he'd lost track of the old one, —and told Reverend he was a Manichee . . .

Janet carried a bowl of oatmeal away through the door. Directly she was out he got the fork she'd taken from him and came back to his pot on the stove. He leaned down to blow off the steam, and then speared twice, each time coming up with a boiled potato. He quick wiped the fork on his trouser knee, then looked at it, and at the spot on his trouser knee, with a look near guilt, and thrust the tines of the fork under his shirt to wipe them clean there. When Janet came back, the fork was where she'd laid it; but she took no notice of him eating the one or the dog standing over the other boiled potato waiting for if to cool. She stood, wringing one hand in the other, and her eyes were very wide.

—There now, what is it? the Town Carpenter demanded, watching.

—He's come.

—What is it, now?

—He's here. As he said he would come.

The Town Carpenter hung there, imbibing Janet's excitement. She sought another bowl.

—Another bowl? he demanded, confused. —Someone's here?

—He's come back.

—So it's not the weightless show of a priest was here, him or the Manichee brush salesman. Is it ... is it ...

—He . . .

—Prester John?

—Prester John! Janet repeated. —If Prester John is young and old, and warm and cold, and breathes and does not breathe alive, wears blood on the hand, and sees with eyes not open. Maran-atha!

—He's come! There now, the Town Carpenter said. —Feed him. Feed him well, it's a long journey. Here, a potato, take a potato . . . But she was gone, with another bowl of oatmeal. —There now, no disrespect after that, the Town Carpenter muttered going toward the outside door. —He'll come down. I'll wait for him there, he said to himself; but he paused in the door till Janet returned to the kitchen. —There, he murmured to her, —no disrespect, you know. "I am but a lump of clay, but I was placed beside a rose and caught its fragrance . . ." He stood a minute looking at Janet busy over the metal sink, squinting his eyes up with looking at her. Then the dog followed him out the door and down the lawn toward the carriage barn, carrying its hot potato.

He'd only got halfway down there when her voice on the air stopped him, and he turned. —And he, has he eaten? she cried.

—That one, he won't come near, the Town Carpenter called back to her, and he motioned toward the fence below which led away from the carriage barn and coursed the pasture's bounds. Title to that piece of land, long disputed with a neighbor, fell to his bull who spent the days there and had gradually become a familiar, encouraged by the girl and the old man with a feed box and even, finally, a stall in the carriage barn. Now Janet came out unwrapped in the cold morning and down the slope with long strides to the fence, where she made a moaning sound that brought the bull from out of sight immediately. The bull was all black, the weight well up in its forequarters sustaining those swells of muscle mounting in the great swell of the neck. Its approach was effortless, not a movement wasted, because every bit of it was in movement, movement which absorbed the weight of it and became motion coming forth here on legs as slender they looked as a man's wrists swinging beneath. It came on at an angle to its path, which gave it a sense of drift as though suffering the wind to carry it along from behind; and the great weight of it was not apparent until it came close by, when even its breath dashed on the cold air fell with weight, and a hoof no longer adrift, but exerted to break the crust of the winter ground, made its force volitive, standing still.

Janet had watched its advance with a look of familiar wonder which almost broke her face into a smile. Now it was before her she stirred the feed in the box there with a square hand of hers and gazed with two eyes into one; and which of them made the gentle sound that rose between them wasn't clear as she caught a finger in a curl above the eye, and then left the bull at the feed box, sobering her face as she turned back for the house, and the bull raised its head, and watched her go.

The Town Carpenter raised a two-by-four, and nailed it carefully slightly out of line. —O pirate ships of the drunken main! O monster cruisers of wicked gain! . . . there now. He's finally got here.

Once in, Janet made across the kitchen for the dining room, there picked up the empty oatmeal bowl from the empty place at the head of the table, and stood staring at the figure across. —He's come, she murmured, and advanced an empty hand in the air. Then her gaze shortened to her hand there, which she squared round to meet it, to look at the palm, and return to the kitchen. She put the empty bowl in the sink. Then she slipped on a pair of gloves, took a slip of emery cloth from her skirt pocket and knelt rubbing her chin, her cheek, and her upper lip.

The sun was high enough now to fill the dining room with its light, over the dark dining table, and the low table under the window, and warm on the back of his neck when he woke moving nothing but his eyelids, opened upon the bowl of cold oatmeal before him, and nothing there else but a spoon. He did stare at the bowl and the spoon for a moment, or a minute, in that waking suspension of time when co-ordination is impossible, when every fragment of reality intrudes on its own terms, separately, clattering in and the mind tries to grasp each one as it passes, sensing that these things could be understood one by one and unrelated, if the stream could be stopped before it grows into a torrent, and the mind is engulfed in the totality of consciousness. Al-Shira-al-jamânija, consider the Dog Star: death? or Islam. Then perfect diamonds, and so across that brink of unbearable loneliness, and fully awake, startled only with the quiet, and the sunlight bearing flecks of silent motion. If there had been a dream, it was gone back where it came from, to refurbish its props, to be recast probably, possibly rewritten, given a new twist to put it across, make it memorable to the audience and acceptable to the censor, all that, but the same old director, same producer, waiting to dissemble the same obscenities before the same captive audience, waiting, again, the first curtain of sleep. He smiled, looking at the oatmeal, and as he did so reached up a hand as though to feel the smile on his face, and fix it there; it was gone when he looked up to the end of the table and saw it empty, and as immediately occupied it from memory but memory which, so suddenly assailed, leaped too far back, and brought forth the Emperor Valerian blinded, in taut agony, flayed under the hand of Sapor, the Persian emperor who battled Christianity in the name of the sun prophet Zoroaster, whose god, Ormazd, lord of light and goodness, wars ceaselessly against Ahriman, and the hosts of evil.

This house had a sense of bereavement about it; though no one had come or gone in a long time. The corridors rang with oppressive familiarity and, perhaps it was the distance that each step covered, the sense of diffusion persisted, diffusion from essential childhood, moving too fast too slowly, rested physically, arriving too soon without expenditure or the pulsations of effort, filling too much space and thus less instead of more powerful, less capable of hiding.

He was inclined to pause, passing the maimed hand upraised of the noseless Olalla, with his hand upon things, affirming their mass; and each weighed enough in return, resisting his touch, to affirm its reality, to belie, that is, the realities which had taken its place.

Suffer barbaric childhood to give and receive remorselessly; civilized age learns to protect what it has, to neither give nor accept freely, to trust its own mistrust above faith, and intriguing others above the innocent. Intrigue, after all, is rational, something the mind can sink its teeth into, and defeat it with the good digestion of reason, a hopeless prospect for the toothless heart, and God only knows what innocence will do next. So prudence rescues the emotions, and exiles them out of reach, countenancing only anxious glances from what another hero came forth from the desert to call "the hesitating retinue of finer shades."

In the unilluminated hallway where Olalla stood in her niche, he paused the ball of a thumb on the saint's broken nose, and smiled, the same involuntary smile of recognition that had lightened his face, and left it and come back, remaining each time a little longer and more fully extended, trying the unfamiliar terrain, since his arrival.

Childhood, the plain-dealer: nothing approached it but upon intimate terms. It's the shades of experience that afford shadows of fear, but the black-and-white of childhood discovers the intimacy of terror. Here, benign Olalla suffers the plunder of her face with wistful gravity in her stone eyes, empty now of the vengeful malice with which they had threatened blind justice upon unwary passers- by; and the hand, once poised to smash a passing skull, now lay flat up in benediction. What greater comfort does time afford, than the objects of terror re-encountered, and their fraudulence exposed in the flash of reason? Triumph! as though it were any cleaner, or happier, or more bare of disappointment, than the deadening shock of re-encounter with the object of love.

Songs of innocence and experience .fill the head so empty of aching that the ache is forgotten, a brawl, but an orderly one, a sequence of decorous violence as neatly carried forth as the fight between the Pleasant and the Unpleasant Thoughts in Handel's Almira.

There were no clocks anywhere in sight or hearing.

—And hmmm ... he did, did he? And he took away the horses that the kings of Judah had given to the sun, at the entering in of the house of the Lord, by the Chamber of Nathan-melech . . . hmm, Melech? Melich? the chamberlain, which was in the suburbs, and burned the chariots of the sun with fire . . .

This came, borne from behind the study door on the pungent vehicle of caraway, into the hall where he stood about to knock.

—And he put down the idolatrous priests, and hmmm whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in the high places in the cities of Judah, and in the places round about Jerusalem; them also that burned incense hmmm hmmmph unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven . . .

Though the words stopped, the caraway came on, unladen but maintaining a belligerent calm out into the hall where he lowered his hand without knocking. Then as he turned from the door he said to himself aloud,

—How safe I am from accident here.

—In the precious blood of ...

—Janet!

—Yes, she answered in a loud clear whisper, —I knew you would return. She stood before him with her gloved hands clasped, and her eyes shining with what light there was in the hall. He started past her, saying —My father . . .

—Still awaits you, she assented, eager. —Our Father . . .

—Janet, he said getting by her, and smiling to her, to calm the great agitation which threatened, as she came after him close as could be without touching him, to break out in some more vehement expression of welcome, —yes, I have come back.

—Rabboni, they doubted, she said. —I did not.

—Yes, seeing you here, and ... he faltered, —I ... my father . . . backing from her, —back ...

—From the tomb! she whispered clear.

—Yes, it ... in a way, he mumbled, reaching the door, —recovering from . . . good God, I ... He fumbled with the handle behind him; and she held off, reflecting the vigilant angles of woodwork beyond her.

—The . . . reassuring feeling ... he went on, figuring his hand in the air between them, —being home again . . . though the scraping of the door obscured his words to her, —here, to feel myself again, here . . .

—They will not know you.

—The reason I came back ...

—Shall I tell them, it is you, come back?

The chill of outdoors embraced him from behind. —I ... I ... He commenced to shiver against it.

—Or will you tell them, in your own time? she asked with a step toward him.

—Yes, yes, he said, getting the door closed between them, and shutting her intensively submissive, conspiratory affirmation into the dim hall with her.

The scraps of cloud which the dawn had found out, drifting with no apparent purpose, met here and there now the sky was light. A delegation of them moved round to east, toward the sun; and others, darkly separate in the west, conspired together over Mount Lamentation, where he raised his eyes. It was the most prominent of an ascendance of rolling hills, drawn up against the only clear horizon; and that simply, it had been the horizon beyond which lay destiny. Again, the cold air stabbed with each breath. No matter the direction on a map, it was beyond Mount Lamentation Lapland lay, waiting for the Gospel. From one step to the next he dropped his weight, jarring, as his feet hit, restraining him down the hard slope toward the carriage barn; and remarkable here, as indoors, the distance a few steps covered, each one a familiar measurement of compulsion, but without the sense of motion, of the dash which this precipitous decline had once insisted down.

The Town Carpenter stood on his platform, with a slightly vacant but still expectant expression on his face. Much, perhaps, like good King Wenceslaus of Bohemia looking out on his still capital, prostrated before him by papal interdict, the Town Carpenter looked upon the town laid out here under the still cold, provoked by its sedulous silence; and here, as there, to the approach of the pale thin man in mean attire.

But however the shade of John Huss may have leaped here from beyond Lamentation to find itself animate, teeth a-datter, shoulders hunched forward, and even the hands thrust down seeking warmth in empty pockets colder against hard shivering limbs of the moving frame within the cloth: too hard, perhaps, and worse, too familiar, a prospect too mean for even that most mettlesome martyr, on such a cold day, ahead one expression effaced another (the Town Carpenter leaned back to spit off the platform), and Wenceslaus IV, "the vacillating," abdicated and was gone, and the shade of the martyr gone with him.

—Here, don't bark at him, by God don't you bark at him! the Town Carpenter shouted, as the dog leaped forward over a heap of bull dung, barking. —Don't pick her up, he went on, coming down from the platform. —She'll pee all over you. There now, he finished, and standing over his visitor he looked at him with frank and eager curiosity. —There now, he repeated, —that you look tired, it's not surprising to me. Here from Ethiopia and the three Indies.

—Ethiopia! Good God yes, I feel like I'd come that far.

The Town Carpenter's eyes glistened, as he listened and pretended to hear. —Sooner or later, of course, I knew you'd arrive, he said. —And are you alone? He bent close, intent for the nod he received. —I knew you would be, of course, he went on at that. —To voyage today with ten thousand knights, and one hundred thousand footmen, it might clutter things up.

Nevertheless, the Town Carpenter looked slightly disappointed.

—Being back, I ... well, thank God I'm back.

The Town Carpenter watched him draw a hand across his chin, and smile. —Back, the Town Carpenter repeated, standing off to look above them at the sky, —when we get back, of course, we can take up such proper customs again. But here ... he swept a hand out before him, —here, of course, they've no idea of a hero. I live surrounded by people who've no idea what a hero is. And do you know why? Why, because they've no idea of what they're doing themselves. None! Not an idea in this world or the next of what they're doing on God's green earth. Oh, it's a strange land you've come visiting to see me here. With no idea of a hero, you see, but they need them so badly that they make up special games, hitting a ball with a stick and all kinds of nonsense, and the men who win the games are their heroes. And then, he went on, warming to what was apparently a severe preoccupation of his, —when that gets stale, they arrange whole wars which have no more reason for existing than the people who fight in them, and a boy may become a hero fighting for a life that's worth something for the first time, threatened with loss of it, that or dying to save the lives of people who've no idea what to do with them. Fortunately, he went on, and inclined his head nearer, -there's a way out for most of them.

They make money, the Town Carpenter whispered hoarsely. —And a good thing such a recourse lies open, it gives them something to do, keeps them out of our way. He straightened up, looking at his balloon ascension stand, his arms still folded, and dingy underwear elbows protruding from his sleeves. He drew his lips tight together over the gums, and nodded. —Fortunately men like you and myself appear every century or so, to keep the way open. But, he called as he walked to the corner of the barn and stood there undoing the front of his clothes, —we must watch out for them, you know, trying to intrude. Here, he said, waving his free hand at the balloon stand, —they try to intrude. Traveling in their trains and their airplanes they try to intrude on the greatest career of the hero. Why, travel's become the great occupation of people with nothing to do, you find second-hand kings and all sorts of useless people at it. There now, it's always the heroic places you find them intruding, trying to have a share in the work of great men, looking at fine paintings and talking as though they knew more of the thing than the man who painted it, and the same thing listening to fine music, because they suspect the truth but they won't pay the price, they all suspect that a man needs something to do, he finished, standing over the light cloud of steam he left rising from the gray boards of the barn.

—Something to do? Most of the trouble in the world is made by people finding something to do.

—There now, the Town Carpenter said, buttoning himself up as he straightened round, and nodding as though he had heard. —Of course they misuse things, every fine thing we have and make and discover, and the finest things get the most abuse. The generals and the missionaries and . . . but we cannot waste time on them, he said raising his eyes from the balloon stand to the sky, —there's but one thing you can do with a balloon.

—Going up? There's only one thing to do when you get up there.

—Danger? They don't know the meaning of it, sitting up there in their airplanes, and surprised when they drop out of the sky. Why, they haven't time to be frightened, they're so surprised, brought up so carefully, insured against accident. Why, their heads are smashed like melons before they know what's happened to them, sitting up there in their business suits at sixty miles an hour wondering if their fountain pens will leak, and then there they are spread all over twenty acres of somebody else's land. No, not the danger. The loneliness. It's the loneliness, the price they won't pay. The Town Carpenter remained abstracted for a minute or so; and the wind which had just come up sounded around the corner of the barn. He gazed up at the sun, which had become involved with a cloud much the shape of a camel, an odd-legged one to be sure, but as the Town Carpenter was quick to point out, —Bactrian. They watched it. The sun entered almost between the two humps and then, from the speed of things up there, looked to be attempting an escape, its body visible along the fleeting edge, as though every instant it would break away. —See him go, see him go, the Town Carpenter said, standing there lopsided. Then he turned and said in a tone of confidence, and commiseration, —The great misfortune of the sun, it has no history. That's why it never gets lonely up there.

Then with a surprising agility he had gone round behind the balloon stand, and from there he called, —This? did you see it? I keep it inconspicuous, they're all very interested in it, the American Legion . . . He swung about a length of two-inch pipe mounted on a swivel. —I've seen them sneaking around to look through it, but when they find no lenses in it, they think I've dismantled it. Of course there's no lenses in it in the first place, they'd only confuse things.

—Then, what is it?

—Yes, since they don't know what they're looking for, of course they don't see anything, wandering around in the daylight. There's so much daylight you can't see anything up there, unless you cut a path through it. Why, in good weather, one afternoon I saw Aldebaran, the red Eye of the Bull, keeping watch on the Pleiades, you know. That means it's a very old star, being red like that. Yes, the red Eye of Taurus, he muttered coming back, —keeping a watch on them. They bear some watching, the Pleiades . . . Do you know? One night I was assailed in the darkness. A man struck me, square across the eyes, and do you know, from that blow? the force of it brought light to my eyes? and I identified him afterward, I saw him plain as could be. His American Legion cap showed as plain as could be. Then he looked round evasively. —Tell me, he said, close by again, —did you bring your great Mirror?

—Mirror . . . ?

—There now, it's not easy to transport, I imagine. The great mirror in which you can see all that goes on in your kingdoms. But ... we need it here, he said bending closer, and with another quick look round, —the American Legion. They watch me all the time, you know. Very interested, very interested in this of course. He included the balloon stand in a gesture. —Though it's no secret. Why, more than one night they've come and picketed the house here. With your great mirror, we could keep an eye on them, the Town Carpenter finished, and watched intently the pockets searched before him until the gold cigarette case was brought out, empty. —For the messages! he exclaimed, taking it. —And with the secret inscription. There now, later you will explain it to me, he said, running his thumb over the words; then in a sudden feat of conjuring the gold case was gone inside the frontal folds of his clothing, and he stood with a large watch snapped open in his hand. —Of course I'd have known you anywhere, he said raising his brilliant eyes from the watch face. —There now, eleven-thirty. Later on we shall simplify things. Why, all the others are drowning in details. That's what happens to them, you know. That's where we'll outwit them. We must simplify . . .

His words were caught on the wind. The dog followed him. Before he was out of sight, there was the sound of thunder, rolling like a body to rest in the south. The Town Carpenter shook his fist at it, but did not diminish his step.

The wind had come up quite sudden. It commenced to blow with that terrible quality peculiar to the winter wind, pointless, and the more bitter. March winds make a boisterous kind of sense, blowing seeds and seed-pods, blowing off the white pustular symptoms of winter, awakening, preparing for growth; and a vengeful sense in the fall, so long as a leaf remains where it grew, but the winter wind blows nothing, and blows that nowhere, blows with destructive violence where there is nothing left to destroy, vindictive and viciously fingered to leave no crevice untouched. Looking up, even the balloon stand is testament to something, erect with the stupid patience of objects so violated, testimony found futile as the wincî itself in the envy as quickly rejected as it is longed after. The clouds conspired over Mount Lamentation had lost their distinct edges, and mounted in a dark mass as though what lay beyond there were already suffering what the wind, if simply to justify itself, threatened to bring closer. It blew round the corners of the carriage barn, over the snow clotted against the mound of what had been the kitchen midden for as long as he could remember, over the snow crusted on the ground behind the barn, showing its surface here and there as though that ground had never been disturbed, as though the surface were all of it that existed.

He drew his shoulders closer together still, and almost lost his balance as he turned away from this desolation where something moved with the sudden effortless ease of an apparition, unconcerned with inertia, unrestricted by the ingenious arrangement of muscle and tendon, weight and intention whose failure to coincide threatened to upset him now. He made the gesture he might have made if he had had a stick in his hand, and expected it to support him; and then twisted like a man menaced on one hand by the very thing he has turned to escape on the other. Whether the empty carriage barn had put forth the shade of Heracles, caroling a missionary jaunt beyond the mountains, or John Huss had approached from that distant direction to urge those already baptized against false miracles, ecclesiastical greed, and seeking tangible evidence of Christ's presence instead of in His enduring word; and whether the two met on the horizon to merge, to vie, or simply compare wares, there was no time to consider, for he looked up to see the bull, its great head thrown up against the wind and the storm it threatened, the great rounds of the eyes wide open, fixed on webs of red veins. Where it had come from, or to what purpose, its casual properties and the questions which might have been asked on a day in June, none of that -was provoked by the bull's appearance. Its back end wheeled as it came to the fence and stopped there, in a halt of defiance which challenged the wind and left it to be consumed in its own violence.

—That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness . . . Janet read, alone in her room, the prophet Zephaniah, as any passing her closed door might have heard. None did. —And I will bring distress upon men, that they shall walk like blind men, because they have sinned against the Lord: and their blood shall be poured out as dust, and their flesh as the dung . . . The paranoid wind shivered the pane at her back. —Gather yourselves together, yea, gather together, O nation not desired . . . The unwavering quality of her voice sustained the relish of the prophet whose benisons she followed here, near breathless with being a step ahead of him, far and away from the New Testament wail down these same halls which had catechized and left her to work out her own excursions among the alarms of the Old. —The Lord will be terrible unto them: for he will famish all the gods of the earth; and men shall worship him, every one from his place, even all the isles of the heathen.

Zephaniah gets his business done quickly. Three chapters suffice; and he makes way for Haggai, whose nose is just as out of joint. In spite of her absorption, Janet read with the assurance of the Old Testament reader who knows that the New will follow, is, in fact, in hand with its more temperate prospects; just as she could read the New Testament without trepidation, knowing that any insinuations of wavering charity on the part of its engineers were bolstered by a Figure Who brooked no nonsense, lurking, "ravin in tooth and claw," at the ready, among the unalterable jots and tittles of His seventy-two-letter masquerade in the Old. Haggai anticipates Him shaking the earth, the heavens, the sea, the dry land, the nations, phenomenal antics still dignified as acts of God set forth with such strenuous diligence that the tenth minor prophet is drained in two chapters; but Janet had for the moment enough of a good thing with —when I turn back your captivity before your eyes, saith the Lord. Her blue lips finished, they repeated while she stood and gazed through that glass, a window tucked high on the house looking down to the carriage barn.

The wind had reached a height of delusion. Now, right before her eyes, it was given something to do: particles of snow appeared, conjured by the wind's own madness. Janet drew closer to the window. Standing with both palms flattened against the glass, her upper lip rose slowly as she stared below, to see the figure between the carriage barn and the bull's enclosure reel as though attacked on both sides, gain his balance and pause, steadying himself, and set out with what at first appeared extreme difficulty walking, until he broke into a run, up toward the house and out of her sight. —He is come, her blue lips made out; but the upper one was drawn down to the line of her bite, giving her a slightly perplexed look, as she turned to emerge, leaving two irregular near-translucent blots on the glass behind her.

Down on the porch, Reverend Gwyon stood staring at the sky, reflecting in his attitude and expression the bull's disdain for what was going on up there. In Gwyon's case, however, the simple grandeur of the bull's impersonal contempt for the storm was impaired by lines of fierce indignation, as though to indicate that this celestial turmoil had been got up as a personal affront to him, or one for whose honor he was jealous. Gwyon did not lower his eyes to the figure approaching up the lawn until the porch steps clattered immediately beneath him; at that, he broke off his engagement, muttering, and turned hastily to open the front door.

—There! ... I mean, here! sounded behind him, teeth a-clatter.

—Whoo . . . what is it? Gwyon got out, looking wide-eyed over his shoulder, with the door open.

—Terror coming both ways . . . like being a child again. Yes, there, get the door closed . . .

Reverend Gwyon got the front door closed with a bang, rattling the bell in it. Then he started to turn down the hall, but his way was blocked. Though neither of them moved, a regular creaking had been set up in the hallway and sounded all around them.

—Why, it's . . . this whole house is saturated with priesthood, with . . .

—Priesthood? Gwyon repeated, looking for an opening.

—Ministry, the ministry then, eh? Yes, here we are, no exception, except I'm late. Late coming. Here, every creak, do you hear them? Every creak one of doubt, generations of it, so I'm no exception, except I'm late. But I ... that's what I was trained for, after all, isn't it. Here, it's so familiar, all so familiar here . . .

Reverend Gwyon found an opening and got through it. Immediately he started to talk, striding down the hall. —Familiar, yes, he commenced, gauging his words to the distance ahead of him. —Science, science has a fool theory about recognition. Half the forepart of the brain receives an impression, they say, an instant before the other half. When it reaches the second half the brain recognizes it! A lot of bosh, of course, he paused a step to confide, —but it gives these fool scientists something to do, keeps them from meddling in important matters that don't concern them.

Reverend Gwyon had timed this observation perfectly; for as he reached the last phrases he had turned the corner to his study. The still surfaces of the mirrors in the cruz-con-espejos were alerted by his passage, but too late to hinder it, for with the last word he was inside, leaving them empty but vigilant now. Alone among books and papers in precarious piles, Reverend Gwyon sat down. There were books open and closed, some with twenty bits of paper between their pages; passages underlined, written in, crossed out. There were periodicals, and ribbons of newspaper littered everywhere. Near one knee a headline said, Science Shows There's a Cod, Pope Declares. Gwyon rested an elbow on Osseruatore Romano. ("Who is capable of fixing his eyes on the shining sun?" It was that issue in which Cardinal Tedeschini testified to the Papal vision: "But he was able to do so, and during those days could witness the life of the sun under the hand of Mary.") Gwyon reached Saint John of the Cross down from a shelf. ("The agitated sun was convulsed and transformed in a picture of life, in a spectacle of heavenly movements, and it transmitted silent but eloquent messages to the Vicar of Christ.") This caught the corner of Gwyon's eye, which narrowed, and he grunted impatiently and covered it with another paper, the Scientific American for 11 April 1891. There, for a moment, he stared at a picture of Doctor Variot and a colleague consulting beside a baby skewered on an electrode in an electro-metallurgic bath. ". . . Rather than to rescue our cadavers from the worms of the grave," he read half aloud, with idle satisfaction, and sat back, staring at the door.

The gold figure of the bull lay on its side among some papers on his desk. Beyond, through the windows, the wind whipped the branches of yew with snow. But Reverend Gwyon's was not an empty stare, arrested by that blank surface. He looked as though he saw straight through the door, and was fully aware of the two eyes which, at that instant, were looking square on a line with his own from the dark hallway, where the clear mirrors of the cruz-con- espejos on the wall behind had seized, and held, dim fragments of the arm raised to knock.

Gwyon waited for a moment; then he opened the book in his lap, and thrust his hand into the cavity cut ruthlessly out of The Dark Night of the Soul.

—Drink; drink! Drain, drain! Another link for the Devil's Chain, sang the Town

Carpenter into the white teeth of violation. He left off, for an anxious moment, as he approached the Civil War monument, which he never passed in bad weather without a look of uneasy solicitude, though near half a century had passed since his mother's last obstinate bivouac there.

The wind was pursuing its career with extravagant glee, now it had one. The snow was driven to places which only this paranoid force could care to oppress so; though, to be striding forth in it was to assume the delusions of the storm itself, becoming the object of its hostility, and thus abruptly render a validifying dimension to this manic phase of a reality which would, left to itself, blow itself out in senselessness. Therefore, to redeem these absurd extravaganzas, which is after all the way of a hero, requires a worthy goal; then the gratuitous violence threatens only that path, and as the wind rises, the more worthy the goal then, and the more heroic the journey.

The Depot Tavern was presided over by the head of a twelve-point buck, whose look of resignation implied understanding of the fact that his antlers would never again be shed and renewed, a fate tempered by a festoon of Christmas tree bulbs which were, momentarily, seasonal, though he wore them with great forbearance whatever the solstice. Otium cum dignitate, the chipped lips posed up there, and with great dignity, considering his circumstances, the buck gazed down through dust-filmed eyeballs upon the present.

Just now this present was being cajoled toward a disfigurated future by a man with a woman tattooed on his left arm. She reposed there so long as he talked or listened; but when he interrupted to raise his glass, she was strangled. Though she had been suffering this treatment for many years, she bore it with the same surprise contorting her blue face whenever it was repeated; and when it was done, she returned to the same pose of unsuspecting tranquillity. (True, she was not entirely innocent: turned at another angle, and a portion of her covered up, she was capable of a pose which none who did not know her might have suspected from her placid countenance.) —The Resurrectionists! said he; and she was strangled.

—The Resurrectionists? What would it have to do with grave-robbers? It was the sermon on medicine made from mummies. Mummies ground up in a powder tor medicine, said a man as far from the weather as possible, at the far end of the bar.

—Not that any of you have ever heard one of his sermons, said a small man in the middle. —Relying on what your wives repeat to you.

—And you was there, I suppose, imperson?

—I was. It was the sermon in which the Swiss rooster is condemned to burn to death for laying an egg.

—Fourteen seventy-four. I know that one myself.

There was an air of grudging conspiracy over all this; and if voices rose in argument the overtones were slightly quelled, suggesting, as in any totalitarian society, walls with ears, the ubiquitous dictator long in residence hie, et ubique, disputing no passage, for He was going nowhere. —But that little man selling brushes . . .

—A manic . . .

—Manichee ...

—He was sent here, but Reverend saved us from that. If good and evil was absolutes, we would all of us be Manichean heretics, says the Reverend. I was there, you see. If it wasn't for evil being a depraved qualification of good, says the Reverend, we should all be Manicheans like the little brush salesman.

—Selling unchristian brushes to honest people . . .

—Ha! there you're wrong, for Manichees was Christian. For them, says the Reverend, the sun itself was the visible symbol of Christ.

—They was not.

—It was so. How could you have the sun . . .

—They was not, and what's more . . .

—Here is the sexton coming now, he was there.

—They was not, and what if he was, he goes to church and makes up his own sermon, and afterward he'll tell you such and such was the Reverend's sermon which nobody heard but himself. Like the sermon on the American Legion . . . him, he's as deaf as that coconut.

Every head but the buck turned to see the door thrown open, shaking the plate of glass and the configuration between the men and the storm. The Town Carpenter entered, pursued by a distant peal of thunder. —That damned racket, he said, shutting it out.

—It's rare, that you have thunder with snow, said the small man in the middle, appeasing.

—May it roll away and take my curse with it, the Town Carpenter growled, arrived at the bar. He squared his shoulders, reared his head, and looked round him. —Now do you know, after the Great Deluge there was no God? Well, there was not. With the world wet for a hundred years, there was no thunder, and men went around with their heads up, alone and unafraid they went, like heroes should, you know. Then it all dried off and the atmosphere up there recovered. He paused to kick the snow from his feet against the bar; and the dog waited till that was done to lie at his feet. —And then that damned thunder started, and scared them all so much, looking up to see nothing, that they took the images of terror right out of their own minds and hung them up there in the empty space above their empty heads. He drank down his glass. —There now, he said, putting it empty on the bar, and he reared his head, as though the buck's were the only face he would countenance. —I have a very important visitor, finally he brought out.

—Tom Swift, it must be, the strangler muttered, watching the Town Carpenter narrowly.

—To see him, you might not guess at the hero he is. Of course I recognized him immediately.

—A strange fellow got off the morning train, said the man in the middle. —Neither hat nor coat. Oh, you never know, you never know. Drunk perhaps. You never know.

Stealthily, the Town Carpenter looked at these two, his expression one of cunning. It was a look with which they were all familiar; and for its astute divining quality (that and the subsequent logical parallel of his conversation) he was often accused of perfect hearing. —There now, he said, pulling a filled glass to him, —you'd be surprised to see him perhaps, a man waited on by seven kings at a time, sixty dukes and a count for every day in the year, so modest and quiet as him.

—That train come in from the city, said the small man with beer.

—I've seen them, city people in the country, said the strangler. —I know them, terrified when they see things move without ticking or smoking.

—A man who sits with twelve archbishops on his right hand and twenty bishops on his left.

—They live in cities where nothing grows. Did you know that? Nothing grows in the city. Even their minds they keep steam-heated. Their horizons are dirty windowsills.

—Drunk, perhaps. You never know.

—Whose chamberlain is a bishop and king, and his chief cook a king and an abbot, he couldn't stoop to taking such titles as those. —Do you know what happens to people in cities? I'll tell you what happens to people in cities. They lose the seasons, that's what happens. They lose the extremes, the winter and summer. They lose the means, the spring and the fall. They lose the beginning and end of the day, and nothing grows but their bank accounts. Life in the city is just all middle, nothing is born and nothing dies. Things appear, and things are killed, but nothing begins and nothing ends.

—His domains lay from the three Indies to the ruins of Babylon, from Farther India to the tower of Babel. That's the voyage we're going to make. Waited on hand and foot by kings, from his humble looks you wouldn't believe it, from his quiet ways you'd never know. Of course I knew him immediately.

—You don't get heroes out of the cities. A city man is spread out too much.

—If you've ever watched the ground for a mole, tried to follow the silent movement of the course of his burrow and nothing moves, nothing but separate blades of grass, each of them moving for no good reason, and then the ground moves, and moves again, why that's the kind of a face he has.

—A simple man who is up against it, a man who knows what he's up against. You have to go to the country to find him. Out to the country or out to sea.

—In his dominions there are no poor, no thieves or robbers, and no dissension. Where he has come from there are no vices, no misers or flatterers, and no lies.

Snow whirled against the glass. The blue woman was held contorted for full half a minute. The Town Carpenter licked his lips, and gazed up at the movement on the cracked lips of the twelve-point buck who remained, unperturbed by the fly, looking down through glazed convexities of dust.

Streaks of sound pierced the woodwork, from the cavetto molding to stab through the stained ribs strained tongue-in-groove wainscoting the hallway, as though there were movement there.

—So, he burnt the throne of the sun with fire, did he? The throne of the sun! . . . nine . . . six, Reverend Gwyon muttered, standing over his littered desk, flinging over the pages of Job with the flat of three fingers. —Which shaketh the earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble. Tremble, do they? Which com-mandeth the sun, and it riseth not; and sealed up the stars. Riseth not, does it? Which maketh Arcturus, Orion, Pleiades, and the chambers of the south, does he! Gwyon looked up impatiently, no more than to take his eyes from the book laid open on top of the Letters of the Emperor Flavius Claudius Julianus. His clear eyes struck the door, and held there a moment, waiting. Then he returned to the pages before him. —Nineteen . . . four ... In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun, which is a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof . . . that's better, now, he muttered, turning pages. —Seven . . . eleven . . . and by it there is profit to them that see the sun . . . uhm . . . eleven . . . seven . . . Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun . . . yes . . . hmmmm . . . Truly the light is sweet, he repeated, raising his eyes now straight before him to the window, and the encumbered sky.

That impregnable meter of silence enveloped him directly he stopped speaking, and stood there erect and alone. There was nothing in his face to betray, or even suggest doubt; but his hands were not, as they might at first appear, resting their own weight and no more on the pages before him. As he stood unmoving so, the faint carnation under his nails became evenly fainter, draining away from the rims until they were, all together, blanched with the strain they sustained, streaked with the life that sustained them.

—One more day's dying, Gwyon murmured looking out at the sky. Would there be time? His fingertips regained their color. Even as they did, the lower part of his face drained of its fullness, as though the two were connected, or as though it were not two but one process, a continuous seepage down, and he caught his lower lip with concern. Would there be time? to make full proof of his ministry; and he searched the sky as though for answer. —One more day's dying, he repeated, searching the sky for the sun.

The parsonage was near a century old, and it was not strange that the wind should set it creaking so. Inside, however, and well in, beyond other evidences, the wind provided an arbitrary explanation and no more: as well say that the sharp angles of wall and wainscot, molding and baseboard complained so at the relentless obtrusion of one another's extremities where they were forced to meet; or that they creaked with effort, supporting the cross, and with vigilance for its prey, suspended there in the near darkness before the small mirrors which looked shined with work as though, leaving Sor Patrocinio stigmatized, they had begun again here. How John Huss would have vilipended the thing! as Aunt May had ruefully noted; but she had not prevailed against it, and inclined to avoid it. Gwyon, passing it many times a day, shocked it and banged the study door in its face before a fragment of his motion could be isolated and fixed. (True, more than once he had surprised Janet there; and often, when he thought of it, attempted stealthy glances at her ungloved palms, but in vain.) The creaking continued; still nothing moved in the dark hallway until the thin lips cracked apart, but still silent, —What was it? What am I supposed to ask? Am I the . . . Homoousian or Homoiousian? Am I the man that . . . What holds me back? . . . for whom . . . for whom . . . What was it? . . .

Reverend Gwyon gripped the lapels of his coat and peered at the inside of the door. —Damnation, he muttered, —what holds me back? And he commenced to rummage among the books and papers before him. The Old Testament and the Letters of Julian the Apostate were thrust aside, Origen's Contra Celsum, one after another he pushed the books back until they mounted in an unsteady pile about the gold bull figure. —Volume eighteen, he muttered, -PLANTS to RAYM . . . where ... He paused, holding Ter-tullian's De Corona. Then he started through the discarded pile, muttering —Cathemerinon, but when he found it, and stood with it open, he spoke without looking at the page.

—Kindly Guide, Reverend Gwyon said to the sky without, —creator of the radiant light, who controllest the seasons in their fixed courses, if thy sun is hidden, grim chaos encompasses us, restore thy light O Christ to thy faithful followers . . . Gwyon paused, as though he had heard a sound. The sky before him darkened as he watched it; and as he watched, the book in his hand closed slowly, and the nails of his hand went white against the covers.

The knocks on the door were faint. Reverend Gwyon planted Prudentius firmly on the desk and turned; but when he reached the door he paused with a hand to the knob and stood that way, listening, the more intently, for something he had not heard.

On either side of the door they stood, a hand raised and a hand held forth, their extended arms abscissa and ordinate for the point of ordination where their eyes met on the inordinate curve of doubt.

There was a crash in the hallway. Reverend Gwyon threw the study door open. The cruz-con-espejos lay on the floor. Streaks of light pierced him from the sharp silvered fragments around it, and held him, blinded for a moment.

Rounding the corner from the kitchen, Janet collided with the figure coming in the other direction. She drew back aghast. —Has it begun? she managed to say, clutching one gloved hand in the other.

—Begun? Good God, I ... I didn't . . .

—Is it time? she asked eagerly. -Time to tell them . . . you have come back?

—Yes, tell them, he said, getting round her with the speed of a shadow when a light is moved, —I came back to preach, but I ...

—They doubted, she said drawing her upper lip down with the sudden modesty of veiling, —but I ...

—Janet! Reverend Gwyon emerged, and pushed the cross aside with his foot. —Lunch, he said, advancing.

—Father . . . father, I ...

Janet was gone. Reverend Gwyon, coming forth from the dark hallway, seemed to become larger as he approached the light, and the figure dancing backwards, still like a shadow retreating, went on, —Something I have to ask you, I ... what was it? ... you

In this fashion they reached the dining room. With expletive —Thank God, once or twice, the voice had risen and went on more rapidly, drawing Gwyon on with the expression on his face of a man tormented by a question to which everyone else in the room knows the answer.

—You look like Valerian, very much, yes very much like the Emperor Valerian . . . the words came on, every syllable expletive and the more rapid, the sound sustaining itself in nimble surprise, alert for the right words, the right question when it came out to be rescued and repeated.

Reverend Gwyon reached the head of the table, and stood at his place. His nostrils worked for an instant. There did, in fact, issue from the kitchen the smell of frying fish.

—In the painting by Memlinc you know, the painting by Mem-ling, Valerian in the painting by Memlinc ...

—How many kings are there left in the world, then? Right now, today, how many kings are there left? The blue woman was drawn to full length, as her master extended an empty glass across the bar.

—I'd rather work for a living, said the small man with beer, staring up at the sign Law forbids cashing welfare checks on these premises.

—Counting the Pope of Rome? asked the man furthest from the storm, at the end of the bar.

—I said kings. He's no more king than that coconut, the Pope isn't.

—He's a kind of a king, the Pope is. Anyone who holds a temporal sway is a king, so the Reverend said.

—And when did he say that?

—In his sermon speaking on the Druids. That is why the Druids made the oak tree the king of trees, because it was so often struck by lightning, and that was a sign of divine favor. —And when was the Pope of Rome struck by lightning?

—The divine right of kings, have you never heard tell of that? You may ask the sexton.

The Town Carpenter, who had been silent for some minutes, snared the word kings from somewhere, and lowered his eyes from the buck to find other, less dusty, glances directed toward him. —Kings, he responded, —second-hand kings and all sorts of useless people you find at it today. There now, just look at the way people travel today, they've no sense of voyages at all. I set off on a voyage myself a while ago, a voyage of discovery, you might say. The train was going a good sixty miles an hour and I got to my feet and pulled the emergency cord. You could see nothing at that speed. And do you know, they put me in prison? Yes they did, without a word of apology. It was in prison I lost these, he went on, motioning to his empty mouth. —I went to sleep, and the man in the prison with me, a dangerous man you could see in his eyes, he stole my teeth while I slept. Let him choke on them!

—Do you know how he holds his temporal power, the Pope of Rome? the strangler demanded, having choked the blue lady dry while the Town Carpenter spoke, taking advantage, now, of the gap while the Town Carpenter drank. —Money from right here in America, money from right here in the United States is what keeps him in power.

—Donations . . .

—Donations! Do you think he heats his fine Vatican palace, all the eleven hundred rooms of it, with donations? For one thing, he's sponsored by an American bread company, I know for a fact.

—Go to a train station yourself, the Town Carpenter continued, pushing forward his empty glass, —or a bus station. Go to an airport and look at them, the miserable lot of them with their empty eyes and their empty faces, and no idea what they're doing but getting out of one pot into another, weary and worried only for the comforts of the body, frightened only that they may discover something between now and the minute they get where they think they are going. There now, I've been to the airport myself, where the airplanes leave for Cairo and Damascus, and would you believe it to look at the people who go to Cairo and Damascus, the washed-out faces, and you see them come in from Cairo and Damascus and do they look any different? They might have been around to the corner grocer and no more, from the look of them. What they can tell of Cairo and Damascus is no more than I can tell of my train trip, sixty miles an hour and no toilet in sight, that is what they know of Cairo and Damascus. He recovered his glass, full, and raised it. —Have you ever had trench mouth? asked the small man with beer. —At first I thought it was only a sore throat . . .

—He signed a contract for fifty thousand dollars a year, I know for a fact. When he gives the Lord's Prayer, now, every time he comes to the part about "give us this day our daily bread" he says, "Give us this day our daily slo-baked enriched oven-crust thin-sliced ..."

—Ah, that's a joke, an old joke, said the man farthest from the storm.

—A joke! A joke, is it!

—Trench mouth can be fatal, they say, if it gets into your throat and the glands you have in there . . .

—I'll tell you the truth now, the Town Carpenter went on, his voice resonant with this confidence, —they've never been to Cairo and Damascus. With all their tickets and their passports, and their fine luggage all stuck up with advertising, they've never been out of their own bathrooms. It's so easy to go anywhere today, he said, and paused to look round, to see if any lips other than his own were moving, —that a fool can go anywhere, and it's the fools who do. There are men who have been around the world a dozen times, and they've never discovered anything but one inconvenience and one belly upset after another. Voyages have lost their meaning, it's so easy today, he finished, looking out over the top of the head of the small man with beer, whose eyes were on a level with the top button of his underwear, who said, —I should be in bed like the doctor told me, and no alcohol.

Beyond the glass three figures, who had crossed the street to avoid the Depot Tavern, passed in the storm. —The Ladies, someone said.

The Town Carpenter saw them too. —There they go, he said. —I offered to sing at their Christmas supper tonight at the church, a nice temperance song. The Toast. Do you know that one?

—By the woes of the drunkard's mother, By his children who beg for bread . . . he began in a low voice.

—I wouldn't dare go home now, said the small man with beer, gazing through the glass. —I'd catch my death.

—A joke? said the man farthest from the storm, studying the blue woman upside down. —Do you know the one about the little nigger boy meets the Catholic priest on the street and he says, Hello Father. So the priest says, Did you call me Father? The little nigger boy says Yes Father and the priest says, Are you a Catholic? So the boy says, I'm a nigger, ain't that bad enough? Everyone laughed but the Town Carpenter. He'd gone to the men's room.

—You're carrying a dead body, the strangler retaliated, —and you ask him how much you owe him, and he says nothing. Is he dead?

—I'm the kind of a man that likes to be a poodle, said the small man with beer, watching the Town Carpenter return with the dog which had followed him in there, and waited.

—A poodle?

—If I'm going to be a dog I want to be something I like. He took a temperate sip of his small beer, and turned to the plate glass. The wind had gone down, and the snow continued to fall. —Do you think the sun will ever shine again? he asked no one.

The wind had gone down; and without its driving force the snow came on in residual particles, remnants of violence left moving loosely in the air, with no apparent direction. It had not settled heavily round the parsonage, because of the slight and exposed elevation, but every crevice and corner was packed as though the wind had come from every quarter in its brief paranoid career. The snow was packed round the dining-room window where, well inside, Reverend Gwyon's face reflected the slight clearing of the sky with raised eyebrows. The dining table, where he sat resting both hands before him, was an oval to which leaves might be added to accommodate a dozen people, though no such need had risen in years. Just the reverse, in fact, might better have served the interests of economy implicit everywhere, not a penurious economy but "sensible," sensible that is to waste, superfluity, extravagance, which might here have dictated that the table contract its surface even further, to the strict necessity of one man's setting: and for another man than this, it might well have done so (considering the withering glances of most of Gwyon's forebears, many of whom ate in the kitchen when alone, one of whom, long before the coming of the incandescent 'lamp, took his meals to a small upstairs closet, as its floor still showed, or the dour John H. (whose picture was nowhere to be seen) who, after he had reached his majority, was never known to eat indoors again). Not that Gwyon ever sat down to a groaning board, or ate with smorgasbord perambulation: there was seldom more than one monochrome dish at a time before him. But so much did his presence require this large open surface before him, that when he was joined at a meal he glanced up incessantly as though aware that the table was crowded, and, when his guest sat on his right hand, each time Gwyon turned his attention in that direction he would grip the edge of the table in the other, supporting the balance which this alien presence threatened, or sit staring straight ahead, steadying the thing with both hands planted flat upon it. So he sat now, muttering a steadying, —Hmmm, every few moments, and raising his glance like an eccentric weight, unsure where it would drop.

The expletive outburst which had issued in a tone of alternate expectation of the right thing, whatever it was, and surprise, when it did not come forth, had stopped as suddenly as it began. Now only breaks and brief beginnings came from one part of the room and then another, from the corner where all Good works were conceived, to the low table under the window. —Superbia . . . Ira . . . Invidia . . . Avaritia, yes, there ... "I would desire that this house and all the people in it were turned to gold, that I might lock you up in my good chest: O my sweet gold!" ... do you remember that? I ... well never mind, no matter. Covetousness, no matter . . . And the voice trailed off again.

Reverend Gwyon exhaled, sniffed caraway.

—Now, the priesthood . . . the ministry, I mean . . . yes, I heard about you, some time ago, John . . . John . . . what was it? He'd seen you, stopped in to see you, I mean hear you and then see you. A priest. John . . .

Their eyes met across the room for an instant. —Yes, yes, Gwyon said dropping his eyes quickly, speaking in a tone of dismissal. —No weight to him at all. Claimed to be a priest. No weight to him at all. He paused, holding the table down. —No mystery at all, he added in a mutter. But movement brought his eyes up again, he watched the hands embrace one another, break, reach out, a small pitcher picked up, juggled between them and almost lost, put down with one hand as the other caught up a streamer of newspaper, with —What's this?

The newspaper clipping slid across the table. —Yes, that's something I've been looking for, Gwyon said, reaching for it. —Some . . . figuring, a calculation.

Written in the margin, in pencil, was this:

—Yes, there, Reverend Gwyon said, getting hold of it. He put it face down on the table, and covered it with his forearm. His lips were working. He stared straight ahead through the window at the sky.

Janet entered, to place two dishes on the table.

—Here, what's this? what's this? Gwyon demanded, looking at them. —This is bread; and this is fish, said Janet, and raised her eyes across the table.

—Fish? Gwyon repeated.

—And bread, she confirmed, standing over the meager portion as though waiting for something to happen. Her upper gum lay exposed, forgotten.

—Bring me some eggs, Gwyon said curtly. She stood there. Reverend Gwyon brought his head up sharply. A quick baffled look at the food on the table, and the figure standing over it, and Janet was gone. A bell's tinkle followed, from the kitchen, and Gwyon clicked his lips at this signal of delay, fixing his elbows on the table as though to steady it while the figure beside him sat down.

—Fish! . . .

Gwyon shipped his oars; or sat, at any rate, as though he had done so, his hands drawn up before his face. There the fingers continued in agitated movement, dissembling the single persistent element in the variety of expressions passing over his face. Each expression embraced his features familiarly: each one was familiar to his face, but seldom had they followed one upon another in such swift succession, as the rate of his commutation between one past and another, the distant past and that more recent, increased; and the shocks of the present, those intervals when he was interrupted as he might have been changing vehicles, came more frequently. A gleam, however, persisted in Gwyon's eyes, a look of keen attention which commenced to glitter with something near cunning each time he turned it surreptitiously on his obstreperous passenger, now hunched over the plate of fish, eating ravenously.

Janet entered, bearing a single plate in her gloved hands. She was not looking where she put it down but straight across the table. The fish was almost gone. Reverend Gwyon lowered a hand and pushed the newspaper clipping aside to make room for the plate being lowered before him, noticing the clipping as he did so, recalling, —That food package, Janet? She said nothing; and Gwyon had to look up at her face to see her faint nod. Her face looked more blue than it did usually, for Janet had gone quite pale in the past few minutes. She went out saying, —There is no egg, over her shoulder, and left Gwyon staring into a plate of white navy beans.

The fish was gone, and the outburst commenced abruptly with, —That cross, you know, that cross, I've always . . . but I mean just now I didn't . . . The hand stopped in the middle of gesturing to the hall, where the cruz-con-espejos still lay on the floor.

Gripping the table edge with one hand, Gwyon snatched at the newspaper clipping with the other. He was too late; and could do no more than watch it picked up as though the wind had got it, and spread it out on the air between them. On one side a little girl in long white stockings stared out obliquely from an indistinct picture, on the other, the sharp eyes of a man from under the even division of a shiny widow's peak.

—This ...

—That, said Gwyon, planting a hand on the paper as it fell back to the table, —is Señor Hermoso Hermoso. I don't understand it. I don't understand it at all. Confession of her attacker, it says here. Why, this is Señor Hermoso Hermoso. And this picture? taken when he was young of course, why this is Señor Hermoso Hermoso, a very respectable man in San Zwingli. I knew him there, Reverend Gwyon went on muttering, —years after the crime. Years after. His hand held the paper down flat on the table between them. —Years after, Gwyon repeated, hiding the marginal calculations with his sleeve.

—Yes, but she . . . she ...

—She? . . . Gwyon looked up anxiously when he did not go on, to see him stopped, confused and preoccupied. It was a bone, in the last mouthful of fishmeat, and Gwyon's own face twitched, watching him remove it.

—But now, he went on more evenly, rid of the fishbone, —now I feel recovered. A lot recovered. Yes, here I am, he said, and though their eyes had caught one another's at a number of angles, he now looked Reverend Gwyon full in the face for the first time. —And I ... you must wonder what I've been doing, all this time?

Gwyon lowered his eyes. He started to make a steadying sound, but was interrupted as soon as his voice broke in his throat; and so he began to eat the navy beans.

—Yes, now here we are, and . . . because down there, things got confused down there, dreadfully confused. I couldn't begin to tell you everything that happened, everything ... I hardly know myself, except ... I hardly believe it now, I hardly believe they actually did happen. And so I ... well there, so I just left it all there, it was getting to be so unreal anyhow that it ... and I ... well here, here to go on from where reality left off, to recover myself, and . . . After all, it's what I was trained for, and I ... the ministry, a career with the times, in keeping with the times. He took a hand from the edge of the table to rub it over his face. —And all that . . . fabrication, there's no reason to believe it ever existed, and she . . . that city? If I fell among thieves? Why, there are places more real, there are places in books, there are people in plays more real than ... all that. It was turning into a ... a regular carnival. With a quick look up from his plate, Gwyon saw him shake his head slightly, four fingers pressed to a temple, then he broke out with the same constricted laugh. —Yes, a carnival, remember? O flesh, farewell! and he jumped up so suddenly that Gwyon dropped his fork and got hold of the table with both hands, like a man grabbing for the gunwales in fear of capsizing.

—But here, I feel like I'm being watched here. I always felt that way, but . . . secure, being watched. He paused in the corner where all Good works were conceived. —You're watching me, aren't you! He caught Gwyon's glittering eye, and then turned toward the window, but did not reach it, he was stopped by the low table there and stared down at it. —It . . . you see? he said turning, and his whole face was softened in a sickly smile, —this . . . "in hell is all manner of delight" ... he coughed, —when the Seven Sins pay a call? But no matter, his features drew tight again and he looked away. —Not now, he whispered.

Gwyon, seated firmly, feet planted wide apart on the floor as though the hull were rolling, watched him standing there looking out through the glass. Outside the window, the snow fell in heavier smaller particles, at different angles to the earth, here in foreground from right to left, and beyond from left to right, not swirling but apparently on separate planes. There was a long pause before he spoke, more quietly, without turning from the glass, —And when the seed began to grow, 'twas like a garden full of snow . . . do you remember that?

Attentive as he was, Reverend Gwyon did not seem to be listening: all of his attention was in his eyes which, narrow and widen as they might with the expressions of his face, had not lost their gleam. Since the moment he had, as it were, almost tumbled into the tailsheets, he sat erect and more firm at the head of the table. His face, which had reflected coming forth from his own memory to the present, and then retreating to extreme confines of memory lying centuries beyond his years, now seemed to embrace them all in sudden intensity as he leaned forward.

At that moment Janet came in with a sail of wrapping paper. —If Reverend will write their name on this, she said, reefing it, —for I cannot write foreign, and she handed over the stub of a black crayon. Subdued, with a quick look at the fishbones and not elsewhere, she took that plate in a square gloved hand and went out, leaving Gwyon staring at the wrapping paper, the concentration in his face gone as suddenly as it had come there. Then his hand came up slowly and plotted the words of address to Estre-madura. His lips moved, and seemed to draw the clear even whisper across the smooth table to themselves.

—And if beauty did provoke thieves, sooner than gold? The path I've come on, and you'd remember, here, how as an ... ape to nature, I excelled. The path the foul spirits kept clean, but it's over. By all that's ugly, it's done.

Real Monasterio, Gwyon wrote, his lips moving, de Nuestra Señora de la Otra Vez, as the whisper came closer, and broke out in a voice over his head,

—What's this? Spain?

—Spain? Gwyon repeated. He dropped the crayon stub, looking up, and his large hand trembled over the newspaper clipping.

—Going to Spain?

—It doesn't snow there, Gwyon said lowering his eyes, until they fixed on the little girl in long white stockings. —But the cold, on the hill where . . . He shuddered. —That land! he broke out. —Damned, empty land, you're part of it when you're there. Part of it, that self-continent land, and when you're out, outside, shut out, and look back on it, you look back on its emptiness from your own, look over its ragged edges to its ... its hard face, refuses to admit you've ever touched it. He was staring blankly at the newspaper clipping.

—But this isn't . . . you can't go now?

Gwyon looked him full in the face for the first time. —Spain is a land to flee across, he said, motionless, forcing the other face to lower in chagrin at the sight of his own undetermined features, as loss spread from his eyes out to the edges of his face, the emptiness in the eyepiece of a telescope where a point of light expands into a field of space and a worldless universe.

—She . . . They ejaculated at the same instant.

—She came to me there, Gwyon went on with somniloquent evenness, —in this monastery. I was almost asleep, and I felt her hand. I got up, I got to the window as fast as I could, and there, the moon had sent a stream of light in, across the room, right across the room to me. There it was in the sky. The moon . . . warm, like the moon . . .

—Yes but you can't . . . I'm not a child any more! and you can't . . . you used to tell me the Thessalonian witches tried to draw it down . . . Gwyon watched him vacantly as he turned away, abrupt movements round the far end of the table as though evading the image, or a mock image of the figure Gwyon had conjured. —And if it's she standing over us ... ?

—"The moon is always in motion," says Arnobius.

—To hell with Arnobius.

—"According to your representation she is a woman, with a countenance that does not alter, though her daily variation carries her through a thousand forms," Gwyon finished, and his querulous voice failed.

—That . . . that, never mind all that! The words were harsh and uneven as he shook his head, shaking away the paraselene. —I came for you! he cried out at Gwyon.

—Yes . . . ? Gwyon whispered, his hands finding one another before him on the table, as his features reformed and his eyes recovered their glitter.

—If I've come for the priesthood, and you . . .

—Yes, you . . . You brought the bull, the gold bull, Reverend Gwyon said leaning forward.

—The what? Yes, that, but listen . . .

—And you've come for the priesthood, Gwyon went on tensely.

—Yes I've come back, I've come to you, because you can tell me . . . what I must know. He lowered his eyes, then raised them gleaming before Gwyon could interrupt again. —Though why you, better than someone else, because I ... then I'll be a minister, I'll know what I'm doing . . . I'll out-preach Saint Bernard. Mothers will hide their sons, wives will hide their husbands for fear my preaching will tempt them away. Yes, he broke up so many homes the deserted wives formed a nunnery. I'll form seventy-two nunneries. Yes, "And the brother shall deliver up the brother unto death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death . . ." Why, I'll go to Laodicea, and I ... I'll be God's Fool Himself, he finished, swinging round to the windows again so abruptly that his hand cracked against the frame. He clutched it quickly in the other, then threw it out again. —Look! Look, the wren, do you see? he cried out.

A wren fluttered to an evergreen outside, its weight not enough to dislodge the snow on the spray where it landed.

—I'll go out like the early Christian missionaries did at Christmas, to hunt down the wren and kill him, yes, when the wren was king, do you remember, you told me . . . When the wren was king, he repeated, getting breath again, —at Christmas.

The wren had flown, as he turned from the window and approached with burning green eyes fixed on Gwyon. —King, yes, he repeated, —when the king was slain and eaten, there's sacrament. There's sacrament. Then at the side of the table he paused and lowered his head, a closed wrist couched in the back of his neck, mumbling, —Homo . . . homoi . . . what I mean is, Did He really suffer? And . . . no, that's not it, I mean . . . He stopped; and clinging to the edge, sank into his chair.

Reverend Gwyon sat high at the helm, steadying, hands stretched forth to the edge of the sail of wrapping paper, looking down at him as though he were trying to clamber aboard. Then, —Are you prepared? Gwyon brought out, his eyes gleaming with the challenge.

—Prepared?

—The priesthood. The trials before you, for the priesthood.

—Trials?

—There must be priests, strong and passionless, able to renounce the things of this world . . . Gwyon reached out and took his wrist, as though to pull him aboard. —To preach Him Who offers rest from sin, and hope beyond the grave. Born of the Rock, He comes forth to offer Remission of sins, and Everlasting Life.

—Yes ...

—Priests to administer Baptism, the Oath, and the Sign on the Brow, and the Communion of Bread and Cup. To preach Redemption, Sacramentary Grace, and Salvation, through the Lord of Hosts, the God of Truth who rewards for acts of piety . . .

—Yes, yes . . . Gwyon's grip was tight as a closed vise on his wrist. It became tighter.

—To be his priest, are you prepared? Gwyon repeated. —To be inured to hardship? strengthened against temptation? and your body rendered passionless?

—But I ... yes, good God, there's no passion left in me now.

—To renounce the things of this world?

—There's nothing here I want . . . Nothing.

—And when the crown is offered you . . . Gwyon came on, straining with intensity.

—Yes, the third temptation, "All these things will I give thee . . ." No, I'm through with that. He twisted in Gwyon's grip. —He offered me all that, and he's behind me. He gave me all that, and he's behind me. Just being here I've renounced him, just coming here, I've renounced all he gave me. He paused, and when Gwyon did not speak but continued to grip his wrist and fix all his attention, as he had before, with his eye, went on, —Do you think he didn't take me up on a high mountain, and show me all the kingdoms of the world? and the glory of them? and offer them to me? and give them to me? And here . . . now ... if this is not Renunciation . . .

—Could you face fifty days of fasting? Gwyon demanded suddenly.

—Why . . . why yes, if ...

—Could you stand two days exposed to extreme heat?

—But ...

—And twenty days in the snow?

—But I ...

—There are twelve trials of fortitude, Gwyon went on in a voice of intense confidence, —you must face heat and cold, hunger, thirst, and the terrors of drowning, before you take the sacramentum and be sealed on the forehead as his priest.

—But all this . . .

—You cannot be his priest without passing through all the disciplines, Gwyon said, relaxing his grip a little, speaking with an admonishing tone. —You must give proof of self-control and chastity, as Nonnus says in his In Sancta Lumina. To be rendered strong and passionless, in order to convert the army first, Gwyon went on, looking toward the window, his voice sinking to a reflective note.

—But Father . . . Father . . .

—Yes, Gwyon said closing his grip again, bringing his eyes back to the eyes which stared at him. —I have passed through all the grades, of course, to be the Pater Patrum. And then, he went on intent again, —after your death . . .

—My death? . . .

—After the cruciati you must die, of course, after the torments, when you have passed through all the disciplines, when you have attained Cryphius, and Miles, and Leo, and Perses, and Helío-dromus . . .

—Die? ...

—How else may the soul be relieved of the dread necessity of its lower nature? Gwyon demanded bending toward him.

—Father! . . .

—Yes, at my hands, Gwyon said looking at him steadily, —you must die at the hands of the Pater Patratus, like all initiates.

Gwyon's face was suffused with a flush which deepened as they sat locked rigidly hand and wrist together; and as it did the face that Gwyon looked into drained of all color until the skin was near translucent, so that it might have been not two processes but one continuous seepage of life. —No one can teach Resurrection without first suffering death himself. No one can be reborn without dying. No one can be Mithras' priest without being reborn ... to teach them to observe Sunday, and keep sacred the twenty-fifth of December as the birthday of the sun. Natalis invicti, the Unconquered Sun, Gwyon finished, turning his face to the window.

—But I ... you ... to worship the sun?

Gwyon let go his wrist abruptly, and he drew it back.

—Nonsense, said Gwyon, brisk now. —We let them think so, he confided, —those outside the mysteries. But our own votaries know Mithras as the deity superior to it, in fact the power behind the sun. Here, his name you see . . . Gwyon revealed the marginal notes on the newspaper clipping. —Abraxas and Mithras have the same numerical value, the cycle of the year as the sun's orbit describes it. Abraxas, you know, the resident of the highest Gnostic heaven . . .

The scuffling of feet sounded on the porch outside. Janet passed through the room hurriedly, behind them. Gwyon reached for his wrist again. It was not there, and Gwyon's hand gripped the edge of the table. —"The gods are benevolent and regardful of the human race," says Elisæus, Gwyon said almost in a whisper. —"If only men acknowledge the greatness of the gods and their own insignificance, and take pleasure in the gifts of the earth distributed by the hands of the king . . ."

Janet's footsteps sounded in the front hall, and the door banged open, spilling voices into the house. Gwyon paused. His hand shook on the edge of the table, and his lip quivered. —Mithras means friend, he said, —mediator. Mithras is mediator between the gods and the lower world. He waited anxiously, as though for confirmation, as footsteps approached in the hall.

—Hell? the lower world, hell? came in distracted query.

—Our own earth, Reverend Gwyon answered, and was silent until Janet's voice broke in upon them from the doorway, and he leaped up.

—It's the Use-Me Ladies to see you, Reverend, said she.

Reverend Gwyon was through the doorway in the other direction before she'd finished her sentence, muttering —I'll ... be a minute, as he passed her. The study door banged, and from inside the sound of a book hurled to the floor a moment later.

Janet fled to the kitchen, as footsteps sounded straight down the front hall to the dining room. Three ladies came in. The cold came in with them; it clung round them as they came to a stop.

—Reverend . . .

—Reverend . . .

—I beg your pardon. We have come to see Reverend Gwyon.

—Oh, I ... I ... He just went out.

—Went out?

—Went out?

—But in this kind of weather he never goes out. Reverend Gwyon is always irritable when the sky clouds over and we have bad weather.

—No, I mean . . . just out of the room. He'll be right back.

—I see.

—We'll wait. And are you visiting here?

—I? Why, you might say ... —It may have surprised you, when we mistook you for Reverend Gwyon.

—But there is a resemblance.

—There is a resemblance. Of course Reverend Gwyon is a good deal bigger.

—A good deal older. But as you're dressed, you may see where we make our mistake. Are you in the Lord's work?

—I? why I ... Yes, I'm . . .

—I can't see where I saw the resemblance.

—. . . the Reverend Gilbert Sullivan.

—But just for a minute . . .

—Just for a minute I saw it too. It may be that only this morning we were speaking of Reverend Gwyon's son.

—Who has been away a very long time.

—The prodigal son.

—But he has no brothers.

—Yes, the poor boy.

—Poor Camilla. , —May was really a mother to him.

—Poor May.

—It was a severe trial for everyone.

—He wasn't a strong boy.

—But then Camilla ...

—Poor Camilla ...

—Poor Camilla never was strong.

—Taken and left in foreign lands. Left to lie among Roman Catholics.

—I trust the Reverend Gilbert Sullivan is not a Roman Catholic priest? The name . . .

—The name ...

—Me? Good God, no. I mean ...

—The name suggests Irish extraction. Perhaps his forebears are north of Ireland?

—Perhaps we may ask Reverend Gilbert Sullivan to attend our Christmas supper tonight?

—Of course we may.

—Of course he may.

Hurraaaph! . . . —Look out, or by God I'll split your skull. Shake the snow off before you come inside. Oh, good day, ladies. I didn't see you, ladies. Don't mind us, the dog and me. We've been outdoors, as you can see. We've been working, both very tired. Up the stairs, now! Up the stairs!

—Working, indeed.

—Indeed! —Indeed!

—Why I could smell him across the room.

—He wanted to sing at the supper tonight. One of his songs from the saloon.

—It is a disgrace to have him our sexton.

—It is a disgrace to have him living right here under the roof of the parsonage.

—But Reverend Gwyon . . .

—Reverend Gwyon . . .

—Reverend Gwyon always smells so fresh.

—Even his charity is stretched too far.

—Indeed it is. But I've been thinking . . .

—I've been thinking, don't misunderstand me, the very same thing. After all, the sexton is getting older.

—The Lord will deliver him.

—The Lord will release him.

—The Lord will have pity on the poor man.

—Why, Reverend Gwyon.

—Reverend Gwyon . . .

—We've come to ask you about our supper, the Christmas supper in the church tonight.

—Mrs. Dorman is going to sing. My sister is going to play the piano.

—And we've arranged for a visiting lecturer.

—A former Y.M.C.A. official. He is going to give a humorous talk.

—Nothing flighty. Nothing frivolous.

—Oh dear no, his talk will have some meat in it.

—I understand he has been in Africa. Not just traveling, wasting time. He was fully occupied with the Lord's work.

—And your guest will come.

—Yes, he is coming. We shall see both of you there tonight.

—Reverend Gwyon might like to hear our poem.

—Reverend Gilbert might like to hear our poem.

—Both of them might like to hear the poem we've written for the Christmas supper tonight.

—The last two verses. The rest will have to be a surprise!

So as members of the Use-Me So as members of the Use-Me So as members of the Use-Me

We hope to conquer all We hope to conquer all We hope to conquer all Offering the fellowship of Jesus Offering the fellowship of Jesus Offering the fellowship of Jesus

To those who need him most of all To those who need him most of all To those who need him most of all

For when we get to heaven For when we get to heaven For when we get to heaven

A reward there will be in store A reward there will be in store A reward there will be in store

For those whose daily living

' For those whose daily living

For those whose daily living

Has been "Use-Me evermore." Has been "Use-Me evermore." Has been "Use-Me evermore."

When they looked round, they were alone in the room. When they left, seeking their footprints, those were gone under the snow; and the prints of departure so quickly obliterated as to leave no witness that their visit had ever been made at all.

Though Reverend Gwyon, alone again in his study, found time to mutter, —There was a woman's grade in the Mysteries. Porphyry mentions it ... hummn . . . He turned up open books on his desk. —Hyena. That was it. Hyena.

His gaze fell upon the Bible. —Near Christmas! Christmas! he said almost viciously, as his eye followed lines on the open page. —Then the moon shall be confounded and the sun ashamed . . . His hand flung over the pages of Isaiah. —The sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee: but the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory. Thy sun shall no more go down; neither shall the moon withdraw itself: for the Lord shall be ...

Suddenly Gwyon's hand swept the Bible to the floor. He stood there quivering the length of his frame. Then he crumpled the newspaper clipping from Osservatore Romano; and after it, one by one, the books went to the floor, Tertullian's De Prœscripúone Hœreticorum, Arnobius' Adversus Nationes, De Errore Profanarum Religionum of Firmicus Maternus . . . He did not stop until came to Saint John of the Cross, which he opened, removed the contents, and dropped the hollow Dark Night of the Soul after the rest of them. Then he straightened the gold bull figure to its feet on his desk, and stood with his hands on its horns looking out at the darkening sky.

—Cannot they see, it is exhausted? he whispered. Thunder sounded, beyond Mount Lamentation, and it sounded again.

Then he broke out,

—Herakles star-adorned, king of fire, ruler of the universe, thou sun, who with thy far-flung rays art the guardian of mortal life, with thy gleaming car revolving the wide circuit of thy course . . . Belus thou art named on the Euphrates, Ammon in Libya, Apis of the Nile art thou by birth, Arabian Kronos, Assyrian Zeus . . . but whether thou art Serapis, or the cloudless Zeus of Egypt, or Kronos, or Phaëthon, many-titled Mithra, Sun of Babylon, or in Greece Apollo of Delphi, or Wedlock, whom Love begat in the shadowy land of dreams . . . whether thou art known as Paieon, healer of pain, or Æther with its varied garb, or star-bespangled Night—for the starry robes of night illuminate the heaven—lend a propitious ear to my prayer. He paused, then went on more loudly,

—O king, greatest of the gods, thou sun, the lord of heaven and earth, god of gods, thy breath is potent, if it seem good to thee, forward me on my way to the supreme deity who begat thee and formed thee, for I am the man Gwyon.

—I invoke thee, O Zeus the Sun-god Mithra Serapis, invincible, giver of mead, Melikertes, lord of the mead, abraalbabachae-bechi . . .

He stood, his hand on the bull's horns, and the expression on his face of a man waiting for something which has happened long before.

Each time Janet's eyes reached the foot of the page, she returned them to the top, to verse eight of chapter twenty-four of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, —All these are the beginning of sorrows, and read the column down again. She stood and bore this repetition silent for some time, until at last, after hanging for a moment on verse twenty-four, her gaze shortened to her bare hands clasped before her, and under the care of her eyes they opened, sustaining the shock of her pupils in two dark scars on the palms. The palms were clean, but the rest of her hands as she turned them, from the nails down along the ridges and jointures of the fingers, were not. Suddenly her left hand closed, and she dug the firm flesh on the back of it with her forefinger.

Through the window the snow fell fast and heavily, the leisured dignity of perfect flakes lost in bitter water-soaked streaks to earth, each moment passing in more frantic declivity until the artifice of its identity had entirely disappeared, and it was rain.

The sound of thunder drew her to the glass. She stood looking out. Then she raised her hands and tried to rub away the two blots on the windowpanes she had left earlier, but she could not, and her hands moved more and more slowly until they stopped, and left her staring down at the carriage barn, barely discernible below. As she looked, a hand came back to her face and commenced moving over it, not in caress along its surface, nor excitedly, but deliberately resting on her features in one position after another; until that hand stopped, the thumb along the ridge of her nose and the palm over her mouth, and she drew her left hand back to grasp the empty folds at her breast.

A minute later and she'd pulled the frame of type from the flatbed hand press in the corner, unlocked it and spilled the letters all over the floor, banged the Bible closed, hesitated a moment over it and then pushed it off into the pile of metal spellingless letters and come out her door. Her steps creaked in the hallway, but the Town Carpenter's voice came on from behind his door as she passed, evenly absorbed in reading aloud to the dog, —"While we go now to bring the Wanderer up, it should not be forgotten that the house, completely furnished, is awaiting him, and he has only to knock at the door, enter, and be at home" . . . (They were in volume I of Lew Wallace's The Prince of India, or, Why Constantinople Fell.)

At the other end of the hall Janet reached the empty sewing room and went straight in among the roses upside-down, the green-capped pink-faced dogs faded on the west wall behind the chaise longue where she suddenly saw him sitting rigidly erect, his drawn fist plunged into his neck so that his arm stood out like a wing, and his brows noticeable for being contracted so forcefully that they seemed to have seized the face and held it in this stifling grasp. Apparently he was asleep. Janet bent close, studying the thin face, the slightly crooked nose, the rough chin and bare throat. The left hand lay in his lap as rigid as the rest of him, the fingers doubled in upon themselves and the veins standing out around the clotted blood, where Janet reached and prodded the torn place with her forefinger. Not a muscle moved in his face, nor anywhere else about him; and Janet turned and ran out, down the hall, and the stairs, and out of the house, leaving him there in the darkening room, where he slept in this same tense numb position until the roses had faded to stripes, and the walls themselves had lost their boundaries. He waked staring straight ahead to that full consciousness which only sheer horror attains: his blood stopped. For a prolonged instant everything stopped and the blood, without motion, was cast as a solid of unbearable weight and impenetrable density.

—No one knows who I am.

It was a full minute before he moved; and when he did he burst to his feet, as though to shatter this irregular surface of space enclosed by merciless solids. —No one in this house knows me, he brought out; but his mouth was so dry that the words came to pieces before he got them out where his own ear could resolve them, and he stood sucking the inside of his mouth in upon itself, plying the barren, abruptly unfamiliar hollow with his insensible tongue until its features dissolved, and he could repeat, —None of them knows who I am.

But even before these words were out, something else had assailed him. He began looking wildly round the room, where shapes refused to identify themselves, and endured only in terms of the others, each a presence made possible only by what everything else was not, each suffering the space it filled to bear it only as a part of a whole which, with a part standing forth to identify itself, would perish.

—Who was here? he whispered. Already the inside of his mouth was afloat with saliva, so that he swallowed, raised the pool on his tongue and exhausted its surface on the roof of his mouth and swallowed again. —She was here, he said, gripping his chin in his hand.

Starting again, the blood on its course had set every interior surface of his body stingingly aflame with the thrill of its own existence; and he stamped his feet, and shook his hands in the air. —This . . . this ... he whispered hoarsely. Then he grabbed one hand with the other and gripped it tight as he could, until the balance of that was out and he exchanged them, gripping the second with the first, and finally got out of the room with his hands interlocked before him, the fingertips of each one straining in upon the bones of the other.

There had been a good deal of noise in this last hour or so, books thrown and dropped, the type-metal words smashed into their meaningless components, doors banging, and all these fragments were recapitulated now in the thunder, as he broke out into the hall and down the stairs repeating, —Don't you know me? Don't you know who I am? You know who I am. Don't you know who I am? . . . , words which broke the surface, and followed one another as discordant articulations of his heavy breathing. Reverend Gwyon had gone out a minute before, hatless, across the bare boards of the porch so heavily that they seemed not yet to have recovered silence, when he reached them and made out Gwyon's great figure striding down the slope toward the carriage barn. He followed precipitously, sliding and slipping on the soaked pores of the snow as though it were the headlong incline of twenty-five years past; and before he'd reached the bottom he did fall, headlong, so that the crust of the snow gashed his cheekbone and, for the moment he lay there, smothered his rehearsal, —You know who I am. Don't you know who I am? Don't you know me? . . .

The rain was coming down the more heavily for the saturated surface which awaited it; and he was drenched when he gained his feet. Just then there was a crash of thunder.

Gwyon had already made the carriage barn and thrown the door open. There was electricity there, and Gwyon stood just inside, his great hand on the switch and his thumb jamming it back and forth, back and forth, with no consequence but a snap. —Damnation, Gwyon muttered; and then, aware of someone behind him, said, —The bull. I came down to make sure of the bull . . . But Gwyon had hardly got the words out of his mouth before his upraised arm was grasped in the dark so heavily that it almost pulled him over; and the lightning followed so fast on the words that followed, that both were gone, and the transformation was complete, when Gwyon heard,

—Father . . . Am I the man for whom Christ died?

Louder than laughter, the crash raised and sundered them in a blinding agony of light in which nothing existed until it was done, and the tablet of darkness betrayed the vivid, motionless, extinct and enduring image of the bull in his stall and Janet bent open beneath him.

Then it seemed full minutes before the cry, pursuing them with its lashing end, flailed through darkness and stung them to earth. Water fell between them, from a hole in the roof. The smell of smoke reached them in the dark.

With no warning uncertain flicker, the light came on. Before them, a metal wash-tub lay on the floor with a square hole riven through its bottom. The door was charred and smoking around the hinges and the lock.

Then the shadows round the walls were set dancing in duplication, each steady dark shape mocked by a distorted image leaping round it, as the Town Carpenter appeared with a lantern and stood swinging it in the door. —There now! he said; and though his voice was not loud it rang with confirmation, as he entered and walked over toward the bull's stall. —There! he said, swinging round, and the lantern with him, —There's a masterful pizzle for you!

The bull shifted on its feet, sounding its weight on the board floor, and turned its head from them and withdrew.

Gwyon was gone. They both turned to the door at the same moment to look; and by the time they reached the door together, Gwyon's figure showed halfway up the slope toward the house.

—There now, said the Town Carpenter, nodding and swinging the lantern out. His coat had come open to show long-underwear buttons to the waist. He'd pulled on his trousers and galoshes to come out, and the trousers were on backwards. —It's that I came down to look at, he said, swinging the lantern toward the balloon stand, which was as good as he'd left it. Then he held the lantern aloft, over the figure poised in the doorway of the carriage barn.

—There, he's fallen!

The Town Carpenter reached out and seized his arm. They could both see Gwyon on the ground up near the house.

—He's fallen. Will you let me go help him?!

—And would you humble him, the Town Carpenter answered without relaxing his grip, —by helping him back to his feet?

He hung there in the Town Carpenter's hand until Gwyon had recovered and mounted the porch steps. Then the Town Carpenter opened his hand slowly, eyes fixed on him, until he suddenly wrenched away and ran up the hill laughing.

The Town Carpenter lowered the lantern and looked into the barn again, murmuring. Then he snapped off the electric light, pulled the door closed, and trudged up the slope hitching the binding front of his pants as he went. At the kitchen door he raised the glass chimney, blew out the lantern and went in, pulling a light cord as he passed, straight over to his pot on the cold stove. There were voices, or a voice, in the dining room, or down the hall, he did not know and did not listen.

—"Away, to hell, to hell!" Do you remember that?

The Town Carpenter rolled up his sleeves, took a piece of yellow soap from the metal sink, and dipped his hands into the pot.

—"Oh, might I see hell, and return again, How happy were I then!" Yes, yes, that's it! Back there!

The Town Carpenter found the soap among folds in the bottom of the pot, lifted it out, and dried his hands. —Something amiss, he murmured as he pulled out the light, —we must simplify, as he tramped toward the back stairs.

Janet came from behind the door of the butler's pantry. She stopped when she heard the voice down the hall, or in the din- ing room, she could not tell, but stood for a moment listening, thoroughly wet, her skirt torn, her hair matted down. Then she came on.

—Yes, back there, that's the place! They're waiting! Yes, the harrowing of hell. That's it. Then wood splintered, in the dining room.

Janet found him alone there. He had just split the top of the low table under the window down the middle. —What is it? Janet asked calmly, coming closer.

—Damnation, he answered, backing round the table.

—Damnation? she repeated, clearly and quietly, as he got round and backed through the door.

—Damnation? he repeated questioning, and stopping as she came close, holding to the door frame.

—That is life without love, Janet said. —Who weeps for you?

He turned and broke down the hall.

—Whom do you weep for? she pursued him. He reached the front door and turned to stare at her, advancing in her torn blood-streaked skirt. —Do you not know that luxury, that most exquisite luxury we have? she kept on until she reached him.

—You ... he burst out, holding a quivering hand before him, —were you . . . you down in the . . . barn? ...

Janet was up beside him, so close that their rough cheeks almost touched. —No love is lost, she said, and kissed him on the cheek where the snow had torn it.

He stared at her an instant longer, and bolted out the front door.

The Town Carpenter had found a note under his door when he entered his room. He read it aloud to the dog, who raised her head from the pillow to listen. —Dawn tomorrow, a great deal of work to be done in the church. It was on an outsize piece of paper, and signed Gw. At the foot it said, "Return vol. 18 Plants to Raym Britannica." All this was written in very large letters.

The Town Carpenter held it up to the light, and finding no other message he started to file it in a drawer which jingled with bottles when he opened it. But he turned with the paper still in his hand, took out his huge gold watch, weighed it for a moment without opening the case, and laid it on the dresser. Next he brought out a flat gold case and stood running his thumb over the inscription.

The dog whined; and a minute later the light was out, and the Town Carpenter's voice sounded weary in the darkness. —Move over, you're taking too much room. Did I brush your teeth? Here. "Move over. Go to sleep. We have a lot of work to do tomorrow. The Depot Tavern showed one of the few lights in that end ot town.

—I wouldn't dare go out in this, said the small man with beer, staring through the glass into the clear night. —I'd go in over my head somewhere.

The man with the blue woman tattooed on his arm was about to comment when the door banged open, and the draggled figure who arrived demanded cognac before he reached the bar.

—No cognac, I got only some brandy here.

—All right, brandy. A glass of brandy. Here wait, I said a glass, not a ... not that thing.

A tumbler half-filled was put before him, and he took out a twenty-dollar bill.

The small man sipped his beer, and looked wonderingly at this extravagant diversion.

—Here, what's that? What's that?

—What? . . .

—Right there behind you. In the glass.

—This here? This coconut?

—Good God . . . it's a griffin's egg. Let me see it.

—This here's a coconut.

—Let me see it. Where did it come from?

—Some guy sent it to me, he was in the service . . .

—Let me see it.

—You shake it, you can hear the milk inside rattling. Hear it?

—Yes, yes, I hear it. Good God . . . will you sell it to me?

—Sell it?

—Here. Do you want more?

—Well, I ... for a coconut I couldn't hardly ask you . . .

—Here, twenty'more. Is this enough?

The small man's hand shook as he put his beer on the bar, silently, not to interrupt. The glass was almost opaque, spotted with fingermarks, for he had been holding it all the afternoon.

Further up the bar, the blue woman who had been reclining for some time was suddenly snapped up and strangled until her forehead almost met her knees.

—When's the next train?

—Where you going?

—Down.

—Down where?

—All the way.

—In a minute, in three or four minutes there's one, the small man brought out, greatly excited to hear himself speak. —In three or four minutes there's one, he repeated. —There's one in three or four minutes.

They held their breath until the door banged again, shivering the pane between them and the night. Then they stared at the empty glass, and the two twenty-dollar bills on the counter. Even the twelve-point buck seemed to have a dusty eye on it.

The train arrived in New York at eleven that night.

The cab slipped on the wet pavement, in and out of the slush in the gutters, thrusting itself ahead of everything else in the frenzied motion of the streets, tearing open the half-darkness of side streets with its lights and its noise.

When it pulled in at the curb he leaped out, thrusting uncounted bills into the driver's hand, and dropped his weight against the door as he reached for the bell. But the door was not locked, and he got into the downstairs hall. There he was stopped by a voice shouting in a fury from above,

—I tell you I goin to do it, Mister Brown . . . There was a heavy thud, and three more. —I tell you, I tell you I goin to kill you, and now I doin so ... Mister Brown, and the sound of hitting, again and again, as he got through the vast living room, up the stairs past the polychrome wood saint in the niche extending the scar of the arm offered in benediction.

He switched on the light on the balcony, and there was silence. He looked into Recktall Brown's bedroom. It was empty. Then he ran down the hall, round the corner and on to the last doorway.

Fuller was alone. He was standing over his bed in his underwear with his broken umbrella in his hand, and the spread on the sagging bed rumpled and torn where he'd been beating it. —I caution him I goin to do it, Fuller said hardly looking round, the gold of his teeth a quick glitter in the light from the hall.

Two suitcases stood packed at the foot of the bed, both cardboard and tied with heavy twine. The high-crowned straw lay on top of them. On the table, among a number of cigar stubs, and the razor blade which Fuller used to pare them with, was the cigar whose wrapper had peeled when Recktall Brown had bitten off the end, now wrapped in a cologne-scented handkerchief. Under the table, all over the floor, bits of paper were scattered: RECKTIL BROWN, REKTELL BROWN, RECKTILL BROWNE . . . covering the pile of crucifixes stacked against the wall.

—Where is he?

—Mister Brown take a short trip, say he will return tomorrow. Sometime when he vexed he become very unpredictable. —What was it?

—He taken a ticket from me, Fuller answered, his chest shaking under the buttoned front of his underwear, yellowed by his life in it.

—But that smell? What's that awful smell? Like hair burning.

—That's what it is, an evil smell, Fuller said. —That's what evil smell like.

IV

"I've had a good dream, gentlemen," he said in a strange voice, with a new light, as of joy, in his face.

—Dostoevski, The Brothers Karamazov

—Sempre con fè sincera ... la mia preghiera . . . ai santi tabernacoli salì . . .

No sound but this, the radio, behind Esme's door. Otto raised his clenched hand to knock again; and as his knuckles hit the door it came open an abrupt four inches. His smile warped into surprise, every line in his face converted to its contradiction.

Chaby faced him over the chain. Chaby had on a suede jacket, the collar turned up in back; and his hair looked like a pastry-cook's triumph.

—NelFora del dolore . . . perchè, Signore, perchè me ne rimuneri così?

—Is Esme here?

—No.

—Do you know where she is?

—Jesis how should I know. She went to get some coffee.

—Do you know where?

—Jesis how should I know where. Chaby did not slam the door until Otto had reached the stairs.

Esme was sitting at a counter eating toast. She wore no make-up but faint sharp lines on her eyebrows. She smiled, and held out her hand to Otto, who realized, as he sat beside her, that she was breakfasting with the heavy-necked person on her right. He was showing her pictures of snapsnot size. —They came out nice, he said. —Much better than most of the girls we get, innocent-looking like. But look at these, look at these of me. The photographs showed him in theatrical attitudes. In one he held a knife. In another, a pistol. In another, a cord, ready for garroting. In all, he wore a hat (as he did now), and a cigarette stub stuck in the corner of his mouth (as one was now). —Whadda you say?

—It's very kind of you, Esme said smiling to him.

—I'll come see you Friday, huh?

—Who was that? Otto asked when the man left.

—He's a nice man who is going to act in movies, Esme said.

—What did he want from you?

—I think he wanted me to act in the mo-vies.

They had both smiled, and for a moment they were together. Then Otto said, —I just called at your apartment, and he withdrew his hand.

—And did you see Mister Sinis-ter-ra? she asked, still with her smile.

—Yes. What's he doing up there?

—He came to see me.

—So I gather. When, last night?

—Otto, that isn't nice, she said, sobered, disappointed.

—I'm sorry. Otto, suddenly, could not afford to be left so: he had withdrawn as a woman withdraws, to be followed. There was no pursuit in Esme's eyes, as she turned them from him. —Esme, I'm sorry.

—You're not sorry, Otto. You only say that. It is a habit. There was no admonition and no feeling of hurt in Esme's voice, she spoke to him simply.

—Esme . . . Oh look, that isn't what I meant ...

—Why do you say he slept with me?

—That isn't what I meant at all, said Otto (and in that instant almost retorted, —Well did he?). Then Esme was smiling happily again. She was smiling at someone behind him.

—Hello Stanley, she said gently. —And do you know Otto?

Stanley nodded and said, —Hello, putting the book he carried from his right to his left hand, so that he could shake hands; but he got no further. His right hand dropped empty to his side.

—Poor Stanley. Why are you so dole-ful?

—I'm all right, Stanley said. He stood there, his only motion a slight weaving toward them, as though his mustache weighed him in their direction. Finally he said, —Did you hear about Charles?

—No, what?

—He's in Bellevue. They took him there last night.

Max came in. He was smiling. He greeted them, and ordered coffee. —How's your play, Otto? he said.

—Well as a matter of fact I'm sort of upset, Otto said. —I misplaced a copy or two of it. In a dispatch case. A pigskin dispatch case. You haven't heard anything? . . .

—No, I haven't heard a thing, Max said agreeably,

—I heard about your play, Stanley said. —You found it?

—No, I mean I just heard about it.

—What did you hear, that it's plagiarized?

—No, I didn't mean that. I'd like to read it.

Otto murmured, —You would, would you . . . Esme said, —Otto has a guilty conscience, and Max raised his coffee cup and said nothing.

—I think I'd better get back uptown, Otto said in a strained tone, casual with great effort.

—Really, Otto? Esme said, surprised, as he took her breakfast check. —Then thank you for my breakfast.

—Did you have bacon and eggs and fruit and pastry?

—No, that was the gentleman from the movies, said Esme.

—All right, he said, crumpling the check in his hand.

—Thank you, Otto.

—Do you want me to go?

—But Otto why should I want you to go?

He lit a fresh cigarette and ordered another cup of coffee. They looked up and Stanley was gone. Esme turned to see him standing undecided outside, on the street corner. —Poor Stanley, she said gently, and smiled.

—He just needs a woman, Max said.

—He needs money, said Esme.

—Money is simply a substitute for the mother in Stanley's case. He has guilt feelings about her being in the hospital, and anyone who gave him money would be filling the mother's place, the nourishment substitute.

—I guess Hannah gives him what he needs, Otto said in morose confidence.

—She'd like to.

—Well she was sleeping with him a couple of nights ago.

—Where'd you hear that?

—She was there undressed at five in the morning. I don't know what else she was doing.

—Was Stanley there?

—Sure he was there, Otto said defiantly.

—Well, so she finally made him, said Max. He smiled and finished his coffee. —You haven't seen my pictures yet, have you Otto. The show opened two days ago. I'm going up to the gallery later, come along?

—Not now, Max. Otto looked at Esme.

—They've sold seven of them, Max said as he left.

—I hate him, Otto said when he was out the door.

—Otto, what a silly thing to say.

—I do, I ... I just mistrust him so much. When he's around I'd like to have a gun in my pocket. Not to do anything with, just to have it there, he added, and brandished the sling.

—Yes, Esme said, suddenly putting her forehead in her hand and running her fingers into her hair. —Because he will survive.

—Esme, I want to talk to you. Esme . . . She looked up, surprised, and she looked frightened. —I want to talk to you.

—Talk to me, she said, and smiled.

—But not here, not in this place, I ... We're liable to be ... Someone's liable to ... Will you go for a walk with me.

Otto paid for five breakfasts, and they went out. They walked toward Washington Square.

—What, Otto? she asked him, seated on a bench.

—I don't know. I mean, look.

—What did you do to yourself? she asked, pointing to his cheek.

—I cut myself with a lousy razor blade. Look, Esme. I mean, are you really with me? I mean, are you and I, well, together? I mean I always feel like I'm sharing you with everyone in sight.

—Otto, you make everything so difficult for yourself.

—I do?

—Yes, Otto. You push something and push it until it breaks.

—I don't want to do that, Esme. I don't mean to.

—And then you do all the more, Otto,

—I love you, Esme. I've kept telling you that. I love you.

—No you don't, Otto.

—I do. I love you.

—No you don't, Otto. You don't even know who I am.

Esme spoke to him calmly, explaining, as though to a child, an adult truth.

—But I do. And even if I don't, is that my fault?

—You had me all filled in before you met me, Otto. There was no room for me at all.

—Esme, don't be ridiculous.

—It is not ridic-ulous, Otto. It is only true, you do not know who I am.

—But I've . . . you've . . . and I don't even know if you've been faithful to me, he burst out.

—You can only be faithful to people one at a time, Otto.

He sat staring at her face turned half from him. Then he reached up and turned it to him with one hand. Esme looked frightened. —Why are you beautiful? he demanded. Her eyes opened more widely, and she tried to lower her face. —Why are you? he repeated, looking at her. She did pull her chin back, and lower her face, silent. —Because you ... I look at your face, this flesh and bone so many inches high and wide, and the nose sticking out and the . . . the punctures of nostrils, and your lips and I ... and those two things that are eyes, and I ... why should that be beautiful, anyhow. What is it? ... and Otto's voice was suddenly constricted, —What is beauty . . . He cleared his throat, —that your face should be beautiful? . . .

—If it is not beautiful for someone, it does not exist, she said.

—Yes, well . . . well ... he muttered, lowering his eyes. —Look, he said when he raised them again. —Is it my fault if you haven't even let me know who you are?

—But you never tried, Otto. No part of you ever tried.

—Look, I've done everything I ever could for you, haven't I? I . . . I'm sick and tired of all this foolishness, this ... I apologize for behaving the way I have with some of your friends but . . .

—You are the only one you make unhappy when you behave badly, Otto. You become the victim of your own observations.

—Do you love me?

—It is not so simple, Otto.

—But you've said you did. She was silent. —I ... damn it, I get all mixed up with other people, he broke out finally, clenching his free hand over the hand protruding from the sling. —I ... it's like trying to tie a knot before a mirror, I know just what to do and then do everything backwards. He sat looking down. Then suddenly he raised his eyes and said, —Do you ... do I look like Chaby?

Esme looked up at him. She did not smile, but her face cleared and it was lightened, as a smile would have lightened it. —Otto, she said. —No. Why did you ask me that?

—I don't know. Never mind, he said lowering his eyes again. —It's just that I ... sometimes I feel my face and ... or I feel myself moving or looking at something in a way that I ... well never mind, never mind that. Never mind it then.

Suggestion of the smile she had not smiled faded from her face, and quietly she said, —All right.

—But no, I mean, I don't know. Sometimes I do, sometimes I almost do, and then I lose it. Like a story I heard once, a friend of mine told me, somebody I used to know, a story about a forged painting. It was a forged Titian that somebody had painted over another old painting, when they scraped the forged Titian away they found some worthless old painting underneath it, the forger had used it because it was an old canvas. But then there was something under that worthless painting, and they scraped it off and underneath that they found a Titian, a real Titian that had been there all the time. It was as though when the forger was working, and he didn't know the original was underneath, I mean he didn't know he knew it, but it knew, I mean something knew. I mean, do you see what I mean? That underneath that the original is there, that the real . . . thing is there, and on the surface you ... if you can only . . . see what I mean?

She had rested her head back and closed her eyes. He put his arm over her shoulders, and she sat forward.

—Esme . . . The brief strokes of anxiety and sharp strokes of detail broke the fragments of expression on his face, and he seemed able to catch none of them and fix it congruent upon that image of original honesty which he clutched at so desperately beneath the surface, and the second surface, with each instant more confused in the succession of mocking streaks of parody which he could not control. A moment came when he might have thought, and even understood; but he had not time to embrace it, and it passed. —It's just . . . damn it, Esme . . .

—Please don't swear at me, she said dully, her lowered eyes on a pigeon passing before them.

—I'm sorry, but I ... Then he laughed with abrupt hoarseness. —Do you remember once when . . . Look, don't you see? I mean, you can't just live this way, you can't . . . wait, where are you going?

—I have to go now, Otto.

—But don't, Esme please don't go, I want to talk to you.

—We have talked, she said, looking him in the face; and Otto reached up and drew an alterant stroke on his mustache.

—I want to marry you, Esme. I, you can't go on this way, I mean so insecure, the way you live, and I want to, if I can save you from . . .

—Save me from! she broke in, mocking. —It is always saving from, she said lowering her eyes, —and never saving for. Everyone fights against things, but people do not fight for things.

Otto stood unsteadily beside her, as though ready to curb her if she turned away. —And I ... even if you don't love me now, I . . . like Saint John of the Cross said, "Where there is no love, put love, and take out love," and I ...

She looked up at him, surprised, at that. Then she said, —Is that how he meant it? Before Otto could answer she went on, lowering her eyes again, —No, how did he know what he meant. When people tell a truth they do not understand what they mean, they say it by accident, it goes through them and they do not recognize it until someone accuses them of telling the truth, then they try to recover it as their own and it escapes. The saints were very mean people.

—Yes, I ... yes that's it, and I ... I want to marry you. She looked up and smiled at him. —How could I marry you, if I haven't got any stomach?

—Esme, stop it, I really mean it. I mean, you know I'm sincere. I've always been sincere with you.

She put her hand on his. —Otto, she said. —Sincerity becomes the honesty of people who cannot be honest with themselves.

—Esme . . .

—I have to go away.

—All right then, damn it, go.

She turned and walked away from him. Then he was beside her again.

—Esme ...

—What is it, Otto? she asked in a quiet voice, looking at him like a stranger whom she did not know.

—Esme, I ... look, please . . .

—Goodbye, Otto, she said gently.

—Esme . . .

She walked away from him easily. It was only eleven o'clock in the morning.

Gazing wistfully into a shop window filled with ladies' lingerie, including a brassiere in black lace with black satin hands cupping the mannequin's composition bosom, Anselm stood with a six-year-old girl by the hand. In his other hand, Anselm had Tolstoy's Kingdom of God, but it was folded in a magazine with a girl and an umbrella, and nothing else, on the cover, so that all that showed of the small book was the spine. The little girl was looking up the street, in the direction of Stanley's approach, and she pulled her escort in that direction, but he hung back, rubbing the rough inflammations on his chin, and staring into the shop window.

Stanley might have gone on without disturbing that reverie, and so home to work (he was carrying his cardboard practice keyboard and a book), but Max was approaching from the other corner, pausing now to greet Otto, who came from the direction of the park.

Without a word Anselm took Stanley's book from his hand, looked at it and handed it back, muttering something. Then he said abruptly, —I dreamt about you last night. Stanley looked anxious. —I know it was you, it must have been you, Anselm went on, before the others came near. —I was crossing the street in this dream and somebody, somebody I knew well, it must have been you, was coming across the other way with something cradled up in his arms like a baby. It was wrapped in a black shawl, I just took for granted it's a baby, and then he said, then you said, I want you to meet my mother. I look and it was a tiny little old woman, this tiny little old woman was in the shawl ...

—Yes, but ... all right, but . . .

—What's the matter? Anselm was looking at him with intense curiosity.

—I just wish you wouldn't . . . Stanley looked one way and the other and down. —It's sort of ...

—It was, it was strange, it was kind of a nightmare.

Stanley raised his eyes, and they looked at each other intently until Max was upon them. Then Anselm laughed suddenly, pulling the little girl round between them, and spoke as though carrying on the same conversation. —Come on, play us something. Look, Stanley brought his instrument, he said, brandishing his magazine at the practice keyboard which Stanley held defensively in front of him. —He's going to play us something by Vivaldi. Come on, Stanley, for Christ sake don't be so bashful, some of that nice Jesuit baroque music, be-do-be-boo, be-be, boody doody boo . . . did you hear the one about the boy who sat up on the rock? and fitted fiddle strings . . .

—Please . . . Stanley began.

—Here comes Otto, Max said.

—And with every erection he played a selection from Johann Sebastian Bach.

—I have to get home, Stanley said.

—To what, your five-fingered honeymoon?

—To ... to work, Stanley said, as Anselm turned to look across the street, where a tall man hunched in a green wool shirt gave a nod of recognition slight enough to be disavowed if it were not returned. Max nodded back agreeably. —Who is that? Stanley asked Max.

—Some half-ass critic, Anselm said, —a three time psychoanaloser. He spat into the gutter. —With his fake conversion to the Church. You remember that little tiny girl that used to be around? she came about up to his waist. He used to take her home and dress her in little girl's clothes and rape her.

—Too much Dostoevski, Max said.

—The stupid bastard with his half-ass conversion, Anselm muttered, looking from the child who held his hand, glazedly at the sidewalk. —Christ, he said, rubbing his chin, —that's what kills me, a guy like that ... as a colored girl, in a plaid skirt which Max identified from behind as the Stuart tartan, passed saying —Reading Proust isn't just reading a book, it's an experience and you can't reject an experience ... to the boy she was with.

—It's the Black Watch, said Anselm, and turning to Stanley, —Why don't you change your luck, Stanley. You . . . God damn it what are you looking at me that way for? . . .

—I ... I'm cold, Stanley said lowering his eyes. His jaw was shaking.

—Cold! You . . . you . . . What did you do to your face, anyway? What's the matter with your chin, anyway? Anselm burst out suddenly.

—I got mixed up this morning, Stanley said handling his chin, —and I shaved with the toothpaste instead of ...

—With the toothpaste! Anselm said, withdrawing with a quick shock of a laugh. —You ought to try a cored apple filled with cold cream, you . . .

—And last night I had a terrible experience, Stanley went on, agitated, looking up at both of them. —I went into a delicatessen to get a can of soup and some bread, and the man behind the money ... I mean behind the cash register was counting up the money and there was some in a paper bag on the counter, and I picked up the wrong bag and almost went out with the money, and when I went back with it and said I was sorry they . . . they weren't nice about it at all.

A blond boy in tight-fitted dungarees passed saying, —Zheeed . . .

—Well what the hell would you go back with it for?

—They almost called the police.

—Stanley's Christian spirit will undo us all, said Max, who had been standing back.

—Yeah, we'd make him a saint if it wasn't so God damn expensive, Anselm retorted, looking at Stanley. —Three million lire for a lousy canonization, he muttered.

—No, he won't do. Max stepped back and looked Stanley up and down. —He eats meat. His body would putrefy before they could get the halo on. Poor peasant girls from southern Europe make the best ones, brought up on beans.

—That's true, said Anselm, musing, looking down. Then he looked up querulously at Max.

From the drugstore behind them came a fat youth who looked, at this distance, to have his beard painted on. It dripped to a point at his chin. —If she won't pray for me, I don't know who will, he was saying animatedly, tossing the words about before him with plump fluttering hands. The boy with him took his arm as they crossed the street.

Max had nodded. —He gave my show a good write-up, Max explained.

—Do you know him? Stanley asked.

—You can't go to a single vernissage without seeing him. He says stupid things with a manner, you know, he has a certain style, so that people remember him as clever.

—People like that make me nervous, Stanley said.

—People like what.

—When they're so ... queer.

—Queer! Anselm burst out, and continued to watch them cross the street. —That one, queer? He's not a homosexual, he's a Lesbian. Max laughed; and Anselm went on, —And that boy poet with him, for Christ sake. Poet! . . . these limp flabby-assed little . . . boy poets who sit around waiting for somebody to give them the business in their . . . Jesus Christ, these boy poets and their common asphodel. Anselm laughed again, a tight constrained laugh looking across the street at the receding couple. —Their common asphodel, he laughed, taking the magazine from under Max's arm, and recovering the fit of abstraction he'd sunk into a moment before as he turned the pages.

—I liked your poem, Stanley said to Max. —The one they just published? That line about Beauty, serenely disdains to destroy us?

—Yes, you . . . almost dropped this, Max interrupted quickly, righting the practice keyboard which was gripped in Stanley's hands, with a quick glance at Anselm. But Anselm had apparently not heard. He looked up from the magazine to nod over his shoulder at the approaching figure, and said,

—Otto? He's the guy who's been laying Esme?

—She's been laying him, said Max.

Otto approached with his head down, as though it were weighed so by the rampage going on inside, and his features declined to the edges of his face, the look of one seeking something, or perhaps someone, a person he could talk this over with, someone who had suffered good intentions put to bad use by others, and would understand (by which Otto, talking to himself, meant sympathize); someone sensitive (he meant weak) enough to appreciate, and experienced (he meant bitter) enough to justify his dilemma. Stanley appeared in the interior rampage, bowed, understanding, sensitive, experienced: he raised his eyes and Stanley appeared, talking with (untrustworthy) Max and (odious) Anselm.

—What does he wear that stupid sling around for? Anselm asked; but Otto did not look affronted, for as he crossed into hearing they were talking of Charles. —I saw him this morning, Anselm was saying. —Who was the old bag with him?

—That was his mother, Max said. —She came from Grand Rapids to get him out of Bellevue.

Stanley had stepped back looking pained, and as always, about to depart but unable to do so. Otto and Max exchanged sounds, and Max reached for the magazine sconced under Otto's slung arm, leaving a newspaper rolled there. —I just picked that up, Otto said for no apparent reason, as Max opened Collectors Quarterly.

—You had it this morning when I saw you, Max said, looking up to smile.

—Oh yes I ... I saw you earlier, didn't I, Otto said discountenanced immediately, and sought a cigarette as though reaching for a shoulder holster.

—Christ! Look at this, will you look at this? Anselm brought out, holding up the magazine he'd taken from Max. It was large, on heavy coated paper, full of pictures, the most popular weekly in the country. The page Anselm exhibited was a fashion photograph. —Will you look at her? Can you imagine putting the boots to that? What man would want to lay her? He rolled the magazine and thrust it under Otto's arm, exchanging it for the newspaper. —Skinny, flat-chested, no hair on her head and no more in her pants than a ten-year-old boy, that's what they're trying to make women look like, these queer . . . what's that smell? He stopped and sniffed. He looked at his own shoes, then at Stanley's. —Did you step in it, Stanley?

—In what? Stanley asked helplessly.

—In what! Christ! . . . you wouldn't say shit if you had a mouthful. Then he glanced up to see that Otto had detached himself from them, and stood scraping his shoe on the curb. He started to say something more, but his eye caught the reproduction in Collectors Quarterly which Max held open. It was Velasquez, Venus and Cupid. A sound of admiration escaped Anselm. —Jesus, how'd you like to hang that on the wall and play hide-the-baloney every night? The little girl pulled his hand. He yanked her back, almost dropping the book folded in the magazine under his arm, and opened the newspaper to the front-page story. It was a vice probe, and he broke out again, —Look at this. In a city of eight million they find a half-dozen girls peddling their ass and it's the greatest clean-up in history. That kills me. Here, I don't want to look at the God damn thing, he finished, pushing it back under the slung arm as Otto returned, muttering to himself.

—I have to go, Stanley said.

—They did a great thing when they cleaned up the whorehouses out of New York City, a great thing for the high-school girls, Anselm said as the newspaper fell to the sidewalk. —If a nice girl isn't clapped up now before she's sixteen it's her own lousy fault. Then he turned on Otto, who attempted to raise his eyebrows as he straightened up, knocking the dirt from his newspaper. —How'd you like to go in business with me and Stanley? Anselm demanded abruptly.

—It hardly sounds . . .

—Artificial insemination, Anselm went on more loudly. —We bootleg the stuff. We're going to advertise in the movie magazines. Girls! Have a baby by your favorite movie star. I fill the barrels and Stanley peddles it ...

Stanley had stepped back, looking down at the little girl whom Anselm pulled forward as he waved the nude with the umbrella in the air. —Which end of the business do you want to go in?

Otto muttered something, looking at his newspaper.

—Come on. I've got some nice pictures, Anselm went on more excitedly, —nice bodies with movie stars' heads montaged . . .

—Come off it, Max interrupted him.

Anselm turned to Max. —What's the matter, he said. The spots on his face had become inflamed by the wind blowing down from the north, and his hair was standing up. —You've never had it look up and spit at you?

—Come off it, for Christ sake. You're crazy.

—Who wouldn't be, in all ... this, Anselm said breathlessly, waving the magazine so that the book folded inside it flew out. It slid along the sidewalk and went into the gutter. —Isn't any madness preferable to ... all this?

Anselm stood there shaking. Then he saw Stanley going to pick his book from the gutter. —Leave it alone! he cried. —Leave it alone! Leave it alone! Leave it alone!

Stanley stopped and stood back, not before he had seen the title of the book. Anselm stooped before him to pick it up, hawking and spitting into the street as he straightened before Stanley. He wiped the book on his trousers, covering it with his hand as he did so. —For Christ sake, he muttered, getting his breath.

Stanley put his hand out with the palm up, and took a step toward him.

—And stop . . . stop being so ... Anselm took a step back. —Stop being so God damn humble, he said, as the little girl got his hand and drew him back another step. Max had taken Stanley's arm.

—You know God damn well that . . . that humility is defiance, Anselm went on disjointedly. —And you . . . that simplicity . . . simplicity today is sophisticated . . . that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication today . . .

They had turned their backs and stepped into the street. Max was guiding Stanley by the arm.

—Hey, what did the chicken say when she laid the square egg? Hey Stanley, I'll dream about you again tonight. Hey Stanley, I'll dream about you again tonight. What did the chicken say when she laid the square egg? . . . Anselm cried after them.

None of them spoke as they walked together, until Otto, after an apprehensive look over his shoulder, said —God, he is crazy, isn't he. He reached up to stroke his mustache, which was quivering, and asked, —Who's that little girl?

—Don Bildow's daughter, Anselm takes care of her sometimes.

—I wouldn't let a daughter near him if she was five. I wouldn't even if she was one, I wouldn't even trust him as a baby-sitter, you know? I'm not kidding, I wouldn't.

Max glanced up from Collectors Quarterly smiling. —That story he told about that fellow, dressing that girl up in child's clothes, that was him.

—Who? Stanley asked quickly, and stopped short.

—Anselm. He's the one who did it, himself.

Stanley came on with his head lowered, staring at the pavement, walking carefully. —Do you think it's true, that he lives on dog food? he asked finally.

Otto laughed unpleasantly. —Where'd you hear that?

—From him, he told me himself. Canned dog food, he said it isn't bad if you have enough catsup.

—Somebody ought to shoot him, Anselm, said Otto, —his crazy yammering about God.

—But have you ever read any of his poems? Stanley asked across Max, who walked between them with the magazine open. —There was one that was a beautiful poem, it was about Averroes, the Arab thinker in the Middle Ages, and should we understand in order to believe, or if we should believe in order to understand . . .

—Look at this, Max said holding up Collectors Quarterly open to a picture of a piece of sculpture by Lipchitz, titled Mother and Child II. —Who do you think writes these program notes? Listen, "It was some time after the sculptor began a series of studies of a woman's torso that he suddenly recognized in them a resemblance to the head of a bull. He developed the bull's head further until he achieved . . ."

—But there's more, Stanley broke in, —when he says . . . when Anselm says that God has become a sentimental theatrical figure in our literature, that God is a melodramatic device used to throw people in novels into a turmoil . . .

—Fairly obvious guilt feelings, Max murmured, lowering the magazine to look up as they approached the curb. On either side of him, they walked watching their way carefully; though Max, who scarcely glanced up from the pages, was the only one of them who knew where they were going.

—But it isn't that simple. Don't you wonder why . . . why everything is negative? Stanley craned round to look up at both of them. —Why just exactly the things that used to be the aspirations of life, those are just the things that have become the tolls? I mean, like . . . well like girls having babies? They used to be the fruit of love, the thing people prayed for above everything, and now, now they're the price of ... Everything's sort of contraceptive, everything wherever you look is against conceiving, until finally you can't conceive any more. Then the time comes when you want something to work for you, the thing you've been denying all your life, and then it won't work . . .

And Stanley's voice fell behind them, as they crossed the street and he waited for a cab which turned in front of him. He caught up again saying, —Everything is so transient, everything in America is so temporary . . . But Max was talking to Otto, who stopped at that moment wide-eyed on the opposite curb to demand,

—Her? I didn't even know you knew her. She needs a doctor? You mean, some man . . . ?

—What do you think I mean, a duck? Max laughed. —That's what I've heard, anyhow, he added, walking on with the magazine open again. —I guess we were just lucky.

—Lucky? Otto repeated, pausing, then hurrying up beside Max. —You mean you . . . you've slept with her?

—Not for years, Max answered; and with a sidelong glance at Otto, went on in the same casual tone, holding up a two-page reproduction in Collectors Quarterly, —Look at this, they describe it as the "algebra of suffering," this Flemish painting. Hugo van der Goes. Otto muttered something, and looked at the picture if only because it was something to take his attention. But the confusion did not leave his face, and the lines round his eyes, gathered in a wince, became fixed so staring at the Descent from the Cross until Max turned the page.

—But ... he murmured, commencing to raise a hand, commencing to speak (for though he had been seen carrying this magazine, which had cost a dollar, he'd only had it open once, and then, with chance venery, upon the Velasquez).

—This Dierick Bouts is remarkable, isn't it, Max went on of the reproduction on the next page, paraphrasing the caption, —the canniness, the control. Even in black and white, the rigid lines and the constrained attitudes, there is a sort of "algebra of suffering," isn't there. —That van . . . the one on the page before, Otto commenced again.

—Van der Goes, there was an overwhelming uncertain passion about it, wasn't there, Max commented, turning a page, not back, but over to a portrait, —Van der Weyden, it's rather saccharine . . .

—Saccharine . . . ? Stanley stayed his hand, with the first evidence that he was looking at the pictures over the other shoulder.

Max shrugged. —Ingratiating then, he said, lowering the magazine from Stanley's hand, to turn another page, —there's nothing like the perfect control . . . Max added and, having turned the page whose caption he was paraphrasing, went on, —There is a great sense of lucency and multiple perspective about these early Flemish . . .

—The separate multiple consciousnesses of the . . . things in these Flemish primitives, that is really the force and the flaw in these paintings, Otto said, —you might say, he added.

—-What do you mean?

—Well, you might say that the thoroughness with which they feel obliged to recreate the atmosphere, and the . . . these painters who aren't long on suggestion, but pile up perfection layer on layer, and the detail, it's ... it becomes both the force and the flaw . . .

—Where'd you get that? Max asked him; and when he got no immediate answer, looked up. Otto looked down immediately, but his expression did not change: it was fixed, like the dull compulsive tone in his voice which had come to it when he interrupted. —Like a writer who can't help devoting as much care to a moment as to an hour ... he went on, now slightly more hurriedly, his voice, like the anxiety mounting with slight stabs in his face, straining an automatic effort of memory whose fullness he could not grasp, but only repeat its thrusts. —The perfection . . . Then he silenced, staring down ahead of him.

—There is an illusion of increased powers of eyesight, looking at these, even in reproduction. They're almost perfect, Max commented, flicking over pages. He glanced at Otto's averted profile, and turned to Stanley. —Isn't there, Stanley?

—Yes, but, Stanley began, faltering, —these men, these painters who were creating right out of themselves, and all of this, all this harmony with everything around them, with all the things, all the spiritual things around them that supported them, that they knew would be there tomorrow, and, in the Guild, why in the Guild it was the opinion of your fellow artists that mattered, not competition before a lot of people who didn't know anything but the price. The Guild even took care of your burial, he added plaintively.

Max laughed, his brief cordial mockery. —I'll bury you myself, Stanley. You can go home and make up all the music you want to now.

—But it isn't making it up, inventing music, it's like . . . remembering, and like, well van Gogh says about painting, when he would take a drawing of Delacroix as a subject and improvise with colors, not as himself, he says, but searching for memories of their pictures, the "vague consonance of colors," the memory that was himself, his own interpretation.

They stopped together at another curb. A store loudspeaker poured out upon them a vacuous tenor straining, —I'm dreaming of a white Christmas . . . with insipid mourning hope. And Stanley, escaping, abandoning his companions to that lugubrious assault, moved from the curb as though called forth by Cherubini: trumpets and the clash of brass: the horn sounded, and he leaped away from the immense and silent automobile guided by a brittle dame hung like some florid gothic tracery behind the steering wheel, her chin jutting just above it, sweeping round from Washington Square.

Max picked up the practice keyboard from the street and brought it up to him on the curb opposite, where he stood quivering. —What happened? he asked. —That moving Christmas music?

—Well it isn't . . . they have no right to ... Stanley tried to speak, out of breath, accepting the cardboard keyboard like a delicate instrument.

—What do you want on Sixth Avenue, The Messiah?

—They have no right to ... cheapen . . .

—Ask them to play, Yes We Have No Bananas, Max said, smiling. —That's from The Messiah, and it's more their line.

—What do you mean? Stanley was trying to wipe the tire marks from the length of the white keys.

—I mean Yes We Have No Bananas was lifted right out of Handel's Messiah. Come on, Max said taking his arm, and looking round for Otto. —What's the matter with both of you today?

—You don't have to ... tell me things like that, Stanley said, pulling away.

A man standing with his back to a shop window said, —It won't snow, it's too warm to snow. And Otto, looking where the man was looking, over the buildings at the northern sky, realized that he was not shivering with cold, but simply shivering. And he heard Max say,

—You want everybody to be like you, that's your trouble Stanley.

—I want everyone to be like I want to be, Stanley answered.

Otto met Stanley's eyes. And though the sky was dull, and there was no such color in sight, they appeared green, brilliant, burning into green in that prolonged moment as Otto stood bound and apparently unable to mount the curb between them. But it was only a moment, the passage of a shadow, and Max's voice, breaking between them, brought Otto up.

—You might say that the man who wrote Yes We Have No Bananas was searching for memories? a vague consonance of sounds? . . . Max began good-humoredly. Then looking at Otto he said, —What's the matter, you look all disjointed.

—I don't know, but . . . yes, disjointed, Otto said mounting the curb, speaking unevenly as he fell in beside them. —Like ... do you know what I feel like? Like when a clay reproduction is made of an original statue, and then they take the copy and cut it behind the head with fine wire, and behind the arms and the legs, and those are all moved and it's cast again.

—Why? Where'd you hear that?

—To be sold as part of a series, a series of the original, a series that never existed, I ... I read about it in a book a friend of mine had, a friend a long time ago, he ... listen . . . Otto groped.

As though spurred by his faltering confusion, Max interrupted, —I knew there was something I meant to tell you. That story you sent to Edna, for a magazine that publisher she works for owns, they're bringing out my book you know.

—What about the story, I sent it in for some guy I met at your party.

—She thinks you wrote it, Max told him. —That you wrote it and sent it under another name.

—She thinks I wrote it? But why would I have written it? I didn't even read it, I ... why would I do a thing like that.

—I guess she thought you were playing it safe.

—But she . . . but God damn it ... Otto brandished the sling.

—She says you used to be clever when you were in college, writing, but you sort of faded out, Max went on agreeably. —She says the reason you were clever was because you didn't know how to be honest.

—Well the only reason she's honest is because she's too God damn dumb to be clever, I mean if she was honest, but she . . . why the hell should she go around saying a thing like that about me? for no reason?

—No reason? Max repeated, and put a hand on Otto's shoulder. —Nobody resents you more than somebody who's loved you.

Otto twisted away from him, but unsteadily as though trying to retain the hand on his shoulder but turn his face to hide the trembling lip. —Why do I ... why do people have to be so ... so ... he mumbled brokenly as detailed fragments of expressions broke over his face one after another until he grabbed with a whole hand round the eyes and drew the hand down, as though to wipe away these abrupt strokes on the surface which mocked the clear image of his anger beneath. Then he brought out a cigarette, and caught both lips round it.

—Forget it, Max said, and patting his shoulder before he removed his hand went on as cordially, —Say, I've meant to tell you again how much I liked your play, Otto . . . Otto mumbled something without looking up. —Because when other people have said they didn't like it, I've told them . . .

—You've told them what! Otto broke out. He looked up to see Max smiling at him.

—Don't be so touchy, Max said to him.

—It's just ... all this . . . damned . . . Otto hunched again, looking down before him. —And when people say I stole it, that I plagiarized.

—Somebody, I can't think, who was it, Max appeared sympathetically thoughtful, —said they thought you'd lifted parts of The Sound and the Fury.

—The what?

—Faulkner's novel, The Sound and the Fury, that you'd plagiarized . . .

—I've never even read it, I've never read The Sound and the Fury damn it, so how the hell . . . Otto looked over to see Stanley look troubled and start to speak. —I mean, damn it ...

—What's the difference? Max laughed. —I noticed a couple of little things you'd picked up, but what's the difference.

—What do you mean, what little things?

—Little things, lines here and there. That line of Ben Shahn's, "You cannot invent the shape of a stone" for instance.

—But . . . who the hell is Ben Shahn? That line, a friend of mine, a long time ago, somebody I used to know, said . . .

—What's the difference. Max smiled. —As Stevenson says, we all live by selling something. He raised a hand to Otto's shoulder again. —What's the difference. The money? You have a real complex about money don't you Otto, a real castration complex without it.

—Yes, the money, Otto muttered, —but, damn it ...

—It doesn't have to be money, just money, Stanley broke in, —if he ... if it's his work, if it's his own, and he wants . . .

—His own! Max repeated, and his laugh this time was sharper, more unkind, edged with contempt. —Look, he said to Otto, —that magazine of mine you've got there, open it. Max made no gesture of surrendering Collectors Quarterly, and taking the other magazine himself. -Just open it to ... there, here it is, this thing on

Sherlock Holmes, "the first authorized Sherlock Holmes story to appear" since Arthur Conan Doyle died. See? Authorized. It "was written after exhaustive study of Sir Arthur's literary methods . . ." he read, as Otto held the magazine before them. —See? these two men who wrote it, "They studied such minutiae as Doyle's sentence rhythms, his use of the comma, the number of words in the average Holmes sentence . . . The authors have felt no temptation to vary the pattern which Doyle usually observed . . . Special pains have been taken to reproduce certain Doylean literary tricks . . ."

—But what do you mean? Otto asked him.

—What's the difference? Max asked in return, bringing Collectors Quarterly up. —Authorized paintings by Dierick Bouts? van der Goes? Who authorizes them? Somebody says, One wishes there were more stories by Conan Doyle, somebody else wishes there were more paintings by Hugo van der Goes. So, after a careful study of the early Flemish painter's technique . . . such minutiae as his brush-stroke rhythms, his use of perspective, the number of figures in the average van der Goes canvas . . . What's the difference? You fake a Dürer by taking the face from one and turning it around, the beard from another, the hat from another, you've got a Dürer, haven't you?

—But only on the surface, Stanley said.

—On the surface! How much deeper do people go? the people who buy them?

—But this, this isn't a ... forgery, Otto said holding out the large picture magazine. —It's no secret, they tell you right here . . .

—That's just what I mean, Max said impatiently. —What's the difference now? In our times? He laughed again, and folded Collectors Quarterly under his arm. —As long as it's "authorized." Isn't that right, Stanley?

Stanley answered immediately, —No.

—No? He studied Stanley's face with mock interest and shock. —Is there something diabolic about bringing Sherlock Holmes back to life?

—The devil is the father of false art, Stanley said quietly. He was walking carefully on the pavement along the edge, his face expressing a concentration which Otto's echoed, but a vague echo, as Otto walked staring at the pavement, not listening to them.

—Stanley believes in sin, don't you, Stanley? Max persisted.

—If we believe that love is weakness? Stanley brought out, —and people resent it, because they think it's an admission of weakness, and they draw away from it ... and that's why you kill the thing you love, because it's your weakness personified. If you kill it, you kill your weakness before it kills you.

—I said sin, Max cajoled him. —But, was there love? before sin, a sense of sin, made it possible? Stanley said in the same low tone, without looking up. —Before there was sin, to be suffered and forgiven?

—Love! You in love? Max laughed.

—Art is the work of love.

—Art is a work of necessity, Max said.

—Was it a good story? Otto asked finally.

—The Sherlock Holmes thing? It was lousy.

—No I mean, I mean, the one that I ... that was sent up to ... her.

—It was lousy too, Max answered.

—But isn't there a moment . . . Stanley went on, —a moment when love and necessity become the same thing?

They reached an open square where the sky was almost black, looking north, as most people were doing. Shops were lighted, and the lighted windows of the buildings stood out against the sky, holding it off, and themselves to earth.

—Where are we going, anyhow? Otto asked.

—I'm going right up here, Max said, nodding ahead. Then, noticing Stanley's careful walk again, he said, —Step on a crack, Break your mother's back . . . and Stanley stopped. —Come on, Max laughed, and when Stanley came on, now obviously avoiding cracks in the pavement, Max said to him, —I can believe you'd really believe that, Stanley. What an unspotted soul for the devil to bid for. What do you think he'd give me, if I sold you to him?

—You couldn't, Stanley said.

—All right, we'll sell Otto. You wouldn't mind, would you Otto?

—Christ no, not at this point.

—You couldn't, Stanley said again.

—Well Faust did, damn it, Otto broke out morosely, —Faust sold his soul to the devil.

—No. That's a fallacy, Stanley said looking round at him soberly. —That evil can take entire possession of the soul like that. Evil is self-limited.

—Damn it, it was his soul, Otto said defiantly, —and he sold it to the devil.

—No. It was not his to dispose of. We belong to our souls, not our souls to us.

—Ontological dialectics, said Max, as they approached a subway entrance.

Otto stood unsteadily, as though afloat, away from them, as Max clapped Stanley jovially on the shoulder and said, —Stanley's fired by a divine spark. The words seemed to come from the great distance of sounds over water before a storm. He turned to Otto without breaking his smile. —But you and me . . . ?

Otto stood there, his arm shivering in the sling, the wind blowing his hair up from behind. —Yes, he said, raising his eyebrows, —sometimes it's difficult ... he curled his lip slightly against its tendency to tremble, —it's difficult to shed our human nature. Then he turned away quickly and stepped back to the curb, where he stood with his back to them, scraping the edge of his shoe. He heard Max laugh, and call to him, —A little always sticks . . . And when he turned, Max was disappearing into the pit of the subway. There was only Stanley, frail against the dark sky.

—What's the matter? Stanley asked him as he approached slowly.

—There was something . . . Otto said, looking him in the face again, in the eyes, which were dull with the sky beyond. —Something . . .

—What? . . . Stanley looked at him anxiously.

—I don't know, earlier, that moment . . . Otto said, looking more confused. —For a moment, a feeling that you . . . that you and I ... It was as though you were someone who had been . . . He faltered, broke off, and looked up, recovering. —Damn it. He's gone, Max?

—Yes, he's gone, down there, Stanley pointed.

—And this damned thing, he left me this and took Collectors Quarterly, it cost a dollar.

—Do you want it back? Stanley commenced helpfully. —If I see him . . .

—That painting, Otto murmured, looking down again. He rubbed his free hand over his face. —The Christ in that painting, I wanted to look at it, I wanted to look at it again, there was something . . . familiar ... he went on vaguely, mumbling, —and the Virgin . . .

After a pause, Stanley said, —But there should be, Christ . . .

—Not that, not that, Otto waved him back, and stood gripping his temples in an open hand. Then he dropped his hand and shook his head. —Never mind, he said. Looking at Stanley, he tried a strained smile. —The divine spark ... he muttered, at the anxious face being weighed toward him by the uneven mustache. —And what are you going to do with it, anyhow? he brought out in sudden derision.

—But that, Stanley said, coming a step nearer him, —that is what undoes us all. He stood before Otto looking into Otto's eyes, waiting; but saw them narrow.

—I hate him, Otto said, changing again as abruptly.

—Who?

—Him. Max.

—But, why?

—Yes . . . because he'll survive.

Every street she crossed, the black sky showed to her right, as though these were tunnels through to the "chilly hell" of the poet's Elegy on the Thousand Children, through to Boreas, and beyond the north wind. And so every time she stepped from the curb, going west, she tried not to look; and always had looked before she stepped up on the curb ahead.

As she came nearer the river, the pavement and the walks were wet with the light snow which had commenced since she started. She passed an empty baby carriage, and stopped, a step beyond it, to look back and make sure it was empty. Then she looked up and smiled at the woman who had been shaking a mop from the window above, and that woman only stared at her until she went on; and even then looked up, and a minute later stopped shaking the mop again, seeing her pause down the block and kneel on the wet walk to help a child with an entangled mitten-string, kneeling there, the narrow eyes of the woman in the window had it, a moment too long.

On a trestle at the far end of the street an engine smashed a coupling closed with a shattering sound which was gone immediately, leaving a wail from the river beyond suspended on the particles of silt in the air, to be exhausted slowly as they were borne to earth by the scales of snow shed from above.

Where a crate lay broken on the sidewalk she turned in at the doorway in this last block of Horatio Street. She sought the bell with no name and then, leaning against the door it came open before her finger found the bell, and his door was just inside. In front of it stood a wastebasket full: some bottles and tubes, electric-light bulbs, and that door was not tight closed.

—Asleep? she whispered, entering. And she closed the door behind her silently, a hand on the knob and her back against it, slowly, as she looked round. Then she coughed, and covered her mouth quickly, for the room was full of a bitter cluster of smells from the smoldering pile in the fireplace. In fact some of it had burned on the hearth and lay smoking spilled out on the floor, and she hurried over and kicked the burning pieces back up on the bricks seeing, as she did so, the blackened edges of photographs, details of brushwork highly enlarged.

There were torn bits of paper, torn pieces of canvas and splinters of wood, a few books, some eggshells, a small squirrel-hair brush, strewn among the bright pigmented spots on the floor. Beside the low bed, where she went and sat on the edge, was a broken glass, a box of Dutch cigars unopened, a coconut, and a leather box filled with cuff links, collar buttons, paper clips, two penknives, another knife, bladeless, and a knifeless blade, buttons, pen points, studs, a number of keys, some brass wood-screws, a single pearl earring, and prominently, two large archaically studded hoops of gold. She leant down and wiped her wet cheeks with the end of a blanket that trailed from the welter on the floor. Then she straightened, on the very edge of the bed, and turned putting a hand forth, gently. —You . . . she whispered.

She sat like that a minute more, seeming not to breathe, then she whispered again, —You . . . but more tartly, —if you keep your eyes closed, then where are you now without me?

The bare bulb glared on her standing up, and she said, —It is very warm in here, taking two, and three, and four steps, taking off her coat. She laid it on a high stool and looked round her again, stood singly beneath the bare bulb and casting no shadow until she turned and walked toward the only whole canvas in the room, turned face-to-wall, where her shadow fell on it and on a single plane expanded over the rough and soiled back of it. She got hold of the frame and turned it from the wall.

—Do you reproach me? she said, after a time of looking at it though their eyes did not meet, and then she extended her hand and traced its features. Then she whispered something and abruptly turned her back.

Frank, Bishop of Zanzibar, lay on the floor at her foot; and she kicked the book away. Then she walked over to where the hinged mirrors stood against another wall, turned them open and closed them again quickly.

—You . . . she said again looking back to the bed, for she'd turned quickly.

There on the floor at her feet was a drawing, it was a meticulous self-portrait, and she took a step before she saw it, saw it was not a detail of brushwork that is, and leaned down to pick it up. —You, she said, —all upside-down. Then she righted it and repeated, —all upside-down.

She stood there staring somewhere between the bed and the drawing as though a hand were on her; and then turned and pulled the mirrors again. She cocked one leaf open with the toe of her right foot, holding the picture up with effort as though it were a great weight, and looked at the prompt emergences, settling her eyes on the even image, the same that she held in her hands; then raised her eyes to the second image of her own face, and let the leaf go closed with a clap, so that a part of it broke out and fell to the floor separating as soon as it sounded, to reflect the glare of the bulb in the ceiling back, in shapes of breakage, to the ceiling.

The room was filled with the odor of destruction: as though there might arise on the smoke a difference, when a storehouse of chemicals burned: here in the squat fireplace were chemicals, some of them inorganic, and the organic transmutations suffering oxidation with the immediacy of a chain reaction on the page of a chemistry text; but where, in this consummation, the law of the conservation of energy? Could brush strokes make the difference, then? Science in magnitude, biology and chemistry as triumphantly articulate as subordinates are always, offer no choice but abjure it in frantic effort to perfect a system without alternatives, the very fact of their science based on measurement; and measurement, designed to predicate finalities, refusing the truth which shelters in possibility: in the weight of the smell of the smoke there was more than the death of the body, the cellular sucking construction, hunger of tissues unconscious of any end but identical reproduction. But if strokes of creation fed the flames, strokes in whose every instant possibility had been explored for the finality which is perfection, torn apart in the attempt to free it into the delineation of that baffled enclosure of its own medium, here were brush strokes whose future had been dictated by the thwarting enclosure of the past, a past whose future was struck dying with every instant of the delineation of its everlasting life.

—You, she whispered, back seated on the edge of the bed, and then kicking out, —Go away egg ... in a mocking voice as the coconut rolled away from her foot. She raised her eyes across the room again to the picture she'd turned from the wall; and faint under a single thin coat the Byzantine earrings showed through. -But . . .

—with your eyes closed, she whispered, turning back to the bed there. —I dream and wake up. The love I have from others is not love of me, but where they try to find themselves, loving me. I drearn and I wake up, and then at that moment you are somewhere being real to other people; and they are a part of your reality; and J am not . . . But you are the only person I am real with . . .

She sat staring down.

—If you are the only person I am real with . . .

Her eyes strayed; and suddenly she had the leather box, spilling everything but the archaic hoops of gold which she held in a hand and was up, raising and dropping her shadow across the room in an instant as she crossed and went into the bathroom.

When she came out, wearing the Byzantine earrings, there was blood on them and on her shoulders, running down in singular unpaired lines over her bared breasts, breaking where they broke away from her, mocking their slightness by assailing it, respecting their fullness by parting above the two swollen stains whose color they ridiculed in passing, down, to delineate the unbroken rising below along the sharply broken lines that her walking so quickly forced with each step, to come apart and disappear where that rising fell away in the white hollow of her thighs.

—Then with your eyes closed, she whispered, pulling a blanket from the welter of blankets over her.

The fire had died under the steady censure of the electric glare, and its emanations contended bitterly until, one by one, their poisonous violence was exhausted by such severe emergency, and left only lavender to rise and spread in a diffusion which penetrated without edge, which cut without sharpness, impetuous without haste, filling without distending as a color deepens in saturation and exalts in brilliance at once.

—Oh yes . . . she whispered fiercely, —Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes . . .

As the fire died even the lavender became indistinct, and lay in with the smell of Venice turpentine, and stand oil, burnt photographic prints, burnt canvas and tortured gesso until, when she woke, there was neither triumph nor dissension in the air she breathed, standing, looking round her, back to the bed suddenly, and round her again.

She put on her coat, and sat on the stool where she'd got it from. She sat there for some time, almost under the light, so that her shadow lay steady and small over an irregular blow of verdigris on the floor, confining its elation within the clear and casual bounds of her retreat.

—Why did you not write to me? she said, still unmoving, not even to look toward the bed.

Then the green she had retired leaped out under the light as she stood, and began searching everywhere, pushing aside Kinder-und Hausmärchen with her foot, picking up a piece of paper, kicking Thoreau and a crumpled twenty-dollar bill, stepping on an eggshell, stooping again in a distracted pause to pick up an unopened container of indigo, kicking, again, Frank, Bishop of Zanzibar, and the broken glass, finding more paper, slipping, and almost falling in a pool of stand oil, picking up, with the same distracted pause, an unopened container of rose madder, and another piece of paper which she threw down because it was smeared on one side with blue paint, and on the other had written in large characters, semper aliquid haeret, and going on so until she had a number of pieces of paper in her hand, which she laid out on a drawing board and commenced to write with a broken penholder, and a point she got from the leather box.

—Here is the letter, she said sitting over it, and turning to look across the room. —Because you must not close your eyes now because you cannot, she said. —Because now you are alone, she said. Still looking over there she put down the broken penholder and picked up the rose madder, running her thumbnail to open it. —Because you cannot, she said, as the rose madder spilled into her hand, and she looked down at it, and shivered in the open coat.

Then she began to write. She wrote there for some time; and when she broke, between words, or in the middle of words, seldom between sentences or paragraphs, she would look over across the room, all the while, with the fingers of her left hand, applying the coarse rose madder to her lips, and the indigo around her eyes. She wrote for some time, and before she was done the rose madder was half gone, and the indigo had caked wetly round her eyes.

When the letter was finished she laid it in the middle of the floor, and looking round for something to weigh it down, found the coconut and stationed it there. Then going to the door she closed her coat, twice, each time after stooping and straightening from the floor, and went out. The crumpled twenty-dollar bill, which had stuck to her shoe with the stand oil she'd stepped in, came off before she reached the street.

Here is the letter she wrote, and left there.

You:

The demands of painting have the most astonishing consequences In my life at this moment you are one of them

Perspective since De Chirico manipulated it plastically; resolved it in his painting paradigms, now exists in the mind; a nostalgia; a co-relative isolation; a plenary; a playa, where, one must, to see the water, go immediately after the rain, and to see the broad level ground, must visit before. Painting is exquisite as the punishment for the thinker: denied the thoughts of his grave-diggers, his own death-face and his final curiosity, a vision of his bones—the skeleton: of which he was always aware, moment by moment emerging to that static release he, the thinker, cannot joyfully sit, a separated thing, shaking his bones Perhaps a heart petrified, or a brain, an eye, an unborn child, would roll deliciously inside it, to rattle there, the way a dead man rattles in the sea nor find a solution to deny all this, a solving, nor a solvent, to disappear those bones, make it an improbability the other's joy, nor to deny the priceless departure into death.

Since paintings are in the service of my desires, I can disdain no ruse to accomplish them. To paint to intensify, to remember but what could I remember here, in this place', where, in truth, I have never been before? a street of accidents all designed to happen to me?

Chroniclers, replacing instinct, become us more and more to lose our sensibilities, but, how can I refuse this slan-derous name when I shall paint, and then insist upon it?

It would doubtlessly, be kinder not to insist so, or investigate less directly, more discreetly: ask my mother, not my brain; "what sort of little girl I was?" and lover: "what woman I became" in order to define the strange significance of the avowal of these episodes of paint, like circumstance divorced from motivation

This, though, would place it, in sum, upon another level of being, every delusion of my energetic brain engages itself alone, then, in this enterprise, this demonstration of itself.

The mere coincident of materials at one's disposal cannot make a painting, nor, even a journey where nothing had been selected, nor lost by traveling, a journey, indeed, that might as well never had been taken.

To paint without means, desire or justification—a dubious use, habit sloughed away from reason or, in an indecisive moment, "wasn't it good of it to rain?" or "who was it, came to see me at three in the afternoon?"

A law-maker, unable to formulate laws, can be a painter, or a land, where, laws when broken, punish, not the offender, but the law-makers, can produce painters. A painter in any other place must struggle to be what he is.

Rooted within us, basic laws, forgotten gladly, as an undesirable appointment made under embarrassing pressures, are a difficult work to find. The painter, speaking without tongue, is quite absurdly mad in his attempt to do so, yet he is inescapably bound toward this.

To recognize, hot to establish but to intervene. A remarkable illusion?

Painting, a sign whose reality is actually, I, never to be abandoned, a painting is myself, ever attentive to me, mimicking what I never changed, modified, or compromised. Whether I, myself, am object or image, they at once, are both, real or fancied, they are both, concrete or abstract, they are both, exactly and in proportion to this disproportionate I, being knowingly or unknowingly neither one nor the other, yet to be capable of creating it, welded as one, perhaps not even welded but actually from the beginning one, am also both and what I must, without changing, modifying, or compromising, be.

The painter concerned for his mortal safety, indifferent because he fears to scrutinize, paradoxically sacrifices that very safety, for he will not be allowed to escape painting.

He will make paintings or they will revolt and make him, unhappy being in the grasp of them. He compulsively must, then, live them cold as they are, static, perversely with warmth and movement he cannot know but feel painfully, a bird with broken eggs inside.

On the other hand, a no-painter—resourceful as he may be, cannot paint. He cannot say, well, "I did not get the job but I shall say I got it anyhow"—by this distortion of fact he deludes, not himself, but other persons, until, that moment arrives to receive the reimbursement. With nothing of value to show the fact will disappear. There is no fact but value.

The painter knows, sadly enough, that experience does not suffice unto itself, has no proportion, dimension, perspective, mournfully he eats his life but is not allowed to digest it, this being reserved for others, not knowing, but who must somehow, at any sacrifice be made to know, then punished for the sight of this knowledge, by aiding it on its journey from brain to brain.

It does not seem unreasonable that we invent colors, lines, shapes, capable of being, representative of existence, therefore it is not unreasonable that they, in turn, later, invent us, our ideas, directions, motivations, with great audacity, since we, ourselves having them upon our walls. What rude guests they prove to be, indeed: although paintings differ from life by energy a painter can never be a substitute for his paintings, so complete so independent as reality are they. Imagine the pleasure they enjoy at this.

They by conversion into an idea of the person, do, instantaneously destroy him. A tragic gesture that actually leads to tragedy but diabolically exists only in an absence of tragedy, nevertheless procreating it, however, they are unreasonably enough, insufficient, because they are not made of ideas, they are made of paint, all else is really us.

Paintings are metaphors for reality, but instead of being an aid to realization obscure the reality which is far more profound. The only way to circumvent painting is by absolute death.

—Close your eyes for the next sixty seconds and try to walk around the room . . .

The man behind the bar reached up and turned it off.

—I got a friend he's got a glass eye with the American flag on it, said the man on the outside.

The man behind the bar poured whisky until it ran over his fingers. —This'll put lead in your pencil. He pushed it in a wet trail across the bar. —Now if you got somebody to write to you're all set.

—Here's Rose.

At the far end of the bar Otto stepped aside for the dumpy woman who came in the door. Her nose was red, so were her eyes.

—What's the matter, Rose? Cold enough for you?

Otto joined the cold coin on the bar with a warm one from his pocket, signaled with his empty beer glass, and put it back down beside the newspaper, folded there on the bar across one of the girls in the vice probe, whose dark glasses he had been staring at.

To his left, the mirror and the window conjoined at such an angle that vehicles on the street outside appeared to come into one another head-on. A bus telescoped and disappeared. He with- drew his bloodshot eyes and turned them straight before him; but he did not see his face for the sign franks and kraut 20cent was pasted on the mirror just above his collar. Below, where his hands met sensitively on the empty beer glass, twitching somewhat, touching at the fingertips, frankfurters turned on hot rollers, slowly, receding and coming forward, passing each other forward and back with dull nudges like fat jointless fingers in meditation. He withdrew his left hand back into the loose sling.

—Here, pussy pussy pussy, said the dumpy woman.

—We got three of them.

—I lost mine, said the dumpy woman. —I raised him from this big. He had blood in his kidney.

—Human beings has to go too.

—I lost two husbands that way. Overnight.

Otto signaled with his empty glass. Then a tall blonde, in a fur cape, wearing dark glasses, walked to meet herself in the glass. Otto turned and looked out the window. He could not see her. He looked in the mirrored pillar behind him, and saw her coat-sleeve disappear. He looked before him, and saw her merge into herself. He looked out of the window again, and saw a man in a Santa Claus suit.

—Could I have a beer here? he said. He waited. Then he put down his empty glass and walked toward the back, taking out his wallet.

In the telephone booth a moment later he sat with the receiver to his ear, listening to a clock ticking in the Sun Style Film office. Finally a voice came through.

—Hello? Otto said, and named the man and himself in introductory greeting. —I'm sorry I've been so long calling you, but I ... Yes, but . . . What? No, about Central America. You remember, I ... When can we get together for a ... No, it was Peru and northern Bolivia, you remember . . . Yes, I ... What? But I ... you . . . Well that bastard, he repeated to himself, leaning back against the wall of the booth. —"We have nothing to discuss." Well that bastard. That bastard. Then the sling gave way.

He came out with his wrist pressed against his wallet. He had forty-one dollars. —And why I gave a five-dollar bill to that Harlem nigger yesterday, to keep an eye out for that damn dispatch case. Damn it. That black bastard too.

The dumpy woman was drinking a manhattan. —I can feel it down to my toes, she said. Her stockings sagged over her broken shoe backs.

—Who you saving the cherry for, Rose?

The man behind the bar turned the radio on again, and left it while it warmed to strains of Mozart. Otto's glass was still empty, but he stood there as though unable to call and command, staring at the man's striped necktie, the signal of another final club which had not invited him to join.

—What's the matter, Rose? You blushing?

Otto waited a moment longer. Mozart continued, rising and gathering to exquisite pauses: and each of these apertures was obligingly filled by a saxophone. Otto picked up the two cold coins, and left the newspaper on the bar. Mozart measured a subtle withdrawal; and a voice from the saxophone world heralded,

—Here's an oldie, friends, Rudy Vallee singing, Love Made a

Gypsy Out of Me.

—Hey Jack, you want your newspaper? the man behind the bar called after him.

—Never mind, Otto answered over his shoulder. —It's yesterday's.

The tropic breeze ruffled Otto's linen, boarding that banana boat, then standing on deck gazing out over the Caribbean, a whisky-soda in his free left hand, skin warm with memory of the sun: so he stood, serene and unapproachable, in the memory of the unsteady figure appearing now (wearing a new green muffler which enhanced the yellowness of his skin), an old friend whom Otto only now fully appreciated, and would like to see again. He passed the steamed windows lowering a handkerchief, where two black rings witnessed what desperate barriers are the fine hairs of the nostrils, and pulling open the door of the Viareggio, interrupted this with his entrance:

—Philogyny? I thought you said phylogeny.

—I said, misogyny recapitulates philogyny.

—Misogamy . . . ?

—Never mind.

—What's the name of this book you're writing?

—Baedeker's Babel.

Noting only the striped tie on the taller of these two, Otto brought the handkerchief up again, and got by them.

—And you say you've become a misologist?

—Whisky-soda, Otto ordered at the bar, slurring his tone in casual rudeness as he imagined one used to command.

—Where's the head in this place? Someone bumped him. —Right through that door, it's called Tiffany's here.

—But I ordered whisky-and-soda.

—You said whisky sour. Sixty-five cents.

Max's back was turned to him at a near table, where a battered copy of Collectors Quarterly lay open to Mother and Child II, under the elbow of a man hunched in a green wool shirt who was saying to Max, —You had some work at the New School, well look. Would I have to prepare "my lectures? or could I just bullshit. Otto took a step toward the table. He was blocked by a haggardly alert face, speaking to someone behind him, —She would have drownded herself if she could have found something to drownd herself in. And the response over Otto's shoulder, —She's been way out for a long time, man. You can't fool with horse without getting hooked.

—That magazine, Otto said to a girl standing behind the table, —do you know what happened . . . where it ...

—A bear chewed it.

—What? I mean that . . .

—Oh I thought you meant this Vogue. She held up a tattered copy of Vogue. —A bear chewed this in Yellowstone Park, the craziest bear . . . She turned her back and went on with her conversation, —Oh very very very very very much . . .

—Hello. Can you buy me a beer?

—Hello Hannah, of course, I'd be glad to. Otto ordered it, handed her the dripping glass, and said, —Really, I've just had the most maddening . . .

—Thanks, said Hannah, and returned to the tall colored boy she'd been talking to, and shared her glass with him in the corner. At Otto's side a blond boy in dungarees said, —I tell you I felt just for all the world like Archimedes in his crwazy bathtub . . . But how could I? I tell you I was stuck. And at the near table, a green wool elbow knocked a glass of beer over Mother and Child II.

Otto winced, saw Stanley seated staring at a cup of coffee, started to approach, saw it was Anselm seated with him staring at nothing, and stopped. The haggard boy came up to their table and dropped into a chair with neither invitation nor greeting.

—You know how I made her the first time I made her? Anselm went on. —I described a wet dream to her, one I'd had about her, she listened as though it had really happened, and then before she knew it I was in again. He laughed, but sounded weary, not really interested in what he was talking about, and sat drumming blunt nail-bitten finger-ends on the table.

—She was probably high then, the haggard boy commented dully.

—You shouldn't . . . Stanley commenced.

—What are you pretending you're worried about her now for? Christ, she didn't make it, did she?

—She could never make anything real, man. The gas was on all right, but there was air coming in all over the place.

—Just the same, Stanley appealed, —if her intention . . . —Her intention! what's that to you? Christ, wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? She ought to get her ass into a nunnery.

Stanley said nothing. He lowered his eyes, sipped his coffee, and opened a newspaper.

—What does Saint Jerome say about women? Anselm persisted. —She's the gate of Hell. "A foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil," says Chrysostom . . . And he broke off, watching Otto's approach without recognition.

Otto got round the two young men whom he had interrupted with his entrance. —I'm doing for writing what Bruckner did for music, said one. —So what did Bruckner do for music? —Well put it this way, I'm doing in writing . . .

—Freud! . . . came borne in a pleasing Boston-bred voice from a tall girl. —Hahaha . . . Freud my ahss.

—You know what the trouble is, like Pascal says, all the malheurs in this world come from a man's inability to sit alone in a small room, said the taller of them. —Can I buy you a drink? He was wearing a tie from the first crossing of the Queen Elizabeth.

—But why . . . ? why? Stanley repeated, plaintive and incredulous. —Why would Max say a thing like that? He'd know it's not true, that Hannah and I were . . . sleeping together . . . ? He looked up and included Otto in his appeal. Anselm was laughing. He shrugged.

—I am one to tell you, my lord, Stanley and a palindrome are making the beast with two backs, he said, and took Stanley's newspaper.

—But why do they . . . people have to ... say such things?

—People? You sound like it's the first time in history somebody got laid, Anselm said, his tone musing and vague. —Das Unbe-schreibliche, hier wird's getan . . . He did not look up, from the paper, whose pages he turned without apparent pauses to read. —Das ewig-Weibliche, for Christ sake, he mumbled.

Otto stood unable to turn away, bound by the hurt accusal in Stanley's eyes, which lowered uncertainly back to the table.

—The last time I saw her, the haggard boy said, —she had to have somebody around her all the time, so she could ask if she'd really done something or gone somewheres. She looked like she was going to flip then.

Anselm tore something out of the paper and pushed it across the table. —This ought to cheer you up, Stanley, he said. —The bell tower at Saint Mark's is ready to flip too.

—She told me once the reason her eyes bug out like that is some doctor gave her henbane, did you know that? She said she can even see the stars in the daytime. If she'd really wanted to make it she would have sliced her wrists like Charles . . .

—For Christ sake! will you . . . stop talking about it? Anselm broke out at the haggard boy suddenly, then looked at Stanley who was staring dumbly at the headline. —You better get over there before the whole thing falls down, Anselm said to him.

—Hannah . . . Otto interrupted, —tried to kill herself? I just saw her.

—Hannah! Anselm looked up and laughed at him.

—It was Esme, Stanley said quietly. —Last night.

—But what happened?

—You're spilling your drink. What are you drinking whisky sours for anyhow? Anselm demanded.

—She flipped, man. Chaby found her with the gas on. Then the haggard boy returned to Anselm. —Did you hear about Charles? His old lady came from Grand Rapids to take him back there, she's a Christian Science.

Otto put his glass on the table. He looked back as though minutes were hours, and the hours had been days since he'd seen her: he had driven her to it. His chest expanded as he got his breath and turned away.

—She came on all sweetness and light, you know man. She thought she could turn him on with Mary Baker Eddy, but she won't give him a penny unless he comes home with her. I don't blame him for flipping.

Anselm reached for Otto's glass as Otto hurried toward the door, pressing on between the two young men, interrupting

—Scatological?

—Eschatological, the doctrine of last things . . .

—Good lord, Willie, you are drunk. Either that or you're writing for a very small audience.

—So . . . ? how many people were there in Plato's Republic?

Otto passed through the streets in a great hurry, but he was moving almost mechanically, one foot before the other and the load of the sling pounding against him, so that his excitement did not show until he passed the head of her stairs and stood breathless at her door. All the way his lips had been moving, and slight single sounds escaped them, chirps of forgiveness which he was trying to draw together.

Chaby opened the door. His sleeves were rolled up, and his shirt, the back of the collar turned up, was unbuttoned to the waist, showing a blue tattoo line which carne, apparently, from the shoulder.

Otto stared at the miraculous medal swinging from his throat, and then looked up at Chaby's small good teeth. —Is she . . .

Chaby nodded over his shoulder and turned away, leaving the door ajar. Otto pushed it open.

She came out to him from the other end of the double room. She wore a clean red cotton dress, and had a spotted blue coat on over it. She greeted him with almost a smile, her tranquil face looking as though she were going to smile, and then not.

—But you . . . are you all right? he asked going in to her.

—No. She must go to the doctor, she said to him. In her hand she held the book she had been reading, finger still between the closed pages. It was Uncle Tom's Cabin.

It was only as he came close that he realized how heavily made-up she was. From the door, there was an almost bluish look to her face, but this proved to be a reflection of the careful make-up on her eyes, which seemed to be diffused over her face by the paleness of her skin. Her lips were as carefully made-up, with a slightly softened but still brilliant red. On the wall where she had just come from hung a mirror, rather an unsquared piece of mirror going off to a sharp point at one side.

—There, Otto said, holding out an empty hand which he let fall slowly. —I'm sorry about ... I can . . . She waited, with this same unachieved smile. —Are you all right? ... he repeated, noticing the great hoops of earrings for themselves for the first time. Until that moment they simply served to complete her figure.

—She must go for a long walk, for today she has had nothing to eat, she said to Otto, —and the doctor put barium sul-phate in her stomach so that he can X-ray her and find out if she has a stomach. Isn't that silly? she added after a pause.

—Yes, but you ... I mean I heard that you . . . that something happened to you last night . . .

—Last night, she repeated, looking away from him, —last night she did a very foolish thing, turning on the gas . . . She swung round to him suddenly, her tone mocking laughter and her eyes bright open: he looked from one to the other, saw in both his own distended reflection. —Turning on the gas, when the bill was so high already . . . ! And she allowed him a moment longer to stare at the image on the surface of her eyes, before she turned away to say, —But then Chaby came and everything was all right.

Otto rubbed his hand over his face and muttered something without turning round to Chaby (where she looked then, over his shoulder) who was seated smoking a cigarette in the room behind him.

—Oh yes ... he said and took a step away from her, dropping his hand, looking down to where the rug painted on the floor came to an end between them.

She went over to a drawer, looking for something, a handkerchief, and left him standing there looking round, but keeping his eyes from the room behind him. —I see you've finally got a mirror up, he said, rather distastefully, glancing into it to see his face shorn off at the jaw. When she said nothing he added, —You must need it, to get all that paint on your face.

—Oh no, the paint is not for the mirror, she said looking at him, half turned from the opened drawer and clinging to it. —But now a ghost lives here who is not happy. And when it comes she hides in front of the mirror where it cannot find her.

Otto muttered —Oh . . . , glanced in at the other room, and took a cigarette out. He lit it and tapped his foot on the floor, looking for a place to throw the match. —What's this? he said suddenly, over near the bookcase, turning a drawing round with his toe on the floor where he'd found it. —Why . . . who is this? he asked, and stooped over to pick it up and look at it close.

—Some one, she said.

—But where did you . . . how do you know him?

—It is just some one, she said.

—But it's . . . what's wrong with this? He stared at the face: it stared back, exactly like, but exactly unlike he remembered, faithfully precise but every honest line translated into its perfect lie, as a face seen from behind.

—It's a funny joke, she said suddenly, speaking more loudly, and she laughed but the laugh was gone by the time he looked up to her face.

—No, it isn't funny, he said, looking back at the picture. He started to hold it up before the mirror out of curiosity, and then abruptly he threw it down and turned to her. —Can you come out for a walk?

—She must go for a long walk with the chem-ical in her no-stomach, she said. She was pulling on gloves.

As they went out, she stopped in the door. —You will be here? she asked Chaby. Chaby nodded.

—But you will! . . . she said with a desperate step toward him.

—Sure, I'll be here, Chaby said from the chair, and he winked at her and smiled, hardly raising the ends of his hair-line mustache.

At that she lost her rigidity, and wilted against the edge of the open door, smiling at him.

Otto waited at the stairhead. As they went out he tossed an end of the green scarf over his shoulder and spoke as casually as he could, —Where'd you get those earrings, anyhow?

—She has always had them.

—I never saw them on you. I didn't even know your ears were pierced. She said nothing. —Don't they hurt? I mean, they're so big.

—Yes, she answered turning away, —they hurt her.

Otto thought of taking her arm, but he did not, yet. Also he was walking on her right, and could do no better than bump her with his slung elbow. He was thinking about the picture he had found, and left, on her floor; was, in fact, intensely curious about it, but put it off, as he was putting off taking her arm until they should be well away from her door (as though once into territory strange to her, she would be at the mercy of his protection): all this, though the self-portrait hung square before his eyes, as he said to her, —I have to meet my father in a little while, in an hour or so. When she did not comment, he added, —For the first time.

—That will be nice, she said.

—I don't know how nice it'll be, he said. —Imagine, being my age and meeting the old man for the first time. He paused as they turned the corner and sorted themselves out from strangers walking there. —Put off the old man, says the Bible, put on ...

Suddenly she took his arm, his whole slung arm in hers. —Do you know? . . . she said.

—What? . . . He tried to reach his hand out the end of the sling, and snare her gloved hand, but he could not find it.

—I have discovered that there is no one, she said, in intimate confidence.

—No one?

—Last night there was a knock upon the door. I went and opened the door, and no one was there. No one was really there at my door. No one had come to call.

Otto mumbled and looked at her quickly, at the blue hollows of her eyes in the light of the street. —And . . . did no one come in? he managed to say, reaching across with his right hand to find hers.

—No, she said, and let him go as abruptly as she had caught him.

—Now look, you know . . . you mustn't get . . . you mustn't be too upset, you know, I mean after what happened ...

—Do you know what happened too? she asked, looking up at him quite surprised.

Otto looked at her excitedly. It is true, he was confused; but she was with him, they were together after what seemed a very long time, and —All this ... he said, —All this . . .

—He made love to her, and then she went away.

—What did you say? ...

—Love that smelled like lilies of the Madon-na, she went on, her voice rising evenly to a plane of wonder and distance. —Yes, she said intently; then her voice dropped. —Like the pus of Saint John of the Cross.

He had started to get round and get hold of her, but she held him where he was with a look of infinite reproach.

—That smelled of Madon-na lilies, she said in this low tone, a tone of infinite regret.

—Now look, you ... he who? . . . Otto burst round to the other side of her, started to take her arm and realized that she was still carrying Uncle Tom's Cabin. His mind churned a vast array of irrelevancies, from the faces passing them which turned here and there in dull curiosity to that incunabular joke which said that Uncle Tom's Cabin was not written by hand because it was written by Harriet Beecher Stowe ...

—He in the mir-ror, -who, she said in her mocking tone.

—Now look, that photograph, and his . . . look, what is it? ... Have you been modeling? . . . for him?

—Sometimes she did.

—But where is ... but where are the pictures?

—He did not show them to her. Her voice was brisk with disappointment. They were passing outside a bar whose door just then came'open and poured out a heavy broken stream of German music which was gone with their next step, leaving her face in the blue and red lights of the window sign for beer, exposed in the expression of fear he first remembered on it when he had gone down on her in the chair in the afternoon and something, somewhere, broke: but in this instantaneous conspiracy of lights and make-up that immaculate fear became terror, and jaded terror sustained beyond human years and endurance, and he shuddered at this hag before he knew it.

—When the witnesses come, she said to him, not taking his arm but touching it with her fingertips, —will they identify her? or will they turn from her to the pain-tings of her which are not of her at all, and shudder as you shudder and look away.

So he had looked away, passing the window of a fun store, a bright litter of novelties, of colors and false faces, pencils, puzzles, a kiddies' toilet seat, Christmas cards, ashtrays, a paint set, rings with false stones, a phosphorescent crucifix, —jingle all the wa-a-ay, came from the transom above.

—We are the gypsies, she said to him as he turned quickly back to her, and she spoke in that low tone of earlier, of deep remorse, —the Lost Egyptians, and we pay penance for not giving Them asylum, when They fled into Egypt. What harsh laws they make against us, she went on, her voice becoming dull. —They will not permit us to speak our own language, she said looking up at him again, —for they believe we can change a child white-into-black, and sell him into slavery! She laughed at that, suddenly, looking up at him;, but with his hand tight closed on her wrist the laugh disappeared and left her surprised, staring into his eyes. They had come to a stop, and she took up walking again though he seemed to try to hold her back.

—Now look ... he said. —Look . . .

—He even said once, that the saints were counterfeits of Christ, and that Christ was a counterfeit of God.

—Now look, where is he? I mean does he still have that studio? that place on Horatio Street.

—Perhaps he does, or he does not. She does not see him any more.

—I want to see him, I ... but you, look can I see you later? at home.

—If you want to.

—Will he be there?

—She does not see him any more.

—I mean Chaby, will he be at your house?

—If he wants to be.

—But he ... I mean damn it he's always there, he ... what's he doing there anyhow?

—Now he is there doing bad things to himself with the needle.

—Look when will you be home?

After a long pause, when they'd reached a corner and she stopped there, under the streetlight, she said, —She does not know, she must take a long walk with the chemical in her stomach that is not there, and then she must go to the doctor.

—But the ... I have to meet my father in a little while, but look, I want to see you. I mean, I have to talk to you, it seems like months since I've seen you, and you . . . and I still love you, even if ...

He broke off, and gave her wrist which he still held such a quick tug that the book fell to the ground. He got it quickly, and came up with, —Because I've believed nothing, or I thought I didn't believe in anything and maybe I've been pretending I didn't believe in anything, but only tried to use my head and figure things out and . . . because that's the way everybody seems to have to be now, because you can't trust . . . and you . . . and now . . . and then when I found you, I found you really didn't, you really didn't believe in anything and you have to, you have to ... he finished breathlessly and reached for her wrist again but she withdrew it and he stood with his free hand quivering on the air between them. Then he took a deliberate breath, deeply, and spent it all saying, —Do you love me?

—If there were time, she answered him looking him full in the face.

—Or ... or ... he started to falter again, raising his hand to the razor cut on his cheek and pressing his fingers there xvhen he found it. —It's like ... he commenced again, lowering his voice, and his hand, and he caught her wrist this time, —It's as though when you lose someone . . . lose contact with someone you love, then you lose contact with everything, with everyone else, and nobody . . . and nothing is real any more . . .

She stared at him, patient now in his grasp which loosened slightly as his voice ran out; though he found enough of it left to repeat, —Or things won't work. Then he drew breath again and stood looking at her under the streetlamp. She had relaxed in his hold; even taken half a step closer to him, and he studied her face in the light from above them, as it seemed a faint and expectant, and a receptive, anxiety spread over it; while his own slackened slowly over the cheekbones, and the excitement drained from his eyes as he marshaled his senses. He loosed her wrist, and lowered his hand, and stood before her as he had stood on the dock before the glare of that white fruit boat; and as he had counted out change for the beggar in whose face he saw no beauty, so suddenly had it come upon him, he computed his emotions, reckoning how much he could spare, and how much retain for himself. —You can depend on me, he said to her.

She withdrew; and there, like small coins slipping through his fingers, he began to lose what he had balanced and accounted with such practiced care, having given the two-and-one-half cent piece, which looked like a dime. He whispered her name hoarsely, and raised his arm to put it round her.

—Don't.

—But I ...

—Leave her alone.

The safety pin came undone, the sling dropped as he put both arms around her, and his hand opened, everything spilled. But she made no move, no effort to move, she stood and waited with her head drawn down as far as she could do. Then he closed his hands, looking beyond her, so quickly gathering up all that he had almost lost.

—You'll be all right alone? he said to her.

—Now she will.

Otto stooped and picked up the sling. —I'll see you later on, he said. Half a block apart, he turned and looked back, to see her walking away from him.

Balloons, a watch, a poopoo cushion, textile paints and stencils, a gold-finished silk-tasseled watch-case compact, Your portrait in oil (a genuine original oil painting) from favorite snapshot, 4½ x 5½ inch canvas, decorative wooden easel and palette free; a dusty imitation ink-blot; a dusty imitation dog spiral; a talking doll; Blessed Mother, Infant of Prague and Saint Joseph, 24K gold-plated, in pocket-identification case, 25cent; Venus de Milo with a clock in her belly; a sewing kit (resembles quality bone china) figurine; a Christmas card with 180-page genuine Bible postage-stamp size attached; a ventriloquist's dummy; a false face, mounted on another false face; all these, as well as many more durable, beautiful, useful, inspiring things lay stretched before Otto's gaze where he stopped to pin up the sling. The pin was gone. He knotted it, unsteadily stealthy with both hands, and felt for his wallet before he put his hand into his trouser pocket, for it was shaking. People passed in both directions. One bumped him below, and cried,

—Yaa, yaaaa . . . The arm in the sling flew up in horror as he stared at his triumphant assailant, a person under three feet tall staring up at him with wide eyes, an immense red nose, and a great brush of a mustache all hung on by the empty wire glasses. With a few steps he was inside the bar where Eine kleine Taverne im Golf von Napoli was being played on the juke-box, and he ordered beer. He was suddenly very cold. He brought his hand out with a coin clenched in it, and tapped it on the bar, looking unwaveringly straight ahead, at the eyes of his image in a mirrored cabinet above the rows of bottles behind the bar. He was alone in the place, except for the bartender; and he lit his last cigarette.

The door opened again, and a man in a battered Santa Glaus suit came in, beardless and hatless, but with a well-stubbled chin. He looked jovially down the bar at Otto and then said, —Pour us something with a smile in it, Jimmy. My special. Toot sweet, Jimmy . . . He winked at Otto. —And the looter the sweeter.

Unwinking, Otto turned back and put his forehead in his palm, that elbow on the bar and the coin in his slung hand, waiting. He closed his eyes for a moment.

The bartender came down empty-handed, opened the mirrored cabinet to take out a bottle of Old Heaven Hill Bourbon, and returned to the man in the battered Santa Glaus suit.

Otto sniffed, and opened his eyes. On the shelf behind the bar, well out of reach, was a donation box for a Sacred Heart Society. Mounted on it was a colored print of Christ exposing the Sacred Heart, looking, from Otto's half-open eyes, like a C.I.D. man showing his badge. Otto stared at it and muttered something to himself. He sniffed again. It was his hair burning from the cigarette between his forefingers. —Damn, he said, and then, —damnation. He put the cigarette in an ashtray at arm's length, and looked up for the bartender who was just then coming with his beer.

—Fifteen, said the bartender. He waited while Otto fumbled through pockets, and finally joined the warm coin from his slung hand with a cold one from his jacket. —We only take American money here, Jack. The bartender tossed the cold shiny two-and-one-half cent-piece back to him and waited, looking absently at Otto's cigarette smoking in the tray until Otto found a dime. Then he took the coins, picked up the cigarette, and went back up the bar.

—But . . . Otto caught the word before it came out. He clenched his hand round the glass and stared straight ahead of him. And it took him a good half-minute to realize that neither the stubbled chin, nor the flattened nose, nor the bunched ears, nor the yellow eyes he stared into, were his own.

He turned and went straight back for the telephone booth. There he dialed SP 7-3100. —Hello? he said into the phone. —I want to report a case of drug-taking. Heroin. If you go to this address immediately . . . What? No, I'd prefer not to give my name.

The glassed doors came closed upon him slowly, and from outside he could be seen staring through the scribbled configuration on the glass, a dedication which might, under other circumstances, have recalled Sir Walter Raleigh's cunning advance upon Queen Elizabeth, scrawling "Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall" upon a windowpane with a diamond.

The juke-box played Fliege mit mir in die Heimat. The bartender put out the cigarette half-smoked, as though it were his own. The man in the battered Santa Glaus suit stood with his back to the bar and his elbows resting on it. —That's a nice muriel, he said, looking at the wall painting, where a moose stared out over an empty lake. But the clock, though hung high in the sky where the sun might have been at high noon in the fall weather of the moose's landscape, was running withershins, as a convenience to bar patrons who could see it right in the mirror.

—I knew a guy once, he had this muriel, said the man in the battered Santa Glaus suit. —Except where it was, it was on the ceiling, he added reflectively, —And it was a dame.

V

"The trust of our people in God should be declared on our national coins. You will cause a device to be prepared, without unnecessary delay, with a motto expressing in the fewest and tersest words possible, this national recognition." —Abraham Lincoln's Treasurer, to the director of the Mint.

—I can't live with you and be a Christian, shouted the woman clinging to the edge of the dirty sink, answering the moaning from the next room, she whose ancestors had gathered at the foot of the Janiculum in ancient Rome, and sold whatever was for sale in the garlic-reeking interior of the Taverna Meritoria, that squalid inn on the Tiber bank.

—You're not a Christian, never were. And the moaning resumed.

—When are you going to stop that awful noise, she demanded, she whose ancestors strove with one another, asking, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"

—Be quiet. It's the only reason you married me. You wanted to marry a Christian, you wanted to marry a good Catholic. Well, leopards can't change their spots.

—Shut up! She turned the volume control of her hearing aid down.

Then there was silence. It lasted for a full minute, when both rooms were filled with a scream so ghastly as to stop the novice heart and breath and blood for the full eternal instant of its duration; a sound which, as the book said, once heard, can never be forgotten. The woman at the sink (she whose ancestors were kidnaped as children, to be brought up in the Faith, A.M.D.G.) clung to its slopped edge. The lines of her face were fallen, not in terror, but in weariness. Too late, she turned the volume control of her hearing aid down still further.

—How did that sound? asked her husband behind her, triumphant in the doorway. —That was an epileptic. I'm practicing. —Oh Jesus and Mary, you've only been home this time for three weeks, and you've started again.

—What's the matter with it? Saint Paul was an epileptic.

—Can't you do anything else, Frank? Are you too old to do anything else?

It was true. Mr. Sinisterra was becoming an old man. Although he had been heard to say that he resented prison years no more than Saint Augustine resented the withdrawal he had made from the world when living near Tagaste; had, indeed, embracing the words of Saint Gregory ("the Contemplative Life is greater in merit and higher than the active"), spent a fair amount of time in solitary confinement ("the hole," as it was called, a place which, though cleaner and more dry, corresponded to the in pace of the convent, where, for their own good, medieval religious were occasionally immured for life), in spite of all this, and his commendable approach, prison years had not softened him, nor prolonged his youth. Life at Atlanta was not, as his son had been told on occasion, "a long vacation for Daddy," any more than Saint Giles's retirement to the desert resembled a tour from a travel folder. Now the retirement was over once more, and with the humility of the prophet Jeremiah, who longed for the contemplative life but was rooted out to "go and cry in the ears of Jerusalem," Mr. Sinisterra had returned again to shoulder the burdens of this world.

—I'm going out for awhile, he said in the doorway, looking suspiciously at his wife's hand as it lowered from the hearing-aid control pinned at her bosom. She stared at him. —You ought to learn self-control, like those yogis, she said.

—I should learn control. I! Me!

—That's a wonderful religion they got, that voodooism.

—Hopeless, he said, turning into the other room. —I was going to get you a book, but I don't think you even could read it if I did. There he sat down before a mirror, illuminated like a theatrical dressing-room mirror. Spread before him was an array of jars, tubes, colored pencils, and hair in bits and transformations which any star might have envied. On the wall hung a crucifix, a picture of Cavalieri as Tosca, some neckties representing better schools at home and abroad, and a reminder of a papal bull of Pius IX, the Pio Nono of many happy memories, in this case the Bolla di Com-posizione of 1866, granting pardon to the felon who devotes to pious uses three per cent (3%) of his plunder, permitting him to "keep and possess the remainder in good faith, as his own property justly earned and acquired."

On the table at his elbow, among bottles of aqua regia, alcohol, benzine, nitric acid, something known in the trade as "dragon's blood," a pair of shears, some beeswax, some resin, some mastic, some amber, some steel plates, and some oil of lavender whose springtime fragrance pervaded the room, lay two exotic passports, and a copy of the Theologia Moralis of Alfonso Liguori, on top of Bicknall's Counterfeit Detector for 1839. He had opened a large bottle of a solution of potassium permanganate, and sat now carefully daubing his face and neck with this brilliant purple, throwing the silver medal which hung at his throat over his shoulder.

—Thank God he took down his washing anyhow, he heard her mutter.

—What do you mean my washing? What washing?

—Them twenty-dollar bills you had hanging all over the place to dry.

—If you smeared any! He turned a face, which was minute by minute blooming with the flush of youth, threateningly to the doorway. —That's just the way they picked up the greatest artist that there ever was, he went on, returning to the mirror. —Jim the Penman, he drew every bill by hand, for twenty years he was a success. And what happens? Some dumb grocery clerk smudges one of them with a wet hand. When he was tried, you know what the defense was? He was an artist. Any of his work was worth more as a work of art than what the government was shoving. An artist, a real artist.

—Don't you worry, I didn't smear any of your worthless paper. Worthless, worthless paper, she muttered at the sink.

—Worthless] he cried. —Do you know how hard I worked on that? Do you know where I got the paper to print them? What do you think it was, old newspaper? Well it wasn't, there was two hundred and fifty dollars' worth of paper hanging up there. Do you think I'd do a cheap job after the work it was to make those plates? Did I ever do a cheap job? Worthless paper! That was two hundred and fifty one-dollar bills, bleached to print the twenties on. It took me almost eight years to make those plates, he added.

—That was a nice way to spend your time in prison, God knows.

—That's right, those are hand-engraved steel plates, you don't see them any more. None of your cheap photo-engraving. He started to fold a packet in brown paper, but appeared unable to resist taking out a bill, which he turned over in his hand murmuring, —You don't see work like this any more, as he looked into the challenging face of the seventh President. Under the packet lay the current issue of the monthly National Counterfeit Detector, where reviews of his work had not appeared in many years: in this work, anonymity advanced with worth, just as it did in the vignettes on the currency itself. The Father of His Country was crumpled, folded, and offered in the most piking and meretricious traffic millions of times a day, infinitely better known and worse treated than McKinley and Cleveland, far more readily summoned than the five thousand times remote Madison, still less than kin, ten thousand times removed, with Salmon P. Chase, if more than kind with him in coveting supreme office, a recognition never granted to that Secretary "of the Treasury under Abraham Lincoln, who made the five hands down without even getting a haircut.

—You don't see work like this any more, he repeated. —Everything's cheap, everybody does things the quick cheap way. This is one of the only crafts left. Look at the eyes, there's none of that dead quality you see in a cheap job. Look at the sensitive lips, he murmured laying the bill back with the others. —I don't waste my time like a lot of people I know.

—Don't talk to me about wasting time, she came back at him. —If you had the kind of pains like I do. Go out and catch cancer yourself, and see how smart you are then.

—Cancer! Indigestion, that's what you've got.

—And another thing I want to talk to you about before you get yourself all made up like a circus clown. Where are you going anyway? she demanded, appearing in the doorway as he opened a bottle of eserine and took out an eyedropper.

—I'm going to make a meet, he answered shortly.

—To make a meat. That's nice.

He filled the eyedropper and turned to her with exaggerated patience. —I'm going out to meet a passer, to hand this stuff over to him. It's all arranged and paid for.

—Such nice friends you got. Socially I should meet them.

—You should meet them! I don't even know him myself, I don't want to know him, I don't want him to know me. They're the ones who get picked up first. If he doesn't know me, he doesn't know where he got the stuff, he can't talk. It's always trouble with the middleman and the passers that get you pulled in. I don't even have any middleman. Everything's middlemen. Everything's cheap work and middlemen wherever you look. They're the ones who take the profit. Thirty dollars a hundred while I get eight. After the way I work? Look at those three plates, that's hand-engraved on steel, they'll never wear out like these zinc plates in a cheap photoengraving job. He tilted his head back and raised the dropper. —This guy I'm going to meet, he's going to identify me by I'm almost blind with my glasses . , . She watched a drop of eserine fall into his left eye, while he went on, —Do you think I can take chances? How many men do you think there are in this country who can pick up engraving tools and do what I can do? There's hardly half a dozen, and they can hardly come near me. Even them, they either work for the government or they're in jail. And do you think nobody knows who I am? The minute they spot a piece of this stuff, they've got it under a microscope. They've got work of mine they picked up thirty years ago, and they can compare it. They're not dumb, with a microscope in their hand, the Secret Service, they can find the smallest resemblance, even after thirty years they can see my own hand in there, a little of myself, it's always there, a little always sticks no matter what I do.

She stood supporting herself on the door jamb, and looked at him wearily; sniffed, and raised her eyes as though looking over distance in the landscape of his kingdom, the strong-scented landscape of Sheol. Finally she said, —So keep your friends to yourself, but let me tell you, when the doctor gives me morphine for my pains, what happens to it? Right out of the house it disappears. Who steals it? Your son, that's who steals it. From his mother yet.

—He's not mine, he's yours. I don't claim him. Does he ever go to church? No. He hasn't got any morals, he hasn't got any talent.

—So who ruined him? So who stood over him when he was a baby, and says, My ain't it wonderful his first two fingers are the same length, so he could pick pockets, trying to teach him how to make his fingers like scissors, picking pockets. So who stood over him and says, My, with sensitive fingertips like that I could feel the tumblers fall in any safe in the world. So who was it give him Daddy's signet ring, like he was a prince of somewhere, except this signet ring it's got a little knife in it, to cut pockets open yet.

Her husband turned to look at her. His was an odd look, for one pupil had shrunk almost to a pin-point, swimming in eserine which he wiped away. —Those things were primary courses, like any kid gets in his first grade school. Do you think I wanted him to be a bum? So I taught him some basic things, how to use his hands. Did he ever learn anything? Did he ever try? No. He never worked a day in his life, like his father. You had his moral side to bring up. That's a mother's work, all those years I was away you had him here to bring up his moral side. Look how it come out.

—So who's crying over spilled milk? It's no good to talk about, all I want is he stops stealing his mother's morphine. I go through his pockets, even, looking for it, what do I find, seasick remedy and chewing gum I find.

—So you think he's seasick? You know what he uses them for? He goes to the dog track, and dopes the dogs up with Mothersill's seasick remedy. The chewing gum he puts between their pads to slow them up. You think I taught him that?

—Anything bad he knows, you must have taught him. She stood there, gazing at him, as he dropped eserine into his right eye. —Such a clown, yet, she said wistfully. —Anyhow he's never been in prison like his fine father who just come out again.

—You think I didn't figure that out? he said, turning from the mirror, to look at her with two pin-pointed pupils. —There was a war going on, and things are bad when there's a war. It's hard to get metal for the plates, it's hard to get the right inks, everybody you can depend on gets drafted, or they get a job in an airplane factory. Like prosperity, things get lousy. It's not so easy now.

But she just looked at him. —Frank, ain't it ever going to let up? Every time you go in this room, I don't know who's coming out. Two months go by, and everything gets chalk on them from your hands when you clean your plate. Everything smells all the time. Like I used to think lavender was flowers, but now I smell it somewhere all I think of is you doing this . . . this . . .

—I'm busy, he said, and returned to the table before him. —You're disturbing me on my nerves.

—Your nerves! she wailed, back at the sink. —So maybe I haven't got any nerves? Whenever you're away J think when you come back maybe it will be different, and then by the time you're back a month I almost wish you was away again. You'd be in there yet for that trouble you was in over the stamp, if it wasn't for a mistake they made.

—Mistake! If ever the hand of the Virgin watched over me it was that time. That conviction was thrown out because one of the jurymen was a Jew. He took his oath swearing on a New Testament. A mistake you call that. That was the Virgin Mary getting even for a mistake the Jews made two thousand years ago, that's what a mistake it was. He waited for her to answer, suspecting that she had turned off her hearing aid. Then he went on, nostalgically, looking at himself in the glass, —That stamp was beautiful, that one-penny Antigua stamp. It took me four months to make that plate. And do you think the color was easy? Do you think just anybody can make the color puce? That's why that kid is no good. Would he work hard on something like that? Do you hear me? He waited, suspiciously, to see if she had turned off her hearing aid, something he had not yet caught her at.

—I hear you, she said wearily, at the sink, and turned off her hearing aid.

—Well then stop talking to me like I was a common gangster. Did you ever see me with a gun? Did I ever hurt anybody, except once and that was a mistake, everybody knows it was, and you couldn't count the Masses I've had said for her. He crossed himself hurriedly, and chose his hair for the evening, a healthy black mop. —Not like that kid, he wouldn't have a Mass said for his own mother. He's slipshod and no good. Whenever I was home to give him the benefit of my study and experience, I tried to teach him. I taught him how to spring a Yale lock with a strip of celluloid. I taught him how to open a lock with wet thread and a splinter. I taught him how to look like he has a deformed spine, or a deformed foot. Nobody taught me all that. I learned it myself. It was a lot of work, and he had me right here to teach him, right here, his own father. So what does he learn? Nothing. He's never done a day's work in his life. You think a bum like that I'd claim him for my son? He's like everybody now, they don't study their work, they don't study their materials. Show me somebody who can get that color green so perfect, he went on, looking down at the back of a twenty-dollar bill. —It's not a place for bums to get into, it's a place for artists, for craftsmen.

Mr. Sinisterra paused to fit the black hair in place over his own, a thinning texture of early gray. Then he went on in a lower tone, —He has no ambition like his father. I tried to teach him how to make copper plates, zinc plates, glass plates. The only platinum plate I ever made he almost ruined it for me. Just once he tried it alone, he tried to make some Revenue stamps. I helped him right through it, like a old master, cleaning the copper plate with benzine, putting on the wax ground, softening it with a little lavender oil. He made a mess of it. I had to throw the whole thing out before he got us all in trouble. Even the color, do you think he could tell the difference of one green and another? He couldn't tell it from red even. His father's a craftsman, an artist, he's nothing but a bum.

Mr. Sinisterra dusted the black hair into place. There were sounds from the kitchen, but no answering words; only the clatter of pans. —It isn't like the old days, he said, looking at himself in the glass. —It isn't like when you could pass a gilded quarter for a ten-dollar gold piece. It isn't like the days of Pete McCartney and Fred Biebusch, and Big Bill the Queersman, the days when Brock-way passed a hundred thousand just like that. It isn't like the days when Johnnie the Gent melted down the Ascot Cup.

He went to the rack to choose a necktie. Flicking aside Eton and Harrow, he lifted the soft dark blue with jagged red streaks of the Honourable Artillery Company, considered it for a moment, and then replaced it beside the false arm hung on the rack. —It's not a place for bums to get into, it's a place for art. You know how big the spaces behind Hamilton on the ten are? Less than one one-hundred-twentieth of an inch. Do you call that a place for bums?

That kid wouldn't even try, when he made those Revenue stamps.

The acid got under the wax and made everything jagged. Do you think he cared? He didn't even know the difference. How sharper than a snake's tooth it is to have a kid like that, do you hear me? You never read a book in your life. Well never mind. It's a great disappointment for a father, when his son don't take an interest in his father's work and carry it on.

The pig, stamped upon the coins of Eleusis when she coined her first autonomous money in the fourth century b.c., the pig of purification, adorned the necktie which Mr. Sinisterra chose, and turned to the mirror to knot it about his neck with a manner of great tradition born. —It's a great disappointment when he don't appreciate our tradition, he said. —Our family wasn't just nobody in Salerno, every secret we have has been handed down from father to son for generations. Do you think he cares? My father was proud of me. He turned to put on his suit coat, flicking at its lapels, and buttoning it before the mirror. His chest filled as he looked at himself there.

Behind him lay the Protocols of the Elders of Zion; and the magnanimous grant of Constantine, though that emperor was some five centuries dead when the spirit of his generosity prevailed through forgers in Rome, to bequeath all of western Europe to the Papacy. Behind him lay decrees, land grants, and wills, whose art of composition became a regular branch of the monastic industry, busy as those monks in the Middle Ages were keeping a-kindle the light of knowledge which they had helped to extinguish everywhere else. Behind lay Polycrates, who minted gold-coated lead coins in his own kingdom of Samos; and Solon, who decreed death for such originality in his. Canute severed guilty hands; and England, escaping his empire and succumbing to the Normans not much later, removed not only hands but eyes, a lily flower of punishment gilded with castration which solved nothing, for even in the reign of Edward III it was found necessary to draw and quarter a number of talented ecclesiastics.

Historians, anxious to rescue some semblance of a system from the chaos of the past, point out that since the dawn of civilization, the center of civilization has moved westward: from Polycrates' Asian island and Solon's Athens to Constantine's Roman Empire nine centuries later, on to Charlemagne's Prankish labyrinth, ever onward to Canute the Dane at the millennium, across the Channel to the fourteenth-century England of Edward III it came, gathered its breath there (while word of renascence breathed behind in Italy) for three centuries, readying for the leap across the sea to shores of a New World, where early settlers (having thrown off that yoke of tyrannical ignorance, religious persecution) promoted a culture founded in pure reason, and introduced their civilized art to the Indians, forging wampum of porcelain and bone. They prospered. Hard work was the only expression of gratitude their deity exacted and money might be expected to accrue as testimonial; though Pennsylvania decreed the pillory, with the ears nailed to it and cut off, and a complement of thirty-nine lashes and a fine, these dedicated beings did not quail. But like so many of the mystic contrivances devised by priesthoods which slip, slide, and perish in lay hands, this too became a cottage industry: tradesmen, barbers, and barkeeps issued money, keeping up as best they could with the thousand different banks who were doing the same thing. Before the war which was fought to preserve the Union, a third of the paper money in circulation was counterfeit, and another third the issue of what were generously termed "irresponsible" banks. Meanwhile inspectors went from one bank to another, following the security bullion which was obligingly moved from the bank they had just inspected to the one where they next arrived; and the importunate public, demanding the same assurance, was satisfied with boxes rattling broken glass. Merchants kept "counterfeit detectors" under their counters, and every bill offered them in payment was checked against this list of all counterfeits in circulation, and notes rendered worthless by the disappearance of the evanescent banks which had issued them.

Mr. Sinisterra kept his copy of Bicknall's Counterfeit Detector for 1839 as a professional curiosity, much as a noted surgeon may exhibit a copy of Galen's Anatomy. And just as the noted cardiac surgeon may admire Galen's discovery that the arteries contain blood (and not air, as four centuries of the Alexandrian school had taught), but still smile patronizingly at his theory that the septum of the heart was pierced by imperceptible foramina (allowing passage of the blood from the right into the left ventricle); so Mr. Sinisterra mused over the ingenious devices of the century before him in Bicknall's, which listed 20 issues of money on fictitious banks, 43 banks whose notes were worthless, 54 banks which were bankrupt, 254 banks whose notes were counterfeited, and 1395 varieties of counterfeit notes in circulation. Thus he was becomingly proud of his tradition, which he had brought to the land of opportunity to exercise in the early part of the century, when the proportion of Italians to immigrants from less imaginative lands was about five to one: he whose consecration had helped to raise New York to its present reputation for being the greatest modern center of counterfeiting money of every currency in the world.

He crossed himself before the mirror, turned down his collar, and let his gaze rest upon the Siam National Railway's Guide to Bangkok, noting, as he did, that he must pick up a copy of Bae- deker's Spain. He allowed himself a moment to dream, saw himself voyaging (for the Eternal City, in a Holy Year, lay before him) like those early pilgrims to the Holy Land, Lententide in Rome, Holy Week at Compostella while their families were left starving at home, where they eventually returned decked with cockleshells to recount their adventures, and receive the applause and reverent congratulations of their lesser neighbors who had cravenly remained at home to work for their living.

Into his pocket he thrust the Theologia Moralis; and, on second thought, a small sandy mustache with spirit gum stuck to it. He picked up the package of bills, and paused to gaze for a moment into the fearless eyes of Andrew Jackson before he folded the paper closed upon them, and secured it with two elastic bands. How could Jackson, fighting in the Battle of Hanging Rock at the age of thirteen, know that a hundred seventy-odd years later a man would be laboring over his portrait with the exquisite care of love Mr. Sinisterra showed for those eyes, those lips, that shag of hair? that more than a century later his rousing battle with wealth, and the Bank of the United States, would be taken up, if on slightly different grounds, by one so covetous of anonymity as this man who stood thrusting two hundred and fifty vignettes of the seventh President into his pocket now?

His wife did not turn around when he entered behind her, muttering —Seventy-two eighty-eight-hundredths of an inch apart! That's no work for a bum. He stopped, and said in a hoarse whisper, —Do you hear me? Still she did not turn. He raised his voice with the same question. Then he advanced upon her. She jumped, and let out a cry, clinging to the sink with one hand, fumbling at her bosom with the other. —You haven't heard a thing I've said all this time. You turned it off, didn't you? Didn't you! With that, he tore the hearing aid from her dress, and threw it on the floor. —There! he said, and stamped on it. —Now you don't have to listen to me.

She only stared at him, at his eyes pin-pointed, bearing blindness, through those dusty lenses. She shook her head, looking at his light reversible coat. —It's cold out, Frank.

—I know it, he said. —I won't be long.

—It's cold out, Frank. Here, you ought to take this around your neck. She went over to a chair, and picked up a green scarf which her son had thrown there. —Wear this. Probably it ain't his anyway.

Mr. Sinisterra stood while she put the scarf round his neck. —I'm sorry, he said, —but when you don't pay attention to me ... Stupidity, I just cannot stand stupidity. She shook her head; and he left her there, stooping over to pick up the broken snarl of wire and plastic case at her feet. With that in her hand, she closed the door to his room which he had left open behind him, murmuring, —The smell . . . the smell gets everywhere, though no one heard her; and she could not be certain that she heard herself, echoing over Sheol. hello.

Mr. Pívner gazed at a full-page advertisement in his newspaper . . . You can say "hello" to a man as you pass him on the street. But you can't sell him anything.

Mr. Pivner's reading embraced tangible things. He had not gone to college (but rather something which called itself a business school: he had studied "accounting"). True, even if he had, he might never have read Democritus, the sire of materialism (judged insane by his neighbors, true, those rare Abderites, who summoned Hippocrates to cure him). Mr. Pivner's attention rarely came upon things at first hand in any case. He preferred those mummifactory presentations called "digests," which reassured him about his own opinions before he knew what they were. Had he read Democritus, he might have discovered, in philosophy's first collection of ethical precepts, among portents of atheism, and the vision of his own soul composed of round, smooth, especially mobile atoms, that it is the unexpected which occurs.

Since life itself tried vigorously to teach him this, however, it was this knowledge that he resisted most successfully. In his reading (a serious pursuit, whether advertising or the Old Testament) he chose, not the disquieting road to serenity, but the serenely narrow path to eventual and total derangement. Nirvana? what sense could he make of a lifetime spent striving toward a goal where nothing was? what satisfaction with Buddhism even when it had reached its tangible (idolatrous) form, to sit in a vase-domed temple turning a prayer wheel before a gilded statue, muttering, —Life is suffering

What sense in the Buddhists? They who affirm.

What sense in the Gainas? They who say Perhaps

As far from the Prince of Kapilavastu (who brought hope that the chain of twenty-four lakhs of birth in the soul's migration might be severed), as he was from the Nazarene (who, agreeing with the Buddha that life was a sore thing, virility even worse, threatened resurrection), Mr. Pivner sat staring through rimless glasses at a kindly book-jacket face which returned his amorphous gaze. He was preparing to meet his son, to win him as a friend, and influence him as a person.

As Odysseus had Mentor, Jesus John the Baptist, Cesare Borgia Machiavelli, Faust Mephistopheles, Descartes Father Dinet, Schopenhauer's dog Schopenhauer, and Schiller his drawerful of rotten apples, Mr. Pivner had Dale Carnegie: he and four million other individuals, that is; among whom none dared suspect that (perhaps) Salome's mother was right.

Did Damon try to sell insurance to Phintias?

It is true, Mr. Pivner, sitting under his three-way reading lamp (turned to its highest brilliance), did not plan to sell insurance, nor even a half-million yards of upholstery fabrics (aggregate value $1,600,000) to the youth he planned to meet that evening, nor glean a Packard car from him in return for applying the "principles of appreciation" as the Connecticut attorney did on page 101. He had taken this most worn of his books from the shelf because it inspired in him what he believed to be confidence. As he read there (underscored), "Let me repeat: the principles taught in this book will work only when they come from the heart. I am not advocating a bag of tricks. I am talking about a new way of life." That was the wonderful thing about this book ("Regard this as a working handbook on human relations; and whenever you are confronted with some specific problem . . ."): if at first its approach seemed fraught with guile, subterfuge, duplicity, sophistry, and insidious artifice, that feeling soon disappeared, and one had . . . "Ah yes, you are attempting a new way of life."

True, Mr. Pivner might have read Descartes; and, with tutelage, understood from that energetic fellow, well educated in Jesuit acrobatics (cogitans, ergo sum-ing), that everything not one's self was an IT, and to be treated so. But Descartes, retiring from life to settle down and prove his own existence, was as ephemeral as some Roger Bacon settling down to construct geometrical proofs of God: for Mr. Pivner, a potential buyer (on page 95) who was head of the Hotel Greeters of America (and president of the International Greeters too!) was far more real.

True, he might have read the New Testament, and worked out a similar synthesis of Christly conduct and Cartesian method to Machiavellian ends; but how much more direct was this book in his narrow lap: for it was not a book of thought, or thoughts, or ideas, but an action book. It left no doubt but that money may be expected to accrue as testimonial to the only friendships worth the having, and, eventually, the only ones possible.

"I am talking about a real smile" (Mr. Pivner read), "a heartwarming smile, a smile that comes from within, the kind of smile that will bring a good price in the market place." An action book; and herein lay the admirable quality of this work: it decreed virtue not for virtue's sake (as weary Stoics had it); nor courtesy for cour- tesy (an attribute of human dignity, as civilized culture would have it); nor love for love (as Christ had it); nor a faith which is its own explanation and its own justification (as any faith has it); but all of these excellences oriented toward the market place. Here was no promise of anything so absurd as a void where nothing was, nor so delusive as a chimerical kingdom of heaven: in short, it reconciled those virtues he had been taught as a child to the motives and practices of the man, the elixir which exchanged the things worth being for the things worth having.

It was written with reassuring felicity. There were no abstrusely long sentences, no confounding long words, no bewildering metaphors in an obfuscated system such as he feared finding in simply bound books of thoughts and ideas. No dictionary was necessary to understand its message; no reason to know what Kapila saw when he looked heavenward, and of what the Athenians accused Anaxagoras, or to know the secret name of Jahveh, or who cleft the Gordian knot, the meaning of 666. There was, finally, very little need to know anything at all, except how to "deal with people." College, the author implied, meant simply years wasted on Latin verbs and calculus. Vergil, and Harvard, were cited regularly with an uncomfortable, if off-hand, reverence for their unnecessary existences. ("You don't have to study for four years in Harvard to discover that," Mr. Pivner read, with a qualm of superiority, for he understood that Otto had, indeed, gone to Harvard.) In these pages, he was assured that whatever his work, knowledge of it was infinitely less important than knowing how to "deal with people." This was what brought a price in the market place; and what else could anyone possibly want?

Here was Andrew Carnegie, who had only four years in school but garnered a million dollars for every day in the year. Here was Cyrus H. K. Curtis, "the poor boy from Maine . . . starting on his meteoric career which was destined to make him millions . . ." Here was George Eastman, who left a clerk's job at fifty cents a day to pull together a cool hundred million ... So it went on, with many lesser, but equally enthusiastic examples, each of whom seemed to know little or nothing about his work, but every exquisite channel in the minds of his workers, all expressed in a tone of such intimacy that the reader, if he could not rise (meteorically) to their levels, could take satisfaction in seeing them brought down to his own.

The carefully selected quotations were impressive, and from as many sources as the success stories, which included exemplary fraud practiced on a bed-wetting child (for his own good) and model deceit practiced on a great opera singer (for his own good). To prepare this handbook on human relations, the author had read "everything that [he] could find on the subject, everything from Dorothy Dix, the divorce-court records, and the Parent's Magazine . . ." to three popular psychologists. He even hired a man to go to libraries and read everything he himself had missed. They spared "no time, no expense, to discover every practical idea that anyone had ever used throughout the ages to win friends and influence people." No wonder, thought Mr. Pivner, reading through these pertinently misunderstood half-truths, that it had succeeded. Here were Barnum and the Bible, Charles Schwab, Dutch Schultz, and Shakespeare, two Napoleons, Pola Negri, and the National Credit Men's Association, Capone, Chrysler, Two-Gun Crowley, and Jesus Christ, each in his own way posting the way to the market place. Even Jehovah appeared, if only in brief reversal ("Daniel Webster, who looked like a god and talked like Jehovah, was one of the most successful . . .").

"You owe it to yourself, to your happiness, to your future, and to your income!" Reference to "old King Akhtoi" of Egypt ("Old King Akhtoi said one afternoon, between drinks, four thousand years ago . . .") made Mr. Pivner feel that the author had been right there, at cocktails, with that charming rascal, old King Akhtoi. The Socratic method was marvelously simplified ("His whole technique, now called the 'Socratic method,' was based upon getting a 'yes, yes' response"): the very essence of cornering, not truth which has no market value (and did, indeed, bring death to the cunning Greek), but a "good price in the market place." Christ and Confucius appeared, to recite the Golden Rule, and bow out, leaving Mr. Pivner (and four million other individuals) with the clever secret of humility which, carefully used, led the prey in the opposite direction to self-aggrandizement, the illusion of power: in fact, sometimes (when he was tired) Mr. Pivner felt that the sublime secret was to behave like a door mat, to present himself to the world as a cheerful simpleton with no ideas of his own, a good-natured half-wit turning the other cheek, to personify Nietzsche's idea of the Christian, a congenital idiot with nothing to gain (all the while, however, slipping a half-million yards of upholstery fabric down his sleeve).

As a matter of fact, he was assured by the author that the only thing keeping him from being an idiot was five cents' worth of iodine in his thyroid gland (hardly a good price in the market place, even for humility). "A little iodine that can be bought at a corner drugstore for five cents . . ." Indeed, the general tone of the book was one of humility, a complacent and ungainly sort perhaps, proportioned as it was to the camel passing through the eye of the needle.

Mr. Pivner thumbed through the pages, glancing at the familiar chapter headings, Fundamental Techniques in Handling People . . . Six Ways to Make People Like You . . . Twelve Ways to Win People to Your Way of Thinking . . . and his head nodded. He was very tired. In the background, unattended, the radio poured out, subdued, the Reformation Symphony. Why so much attention, so much time spent on this book resting in his narrow lap? Mr. Pivner found safety in numbers; any publication with a circulation of a million reassured him, and in a land where mental diseases tolled more people than all other human ills combined, a circulation of four million was more reassuring than anything else could be: for every twenty-five literate citizens over the age of fourteen, one had bought this book, not to guess at how many single dog-eared, underscored copies had circulated among the remaining twenty-four. Assuredly then, it was more than safe; it was an integral part of life around him, those who sneered notwithstanding (for they too were forced to share his life, to be won and to be influenced, no matter their faiths, their aspirations, no matter their reasons for courtesy, their grounds for love, how could they presume to distinguish what they offered from what they were given?); and those who decried and denounced it might be condemned out of hand as dangerous at best, bitter, ungrateful at the least, failing not virtue (which has no definition and no country) but that conspiracy of self-preservation known as patriotism.

The tic, which came in Mr. Pivner's lower lip just left of center when he was tired, came now, and waked him to a look of indecisive emotion. It would not stop, but pulled his lip down in quick throbs, as though he had abruptly been asked a question whose answer he knew, and feared to give. He looked suddenly at his watch. He raised it, and held it to his ear. He stood up (still holding the book, open) picked up the telephone, and dialed O, —I'd just like to know what time it is, he said. (—Do you want the time bureau?) —No, I just wanted to know if you had the time, please. (—I'm sorry, we're not permitted to give out that information . . .) He hung up, and looked at the radio, waiting. The Reformation Symphony made him nervous, as all such music (called "classical") did, as the word Harvard did; but sometimes he was struck with a bar of "classical" music, a series of chords such as these which poured forth now, a sense of loneliness and confirmation together, a sense of something lost, and a sense of recognition which he did not understand. It must be time to take his medicine, before he left to go downtown. The symphony continued as he left it, and went into the bathroom. He preferred that music to which he did not have to listen. It was only the human voice on the radio that stopped him, that raised his head in expectation, as though it were about to impart something of great personal significance, to him. Indeed, that was always the tone in the voice, disembodied; and still listening, expectant, he would sit back, and wait. He had been laughed at, by someone who said, —But you don't listen to that stuff? Why do you let it bother you? and of advertising in print, —But you don't read that stuff, do you? What do you let it bother you for? What was this anomaly in him, that still told him that the human voice is to be listened to? the printed word to be read? What was this expectant look, if it was not hope? this attentive weariness, if it was not faith? this bewildered failure to damn, if it was not charity?

The room was filled with the strident ring of a telephone bell. It shivered the metal sails on the man o' war, brought forth an undisciplined tinkle of broken glass, and a frantic shade of movement concerted in seizure: breathing the hoarse aspirate initial of greeting, waiting, listening, everything stopped:

—Hello! This is Meribeth Watzon, speaking for the New York

Telephone Company . . . the radio confided without changing the expression of its features, grill and knobs and a lighted smile; and what shadows moved in the room were slow about retiring, those that remained borne still on the walls including the black shape of the cradled telephone where he had dropped it dead, for almost a minute.

Mr. Pivner stood quivering. He'd just broken his last container of insulin. It was too late to go out and return.

—Friends, don't take my word for it. You owe it to yourself to get the details of our free offer. And listen, friends, the next time you . . .

True, the janitor in Mr. Pivner's office building did not yet call him by his first name. True, the divorce rate had almost doubled since the publication of the book before him. True, he read in headlines of men in the governments he helped to elect, men who might not know their work, but they certainly knew how to deal with people, men who strode forth from the front page in expensive clothes, smiling, the hand raised in bonhomie, on their way to appear before investigating committees interested in their remarkable incomes, withering the smiles which had brought a good price in the market place.

". . . dashed off in a moment of sincere feeling . . ." As he put the green scarf around his neck, his lower lip pulled, and he tried to hold it tight—Friends, you owe it to your own health, and your family's . . .

And King David, what did he say in his chamber over the gate, after Joab had dispatched his son still hung in the branches of the terebinth tree?

Mr. Pivner pulled on his overcoat, and put the needle and syringe into a pocket. He turned off the radio, courteously, waiting until the voice had finished a sentence. He left the book of selective quotations out on the table, next the photograph album. True, one must select; impossible to quote all that Shakespeare ever wrote, to prove a point he never embraced; impossible to print the words of Rosalind, when she said, "But these are all lies: men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love."

Mr. Pivner stood in the doorway for a moment, looking back into the small apartment before entering the world of loss which came when he turned off the light. He remembered years back, when he had bought that book; and in the doorway, still lighted, a fragment of gold arrested him, gold now like the double eagle of the nineteenth century, bored as those words had pierced him, with the sound of the counterfeiter's drill, hollowing out the coin, and filling it with lead, and sealing it so, a very difficult counterfeit to detect. He had bought that book hoping to win friends. He wondered if other people had bought it for the same reason.

The button at his hand clicked, the place disappeared in darkness, as the days of faith were gone, all gone into the dark, gone to earth under Fort Knox, and in the cemetery at Hatton Gap, Arkansas, where, a bare half-century before, Moses had polled six votes in the presidential election, and John the Baptist, three.

And the Buddha?

And the Gainas?

And the morning? and the evening? Morning, evening, noontime, night: what was the shape of Mr. Pivner's soul? round, or oblong? And its atoms, worth as much as iodine atoms? worth five cents? Or were they of a different kind: round, smooth, and especially mobile?

And a good price in the market place, say . . . thirty pieces of silver?

—Whhhhassafuksamatter? This delicate question went unanswered, for the man who asked it was alone on the street corner. He waved his rolled-up newspaper at no one, and then stood smiling. —So. You wonanswer? Ascared? he challenged. The light above his head changed, on one side, from red to green, on the other from green to red. A bus approached. It stopped, and so he got on it. He put his fare in the box, and stopped halfway down the aisle, -MERRY CHRISTMAS!

No one answered. —Sgoddam too bad, he said. —I got on a funeral hearse. Snobody's funeral, snobody to bury. Merry Christmas in a cemetery. He sat down, and opened his newspaper. After a few minutes of patiently staring at the words there, he asked the man across from him, —Wherzis bus go?

—I don't know, said the other.

—Fine thing, you don't know. I congradulate you. You're the first man I've met in New York'll admit he don't know something. Con-gradulations. He extended a hand which swung emptily in the air between them. The bus stopped, and as his neighbor got off he called, —Look out, don't break your leg or we'll have to shoot you . . .

He sat back and stared at the newspaper. Across the top of it were printed chapters from Genesis, which was being serialized for the holiday season, as a public service. —I'll be damned, it's the Bible, he said loudly. —You get the Bible in the newspaper, he said, addressing the man who had sat down across from him, next to a lady with a baby in arms. —Whdyou think of that. You know why that is? He looked up and down the bus. —Sbecause any of these fine people would feel like a jerk reading the Bible in public, they'd be ashamed to. But if they're oney reading the newspaper, that's all right. Merry Christmas! You don't have to go to college four years to know that. Am I right? Am I right? he demanded of this man across from him.

—Yes, Mr. Pivner said, lowering his eyes from the card above the man's head, and raising them again, to read, unbelievably realistic see for yourself $8.00 per carat

—Merry Christmas! the man threatened.

—Merry Christmas, Mr. Pivner answered him. He was very tired. He had stopped at a drugstore to buy his medicine, but not taken the time for the injection, fearful of missing his rendezvous, planning to take his injection in the men's room of the hotel, when he got there. Still, at this critical instant, his training did not fail him. He recalled chapter nine ("Wouldn't you like to have a magic phrase that would stop argument, eliminate ill feeling, create good will . . . ? All right. Here it is . . .") —I don't blame you a bit for feeling as you do, said Mr. Pivner, recalling the words of John B. Gough, quoted on the following page (". . . when he saw a drunken bum staggering down the street: 'There, but for the grace of God, go I.' "). Then he had a strange sensation on one leg. He drew it toward him, and looked, as the woman lifted the baby away from the large spot on his trousers. —You can't hardly blame the baby, can you? said the woman. Mr. Pivner stared at his trousers as he stood up. The tic in his lip pulled it down in quick throbs, and he said nothing.

—Sit down. Merry Christmas, said the man who sat beside the only empty seat in the bus. Mr. Pivner sat down. He was very tired, and nervous. He lifted the wet portion of his trouser away from his leg, and looked out the window. His destination lay some fifteen blocks on.

—I congradulate you. You're the first man I've met, said his companion. —D'you want to read the Bible? I got it right here. He disappeared for a moment under a flurry of newspaper.

The bus bore on, block after block. Chapter six, How to Make People Like You Instantly: ("So I said to myself: 'I am going to try to make that chap like me . . . What is there about him that I can honestly admire?' ... I instantly saw something that I admired no end"), —What a wonderful head of hair you have, said Mr. Pivner. The man beside him looked at the thin hair on Mr. Pivner's head, and then clutched a handful of his own. —Lotsa people like it, he said. Then he sat back and looked at Mr. Pivner carefully. —Say what is this, are you queer or something?

Mr. Pivner's eyes widened. —I ... I ...

—Where you going?

—I get off here, said Mr. Pivner, and got out of the bus when it stopped, six blocks from his destination. It was a cold night, and the wind blew, concentrating on the wet spot on his trousers. How could he explain that, to his son? He walked on, suffering, more weary, against the wind, hoping now that the wind would dry that place before he reached the hotel.

He stopped outside its doors, to pull the green muffler from his coat. The wind helped him to whip it into plain sight.

—Whhhhelllll, here we are, said a familiar voice beside him. —My friend! Merry Christmas!

—Not now, said Mr. Pivner, quivering a hand in the air. He stepped toward the hotel.

—That's the idea. A drink for Christmas, said his companion, accompanying him. —Merry Christmas! You know, I've got a religion too, my friend.

Mr. Pivner paused at the revolving door. He said, —Go away.

—We're going to have a Christmas drink, friend. We're going to be friends. Like Damon and Pissyass, ha, hahahahaha . . .

The revolving door swung, emptying Mr. Pivner into the lobby where he stood weaving from the shock of the warm air, blinking his eyes, looking. The revolving door continued its round: —VVhhhay, Merry Christmas! Mr. Pivner reeled. He fell toward the tall bellboy, who caught him by the shoulders. He tried to speak; but he only gurgled. He was barely conscious. He was being taken out of the lobby.

—Whoooufff ... I have a religion too gentlemen . . .

—Get them out of here, out the side door.

—Merry Christmas gentlemen . . . what's this, the policemen's ball?

—It looks bad for the hotel, taking them out the front way.

—I seen the little one, standing out in front there, fooling with his clothes, said the tall bellboy when quiet was restored.

—It's no good for the hotel, that kind of thing. Too early yet, said the manager. —Even so, you got to be charitable for them.

—He passed right out in my arms, just like my old man. Some of them you can't keep away from it, like my old man, you could blindfold him and tie him to the bed, but he always finds it.

They both stepped aside to let a breathless young man pass. One arm was concealed under his coat. He stopped to pull at his muffler, looking round him. Then he checked his coat and went into the bar with the muffler stil] around his neck.

—Don't tell me that kid ain't had one too many, said the tall bellboy.

—So it's Christmas, said the manager.

The mirror behind the bar was tinted, and of such a slight convexity that those who appeared within its confines wore healthy complexions, figures not distorted but faces slightly slimmer, and he appeared the more grave, she assumed delicacy, lost weight and the years gathered conspiring under the chin. Otto's pale lips, drawn in tension, appeared as thin dark lines of determination, the straggle of hairs on the upper lip a diffidently distinctive mustache. He raised an eyebrow. He moistened his lips, and curled the upper one. Left eyebrow raised, eyelids slightly drawn, lips moistened, parted, down at corners, his quivering hand anchored by the glass, he turned to look at the woman beside him. She was staring straight ahead. He returned to the mirror, where her eyes in ambush caught him and he felt tricked, out-maneuvered; and he quickly returned his eyes to their own reflection. Kettle drums rolled in some semi-classical pursuit from hidden untended amplifiers, rolling to crescendos which manifested capture, then withering as the prey escaped.

The blonde coughed. It was not the delicate unnecessary cough of a lady, drawing attention which she snares with her eyes, but a visceral sound of submission to reality. Nonetheless, looking at her he saw only her eyes as she turned and got down from the bar stool. She retreated in two directions at once, and Otto chose the mirror image to follow her short bobbing steps, and the ceding insinuation o£ her thighs. Among images of tables and portieres she escaped in the tinted glass, but established him as the hunter and he drew breath, deeply, as though the air were fresh.

In the mirror again he saw himself as he had seen himself from two thousand miles away. —How brown you are, Esther said. —And all in white . . . There was still time.

As a child, Otto had had a phantasy which, in all of the childish good faith which designs such convictions, he passed for fact to himself and his friends. At about the time he learned that he had a father, or should have one, Albert, King of the Belgians, was killed mountain-climbing. It was not difficult to relate the two: he told that his father had been killed mountain-climbing, and so took upon himself the peculiar mantle of a prince.

Looking hastily round the room now, and down the bar, the sudden apprehension of royalty filled him, royalty about to be shoved from the throne room to the scullery, where the pretender belonged. For royalty's blunders always glisten with extraordinary foolhardiness, that makes them royal, distinguishes them from the common subjects who only make mistakes. And what blunderer more absurd than he who dethrones himself? So it has happened; a prince or a king may do it (but find a princess who would not at any cost be queen! a woman who would confess for no reason, who would step from shadows to), dare that reality which is the fabric of damnation, as men who have ruined themselves, for no reason, will tell you.

Down the bar, a man of better than middle age took Otto's attention. His suit was flannel, too light for the season, but bearing other seasons in other lands, as though it were spring now, in London, and he had stepped in from Saint James's Street for a drink; that when he walked out it would be to cross the Mall, and into Saint James's Park, across the turf, to pause for a moment and note the swans there, and other springtime foliage. (London and royalty wove close in Otto's mind.) The man signaled the bartender, raising a hand which caught Otto with the gold flash of a signet ring, an affirmation, a summons which drew taut the muscles in his legs, ready to stand and deliver, do homage, receive from that hand the clasp of recognition, pledge fealty, inherit the signet and the kingdom its seal perpetuated. Undeterred by the man's glance which turned to him, piqued quickly and moved on without curiosity or surprise (so the visage of monarchy, does not deign vulgar response), Otto looked and found resemblance. About the eyes, was it? the bridge of the nose? Clearer correspondence than the device hung from his own neck, wool proclamation of plebeian kinship, green signal of the multitude, its verdant undiscriminating growth.

He drank off the whisky in his glass, lightened the anchor which held him still. Beside his hand lay a pair of black gloves and a gold cigarette case, next to the half-finished cocktail in its long-stemmed glass, smeared red at the lip. Engraved on the gold in generous longhand was the word Jean. There was still time.

He lit a cigarette. His hand was weighted down with a full glass, and he relaxed slightly, looking down at his ringless fingers. He took the cigarette in his left hand and rested his slung-up elbow on the bar. The muffler got in his way. There was still time to destroy it. If he telephoned Esther, he might get her husband; if he called him, Esther. He looked quickly over the room again. There was still time to destroy the muffler before it sprang the trap which he had laid himself, before Procrustes appeared to fetter him, with no more than a shock of recognition, to the bed of reality, stretch him or cut him down to fit, release him then, and publish him abroad. He drank down half his drink, and tucked the green muffler under his jacket collar. Walking (so he believed, quickly) toward the telephone booth, his fingers sorting the change in his pocket for the right coin, he rehearsed his conversation. —Esther? Listen . . . yes, it's me, I told you I'd come back . . .

He rested against the side of the booth, and closed his eyes for a moment. Then he opened them, lifted the receiver and dropped his coin. Before he could dial, he heard

(—And so I says to him, you can't ever tell what she's going to do, she's so psychological . . . (—Nobody asked me, but / could have told you . . .

—Hello, Otto said. -Hello?

(—Hello, said another voice, a young woman, —darling, is that you?

—Hello? Hello?

(—1 think we got a crossed wire, would the other parties mind hanging up? ... So then he says to me . . . where was I ...

Otto hung the receiver back on its hook, and clung to it himself. The door opened, and the light went out. Then as he started to the other telephone booth, he pressed his wrist against the breast pocket of his jacket, for assurance, the papers of identity, the money, the manhood implicit there. His wrist pressed against his chest. There was no interruption. There was no weight of that presence more familiar than his own bones, all he felt now with his wrist.

The left hand leaped from the sling as he tore open his jacket with the other, and the bandaged wrist worked frantically down into the empty pocket, where his fingernails snagged rolls of dust. Then the left arm fell limp in the sling.

When he felt the empty pocket he had said no, quite clearly in the tone of no, of absolute rational denial. He repeated it again, this time not the thud of negation but no with a shape to it, rising in the middle, a convexity of complaint and disbelief. His upper lip quivered and he raised his right hand, and put his forefinger along its length to stop it. Then he turned quickly into the other telephone booth, dialed, and stood bent rigid before the mouthpiece. —Hello? he said. He gripped the receiver and listened. He heard a clock ticking. —Hello? hello? Then he heard a sound which froze his hand on the receiver, and he stood paralyzed with it jammed against his ear: it was the sound of someone salivating, lips opening and closing, the tongue dropping in fluid from the roof of the mouth.

He left the receiver swinging at the end of its cord, and turned seeking support, as he had in the subway threading a slow career down the veering deck where a man in shirtsleeves, swinging from pole to pole with tattooed arms, called out, —Hey buddy, could you tell me what's the name of this ship we're on? . . . and a spattering of lights signaled their next port of call. He disembarked with the man's question filling his mind: unanswered and un-diminished it lay there, static and insistent as a piece of ugly furniture, its place appointed, only to be dislodged by another more hideous when he stepped out on the quay, —Merry Christmas, hey, who got sick on your tie? . . . and climbing the mole, —You're looking good too. Who's your embalmer?

—You're going to be the richest woman in the graveyard, said the bartender, smiling. —How long since you're back?

—Two days, she answered, turning her head, smoothing her blond hair back over the separate mink pelts swung at her shoulders. The upper part of her face was attractively drawn, the lines of her forehead and nose simple and sharp. Her mouth, and below her mouth, lay heavy, and the jaw no forceful prominence but thickset.

Lips parted, left eyebrow raised, he looked at her, but the eyes themselves stared out in an intent lunacy graduated by lust: he heard his own voice as one hears a voice far down the beach during a hesitation in the surf. The untended amplifiers threatened Aïda, and they drank. —My arm? he murmured. —Nothing, a scratch . . . and as he lowered his glass swept his forearm along his chest to feel only the corrugations of his ribs. He offered a cigarette with cool clumsiness, brandishing the sling. —Yes . . . they're a regular occupational hazard down there, you know.

The bartender laid the bill face down before him; and he glanced at it as though it were a splinter cast ashore, raising his eyes to the tinted horizon, and her indefinite profile afloat there, while his voice came on from far down the beach where the edge of the sea receded, to gather force from the mass and crash in again.

—As a matter of fact, I've just recently finished writing a play, he went on, and took his eyes from her image in the glass to that of the figure beside her whose familiarity he acknowledged without haste: rather, he approached it carefully, with the controlled enthusiasm of a painter advancing upon an unfinished portrait put away for months while he has, all that time, studied it and completed it in his mind. Slight alteration of an eyebrow, a touch at the lips, embellished with a slight flaring of the nostrils, and he'd turned and presented this portrait to her.

Her voice came in gusts, bringing them closer. —I don't think you really ought to read a play, it spoils it when you see it ... But somehow when I own a book, it's almost like I'd read it ... In the Modern Museum of Art, it was supposed to be a painting of a woman and he told me it was very valuable, but even my knees are better than hers were . . . The music had not stopped; had, in fact, been pounding its way into A'ida all this time, and by now reached "The dance of the little Moorish slaves." —Isn't just the word poem beautiful . . . ?

Staring into the loose top of her dress, he stroked his mustache with a fingertip, and sat closer, to hear, —I couldn't live without Christmas ... as her knee came against his and lay there in warm confidence, like the plain gold cross whose stem sprang from between her breasts. —Yes, I turned into a Catholic when I got married . . . Shoulders drawn back, the cross climbed from between the cumulous embankments. —But then I got a divorce and I don't know if I'm still one or not. He gave me this . . . The cigarette case was snapped open and closed in metallic rumination. —It's all he ever gave me, it's supposed to be gold but I have to go and have it redipped every two or three months, I keep it because it's a kind of a sacred memory, that being the only time I was married and all.

—I know what you mean. He squeezed her knee in gentle affirmation. His eyes settled on the bill, and seeking something more pleasant rose to the tinted mirror which showed his hair mussed, the green muffler askew: but neither hand dared leave its duty, to the casualty, and the casual prey. —Back to Central America, he heard his voice echo, minutes later, —South America, really. Boru and northern Polivia . . . And he sat staring into the mirror at the person who had made this statement. He waited; as one may in polite conversation, for it to be corrected. But the figure he saw there in the glass made no such effort, simply sat, as though facing destiny on equal terms at last.

—Yes, my name's Jean, she repeated. —And you?

—My name? he said. —My name? His tongue clung to the roof of his dry mouth. He opened his lips and ran the end of his tongue over them. He started to raise his left arm to look at his watch, and the hampering sling surprised him as though he'd wakened bound. He did not look at his watch then, but thought he could hear it tick. He heard the sounds of his mouth recovering fluidity, heard his name but could not repeat it now, no more than the king who abdicates repeats the name he took when he assumed the crown. —Look ... he murmured. She had a room in the hotel. The one next to it was empty. The bill for their drinks had mounted quite high: if he took the empty room he could sign for it. He looked down the bar quickly, to where the man in light gray flannel sat thoughtfully picking his nose with his thumb. —What time is it?

She leaned forward. —Your watch says twenty minutes of eight.

—Well then it's stopped, it must have stopped . . . He drew off the green muffler, and commenced to stuff one end in his pocket. —I'll see about the room. But he sat still for a moment longer, watching the man in light gray flannel, to see if he had been noticed during all this time. The man had no green muffler; and as Otto drew off his own, a contract of necessity disappeared: the Damastean robber took his bed and was gone, slain by Theseus, that hero who identified himself to his father with the sword his father had left behind, Aegeus, King of Athens.

Here the man in the light gray flannel suit signaled the bartender. The seal ring flashed, connoting monarchy; and turning away, the prince, to some extent, relaxed, as the Protean image of his father, after two decades of transforming itself, settled again prepared to change as soon as grasped, just as Proteus, rising from the sea at midday to sleep in the rock shade, assumed every possible shape and form to escape prophesying, when the curious caught him.

Otto let himself down from the bar stool slowly, intent intending dignity, posturing peril; and then he hung there, staring, as the revolving door swung into the lobby. Santa Glaus entered, propelled with a whack from behind, and stood unsteadily for a moment. Then he saw what he was looking for, and started for the bar just as the tall bellboy caught him and inserted him again into one of the revolving compartments, pushing him back in as he came round again, and finally getting in with him to help him out the other side, and send the red-clad saint to other hearths. The dining room swayed gracelessly, and as Otto's feet rested upon the floor it seemed to shudder, like the deck of a ship as the hull lowers upon a ragged sea. He steadied himself for a moment; and then with his whole hand he felt for his inside breast pocket, as though the wallet must have been there all the time, its absence illusory, caused by witchcraft; and he glanced quickly at the blonde, as those medieval inquisitors, fingering the pages of the Malleus Maleficarum may have glanced at the witches who seemed to deprive men of their virile members, when they found that "such members are never actually taken away from the body, but are only hidden by a glamour from the senses of sight and touch."

But his hand pressed against bone. With that, he retired from the image of himself which had stepped down from the mirror above the bar, to dwell apart and watch it move across the room toward the lobby, prepared to applaud this vacant being if things should go well, to abandon it tinted and penniless if things should conspire against it. Even absolute, he mistrusted glamours; even so, he did not notice the green muffler trailing from his pocket as he walked across the floor.

—A single room for tonight?

—We have just one, sir. With bath. Nine-fifty.

—Fine. Fine.

—And your luggage, sir?

—Coming along behind me, you know. From the dock, following me.

—I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to pay in advance. A formality . . .

—I say, my travelers' checks are all in my small suitcase, you know, following me along here from the dock. Just recently arrived, I mean back in this country . . .

—I'm afraid we won't be able to ...

—I haven't much time to ...

—We might be able to hold a room for you until ten, unless someone else . . .

—Yes, well, that will do then. It will have to do, you know. Thank you, Otto finished, turning from the desk, the particles of his expression uncomposed, as though at the theater and temporarily confused by the course of the play; but as the theater-goer has redemption written on his ticket stub, and a sterile fragment of faith tells him that salvation is just around the corner as he takes his seat for the last act, so an anticipatory calm pervaded the materials of Otto's face.

Nevertheless the machinery of faith inclines to creak when the multitude boards; and the more the formidable tyranny of their privilege exerts itself, and love of spectacle demands effects, the more brazenly the machine is bared. Among Rome's earlier and more cheerfully dealt contributions to the decline of civilization was the gallant assistance she gave to the decadence of the Greek theater, where Roman eyes blinked in startled satisfaction as the god descended in a machine to dispense salvation on the stage, which faith, in the audience, had anticipated (while Democritus, succumbing in a measure to popular prejudice, granted to the upper air inhabitants "of the same form as men, but grander, composed of very subtle atoms, less liable to dissolution . . .").

As Jean was saying to Anatole in the bar, even then, —I just always kind of expect something nice to happen. And then it does.

The slung arm rose taut from the sling; the free one dropped its work of jamming the green muffler into a pocket, and collapsed as Otto stood, swaying gently as though suspended, like Absalom perhaps, hanging by his chin in the terebinth tree as the darts of Joab found his heart, and so smitten he came down to earth: the revolving door turned, and from it issued an apparition on a fragmentary blast too weak to do more than flutter the end of the green muffler.

It was too late to go out another door. The man had seen him. Otto finished jamming his own muffler down into his pocket, in mechanical denial of what was happening, and came forward with his hand extended.

—Hullo, he said, a sound which took all of his energy, left him unable to add the word, —Father.

—Uh huh, said the other, looking round him quickly through the thick glasses, pulling the cane up under his arm, hardly pausing to shake hands. —Everything all right? he murmured, going on in toward the bar.

—Why yes, I ...

—You better take my arm. It looks better.

—Why yes. I'm sorry. Of course. Otto guided him in; and they paused. —Do you want to have a drink first? I mean, a drink at the bar? Otto managed to ask, staring over a sagging shoulder at the sagging charm of Jean at the bar.

—I don't drink. Too many people at the bar anyhow. We'll get a table.

Otto followed, looking back over his own sagging shoulder at the bar. —It isn't really crowded, he said.

His companion turned, and for the first time fixed him with sharp pupils which seemed to penetrate him. —You're not drunk, are you?

—Drunk? I? Why no, no I ...

—That would be a nice stew.

A lonely waiter appeared, to show them to a table in one corner, felicitously almost dark. Otto walked with a slight limp, in time to the March of the Sardar which came from the hidden amplifiers. The cane before him kept similar time. Passing an occupied table, Otto looked with horror at the man seated there: not at the man, perhaps, but at his tie: the inquisitorial stripes still challenged him. He still felt eligible, or had until this moment. The glance of the man at the table was cursory, from Otto to the grotesque striding before him, the glance of the British resident as the two ruined nobles followed the crippled clamor of their music toward the south.

They were imprisoned, side by side, behind a table against the wall.

—You shouldn't have jumped like that, when you met me.

—Oh, did I?

—It just don't look good.

—I know, I ...

—People notice things like that.

—I know. The waiter dropped menus before them and escaped. —I guess . . . well I mean we might as well start right off with dinner.

—You want to eat?

—Well, I mean I thought we were going to ... I guess it doesn't really matter. It was difficult for Otto to study the figure beside him; nevertheless he tried, beyond the bushy hair and the heavy glasses. Otto wanted to see his teeth. —It's funny, he said. —You have such black hair.

—What's so funny about it?

—Well, I mean because mine is so light, Otto answered as the cane clattered to the floor.

—Is it on crooked? his companion asked in a low tone, raising his hand to his brow, and passing it delicately over his temple. —I been kind of rattled all evening, he said. —Since I left home.

—Why. I mean is anything wrong? at home?

—"He that is slow to wrath is of great understanding: but he that is hasty of spirit exalteth folly." I just done something sort of hasty, like the Bible says there. But stupidity gets me sometimes. I just blow up. He sat back, then, and appeared to relax. —That's dangerous in any business, let alone this one.

—Yes, said Otto. —Of course. He held the large menu card up as a screen for his confusion, increased now by a scent which crept up around him, a familiar fugitive aroma which he could not identify. He was not reading the menu, but anticipating, as though reality in any desperate measure would suffice to anchor his covetousness; and he did not dare look up the bar for Jean. Clams, gros, to start? or omelette aux truffies?

—But those things don't hardly seem to matter tonight. I feel in a nice mood.

Coq au vin? Pigeon aux petits pois? Poularde au riz, sauce supreme?

—I always feel this way after a good job. And Christmas all over the place . . . The lonely waiter appeared, and he silenced.

Foie gras a la gelée de Porto? Poulet . . . Fonds d'artichauts . . . Salade a la grecque . . .

—Hamburger steak, sounded beside him; and the music was Mozart's Turkish March. Where had he found that? Otto realized that he was looking at the wine list. As he folded the huge card back upon itself, the voice said, —Same thing for you?

—Yes, I ...

—Two hamburger steaks, well done. And hurry it up.

Albert, King of the Belgians, careening gloriously down among the crevices of rock, gone, never to reappear and interrupt legends offered about him, to suffer translation from the fiction of selective memories to the betrayal of living reality.

Otto looked at the heavy glasses, saw dust on the surfaces of the lenses. —I noticed your eyes. Are they ... I mean, very bad? I mean, they really look . . .

—Eserine.

—Oh. Is it contagious? I mean, is it dangerous?

—Dangerous? It's not dangerous.

—But ... is it painful?

—No. You can feel it, but it's not painful.

—Oh. Otto folded his hands before him. —Is it hereditary, do you know? he asked, looking up.

—Is it what?

—I mean, how did you get it?

—I got it from a friend of mine.

—Oh, said Otto, and sat a bit further away. Then he said agreeably, —I suppose you wonder what I've been doing with myself.

—Keeping busy I guess, was the answer, in an uninterested tone. Otto looked down at his hands, and reconsidered. —What have you been up to lately?

—I'm working on a passport now. It's no job for a beginner. It never was work for bums to get into. They ruin it for the real craftsman.

—Yes. I mean I guess it's like that in everything. But passports? I mean, what are you . . . The lonely waiter bore down, a plate in each hand. —All right, can it.

—What? I mean, I just asked about passports, what are you . . .

—It's a very cold night out tonight, ain't it. Their plates were put before them, and the waiter went the way he had come. —What's the matter with you, anyway. Don't you know there's some things you just don't ask about like that? This is a public place.

—Oh. I'm sorry, Otto said, and watched his companion cross himself, and start to eat. —Are you Catholic'? he asked.

The eyes turned full upon him, penetrating the dust. He swayed, and looked down at his plate. —Am I Catholic! What do you think I am?

—Oh. I mean, that's fine. I was just sort of surprised. Seven thin slices of mushroom stuck to the top of the meat. Magic number: Otto cut into them. Somewhere (in exile, doubtless), the handsome young prince must be sitting, over cognac so fine it could hardly be swallowed, recalling legends of the king. Otto put a piece of the dry meat into his mouth, and could hardly swallow it. Beside him, he smelled lavender, and felt ill. He looked up to see the blond Jean leave the bar, carrying her bag. She glanced at the two of them without recognition or interest. Otto raised his face, his eyebrows, and his fork, to signal her.

—You know her? You know that woman?

—No, I ... well, I talked to her while I was waiting.

—It's no time to get mixed up with women. Keep yourself out of trouble. He went on eating.

—Yes, well ... I guess it was just Christmas, you know, I mean, the sort of Christmas feeling. Otto raised another shred of meat on his fork. —I've thought of it, you know. Joining the Church, I mean.

—Uh-phhm, was his answer, through a mouthful of bread.

—It's ... it kind of gives a reason for things that otherwise don't seem to have any. I mean, it legitimizes . . . well, you know . . . life, sort of.

—You're either born into it or you're not. The fork beside him rested on the tablecloth. —There's too many people around joining it as if it was a sight-seeing party.

—But I ...

—You got to be born into it.

—In a sense, I was, said Otto, with a slight laugh of confidence, waiting affirmation. There was none. He rested his fork on the table. He felt dizzy. From the corner of his eye he saw the figure beside him bowed over the plate, eating fast, moving the food only a matter of inches from the plate to his mouth. A fly descended upon the bread, and busied itself there. Otto's hand shook as he raised it with the fork. —I guess it's silly, that I should be nervous now, but I am I guess.

—Hide it the best way you can. It's all right to be nervous, anybody gets nervous in a thing like this sometimes. But you don't need to show everybody you're nervous. You look pretty young.

—Young? Well I guess I do look young. But I've been out of college for about three years now.

—College? You went to college? He wiped his mouth with his napkin, bowing his head to do so, and looked up.

—Yes, I thought you ... I went to Harvard, Otto said, and for the first time noticed the man's necktie. —Why . . . you have on a Porcellian tie. Otto stared at the silk pigs' heads. —Were you P.C.? I mean, I didn't even know you went to Harvard.

—Me at college? You know where I studied. Attica and Atlanta.

—But . . . that tie, it is the Porcellian tie isn't it.

—Don't worry, kid. I know what I'm doing.

The fly lit on Otto's hand, and he shook it away. His legs were crossed, and he commenced rubbing his ankle up and down against what he believed to be the center leg of the table. The man in gray was leaving the bar. As he watched him go, Otto's hand rose with slow automatism to his chest, and his wrist pressed the vacancy there. Who could prove a thing? if he rose abruptly, dumping the table over if necessary, to turn square upon the upholstered shoulders beside him and cry, —Do you believe this? But then, who would pay the check? and the bar bill? There would certainly be no offer of a Christmas gift of money which Otto must, somehow, manage to suggest: a gift which might pay for the drinks he had enjoyed with Jean, for having seen the frayed trouser-cuffs when they walked to the table he could hardly expect more. Suddenly he imagined his hair furiously red, his skin dark, or eyes at a telltale slant: that would give the lie to this whole thing. But no: his nose was, really, quite like the one beside him, though Otto refused to recognize it as being absolutely so, derivative. Noses were, after all, noses, quite similar among Caucasians.

The most gross insult might simply be to say, —I trust there hasn't been some mistake? Better than that, to get up quietly from the table, cross the room quickly to the gentleman in light gray flannel (who also had a nose) and shake hands with him. But even now, the gentleman in light gray flannel was gone.

All this time, the sling had bumped between them without rousing curiosity. Now, he heard, —What are you wearing that sling for, you really got hurt?

—Well, in a way, I ...

—I thought it was faked. You haven't learned how to handle it yet. You act like you're keeping a live squirrel in it.

—But it ... I ...

The music was the Blue Danube waltz. Otto rubbed his mustache with his fingertip, and looked into a distant mirror where he could see Santa Claus's strategic entrance, and stealthy approach to the door of the bar, where he was apprehended.

The fork beside him clattered to the plate. —I'm done.

—I think I've had enough, Otto said, barely half finished with the meal. He lit a cigarette, as the smell of lavender rose, heard a ringing in his ears from nowhere, wet his lips and heard forced salivation. Might it not all be rehearsed again, but differently, he thought, seeing a thin man of average height and quiet manner seated at a table in the middle of the room, finishing his dinner with a brandy: might Otto not have walked over and shaken his hand, and seated across from him, unsurprised, have listened to his intimacies with opera stars, artists, producers, over breast of guinea hen and wine?

The man in the club tie rose, looked at them, locking them together in his glance, and left. It was too late. Procrustes' bed was made: the only thing now was to get out of it the best way he could, which Otto did, more with weariness than pain. —It's kind of difficult, to talk about money, but . . .

—I've got it right here for you. You want to take it now? said the voice through a mouthful of bread. He was cleaning his fingernails with a tine of his salad fork.

—Take what?

—Twenties. Five G's in perfect twenties.

—Five what?

—Five thousand. Here, it's a thick packet. He motioned with his elbow to his side pocket.

—Five thousand dollars?

—Christ! Keep your voice down.

—But isn't that too much? I mean, even with Christmas ...

—Listen, are you sure you're not drunk?

—Why no, no, I ...

—I wouldn't give this stuff to you if you was drunk. You'd probably throw it all over town before the night's over. Lift it out of my pocket there.

—Oh I'll be very careful of it, ver-y care-ful of it ... Otto said as he reached into the pocket and lifted the packet out, while the other sat silent and unconcerned, cleaning his nails with a tine of his salad fork. Otto wanted another glass of whisky. He opened the packet, and took out a twenty.

—Christ! Don't wave them around here! said the man beside him, and looked over the room quickly. But no one was near to notice them, and when he looked back he seemed unable to resist taking the bill from Otto and laying it on the cloth before him. —Beautiful, he said. —Beautiful, isn't it.

—Yess, Otto gasped.

—A real work of art. He stared into the face of the seventh President. —You know it takes six different artists to make one of these? That's what makes it tough. Six to one. Six against one, you might say. He turned it over, and ran a fingertip gently over the portico of the White House. —A real work of art, he said. —You don't learn that at Harvard.

Otto stared. He clutched the packet, as though it were liable to be wrenched from him at any instant.

—You know, they burn around six tons of this stuff a day, the true quill, down in the Bureau of Printing and Engraving. Worn-out bills. It's a crime.

—Yes, but . . . well . . . this . . . was all Otto could say.

The hand beside him rose to catch at a lapel, as the man sat back and stared upward, relaxed in nostalgia. —Johnny the Gent died the other day, he said. —You know him?

—No, I . . .

—He melted down the Ascot Cup. He was the first one to gild the sixpence, and passed them as half-sovereigns until they had to call them in. He knew so much about the Church that once he posed as Bishop of the Falkland Islands. He just died, Johnny. He had about ten dollars on him.

Otto appeared to listen; but he heard nothing but jarring syllables.

—He organized the best den London ever saw. He was even a Sunday School teacher for five years. He was a great man. I've thought of him a lot of times when I was sitting in the hole.

The waiter approached a nearby table. —Put that stuff away. Otto put the twenty into his pocket, and the packet between his knees.

—I miss him when a great artist dies like that. He was no bum. It's no place for bums to get into, but they're ruining it every day. There hardly is a single old master left, a real craftsman, like Johnny, or Jim the Penman. And me. I haven't had a notice in the Detector in fourteen years.

—The what? Otto asked, politely, but firm.

—The National . . . listen. Shut up and listen to that a minute.

It is. —What? —Vissi d'arte, vissi d'amore, he murmured with the music, -non feci mai male ad anima viva . . . And they sat silent to the violent grief-impassioned end.

When it was done, Otto said, —That was very nice.

—Nice? Is that all you can sayr But you're just a kid, you never heard Cavalieri do Tosca.

—No, I ...

—I'm going to get out now. He stood, and found his cane.

—Well . . . but I mean, don't you want some coffee or something?

—No. I shouldn't have stayed this long anyhow.

Otto took the check. —I'll get this, he said graciously.

—All right, kid. Thanks.

—But thank you, I ... Merry Christmas. Otto was left, the packet clutched against his parts, sniffing the delicious aroma of lavender, only half aware that the table had four legs. A fly landed on his hand, and he simply stared at it.

Two men went out the revolving door, the second a figure in a checked suit, who had been waiting for some time in the lobby. He caught the other by the arm. —This is you, isn't it?

—What do you mean?

—You're Frank? They told me I was going to meet you in the lobby. They kept me half an hour late, but you're an hour. Have you got the stuff? Five G's in queer?

—Jesus and Mary.

—I'm the pusher they sent, you know? Have you got the queer?

—Jesus Mary and Joseph.

—What's the matter with you, for Christ's sake?

—That kid. That fairy. He took every bit of it. He sat there rubbing his ankle against my leg . . .

—Where'd he go? We'll go in and get him. He's got the queer on him?

—We'll wait out here. We'll get him when he comes out.

—Where you going now?

—Right here in this doorway. The coat came off, was reversed, the black wig went into one pocket, green muffler and glasses into the other, and the sandy mustache appeared, stuck to his upper lip. —It's cold, said Mr. Sinisterra. —And stop calling it "the queer."

Otto had appeared at the desk briefly, to put down a ten-dollar deposit on his bill. He was taken to a room. There he sat on the edge of the bed. He tore the wrapping from the money, and started to count it. The sling got in his way. He ripped it off and threw it on the floor. Then he made piles of ten bills each, fanned out alternating backs and faces, on the bed cover. He stood looking at it, and then turned to the mirror, and ran his fingertip over his mustache. He called downstairs, and waited for the bellboy to come with a razor and "anything else that might come in handy," passing the time counting the money, in various positions. When the razor arrived, he shaved quickly and dressed. He reeled a little, putting four twenties with his change (which included a ten), and the rest into a drawer, hurriedly, for he heard stirring next door, remembering his neighbor. He turned off the light, closed his door, and stood outside 666, where he knocked and, unable to restrain himself, and as surprised to find the door unlocked, threw it open.

—Who . . . what do you want? Jean cried, pulling a sheet to her throat, uncovering her neighbor, whose light gray flannel suit lay on the floor.

—Why you . . . why ...

—Get out, get out of here, what do you mean coming in a lady's room like that.

The door banged.

—Now just who the devil was that?

—Don't worry, honey, it's only a fairy I met down in the bar.

—A fairy?

—You know, queer. He said he was a writer, and they're always queer nowadays.

—There he goes, said the man in the checked suit. —Out the side door. Look out of the way, you dumb bastard.

—That's no way to talk to Santa Glaus.

—Well get out of our way,

—Merry Christmas. Have you got a dime for old Saint Nick?

—Get the next cab in the line and follow him.

The two cabs pulled away from the curb half a minute apart, and a police car drew up before the hotel.

—I could sue you for false arrest, Mr. Pivner said when he got into the lobby, with a policeman, —if that would do any good. Do you know what you've done?

Behind him the policeman talked with the tall bellboy, who said, —Well Jesus, / thought he was drunk. The guy with him was. The policeman said, —We got him down to the station house and found a needle on him. We thought he was a junkie. He's real pissed-off.

—Do you know what you've done? Did you see him? A boy with a scarf like this on, he came here to meet me, that was my son, my son ...

The policeman turned to the revolving door, and the tall bellboy said to him, —While you're at it, take Santy Glaus along. He's driving us nuts out there.

The controversy in the sky, by this time, was no nearer settlement; there was really no promise of armistice at all, though the haggling might continue, precipitating fine rain for periods of monotonous variance, broken by impatient bursts of sleet. The skyline of the city was reduced to two dimensions. There was no depth; accustomed to mass, and there was no such sensation, but instead buildings in immediate isolation, their heights'awhirl in the weather, their lights incredible in the night, their feat un-diminished by comparison with the mass which had clung to their sides pretending support, cowering now out of sight, would be there next day if it were fair, pretending, and sharing the steep triumph of these hampered giants tonight abandoned in trial to their integrity.

The first cab turned into Jones Street; the second waited at the corner. —He's going into that doorway where all those cops are. What's he doing there. —How should I know what he's doing there. I never should have trusted him. —I wouldn't trust a fairy. —He's not a Catholic. I should have known. They watched Otto talk with one of the policemen, and get back into his cab. —How'd'ya ever do a thing like that? —It was pride, it was the deadly sin of pride, I was so proud of those . . . those . . . O Mary, pray for me ... If I hadn't been so proud I would have watched my step . . . —Let's just let him go, said the man in the checked suit as Otto's cab left the curb. —The hell with him.

—Let him go? with all that? You think it's worthless, that paper? You think it's a cheap job I did? Driver follow that cab.

The juke-box played Return to Sorrento.

Someone said, —Have you read this? It's by a woman who spent the entire winter last year in Rome, she tells all about it here.

At hand, a limp wrist hung on air. —I was in Florida for two fearfully rainy weeks, and I didn't get browned very much . . . Laughter sprinkled up around him.

—I'm a drunkard, said one of two young men sitting at a table with Victoria and Albert Hall. —Nothing but a drunkard, he repeated despondently. —You think that's bad, I'm a drunk and I'm queer too, said the other, —an alcoholic and a homosexual. —So? demanded the paterfamilias. —I'm a drunk, a homosexual, and a Jew.

She looked them over calmly, and finished her drink. —I'm alcoholic, homosexual, and a Jew, she stated. -And I'm crippled. When the next round of drinks arrived, she was the toast.

—Have you heard the one about the muscular fellow named Rex? who had minuscular organs of sex?

—Do you know, II y avail une jeune fille de Dijon?

—Es gibt ein Arbeiter von Linz?

—'The whole gripping story is founded on fact. Look at the beautiful girl shown in the accompanying cut . . ." Anselm read aloud. —Are you listening? "Note the cruel marks cut in her tender body by the lash of the cat-o'-nine-tails wielded by the hands of a heartless and Christless Mother Superior in whose heart all human sympathy had been assassinated by the papal system . . ." He lowered The Moan of the Tiber to look up at Stanley. —You're still brooding over that thing? he asked, seeing the torn strip of newspaper in Stanley's hand. —That's yesterday's paper, the whole of Saint Mark's is probably under water by now. What are you drinking so much coffee for?

—I have to stay awake, when I get home to work, Stanley said and looked anxiously at his wrist watch.

—To work! Anselm muttered. —What are you waiting for? But he appeared to have no interest in what Stanley might answer, or not. He sat slumped, looking sullenly out from the table at the evening victims of the Viareggio. The spots on his face were dulled, his eyes lit with a smoldering rancor now and then as he watched them, but his tone was vague when a tall girl with dark hair reaching her furpiece said to someone, —Well I have yet to see an animal reading a book . . . and Anselm mumbled, —How'd you like to get your hand in her muff? Then he brought a hand up, fingers turned in upon the palm, and commenced to bite his nails. A minute later he had slumped again, motionless, and started to whistle, dull and rasping through his teeth.

Stanley looked up. —What's that? What you're whistling.

— Too Much Mustard.

—Too much . . . what? No, what is it? It's familiar, it's Bach?

—Yes, it's called I can give you anything but love, Anselm answered without looking up. —Bach wrote it when he was three, he added, —for Mother's Day.

—Anselm, Stanley said inclining toward him slightly, —is there something, is something wrong?

—Is something wrong! Anselm turned at him. —That's the stupidest ... But his voice tailed off, he lowered his eyes from Stanley, and scratched his head.

—If there's anything I could . . . do?

Anselm looked at the blunt black ridges of his nails, then held them out. —I've got a sycosis, see? Not psychosis, like these other crazy bastards. Plain sycosis. Scabs. And he went back to scratching his head.

Mr. Feddle entered, an alarm clock swinging from his neck on a piece of twine. In the doorway he bumped the man in the checked suit, whose companion said, —Go in and get him. —I couldn't just pull him out of there, said the man in the checked suit. —He won't stay long, he's too jumpy to hang around a dump like this. —Look out, there he goes! . . . —Goes, hell. He's going to the can.

As he stood, occupied, the mirror was beside him at his left shoulder, and Otto stared into it. He continued to stare as he turned a minute later, buttoning his trousers, weaving slightly, and allowed the smile to come to his face slowly as though savoring the renewal of an acquaintance long away, dead perhaps, for all they knew, in the jungles; returned now, and returned affluent. Then the smile left his face as slowly, and the same reckoned composure with which it had come: with all the sincerity of a suppliant before an icon he said, —If I were a character in a play . . . would I be credible? When the door banged open he was standing looking down at the pale left hand extended from his sleeve, and licking the strangely naked upper lip.

—What are you grinning about? You look pretty pleased with yourself.

—What? Oh ... he spun around. —Max. —What happened, you sell your play or something? —My play? I ... yes, yes that's it. How did you know? Yes . . . —Good, Max said over his shoulder. Smiling, he added, —Look, I hope you didn't think I had anything to do with what people were saying.

—People? Otto repeated vaguely, going toward the door. —You know, that you'd plagiarized . . .

—Oh, oh that, yes, no, no I wouldn't have thought that, Otto said, and left Max bound there to deepen the steaming gully in the cake of ice in the drain. He saw Stanley sitting at a table with Anselm, who was listlessly turning pages in a magazine which bore the picture of a girl sliding down a bannister, and the challenge, Can Freaks Make Love? on the cover. Anselm tore something out and pushed it across the table to Stanley who looked at it and then away quickly, his eyes searching the room for refuge until he lowered them to the floor.

—Hey, Hannah? Look at those two, said a tall round-headed young man in an expensive suit. —Did you ever see that Kollwitz print, "Zwei Gefangene Musik hörend"? That's what they look like, two prisoners listening to music.

—Stanley is a sort of prisoner, Hannah said half to herself. —Anybody is who's always broke. He handed her the beer he'd got her.

—You can talk! Hannah turned on him, accepting the dripping glass. —You work for your money, so you don't have to worry spending it.

He stared at her; then cleared his throat and asked, —Say, is that really Ernest Hemingway behind me?

—What if it is, what would that make you?

—He, I ... I'd like to meet him, I think he's a great writer.

—You think some of it will wipe off on you? You're still a salesman. Did you ever read Cummings' poem, a salesman is an it that stinks to please . . and you want to write?

—I do in my spare time, I've taken a course . . .

—Go stink to please somewhere else.

—Yes, I ... all right, all right . . . He turned two hundred dollars' worth of tweed on her, and said, —Mister Hemingway? My name is George . . .

—Glad to see you, George, said the Big Unshaven Man. —What are we drinking?

Otto paid for his whisky-and-soda with a twenty-dollar bill, and stood unsteadily looking about him.

—What are you mumbling about? Hannah demanded from just beneath the level of his gaze. He was looking at a tall blond girl who had just said, in Boston accents, that Paris was like a mouthful of decayed teeth.

—Hannah? I just sold my play, Otto repeated, but aloud this time, as though finding confirmation in what he heard.

—You sold your play? her query sustained him, but no further than, —Can you buy me a beer? as she put an empty glass on a table behind her. He struggled to the bar, got her a glass and handed it to her over someone's shoulder, but when he'd paid for it and turned again she was gone, leaving only her query echoing Max's, sanctioning what he had heard in his own words, and ratified now with a murmured yes and a smile of discovery. But immediately he saw Max, standing at the table with Anselm and Stanley, looking in his direction and talking through a smile, he felt unsteady again, called upon to defend himself, and his hand rose to the empty fall of his jacket as he approached them.

Max always looked the same, always the same age, his hair always the same short length, in his smile the humorless agreeability of one who could neither suffer friendship nor celebrate enmity, a parody on the moment, as his clothes caricatured a past at eastern colleges where he had never been.

—And if it's only through sin that we can know one another, and share our human frailty? Stanley went on, staring into his coffee. —And by doing that, we come to know ourselves . . .

—Crossing the Atlantic Ocean to get laid. He can't even get it up without a dose of methyltestosterone, Anselm interrupted, without looking up as Otto approached, without a pause in his speaking he tore something from his magazine and held it out to Otto, who read, "lonely? 25cents brings magazine containing pictures, descriptions of lonely sincere members everywhere, seeking friendship, companionship, marriage . . ." —What better reason is there to get out of this stupid white Protestant country, for Christ's sake. Yes, for Christ's sake. At least Catholic countries take sin as a part of human nature, they don't blow their guts when they find you've gone to bed with a woman. Somebody like him is scared to try it here, he'd rather go where nobody knows him, a bunch of stupid foreigners he doesn't have to respect because they don't speak English, and don't have any money, where nobody will point at him in the street if they see him coming out of a whorehouse. Christ. It breaks my heart. Somebody like that, it breaks my heart. But you know what breaks my heart? He looked up directly at Otto, who started, the smile jarred from his face, whose eyes, evading a wince, found Max's .indulgent smile. —That that's sin! Anselm hissed, looking back at the table top. —That . . . Chhrist!

None of them spoke. Stanley clung to his coffee cup as though moored there. Otto tottered slightly. Max stood reflecting the vacant satisfaction he found in expose.

—With all the . . . rotten betrayals around us, and that, that . . . that one moment of trust, is sin? Anselm whispered, looking at none of them.

None of them spoke until Anselm said, —You're spilling your God-damned drink, what's the matter with you? and Otto, righting his glass and licking his naked upper lip, came round to the other side of the table and the empty chair Max stood beside, bumping a girl who was carrying Everybody Can Play the Piano under her arm, and saying, —Well I thought his approach was rarther crude, just coming at me like that with a dollar bill wrapped around it ...

—You're not sitting here? Otto asked Max, who stepped aside with the courtesy accorded infirmity. —Who's going abroad? Otto asked after a moment, seated. Stanley looked up at Anselm, as though to give him opportunity of answering, then said himself in a quelled tone, —Don Bildow . . . sounding as though he wanted to say more, but could find no more to say. And Otto looked up, over backs and shoulders, to see Don Bildow's white face bobbing behind the plastic-rimmed glasses; and heard, from someone falling toward the table, —Everything is either concave or convex . . . someone caught and raised to receive this intelligence, —Nothing, absolutely nothing, can convince me that all of us and everything isn't shrinking at the rate of one millimeter a minute . . .

—Has anybody seen Esme? Otto asked, his voice in an abrupt strain. —I just went by her house, he added hurriedly, and brought his glass to his lips.

—Nobody there? Max asked behind him. —Well no, no not really, I mean no. —Not even Chaby?

—No, he was ... he wasn't there, no. I mean, I didn't see him, I didn't really go in, I . . . I just passed there, Otto finished looking up confused, rummaging his pale left hand, whose freedom no one had noticed, in a pocket, and seeing Stanley's ragged mustache, licking a lip whose nakedness no one had remarked. —Would anybody like a drink? he asked, and signaled a waiter who did not see him. Behind him, someone said, —A million people try to disappear in America every year, a million Americans try to erase themselves, that's a statistic and it doesn't include criminals either, a million a year, a million people a year . . .

The juke-box played Return to Sorrento; and nearby someone said that Saint Francis Xavier was only four and a half feet tall.

—"Does Drunkenness Threaten Your Happiness or Your Loved Ones? Our Remarkable New Discovery Quickly and Easily Helps Bring Relief from All Desire for Liquor! . . . No Will Power Is Necessary To Stop Drinking. This Is Strictly a Home Method! . . ." Anselm read, returned to his magazine and his dull tone. —I'd just like some coffee, Stanley said.

—Have you got some money? Anselm asked. —If you do I'd rather eat. And he called a waiter.

—Yes, as a matter of fact I, yes I just sold my play, Otto said to them. He looked quickly from Anselm's shrug to the first sign of Stanley's approving pleasure but could not stop his eyes, and turned to Max for confirmation.

—Eggplant Parmigiana, Anselm ordered beside him, and Otto caught the waiter's arm as he departed, to order another whisky, and coffee for Stanley who looked up at that moment to ask, —Didn't you go to see Esme earlier?

—Well yes, earlier, I saw her earlier . . . The confusion in Otto's voice was reflected in his eyes. Escaping Stanley's simple question, he looked round at hazard for a new topic and unfortunately found it immediately. —There's Hannah, he said. —I just saw Hannah, she ... I ... The waiter appeared with their orders.

Anselm was laughing. —But I don't see why someone said what they said about me, about Hannah and me, Stanley brought out. And Otto, fleeing the appeal on this side, and the laughter on the other, looked to Max, whose smile was the conspiracy of an instant, an embrace confirmed in Stanley's discerning, and quickly lowered eyes.

—Stanley, you don't think ... I didn't mean . . . Otto commenced, the lines of his face rising toward his brow in anxious entreaty, when Anselm interrupted, growling, with his mouth full, and Otto turned to him for deliverance.

Anselm ate rapidly, jamming pieces of bread into his mouth between forkfuls of the eggplant, as though he expected it all to be taken away at any moment. Still he managed to growl at Stanley, and crumbs flew from his mouth across the table. —The beast, Anselm gurgled, chewing, —the beast in the jungle. The beast with two backs, he growled and snarled and laughed at once. —Stalking, crouching, ready to spring, that's the number of the beast that's stalking you, the beast that's waiting to devour you, the beast with two backs, waiting to sspring! . . . and he lunged, blowing bread crumbs.

—Look, Anselm . . . Otto's voice quavered toward firmness.

But Anselm already appeared to have relented. He sat chuckling over his almost empty plate, looking down as though some imminent satisfaction filled his mind; while under the table out of their sight, his hands opened a small flat tin, took out an envelope, and unrolled its contents.

Meanwhile the waiter stood there with the bill, and Otto seized the interruption, taking a roll of money from his pocket. —Here, I'll get this, he said, as though it were necessary to forestall them, though neither moved until Anselm shot an arm forth unseen and dropped something into Stanley's coffee. And as Otto sat back, folding his money, Anselm asked him agreeably, —Could you lend me something?

—Why, why yes, sure, Otto said. —How much?

—Whatever you can.

—Yes, Otto repeated, hesitated, and turned to Stanley. —Do you need any right now, Stanley? Any money? because I'd be glad to, to lend you some?

—Maybe, five dollars? Stanley said. —I might need it, if I go to the dentist, I have a tooth . . .

—Here, take this, Otto said unfolding the bills again, and he held out a twenty. —Go ahead, you might need it.

—No, just five, that's all I'd need, just five.

—Give him five, I'll take the twenty, Anselm said quickly, putting 3 hand out. —You know the kind of a lousy life I have, I need it . . . But he watched Otto hand the clean twenty-dollar bill to Stanley, over another faint gasp of protest, and accepted himself a worn five, murmuring, —Thanks, I ... thanks. And, have you got a cigarette? having trouble even then getting one from the pack with his blunt bitten finger-ends.

—I didn't know you smoked, Otto said to him.

—I do sometimes, Anselm said holding the cigarette unfamiliarly, and then he folded the five-dollar bill smaller and smaller, until it was a wad scarcely the width of his tortured thumbnail. He puffed the cigarette once or twice, then dropped it on the floor and stepped on it; and in that minute all of the sullenness of a little while before had returned, and he stared at the table as though he were sitting there alone.

Max had turned away to talk with a small elderly man dressed in black, with black rubbers and a black hat, carrying a black umbrella. He appeared to say nothing, nodded his head occasionally, and accepted the drink Max brought him, while Max talked. Max returned to identify the black figure as the art critic for Old Masses, said he had a very incisive wit, and had given his pictures very good notices, —which is what makes all the difference, Max added smiling.

—It's strange having the use of this left arm again, Otto said finally.

—Oh yes, you were wearing a sling, weren't you, Stanley said, looking up quickly at the hand motionless on the table. —It looks very white, he commented. —Did it leave a bad scar?

—Why don't you ask him to show you the scar? Anselm demanded. —I'll bet it was a nice hole. You envy him, for Christ sake.

—It isn't the wound that matters so much, getting it, Stanley said as Otto sat back and lowered the pale hand to his lap. —But the scar, the scar is a witness for all the wounds we get ... all the wounds, all kinds of wounds. I heard about somebody once who had a scar and he bandaged it, every once in a while, to renew the wound.

—Scars, all Stanley wants is scars, to show people. Scars! Hey Stanley, did you hear about the reliquary they opened that was supposed to have Ignatius Loyola's left arm in it? They brought it-over on a boat, when they opened it they found an arm with a heart tattooed on it, with a bleeding dagger and the word Mother, ha, haha . . .

—That's not true, Stanley said promptly. —And it's not wanting to suffer, just for that, just to suffer, it's more . . . proving the right to it, to suffering.

—Come off it, man, said a haggard face rising over the back of a booth. —You're dragging us. —He's right, for Christ sake, everybody suffers, the crime is in this world you suffer and it doesn't mean a God-damned thing, it doesn't fit anywhere. You can stand any suffering if it means something, Anselm went on rapidly, but still as though suppressing some specific thing which filled his mind. —The only time suffering's unbearable is when it's meaningless, he finished, muttering.

At that Otto raised an eyebrow and licked his lip, preparing to quote the lines with which Gordon reduced Priscilla toward the close of Act II, the scene in the doorway of the summer cottage which glittered before him even now, as though in production. gordon: Suffering, my dear Priscilla, is a petty luxury of mediocre people. You will find happiness a far more noble, and infinitely more refined . . .

—You remember what Montherlant has to say, Max interrupted them. —Le bonheur est un état bien plus noble et bien plus raffiné que la souffrance . . . His French was unprofessional and surprisingly clear. Otto muttered impatiently at being interrupted the moment he had started to speak, and turned to ask Stanley if he had ever read any of Vainiger, as Max finished, —le petit luxe des per-sonnes de mediocre qualité.

—That's a lot of crap, Anselm said without looking up.

—When he says that life must be led in the dark, Otto pursued, —and that we must assume postulates to be true which, if they were true, would justify . . .

—Hey Stanley, I've got a song for you.

—Leave him alone.

—Hannah, sit down, sit down in Otto's place, he's delivering a lecture on Die Philosophic des Als Ob, Anselm advised her.

—On what? Otto demanded curtly.

—The buttons say U.S., So they just mean us I guess, Anselm sang, tearing something from his magazine which he handed to Hannah. —So they must just stand for me . . . and Mo-therrr . . .

"Get Male hormones Science has discovered that domestic and business worries often disappear when male hormone deficiency is overcome ... If you do not feel the return of that old-time activity, that keen love and zestful desire for life . . ." —Shut up and leave him alone, Hannah repeated, crumpling the paper but she did not drop it.

—Leave who alone? Otto and I are discussing Vaihinger, aren't we Otto? He's an expert on als ob, ich gebe Ihnen mein Wort, Hannah, an expert, ich bin ihm nicht gewachsen, Hannah . . .

—Shut up, she said to him, looking him straight in the face as he became more agitated. The spots on his complexion stood out vividly, and his hair was up as though a wind were blowing. He reached up and felt it, took out a dirty pocket comb and made cracking sounds combing his hair.

—Scabs, he said. —I'm sycotic. Do you know who I envy? I envy Tourette. He had a disease named after him, a very God-damned rare one.

—Are you drunk? If you're not why don't you shut up.

—When you have Tourette's disease you go around repeating dirty words all the time. Coprolalia. Everybody below Fourteenth Street has coprolalia. Then he opened his magazine and turned suddenly to Otto. —"Women are funny," he read. —"You never know whether you're making the right move or not. Avoid disappointment, heartbreak! Save yourself lots of tragedy. Don't be a Faux pas!"

—Anselm, Otto began quietly, —why don't you relax and . . .

—You're drunk. Why don't you try God? Four three-letter words, Why Not Try God? That's a book by Mary Pickford. Real coprolalia. You'd like that. Then he got breath and said, —You know who I envy? Never mind. The buttons say U.S. . . .

—What's the matter with you tonight, is it on account of Charles? Hannah cut in, and Anselm stopped singing abruptly, and stared at her.

—I'm not . . . singing to you, he said after a moment, faltering, and he looked down at the dirty floor muttering something.

—Well why don't you . . .

—Well why don't you leave us alone! . . . you, God damn you, you . . ,

—I meant to tell you how glad I am about your play, Stanley said to Otto. —I am, honestly.

—Thank you, I ... I know you are, Otto said, and put a hand to his shoulder. —You're really good, aren't you Stanley.

—I wish I were. I wish everyone was.

—There'd be a lot of crazy priests out of work. Work! Hahaha . . .

—Anselm, you . . .

—Damn you Hannah, God damn you, is it any business of yours if I feel this way about Charles? And his mother coming here to get him and take him home to Grand Rapids and when he wouldn't go she left him here, with nothing? with his wrists . . . just like she found them, she . . . You remind me of her, maybe it's your Goddamned smile. Maybe it's the way you try to get your hooks into Stanley, for his own good, for his own good!

—But what . . .

—It's the complacency I can't stand, Anselm burst out. —I can't stand it anywhere, but most of all I can't stand it in religion. Did you see Charles's mother? did you see her smile? that holier-than- thou Christian Science smile, she turns it on like . . . They're so complacent about this error of matter they've picked up, "It's nice because it's mine," that's the kind of a look they have, as if the old bag who started them off was the first one to think of the error of matter, didn't they ever hear of Catharism? or the Albigensians? or the Manichaeans? or even Bishop Berkeley? No, they stop thinking the minute they get hold of that thing Science and Health, they never read another book after that, they've got a corner on the Truth, everybody else is a Goy . . .

—So what have you got your balls in an uproar for? Hannah pressed him.

—Because Charles and I ... I don't blame Charles a God damn bit for flipping. God is Love! We'd all flip, taking that from your own mother and you're lying there with your wrists slashed open. But love on this earth? Christ! . . . pity? compassion? That's why I've got my balls in an uproar if you want to know, talking about some kind of love floating around Christ knows where, but what did she give him? When he wouldn't go back to Grand fucking Rapids and be treated by Christian Science? She gave him one of those eternally damned holier-than-thou smiles and left him here. She left him here without a cent, to let Bellevue kill him, or let him try it again himself. God is Love, for Christ sake! If Peter had smiled like a Christian Scientist Christ would have kicked his teeth down his throat. He sat there whispering to himself, and then said, —At least the Catholics have some idea of humility, I have to admit.

—All right, Anselm, nobody . . .

—All right, all right, I'll shut up. But don't you understand me? He half rose from the table, looking at her with an insane intensity; and then shuddering through his frame, sank back in his chair, and she turned to Stanley.

—How is your mother? she asked him.

—You always ask me that, Hannah. Thank you for asking.

—But how is she?

—She's . . . waiting. She's still waiting very patiently. They're going to move her to another hospital.

—Catch my mother waiting patiently, Anselm muttered.

—Please don't talk disrespectfully of your mother, Anselm.

—She's a nut, Stanley, said Anselm calmly, looking up at him. —It's all right, I'm just stating a fact. She's a nut. An old nut. Right now she's probably down in the Tombs forcing a Bible on some poor bastard who just wants to be left alone with . . . alone. He was perspiring, staring at the dirty floor. —Do you care if He ... a saint, kissing the leper's sores? he whispered to none of them; and then said, —Never mind, never mind, you don't . . . you can't . . . do you know who I envy?

Mr. Feddle's alarm clock swung like a pendulum as he almost fell, recovered, and tipped in the opposite direction. The swinging clock banged the edge of their table. —That old fool, Otto muttered, —except he's not funny.

—But very sad, Stanley said, drawing back as the clock swung in a dangerous arc, above the tabletop, and down. Someone cried, —Owwwww, as it cracked an ankle. —He's happy now because he's publishing something at last. People congratulate him, they're really laughing at him all the time because it's a vanity house, but he doesn't know that, that they're laughing at him. And his wife looks troubled and says, But publishing is expensive, isn't it, she doesn't know you're supposed to make money publishing something, she thinks any author has to pay to publish something of his own. At parties he used to go around autographing books from the bookshelves, he'd write a dedication and sign the author's name.

—That's good, Otto laughed, looking at Mr. Feddle's back which stood now stolid as a grandfather clock, only the pendulum swinging for he had just bowed and shaken hands. —It could go in a play.

—You shouldn't be cruel now, just when you've sold your play Otto.

—But even if I hadn't, Otto turned on Stanley. —Even if I hadn't ...

—I envy Doctor Hodgkin. Anselm was cleaning his teeth thoughtfully with a folded match cover. —He had a disease named after him.

—What kind of disease?

—Hodgkin's disease, for Christ sake.

—A kind of cancer, said Max from behind them.

—Cancer hell. It's a kind of leukemia. If you want to know what it is, it's progressive hyperplasia of the lymphatic glands associated with anemia. Lymphadenoma.

—Where'd you hear that?

—I studied medicine, Anselm said, mumbling as he did usually when admitting to something favorable about himself; and as immediately embarrassed at so having drawn their attention, tore from his magazine "piles! Amazingly fast palliative relief . . . No mess or sticky fingers! . . . It's Better, Faster, Easier to use! . . ." Beneath that: "GoD Wants You . . . Poor health? Money troubles? ... A remarkable New Way of Prayer that is helping thousands to glorious New Happiness and Joys . . ." —Here Stanley, take your choice. It's all one anyhow, he said, rolling the cover closed on Can Freaks Make Love? —You know, the trouble with you, you're all mothers' sons, Max said to them. Stanley stopped stirring his coffee and looked up, Anselm turned on him, Hannah had turned away. —You and An-selm and Charles, Max smiled agreeably to Stanley. —And Otto? he added, looking at Otto who said,

—As a matter of fact, I just finished dinner with my father a little while ago.

—Otto's part of a series of an original that never existed, Max said as though he had not heard.

—What do you mean, you ...

—That's what you told me yourself yesterday, didn't you? Max drew him on.

—But no, Otto rubbed his hand over his eyes. —The series didn't exist but the original existed. The original did. It had to. He sat there looking glazed-eyed for a moment, then turned to Stanley. —I just had dinner with my father, he said, as though remembering back over a great distance, or attempting to separate a distant image from one which had recently supplanted it. —For the first time, he added.

—Did you like him? Stanley asked uncertainly.

—It's a funny feeling. It was strange, sort of ... I feel like I'd lost something, like ... I feel like nobody sort of ... Staring straight ahead of him, he rubbed his forehead, and his wrist, descending, paused to press against his ribs, where no identity interrupted his contagion with himself. —I don't know, he mumbled, licking his naked lip, and went on in a low tone to Stanley, —Look, if you had a friend, somebody you haven't seen for a long time and he ... someone else takes his place, but he still ... I don't know. Never mind.

—You're drunk, Anselm offered.

—That's funny, Otto persisted without looking up at Max. —To say the original never existed! Look, he went on to Stanley, —Suppose you knew somebody who used to be a friend and who . . . and you found out he was, well like Mister Feddle, putting names on things that weren't his, I mean . . .

—You know who I envy? Anselm broke in on them impatiently. —I envy Christ, he had a disease named after him. Hahaha, hey Stanley?

Stanley pretended not to hear. He looked up from his cold coffee and said to Otto, —But if Mister Feddle saw a copy of a play by Ibsen, if he loves The Wild Duck and wishes he had written it, he wants to be Ibsen for just that moment, and dedicate his play to someone who's been kind to him, is that lying? It isn't as bad as people doing work they have no respect for at all. Everybody has that feeling when they look at a work of art and it's right, that sudden familiarity, a sort of ... recognition, as though they were creating it themselves, as though it were being created through them while they look at it or listen to it and, it shouldn't be sinful to want to have created beauty?

—Why don't you go home and read Saint Anselm before you talk like this? said Anselm sitting forward, opening his eyes which he had closed as though attempting sleep here. —"The picture, before it is made is contained in the artificer's art itself," he said. "And any such thing, existing in the art of an artificer, is nothing but a part of his understanding itself."

—Saint Anselm. Dig him, said the haggard face bobbing over the back of the booth. —What are you trying to prove?

—I'm proving the existence of God, God damn you. Saint Augustine says a man who is going to make a box has it first in his art. The box he makes isn't life, but the one that exists in his art is life. "For the artificer's soul lives, in which all these things are, before they are produced."

—Where's God? In the box?

—You dumb son of a bitch ...

—What's your favorite song, Anselm?

—Nola. Now screw, will you.

—I wish I had written The Wild Duck, Stanley said.

—I'm high, man.

—On what?

—On tea. We been balling all night. Have you got any? Hey Saint Anselm, have you got any charge? The haggard face hung over the back of the booth like a separate floating entity, rolling the eyes toward Max, to say, —He's in training. To be a saint.

—I notice he doesn't eat meat, is that the reason Anselm? Max asked. —So that your body won't . . .

—What God damn business is it of yours?

—Save the bones for Henry Jones . . . gurgled the haggard face.

—Anselm, preaching leftovers of the bleak ruin of Judaism, Max commenced with sententious ease, —a watered-down humanism . . .

—Cause Henry don't eat no meat. Hey Anselm, I got something for you.

—What are you supposed to know about religion? Anselm turned on Max.

—As Frazer says, Max explained indulgently, —the whole history of religion is a continuous attempt to reconcile old custom with new reason, to find sound theory for absurd practices . . .

—And what does Saint Augustine mean when he talks about the Devil perverting the truth and imitating the sacraments? —This sacrament will go the way of all the rest of them, Max smiled. —It won't be long before they're sacrificing Christ to God as God's immortal enemy.

—Hey Anselm, listen to this, Daddy-o noster. Daddy-o, up in thy way-out pad. You are the coolest, and we dig you like too much . . .

—The god killed, eaten, and resurrected, is the oldest fixture in religion, Max went on suavely. —Finally sacrificed in the form of some sacred animal which is the embodiment of the god. Finally everyone forgets, and the only sense they can make out of the sacrament is that they must be sacrificing the animal to the god because that particular animal is the god's crucial enemy, responsible for the god's death . . .

—Crucial! . . . Anselm spat out.

—Thy joint be right, the squares be swung . . . the haggard face continued, reading from a scrap of paper.

—And what does Justin Martyr mean, when he says "the evil spirits practice mimicry"? Anselm demanded. —Crucial! . . .

—Help us to score for some scoff today, and don't jump us salty if we come on like a drag, cause like we don't put down other cats when they goof . . . the haggard face went on in the silence straining between Anselm and Max. —For thine is the horse, the hash, and the junk . . .

—God damn you! give me that God-damned thing! Anselm burst out, swinging round and tearing the paper from the loose fingers; and the haggard face dropped out of sight, to bob up once more with, —Cause face it ... and disappear again, as Anselm tore the shred of paper into smaller and smaller bits.

—Look Anselm, Max said coming up to him, —why don't you be reasonable? You'll end up like Charles, this pose of yours . . .

—Like Charles! And you, what ... be reasonable! Anselm got to his feet. —This pose! this . . . Gott-trunkener Mensch, yes, you ... be reasonable! That's what they called Spinoza, your prince of rationalists, damn him, you know what they offered Spinoza to conform? A thousand florins. "Conform outwardly" they told him, but what did he do, he changed his name from Baruch to Bene-dictus. The prince of rationalists!

Max had taken a step back, and another, smiling as though embarrassed for Anselm, as Anselm came on. —And what did they do, they damned him, the lens-maker Spinoza. They excommunicated him, right into the darkness of reason. The Schammatha, they damned him in the name that contains forty-two letters, they damned him in the name of the Lord of Hosts, and the Tetragramraaton, in the name of the Globes, and the Wheels, and the Mysterious Beasts ... Max was backing toward the door, toward the man in the checked suit who said, —To tell the truth I wouldn't dare go in there, they're all nuts. —I'm freezing to death, said his companion.

—In the name of Prince Michael and the Ministering Angels, Metateron, Achthariel Jah, the Seraphim, the Ofanim . . . Anselm went on shrilly as Max backed out into the night. —The trumpets dropped, they reversed the candles, Amen, there's the Schammatha, damned right into the darkness of Reason . . . and he stood quivering in the empty doorway for a minute, indifferent to the eyes turned on him. Then he spat in the street and came back to the table where Otto had just stood preparing to leave. —Here, take this, Anselm said to him, holding out his magazine. —There's a special article in it, Can Freaks Make Love? with illustrations, a "rare photo of Chang and Eng, the original Siamese twins, with two of their natural children . . ." He slumped in his chair again, and after a moment started to whistle, rasping through his teeth.

—What is that? what you're whistling, it's Bach isn't it?

He looked up at Stanley, and after a moment, —Yes, he admitted, —the seventy-eighth cantata. His elbow rested on The Moan of the Tiber.

—An aria? Stanley asked to his empty face.

—"We hasten with feeble but diligent footsteps" ... a duet, Anselm said vaguely, watching Stanley stir the cold coffee, with a lifeless chill in his eyes. —Sung by women, by women's voices . . .

Stanley gasped, lifting the spoon from the coffee cup. —What is it? he whispered, as the thing slipped back into the coffee. He raised it out again.

—Ha, ha, hahaha . . .

The alarm clock strung to Mr. Feddle's neck went off.

—What is it? It's a ... he held it in the air, unable to move, staring at it.

—You can use it for a bookmark, Stanley. For when you read Malthus. Hahahahaha . . . look at what Stanley found in his coffee.

—Anselm, did you . . .

—Hahahahahahahahaha

Mr. Feddle shut the clock off with one hand, finished his beer with the other, bowed to three people, stumbling away from the hollow desperate laughter behind him, out the door where he bumped the man in the checked suit who said, —There, there he goes, out the other door, the side door.

Above emptied streets, the roseate heaving persisted; above bodies contorted with sleep, strewn among the battlements erected in this common war without end, some wrenched as though in the last embrace, spoke with tongues, untended and unattended, extended limbs and members to come up against the thigh of another fallen, and be similarly still, or rise distended to enter the warm nest again and swim in the dark channel, committing the final assault in the anonymity of exhaustion, hearts emptied of prayer. But the blood-luster of the sky witnessed that the battle was not done, though all were slain: it shone like the sky over the Campagna where Attila's Huns met the Romans in engagement so fierce that all were slain in deed, extreme but inconclusive, for their spirits continued the battle three nights and days over the field of unburied dead.

In the bar of a midtown hotel where the rear guard bivouacked among chrome and glass, scarred, alert, at battle stations (for there's no discharge in the war), Otto rested his left arm openly before him, raised one eyebrow, turned his lips down at the corners, flared his nostrils, and paid with a twenty-dollar bill. He spilled his drink. —Better give me another, he said. —Irish.

—You've had enough, Jack.

—Will you give me another drink?

—You've had enough tonight. Go home and sleep it off.

—Have I had enough? May I buy you a drink, madame?

—Come on, Jack, don't start any trouble. Leave the lady alone.

—I'm talking to her, not to you.

—Come on, fellow. Be a sport. Get the hell out of here.

The man in the checked suit came in the street door as Otto, clutching Can Freaks Make Love? rolled in his fight hand, strode from the bar into the lobby of the hotel.

—You want to buy some pictures?

—Pictures? Otto asked, turning.

—Girls, you know?

—Just girls?

—Yeh, what'sa matter, you queer? He started to thrust back into the envelope the pictures he had half displayed, tangles of white limbs.

—Don't I know you? Otto stared at the young man, the hat on the back of his head, the extinguished cigarette stub in the corner of his mouth. —You don't know me, Mac, the young man said quickly. —You don't know me. You want these or not.

—Let's see them.

—What's the matter, you don't trust me? I can't bring them out here. A buck for the pack.

—All right, here. Here. Otto handed him a one-dollar bill.

In the men's room, he opened the envelope. A sailor banged the door, coming in, and Otto went into a booth. He stared at the first picture; and then sat down, staring at it. He turned it up, and looked at each one, his fingers quivering against their glossy surfaces, at each one quickly, ascertaining the face, unable to contain the whole figure in his apprehension, seizing at details, the unfamiliar maple chair she sat on, curled in, the Venetian blinds, the wallpaper, the upholstery pattern on the chair, her fingernails, the lines of her knuckles, the irregular dent of her navel and the two full blots swelling toward him, detailed blemishes on the expanse of her flesh, which delineated it but could not bring it to life in any variety of pose and exposure, obstacles at which his gaze stumbled, passing over the shadowed white in a silent mania of search which led him helplessly to her face, and deserted him there, fixed by the mouth which stigmatized his hunger, fixed by the eyes which knew him, and did not move.

Aware of silence, he stared at these blemished rubrics, WARNING! ALL SO-CALLED PROPHYLACTIC TUBES . . . NOT SANITU . . . GENUINE!, on the metal door before him, conscious only now the sounds of it ceased that the sailor had been sick in a wash basin.

—Hey, come on out, you want a good browning?

He sat, paralyzed by silence, suddenly cold and in detailed motion, shivering. The metal door before him banged, and rattled on the latch. —Hey, come out of there, what are you doin in there, poundin your pork?

Another door banged.

—O.K., sailor. Be a sport. Get the hell out of here.

He heard that; and heard the scuff of shoes on the tile floor; and listening, heard nothing,

Out in the street, he paused as two men came toward him from one direction, a woman from the other. She walked slowly, looking at him in apparently careless interest, a look of appraisal.

—Pardon me, he said. She stopped. —Are you . . . are you . . .

—Trying to make a pick-up? she asked him.

—Yes maybe but it isn't that bad, it isn't that crude, it isn't just for that, it's that maybe you can . . . that I need . . .

The man in the checked suit stopped, stayed by Mr. Sinisterra's hand.

Otto stopped swaying, stayed by the woman's hand on his wrist. —Come along with me, she said. He started to withdraw his hand, to take her arm, and he felt his wrist caught in a chain. —But what's this? I ... I mean you . . .

She gave the nippers a slight twist, and repeated, —Come along with me.

—I knew it, said Mr. Sinisterra, standing behind a refuse can. —A cop?

—It sticks out all over her.

—It sure does. She's got a front like a cash register. We're screwed. If he has any of the queer on him we're really screwed. What are you going to do?

—Be quiet.

—Where you going?

—I'm going to church.

—What the hell are you going to church for?

—To confess.

—To confess this? to tell them . . . why Jeez what's the matter with you, them priests have a pipeline right into the cops . . .

—Be quiet. You think I'm a half-wit? I'm going to confess a sin.

—What sin, for Christ sake?

—Pride, said Mr. Sinisterra, removing the mustache from his lip, and putting it into his pocket. —And to burn a candle.

—For who you're goin to burn a candle, said the man in the checked suit, stepping back to look at his companion, his simple face falling into one of the few expressions it afforded, complete bafflement.

—For Johnny the Gent, said Mr. Sinisterra, walking on. —He had humility.

The music was the Sorcerer's Apprentice, threading into the lobby as though seeking a listener, for the bar was empty.

It came forth as though lunging from a coil hidden beyond the portieres, trailing and lunging, as though these notes reaching the lobby now had been audible in the bar moments before; and, sitting in the bar, one might have followed the single course of the thing from behind, to behold it rearing over its prey.

Then it struck. Mr. Pivner stirred, started, woke in alarm, to recover all that he could in this unfamiliar chair, his newspaper, which had slipped to the floor as he read, ZOO ESCAPES INCREASE, HUNT MADMAN Police believe that they are on the trail of the man, apparently insane, who broke into the Bird House at Central Park Zoo last week in an attempt to turn loose the specimens on display there. Theft was discounted as the motive. The lunatic, described as a tall Negro of uncertain age, was seen by Bertha Hebble, a cleaning woman, as she passed . . .

—I beg your pardon sir, the young gentleman who you were waiting for has not come in yet. It is getting quite late, and . . .

—I must get home. I must get home, but I want to write a note, said Mr. Pivner, standing. He went to the desk, and the music lurked as he wrote. Then he put on his hat, which he had been carrying, and turned toward the revolving door, which the manager set in motion, and said —Good night, as the music towered in ambuscade's tense imitation of silence.

Sticking from an ashcan halfway down the block he saw a cane. He looked about him quickly, to establish his loneliness in fact; and when the four notes struck in finale he was beyond reach, moving slowly, escaping again in unconscious defiance of something which he did not understand, affirming with each step an existence still less comprehended, so crowded were its details, so clamorous of worth, until heeded, and then speechless as the night itself.

VI

"Des gens passent. On a des yeux. On les voit.'

The sky was perfectly clear. It was a rare, explicit clarity, to sanction revelation. People looked up; finding nothing, they rescued their senses from exile, and looked down again.

Behind the bars which kept children out of their cages, the two polar bears moved continuously without touching each other, the male in an endless circuit, down to the front where he half reared, dropped and returned to his mate who stood swinging her head back and forth, timekeeper for their incarceration, clocking it out with this massive furred pendulum. —He's doin that every time I come here, swingin his neck, a little girl complained, straining at the outside bars. A little boy asked, —What's their names? The female turned toward the rock cave, exposing the people to the filth of her unformulated rear. A young Negro stood and stared. A fat man in a yellow and brown necktie aimed his light meter, and stepped back to adjust an expensive camera.

—You thought I'd gone to Lapland, didn't you.

—My dear fellow, I hadn't the faintest notion where you'd gone, Basil Valentine said without turning from the bears' cage. His voice sounded strained and a little weary. He was wearing a double-breasted gray coat, slightly fitted, fully buttoned, a gray hat with a rolled brim, gray gloves, and his tie was striped black and dark red. The polar bear approached looking him over, reared at the bars, sex apparent wobbling among fur drawn into spines by the water, and retired, gone green up about the neck. —But you do look rather better this morning, Valentine added, as though needing the makeshift of this observation to turn around, and look. —Where've you been?

—v-I? In a Turkish bath. Good God but it's cold.

—If you would put on an overcoat when you come out . . .

—What difference would that make, it would still be cold wouldn't it? —You know, Valentine went on, as they came out of the arcade, —when I look down to your feet, I'm almost surprised to see them there, on the ground. I half expect empty trouser-cuffs blowing in the wind.

—Yes, I hate the cold.

—Shall we go down and buy you an overcoat? To see you hunched up, with your hands in your pockets . . .

—An overcoat? No but listen, there's something. There's something. I went to the bank this morning, for some money. I went to get some money out, and they told me there's only a few hundred dollars. Why, there should be ... there should be ...

Basil Valentine pursed his lips, not as though coming forth to the subject at hand, but shifting from one preoccupation to another. —You've never known what sort of hand Brown kept on that account, have you.

—Why no, I ... He put money in, and I took it out.

—And you haven't seen him . . . recently. Since your . . . the spree you went on?

—I interrupted his murder . . . but there. I'd just escaped my own.

—What do you mean? Valentine asked impatiently.

—Never mind, I won't try to explain it. Situations are fragile.

—Come now . . . what happened? Basil Valentine demanded, walking on with his head lowered as they approached steps leading down. He spoke no more loudly than he might have done asserting some demand upon himself, and as impatiently, knowing the question but finding it necessary to hear it in words, as though the answer, cogent as the query, were bound to follow upon it, —and enough of this foolishness, he added.

—No. No, I'm not joking. Who can tell what happened? Why, we have movement and surprise, movement and surprise and recognition, over and over again but . . . who knows what happened? What happened when Carnot was stabbed? Why, the fellow climbed into the carriage and stuck a knife in his belly, and no one would ever have known it if he hadn't stopped to shout, "Vive 1'anarchie." All of our situations are so fragile, you see? If I meet you, by surprise? in a doorway? or come by invitation, for cocktails? or by carefully prearranged accident? Even that. No matter, you'll see. They're extremely fragile. And all this ... all this . . .

A hand was waved before Basil Valentine where he paused to take off his gloves at the top of the steps. All this had been going on for some minutes, and Valentine was obviously annoyed. Indeed he did know of the anarchist Caserio's absurd blunder after assassinating the president of France, half a century ago, an image which assailed him now with all the vivid insistence of those irrelevant details which crowd a memory being probed for some calamity so alarming, or so disgraceful, that memory does not want to surrender it to consciousness until leavened by time, when the enormity of the deed may be appreciated at a distance, and, from this distance, dismissed. Basil Valentine got his gloves off, and stood looking at his hands for a moment there at the top of the steps as though recovering what the gloves had concealed, and verifying the left hand folded over the right with the glitter of the gold seal ring in the sun. Then, with the gray gloves clasped behind him, he descended.

—Did you see the moon last night?

—I can't say I noticed it, Valentine answered, looking quite old; though in profile his face maintained its look of strength, even heightened now by the severe preoccupation which his voice reflected.

—Yes, in its last quarter. The horned moon.

They had walked down near the seal pool in the center, where a child of about eighteen months stood blocking their way, ga/ing up at Basil Valentine who paused again to take out a package of Virginia cigarettes. The child was hatless, wet-nosed, and dripping steadily from the breech.

—Here, here . . . Valentine burst out, looking up. —I shouldn't touch it if I were you. He offered a distracting cigarette.

—Touch her! But she's lovely! And the rose . . . ?

—You never know what they may have in their hair, and 1 shouldn't like to think where she got the flower. It's ruined, let her eat it, and come away. Valentine turned without looking back at the dripping figure, twisted to watch his retreat, chewing rose-petal. His effort to appear agreeable was being riddled by these thrusts, and he heard now beside him,

—Did you ever read the Grimm Brothers? the Froschkönig? No, never mind. Listen, those fragments? you have them? you still have them safe?

He stopped, to light their cigarettes. —I haven't forgiven you for running off with that cigarette case, you know. Where is it?

—I didn't ask you . . . that? that? Why, it's probably in Ethiopia by now. The three Indies. And the bull? Well damn it, I brought you back a griffin's egg, a much scarcer commodity, I found it in a secluded shrine in ...

—You haven't yet told me where you've been. Hunched over his cigarette, Basil Valentine looked through its smoke without taking it from his lips; and they stood there motionless as plants, Valentine in epinastic curve as the expression on his face unfolded to immediacy, and bent him down over the growth from the lower surfaces before him. —You still hope to expose these fakes then, do you? he said calmly. The stem before him was uprooted.

—That's why 1 came back! I ...

—Back? Valentine straightened up. —You went home, did you? he said, and seemed to appreciate the confusion this remark brought to the downcast face beside him as they walked on: it was at moments like this, absorbed in satisfaction, gleaned surreptitiously in a steady look from the corner of narrowed eyes, that Basil Valentine added ten, or even twice that many years to the face he showed to others. Even so, his silence evoked nothing as they walked toward the lion house, no response but an uneven cadence in the footsteps beside him, and he finally questioned, —That cut on your cheek? what is it?

—I fell in the snow, killing wrens. There. But this . . .

—You're done with that drunken inspiration for the priesthood, at any rate? . . . Eh? Tell me, what happened.

—What happened! What happened to Huss? John Huss, enticed by a salvoconducto up to Constance, where three bishops sat on his case, and he was burned . . .

—Anyone who hints that the Antichrist is to be found in Rome, my dear fellow, Valentine interrupted patiently, —and denies Peter as head of the Church . . .

—Burned and his ashes thrown into the Rhine, fishing for men, O sancta simplicitas! . . . yes, I've been off to see good old King Wenceslaus, there, and . . . my sainted mother! the women's voices . . . do you remember the Boyg? Why, I was almost pulled into the priesthood.

—And wasn't that why you went?

—And if it was! if it was! My sainted mother? . . . it's as though I'd left before she named me. Do you remember that story the poet tells? "I lay this destiny upon him, that he shall never have a name until he receives one from me" . . . never mind. The women's voices, and even that one, I left with her kiss on my cheek, see the scar? . . . there without so much as a talitha cumi I left that wise virgin.

—And now? The look from the corners of Valentine's eyes was the same concentrated appraisal of a few steps before. —The last time we talked . . .

—Yes, we talked about Shabbetai Zebi, didn't we. It's a way of getting acquainted, discussing the failings of mutual friends. A mes-siah? At Smyrna a letter from God falls out of heaven to confirm him. He's flogged and imprisoned. He denies he's the messiah, while the Jews outside are breaking their neck to free him, fasting, jump- ing naked into rivers, remember? They say he's never slept with a woman, though God knows he's been married for years. Before the Sultan, he denies it again, he's given the choice of death or Islam. Damnation! Sirius the Dog Star, the bright star of Yemen, Al-Shira . . . what was it? a sun itself where it rises with the color o£ ruby, then sapphire, emerald, amethyst, and then the most brilliant diamond . . . damn it, listen. In that immaculate place of yours, you . . . yes, immaculate, a thing like that would show up. It would show up immediately, a package like that wrapped up in old newspaper.

—You're still bent on this . . . suicide? Valentine asked, drawing on his cigarette, lowering his hand to take it from his lips. It stuck to his lips, and the coal burned his fingers as they slipped over it. The cigarette dropped to the ground, his lower lip trembled for that instant at losing control of it, his right hand came up clenched and behind him his left hand dropped a glove. —But here, he snapped, —will you walk up beside me where I can talk to you, instead of ...

—Suicide!

They were approaching the steps to the lion house, passing a fat woman on a bench with two books in her lap, one gaudy but closed, A Day with the Pope, the other opened, First Lessons in Italian. With a hand mounting two mean pearls on a thin line of gold almost absorbed in the flesh, she drew an enameled nail down the page, and then wiped her nose, each time folding the piece of disposable tissue in half until she clutched only a wet wad, forming the words behind it, mi place, with her lips, —mee piachay, mee piachay . . .

Three little girls had just deferred to the clamorous wishes of the smallest of them, and bought a balloon.

—It's been noted, of course, that the thought of suicide has got many a man through a bad night. Nietzsche, I believe . . .

—Suicide? this? Do you think there's only one self, then? that this isn't homicide? closer to homicide? that, listen . . .

Approaching the door, the lines on and around Basil Valentine's eyelids became apparent as he looked at the anxious face turned up to him; and, brought out of profile into the smiling duplicity of the full face, the strength seemed to drain out through the narrow chin. —It mayn't be so simple, you know. This so-called homicide of yours, he said. —This putting off the old man?

A child posted by the door pointed to a remarkably symmetrical dog spiral on the walk. —Look at that dog-do! the child said with intense admiration.

—Get out of the way, Valentine snapped, and pushed the child aside with a firm narrow foot. —Shall we go in? he asked, still smiling, with a step back to hold the door open.

The place was filled with noise coming from the opposite end, moaning which broke into a stifled scream, relapsed in a heaving sob, repeated, and repeated, interrupted by a hiss and spitting. The animals moved about their cages in the restless patterns of their lives, to turn their heads in that direction as they passed, across the front of the cage, round to the back, emerging again; and the tigers coming forth approached the bars as though they were coming straight through. Some of the animals did not move. A black panther, caged down across the way, stood watching, motionless but for the black tail whose weaving tip just cleared the floor. Other leopards sat waiting, and watched; an albino with pink eyes. The lion lay still, archetype of the calm of enduring vigilance, fore-paws extended. The racket went on, leaving only two apes, caged halfway down one side, generically unconcerned.

—And you don't hate Brown, do you? Basil Valentine asked abruptly. —For what he's done to you.

—Brown? hate him? for what he's done to me?

—There's a favor I have to ask of you, Valentine went on, as though he considered his question answered.

—That Patinir? I remember. You think I don't, but I remember.

—No. Something else, Valentine commenced, his tone both fresh and casual. —The Stabat Mater? What do you plan doing . . .

—She? . . . bury her and marry her, after all, she . . .

—No, no. That painting, the last one you were working on.

—Why?

—Well, if you are as you say, through with all this, I ... thought I'd rather like to have it. What's the matter?

—You? Yes, I told you, how fragile situations are! Every moment reshaping the past. You? you want it?

—If you'd give it to me, as a ... to a friend, a favor to an old friend? Valentine put a hand out to his shoulder, but he turned away.

—Everything down there's destroyed. I burned everything, I put everything into the fireplace and set fire to it.

—But not that? not that picture too?

—Why not? he demanded, turning.

—If it was, as you said, becoming . . . not van Eyck, but what you want?

—What I want? he whispered, and shuddered. Moans from the other end rose above the broken echoes of human voices.

—The face, Valentine said. —The . . . reproach in that face, it was very beautiful, I thought. Then Valentine felt his wrist gripped tightly.

—Yes, the reproach! That's it, you understand?

They were halfway down the tiers of cages.

—Gee lookit how he does it, said a boy before the apes' cage.

—That's a her . . . and lookit her eat it, she's stoopin over and eatin it.

The caterwauling rose. The two pumas, as they would prove to be, were in the last cage to the right. Next to them, and separated by a metal wall, a white African lioness brushed the bars of her cage, stalked to the back, and came forth round a tree trunk in the center, its length torn by her claws and teeth. Her tail wove to one side and the other, and she twisted to bare her teeth and snap at it, making no pause when the cries in the next cage broke. —Weh weh weh it's all right beautiful lady, yes, come on, you gonna eat it all up today? you gonna eat your tail all up? Yes . . . weh weh weh . . . said a woman before the cage, sharp-nosed, with too much make-up, she held out a skinny hand with a ring mounting a miserable stone, to the lioness.

—Listen. You see why it's important now?

Shocked as much by the smile fixed on him, as he was by the grip fastening his wrist, Valentine had started to withdraw. The instant his arm tightened the hazardous hand left it, but the smile persisted; and Valentine asked, —Why what's important?

—Yes, clearing up all this, these . . . those fragments, if they won't believe me. If you saw it too, in that face? The eyes turned away, the eyes not looking at you, but the forgiveness, the . . . grace? Yes, but even in that, the reproach. If you saw it too, that reproach? You understand, then, don't you. How I've felt since that dream? The Seven Sins, when they come to confess, and be shrived? The second dream, I don't remember the first one, but the second one, he wakes up but he goes to sleep again over his prayers, and there's Reason preaching, a "field full of folk"? And one by one, Superbia, Invidia ...

—Damn it ... !

—What?

—I've dropped a glove somewhere, Valentine said in a tone which penetrated the cry of the puma. Before him the lioness came forward with her head lowered and out to one side, waiting for him to appear in her view. Then their eyes met, and without turning from her as she did from him, passing the bars, he added, —Come now, what is all this : . .

—I'll tell you about it, listen. When I was away, I was dreamt,

I mean I dreamt, I had two dreams I think, but the first one, I don't remember the first one. But the other one, sitting bolt upright in a chair, was it? And there she was, she touched me. Her lips were blue like indigo, and she ... I didn't understand it then, but now, you can see, yes that reproach, if you saw it too. You can see that I can't just go to her, like this, after what I've done and, done to her. That I couldn't just go to her and offer her this . . . what's left.

—What is it, all this, this dream . . . ? Valentine interrupted, not turning nor raising his voice, nor his attention which seemed to seethe and recede with the shape of the lioness looming toward the bars and retiring. —This she, this face in that study . . . ?

—Yes, and you see why it's crucial. Why, when we've settled all this and we can leave . . .

—Leave! Valentine took a step back, without looking round his hand caught the wrist rising before him. —Tell me, what are you talking about?

—She . . .

—She? This . . . stabat Mater . . . dolorosa, it's she standing-over you, is it? isn't it? Yes, you've told me, this blessed Queen of Heaven? . . . Valentine looked up quickly as the lioness turned away. The hissing in the next cage rose to broken cries. —Yes, your mother, isn't it? Your . . . "sainted mother"?

—My mother? He twisted in Valentine's hold, which was not tight but rigidly closed on his wrist. Beyond Valentine's shoulder, across the way, the rigid pattern of the bars was broken by dark blond hair and dark eyes, the abrupt, aware delicacy of a woman of undamaged beauty, who turned from the leopard cage to look for the child with her. She carried a fur coat over the arm of a tailored suit, and her expensive walking shoes lent purpose to the steps of her slender frame, deceptively fragile, full-bosomed and, again, so well tailored that that modesty was such only because she could afford simplicity, turning now to catch, for an instant, the eyes in the distraught face turned, for no reason, to her. He mumbled, or cleared a constricted throat, which was it? and she moved on quickly.

—Your . . . blessed Queen of Heaven? Basil Valentine seemed to force attention to his words as he stared into the cage where the lioness came forth again with her head lowered, turning, to look up, paused at the bars with forelegs crossed left over right, and then with no effort leaped to one side and was gone. —This woman, the "women's voices," and did I see the moon last night? this . . . good heavens, like Lucius in the Golden Ass, eh? Valentine faltered on, unwilling to pause and allow contradiction, postponing denial with whatever memory crowded upon him, casting up shattered shapes and fragments, shapes and smells. —And you, I suppose you went down and plunged your head seven times in the sea? You . . . "Little by little I seemed to see the whole figure of her body, bright and mounting out of the sea and standing before me . . ." One recalls her "odoriferous feet" but . . . yes, so it's not, then? Not your mother at all, that reproach and all the rest of it ... ? Unwilling to stop until his hold was broken, unwilling to let go the wrist until it turned from his hand, unwilling to listen, until their embrace was sundered by laughter.

—My mother? why she . . . good God, she in the painting?

—Yes, you told me, you know . . .

A boy in the remnants, or perhaps the beginnings of a Boy Scout uniform had got between Valentine and the bars, and reached out over the rail. —Gimmeyatail, Zimba, he said. The sharp-nosed woman repeated, —Yes, weh weh weh . . . The lioness approached, looking beyond them.

—It's some girl you've picked up, is it? And all this talk about clearing things up, it's all some notion she's . . .

—No. Not that, all that is still itself, it's only part of itself.

—Really . . .

—Do you hear me?

—Really, and tell me, who is this . . . Solveig of yours? this Senta? The girl you've been using to model, I suppose, didn't Brown say he'd sent along something?

—Listen . . .

—And how is it I didn't see her? the night I dropped in on you.

—But she doesn't . . . we've never even . . .

—Gimmeyatail Zimba, the boy said between them and the cage.

—Or is it all in this phantasy of yours, eh?

—Yes, I'm working it out, and everything fits, everything fits so far, everything. And, that dream? I told you about that. Why, you've dreamt? and afterward, you meet them, who you dreamt of? What an advantage! . . . you know things they don't know, things about them they don't know that you know, things they've done, they never suspect you know. Why, they can go right on talking as though nothing had happened. Yes, like the saints, Rose of Lima? and what innocency of hers was woven into her past by her Jesuit confessor! What defense have they against our phantasies? And meeting her again, can she imagine what she's shared? where she's been enjoyed, in privacy? Can she imagine the postures and pleasures she's shared? And you know, all the time. What an advantage you have, over people you've dreamt of!

•-Gimmeyatail gimmeyatail gimmeyatail . . .

—So you understand, how important this is? How crucial . . .

Basil Valentine turned and laughed in his face. —Really, really my dear fellow. No, he said, clutching the single gray glove before him. —The "somber glow" at the end of the second act, is it? the duet with Senta, is that it? ... "the somber glow, no, it is salvation that I crave," eh! "Might such an angel come, my soul to save," your Flying Dutchman sings, eh? Good heavens! And up they go to heaven in a wave, or whatever it was? Really! And all that foolishness you were carrying on with the last time I saw you, that "I min Tro . . ." and the rest of it, that Where has he been all this time? and your Solveig answers In my faith? In my hope? In my, . . . good heavens! You are romantic, aren't you! If you do think you mean all this? And then what, They lived happily forever after?

—But listen, listen, she . . .

—No, no, it's too easy. After all, you know. With no interruption, Valentine paused, looking into the cage of the lioness. The lioness had come to the middle of the cage, watching him. She went round the tree trunk where her tail followed close, circling it. She stopped and moaned at the tail. She turned and bit at it. Then she moaned and faced him again. He did not speak until threatened by the voice beside him, then went on derisively, —And Saint Rose of Lima! Why, this sudden attempt to set the whole world right, by recalling your own falsifications in it? And then? Happiness ever after? Then you will be redeemed, and redeem her, and . . . good heavens knows what! And then, what next? First it's Shabbetai Zebi, now it's the Flying Dutchman? Listen to me, he went on, his voice dropping, —this lost innocence you're so frantic to recover, it goes a good deal farther back, you know. And this idea that you can set everything to rights at once is ... is childish. I know what it's like with Brown, of course I know, I know you can't go on like that. But you and I, my dear fellow . . .

The broken cries from the next cage had stopped, given over to heaving and groans.

—What! You and I, what!

—Listen to me, Basil Valentine said, suddenly closing his grip on the wrist he'd recovered, without taking his eyes from those of the lioness. —Do you remember, when I told you that the gods have only one secret to teach? Neither was looking at the other. Over Valentine's shoulder, the blond woman reached the child who had run to her. She was bent down now, listening, her skirt drawn tight, her jacket full with the weight of her breasts, her face alive with attention. —Were they really fighting? she asked, still inclined over the child, being led back to the next cage where the pumas were, in her voice that tone children accept as awe, delighting to shock the innocence of those who awe them. —That secret, do you remember? said Basil Valentine still holding him tight there and still looking, himself, into the cage of the lioness. —What Wotan taught his son? the only secret worth having?

—But how were they fighting?

—The power of doing without happiness, Basil Valentine said.

—See? said the child. She saw. She pulled the child to her, and looked quick into the other faces before the puma cage. They were all men. They all found her upturned face instantly, caught her dark eyes, one with a smile, one grinned an intimate recognition, until seeking escape she found herself looking into eyes familiar from a minute before, eyes not drawn to her by this instant of leveling, but still fixed on her, eyes which made no response at all. So she continued to stare at him, where he stood held in Valentine's grip there, for moments, finding sanctuary where she could recover all so abruptly assaulted, in eyes which shared nothing, recognúed nothing, accused her of nothing: but those moments passed and, recovering, she groped for escape. But that lack of response held her, that lack of recognition no more sanctuary than the opened eyes of a dead man, that negation no asylum for shame but the trap from which it cried out for the right to its living identity. She clutched the child by the shoulder, as one essays handhold climbing from a pit, and turned to stare into the cage of the pumas, reddening over her face and neck and, though none knew it but she, to the very breaking-away of her breasts.

The sun was visible, white, in a sky which showed no premonition but in its fleeting neighborhood. The fat woman had followed it, from her chill seat near the seals to another, facing the sun, though she did not look up so far, no further than passing waist-levels, mouthing behind her damp wad, or the faces of children. —Frerra jacka, frerra jacka, dormay-voo? one sang. —What's that? asked the smallest. —Soney malatina, soney malatina . . . —What's that mean? asked the smallest, and the string of the balloon slipped from her finger. —It don't mean nothin stupid it's French, and lookit you lost the balloon already.

How old Valentine might have looked, to someone who'd shared with him the cruel familiarities of youth. Or are there moments of intimacy, of which only strangers are capable? of which those known, and suffered over years, could never conceive, so seeking for their own reflection in the attrition of familiarity. So the fat woman, mouthing —grot-zy, grot-sy . . . behind her damp wad looked up as though she might in that instant know the history of every line around his eyes but only lacked the time to set it down, set it down anywhere, even in her own; or set it down in prescience, not magic, not art, but only history before it happened: not age as mere accom- plishment, but in performance, living out what would be lived out, age knowing itself, earning itself in that instant and gone. Until all she could have told, if she'd been interrupted a moment later, surprised? indignant? mouthing —grott-sy, probably all she could answer would be, —How old he looked, just then, throwing that gray glove into the ashcan when he came out of the cat house.

—What now? the sun? A priest of Mithras, was it? Come along, my dear fellow, I'll tell you why Mithraism failed, the greatest rival Christianity ever had. It failed because it lacked central authority. It spread all over the country with the Roman Legions, but Christianity was a city religion, and power lies in cities, remember that. And what was it you said? A man's damnation is his own damned business? It's not true, you know. It's not true. Why, good heavens, this suicide of yours? Why, like Chrysippus then? feeding figs and wine to an ass, and dying of laughter? Look! look there, in the sky where it's still blue, that line? That white line the airplane's drawn, do you see it? how the wind's billowed it out like rope in a current of water? Yes, your man in the celestial sea, eh? coming down to undo it, down to the bottom, and they find him dead as though drowned. Why, this . . . pelagian atmosphere of yours, you know. Homicide, was it? What was it Pascal said, There's as much difference between us and ourselves as between ourselves and others? . . . no, but that was Montaigne wasn't it.

He stooped a little, finding his way up the steps to the street.

At the corner the three children stopped, to look at a deer hung there by its hind feet, to remark, —Lookit where they stuck the paper flower!

From down the block two women approached. —And I just haven't been the same since the Morro Castle . . . the tall woman said, and laughed. —And I wish I could, but I can't, this dismal cocktail party tonight, my husband has to go, he's her editor, and I'm his wife. We're going to miss the Narcissus Festival in Hawaii again this year, I told him we'd just have one of our own . . .

Basil Valentine's hands were clenched deep in his coat pockets. —Now? a Turkish bath? he muttered. —Well don't worry, those fragments, I'll be there tonight, I'll be at Brown's. And he looked up, as though watching something blown on the wind.

Ahead, the three children approached a figure sprawled on the sidewalk, and a little boy on a tricycle wheeling round it.—What's that? asked the smallest. —A man, what's it look like? —It looks like a Sanny Clans. What it's wearing, it looks like it was a Sanny Glaus suit, don't it? —How could it be a Sanny Glaus? It don't have a wite beard. —But it's getting a beard.

Valentine's look was not so steady: he raised it every three or so steps with that sort of blank surprise of a man glancing up to where he has been used to seeing a mirror upon entering a room, and finding a blank wall. —At Philippi? he murmured. —Yes . . . Why, I will see thee at Philippi, then. Like the sky, his eyes remained unclouded, but (perhaps it was the sky beyond him that did it) simply darkened, evenly, assuming a hard solidity and the enduring texture of gray, as the sky itself was doing, as one might have seen, looking up at them both.

The tall woman turned her friend in at a door before the stubble-chinned figure sprawled on the walk in front of her house, —Right under the dining-room window, in fact, right here, as she remarked, —in front of God and everybody. She almost tripped over the tricycling child, but got the rail and down the steps to say, —My husband says that's when you have to be careful, around lunchtime, that's when most of them jump, when the streets are full of people, they do it then for the publicity.

Above her the sky darkened. She did not look at it, but went in with her eyes on her own hand laid out at elegant length on her friend's fur; while behind her, outside, the tricycle wove smaller and smaller circles, as its rider watched over the left shoulder how close the rear tire could come to the fingers on the pavement.

By late afternoon it was snowing.

The flakes were small, blown neither one side nor the other, nor falling direct to earth, but filling the air with continuous movement.

Mickey Mouse pointed to ten minutes of four.

The first thing she saw when she entered her apartment was the unnatural radiance of the sunlamp. Agnes Deigh paused there, still holding her keys, as though to appreciate fully the affliction before her, worse second by second as she hesitated, considering what might have happened had she not arrived; even perhaps that there was still time for her to leave, quietly as she had come, back into the trans-figurating weather: but before she was able to contain this possibility sufficient to examine it, and find there one of those mortal shocks with which life rarely presents us opportunity to abandon the bonds of circumstances woven with such care, and start off upon any of a thousand alternative courses among which, like the needle in the haystack, lies the real one: habit betrays us, as it betrayed Agnes Deigh. She put a hand on the Swede's shoulder, and made a sound.

—Owwwayy . . . what . . . what . . .

—How long have you been asleep under this thing?

—What time is it? —Almost four, she said, and finally turned the sunlamp off.

—Oh my God, my God, I've been here for . . . owwwww ... what shall I do? . . . the Swede wailed.

—There's some butter. I'll get some butter.

So that is what she did. —I'll die . . . she heard him a minute later from the bathroom, applying it. —How could it happen? But just look at mel . . .

Instead she looked away, and said, —I wish you'd . . . But she had looked away in time, and broke off, biting her lip, her eyes fixed at the same level (staring at a table lamp) as though she could not raise them.

—Baby, Ba-by! Oooooooooo.

—I wish you'd put something around you, she said, recovered, looking up, and caught her lip again, for it had almost happened again: she had almost said what she did not know she meant, instead of what she meant to say; just as, that day in the office when she had intended to ask, Are you Catholic? . . . and had suddenly heard herself demand, Do you believe in God?

The Swede had got back into the bathroom. Agnes Deigh sat down, and opened the only letter that was waiting for her. She read,

Dear Madam . . . The case you reported to us as sadism and brutality reported by you to this precinct Tuesday December 20 at 10:17 A-M-resulted in false arrest for which you may be held responsible. Dr. Weis-gall who you accused, was punishing his daughter in which case unless injury results no third party is obliged to intervene. This case is marked closed in our files but we feel it our duty to warn you that if at future date you accuse someone of criminal action that you investigate the facts thoroughly before reporting it to the Police. We also feel it our duty to warn you that Dr. Weisgall may be justified in communicating with you as agent of his unjust arrest, and any future action will take place between yourself and the injured party . . .

—Baby who sent you ros-es? The Swede had emerged, clothed. Agnes looked up. She made a sound, almost told him, and bit her lip on that stark erect syllable. Then her telephone rang. —What? she said into it, shaken. —Hello? . . .

(-Hello, Mrs. Deigh? —Baby I've got to find a doctor. —Yes, what is it? who is it?

(—I'm sorry, this is Stanley and I think I left my glasses at your house once, and when could I ... how . . . —I hate to run off like this baby but I'll call you, from the hospital probably, but I can't go to the hospital on Christmas Eve . . . —Stanley, Stanley, I ... I'm so glad you called. Yes, I found them. I found your glasses, Stanley. But I won't be home now, I'm going to a party in a little while. But could you come there? Couldn't you meet me there?

(—But I'm getting a toothache, but yes, all right, I can come for a little while but I have to go up to this new hospital where they moved my mother . . .

—Yes here, here's the address . . . She lead it to him; and almost a full minute passed after she'd hung up the phone and sat, staring at the letter she'd just received, before she looked up and realized she was alone.

Immediately she got pen and paper and started to write. "Dear Doctor Weisgall. I cannot begin to tell you how sorry I am for my recent mistake. How can I explain it to you so that you will forgive me? A woman's life is not . . ." She stopped and read that; as she would stop and read again, and again, until the letter on the edge of the wastebasket started, "Dear Doctor Weisgall. Perhaps it is not until late in life that we realize that we do not, ever, pay for our own mistakes. We pay for the mistakes of others, and they . . ." And the letter which fluttered to the floor, "Dear Sir. I trust that you are intelligent enough to distinguish between a vulgar act of meanness and revenge, which God knows I have no reason to commit, and the act of a citizen and a human being doing what she believes . . ." when she got up to find two strips of tape. Then she stood at the window stretching the skin at her temples, sticking the tape there to discourage wrinkles while she rested. Unblinking, she stared out at the snowfall a minute longer; and when she turned on the room her moving eyes found the roses. They were full blown with the steam heat: and that instant her gaze struck them, three petals fell.

The snowflakes frolicked about the Swede's face, which was growing larger and more brilliantly red by the minute. He hit at them, as though they were a flight of insects sent to plague him. It did no good. They came from every hand until, seeing a bar, he fled from the white swarm inside, where patrons looked with impolite interest at his high buttered countenance. He got into the telephone booth, after only one drink, and dialed. —I came out in this blizzard to find a doctor but I don't know any doctors . . .

(—My doctor's away . . . on vacation ... in prison ... I can't think which . . . The tone was vague.

He dialed three more numbers, got no answer, and returned to the bar to try to think of telephone numbers.

—Nothing?

—Nothing. Nothing at all, except this . . . wet, said Maude, standing against the door she had closed behind her. Snow crystals melted and dripped from her coat to the floor. —I had to come home in a taxicab.

—The same judge?

—Oh yes, and I almost hate him even though he does look like Daddy.

—That's a good sound reason itself.

—Arny please don't be cruel, not today. It's Christmas Eve, Arny. I feel so awful. Even when my doctor said, Does she look like she's malingering to you? Would you undergo an operation on your spine if you were malingering? And their lawyer said he was sorry but . . . Oh Arny, I get so tired.

—Do you want a drink?

—No. My doctor gave me some morphine. Are you drinking this early?

— Just a couple before I have to start drinking at the party.—Arny I wish you wouldn't drink so much. Have you filled out the papers?

—What papers?

— The papers. You know, the ones for the ... I can't pronounceit, for Sweden.

He planned to fill out these papers, declaring their fitness as parents, after the party. Now he poured the last of a bottle of whisky into his glass and sat down slowly, making a wry face, supporting the lower part of his abdomen with a hand inside his trouser pocket.

—I'm hungry, he said abruptly. —I didn't have any lunch.

—Do you want some spaghetti? Maude said vaguely.

—Spaghetti in the middle of the afternoon? he mumbled, as she went toward the kitchen. But what Maude thought was spaghetti turned out to be a box of waxed paper. She offered salad; but they were out of whisky. When he went out for some, she sped him with, —But get a quart, there's something sinful about a pint of whisky.

—Sinful?

—Well, naughty . . . She sat down wearily, and had hardly managed to assume that suspended look of a passenger on a railway train which came over her when alone, when the telephone and the doorbell both rang at once. She shuddered right through her frame, put out a hand in each direction, and finally got to the door. But when she'd let Herschel in, and picked up the telephone, all she could say was, -What?

(—Baby do you know a doctor? I need a doctor. —A bone doctor? Maude managed. She looked helplessly at Herschel.

(—I've just had the most terrible accident . . .

—Baby are you in the hospital? Herschel answered, taking the thing.

(—No but I will be, if you'll just tell me a doctor.

—But where are you, baby? I always told you this would happen, no one can drive the way you do and go on living in this world . . . (—But it isn't an automobile accident, I have sunstroke.

—Who is this? (—It's me.

—Oh you! I thought it was you-know-who. Sunstroke? Are you drinking?

(—Second-degree burns at the very least, stop asking sillies.

—Listen baby we're going to a party. You just come there and we'll find you the cutest little doll-doctor you ever! Now listen, here's the address . . .

And when he'd hung up, Herschel turned to Maude. —And I've had the most . . . just most day, you cannot dream where I woke up! Can you tell I have this shirt on inside out?

—Who was that? Maude asked, motioning at the telephone.

—It was Rudy, I think he'd been in an auto crash, or something. He said the strangest things, he must have hit his head, and so I just told him to come right along to Esther's cocktail, baby is there a clean shirt? Because I can't possibly go anywhere in this. He followed her into the bedroom, where Maude opened a bureau drawer and took out Arny's last clean shirt.

When Arny arrived, with a full quart by the throat, Herschel was already revealing his latest arcanum: —Chavenet. It really doesn't mean anything, but it's familiar to everybody if you say it quickly. They mention a painter's style, you nod and say, Rather . . . chavenet, or, He's rather derivative of, Chavenet wouldn't you say? Spending the summer? Yes, in the south of France, a little villa near Chavenet. Poets, movie stars, perfume . . . shavenay, Herschel brayed becomingly.

The evening of this feast day, for so it was, perennially addressed to SS Adam and Eve, and the 40 Maidens martyred at Antioch, was brisk or cold, according to one's resources. The people in the streets had not changed; most of them, certainly, were the same people who might be seen passing the same points with the same expressions at the same hour on almost any of the three hundred sixty-five feast days of the year. Nevertheless, something had happened. There was a quality in the air which every passing figure seemed to intensify, a professional quality, as everyone became more consciously, more insistently, what the better part of the time he either pretended, or was forced to pretend himself to be. This was as true for each quantum in the bustling stream of anonymity, moving forth in an urgency of its own, as it was for such prodigies of the tyranny of public service as the policemen offering expressionless faces cut and weathered in the authority of red stone, and their contraries, a porous group in uniforms of low saturation and low brilliance gathered round something on the sidewalk before the American Bible Society, an object so compelling that it gave their diligent chaos the air of order. It appeared to be a gigantic male Heidi.

—Cross the arms on the chest, Maurice. All right there, get his feet. Wait a minute, don't lift yet until I tell you.

The policemen, busy elsewhere attending the smooth functioning of that oppressive mechanism which they called law and order, looked as unlikely of ever being seen in any other combination of lip, nostril, and cold eye, badge, uniform, and circumstance, as Saint-Gaudens' statue of the Puritan; in the same way the Boy Scouts hazarded neither past nor future, heirs to all the ages and the foremost files of time notwithstanding, they composed and expressed a pattern endowed with permanency.

—Look out f'his head, you want to break something?

—How'd it get so red?

—He's red all the way down. I looked.

—So how'd he get that way?

—You tell us, your father's a doctor.

Be Ye Doers of the word, and not hearers only, said a lighted sign behind them. In the window was a large loose-leaf book, whose lined pages were filled in a cramped round hand. A sign beside it said, It took Mrs. Gille / 75 years to / copy the Bible//The Bible / was presented / to her son / at Christmas. There was a picture of Mrs. William Gille, of New York City, and her hand-copied Bible.

—You passed First Aid, Maurice?

—Merit badge.

—What do you say?

—Artificialresperation?

—Right. Take his feet there and twist.

—He won't roll. He's big.

—Twist.

They stepped back, as the hulk rolled, and the nose hit the pavement.

—Cup the face in the arm, there.

—O.K. Get on him. —You get on him.

—I'll get on him.

—We'll both get on him.

—O.K. Ready with your side? One two three go ...

—Ughhh

—two, three . . . push, two, three . . . push,

—Sweet little boys.

—He's talkin. He said somethin.

—He's got me by the knee.

—Sweet little boys.

The police too were busy, in as serious, if less concerted pursuits. In the Fourteenth Street I.R.T-B.M.T. subway station one of them reached Hannah. A policewoman handed that nomadic laundress over to the stronger arm of the law.

—You might at least have given me time to rinse them, Hannah said, a note of hauteur distinct in her voice as she gathered the wet clothes up under her arm. Earlier, she had gone to see Stanley. She had knocked at his door and found him not at home. Even going round to the front and peering through the bars of the grating and the dirty window, all she had been able to see was in order, that silent patient order of things abandoned. She could make out the picture of the cathedral at Fenestrula, the stacks of paper, palimpsests on the left, untouched to the right, twelve empty staves to a page but already dedicated and, she realized with a twinge of cold, as though the cold brought it to her clearly for the first time, not to her. Peering in she saw all this, even enough of the bed to ascertain that it, too, was empty. She could see everything in his room, in fact, except the crucifix, for it hung above the bed, next to the window through which she peered.

This willful insistence of finality was so pervasive that, on those occasions which seemed to resist, an element which might too easily have been called fateful intruded, heavy-handed some wheres as though fate had become exasperated; in others, no more than the cajoling hand of co-operation.

Stanley's mother had been transferred to a first floor room in a large municipal hospital, pleading, the entire journey, for her possessions. After Stanley's visit, her attendants might have noted that there was something more than the usual immediate anxiety in her voice, which had deepened with her demands to a tone which implied that they would never have opportunity to separate her from another of them. Had they brought her appendix? her tonsils? her severed limb . . . and her teeth?

The denture was put into a clean glass on the bedside table, where the nurse, watching the doctor leave, poured the wrong solution into the glass without spilling a drop, and left her old patient gazing at that submarine chimera. Stanley's mother gazed. It moved gently, suspended, as though melting there before her eyes. She dug nut-sized knuckles into her eyes, and looked again. Gumming imprecations of an exhausted nostology, she slept.

She woke, jolted into consciousness by a belch, pulling her three limbs toward her, startled. What was it? She looked into the glass. There was nothing in the glass but a placid clear solution with a slight pink precipitation on the bottom. It was too much. She must get where she was going while there was still time.

Who but a priest, dead for a thousand years, could have read the words which formed themselves on those remnants of lips, as she made her way informally across the room, moving as though encouraged by fitful gusts of wind, weightless, like a sail without a ship, toward the windowsill. The window slid up easily; the shade rolled up like a shot. The forceps shifted, the music began, and she crossed herself, nightmare of the girl she had been two generations before, running to the water's edge, stopping for a breathless instant there to commend her own salvation before she dove in.

Transfixed below, the darkness unfurled upward, pierced by-lights at each point in its ascendance until it hung, impaled, on the city. Over and under the ground he hurried home.

Mr. Pivner's lips moved as he walked. Perhaps it was this complement which gave him, as the seasonal festoons gave the pitted face of the city, this intense quality of immediate realization, real no longer opposed to ostensible but now in the abrupt coalescence of necessity, real no longer opposed to factitious nor, as in law, opposed to personal, nor as in philosophy distinguished from ideal, nor the real number of mathematics having no imaginary part, but real filled out to embrace those opponents which made its definition possible and so, once defined, capable of resolving the paradox in the moment when the mask and the face become one, the eternal moment of the Cartesian God, Who can will a circle to be square.

Mr. Pivner's monologue was neither gibberish nor absent mumbling. In a clear, if inaudible voice he was accounting for every one of his movements. It was difficult to know (and he might have had difficulty himself, saying) whether he was carefully preparing an explanation, or believed himself actually before a Tribunal where he had been summoned to account tor his movements. What had once been anxious inclination was become severe practice; it might have been brought on by the hours he had so recently suffered at the hands of the police, an inquiry which had been, by the standards of almost everyone else who passed through the station house that day, an indifferent, even tedious procedure, in light of the compass of their own applied, and again detected, talents. For Mr. Pivner, it worked quite the other way; and it was, perhaps, just this quality of merciless boredom with which his captors treated him, the entirely disinterested manner with which their relentlessness pursued him, that impressed his own impersonal presence in the world most deeply upon him. Under their questioning, he began to see himself capable of almost anything, someone to be watched, and accounted for after those awkward incidents which composed the biography of the city whose turbulent diary he was accustomed to following in the newspapers.

He looked at his wrist watch, lowered it as his lips kept moving, and abruptly raised it again, first to his eyes, then his ear, and walked faster. He bought a newspaper, turned his corner, and it was not until he was mounting, motionless, in the elevator, that his lips stopped, finishing his account to the Tribunal as he approached his own door, and the locked-up disposal of witnesses waiting to confirm him. The key half in the lock, he paused, listened, and moved frantically, shaking the door to get it open and himself through, to strike at the light switch and reach the telephone which he seized and raised so quickly that it hit him in the eye. —Hello? hello? He heard that sound of patient vacancy which is called the "dial tone." —Hello? hello, operator? His hand quivered over the dial: he spun it all the way:

(—What number were you calling, ple-ase.)

—Operator? Oh, didn't this . . . I'm sorry, I thought I heard it ring.

He moved more slowly, returning to the hallway to remove his hat and coat, and pick up his newspaper. He placed the newspaper on the table beside his chair, turned on the radio, and went into the bathroom.

He came back carrying his medicine and a syringe, paused to change the station on the radio for no reason but to change it, and returned to his chair to relax into that state of spiritual unemployment which he called leisure.

Then her eyes caught his, staring out at him wistfully from the harsh newspaper reproduction where she stood patient in long white stockings; and Mr. Pivner looked confused, as though he'd been abruptly handed back among the classic peoples of pre-Christian times, whose dates, declining with the advance of time, had always given him the feeling that they had lived backwards. He picked up the paper, and his eyes followed automatically the feature story account of the little Spanish girl soon to be canonized, while his mind rummaged its rich embarrassment of glories and defeats no longer news, for recognition. He opened the page, and saw the headline on the bus gone down a Chilean ravine, killing one American and eleven natives, before he realized it was an old paper, and looked at the date to be sure. He folded it quickly and thrust it at a wastebasket behind him. He found the newspaper he'd just brought in, and settled back with a sigh, a weary sound suggesting a suspicion, if he had stopped to reconnoiter, that if the evil thereof is sufficient unto the day, so is it to a place. For had he known, no great disaster had occurred in that region of Chile where the bus crashed since the nineteenth century, when the cave-in of a burning church gave hundreds of bereaved families grief sufficient for decades; and these eleven new and sudden deaths were enough to be mourned for another score of years, deeply felt without publicity, realized in their full right as suffering and death, ungalled by the attrition of a world's tragedies circulated elsewhere on what had been, but remained, there, hectares of green trees.

If you can count, you can paint ... he read, an advertisement in the evening paper. New Subjects for your Paint-It-Yourself Collection . . . and his lip drew in the tic which came when he was weary: for over this artistic suggestion loomed the specter of his retirement. "Yes, even if your artistic talents are zero, you'll be able to decorate your house, from wall to wall with fine paintings and be able to say: 'I did it myself.' "

The music was Francesco Manfredini's Christmas Concerto, approaching resolution in the last movement only to cease abruptly in favor of a voice, a voice laden with the viscous pauses of sincerity, feigning itself the last movement of that concerto interrupted with such confident presumption as though, in those minutes of music the listener had got, not bored but lonely, even alarmed at being left so long abandoned to the allurements of some possibility of beauty. Isolating in confident repetition the name of a product which had the distinction of never having been a word in any language, the voice came to the rescue, stickily compelling, glutinously articulate.

"Just match your numbered pre-planned canvas to the numbered pre-mixed paints. If you can count, you just can't miss . . ." be read, before he turned the page, this reasonable appeal, his head already nodding over retirement from the means which had become the only reasonable end. Still it was to him that they appealed; and a hand went to his pocket, where the past (his own, for there was no other) lay coined in justification.

With his last attention, he noted that the Burma Translation Society had published How to Win Friends and Influence People, and that U. Nu (Thakin Nu) hoped for more books, so that his nation would not "remain static as ignoramuses . . . This indeed is a matter of life and death to all of us." His eyes closed slowly; and when he thought, he fastened his hand on his extravasated heart, glad if only of recognition and familiarity, proof against Reason, and the cries of the mendicant Past.

When the doorbell rang, Mr. Pivner started violently, and grabbed the telephone. —Hello? hello? The doorbell rang again. —Oh . . . I'm sorry, he said to the sound of patient vacancy, —I thought . . .

He received the large package from the delivery boy, a wild-eyed figure about twice his own age who stood waiting dumbly for something more than his words of gratitude. —For me? Pzimer? Is it addressed to me? Oh, I ... wait, he said, unnecessarily, —here . . . He fetched a quarter up from his pocket, which was accepted with a grunt. As the old man turned away, Mr. Pivner stopped staring at the package and cried out, —Wait! Here, I ... merry Christmas. He handed over fifty cents.

The robe was too big. Nevertheless, the pattern was so conservative, and the material so fine, that this seemed rather a mark of luxuriance than some deliberate hebetude on the part of the giver; also in a way it marked the thing as a gift, for had he got it himself it would have fit perfectly. For that reason, any notion of exchanging it left his mind directly it arose there. The card said simply, "Merry Christmas from Otto."

And though he was surprised when he realized it, was it really any wonder at all that Mr. Pivner, whose world was a series of disconnected images, his life a procession of faces reflecting his own anonymity in the street, and faces sharing moments of severe intimacy in the press, any wonder that before he knew it, he had be-seeched familiarity, and found himself staring at the image of Eddie Zefnic, as he sat running the end of his finger over the fine ridges of wool challis draped across his knee.

Wearing the robe, he stood up. He looked about him for something to do, something which, done while wearing the robe, would establish it as his own. First thing he noticed, there on the photograph album, was his syringe. He picked it up, noted that he had intended to attach a new needle, and went into his bedroom to get one. He opened a small upper drawer; and as he took a needle out the dull luster of gold caught his eye. He lifted the watch out by its chain, and dangled it there for a moment before he opened it. He pressed the stem with the heel of his palm, and caught the opening spring of the hunting case on his fingertips. Then he stood staring at that unchanged continent face, the hands stopped upon his father's forsaken past at XII; though whether noon or midnight, he did not know. The hunting case closed with a snap on this instrument which seemed, as his hand closed upon it, capable of containing time, time in continuum, where all things, even ends, might be possible of accomplishment. Mr. Pivner put the watch into the pocket of his robe, feeling, as he did so, Otto's card there. He put the card into the drawer, where the watch had been, and returned to the other room with the fresh needle.

Still, it was to him they appealed, (for that time coined dead in his pocket). In just a moment, Necrostyle will bring you the correct time. But first, friends, do you feel dull, logy, just not-up-to-much, first thing in the morning? Well . . . Mr. Pivner took his injection with great care, as he always did. When he was finished, he was told that the correct time was six-thirty. He was startled at that; and on second thought he lifted the gold watch out of his pocket by its chain, opened it, and pulling out a lever on the side he turned the stem, and brought the gold filigree hands into concert with his own affairs.

—Every hour, on the half-hour, the latest news, brought to you by ...

He was suddenly in a hurry. He removed the robe with reluctant care and put on his jacket. He moved around the room, straightening things, or only touching them, as the voice rehearsed unimproved details of the war which no one talked about, commencing a summary of the same news summarized an hour before, which it had taken that hour to rewrite. He hung the robe carefully, and noticing its lopsidedness as he did so, removed the gold watch and put it into his vest pocket, not pausing to thread the chain through a buttonhole, for he was in a hurry, having intended to reach the hotel well before seven o'clock tonight. He put on his coat, and the green scarf, and had his hat in hand before,he went to turn off the radio, waiting courteously, as he did from habit for the voice to finish a last-minute bulletin.—In the metropolitan area, police are on the look-out tonight for a large man with a red, noticeably swollen face, who is believed to have abducted a group of seven Boy Scouts.

It had begun to snow again. Mr. Pivner hurried along the slippery sidewalk and caught a bus almost immediately. It did, in fact, wait for him, which put him in even better spirits as he sat down and looked out the window, allowing himself to marvel at this dreadnaught which bore him away to the south, and the wonders of science which made it, not simply possible, but ordinary. Then the bus drew to a stop, and moved again reduced to a crawl, a cautious hulk in the solid dark line of vehicles. Traffic in the other direction was stopped; and as though conducting tourists reverently past a venerable setting of martyrdom, the bus crept past the figure of a man on the glistening wet surface of the street. One of his feet was balanced up on the toe. His hat was four feet away, and all that moved was his smashed umbrella, its black festoons stirred by bits of wind. It was the image of the foot, so delicately awry, which held Mr. Pivner even as they went on. His bus passed another, stopped in line in the opposite direction. His driver leaned out, to call to the other driver, —Ya got a knockdown.

Mr. Pivner's lips were moving again. He opened his newspaper, and stared for a moment at the headline, Minister Dies in 51-Day Fast Seeking "Perfect Will of God," trying to compose himself. Then he turned the pages looking for that ad, If you can count, you can paint . . . There were times when he had considered taking up a hobby, painting? or building ships in bottles; but something that would interest him. Seeking those words, I did it myself, his eye caught a picture: Raise Chinchillas! in Your Own Home . . . No Mess! No Trouble!

They all appealed to him, counting him excellently satisfactory just as he was; but if, on learning mistrust so late, he was not: how would they reward his ingratitude? how requite his betrayal?

Science assures us that it is getting nearer to the solution of life, what life is, that is ("the ultimate mystery"), and offers anonymously promulgated submicroscopic chemistry in eager substantiation. But no one has even begun to explain what happened at the dirt track in Langhorne, Pennsylvania about twenty-five years ago, when Jimmy Concannon's car threw a wheel, and in a crowd of eleven thousand it killed his mother.

Mr. Pivner stared at the chinchillas. They looked warm.

"Here's to fire, not the kind that burns down shanties . . ." he found himself reading a few minutes later, bound by necessity before this scribbling on the wall. He shifted his eyes, chagrined at being seen staring with such attentive preoccupation at this, and the various graffiti surrounding it, even by the young man similarly preoccupied, and equivalently occupied, beside him. But the picto-graph his eye caught was so alarming that he lowered his eyes, glimpsing in that brief embarrassed sweep, the face beside him, a haggard lace drawn over a sharp profile which stared intently ahead. And his eyes were drawn slowly back up this figure his own height, near the same stature, slowly up, then snagged, drawn up short, and back, caught on a corner of green. And he was staring at that, down at the bit of wool protruding from the coat's pocket, waist-level, when the whole face turned on him, turned bloodshot eyes in a desolation of contempt.

Instantly Mr. Pivner returned square before him: "But the kind that burns in young girls panties." And after a shrugged fluster and buttoning beside him, he was alone.

—Is that old jerk going to come in here every night now, just sitting here in the lobby? the tall bellboy demanded as he emerged a moment later, and the night manager approached him. —Perhaps you would care to wait in the bar for the rest of the evening, sir?

—That young man, Mr. Pivner managed, —he, who just left?

—I believe he has been a guest of the hotel.

—Oh well yes, well then, no ... Mr. Pivner lowered his eyes to the shining tips of the night manager's shoes. —But ... ! he looked up suddenly: eyes as bright, and incurious as the shoetops, dismissed him.

—If the young man you have described . . .

—Yes, thank you, thank you . . . Mr. Pivner hurried into the bar, and there ordered orange juice. He sounded weary and unprepared for surprises, even one so familiar as the dim image already resident, awaiting but the raising of his eyes, in the tinted mirror. To one side of him, a blonde sagged slightly in his direction. Her elbow edged nearer to his own a gold cigarette case, and he politely averted his eyes to avoid reading the inscription, withdrawing, bumping the man on his right. Mr. Pivner cleared his throat, as one prepared to apologize. But the other merely darted a pin-pointed glance at him and turned away, straightening a lapel where hung a boutonnière shabby enough to appear, in this light, made of paper. And Mr. Pivner settled his rimless glasses back closer to his eyes to stare forth into the tinted glass whose length construed the three figures in vacancy, maintaining a dim reality of its own, embracing their shades in subterranean suspense.

To one side, the blonde opened her purse, and exchanged a muffled pleasantry with the bartender. From the other side came a gasp. Mr. Pivner cleared his throat, as though prepared to apologize but unable to think, so quickly, of anything specific to apologize for. But the sharp eyes gleamed at something beyond him, and with such intensity that his own were drawn in a reflex to look to where the blonde paid for her drink. But all Mr. Pivner saw, in the dim light, was a crisp twenty-dollar bill exchange hands: or so it looked to him, moonblind in the tinted gloom of that landscape where the three of them hung, asunder in their similarity, images hopelessly expectant of the appearance of figures, or a figure, of less transient material than their own.

VII

We will now discuss in a little more detail the struggle for existence.

—Darwin, The Origin of Species

—It reminds me rather of that convent, the one at ... Cham-pigneulles, was it? Near Dijon, said a tall woman, looking round her. —The one that was turned into a madhouse.

—I know what you mean, said the girl beside her. —Everyone keeps changing size. The tall woman looked at her quizzically, and noted that both of her wrists were bandaged. She took a step back; the girl took a step forward. —What do you do?

—I? Why . . . when?

—Write?

—Oh, said the tall woman, recovering, —I support my husband. He writes. He's an editor, you know. He's editing Esther's book.

—Who's Esther?

—Why, my dear, she's our hostess. There, talking with the tall fellow in the green necktie. She turned, as her husband approached with a martini. —What an interesting group of people, she said. —And what interesting music.

—It's Handel, he said, handing her a glass. —The Triumph of Truth and Justice.

She looked around her, and raised the glass to her lips. —Do you think next year we might get to the Narcissus Festival in Hawaii?

Drinks were spilled, another brown line burnt on the mantel, people collided, excused themselves and greeted one another, and Ellery, tucking the green silk tie back in his jacket, said, —Just stop talking about it for a while. Who's that? he added, nodding at a blond girl.

—I don't know. She came with somebody. She's going to Hollywood.

—I want another drink, Ellery said, and went toward the blonde.

—Ellery, please . . . But he was gone. She sat, holding her kitten.

—What does it mean, said a heavy voice near her. —The garbage cans in the street, the kids on the East Side playing in the gutters, swimming in that filthy river, see? What does that mean?

—Well she says Paris reminds her of a mouthful of decayed teeth, but I think Paris is just like going to the movies ...

—A lovely little hotel near Saint Germain, I don't think 1 crossed the river more than twice all the time I was there. I really lived on the left bank, it's so much nicer, the architecture, the cloud formations over there . . .

—Of course if you like Alps. I found them a fearfully pretentious bore myself ... I mean, what can you do with an Alp . . .

—He's still in Paris. He wrote that he's just bought one of those delightful Renaults . . .

—Oh yes, I do love them. An original?

Esther stood up. Her face was flushed. The music disturbed her because it seemed the records were being played at random, one stray side of Handel after another in haphazard succession. She started toward the room which had been the studio, where the music came from, and bumped into a person who was saying, —Do you mean you've never heard of Murti-Bing? Before she was halfway across the room, her way was blocked by an immense glistening countenance. —Baby they told me you were looking for a doctor, and . . .

—Do you know of one? Esther asked, too startled for poise.

—No but I'm looking for one too. Maybe we can find one together . . .

Esther found Rose sitting in the dark. —Isn't the music nice? I'm playing them, she said. —Yes, but perhaps, he wouldn't want any of them broken, Rose. —Oh, I won't break them, Rose said, smiling at her in the dark. Suddenly Esther put an arm around her; and then as abruptly withdrew it, and left her there with the phonograph.

— Wasn't it silly of me. I tried to kill myself twice in two weeks. The second time I was out for two days. Sleeping pills.

—How many did you take?

—Twenty-three. Why?

—I just wondered. It's always a good thing to know.

Esther closed her eyes, as though shutting out sound, and moved on toward Don Bildow, whom she saw across the room talking with a gaunt man in an open-collar green wool shirt, and a stubby youth.

—Yes, I'm almost finished it, said a woman beside her, to the editor. —It's to be called Some of My Best Friends Are Gentiles. I'm so weary of these painful apologies from our sensitive minorities.

I often think how nice it must be among dogs, a bulldog saying, there's a grayhound, there's a basset, a Pekinese, none o£ them mind at all. They're all dogs. Here all you have to do is say a word like Jew or Catholic or Negro or fairy and someone looks ready to cut you up . . .

—I'm sorry to interrupt, Esther said, —but who is that fellow talking to Don Bildow? The tall one.

—He's a critic. I can't remember his name. He used to do books on Old Masses.

—The other one calls himself a poet, said the woman who had been talking. —He's a professional Jew, i£ you know what I mean.

Nearby, a man smoking something from a box whose label said, "Guaranteed to contain no tobacco" spoke to a fluttering blond boy who, someone must eventually remark, resembled an oeuf-dur-mayonnaise. The tall woman indicated him to her husband, with the query, —And who is that perfectly weird little person? He's been talking for simply hours about the solids in Oochello. Wherever that is.

—He's one of our . . . more sensitive writers, her husband got out expelling air as though it were salt water.

—Yes, she murmured, —I can see he has a good deal to be sensitive about. She watched, as the object of her gaze halted a pirouette of departure to say, —But all my dear friends are exotic, just all twisted and turned like the irregular verbs in any civilized language, and all from over-use! . . . The tall woman said thoughtfully, —Yes, and I tried to read his book. Didn't I? she added, turning to the other woman who, she noticed now, was wearing a maternity dress in collapsed folds, the pregnancy foiled. Then as though bringing a topic from nowhere she smiled and said, —Will you bring me a drink? to her husband; —I'm drinking for two now, to them both; and, —I don't know how he could have been so careless, to the other woman.

As Esther crossed the room, Herschel caught her arm. —Baby, you must hear what Rudy's given his maid for Christmas. A hysterectomy! Isn't that the most thoughtful thing you ever heard?

While the tall woman continued to stare toward the door, where the sensitive youth fluttered an escape against the current of entrants. —At least I think that's who it was, I remember the picture on the book jacket, posing with magnolias . . . She paused, to add, as he disappeared, —Or was that a book by Edna St. Vincent Mil-lay . . . ? And stepped aside for,

—Big Anna! but what happened baby? How did you get here?

—My Boy Scouts, I'll never speak to them again . . .

—But I'm really upset about Rudy, Herschel went on, -that one called and has been in an auto smash somewhere.

—I have to find a doctor . . .

—And you're so pretty tonight, and your nose, you know what they say about nos-es. Now you just drink this and we'll find you the cutest little doll-doctor . . . Oh! so pretty for Christmas Eve, all red and shiny like a candy cane.

In the doorway, Maude hung back. —Do you think we could just go join the baby and live in Sweden, Amy? —Same thing there, he said. —I'll get you a drink. Can you really tell I've got this shirt on inside out?

Someone was saying, —Rather like Pyramus and Thisbe, if you know what I mean, and of course everyone knows that he was so sensitive she had to put cotton in the bedsprings the first time so he wouldn't be embarrassed . . . That person quieted, nodding at who came in the door. Others turned to see Agnes Deigh, who said immediately, —It's really the most God-awful thing, will someone get me a drink? Is Stanley here?

—Who's Stanley?

—A funny boy with a mustache. She sat down, looking round her; but Stanley had not arrived, and she was soon enclosed behind a curtain of trouser-seats.

—I really prefer books. No matter how bad a book is, it's unique, but people are all so ordinary.

—I think we really like books that make us hate ourselves . . .

—But . . . why doesn't someone just write a happy book . . . Maude had said that; but no one heard her. —If you had a judge who looked like your Daddy wouldn't you trust him? she asked a youth who turned on her with, —Trust that old bastard? Chr-ahst, he doesn't even trust himself. Do you want to buy a battleship?

All Maude could say, looking round the room, was —How do all these people know each other?

—Chr-ahst only knows. Do you like the party?

—It's a little . . . chavenet. Don't you think?

—Chr-ahst yes.

Esther had retrieved her kitten, and stood holding it too tightly. At her elbow, someone said, —Well Ruskin dated his life from the first time he saw them. —Well, of course Ruskin, said the other. —He was in town just last week, wasn't he? said the tall woman. —I heard my husband talking about him. They had lunch together, I think . . . he's doing a book about stones . . . ?

Across the room Ellery was turned toward her. He was talking to the blond girl, laughing, listening to her, she stood almost between them. The length of her back faced Esther. The heels were high, shoes narrow, legs slightly bowed. The whole of her figure up to the shoulders was slim as though waiting to be taken and turned, and bent downward and back: Esther felt heavy, resting against the door jamb, shapeless, and her head was tired, full, aching dully. —All I want to do is rent a house in the south of France with four deaf mutes . . . said someone near her. The room before her was clean; but in her own mind it existed with the permanence granted only to shambles. Tenants whom she had not met stood like fixed dwellers in her life, never to be dispossessed: they had been borne to her as they were in their permanent blue suits and brown suits and black dresses and eyeglasses, permanently standing and turning, talking to and about one another, nourished and propagated by their own sounds and the maneuvering of cigarettes, leaving the act of life outmoded, a necessity of the past, a compulsion of ignorance: men raised cigarettes in erect threat; women proffered the olive-tongued cavities of empty glasses. —What's that music? someone asked her. —I don't know, it's something of Handel s I think, said Esther, pausing to listen to the strains of celebration written by the barber's son who had learned to play on a dumb spinet, as the anachronistic morning-sickness rose in her, and she put an arm across her sensitive breasts. Ellery blew a smoke ring toward her, a savage missile which the blonde reached out and broke on the air.

—You'd better ask this nice lady right here, said a man who was fluttering a pamphlet titled Toilet Training and Democracy in one hand, leading a seven-year-old girl with the other.

—I'm the little girl from downstairs, the child said to Esther. —Mummy sent me up to ask you could you give me some sleeping pills . . . Esther set off with her to the bathroom, where they interrupted someone who was looking through the medicine cabinet. —Oh, sorry ... he said, —just wanted to see if there were any razor blades here . . . He left with difficulty. Emerging a minute later, she was caught forcefully by the wrist. —Look, you've got a kitten, I've got to tell you the one about Pavlov and his kitten. You know Pavlov, he had dogs. Pavlov rang a bell and whfffft, they salivated, remember? The dogs I mean. Well this time Pavlov has a kitten . . . Voice and man were swept away, and Don Bildow was not where she had seen him. But Ellery was coming toward her smiling. She raised her face, smiling; and he stopped short, at the couch between them, where sitting alone was a man whose profession was as immediately obvious as that of the rickshaw boys of Natal, who whitewash their legs. A bow tie of propeller proportions stood out over extra-length collar bills on a white-on-white shirt, protected by many folds of a cloth which somehow retained the gracious dignity of transatlantic origin in spite of the draped depravity in its cut. -Benny! I'm glad you got here.

—Business is business, said Benny, raising his glass.

—What do you think of the idea?

—Terrific.

—I've got the guy all lined up. We're going to pay his family when he goes through with it, half now, half on delivery. But it's got to look accidental.

—Listen to this, said Benny. —I thought of this last night.

—What? An angle?

—Well, I didn't know whether you wanted to gag it up or make it arty or what. You know. We could have built a nice artistic number around it. Some ballet, with a story line in the background. Sweet. Or I thought if you wanted to gag it up we could make a kind of musical out of it. You know? Girls. Exploding cigars.

—Yeah but look, that's not quite . . .

—I know, we couldn't do that angle anyway, the cigars. We've got a couple of good cigar accounts that would yell. No. The more I thought about it, the more I thought, what you guys really want is stark human drama. The real thing. So listen to this. I thought of this last night.

—Yeh ...

—From a church. He does it from a church steeple.

—Christ! Benny, you'll win the Nobel Prize for that. It's a natural.

—I figured how we can make it look accidental enough. There's this church up in the Bronx right across from a dancing school. We'll have the cameras up there doing a show on kids learning ballet dancing, see? Then when we get the word all we have to do is break in and dolly them around right out the window. Beautiful camera angle.

—But what about the priest? He might screw it up if he's around.

—He'll be around. He'll be busy inside, saying a Mass.

—It's terrific. That's all I can say. Ellery spoke with his eyes lowered, in thoughtful admiration. Then he raised them. —You deserve a drink. Where'd you think of it, alone or in a story conference?

—In church, said Benny.

—But Anna baby, came a voice from the end of the couch, filling the gap of Ellery's marveling silence, —they boiled Sir Thomas More's head for twenty minutes just so it would hold together, before they stuck it up on London Bridge . . .

—Right there, said the tall woman, nearer Esther, —in front of God and everybody. That's the way those things always happen. Do you think I have on too much perfume? I have sinus trouble and I never know. Isn't it warm in here.

—Well, your furpiece . . . Esther began, turning to face her.

—I know, my dear, but to tell you the truth I don't dare put it down anywhere. —I'm sure it would be safe in my bedroom.

—Oh, then you're Esther. My dear I'm sorry, I didn't mean . . .

—It's all right, you're probably right. I don't know a lot of the people here myself.

—Tell me Esther, has he come yet?

—Who?

—Your guest of honor, of course . . .

—Do you know him?

—Hardly. But I've seen his picture so many times. And I own his book. I heard him speak once, about families, I mean about having children and that sort of thing. I can't bear them myself. I mean bear them, literally you know, she laughed. —A tipped uterus, you know. There seem to be so many nowadays, you run into a tipped uterus wherever you turn . . .

They both turned hopefully to look across the room, where the door opened. —My dear he is probably someone quite notable. You have to be, to go about with an alarm clock strung around your neck . . .

—Mendelssohn Schmendelssohn, someone else said. —I'm talking about music.

—Wasn't that silly of me, said the tall woman, watching Esther cross the room toward the couch. —Telling her a thing like that when here I am two months gone. It just goes to show what habit will do.

—I think Sibelius' fourth is his best.

—Fourth, schmorth; it's his only.

—It just goes to show that you can't trust nature.

Across the room, Mr. Feddle already was engaged, inscribing a Copy of Moby Dick. He worked slowly and with care, unmindful of immediate traffic as though he were indeed sitting in that farmhouse in the Berkshires a century before.

Maude looked up and said, —Isn't it funny, how dark it seems over there, I mean where they are, do they make the corner dark or did they just gather there because it's dark there . . . Then she saw that the heavy-set man was in uniform, and said, —Oh. What are you? —Army Public Relations, he said, looking up again at the group in the dark corner. —They look like something out of a Russian novel, he said. —Chavenet, said Maude, looking up at him with wide unblinking eyes. —Yeh, him, said the officer. —Just because I'm not an intellectual don't mean I don't read books. Together they stared across the room; and Maude, feeling his warm hand on the back of her neck, relaxed somewhat.

A few years before, someone who had once seen one rather unfortunate print of Mozart (it was in profile, the frontispiece in a bound score of the Jupiter Symphony printed in Vienna), and soon after looked once at the profile of the man now standing stoop-shouldered across the room in an open-collar green wool shirt, remarked that he looked (for all the world) like Mozart. Safe away by a century and a half, this was repeated often, most especially by those who persisted as his friends, wished to say something complimentary about him, and had never seen the frontispiece to the Vienna-bound Jupiter Symphony.

—I know him, the tall one, Maude said. —He's been around a long time.

He looked up, as though he might have overheard her, and he looked offended; but if she had seen him more often, anywhere, and in any circumstance, she would have realized that he always looked offended. Bildow, who was talking, looked slightly offended. So did the stubby young man whose belligerent interest was poetry. They might have been offended by the conversation immediately beside them, a group as unattractive as their own but in another way: crackling with brittle enthusiasm, these guests pursued one another from the Royale Saint Germain (across the street) to the Deux Magots; out to the Place des Vosges and back to the Flore; across the river to the Boeuf sur le Toit and back to the Brasserie Lipp (—It was Goering's- favorite place in Paris you know); briefly to the Carnavalet and back to the Reine Blanche (—That's where I saw how tough the French police can be . . .).

—And laundry so expensive, eighty francs a shirt . . .

—Of course none of us had baths in our rooms, but there was a charming boy from Virginia whose bathtub was always free after eleven in the morning . . .

—I managed very well, just washing in the bidet . . .

Wherever encountered, it seemed that their one achievement had been getting across that ocean once, and getting back to retail wares which they deprecated but continued to offer, all they had in stock at present though a sparkling variety was on order (—Cyprus sounded like a marvelous place, I heard that they have these trumpets there, and at night when they go to bed they put one end out the window and the other end . . .).

—We didn't get time to do Italy this time, anyhow it's really more important to get to know one place really well, we were in Paris for almost a whole week . . .

Each one inclined from wistful habit to say, —Well I've only been back a couple of weeks, and ... or, —I just got back recently, and ... or, —Well I've only been back a little while, but . . . , realizing in the back of their minds that seasons had changed since the!r return, that the same season they had spent there was approaching again here, realizing, in spite of those vivid images which conversations like this one refurbished, that they were back, and their wares not for sale, but barter only, and in kind.

—I guess it was Corfu I meant, anyway when you walk down the street in the evening you hear these really mellifluous sounds from these trumpets . . .

—Well we were there when our ambassador laid a wreath on the grave of the unknown soldier. He dropped to his knees, and everybody in the crowd was so touched by his reverent act, then he fell flat on his face ...

—You're talking about my hus-band! cried the one who had thanked Esther for her lovewy party, in passing, paused then to make a face at Don Bildow over their shoulders, and went on.

—I never saw anything like that, even at the Au Soleil Levant. What was it?

—The Duchess of Ohio.

Bildow turned his unimpressive back. —There isn't a good lay in this whole room, said their stubby companion, with a look as though recalling some severe unkindness done him privately years before. It was, in fact, a look he seldom lost. The tall stooped one undid the next button of his wool shirt, and said, —What about Esther, what about her?

—It's funny you never knew her. She was around a lot, before she got married. That summer your wife shot herself, Esther was all over the place.

—I was at Yaddo, said the critic. He smoothed the hair on the back of his head, but it stood up again immediately he lowered his hand; and the likeness to the Mozart print was remarkable again, not for the heavy and long upper lip, and the prominent nose, but the weight of the hair which he wore as consciously as the eighteenth-century man, though not for reason of that infestation of daunted vanity known as fashion, but for his own unintimi-dated reason: it made his head look bigger, inferring its contents to be a brain of the proportions which Science assures us we all might have, if we had wings. —I heard you sold out, he said to Bildow.

—What did I have to do with it? You know how much it costs to run a magazine.

He smoothed down and released his obedient hair. —Are you using my Dostoevski piece in this issue?

—Ahm . . . not in this one, but ...

—Jesus Christ, you've had it up there for over a year. I'll finish the book before you print it, probably.

—Well, you know. There's politics up there like everywhere else. 5?6

—Who's out to get me?

—Well, you know that piece you did on Rilke last year, a lot of people . . .

—Jesus Christ, whose fault was that? Everybody knows I wrote that Rilke's references were occasionally obscure, and that dumb Radcliffe girl I had typed obscene when she copied it. I'd like to know who the hell copy-read that. And putting a t in genial . . .

—I was at Yaddo, said Bildow.

Someone from the neighboring international set tried to join them, offering, —Just imagine Victor Hugo wanting the whole city of Paris renamed for him! This credential earned cold stares, frightening, not for their severity, but for the very bleakness of the faces engaged.

—I hear you're going over, said Bildow's shorter friend, bleakly accusing.

—Yes, in a month or two. I want to see for myself, said Bildow, fingering his brown and yellow tie, bleakly defensive. Then he added, —It's funny that Max isn't here.

—What's so funny about it? That wise bastard . . .

—He usually shows up at these cocktail parties, said Bildow.

—What the hell ever made you print that poem of his, in the last issue? The one about Beauty disdaining to destroy him, that one.

—Well, we ... It was . . .

—Did you see his paintings? Crap, all of them, even if he has got a sense of form.

—She looks like a good lay, said the stubby poet. —That blonde over there.

—Do you know who that is? It's that dumb God damn Radcliffe girl, Edna, the one who screwed me up on that Rilke piece, the one thing I've written that's worth everything else put together, because I understood Rilke, I understood him because he understood suffering, he respected human suffering, not like these snotty kids who are writing now . . . He put his glass down empty, saw another, full, and picked it up before its owner had finished saying, —It's like the movies because there's everything spread out for you, and you just have to react, like at the movies you don't have to pay with your real emotions, you don't have to do anything . . .

—And who's that over there, with all the queers around her? Agnes Deigh? Jesus Christ, I should think she'd get sick of playing mother to every God damn fairy in the city.

Esther had sat down on the couch because it was the only place in the room to sit. At one moment, she had thought that if she did not sit down, she might fall; but even now, sitting, she felt that she was falling, and she forced her back against the back of the couch, raising her chin as though trying to surface, for it was not a sense of tumbling through air, the limbs absurdly extended and unaccounted for, toward sudden impact which would so abruptly account for their ridiculous efforts in an unalterable pattern of incongruous torsions; but of falling in water where no bottom waited to delineate finality. With penetration peculiar to distance, every sound seemed to reach her, though it was perhaps her own doing, trying to escape the sounds nearest her by straining for those beyond.

—Maladjusted? To this? Well thank God I am. If I wasn't I'd go crazy, someone said across the room, while she listened.

—But you've got to understand New York, it's a social experience.

—That's why I like her, she's part woman, came a tittering asthmatic voice; and someone else was whistling slightly delayed accompaniment to a stretch of Handel's Water Music. The door opened, and she raised her head in hopeful anxiety, still unaware of how he would appear, the writer whom she had invited, and as afraid that he would not; and she lowered her eyes in disappointed relief, for the man who came in was carrying a baby, and immediately met by the girl with the bandaged wrists. —What did you bring it for? she greeted him, then turned to say, —This is my husband. He's late because he's been tight-rope walking. He has one set up in the apartment and he says he can't practice when I'm around and I'm around most of the time . . .

In the middle of the room someone greeted the boy who had been looking for razor blades in the medicine cabinet with, —Charles Dickens, my God, they told me you'd gotten a job as publicity agent for the Hiroshima tourist bureau, Come see the Atom City and all that kind of thing . . .

The kitten tore at the arm of the couch. Esther caught it, and drew it to her, Ellery's voice still the clearest in the room. He was talking to the blonde a few feet away. —Hollywood's through, honey. Why go way the hell out there when TV's right here in town. What do you think, Benny? Don't you like her for a spot in Lives of the Saints when it goes on video . . . ?

Esther realized that all this time the quiet seated presence beside her had been eating. He followed a stuffed egg with a small hot frankfurter, then a fresh carrot. —I beg your pardon, she said. He made a sound, eating. —Are you a friend of ...

—Hors d'oeuvres. All I ever get, hors d'oeuvres. I keep thinking Benny will take me somewhere where we'll eat, an invitation to dinner somewheres, but all I get is cocktail parties, all we do is drink, all over town.

—Are you in television too?

—No, God help me. Benny and me went to school together. He coughed, and took another small hot frankfurter, as though annoyed at this interruption in his meal. —Benny and me went to school together, he repeated. —See this suit? This is Benny's. He gave it to me.

—It's a lovely suit, Esther said, looking at the gray flannel sleeve which came halfway down the man's forearm. —A very nice gift.

—Now it's too conservative for Benny, he can't wear things like this any more he says. Honest, you can't imagine a different guy than Benny when we went to school together, quiet and real serious. He was going to do great things then, he was going to design the most beautiful bridges you ever saw, and look at him now. Even a year ago I saw him and he was real, like the guy I used to go to school with. He isn't real any more. The tray was abruptly lifted away, and he grabbed two frankfurters and a stuffed egg. —Look at them, he said, watching casual hands pick up stuffed eggs, frankfurters, an occasional carrot. —You'd think they were hungry, the way they eat. Look at that woman with the white fingernails, does she look hungry? His meal was done, and he turned to Esther for the first time. —Do you know anything about player pianos?

—I'm afraid not, I've never really been interested . . .

—I've written a history of the player piano. A whole history. It took me two years, it's got everything in it. What's the matter with people. What do they want to read about, sex all the time? Politics? Why, did you know, he went on in a spicy tone, —the Crown Princess of Sweden, the Queen of Norway, the Sultan of Johore, all of them had piano players? And Anna Held, Julia Marlowe, President McKinley, they had player pianos. And Pope Pius X, the Wright brothers, the ships of the Russian navy . . .

—If you want something to eat, Esther interrupted, —I'm sure that out in the kitchen . . .

—Anything, he said, but his eagerness was weary, for just then art had taken appetite's place. —Some day I'm going to have it printed myself, on Japanese onion-skin, bound in vellum ... I don't know. Am I the only one that.'s hungry? Doesn't anyone else ever eat in New York? He stopped to pick some egg off the flannel sleeve. —White vellum with gold stamping . . .

—I'm sure that in the kitchen ...

—Well, here you are! Benny stood over them, unsteadily, with a dripping glass in each hand. —Are you all right? He leaned over and spoke to Esther in a low tone, —Are you keeping my friend here supplied? He always needs a drink, poor fellow. We went to school together. I've had to take him to every party in town the last two weeks, I don't know what he does with himself when I'm up at the studio.

Esther felt that she had regained her strength, and stood as the arm beside her reached dutifully up for the glass. She did not see Ellery and the blonde, and started toward Don Bildow when Herschel took her arm. —Baby there is a kitchen here isn't there? Because we must have just a little but-ter . . . and baby, has Rudy come yet? You know Rudy don't you? You must, he designed this new Doukhobor dress, the one that comes off with a touch, isn't that fright-fully Tolstoy? And now he's designing sports clothes for nuns. Why, before he's through he'll end up in the Church himself! Isn't that too camp? Why even Agnes says . . .

—Bathysiderodromophobia. And that's only one of his troubles.

—But why does simply everyone join the Roman Church? When there are so many other divinely amusing religions .around.

—I think sun worship would be the most divinely inspiring thing, why just imagine everyone here running around without a stitch on ...

—I'd like to start right now . . .

—I want a new messiah . . .

—Baby we all do ...

—That tall stooped one in the open green shirt over there, I'd follow him any-where . . .

—And it wouldn't do you a bit of good, said Agnes Deigh, leaning forward with a cigarette in her mouth, looking for a light. —He'd probably break every single little bone in your body.

—How fer-wocious! Agnes introduce me, promise.

Of the three lights proffered, Agnes Deigh leaned over one and then sat back, lowering her cigarette. —Darling he's not any stronger than you are.

—But he looks so m-timate.

—He does, Agnes said, looking across the room. —That's because he has myopia.

—Agnes darling you sound bit-ter. What's he to Hecuba, baby?

—Oh God, let's not talk about it. I spent most of a year listening to his troubles with his wife, with his childhood, with religion, with his work, honestly, nursing him . . .

—Agnes, how angrwy you are!

She had, indeed, got a stern look on her face which none of them had ever seen; but as quick as it had come, it softened to one of weary disappointment. Then she said thoughtfully, not looking at anyone, —The people who demand pity of you hate you afterward for giving it, They always hate you afterward. She watched him plod across the room as though in deep snow.

The front door was opened and closed three times in quick succession, the first draft catching the flower of Agnes Deigh's patronage to detach a frayed petal and waft it across the room. —Buster! —Sonny! —But how did you get here? The second was Stanley; and the third a dark-skinned man about five feet tall in a snappy gray sharkskin suit, who looked round cheerfully, raised his eyebrows, shrugged, and accepted a drink. (He was, in fact, the Argentine trade commissioner, at the wrong party.)

Maude sat with her eyes closed, moving her head slightly in the hand of the man in uniform. —I just don't do happy things any more, she was saying. —I guess because it's easier not to, because when you do, and then remember them, it's much worse than if you never did them, it's much better if you don't have happy things to remember, and then you don't remember them and get sad because you're not doing them any more, it's easier just not to have anything to remember . . . He leaned forward and blew softly into her hair.

—Who's looney now? someone said, as Mr. Feddle worked his way along the wall, with the care of coastal shipping not to venture into the open sea; his cargo was Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and he sought dockage where he might inscribe it in peace. Benny was approaching the very attractive girl who spoke with Boston accents. The tall woman said, —Then it's your husband who writes. What sort of thing? —God knows, said the girl with the bandaged wrists, —God and the Congregation of the Holy Office. Everything he writes goes right on the Index, and I can't read it. —Then you're Catholic? —My God yes.

The very attractive girl, indicating Benny, turned to Ed Feasley and said, —Tell your friend I'm a lost horizon, will you? —Chr-ahst, Feasley said, —I don't know him. He looks like a brush salesman in that outfit. Maybe I can sell him a suit. She raised her eyebrows. —Well Chr-ahst I've got to do something. Ever since I smashed this last car up I've been living on the free lunch at the Harvard Club, and going through the cushions of the big chairs there looking for change that drops out of those old bastards' pockets. Chr-ahst.

Benny turned unsteadily toward Agnes Deigh; but she had got up and gone to put an arm around Stanley, who shrank away. —Stanley, something awful has happened . . . she began, and looked over his shoulder to see the dark face of the critic. —Hullo, he said. —How is everything, Agnes?

—Well enough, I suppose, she answered, and took her arm from Stanley's shoulders. —I didn't know you knew Esther.

—I just met her, he said. His tone was dull.

—How's your own novel coming along? She sounded impatient. —Well, I haven't finished it yet, but . . .

—And the autobiography of Dostoevski?

—Look Agnes, don't start that with me tonight, that autobiography crap.

—Relax, Agnes Deigh said. —Have another drink.

—All right. But just don't start ...

—I'm not starting anything. Now relax.

—You must be having a good time here. I never saw so many queers in one room, queers and uptown fluff and cheap advertising ...

Agnes Deigh turned her back. —Stanley, I have something I want to talk to you about, she said, and led him back to her chair. Benny walked toward the other side of the room, where Ellery stood with the blonde backed up against a cabinet, his hand in the shadows there, hardly moving. Benny's lip was trembling.

—Lady . . . lady . . . Esther felt her skirt being pulled, and looked down to see the little girl from downstairs. —Mummy sent me up to ask you for some more sleeping pills . . . —Just a minute, she said as she looked, and put her hand on the child's head. —You've got lots of friends, haven't you, the little girl said, looking up at her. —Mummy used to too, but not any more . . .

—You must meet Mister Crotcher, said someone to Esther, beside her. It was Buster Brown (whom she did not know either). The pair had approached like a depraved version of body and soul, the one on little cat-feet (as he himself remarked), the other in a brown suit of heavy material, nearer the floor with each step, as though wheeling a barrow full of cement. He shook Esther's hand with an air of great fatigue. —But you didn't tell us what you do, said Buster to him.

—I'm a writer, he answered.

—Oh. What sort of thing do you do? Esther asked, dropping the weight of his hand, and looking down as though she expected to see it drop to the floor.

—Write.

—Yes, but ... ah ... fiction?

—My book has been translated into nineteen languages.

—I must know it, Esther said. —I must know of it.

—Doubt it, said the modest author. —Never been published.

—But you said . . .

—I've translated it myself. Nineteen languages. Only sixty-six more to go, not counting dialects. It's Celtic now. A lovely language, Celtic. It only took me eight months to learn Celtic. It ought to go in Celtic.

—You mean be published?

—Yes, published in Celtic. Sooner or later I'll hit a language where they'll publish it. Then I can retire to the country. That's all I want, to retire to the country. Erse is next.

—It must be an awfully dirty book, said Buster.

Mr. Crotcher gave him a look of firm academic hatred which no amount of love, in any expression, could hope to erase. —It is a novel about ant life, he said.

—Lady, could you take me into the bathroom . . .

—You'll have to excuse me, Esther said, gripping the child's hand.

—Gee, lady, said the little girl as they crossed the room, —you ought to watch out for your baby.

—What?

—You ought to change his pants, she said pointing. Esther saw the baby on the floor, trying to climb the leg of a small dark-skinned man in light gray.

On the other side of the room the girl with bandaged wrists was saying to her husband, —What'd you do with it?

—Some girl borrowed it, he said. —You'll know her, she's got a green tongue.

—The baby's all right, if that's what you're talking about, said the tall woman. —A nice-looking man seems to be playing some sort of game with it. She turned to her husband and said, —Who do you suppose that flashy little dago is?

—But that's what's wonderful about France, someone said. —Simply ev-rything is for sale.

—We've found the loveliest French restaurant, a girl said. —Everything is flavored with garlic, that's how you can tell . . . She was interrupted by the Duchess of Ohio who asked if her name were Maude.

—Why no. Why?

—They've told me that someone named Maude knows where you can get babies by post from Nor-way!

—Do you want one?

—Baby, I feel like I'm going to have one. The girl stared.

—There hasn't been anything like this since the Morro Castle, said the tall woman, looking round. —I expect everyone to burst into Nearer My God to Thee at any moment.

—Chr-ahst, what a party, said a young man to Esther, stopping her as she came from the bathroom, the little girl dodging obstacles, running for the door. —Could I get you a drink?

—It's my party, and you're very welcome, said Esther, feeling ill again.

—Oh Chrahst, I'm sorry. Ed Feasley was folding together four dirty five-dollar bills. He put them into his pocket. —Damned lucky bit of business, he said. —What? —You see that seedy-looking guy in the green shirt? —Oh yes, I know him, he's ... —I just sold him a suit. —But ... he doesn't look as though . . . your suits would fit him, Esther went on, automatically, making conversation. —I wouldn't sell him one of my old things, Feasley said. —I told him to go up and get a suit at Brooks. He can charge it to my old man. What else am I supposed to do? Sell a battleship?

They stood looking over the room. —How do you know all these people?

—I really don't, to tell the truth, Esther said, looking for any she could identify. There was James Leak, who said he had published a book called With Gun and Camera in Flatbush and Green-point, though no one had ever seen a copy, and was now at work exposing the Swiss conspiracy to dominate the world. There was Arthur, with a beard, who was writing a new life of Christ, to be published under another name, the same name he had used when he reviewed his first book, published under his own name, a satire on the Bible so badly received that he joined the chorus of its detractors and got even with himself by quoting Charles Reade and George Borrow, calling it an excrescence of over-refinement. —Yes, he was saying to a girl named Izarra (she had got that off a liquor bottle; her real name was Minna Vesendorf). —Of course it's going to be autobiographical. All books are.

Someone else was saying, —When I finish this psychoanalytic critique of Mother Goose I'm going right on to the Revelation of Saint John the Divine ...

Someone else said, — She went into a cream dream talking about Ischia last night . . . Nearby, someone asked about a slim middle-aged man just out of earshot, who had been appointed instructor in one of the better eastern boys' boarding schools. —Well I don't think he really realizes what he's doing, he just lies beside them and kisses them . . .

—It's all right just so long as he doesn't turn them over . . .

—And where did you get those eyebrows? someone in that corner asked the Duchess of Ohio, who was waving an old magazine. —If I didn't have these eyebrows I couldn't look so fer-wocious. The magazine was Dog Days, open to the picture of Ch. Dictator von Ehebruch.

—Of course I believe in Art, said a girl with a green tongue, near them. —But not just to look at.

—Chr-ahst, I mean, you know? I mean, Chrahst, don't you wonder what they're trying to do, all of them? I mean, look at this wild-eyed guy that just came in ... —God! said Esther, clutched his arm and thrilled him for an instant, left him dumb.

Esther crossed the room, her face flushed, as though this abrupt challenge temporarily suspended the consuming terror which had become the fabric of her own life, just as the flush in her cheeks replaced the transparent whiteness which had come over her face only hours before.

—Look, where's your kitten? Only someone who loves kittens could understand ...

—Please, let go of me.

—But you've got to hear this. The kitten ... I mean Pavlov had an experiment with lights, and when he rang a bell . . . whhffft

—Esther . . .

—Darling haven't you had enough? . . .

—Esther darling, the tall woman stopped her, —that music seems awfully loud, even for Bach . . . Darling where are you going? what's the matter?

The music was The Great Elopement: a chill horn raised her, twisted her up and exalted her for a moment; and then she was let go, and lowered evenly on strings. —He's here, Esther said, her flush already failing. —He's come . . . here.

—He has? . . . But I don't see anyone, said the tall woman looking over the room with her head cocked back, drawing her eyelids to the level of her lashes which did not move and she looked quite disdainful, —anyone who looks like a Kwa-ker, certainly . . . certainly no one whose picture I've ever seen on a book jacket . . . Then she lowered her face so quickly that the smooth proud hollows where her eyes lay became furrowed, drawn together by the brows, and —Who do you suppose? . . . she murmured, watching Esther hurry toward the door and there seize the arm of a figure with neither hat nor coat nor tie, immediately obscured by her back.

—You've come back . . . here? Esther said almost in a whisper.

—I didn't know you had a party. I ... I won't interrupt.

—But you . . . come . . . Esther drew the arm she had seized to her in a convulsive gesture, then as though shocked at this she almost let it go, but did not, turning, toward the bedroom hall, trapped for an instant in the brown eyes of the critic upon her, a gaze she broke and went on, restraining the tension of the music in the wrist gone rigid in her hold. —Come in, in ... into the bedroom. All these people, it's not . . . not . . . where have you been? she asked when they gained the cover of the hall.

—In a Turkish bath, he answered promptly.

—Oh no, you ... I mean . . . close the door. She sat on the edge of the bed, holding with a hand on either side of her, and looked at him. He started toward the closet. Then she said, —You . . . and her voice quavered, so she stopped and made an effort to swallow, trying to draw together the great hollow behind her tongue. —Almost as though I knew you were coming, she said, and then added, —and expected you. At that he turned to her, and Esther shuddered, for his face was drawn in the mild surprise her memory knew so well, for here now, just as there, she had intruded upon him. There he was, in her memory, usually seated but sometimes standing at a window with his back turned, unaware of her approach so that no matter the circumstances or her intentions, she became stealthy, and might even try to retire and leave him there; but he always turned, like this, intruded upon, composing the lines of his surprise into expectation, looking at her, waiting.

But all this happened very fast, and sometimes, before she knew it she'd set fire to his hair, or saw it so, what was the difference? or saw him streaming blood down the side of his face (as he had that morning when they had news that the warehouse, where his early paintings were stored, had burned, and he came in with a razor cut on his cheek), and this same mild expectancy, waiting to be told.

But now he turned away. —I've just come to pick up some things, he said, and he stood there holding one hand in the other before him, looking down. She watched the lines of his face become confused again, and still sitting on the edge of the bed she asked him,

—What things?

—Well, the . . . there must be some clothes. Some clothes. Because this . . . He stopped again, holding a black wilted lapel, and looked at it.

—It's been so long, she said, starting to get up. But then she only clasped her hands around a knee, and stayed. —Are you going away? she asked him, and sorry she had for he looked bewildered and not at her. —You're not going to stay? she added abruptly.

—To stay? he repeated, and looked at her.

—You haven't come back to ... to stay? . . . with me? Her knee slipped from her clasped hand.

—Why no I ssstopped in to ... pick up some things, I ... there's somewhere I have to go tonight, something I have to ... do. He spoke each word as though intending another, misshaping them with his lips, and stood there uncertainly. —You see, I ... he commenced again, but she interrupted briskly as she stood.

—It's all right, I simply wondered. A woman likes to know these things.

—But you ...

—But you do look better than when you were up here a few days ago, don't you, she went on, her voice with an edge to it.

—Yes, I'm tired.

—Where have you been?

—A Turkish bath.

—All this time?

—No, I ... yes.

—Why? Why? Why?

—Oh, they ... do all sorts of things to you there. Heat and cold, and steam . . . and cold water, and they pound you, and you . . . and they . . . they do all sorts of things to you to make you . . . that you feel . . .

He turned toward the closet again, took a step and startled at his brief image in the mirror.

—Oh, but that . . . I'm sorry, she said, laughing, coming toward him around the foot of the bed.

—Well I didn't . . . think it was mine, he said, confused again, taking off the jacket he'd got from a closet hanger. Its bold plaid sleeves came down to his knuckles, the skirt well down over his thighs.

—I am sorry, Esther said and she quit laughing. —It's . . . someone left it here.

—But they're all like this, he said from the closet.

—Your things are in here, in these drawers. She stopped her going toward him, and pulled open a bottom drawer. When she straightened up she'd recovered her impatience. —When you're away for as long as you've been, she began. He was putting back on the wrinkled black jacket from the floor where he'd dropped it. —But here, Esther said, pulling folded clothes from the drawer, —surely there's something in here that will do better than . . . that.

But he buttoned the jacket in front, taking both hands to each button.

—This, she said.

He took from her the suit she held out, plain gray with a diagonal weave.

—Well, aren't you going to put it on?

He folded it and put it on the bed, at the same time making sure of the buttons on the jacket he wore, as though suddenly afraid to lose it.

—Aren't you going to wear this?

—I'll . . . I'll take it with me, and a shirt. Some shirts too. Then with a step he was nearer her, and another; and he stopped, bringing up his head, both hands open before him, open as though to come to grips except that he'd already fallen half a step back, and She, straightening up with some shirts held forth on the flat of her hands raised her face to his, joining forces with the mirror behind her. —What is it?

But with that half a step back one image retired, and bearing his green eyes on her he recovered, the half-step and another with it so that Esther shrank back against the chest holding the shirts out farther still between them and she repeated —What is it?

The door opened, flung open. Music burst in.

—What do you ...

—Sorry.

Broken shapes, gray Glen Urquhart mitigated by blond hair in a wild panache, shattered the wall; a peripheral pattern instantly restored as the door bangs, closed.

—What was it?

—Purcell.

—No. Her hands lay in his, under the squared white mass of the shirts, cold nails and soft lined joints against his hard palms.

—The music?

—No. Her thumbs out, and palms up with the weight on them, her shoulders relax, and her hands open further, to draw up as instantly there is no support, first his right hand gone, clearly gone, and then with an instant's paroxysm the left.

And then the weight of those shirts, lifted away, and her hands rise empty, round-fingered, untapering and separate.

The mass of the shirts broke on the bed as he dropped them there, and took his left hand in his right where veins stood out in swollen tributaries rising between the roughed mounds of the knuckles, breaking in detail on the fingers whose severity they articulated.

—That night . . . Esther said staring at his hands, her own withdrawn to shelter the hollows, heels on bone and the round ends of her fingers appointing that soft declivity which rose above them until her thumbs could not meet across her waist. —That night, she repeated, curling her finger-ends in upon the yielding bank, and the tips of her thumbs touched. —When I wanted to ... manicure you? She looked up at his face, and with the effort smiled until she said, —And you . . . drew away just like that . . . each word draining the smile from her face, and she lowered her eyes, and her empty hands came down to her sides.

She waited, and heard no response, but watching saw his lips go tight. —What have you been doing all this time? she demanded of him, and sat on the bed.

He turned back to the shirts, which he'd just left stacked unevenly on the bed, and commenced to arrange them in a careful pile. —Nothing, he answered automatically.

—Nothing! she repeated, and sat up straight.

—A few things . . . working, sort of ... experimental things.

—Painting? What kind of things, then?

—Yes, sort of ... that kind of thing.

—Painting?

He looked up at her, quickly and away, back to what he was doing, squaring the pile between his hands. —Looking around us today, he said with effort, —there doesn't seem to be ... much that's worth doing.

—Well what good is it then? . . . she burst out at him, —going on only to find out what's not worth doing?

—You find ... he mumbled, —if you can find, that way . . .

—Are you very ill? Esther said.

—111? He looked up pale and surprised.

—Everything is just like it was, isn't it. Only worse. She started speaking rapidly again, as she got to her feet. —You've just got everything tangled up worse and worse, haven't you. Why the way you pulled your hands away from me just now, as though they were something . . .

—Esther . . .

—And your guilt complexes and everything else, it's just gotten worse, hasn't it, all of it. And the way you pulled your hands away from me just now, it was just like when we were first married and I hardly knew you, and the longer we were married the less you . . . won't you talk to me? even now, won't you talk to me?

—Really Esther, I ... I didn't come here to argue with you. He sounded again himself she remembered, and she pursued,

—You won't argue, you'll say things like that but you won't argue, you won't talk ... to me . . .

—Damn it, I ... Esther, I just came in to get some things.

—Get them then! Take them! Take them!

He busied himself folding the shirts up with the gray suit, tightening his lips against the sounds which escaped her.

—Because there's no one, is there. You're alone now, aren't you. Are you alone now?

—Esther, good God . . . please ...

—Ignorance and desire, you've told me . . . Oh, you've told me so many things, haven't you. All of our highest goals are inhuman ones, you told me, do you remember? I don't forget. But remorse binds us here together in ignorance and desire, and . . . and . . . not salt tears then, but . . . She gasped again, shuddered but would not give in. —And what is it now, this reality you used to talk about, she went on more quietly. —As though you could deny, and have nothing to replace what you take away, as though . . . Oh yes, zero does not exist, you told me. Zero does not exist! And here 1 ... I watched you turn into no one right here in front of me, and just a ... a pose became a life, until you were trying to make negative things do the work of positive ones. And your family and your childhood, and your illness then and studying for the ministry, and . . . when I married you we used to talk about all that intelligently, and I thought you were outside it, and understood it, but you're not, you're not, and you never will be, you never will get out of it, and you never . . . you never will let yourself be happy. Esther was talking rapidly again, and she paused as though to give effect to the softness of her voice as she went on, though her memory crowded details upon her and it was these she fought. —There are things like joy in this world, there are, there are wonderful things, and there is goodness and kindness, and you shrug your shoulders. And I used to think that was fun, that you understood things so well when you did that, but finally that's all you can do, isn't it. Isn't it.

He stood across the bed holding his bundle up before him, meeting her eyes, provoked, and he smiled, ready to speak.

—And your smile, she went on, —even your smile isn't alive, because you abdicated, you moved out of life, and you . . .

—But the past, he broke in, —every instant the past is reshaping itself, it shifts and breaks and changes, and every minute we're finding, I was right ... I was wrong, until . . .

Esther plundered the fragments her memory threw up to her, taking them any way, seizing them as they rose and clinging to each one until she'd thrust it out between them. —The boundaries between good and evil must be defined again, they must be reestablished, that's what a man must do today, isn't it? A man! Wasn't it? ... She paused, retaining hold on that for a moment longer, raising her hand to her forehead in fact as though doing so, considering its details and lowering her voice. —Yes, you couldn't have a world in which the problem of evil could be solved with a little cunning, she added, word by word, dully, —and you . . . Oh yes, by confessing, to set up order once more between yourself and the world . . . Esther's voice tailed off as she stared down at the bed between them.

—Yes, go on, go on with it, he said eagerly when she stopped, staring at her.

For as it happened, this point had come from a play she'd read shortly after Otto had sailed for Central America, a play by Silone called And He Hid Himself: but even now, looking up, Esther saw these words on the lips before her, slightly parted in expectation. She began again, —I wish . . .

—Yes, you understand, he burst in, —you understand, that's why this is crucial, you understand, don't you. How this is going to expiate . . .

—Expiate! She accepted him again, standing there with his hand out.

—And that it isn't just expiation, but . . . that's why it is crucial, because this is the only way we can know ourselves to be real, is this moral action, you understand don't you, the only way to know others are real . . .

A wave of nausea rose through her body, and Esther gripped the corner of the night table behind her, swaying a little, swallowing again. —If we had had a child . . . she murmured. —Yes, if we ...

—And you understand it, his voice came on at her, —this moral action, it isn't just talk and -. . . words, morality isn't just theory and ideas, that the only way to reality is this moral sense . . .

—Stop it! she cried out. —Stop it! ... She caught herself, and took up the handkerchief again quickly for saliva was running from the corner of her mouth beyond the apprehension of her swallowing. —Moral sense! she repeated loudly at him. —Do you think women have a moral sense? Do you think women have . . . any morals? that . . . that women can afford them?

—Esther . . . He started toward her round the end of the bed.

—Oh no! she said. —No! Do you know how much she has to protect? and every minute more? And you make these things up, and force them on her, men take their own guilt, and call it moral sense and oppress her with it in the name of ... She shrank back as he came close to her. —In the name of Christ why didn't you go on and . . . stay where you came from, and be a minister where you came from, instead of ... coming here where I ... she shuddered as he took her arm, —have so much to protect.

—Esther, he said to her, that close.

—But now you . . . are here, she said to him in a whisper. The nausea had fallen away, abruptly as it had come,' leaving her in his grip with her teeth chattering as she spoke, and her tears did not fall but spread evenly into the wetness of her cheeks. Two of her fingers sought his wrist, and tried to close on it. —You . . . she articulated from a wild breath in his face, —now you are here to . . . stay and protect ...

They stood there with three senses locked in echo of the fourth, and she licked her lip.

—Sorry . . .

The door banged against the wall.

—They're still there only talking ...

The door banged closed.

—Esther . . . you don't understand? His hand opened.

—You're not . . . going to ...

—Not yet, because tonight, when I've done what I have to do ...

—Not yet! She stepped away as though she had broken from him. The clothes bundle fell to the floor. He put a hand out, and then withdrew it slowly, and stooped to recover the clothes.

Esther stared at the wrinkled black of his bent unsteady figure only for a moment. Then she opened the handkerchief, wadded all this time in her hand, and blew her nose as she crossed the room to the mirror, and he backed toward the door.

—I'd better go, he said, from there.

She did not answer. She had picked up a lipstick, and stood contorting her mouth, drawing generous lips. Then a rush of sound broke over her, and she looked up quick as the door came open behind him, and he stood there in the course of the waves pouring in around him, his back to it, not straight but still as a rock secure against the flood, safe until the turn of the tide.

—Because this . . . one thing I have to do is ... crucial, Esther.

—Crucial? she repeated calmly, and still she did not turn from the mirror. —And you think it will work, well it won't. Whatever it is, it won't. She watched her lips as she spoke, paused to draw them in, purse them, separate them so that her large teeth showed, and smudge the handkerchief between them.

And she stopped, dry and silent, as the door came closed where he stood against it. —What are you going to do? she asked him. —I don't mean this . . . thing you're up to now, this crucial thing, whatever it is, I don't care what it is, but after all this what are you going to do? What are you going to do?

—I don't know but I think ... he started precipitously, and as he went on his voice was strained but for the first time there was no doubt in it, and no effort to control excitement, —if we go on ... if we go on we're finally forced to do the right thing, but . . . and how can I say, now, where, or with whom ... or what it will be.

Then he lost his balance and almost went over as the door came open behind him in someone else's hand.

—Rose!

—I saw you here.

—My razor, I forgot that, he said, between them, turning. —A straight razor with black handles, is it in the bathroom?

Rose followed him there. Looking for the thing, he paused half turned to her, seeming slightly confused at the scent of lavender she brought with her.

—Rose ...

—I heard a poem, Rose said, —"A magnet hung in a hardware shop ..."

—It's not here.

—Rose, Esther said, —that music is too loud, Rose.

Around them the sounds of voices reached separate crests, broke in spray, and lay in foam awash on the surface of the swells as the music rose and receded, and the faces themselves seemed to lift into a moment's prominence, immediately lost in the trough that followed. So Benny's face was raised, and stood out inflated with effort, and dropped from sight again.

—To find out what sex it is you just spread it out and blow.

Esther looked down to see the kitten, unfurled upside down between large thumbs. —Here, give it to me, give it to me, she said, rescuing it. The nausea startled up in her for a moment.

—It's the worst feeling in the world, said the tall woman beside her.

—What? Esther asked, drawing the kitten in to her.

—To know you've laid a cigarette down somewhere.

The little girl tugged at her skirt. —Mummy sent me up again . . . The tall woman laid a hand on her wrist. —You didn't tell me that he was coming tonight. Esther turned quickly, startled. —Do you know him?

—No, my dear, and I didn't know that you did.

—But . . . Oh, Esther said. Looking round to where he had been standing beside her she realized that the tall woman was talking about someone else.

—Did you like his book?

—What book? Esther asked, looking where the tall woman was looking, at a man in a tan suit who had just fallen over one end of the couch.

—Now don't tell me you don't know about The Trees of Home? Or are you snobbish about best sellers too?

—No, I ...

—My husband says he stole the plot from the Flying Dutchman, whoever that is. My husband meets all sorts of people.

The man in the tan suit, back on his feet, was saying, —Why should I bother to write the crap for those speeches? I'm lucky I can stand up before the Rotary Club and deliver them. Some faggot writes them for me.

Near him, someone obligingly derived fnggot from the Greek phagein. —Phag-, phago-, -phagous, -phagy, -phagia . . . the voice whined. —It means to eat.

Arny Munk, propped against a wall with Sonny Byron's arm around him, said, —Really ought to tell Maude, ought to tell her . . . huhhh . . . the University of Rochester has discovered huhhhh how to make synthetic morphine huhhhhp from coal tar dyes . . .

—I think you're sweet, said Sonny Byron, soberly.

Mr. Feddle was standing on a chair, reaching for a book on a high shelf. The swinging alarm clock hit a girl on the back of the head, and she stopped singing I Can't Give You Anything But Love.

Esther, listening intently beyond the tall woman's voice to escape it, heard only a whine, —the decay of meaning, and you can't speak a sentence that doesn't reflect it. You're enthusiastic over sealed-beam headlights. Enthousiazein, even two hundred years ago it still meant being filled with the spirit of God . . .

She would have gone direct to the couch and sat down, had not Benny caught her by both hands and turned her to face him. —Where did he go? Where is he? Who was that?

—Why . . . my husband. Do you know him?

—Where is he? What was he doing here?

—He just came to get . . . some things . . . Two or three people turned, curious at the tone in their voices, Benny's excitedly high, while Esther spoke with faltering intensity, as though forced to affirm, and repeat affirmation to this impersonal, circumstantial demand which was Benny. —You're hurting my wrists, she said.

—But ... I thought I'd never see him again. Isn't that . . . isn't that ... I never wanted to see him again, and now here he is and I want to see him, I have to see him, where is he?

—I can't believe he's really gone, she murmured as they took their eyes from each other and looked toward the door, saw only the young man whose heavy mustache seemed to weigh his round head forward, looking at them, innocent, anxious at their sudden scrutiny.

—Ellery, did you see him? I mean, he was just here, did you see him leave, Ellery?

—Sorry, old girl. He broke a leg. Had to shoot him.

—Really, Ellery, please. I've got to find him, is he still here? She had taken hold of Benny's arm; and who Benny was, or what he wanted, ceased in her grasp which held Benny forth, a dumb prodigy, to witness that the matter was not hers, but necessity's own.

—A shame to shoot him, a fine blooded animal like that ... It was difficult to know if the blonde beside Ellery was trying, but unable, to smile, or subduing that smile which is stupidity's cordial greeting to matters which its very nature excuses it from attempting to understand: so she looked, not at Esther, but at the silent phenomenon of Esther's evidence, as though there might be immediately apparent not only the evidence, but the very nature of the case itself, and its disposition not understanding, but dismissal.

—Ellery . . .

—The truck just came around from the Futtybrook Hunt Club, skinned him, cut him up, took him back to the kennels. Dog meat . . . Benny tore from Esther's grasp, and, stepping forward, he said, —Ellery, what's the matter with you, good God Ellery will you . . .

—Hell of an end for a thoroughbred.

—Stop it, will you tell us ... Benny commenced, raising his hands.

—Come on, Benny. You're drunk, Ellery said, grinning and looking at him, and the blonde looked at Esther, no longer plaintiff but witness herself to the relieving and obvious fact that there was really nothing to be concerned about after all. —He's gone, Ellery said easily. —I saw him leave a minute or two ago. He put a hand on Benny's shoulder. —Come on, Benny, Christ. Straighten up. I told you you deserved a drink, but not a whole bottle . . . Benny drew away from him, without even looking at his face; and Ellery shrugged, took a deep inhalation from his cigarette, winking at the blonde as he turned away. Esther and Benny stood silent, as though both listening for denial of Ellery, for explanation of one another.

—That very odd girl with the green tongue has been telling me that it was really the Jews who discovered America, said the tall woman, her back to them. —Isabella's jewels didn't have a thing to do with it, backing Columbus I mean, it seems it was Isabella's Jews . . .

They both looked up, and both spoke at once. But Esther stopped.

—He was a draftsman, wasn't he. Were you married to him then? He was only a draftsman, and I was a designer. We worked together. He never mentioned me, did he. Well why, why should he, why should he have mentioned me to anybody, why . . .

Over his shoulder, Esther looked up to see the brown eyes of the critic; then she turned back to Benny with a different look on her face. —Don't you want to sit down somewhere? she said.

—He never talked about me, did he. And why should you care, what would it matter to you? And why should I care now, why should I want to see him, because anyhow everything's different now. And it's all different for him too, isn't it. Why should I want to see him now, any more than . . . why should we have even worked together then, what . . . because everything's different now, I'm fine now, I'm getting along fine, and is he? What's he doing now? Is he happy now? Is he getting along fine, like I am? Did everything change for him too, so that ... Is he doing what he wanted to do now? or like me, is he doing what he can do, what he has to do ...

—Why don't you just sit down here? Esther said as they reached the couch. —Can I bring you some coffee? She hesitated, and turned away.

—That's funny. That's funny, Benny said, sitting down slowly. —But you didn't tell me what he's doing now. That's funny. God. Benny blew his nose, and looked round him. He saw the back of his own flannel suit, and heard the voice of the man in it saying, —It's not really my line of work, I'm really a sort of historian, a musicologist, you might say, but I've been trying to get permission from the city to operate a public toilet concession in New York . . . Could you hand me those crackers?

The woman in the collapsed maternity dress said to someone, —And you see that person in the green shirt, you see that scar on his nose? Well I understand that he had his nose bobbed, an expensive plastic surgeon did it and some girl paid for it, didn't leave a mark, and then one night when he was in bed a radio fell off the shelf and gave him that scar, there's poetic justice . . . heh, heh heh heh ...

—What's his name?

—Him? It's ... I can't think of it, but it's one of those nice names, you know the kind they take, like White, White is a good nigger name.

Nearby, Mr. Crotcher had settled into an armchair, and begun moaning accompaniment to a harpsichord fraction of the Harmonious Blacksmith. He stopped to look down, and say, —Good heavens, good heavens, where did you come from? Get away. You're going to have an accident, get away, getaway getaway getaway . . . The baby, with a welt rising on its forehead, had begun to climb up his leg. Out of sight, the girl with bandaged wrists was saying, —After all, this is its first birthday, so this is kind of a birthday party for it too ...

—Started to call himself Jacques San-jay when he went into interior decorating, someone said. —I knew him when his name was Jack Singer.

—So after that, the old man left me with nothing but fifty tons of sugar that I can't unload, and they're forcing me to take delivery. Do you think Esther would mind storing it here?

—Yess, said the dark man in the sharkskin suit, —I was told that the Stock market in New York was a complex affair.

—Maybe I ought to have it dumped on the old man's doorstep. Chr-ahst, after a trick like that. Now all I have to do is sell one of his God-damned battleships . . .

—Ah? How fortunate, said the shark-skinned Argentine. —For a moment I thought I was at the wrong party.

—Dear God no, the tall woman was saying, —my husband hasn't got any friends. He doesn't have the time.

—Well look, it's obvious to any thinking person. The Swiss have banks all over the world. What's more necessary to a successful war than banks?

Mr. Feddle, concentrating on an open book (it was Frothingham's Aratos) was bumped aside by someone looking for an encyclopedia. —Got to look up a mutt, named Chavenay. Sounds French.

—You have to really live there to understand why France has turned out so many great thinkers, and artists, a girl said. —Just live there for awhile and get a load of what they have to revolt against, and anybody would be great.

The boy who had got an advance on his novel said, —I wanted to sort of celebrate, but what the hell. Where are the nice places? They're all business lunchrooms, do you know what I mean? Expense accounts. They're all supported by expense accounts. It's depressing as hell.

—But my dear boy, why should all this bother you? said the tall woman, who had appeared. — You don't have to eat in these places all the time. Look at my husband, he has to.

—I know. But it's depressing as hell, where can you celebrate?

—I'd suggest Nedick's, said the tall woman.

—I'd suggest Murti-Bing, said the young man with no novel to advance.

—Oh, where is that? said the tall woman. —I don't believe I've ever eaten there.

—Fifty million tons of food a year eaten in New York, what does that mean?

—Something terrible happened, Stanley. Agnes put her hand on his.

—I'm sorry, Stanley said. —If you'll just give me my glasses . . .

—No, dear, I'm not talking about that, and that was so long ago, that night . . . She was looking in her purse. —Here, she said, —you'll have to read it yourself. What am I going to do, Stanley? Her hand shook as she dragged the letter from her bag. —It was a terrible thing to do, an unforgivable thing to do to this poor man but he's got to forgive me, and how can I ... what can I do to

... so he will?

Stanley unfolded the letter from the Police Department; and Agnes felt a gentle tap on the shoulder, and turned. —Did you see a kitty-cat here, lady?

—Why there was a kitten here somewhere, Agnes said, looking round her, —but I guess the kitty-cat has gone to bed. What are you doing up so late?

—My mummy sent me up to get some sleeping pills, but I can't find the lady who . . .

—Now don't you bother the nice lady, said Agnes, rummaging in the bottom of her large purse, taking out a French enameled thimble case. —I have some right here. Is three enough? You just take these down to Mummy. And I've already written him. She looked up at Stanley.

—Thank you, lady. Where'd you get the funny watch?

—Why, Mickey Mouse is my loyal faithful friend, said Agnes. —I can always trust him.

—What have you got the funny things sticking on your face for?

—Where . . . Agnes raised her hand, to feel the strip of tape at her temple, put there to discourage wrinkles when she lay down. —Oh my God, and they've been there . . . why didn't someone . . .

—What are they for, lady? the child asked as Agnes tore them off, and opened her compact.

—Go along down to Mummy now, for God's sake.

—He would understand, if you went to him, Stanley said, handing the letter back. —If you went to him and . . .

—I couldn't face him. To ask forgiveness . . .

—Is a sublime test of humility . . .

—And he's really rather an awful person I think . . .

—And from your interiors an even greater trial.

—I want to do something, and . . . but don't you think I might just send him something? Maybe some sort of nice gift . . . yes, something nice and you know fairly expensively nice for his daughter?

—I think, Stanley commenced soberly, —that really, for your own good . . .

—Oh, let's stop thinking about it for a little while, she interrupted. —I just get so ... tired of the terrible things I get in the mail. She smiled up at him briskly, and tightened her grasp on his hand. —Tell me about your music, Stanley, this long whatever-it-is that you've been working on for so long. Oh, and your tooth? I'm sorry, I forgot to ask.

—I think it went away, the toothache, it didn't last, but my work, it's an organ concerto but it isn't finished yet.

—But you've been working on it for months.

—For years, he said. —And you know, I look at the clean paper that I'm saving to write the finished score on, and then I look at the pile of ... what I've been working on, and, well I can see it all right there, finished. And yet, well . . . you know I never read Nietzsche, but I did come across something he said somewhere, somewhere where he mentioned "the melancholia of things completed." Do you . . . well that's what he meant. I don't know, but somehow you get used to living among palimpsests. Somehow that's what happens, double and triple palimpsests pile up and you keep erasing, and altering, and adding, always trying to account for this accumulation, to order it, to locate every particle in its place in one whole . . .

—But Stanley, couldn't you just ... I don't know what a palimsest is, but couldn't you just finish off this thing you're working on now, and then go on and write another? She ran her hand over his, resting on the chair arm there; and Stanley called her by her Christian name for the first time. —No, that's . . . you see, that's the trouble, Agnes, he said. —It's as though this one thing must contain it all, all in one piece of work, because, well it's as though finishing it strikes it dead, do you understand? And that's frightening, it's easy enough to understand why, killing the one thing you . . . love. I understand it, and I'll explain it to you, but that, you see, that's what's frightening, and you anticipate that, you feel it all the time you're working and that's why the palimpsests pile up, because you can still make changes and the possibility of perfection is still there, but the first note that goes on the final score is ... well that's what Nietzsche . . .

—All I know about Nietzsche is that he's decadent, that's what they say.

Stanley withdrew his hand, and it hung in air for a moment, like an object suddenly unfamiliar, which he did not know how to dispose of. —He was, because of ... well that's the reason right there, because of negation. That is the work of Antichrist. That is the word of Satan, No, the Eternal No, Stanley said, and put his hand in his pocket.

Agnes Deigh looked at her own hand on the arm of her chair. Two of the tanned fingers rose, and went down again; and when she looked over to where the critic had joined Benny on the couch, and sat, smoothing down the back of his hair, her face took the expression of the man she looked at, one of contemptuous, almost amused indulgence, though she did not have the dark hollows in her face, nor the brow and the forehead worn so with this expression that it looked natural; rather she looked uncomfortable, saying, -Those two look like they're discussing the same thing we are, and he should know, that one . . . —You know what I thought of immediately just now when I looked up and saw them? Stanley said, earnestly. —I thought of El Greco before the Inquisition, arguing the dimensions of angels' wings. He looks like an Inquisitor, that dark fellow. People laugh at arguments like that now, and how many angels can dance on the end of a pin. But it's not funny, it's very wonderful. Science hasn't explained it, and you know why, because science doesn't even understand the question, any more than science understands . . . You know, Agnes, this concerto I'm working on, if I'd lived three hundred years ago, why . . . then it would be a Mass. A Requiem Mass.

—Einstein . . . someone said.

—Epstein . . . said someone else.

—Gertrude . . .

—Of course you're familiar with Heisenberg's Principle of Uncertainty. Have you ever observed sand fleas? Well I'm working on a film which not only substantiates it but illustrates perfectly the metaphor of the theoretic and the real situation. And after all, what else is there?

—Who was it that said, "a little lower than the angels"?

—That? it's in that poem about "What is man, that thou art mindful of him." That was Pope.

—Which one?

At this point, Anselm, in a shirt torn at the shoulder, his hair tousled and on end, unshaven, and clutching a magazine and two books, appeared in the door. No one seemed to notice him; and he stood there silent for some time.

The music had got quite loud. —There, you see? said someone more loudly, —I told you. It is Handel. The Gods Go A-Begging, so there!

Benny's face was fleshy. Moreover, though it was not puffy, it seemed to be flesh recently acquired, and his expressions seemed, if such a thing were possible, to have difficulty in reaching the surface or, once arrived, to represent with conviction the feelings which had risen from within. So it appeared; though it may be that this want of precision pervaded the source itself, and his amorphous facade faithfully expressed confused furnishings, broken steps mounting deep stairwells, rooms boarded up, in disuse, and rooms of one character being used for new and timely purposes in the interior castle, whose defenses were not yet adjusted to the new tenancy but being constantly hastily altered in the midst of skirmishes, before that battle which would be the last.

—God is love, telling that to a Welsh Corgi in labor, isn't that divine? the girl with Boston accents laughed, and Benny, who had heard her remark about a lost horizon, drew away from where she toppled near his end of the couch, pulling the book to him as he did so. It was a book on bridge design, largely the work of Robert Maillart, and his finger marked a picture, diagram and description of the bridge at Schwandbach. He had picked it up after his words with Esther, and sat trying to appear absorbed with it while he collected himself. But he was interrupted by the figure in the green wool shirt who had joined him on the couch with, —I hear you're in TV. Smiling with effort, and already perspiring freely, Benny answered, —That's right, what can I do you for? . . . offering a cigarette, which was accepted without thanks.

They were being watched by the two who remained posted near the door, where they would be the first to greet, and snare, the guest of honor. Don Bildow, apparently supported upright by the lusty design of his necktie, watched through plastic rims. —What's he talking to him for, that television person? —He's just giving him a hard time, his companion answered, the same baleful satisfaction glittering under his brows, that poetic look of inner contemplation, charish, shot through with beams where some, his mirror among them, read a charismatic luster: all very well for the dust jacket of some slim volume (though no such had appeared), or the moment of inspiration itself, reflected in the eyes of someone else's wife, but, for moments like this, scarcely practical, for he could see nothing clearly more than a few feet away. —He said he was going to ask him for a job writing TV scripts.

It was evident that Benny was having a hard time. He'd just given his glass a brave, unsteady toss in his hand, and started to stand up, but he was stayed by the critic's hand, put forth in an annoying gesture as though to soothe where the irritating voice continued, speaking then of television as corrupting tragedy, now of the writer's integrity, of human suffering . . .

Benny had hardly looked at the face of the man who was talking to him: in contrast to his own it was a detailed fortification, every rampart erected with definite purpose, their parapets calculated to withstand repeated assaults from any direction, tried in innumerable skirmishes where many had approached so close as to tumble between scarp and counterscarp, an arrangement so long in the building that, though every bit of it had been erected for defense, in finished entirety it assumed aggressive proportions; inviting strategy, it might only be taken by storm.

All this time, Benny's smile had not failed. His smile was his first line of defense. But even as he'd started to his feet, that defense was being abandoned, and so it remained, unmanned, as empty as gaping breastworks relinquished before unexpected onslaught.

—So tell me the truth, the harassing voice went on, as its owner came far forth from his walls, openly besieging. —Do you guys really give this same crap to each other you're giving to me, pretending it's a cultural medium? or do you just admit you're all only in it for the money, that you've all sold out.

Benny's smile was gone. He sat silent for a moment, studying the features of this attack. Then he said, —Why do you hate me? Did I ever do you a favor?

The critic straightened up, unprepared for this sally, without time to recover his own walls, he withdrew instantly behind con-travallations of mistrust.

—Tell me the truth, what do you want from me, you fine-haired son of a bitch, Benny said to him evenly.

—All-right, for Christ's sake . . .

—What are you supposed to be, an honest man just because you don't have a necktie?

—Relax, relax . . .

—I will like hell relax. Who are you, anyhow?

—Now listen . . .

—You listen to me. I've just taken a lot from you. I've taken a lot from people just like you. Just like you. That's tough, isn't it, just like you, that this town is loaded with people just like you, the world is loaded with people just like you. The honest men who are too good to fit anywhere. You're one of the people, aren't you. Look at your hands, have you ever had a callus? You don't get them lifting glasses. Who are you, to be so bitter? Have you ever done one day of work?

—Look . . .

—And now I understand. And you talk to me about life, about real life, about human misery, Benny went on. He was not speaking loudly, nor fast, still the cold but vehement and level tone of his voice drew several people to turn around, and listen and watch. The other sat his ground with a patient sneer. —I offered you work, and you were too good for it. We buy stuff from guys like you all the time, writing under pen names to protect names that are never going to be published anywhere else, but they keep thinking they'll make it, what they want to do, but never quite manage, and they keep on doing what they're too good for. It's a joke. It's a joke, Benny repeated, and it was now that his voice began to rise. —I know you, I know you. You're the only serious person in the room, aren't you, the only one who understands, and you can prove it by the fact that you've never finished a single thing in your life. You're the only well-educated person, because you never went to college, and you resent education, you resent social ease, you resent good manners, you resent success, you resent any kind of success, you resent God, you resent Christ, you resent thousand-dollar bills, you resent Christmas, by God, you resent happiness, you resent happiness itself, because none of that's real. What is real, then? Nothing's real to you that isn't part of your own past, real life, a swamp of failures, of social, sexual, financial, personal, . . . spiritual failure. Real life. You poor bastard. You don't know what real life is, you've never been near it. All you have is a thousand intellectualized ideas about life. But life? Have you ever measured yourself against anything but your own lousy past? Have you ever faced anything outside yourself? Life! You poor bastard. Benny started to laugh. He knocked an empty glass from the end of the couch, and Ellery put a hand on his shoulder. The stubby poet had come up beside the man at the other end of the couch, who was silent, looking at Benny, and the sneer almost squeezed from his face. Most of the people in the room were aware that something was happening, and had half turned, giving it half their attention, waiting to see if it deserved all. Benny started to stand up. —Come on, we'll get a drink, Ellery said to him, an arm across his shoulders. —All right, Benny said. Then suddenly he swung around again.

—Go on, you lush, said the stubby poet; but Benny did not regard him. He stood over the man who as quickly recovered his sneer to look up.

—How do you make your living? Benny demanded.

—Come on, Benny. Leave the poor bastard alone.

—I just asked how he makes his living.

—The hell with him. Come on, Ellery said.

—I just want to know how he makes his living, is there anything wrong with that?

—He's a critic. He writes about books, or some God damn thing. Now come on. But Benny pulled from Ellery's grasp on his shoulder. —How long is it since you've seen the sun rise? he demanded. Then he went on, —How you would have done it. That's the way everything is, isn't it. How you would have done it. Not how it should have been done, but how you would have done it. When you criticize a book, that's the way you work, isn't it. How you would have done it, because vou didn't do it, because you're still afraid to admit that you can't do it yourself.

—Ellery, please . . . stop him, Esther said, in a low voice beside Ellery. He turned and looked at her, and he did, just then, have an expression very much like Benny's, one of tense impatience, which in that instant of exchange between them seemed to direct every- thing Benny had said, and was saying, at her. Everyone, within the bounds of what each considered either manners or sophistication, was watching; and most were watching the man on the couch. —Oh Chrahst I remember him, he's the guy that married Deedee Jaque-son, and they kicked her out of the little black book for it. Chrahst, what a coincidence, Ed Feasley commented.

Rudy consoled a frightened group in one corner, with, —You know, he's the kind who knows art but doesn't know what he likes.

Don Bildow watched apprehensively from the other side of the room, where he had retired, and did not see Anselm who watched, silent and attentive. Mr. Feddle, clutching a book, had gained the front row. The back of Maude's neck was being manipulated by strong fingers, stronger perhaps but not so vigorous as those twisting Stanley's hand. He looked at Agnes and looked away quickly, as though afraid to provoke the tension in her face to burst in confidence to him.

A high voice broke the silence as Benny paused for breath. —So there! And that goes for your cat too! It was the Duchess of Ohio, who scurried back to cover.

The tall woman told someone that she and her husband were going to Spain in the spring, though she had hoped to be in Hawaii right now; someone said, —She rubs you the right way, does she? talking to someone else about someone else; Sonny Byron said, —Wake up, baby, the floor show's over, and stroked Arny Munk's forehead; the author of the best seller Trees of Home, who had kept his back turned to the room all this time, pretending conversation with Mr. Crotcher who was singing, said, to someone else, —How can I respect my readers when I know they're just trying to get a cheap psychoanalysis at my expense? and was told that they probably thought that he was getting one at theirs; the dark man in the sharkskin suit said, —Yes, I was warned about this sort of thing in New York. Now about these battleships ...

—A dreadful crime she did commit, did all the world surprise, sang Mr. Crotcher to the baby, whose chin rested on his shoe, which he jarred in approximate 2/4 time. —Black beetles in walnut shells ...

—And that dumb bastard's starting in again.

Ellery was holding Benny tight by one shoulder. —Come on, relax, forget the dumb bastard, he said. —Come on, Benny, take this. He held a full glass up, and Benny took it, and drank it down steadily and carefully. Then the empty glass hung in his hand like a weight.

—Get where I am, and then you can be bitter, Benny mumbled, staring into one of the few empty spaces in that room. —Do you think I like these clothes? Do you think I like double-breasted snappy clothes, like . . . Do you think I like this God-damned awful necktie, do you call it a necktie this thing? These glasses? He reached for them twice, and the second time a finger caught one of the broad bows and they fell to the floor. —I'm a success, that's why I've got a right to be bitter. God damn it. God damn it. How long do you think it is since I've seen the sun rise?

Though Mr. Feddle moved slowly, Benny raised his face as though the space before him had been materialized into an apparition. —Go on, said Mr. Feddle, hungrily. —Go on. I understand you. Go on.

—Isn't that right? Benny said to him, reaching an arm to him which made an irregular arc and dropped between them.

—Come on, forget that jerk, you'll be all right, Ellery said, supporting Benny. —You're making a fool of yourself.

—Why? Why?

—Go on. I understand you.

—That's what I've got a right to do, I've got a right to haven't I? Haven't I? Isn't that why I've worked, and worked, and . . .

—Go on . . .

—Why?

Mr. Feddle darted in and embraced him. —Do you remember Fedya, in Redemption? in Tolstoy's Redemption? he said, the alarm clock swinging between them. —"And you know . . ." His voice lowered, and he spoke more slowly, —"it's a funny thing, but we love people for the good we do them, and we hate them for the harm . . ." Do you remember?

Benny stared into his face, as they separated and Mr. Feddle. braced himself with excitement. —Go on ... !

—But . . . dishonest . . . then, but now? Now? I got into this and I found everybody believed what they were doing. They all believe it, and after awhile you believe it too. You live with it for awhile and you believe it too. Friends. Do you think I have any friends? Everybody I know ... I ... they want something from me or I want something from them. Somebody asked me if my wife is here. My wife? I go home and we just sit and look at each other. Home? My home looks like a cocktail lounge. I read all the books. I read all the books about self-improvement, master yourself, develop your personality, be a good God-damned Christian and get something for nothing . . .

—Go on ...

—Forget . . .

—If you're doing something you hate, quit it while you still hate it ...

—Go on ... —Relax ...

—Because you were right the first time . . .

—Ellery, please stop him. Ellery looked down, to Esther hanging to his arm. —What can I do, he's . . .

—And you . . . Benny turned to her, —He was your husband, wasn't he. And you know, don't you. Don't you. You know who designed the bridge at Fallen Ark Gap . . . and the Cooper City viaduct . . .

—Why, I ... Ellery, please. There's something wrong.

—Go on ...

—That's what I wanted to do, that's all I ever wanted to do. Where did he come from, sitting there at a draftsman's table, and he could draw it as though he was making a sketch, but every tension was perfect, the balance was perfect, you can look at those bridges with my name on them and see them leap out to meet themselves, see them move in perfect stillness, see perfect delicate tension of movement in stillness, see tenderness in suspense . . . with my name on them, I designed them. Like hell I designed them. Do you know why? Benny looked into their faces, and suddenly took Mr. Feddle's arm. —It was like a part of me working, like part-of myself working there. Do you understand?

—Yes. Go on ...

—And I couldn't do it. He could do it and I couldn't do it. Do you understand?

—Yes, yes ...

—I couldn't do it, Benny said; and for a moment the only sound was the ticking of Mr. Feddle's clock. And called upon, not by alarms but by this insistent and accurate silence, several people turned to hear Mr. Feddle say, —Yes, yes, do you remember him? Fedya? In Tolstoy's Redemption? "There was something terribly lacking between what I felt and what I could do . . ." Do you remember? Mr. Feddle had both hands on Benny's shoulders; but Ellery thrust his hands aside. —Come on, Benny, you'll be all right.

Benny had gone limp. He stood with the book on bridge design open, a page went over, and he was staring at a picture of Maillart's bridge at Salginatobel, a glazed distance in his eyes as though he were indeed gazing the full ninety meters to the foot of the valley below. Then his eye caught something, scribbled in the margin, The arch never sleeps. —Look ... ! he said, and read it aloud, stared at it silently and read it aloud again. —He wrote that here, didn't he, I remember, I've heard him say that, he ... yes . . . Suddenly , he turned to Esther. —Could I ask you something? a favor? a gift from you? The pages of the book trembled in his hands. And if her tone was, —Yes, anything to silence you, to send you away ... he did not notice. —Because this book . . . this book . . . ?

—Yes, she said. —Yes.

—Yes, he repeated, staring at it, he whispered —the arch never sleeps.

—Relax, Benny. You just need a drink, Ellery said. —You'll bounce back.

—Ellery, let him ...

Benny stopped, and looked up at Ellery. —I know, he said. —That's what I can't stand. I know I'll bounce back, and that's what I can't stand. He looked at them all three. —Don't worry, he said. —This only happens once. That's the world I live in. You make one show, and when it's finished you throw it out. You give everything you've got to make one show, and then it runs for twenty minutes and you can never show -it again, so you throw it out. This only happens once . . .

—Look, Benny . . .

—But could I have this? he went on, in the same loud tone, holding up the book. —Do you understand? Because I'm sentimental. That's why I have my job, because I feel what other people feel but more, the same things but more, but not too much, not too much like he did . . .

—Benny . . .

—Not too much. He relaxed against Ellery. —You're O.K., Benny. You just need a drink.

Benny looked up at him. —Don't you get tired?

—Yeh, we both need a good night's sleep.

—I mean tired of the whole thing.

Ellery looked at him. —I'll get you a drink, he said, and bumped into the tall woman, who had turned from this scene to say to her husband, —Now, do you see what I meant about Hawaii?

She was interrupted. —Do you see what I mean? But the man who made this demand turned from her to look at Esther, and looking at Benny he said to Esther, his forearm extending its own length from the gray flannel sleeve which Benny looked at with glazed familiarity, —Do you see what I meant? Do you see what I meant?

—That's what I hate. That's what I hate. That's what I hate.

—Do you see what I meant?

—Merry Christmas, someone said, raising a glass. —If you'll pardon the expression.

—Great God. Whatever made you think of that?

The girl with Boston accents looked at Benny and said, -What's he high on, man? The stocky man in army uniform looked at the critic, still seated on the couch, and, saying, —A guy like that is dangerous, was, as usual, right for the wrong reasons.

—And the Swiss Guard at the Vatican? I suppose you know that the Pope has given them permission to practice shooting at a target range? And in plain clothes?

—And they say that the food in Spain is inedible, that is if you're used to eating like a civilized person, and so I'm taking scads of these marvelous reducing pills that simply take your appetite away.

—I finally got this new Cadillac, said the author of The Trees of Home, filling a hypodermic syringe with whisky. —I've just always wanted a brand new car, there's something about the way a brand new car smells inside, that new smell. It's something I've always wanted, it's been a regular phobia of mine.

The person with him was garnishing an unseasonal martini with Pernod from a pocket bottle, muttering —Just a drop in each one, there's some chemical reaction. But what's that? he added, looking up to see the needle fitted into place.

—You take it this way, you get just as drunk and you don't get hangovers, said the author of the best-selling book. —My analyst told me about it. He rolled up a sleeve. —Did I tell you about this new Cadillac I got? It's been a regular phobia with me . . .

Esther stood looking round her, nervously as though for something to demand her attention and relieve her of going where her attention was demanded: from the doorway, Don Bildow directed a plastic-rimmed appeal over the shoulder of a paunchy man whose familiar face had been so many times, and she realized now, so inadequately, photographed. At hand, the collar of the green wool shirt and the dark head above reared over the back of the couch. The critic and his stubby companion were looking in the same direction. —Christ ... It was difficult to tell, from behind, which of them was muttering. —The guest of honor. Why can't he stay home to get drunk?

Across the room, Stanley had looked up and interrupted himself to say, —Look, he must have just come, isn't that . . .

—Somebody said he was coming, Agnes Deigh said. —Oh God, I don't want to listen to his soul-searching . . .

—But if we ...

—Not from him. Not tonight. She looked up at Stanley.

—Black beetles in wal-nut shells, bound round her baby's eyes, Mr. Crotcher sang. —Do you like that?

—The Boeuf on the Roof . . . —I haven't seen her since Ischia . . .

—It's in the Vatican, if you call that art . . .

—And don't let those medieval costumes fool you, you can carry fifteen rounds in a good codpiece, a grenade if you're underdeveloped . . .

—She says it happened right there in the Cappella Sistina, but you know her, it might as well have been the Cappella Paolina . . .

—I wonder what ever happened to old Deedee, Ed Feasley said to no one, and then, to the sharkskinned Argentine, —What was that about battleships?

Don Bildow brought his shoulders up to a hopeful slope as Esther approached, but they sagged again as her eyes and her smile passed him to embrace a haggard, red-eyed, rash-looking young man who had just come in.

The two on the couch watched her, though the shorter one did not stop talking. —I got a look at the manuscript, he said. —It's called Wild Gousse Chase, and I swear he's got you in it. A character named Hawthorn, and I swear it's you, just about the time you were mixed up with that same blonde, except he's got her having you psychoanalyzed just like she had him analyzed when he was trying to get rid of her and couldn't because she was paying for the analysis, so he's got this character that I swear is you screwed up like that with her. You could sue that wise bastard.

—Yuh. Hand me that glass, will you?

—Who's that that Esther's got her hands all over now?

—A stupid kid named Otto.

—He looks like a truck ran over him.

Benny was talking to the man in his old suit. —I'm going back tomorrow, he said. —I haven't been home for eleven years. That's a long time, to go back and try to take up where you left off. I haven't seen anything grow for eleven years. You forget that things grow. The vegetables you get in restaurants, you can't believe that they ever really grew anywhere, and the flowers, you never think of flowers growing, you see them one way, cut, and you can't think of them any other way except posing, dead. The trees here don't grow, they're ready-made like furniture, that puts on new slip-covers in the spring. My God, you forget, you forget . . .

—Benny . . .

—Why, I'll be there tomorrow morning, I'll be out on the side porch watching the sun come up Christmas morning, you see if I'm not . . .

Benny raised his head, looking around the room. Then, standing beside the door to the hall leading to the bedroom, he saw Ellery talking to the blonde; and when the man before him said, in the same tone he himself had been using a moment before, —Benny, •would you take me along . . . ? Benny said nothing.

Behind him, a girl said, to someone else, —So I started this person-alidy course where they have you stand in front of a mirror and repeat your name over to yourself in a nice gentle tone . . . and now I'm Mister Wipe's personal secretary . . .

—So I said to her, you just go ahead and be pathological . . .

—So I said to them when we got back to Florence, of course there's no place I'd rather live than Siena if I had my analyst there with me ...

—So he said to me, Oh, Sappho, he was queer too wasn't he ...

No longer the garden, but, as Benny said, cut flowers posing dead, without past or future, in as great a variety of jealous identities assembled as the tenants of an expensive florist's window, lacking the careless grandeur of indigenous plants, arranged instead in that slightly frantic symmetry which dazed passers-by call artistic, and move on, never hazarding the senses to violation by wire and the treachery of paper petals. Even now, Herschel, perilously erect, posed blossomtime. —Of course, baby, I've never been better in my life . . . but no, I couldn't show you the tattoo. Since you must know, the two friends I met that night played a vile trick on me, at least it seemed so when I saw it in the mirror, what they had tattooed on me I mean, I never saw them again. But now that I've lived with it for awhile I'm quite fond of it. It's me. Do you like foxes? I can't even tell you, it's so naughty, but it is rather cute, would you like to see it? Come into the bathroom . . .

Anselm watched all this in silence. Occasionally his lips moved, forming isolated syllables which were words in themselves, most often one which drew his lower lip under his front teeth, and released it on a sharp k. People made way for him, turning their backs, as he moved about the room with none but immediate goals, the half-emptied glasses put aside carelessly, and raised, empty, with surprise, when he had gone on. Someone, turning upon him too soon, challenged agreeably, —Why don't you ask for a full one? Anselm handed over the glass he had just emptied and said, —Why don't you ask for eight more inches? you'd still have a hole in your belly . . . and went on, the magazine rolled in his hand advertising trusses on its back cover.

—I don't know, Stanley, but it's as though everywhere I look, there's something, or someone . . . that I've failed to ... Agnes Deigh paused, looking round. —Unintentionally maybe, even betrayed . . .

—It's because we've been led to believe today that we are self-sufficient, Stanley commenced, —that no transcendent judgment is ...

—There, even there, do you see him? she said, starting a little in her chair. —The boy who just came in? He brought me a play he'd written, and I never got a chance to read it but I told him . . .

—Agnes, you . . .

—Stanley, I ...

—Esther . . .

—Now listen, you're the lady with the kitten aren't you? . . .

—Esther, have you seen? fairies in the bottom of your garden? hehehe

—But this time he wasn't trying to teach the kitten to salivate . . .

—Otto . . . I'm so glad you're here.

—But I didn't know you were having a party, I just came up ...

—But you're here, she said, and took his arm. —I knew you were back, she said, leading him slowly through the room, but not pausing. —But you look ... I even heard you had your arm in a sling. Where have you been?

—I just got out of jail, he said rather jauntily.

—Out of what? jail? She did stop, and looked at him.

—It was nothing, he said to her. —A fifteen-dollar fine for . . . you know, fooling around. I was celebrating. I was lucky, I had just sixteen dollars on me . . . With a shock of anxiety, his hand went to a breast pocket, found the sharp confirming corner of the packet inside, and dropped. —I was lucky, I'd left ail the rest of my money in a hotel-room bureau drawer, I was terrified it would be gone by the time I got back there, I ... Esther was looking at him, as though not listening, simply waiting for him to finish. —What's the matter? he asked uncertainly.

—You haven't said you were glad to see me.

—Oh but, I mean, of course I am, I just, everything's been so sort of ... you know, and I, and maybe . . . someone's mentioned to you? about my play, I mean? he blurted out. She shook her head. —Well I mean, it's nothing, nothing really, but . . . But she did not interrupt him, or no more than with the look in her eyes, waiting for him to ask what it never occurred to him to ask: about her, how she had been all of this time, how she was; what would have given him what he sought, had it occurred to him: the chance to bridle this runaway apology, which she did not require, this hazardous insistence, which he did not dare halt, in this race with himself. His jauntiness was falling away, giving place to exhaustion and mounting anxiety. —And then, I met my father finally. I had dinner with him. I mean, do you remember how you used to ask me why I didn't look him up? And he ... so I did. Esther's hand rested on his arm, she seemed to have wilted a little before him, and she asked quietly, —What was he like?

—Well he was fine, he was sort of stern, but I mean he was really very nice, and . . . well sort of stern and brusque. And he was a Catholic, I mean not that that should make any difference, but it sort of surprised me, and . . . well I don't know, to tell the truth I'm sort of mixed up ... Otto was rummaging in a pocket, and he brought out a note. —When I got back to the hotel finally, here was this note waiting from him. It's sort of pathetic, asking me to call him as soon as I can, and then he says he hopes I haven't been worried about him, right after I'd just seen him for the first time, maybe he means on account of his eyes, he didn't ... he doesn't see very well, and ... I don't know, I mean when I think of him that's what I remember, his glasses, the dust on his glasses, Otto persisted. And now, as the appeal in her face became more manifest, reaching further back, through unrelated privacies to the last embrace they had abandoned, the more he retreated, dodging among irrelevant images of himself. —And I haven't called him, I sent him a fancy robe this morning for Christmas, it seemed the least ... I mean, I thought I should do something like that, you know, for Christmas, he finished, running a finger of his pale hand across his smooth lip.

—Esther, Don Bildow interrupted them, giving Otto a bare glance, sufficient only to dismiss him. —I think you might come over and greet your guest . . .

—That man standing over near the door, Otto commenced, recovering somewhat, —isn't that . . . ?

—In a moment, Esther said to Don Bildow, who retired a polite step and waited. —Do you want to come over and meet him? she asked Otto.

—Well, I mean, I don't know . . .

—Do you remember? she asked, both hands on his arm now, —when you lent me his book? When we first knew each other, that first day at lunch?

—Yes, yes I remember, of course I remember, Otto said quickly, and then paused uncertainly. —But now . . .

—After all, Don Bildow recovered from his momentary lapse of politeness, —he is the only halfway interesting person here tonight, Esther. He started to turn his unimpressive back upon them.

—Wait, Esther said, and then to Otto, —You don't want to meet him?

—I guess not, Otto said, looking beyond her at the paunchy figure near the door, who had just covered his mouth with a handkerchief and looked like he was going to be sick into it; and the tall woman, who had just said,—/4 theism! . . . that charming word, I haven't heard it in years, turned looking for her husband murmuring, —Oh dear . . . have I said something wrong again? . . . —I guess not, thanks Esther, I mean what would we have to say to each other? he went on, as Esther was turned away on Bildow's urgent arm. —I used to ... wanting to meet the poet, or the painter, or the writer or the tight-rope walker of the minute, as though you could sop up something from them in a handshake . . . Otto had lowered his eyes, over her thighs, and his voice until, having made a discovery in his own words, he was talking to himself. At that he raised his face, and with the brave refusal of one rejecting revelation for fear of examining the motives which conspired to breed it, went to seek a drink.

—Chrahst, I thought you'd gone to Peru.

Otto looked up to see Ed Feasley. —But I just saw you, a day or so ago.

—I know. Chrahst, wha'd you do, fly both ways? I mean, what are you doing here?

—I just heard there was a party here, Otto answered, and added, —I don't know, picking up a glass.

—I know, I mean Chrahst, you know? This crazy spic has been following me around all night. What's that they're playing anyway? He cocked his head numbly to a fragment of Handel's Royal Fireworks Music, which was being accompanied by Mr. Crotcher singing Bye Bye Blackbird from his armchair. —I mean I wish they'd play On the Sunny Side of the Street, you know? There's been somebody tagging around after me all day, this marathon walker, I met him in a bar. Forty miles a day, you start at four a.m. and you get there at three p.m. and eat. You just have to have a destination, he told me. A marathon walker, I mean Chrahst, how unnecessary. And now this spic. I heard you sold your novel.

—My play, I ... Otto commenced.

—Yes, Chrahst, you ought to try selling a battleship.

And the two young men finished their drinks and stood silent, staring vacant-eyed on the room, vaguely jarred by the words spattering around them.

—The one about the lady from the First Unitarian Church of Kennebunkport, M.E. who orders monqgrammed napkins for a church luncheon and . . . Oh, I've spoiled it.

—And even barely more than a hundred years ago there weren't ten bathrooms in all the private houses in Paris . . .

—In a hundred years the population of Europe has tripled, what does that mean?

—And have you heard the Far Rockaway locker room story? —I said to him, if you really believed what you wrote there, you'd be morally obliged to blow your brains out.

—Well whisky's all right, said the girl with the bandaged wrists, —but for God's sake don't give it gin, gin stunts the growth, we tried it on a kitten.

Nearer by, the woman in the collapsed maternity dress said, —Cross-eyed people bring me bad luck.

—Not just cross-eyed, the tall woman went on, —but with a withered hand, on crutches, and an idiot. Can you imagine one person having all those things? And in a suit with a pleated, belted back?

—An embarras des richesses, or they would be for that woolly-headed boob over there on the couch. His main trouble is that he never finished his analysis, some girl was paying for it of course . . . There was a tug at her skirt. —And what do you want? ,

—Mummy sent me up for some more sleeping pills.

—What are you reading . . . ?

—Oh I'm not readin this, the little girl said, holding up Toilet Training and Democracy. —Some man ...

—Here, said the tall woman, opening her bag. —I have some right here. She took out a Chinese toothpick box, and worked with its intricate catch. —Oh wait a minute . . . my God, I almost gave you my Seconal. A friend of my husband's brings it from Mexico, she went on, rummaging. —Here you are, dear . . .

—Now you'd better march right downstairs and . . .

—Don't hurt the poor child's feelings.

—Another sensitive minority, children? If I hear once more . . .

—I mean Chrahst, sensitive minorities, you know? Ed Feasley took up, turning to Otto. —I mean it's really people like us, you and me, we're the persecuted minority. White, Protestant, male, over twenty-one, 1 mean we don't belong anywhere, you know? And finally we're all just parodies of each other. I mean Chrahst sometimes I wish I'd studied something in college. What's the matter? he broke off, seeing Otto's expression.

—Nothing. That girl, that blond girl, for a minute I thought . . . nothing.

—Her? I know her from somewhere, you want me to introduce you? Otto mumbled something, and reached for a full glass nearby. —You don't? I don't blame you, Chrahst why start all over again? I mean, it's just like that marathon walker, you know? What do you do when you get there? You eat and go to bed.

—I know, Otto said dully, looking at the floor. —It's funny, I used to think that to go to bed with a girl older than I was or bigger than

I was, that made it all right. Then you know, when I was in Central

America, it was funny, I thought that if you paid a girl, that made it all right, but if you paid a lot it was more sinful than if you paid a little, but it seemed more honest to pay with money than . . . than with pretending that you . . . than paying with . . . yourself, he finished vaguely, still looking at the floor.

—I know, you know? I mean imagine just starting in now. My old man says you're not a man until you're the head of a family. He's had it, Ed Feasley went on, as vaguely, looking at his shoetops. —There's this great big old house up in the Hudson River Valley. Cornwallis had his headquarters there, or maybe it was Lafayette or General Sherman, I don't know, but you can't go into the place without thinking about the parties they've had in it, ambassadors and presidents, you know, I mean it's historical as hell. And now my mother sits up there opening packages, that's the only thing she ever thinks about, whenever a package comes for anybody she gets so excited. I mean even the laundry. Even the groceries. You know? And now they've built this state hospital three miles away, it's full of feebs, feeble-minded people, and some niggers are building this crazy religious camp right across the river. I mean I've got nothing against niggers but Christ, you know? Ed Feasley finished his drink. —Whenever I go home, it's like everything's wearing out. I mean just imagine being the head of a family in that place now. Just starting in now. I mean Chrahst everything wears out, you know? People wear out, friends wear out, cars wear out, sometimes it's easier to smash them up while they're still new, and you don't have to watch them wear out.

They were being approached by a short shiny figure in a gray sharkskin suit who was, himself, being hounded by someone saying, —Are you the guy who's telling people that our company puts drugs in its dog food so dogs get addicted to our brand . . . ?

—Oo, coño ... I was warned about this sort of thing, the Argentine said, escaping in Ed Feasley's direction. —Excuse me, do I intrude? We became separated while speaking of ...

—Battleships, said Ed Feasley wearily, and taken in charge, he left Otto staring into an empty glass. He did not even raise his eyes when someone beside him said, —She told me there was food in the kitchen, but I went in and there are two lunatics in there, one of them's almost naked and the other is buttering him.

Stanley's voice droned steadily as a distant undercurrent, —Yes but just let me finish ... to Agnes Deigh. —I'm not trying to say I'm exempt from it, this modern disease, he went on with an insistence which prevented him from seeing that she was more than tired, was in fact exhausted in a sense so severe that it was physical only in its trembling expression. —That's what it is, a disease, you can't live like we do without catching it. Because we get time given to us in fragments, that's the only way we know it. Finally we can't even conceive of a continuum of time. Every fragment exists by itself, and that's why we live among palimpsests, because finally all the work should fit into one whole, and express an entire perfect action, as Aristotle says, and it's impossible now, it's impossible, because of the breakage, there are pieces everywhere . . .

Suddenly Otto's hand shot up to his inside breast pocket: one might have thought he'd been bitten, so involuntary had this reflex become.

—A nation of watchmakers, can you imagine any country better qualified to make atom bombs?

—Oh God, to be in Europe, anywhere in Europe, even in France . . .

—Maude, is this yours? Big Anna was wearing it under her shirt.

—Even in Mauberge, even in a coal mine.

Otto's face expressed nothing: unobserved, his features apparently had no reason to arrange themselves one way or another. His brow was level and without lines, his lips together and even. But slight marks of agitation drew up round his eyes when he raised them toward the door, where Esther stood with a woman wearing an orchid upside-down, and two or three others clustered about the guest of the evening, who afforded a spectacle of sartorial sloppiness and postural dilapidation consistent with the humility 'which he offered, in his soul-searching best-selling book, to share with others. At that moment Esther caught his eye with a querulous look which drew Otto's face up in immediate confusion, and widened his bloodshot eyes; though why, he could hardly have said, as he turned and pretended to be speaking with the woman in the collapsed maternity dress who had just said, —Monasteries are a good thing for America, they help keep the homosexuals off the streets.

Then Otto saw Anselm, who was whistling with soft harshness through his teeth, and watching Stanley. Otto looked away quickly, as though fearing to be recognized, and accused of something; but Anselm kept whistling, and watching Stanley.

—This self-sufficiency of fragments, that's where the curse is, fragments that don't belong to anything. Separately they don't mean anything, but it's almost impossible to pull them together into a whole. And now it's impossible to accomplish a body of work without a continuous sense of time, so instead you try to get all the parts together into one work that will stand by itself and serve the same thing a lifetime of separate works does, something higher than itself, and I ... this work of mine, three hundred years ago it would have been a Mass, because the Church ...

—But dear man . . . came from across the room, the woman with the orchid upside-down.

—And it would be finished by now, because the Church . . .

—But my dear Mister . . . Pott is it? her voice came on as she stood spilling part of her drink on his shoe and burning Don Bildow's sleeve with her cigarette, —I am a birthright Friend.

As Anselm approached behind him, Stanley heard the vague harsh whistle, half turned, and then talked more rapidly and more directly to Agnes Deigh, who listened with strained attention. Anselm walked with slow careless indifference, bumping people as though they were pieces of overstuffed furniture. —Come on baby, one more glass of nice gin and we'll find you the cutest doctor, why you look good enough to eat! . . . oww . . . Anselm bumped, bumped the girl with the bandaged wrists who went on, —We've been thinking of getting a two-toed sloth instead, they just hang on the shower-curtain rod all day and you don't have to do a thing.

—Hey Stanley, where's your instrument? Anselm asked coming up behind him. He'd taken out a dirty pocket comb with some teeth missing. —Here, middle C is missing, but if you can find some toilet paper I'll accompany you in "We hasten with feeble but diligent footsteps" . . . didn't you bring your instrument?

—And I don't read Voltaire of course, Stanley continued, his voice quavering as he forced it, —but somewhere I came across some words of his, "If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him." That may sound irreverent, but . . .

—It sounds downright God-damned heretical, Anselm said behind him.

—But . . .even Voltaire could see that some transcendent judgment is necessary, because nothing is self-sufficient, even art, and when art isn't an expression of something higher, when it isn't invested you might even say, it breaks up into fragments that don't have any meaning and don't have any . . .

—You sound like Simon Magus, invested, for Christ sake, Anselm said, putting a dirty hand on Stanley's shoulder. —Why don't you go see his heart, they've got it in the Bibliothèque Nationale. You might understand him. By osmosis.

—Simon Magus? Stanley said, turning, confused.

—Voltaire, for Christ sake. He patted Stanley on the shoulder. —How's your crack, Stanley? he asked him. Two people turned, raising eyebrows in shocked interest. Agnes Deigh pretended to be looking for something in her large pocketbook.

—Why, what . . .

—The crack in your ceiling, what do you think I mean. —Oh, I didn't know you . . . it's a little longer, three-eighths of an inch longer, I ...

—What the hell have you got in your pocket? Anselm said, nodding at Stanley's side jacket pocket, which bulged, and weighed the jacket down on that side. —I'll be God damned, Anselm said, reaching into the pocket before Stanley could step away, —a cold chisel. I heard this but I wouldn't believe it.

—Well, I came up on the subway, and . . .

—Bathysiderodromophobia! What did I tell you! said an onlooker. Anselm looked up, his eyes narrowed. —And what's that in your pocket?

—A stethoscope, Anselm said, —what does it look like.

—Anselm! What are you doing here? They looked up to see Don Bildow. —Where is ... you're supposed to be taking care of ...

—I took her to a movie, and left her there until I come back.

—To a movie! But . . . what movie, where, where is she, how could you . . .

—All right, I'll tell you the truth . . . well, don't worry about her. It's a good show, it will do her good.

—But you can't . . . couldn't do a thing like that . . .

—Don, an excited young man interrupted, grasping his arm, and nodding at someone across the room, who stood looking at a copy of the small stiff-covered magazine. —That poem, that poem by Max, he says it isn't by Max at all, he says . . . well come over, quick.

Anselm said, —What poem? and followed them across the room, rolling his magazine now with the cover outside (Pin-Up Cuties) with one hand, picking up a drink with the other, and already showing the yellowed edges of teeth in a grin.

Stanley looked after them bewildered; then he saw Esther, whom he did not know, approaching Otto, and attempted an irresolute signal, saying —There's Otto, I still have the twenty dollars he lent me, I haven't needed it ... His signal went unseen; he listened at a strain of music, and returned to Agnes Deigh, whose eyes were closed. —And do you know what Handel had inscribed inside the cover of his harpsichord? Musica Donum Dei . . . they still have it, he finished in desolate consolation, looking up, embarrassed at the prospect before him, the flesh abandoned by the lights of the discriminating will.

Very near him, the tall woman had just caught her husband in time to prevent him from confessing (to some "total stranger" as she would tell him next morning) that he had two psychoanalysts, neither known to the other, whom he played off against each other and managed to keep ahead of them both himself. —Our bene . . . one of our dear friends, she interrupted, as Stanley attended with fugitive interest, —has the most exquisite Queen Anne sofa which he's hinted he might be willing to sell, tor a price of course. Of course there's nothing we need less than a Queen Anne sofa, she went on pleasantly, including the total stranger and, with an icily cordial smile, Stanley's gape, and then she turned a rueful look on her husband, —but it might rather help things along, to buy something tonight from your employer . . . ?

The total stranger mumbled something about a Cadillac that smelled like a phobia inside; and Stanley, again abashed by the cordial dismissal in the tall woman's smile, and the weary bravery in the superciliary shadow of her look, sought refuge in more immediate terrain, anticipating it as unlit as he'd left it, and so doubly startled at being so sharply fixed in the illumination of both eyes upon him.

Beyond, someone was engaged in writing a criticism of a work which contained forty-nine one-syllable words to seven of two syllables; thirty-one words of Anglo-Saxon origin to five of Latin and one-eighteenth of Greek. It was honest, this person said.

And beyond, Otto fled himself from one of Esther's eyes to the other, and found himself in both. —You don't look well, she said to him. —Come, where we can talk . . . leading him across the room toward the door of the bedroom. —It's as though I knew you were coming . . . The bedroom door was locked. She turned to the other door, still holding his arm. —Oh Herschel, I'm sorry . . . She closed the bathroom door and they turned back. —What did you say?

—Like a jungle, Otto repeated, looking into the room beyond her. —A jungle where you've lived in the dry season, and you come back in a wet season . . . His voice tailed off and he stood there trying to assume no expression at all as her eyes searched his face, to find no betrayal but a quirked eyebrow which started to rise, and did not.

—What's happened to you? she asked him.

—Nothing, I ... I'm tired.

—Nothing! She caught breath. —You're different. You've changed.

—I guess I'm just tired, he repeated.

—Do you want to stay here tonight?

—Here? he said, looking at her as though not understanding.

—Here. With me.

—But Esther, I ... I don't think it would be ...

—All right.

—I mean I just think it might . . .

—All right, I said.

—But ... —Please._ If you don't want to then don't talk about it.

—Oh damn it Esther, I didn't come here to argue with you, he said in a hoarse whisper. —Why are you looking at me like that?

—Where have you been all this time? She asked him that gently, as though prompting him to the question he should have asked about himsell, of her: for she had the answer ready enough, as he may have known, looking down at his own thumbnails instead of into her eyes where he might have read it.

—Just . . . around, he mumbled.

—But what have you been doing to yourself? she came on, forced to recover the moment.

—Nothing really, not much of anything, I ... He looked up at her with an attempted smile. —Looking around, there just hasn't seemed to be much worth doing.

—Is it worth going on like this, alone? just to find out what's not worth doing? she demanded with an involuntary abruptness, and as he looked down again, —Even your smile isn't alive . . . and she stopped, lowering her own eyes as though someone else had spoken. Then she looked up quickly, as though to ascertain him there, before she went on, —And you, I suppose you have something . . . crucial, something crucial you have to do before you can . . . But Esther stopped speaking again, for in his face, she saw that he had not.

The place did present aspects of foliage, shifting and dank, the florist's window flooded perhaps, its tenants afloat in slithering similitude; or the jungle: for at that instant the room was pierced by a raptorial cry like that of the bird descending.

—That? that's Max's poern? Anselm laughed, crying out, —"Wer, wenn ich schriee . . ." that?

They looked toward the door, saw only the paunchy guest of the evening moving toward it, in an unsteady rasorial attitude as though following a trail of crumbs to the great world outside. Mr. Feddle approached, looking rather reckless, gripping The Vertebrate Eye and its Adaptive Radiation.

Otto's hand jerked, and then moved furtively to his inside breast pocket as half a step back he looked frankly down Esther's figure. Her eyes drew him up quickly. —I just thought . . . remembered, you? are you all right? I mean, I heard . . .

—What?

—I don't know. Nothing. You hear things.

—What are you talking about?

—Well you, that you needed a doctor?

—A doctor came this afternoon, and ... I saw him.

—But, and then, you're all right?

—I'd rather not talk about it.

—But all right, I'm sorry, I didn't mean . . .

He had started to move away from her but Esther was speaking to him, her voice going on as though she had not stopped, —Because you've done the same thing, you've spent all your time too, you've put all your energy up against things that weren't there, but you put them there yourself just to have something to fight . . .

—Esther ...

—So you wouldn't have to fight the real things. She spoke with great rapidity at him. —And now you say you're tired? At your age, because you've been trying to make negative things do the work of positive ones . . .

—I wish I was an old man! he burst out at her, and then lowered his eyes again, his pale hand inside his coat holding the thick packet there. —Because . . . damn it, this being young, it's like he said it was, it's like a tomb, this youth, youth, this thing in America, this accent on youth, on everything belongs to the young, and we, look at us, in this tomb, like he told me it could be, like he said it was . . . And Otto raised his eyes to see nothing moving in her face.

—Yes, you came here for him, didn't you, she said quietly. —You only wanted to see him, didn't you. And you came here hoping to find him? Well he isn't here. He was here. But he isn't here now. '

—Where, he was? here?

—I said he was, but he isn't here now, she answered steadily, watching Otto look everywhere round the room, waiting calmly until he brought his bloodshot eyes back to her, to say, —He's gone.

—Where, do you know where?

—No, she answered and paused, looking at him for seconds, before she said, —Yes I knew, you'd come for him, because, from the first it was like that, and you took me to get closer to him, to take what you thought was the dearest thing he had, and you . . . trusted him, didn't you . . .

—Do you think it's you I mistrust? he said suddenly looking up to her face; but then he looked away slowly, as from the light of a candle after knowing the light of a self-consuming indestructible sun, carefully as though in fear of extinguishing that candle, though it flare up in determined self-immolation, demanding to be saved from itself. —If I did then, he went on trying to speak clearly, —if I didn't trust you then, I mean mistrust you, then, I wouldn't have learned to mistrust myself and everything else now. And this, this mess, ransacking this mess looking for your own feelings and trying to rescue them but it's too late, you can't even recognize them when they come to the surface because they've been spent everywhere and, vulgarized and exploited and wasted and spent wherever we could, they keep demanding and you keep paying and you can't . . . and then all of a sudden somebody asks you to pay in gold and you can't. Yes, you can't, you haven't got it, and you can't.

—Where have ytra been asked to pay in gold? she asked quietly, when he finished the outburst which left him breathless staring down, as if uncertain if he knew what he'd said, and sought to recover it at their feet. —Otto? He looked up and stared at her. —Tell me, who's done this to you?

—I ... he mumbled, looking away again, —I guess I've done it myself, he answered in a whisper, as Mr. Peddle bumped him, passing in the other direction, empty-handed.

And though aware of someone at her side demanding her attention, she waited, looking at him, waiting for his eyes to return to her.

—Esther, have you got a copy of the Diuno Elegies? Rilkey's Diuno . . . ?

—"Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ord-nungen?" Anselm repeated, in a rapture of delight, —"und gesetzt selbst, es nähme einer mich plötzlich ans Herz . . ."

—Shut up, Anselm.

—It can't be, Don Bildow repeated, staring at the open page of the small stiff-covered magazine in his hand, as the words of the first line under Max's name formed on his lips, "Who, if I cried, would hear me among the angelic . . ." —He wouldn't have dared.

—"Ich verginge von seinem stärkeren Dasein . . ." Hahaha, that's Max's poem? Die erste . . . haha, hahahahahaha, from the Duine-ser Elegien von Max Rilke, hahahaha

—Esther, have you got a copy of Rilke? these . . . elegies?

—I have, she faltered (for it was not true), —but I've lent it.

—But not Rilke, he wouldn't have dared, Don Bildow repeated, as though it might be a matter of opinion, or a rumor which, traced down, might yet be retracted.

—Ask him to show you his Sonette an Orpheus, you'd love it.

—Shut up, Anselm, said the stubby poet darkly, motioning to the man in the green wool shirt.

—You should have known, Bildow cried out at him as he slogged toward them.

—Whut?

—This, this . . . poem, this thing of Max's, you wrote that essay on Rilke last spring, you . . .

—Rilke, but that was on Rilke, Rilke the man, an essay on Rilke the man . . .

—Max Rilke. "Weisst du's noch nicht?" . . . Anselm howled, waving his magazine in the air, wrapping something around his neck. —Christ, don't you know Max by now? Like that shirt he cut up and framed, he called it a painting, "The Workman's Soul"?

—Shut up ... was repeated, but Don Bildow was staring at Anselm dumbly. Then, —Shirt? he whispered.

—And these pictures he's showing now, the abstract paintings he's selling now, don't you know where he got them? Max Rilke Constable, Anselm went on, laughing. —Didn't you know where he got them? that they're all fragments lifted right out of Constable canvases?

—My God, my dear, excuse me, said the tall woman, —but that creature has my furpiece . . . She set off toward Anselm, sundering numerous conversations as she crossed that room.

—D'you know what happened when Caruso died? Science cut open his throat to see what made him sing. D'you know what that means?

—Do we know even half of what's happening to us?

—And do you know why the French are so honest? because there are so few words in their language they're forced to be.

Otto had moved slowly across the room, vaguely, sideways, steps backwards, picking up a glass half full, getting nearer the door of the studio, as though in that darkness might be the figure hidden there working, still there and silent from two years before.

—Hello, Rose said looking up to him with a smile.

—Oh! he startled, to see her there sitting on the floor. —And . . . you?

—Yes.

—And you, then you're Esther's sister?

—Rose. And she continued to smile while he looked at her almost wincing as though seeking something there in her face. Then, —You look like the doctor, she said. —Except the doctor was not so old.

—The doctor? You mean the doctor who came to ... to see Esther?

—Yes, Rose said, and turned her face away suddenly. —To kill her beautiful baby.

—But the ... I mean, they told you about it? Esther, about . . . a baby?

Rose looked up at him. She was smiling again; but it was a different sort of smile. —Not a real baby, she said, in a low tone of confidence. —For Esther made it up, she only made it up.

—Made it up? But I mean, is that what he said? the doctor? that it was a ... I mean, what do they call them, a hysterical pregnancy? Is that what he called it?

—Yes, Rose confirmed after a thoughtful moment, moving her lips as though fitting the words to them in recall. —So he said, when he killed it, for so he killed it. Those are the best babies, she said, as Otto looked away from her and stared out into the room. —Are they not? the best babies, for they do never grow up, she went on, —and when they die they go where nothing happens, and there they remain in suspense forever . . .

Her sigh lingered as he stared out into the room, listening to the tall woman, watching her attentively as though every word and movement of hers were extremely important, though he did not hear a thing she was saying, —Aren't they charming? Baby's breath . . . taking a jeweled spray from her purse and fixing it to an ear-lobe. —My husband gave them to me, he says a woman can lie so much more convincingly when she wears jew-els, she went on, affixing the other. —I just gave him some money and told him to go out and buy himself something and promise not to look at it, she finished, snapping her purse. —We have to go on to another God-awful party later. She cleared her throat, looking round, and took up again, —Did you meet that very . . . healthy-looking Boy Scout master? Except for his nose, possibly. I overheard him say that the Boy Scouts had hit him with a sidewalk.

Maude Munk had not moved. She said, —I haven't seen Arny for hours.

—Late hell, it's morning, said the man in uniform.

—It's always morning somewhere . . . She looked at a window-less wall.

—That's Longfellow. I may not be an intellectual, but I know my American poets.

—Is it? she murmured, surprised without interest.

—That was Hannah the Horror of Hampstead, Mr. Crotcher intoned from his armchair bastion, to no one. —Shall I sing something else?

And the woman in the collapsed maternity dress, who had been talking to the tall woman, went right on to the girl with the green tongue, —You see all the fat ugly little men with beautiful girls? All the wrong people have the money now, that's because ugly people make money because there's no alternative. When you're ugly nobody spoils you, you see reality young and you see beautiful things as something separate from you you're going to have to buy. So you start right out thinking money. Since the old aristocratic system where you inherited looks and manners and taste with your money . . .

—Quick, gimme a piece of paper quick, Anselm said grabbing Otto by the shoulder. He wore the furpiece circling his face, knotted under his unshaven chin. —Hahaha, did you hear what just happened? I want to write something down, quick. .He had jammed his rolled magazine into a hip pocket with the stethoscope. He was too excited with pleasure to notice Otto's face, an anxious expression, but a vacant anxiety, and the more abandoned for being features inured by conscious arrangements where, only now as in sleep, nothing happened. Otto's pale hand delved in his left jacket pocket, came up with his father's note, some papers, —Wait! . . . wait a minute, not that . . .

—Gimme that picturel . . . Everything about Anselm changed in an instant.

Papers dropped between them. And Otto stood staring, at the pale, quivering, empty left hand so long out of use.

—Where did you get it? Anselm demanded, half in a fury and half in a rage, as though he'd never seen, never before tonight, what was able to take his breath away: he picked it up from the floor staring at the glossy surface as though unable to contain the whole figure in his apprehension, seizing at details, the chair, the wallpaper, finally the delineating blemishes on the shadowed white, in a manic silence of search which led him to her face and left his own in a helpless show of fury and dismay. —I'd . . . youl . . . he hissed, looking up at Otto.

—Esther, I've just heard the campiest limerick about an a.-meeba. and the queen of She-ba ... a frail voice cried.

—You . . . Anselm hissed.

—But, listen . . . you can't . . .

—Are you the lady who wanted to hear about Pablo and his kitten?

—You . . .

—But how do you think I felt . . . ? Otto burst out at him, and reached to catch his naked trembling lip under a yellow forefinger.

—Pablo was this scientist . . .

—And it murmured, ich liebe, ich Hebe.

Then Anselm laughed, a choking hysterical sound, broken for an instant with a whimpered, —Sssuccubus . . . until he got his voice, —And when they took her to Bellevue and she knew they were going to undress her, she stopped screaming long enough to take out her falsies, and then she started in again, there, there, there! . . . his face was almost touching Otto's.

—In . . . she in, Bellevue? The whisper burned both their lips.

Then a word ruptured Anselm's mouth in a concussive sound which laid them at arm's length: for both had brought up hands and stood so until, only Anselm did not move but followed his words with his eyes only, —yess, find her, find her, he hissed at the face gone in profile, and then that lost to hair and collar, and the soft convolution of an ear, —find her and be damned.

Sounds rose about him; still Anselm did not move. With another look at the likeness in his hand, he shuddered and stuffed it into a pocket, then stood there alone gazing with an expression of revulsion at the orchid wilting upside-down on the graceless trunk of the figure moving like something afloat, bearing the signature of the jungle deeper among its shadows.

—But nobody's ever physically proved that the earth is in motion.

—Einstein says he can't believe God plays dice with the universe.

—Well I have a friend who's a physicist, he's been converted. He writes songs now.

—Claims he's a serious musician. Be-bop, if you call that music.

—Just so what she writes rhymes, she calls it poetry.

—One of them goes, "With the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost and you-hoo-ho-hoo, What wonders the five of us could do . . ."

—Painting like she was having an orgasm, if you call that art.

—If you call this living . . .

—If you call that love . . . ?

Sounds echoing, not from the vibrant reaches of the jungle, but the jungle floor itself, constrictions in the peat bog, the specimens themselves in motion: —I feel like we've been here for simply ages, said the tall woman. —I feel like 1 was born here, murmured Maude. But neither plaint nor query sounded in their voices, and neither made a move to go. Those who had disappeared were gone silently, leaving only faint traces or none on their minute contributions to the origin of species: the others remained with the tenacity of creatures bound to work out natural laws of survival, thus prove the superiority of their various equipment in adapting to conditions which no memory was long enough to find anything but nature.

The dark poet reared his head with reptilian vigilance, looking from the dead orchid to Herschel, who had just come from the bathroom and posed, flourishing, in the door, an unfamiliar bloom sprung from the jungle floor, watched by these resentful close-focused eyes, turned away, at that moment, to a sound and flutter across the room, where the Duchess of Ohio soared on an outburst of tittering. The critic approached, moving with the steps of one in a familiar medium, disdaining claims of time past and future, both contained in this limicolous present.

—They're moving Father's grave . . . Mr. Crotcher sang, sunk in the armchair, indifferent as the oyster which, despite the evolutionary excursions going on above, has found no reason to change in two hundred million years. While all around, less abiding varieties kept in motion, as though this might in itself be proof against time. Arny Munk's head lolled in several directions, its sensory equipment unnecessary for he was being led by Sonny Byron whose tender voice belied the firm grip of his hand. —Come along, baby, be sweet, just for a minute, she'll never miss you . . . And they passed under the eyes of the Paleozoic poet, glittering open from features whose prehistoric simplicity was faintly shadowed with apprehension at the sight of the opportune mutations going on around him, denying, by their very existence, the finality of his old-world wisdom, and suggesting, as they took to the air manipulating the baubles so helplessly evolved with a pretense of having designed them themselves, that perhaps, for all his belligerent cooperation with environment, that environment itself was changing, and not only he, but the entire species upon which he depended while living, and rescue from anonymity, perpetuation afterward, was to become part of the sodden floor, and the mat, and finally only traces on the crust itself.

—Derive venereal, and see what you get, if you don't call that decay, said someone near the hunched critic, who turned away, looked down at his large hands, and shrugged.

Beyond, like some creature opportunely equipped to cope with situations which have not yet arisen or, indeed, even been suggested, Mr. Feddle scooted up a tier of shelved books, beyond the reaches of hagfish and lamprey, and other jawless progenitors babbling in apparent contentment below. From the surface there, the critic watched him, bringing up a hand to smooth his hair and for that moment betray the size of his head. His expression was as simple as resentment without understanding can be: now like plesiosaurus laboring all four limbs for the paddles they were, lifting a small head to see pterodactyl raise its absurd body on more absurd wings and with cumbrous scaling gain the sky, a ridiculous place to be, certainly, but for that moment he watched, disconcerting to plesiosaurus, to whom no such extravagance had ever occurred and who, by no feat of skill or imagination, could hope to accomplish it now.

—As for your Emerson . . . ! someone said: and indeed, there were those to satisfy that eclectic digger too, gliding not to eat, nor for love, but only gliding.

Esther, advancing, searched the shadows, but the speechless kitten was nowhere to be seen. Then looking for Ellery she raised her eyes, but their light remained untenanted until Benny's flickering image filled them, and he asked with forced cheer, —Have you seen a little blond number named Adeline?

Several people turned to see Mr. Feddle fall clattering to the floor; and in keeping with that refusal to be ruffled by disturbances, which they called good breeding, no one offered to help him up. For even those present who considered good breeding a pretension affected by a class they were vocationally in revolt against, substituting for it an obtuseness which they called honesty, watched with honest laughter.

—My dear, it's been lovely, the tall woman said to Esther. —I do wish I could give parties like this, but my husband . . . With one hand she was attempting to dislodge her husband from the shoal of furniture, where his hapteric glass anchored him. —But you're not upset? You have to learn to be philosophical about those things, my dear, just don't think about them. Now I have a real problem, just look at my furpiece . . . well it is insured, thank God. I spoke to him about it but I honestly don't believe he understands English. I can't repeat what he said to me. There is something almost prehistoric about him, wouldn't you say? . . . something almost attractive . . . wouldn't you say?

The furpiece had, in fact, lost the quality of being an assumed decoration. Nature's hand (which we are now assured is experimentally inclined) might have worked here to produce one of those severe mutations which (so Science goes on assuring us) are opportune, chancy arrangements with no particular purpose, included in the calculated risk of being born. Nonetheless, Anselm wiped his nose on a mink tail as casually as though the thing had grown there for that purpose. But his expression retained a livid suspension, as the lower lip was held sharply under an uneven yellow line of teeth. He was watching Stanley. From Rose's darkness came men's voices borne on music, Judas Maccabaeus. On one hand, Chavenet turned out to be the man who had first proved that the eye which forms the image could not possibly have worked until after it was complete. Seated on the other, that xenophobic accessory to monosyllabic criteria in honest writing, overheard the word hapteron from above, and swore. Anselm watched Stanley. And behind him, Don Bildow approached mustering as vengeful an expression as plastic rims would allow.

—There must be some place to hide for people who make mistakes, Agnes Deigh said holding Stanley's hand in both hers. She was staring there, where Mickey Mouse semaphored annul with yellow mittens. —It can't be that early, she murmured.

—But Agnes, the Church . . .

—That glass, the full one, could you hand it to me? she asked him then, looking up.

He did, hesitatingly, —But don't you think, for your own good?

—Isn't it when we make mistakes that we need love most? she said abruptly. She'd raised the glass in a quivering hand but did not drink, waiting.

—Yes but, he answered unsteadily, pretending not to see Anselm's approach as his voice picked up. —But not finite love that's as weak as we are, not just that, not . . .

—Stanley, she interrupted firmly, though her voice was faint. —I'm sorry. I'm sorry now for . . . about what I said to you that night, that night when you ran away Stanley, it was my fault, I shouldn't have said that to you, should I ... He waited for her to go on, unable to answer. —It ... I ... I didn't know, Stanley. I didn't know you didn't want to hear it, God knows I do, I mean ... I thought we all did, I thought it was all anyone wanted, to hear that . . .

—Yes but . . . well, it's ... I mean love has to be something greater than ourselves, and when it is then it is faith, and the Church . . .

Bildow clenched small fists, at the ends of his long arms. —I demand that you tell me where my daughter ... he said loudly to Anselm.

—Shut up, this is a conversation about love. Did you ever read the great poet Suckling? Here's a poem of the English Cavalier poet Sir John Suckling for you, Stanley. "Love is the fart Of every heart; It pains a man when 'tis kept close; And others doth offend, when 'tis let loose." Do you like that? Hey come here, where you going?

Stanley looked helplessly at Agnes Deigh. —I have to ... excuse me a minute, he said. She continued to stare at Anselm, who shifted his eyes from hers in sudden discomfort, finally said, weakly, —I'm ... I mean he's scared . . . Isn't he ... and turned away to where Bildow pulled him.

All this time, a figure had been moving about the room like a shadow, but a pale shade, if black light could cast such a wan shape in darkness. Occasionally Anselm had fixed inflamed eyes upon him, and looked away after a fiercely vacant exchange. He spoke to no one, hardly anyone had spoken to him, and fewer of him, until now the woman in the collapsed maternity dress noted, —Yes, the boy with the silver plate in his head, he looks like a sensitive minority of one to me. And that woolly-headed boob is trying to convert him, that's the trouble with converts . . . what is it, child? Mummy sent you up ... I know, wait a minute, here . . . Wait, I almost gave you my Pubies . . .

—What are they for? the girl with the green tongue asked.

—I forget, but they help . . . And she looked back hungrily to where the hunched man in the green shirt had just said, —Just the same, you ought to get wise to yourself . . . when he was swung round with a dirty hand on his shoulder. Anselm looked him square in the eyes.

—Don't you get tired of hanging around like a spare prick?

—Why, why you . . . The hunched man quivered throughout his body, as though it were suddenly an unfamiliar arrangement which he could not call upon, at such short notice, to fight.

—Just don't give Charles a hard time, Anselm said to him calmly. —You'd be a God damn lot worse oft than he is it you'd been through what he has. I heard this crap you were just giving him, your . . . and you can't argue that way, you can't discuss absolutes in relative terms. That's what screws you God-damned smart intellectuals up, trying to discuss absolutes in relative terms.

—I'll discuss it any way I want to, the critic said sounding firm because he spoke quickly.

—God damn it you will not! Anselm said desperately. —You can't, you can't do that with absolutes, you either accept them or you tell them to go take a flying fuck but you can't do what you're doing . . . Anselm stopped, breathless, close upon the man. Behind him Bildow stood where Anselm had broken from his grasp, looking at the pale face beyond them both. —And . . . and leave Charles alone, just . . . leave him alone, Anselm finished.

The other shrugged, taking green elbows in his heavy hands. —I was just trying to get a razor away from him, he said sullenly, turning away.

—A what? Anselm demanded, got no answer, and turned to the pale fading figure. —Did he? Have you? He grabbed a shoulder and shook him. —Where'd you get it? Give it to me. Give it to me. God damn you I said give it to me! He watched the thin wrist with its exaggerated rasceta disappear, and snatched the black-handled thing from the thin hand as it drew out of a pocket. —You . . . stupid bastard, you . . . what were you trying to do? Anselm went on, but his own voice was unsteady as he put it into his own pocket, and he did not look into the empty face before him. —You have no ... God damn right to try things like this, you . . . stupid bastard ... he finished bringing his voice to a whisper where he could control it. When he did look up their eyes held one another, Anselm's burning into that vacant embrace until he tore them away, and turning away himself sniíîed and wiped his nose with his hand, muttering. Don Bildow stood in his path but did not interrupt him when he saw the orchid, fallen to the floor from an earlier caress, and went to pick it up. With it dangling between two fingers, Anselm turned, recovering, —Hey lady, he said, but the woman who'd worn it was not to be seen. —The lady lost her nuts, Anselm said to no one. He mumbled, —That's the world we live in, the ladies wear the nuts . . . choking forth convalescent laughter, coming on toward Stanley who had found the bathroom door locked and was returning to Agnes Deigh the long way round the room.

—And Pablov had this kitten . . .

—But Carruthers had a mare . . .

—Well she says she got pregnant by taking a bath right after her father, but I say . . .

—Omychrahst, I mean, youmeanyoureallywanttobuyone?

—Cómo? qué dice . . . ?

—You. Really. Want. To. Buy. One.?

—That is the purpose of my trip to your country, in addition for picking up something of artistic for the Jockey Club in Buenos Aires.

—Oh Chrahst now look don't go away, I mean I haven't got one with me. Look tomorrow morning I'll come to your hotel and you come with me. I mean, you're not drunk are you?

—Drunk? I?

—Chrahst I'm sorry maybe I am, I mean I was, but I mean people don't just go around buying battleships.

Maude had been fumbling at her throat. —What's matter, you spilled something down your dress? The hand on the back of her neck stopped, the man leaned forward and looked, with her, down the front of her dress. —What's matter? But her fumbling hand failed, and she was staring at an encumbered limb before her. The attractive girl with the Boston voice, whose leg it was, looked down too. She had just said,

—It's not a bad kick, take two strips of benny and two goof balls, they get down there and have a fight. It's a good drive. She shook her leg. —Is this yours? she accused, looking up at Maude.

—Why I ... I'll take her, Maude said reaching.

And the Boston girl pulled up her skirt at the waist and went on, —If you want to score tonight I know a connection uptown we can probably catch.

—Yes, I'll take her home now, Maude said and held the baby up before her, cupping one hand to the head, and she murmured, —A leader of men.

—Huuu, may I take you home? the uniform asked, still trying to gaze down into where Maude had sought what she had now forgotten.

—Where do you live? she asked vaguely, looking up at his face.

Agnes Deigh had taken Stanley's hand to say, —And every time people meet, they seem to just get a little further away from each other. —These gulfs everywhere between everything and everybody, Stanley took up immediately, —it's this fallacy of originality, of self-sufficiency. And in art, even art . . .

—Didn't you know him? He died in my apartment in Paris when I was having my first one-man show.

—When art tries to be a religion in itself, Stanley persisted, —a religion of perfect form and beauty, but then there it is all alone, not uniting people, not . . . like the Church does but, look at the gulf between people and modern art . . .

—When I go abroad I want to see countries, who wants to see people? You can see people on the B.M.T.

—Damn fine music, Mozart, said the Big Unshaven Man, He had just finished making a whole pitcher of martinis, which he poured into a large pocket flask. —I tell you true.

—Well doesn't it seem to you like everybody's changing size?

And in spite of the torn orchid which lowered, and was dangling before his face, Stanley went on, —It isn't for love of the thing itself that an artist works, but so that through it he's expressing love for something higher, because that's the only place art is really free, serving something higher than itself, like us, like we are . . .

And behind him, in a hoarse riot of whisper, —Oh this is minel this is mine!

—And that's why you must stop staying outside Agnes, because the Church ...

—Yess, this is mine! . . .

—There's no more to drink, said the woman he spoke to, but looking beyond him to that thin broken face. There yellow teeth tore sound into laughter.

—Tell them to fill the waterpots. Fill them up to the brim . . .

—Anselm . . .

—Mine hour is not yet come, Anselm returned, controlling the ragged edges to form words in Stanley's face, then getting breath, over Stanley's shoulder, he still laughed, —Woman! what have I to do ... Stanley bumped him, turning now his whole body against the shudders he shared, locked so as those yellowed teeth bit words out of the air between them, —For I am come to set man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law . . . and a man's foes shall be they of his own household . . .

Stanley licked his lips against the fever upon them; and he blinked against the burning eyes.

—Yes, there's your gulf, the hand of your everloving ChristI

With daring tenderness Stanley's hand came to the warm wrist, where a vein's blue ridge coursed the bone. —Why do you fight it so hard?

—You, you . . . Anselm pulled away. Then he looked around frantically for an instant, pulling up breath before he could speak, —Yes, what a lousy time to be alive, yes isn't it? Yes, I ... and don't you wish it was the good old days, when Pope Urban sold his toenail parings as relics? and the . . . yes, when you could choose between three assorted foreskins from the Lord's circumcision . . .

—When I get drunk it means something, broke in upon them, broke long enough for Stanley's hand to reaffirm its hold, a frail enough articulation though, in closing so, it brought the veins on Anselm's hand to bursting prominence. —It doesn't help to talk this way Anselm, why do you do it?

—Because you can't ... I, yes . . . Anselm threw his hand up, breaking the grasp with no effort. —These lousy apologies, these refuges from being alive, art and religion and God damn it you . . . and philosophy, I ... and I was born with a veil over my head.

—With what? I don't . . .

—Yes, a caul, God damn it, read an old cookbook, I, yes well what the hell, never mind. I studied medicine. I had a good lay this afternoon, Anselm went on disjointedly, pulling the stethoscope from his pocket. —I just go up to the hospital and I ...

—Please, don't talk about . . .

—No but listen, I've got to tell you, I go up to this hospital and they think I'm a special physician from outside, the nurses do, that's what I tell them, so then I go in to look over patients who think I'm connected with the hospital, that's what I tell them and you should see some of the handfuls I've had that way. This afternoon was the best yet. He brandished the stethoscope, the end flew past Stanley's chin. —This blonde, this terrific blonde, I gave her a three-and-a-half grain shot of sodium amytal and then I climbed in and gave her the business . . . Uninterrupted, he stood there staring at the uncoupled caducei of the stethoscope; then twisting them closed like metaled snakes in his hand he whispered, —That's what it is, that's all any of it is . . . But he could not break it, and he looked up and away, instantly found the blond girl earlier accused of putting a t in genial, made up, composed, as pretty (she would never be beautiful), as inanimate and stale as a photograph, once accused of taking the v out of live; now, of putting an / in lie: —Arse gratias artis, he muttered, —that's all any of it is.

—Anselm . . . Stanley put a hand forth to him again, —if . . . suffering . . .

—Yes, God damn it, my scars, do you want to see them, they . . . where's Otto? He'll show you his scars. Otto, hey Otto, come here, you, where the hell are you? Where the hell is he? He'll show you, he ... he'll put up a real maudlin raree-show for you, he ... maudlin! Yes, Mary Magdalene crying her eyes out for Christ. That's great. Can you see him crying his crazy eyes out for Christ? . . . Anselm shuddered. —Suppose you never see me again? he burst in Stanley's face. —Yes, what would you do, you wouldn't have, yes but Christ didn't have any friends did he? Is that what you mean? Yes, well you wouldn't even have a witness, you . . . because that's all He had, He ... where the hell is he, he'll show you his scars, is that what you want? The Five Sacred Wounds. How would you like that, you could bleed all over the place. You might even get a good set of punctures with the Crown of Thorns, you . . . how about the Ferita? the real bloody heart-wound. Or a good sweat of blood in Gethsemane? you could out-Lutgarde Saint Lutgarde, you could out-pussy Blessed Catherine of Racconigi, if you want to suffer why don't you go somewhere where it will do somebody else some good instead of being so God-damned selfish about it like these crazy saints. Get a little cross with mirrors in it, that would be the nuts if you want to suffer your way, for Christ sake . . . Where the hell is he? yes, with his scars . . . ? Anselm looked frantically round the room, clutching the stethoscope out before him, for some tangibility among the pale presences.

—If it is fear, Stanley whispered to him in confidence.

—Yes look! Anselm rescued the palest shade of them all in his gesture. —Look at him, look at Charles for Christ sake, look at him! Love? I've heard you talking about love. He can tell you about love, about spiritual love, about your kind of love. Tell them, go ahead for Christ sake tell them, about your mother and the Pekinese that the pile of folding chairs fell on, she picked it up and breathed into its mouth, she kept it alive breathing her own life into it but for him? Would she give him one, breath of love? Or a lot of gas about love that has nothing to do with either one of them, for the love of Christ, for Christ sake, she left him here to cut his throat for Christ sake . . .

Figures had started to gather round them, and Anselm lost in his weight with every word, retreating in fury from every hand though none dared touch him. He tried to jam the twisted stethoscope into his pocket, instead knocked it and the rolled magazine to the floor, and came up with that. —Your sick . . . Lupercalia, he was muttering, as though the weight of words would keep them at bay, and the magazine came open on its back cover. And he burst out at Stanley for the last time, —Yes here, here's your peace and salvation, "If it slips, if it chafes, if it gripes, THROW AWAY THAT TRUSS! . . ."

—Shut up, the hunched critic said to him, close.

—"Literally thousands of Rupture sufferers have entered this Kingdom of Paradise Regained . . ."

—It doesn't help to talk this way, Anselm, Stanley said to him.

—Yes, here's your salvation, yes, thousands "have worn our Appliance without the slightest inconvenience. Cheap—Sanitary-Comfortable . . ."

—Anselm, it doesn't help to talk like this. Why do you do it?

—Because the one God-damned thing I can't stand is your Goddamned . . . confidence. Pin-Up Cuties fell to the floor between them.

—But it's not confidence in myself, Stanley said quickly, —but faith, not confidence but faith in something greater than any of us.

—Why don't you shut up and get out of here? the critic said.

Anselm turned to him slowly, and formed his words slowly when he spoke, —Fuck a duck and screw a pigeon, that's the way you'll get religion. Then he spat in his face. —That's for your side-show conversion, he said.

—Leave him, Stanley said quickly. —Let him be. He put an arm around Anselm's shoulders.

Anselm hung there for a moment, or part of a minute, then came up in a shock, —And stop this damned . . . this God-damned sanctimonious attitude, he cried, twisting free, and they stood face to face. —Stanley, by Christ Stanley that's what it is, and you go around accusing people of refusing to humble themselves and submit to the love of Christ and you're the one, you're the one who refuses love, you're the one all the time who can't face it, who can't face loving, and being loved right here, right in this lousy world, this God-damned world where you are right now, right . . . right now. Anselm stood panting; and Stanley had withdrawn a step to stand with his insensible hand on the arm of Agnes Deigh's chair.

Anselm came toward him, crushing the orchid under foot, pulling in a pocket without moving his eyes from Stanley's. —Afraid of this, he came on, his voice lower, —this . . . ssuccubus, he came on, sibilant, —thiss, beast with two backs. He brought out the crumpled photograph. —This is it isn't it, isn't it ... He forced it in Stanley's face. —Isn't it ... ! And then it crumpled in his hand, as though drawing itself in upon its own blemishes of betrayal while his hand closed on it, drawn by the loded hieroglyphs coursing the flesh blue in selfish sympathy. —If you should never see me again? Anselm's voice broke. —Do you know what it is? he came on, almost inaudible, looking at no one. —Und wir bewundern es so, weil es gelassen verschmäht . . . uns zu zerstören . . .

He stood with the orchid crushed underneath his foot: even Don Bildow could swing him round.

—Where is my daughter?

—Your daughter? Anselm repeated, and sounded about to gag. —She's all right.

—Where is she?

—She's in church, Anselm said. —I left her in church, he repeated helplessly. The critic advanced on him as he stood with his head rolling from side to side. —Go on, that's enough of you, you . . . go on, get out . . .

Anselm threw himself at the man but Bildow, clinging to his arm, afraid to let go, held him back. —Get out, get out, Anselm cried. —Go home alone. Alone. Alone . . .

—Shut up, you ...

—Alone. Go home with your lover, old mister five fingers, haha, haha haha . . . here, he went on, snatching the magazine up írom the floor and thrusting it in the face of the other, —here are some girls for you. Here! Do you think I don't know? do you think we all don't know, let's see the calluses on your right hand, old mister five fingers, hahahahahahahuhhhph . . .

Bildow let go of him as he sank to the floor from the comparatively light blow, an effort which had, nevertheless, exhausted his antagonist who stepped back and in the moment it took him to realize that Anselm was down, composed himself, in triumph.

Maude's voice was faint, but clear in the silence. —This isn't the way I remember Christmas Eve, she said.

Someone laughed.

—The Lord wouldn't like this . . .

—Well if this is the cultural center of the world you can give it right back to the Indians . . .

Someone else laughed.

—And so that one said to me, just ask God, baby, She'll protect you . . .

—Hehe, hehehe ...

— We know what love is, don't we baby . . .

—Stanley, please . . .

—Just wait a minute, I want to ... I ha\e to help him.

—Leave me alone.

—Where is my daughter?

—Leave him alone for a minute. He shouldn't have hit him.

—Stanley please . . .

—Leave me alone. God damn you, leave me alone!

—But Agnes . . .

—Stanley ...

—Chr-ahst . . .

—Yes I was told to expect this sort of thing in New York.

—Yes but I mean Chrahst don't go away, or we'll both go, let's both go to your hotel, I'll stay there tonight.

—But in another room.

—Chrahst yes.

—I was warned about that sort of thing in New York, his companion commented, adjusting his perfectly adjusted tie.

—Oh Rose, Esther said to where her sister sat on the floor in the dark with the records. —Aren't you tired?

—Are you having a nice party?

Esther put her face in her hands, and felt her sister's arm round her neck. —Oh Rose. Rose.

The hand under her became rigid, the paralysis ran up her arm, through her shoulders and neck, her face yellowing as the blood drained from behind its bronzed canvas. —Stanley! . . . Agnes Deigh whispered, staring at him bent over Anselm, an arm around Anselm.

—You see, it's all right now, Stanley said gripping his shoulder but unable to raise it from the floor. Anselm opened his eyes.

In the hand she drew from under her, the white nails clutched a limp cinnamon-colored body. —I thought ... it was something, Agnes Deigh said weakly to herself. Then she looked around quickly, opened her bag and pulled handfuls of things out which she stuffed in her coat pocket, to snap it closed a moment later upon the lifeless kitten. She summoned her voice in, —Stanley . . .

—And now, you don't have to fight it any more, you . . . An-selm's arm was flung around him, and Anselm's unshaven face tore at Stanley's cheek with the kiss.

—Stanley! . . .

—You've got to listen carefully because it's very complicated, said someone dangling over her from behind, —Pavlov had dogs who salivated, but this time . . .

—Stanley! she cried out. Stanley looked up to her. —Stanley, please come here.

—But . . . Stanley said, rising and releasing Anselm, who sank back to the floor. —I can't leave him now, he said, taking a step toward her.

—God help me, Stanley, you must. She reached out and caught his wrist. —I think I'm going to be ill.

—But I can't leave him now, Stanley said, appealing to Don

Bildow who stood beside them. —Stanley, you can't leave me.

—But Agnes ...

—Help me up.

—Where is he? Bildow burst out. —He's gone, he's gone, and where . . .

They looked around. Anselm was not there. Stanley staggered and braced himself as Agnes Deigh stood, clinging to his arm. His voice broke when he spoke. —But he was almost ... I almost . . . what will he do now, alone?

Maude found the baby heavier than she had expected, when she stood with it. —Help me, she said.

—What's matter?

—We're going home.

—But that thing, you better leave it here, you better not take it, it might belong to somebody.

—Please, just . . . open the door.

—Calls himself Tree, does he? I knew him when his name was Tannenbaum, someone said.

—Spain? But everybody in Spain's been dead for years . . .

—I'm sorry, I'm going home with this gentleman, he's going to help me write a novel. I don't know what Mister Wipe will say . . .

A girl was being sick behind a bookshelf. —You gotto excuse her, she's not used to this. And the bathroom door's locked. Mr. Feddle, clutching The Razors Edge, got to one side.

—That philodendron, that God damn cut leaf philodendron, that's the only thing I've seen growing in eleven years, if you call that growing . . .

Nearby someone obligingly derived philander, —Philos, loving, plus andros, man . . . the voice whined.

—It's my wife's, she pays more attention to it than she does to me . . . that's why I thought about the scythe, that's why I couldn't understand it, breaking a scythe . . . but tomorrow morning ...

—You'll take me with you? Benny?

—She and Iphigenia, they're beginning to look like each other.

—Who's Iphigenia?

—The philodendron.

—What's that funny smell, I been smelling it all evening.

The heat, and the numbers of people, seemed to have heightened the scent of lavender which came from the dark doorway and pervaded the well-lighted room, except for the fragrant shade left by the tall woman, the trace of My Sin still clinging to the chair Agnes

Deigh had left empty, and a sweet pungence rising in one corner where someone said to the Boston girl, —Don't smoke that stuff here, for Christ sake.

The music had, by now, become a fixture in the room; it was as though it had combined with the smoke and the incongruous scents into a tangible presence, the slag of refinement rising over the furnace, where the alchemist waited with a lifetime's patience, staring into his improbable complex of ingredients as dissimilar in nature as in proportion, commingling but refusing to fuse there under his hand, and as unaware of his hand as of their own purpose, so that some sank and others came in entirety to the surface, all that as though nothing had changed since the hand sifted the scoria of the Middle Ages for what all ages have sought, and found, as they find, that what they seek has been itself refined away, leaving only the cinders of necessity.

Esther started toward the dark doorway. Then across the room she saw Ellery coming from the bedroom passage. She turned toward him, but he appeared not to see her. When she got there the blonde was coming out. She smoothed her dress and smiled at Esther as she passed. Esther started to speak, but the blonde went on, smiling pleasantly, unhearing, fretting the quiescent cat that had swallowed whole the fled canary as she walked away.

In the bedroom Esther entered with her hand pressed against her belly, and turned on the hot light beside her mirror. She looked at the powder spilled on the dressing table. Then she turned, the heels of her hands buried in her eyes and sat down for a moment before she could look: the bedspread had been straightened with quick carelessness so that one corner hung to the floor, and the pillow lay half uncovered. She ran her hand through her hair, and looked up to say, —Rose? with dull loudness. From the next room all she heard was, —I've put a cigarette down somewhere . . .

—Rose?

—Well 7'm proving that Einstein doesn't exist ...

She got up and went back into the room.

—A million people a year in this country try to disappear, what does that mean?

—Pony boy, I feel light enough to skip all the way home.

—Aren't you going to even say good night to her?

—I stopped knowing her years ago.

—Oh Chrahst, Chrahst, you haven't seen a greasy-looking guy with shiny hair have you, because I mean Chrahst I can't have lost him.

—Is your name really Adeline? Herschel was asking the blonde as he left her. —Because baby I had a nurse once who looked just like you, I bit her . . . you-know-where! But you're going to Holly- wood? Baby so am I, maybe I'll see you there and we'll have a nice teat-a-teat over old times . . . He was backing toward the roseate misery of the Swede, who was holding his swollen nose. —Now it's all right, baby . . .

—But those Boy Scouts! I'll never speak to a Boy Scout again.

—Don't cry, baby. Think about Rudy, I know something terrible has happened to that one, but I gave him this address when he called and said he was in an auto smash . . .

—Where's Bildow?

—He went to the police station.

—Why doesn't somebody just tell the French they're through.

—You'll like this song, said Mr. Crotcher to no one.

—This shiny-looking little guy with greasy hair, I mean Chrahst I can't have lost him, Chrahst.

—We'll just go where they've got some gone numbers on the box. We can order coffee and get high on benny.

—Come on, Ellery said to him. —I hate to see you like this, Jesus Christ Benny, you're my best friend, you're the best friend I got.

—That's all it is, Benny went on. —What's tragedy to you is an anecdote to everybody else. We're comic. We're all comics. We live in a comic time. And the worse it gets the more comic we are.

—Benny you're going to take me with you aren't you? the figure with flannel sleeves to his elbows broke in. —You are really going aren't you? We're really going, aren't we?

—We're comic because there isn't anything else that . . . that has to ... anything else that has to be.

—Benny, relax, forget it, look, that church gimmick, you're in, you're made Benny . . . Ellery was supporting him, but he wrenched away when he saw Mr. Feddle who had just finished inscribing the book he held, with best wishes from Benedict Arnold.

—What happened to him? Benny demanded. —To him, Fedya, the one you told me about. What happened to him? he pressed.

—Why, he killed himself, of course, said Mr. Feddle with relish. —He was Russian. Benny had a hand on his wrist. —Yes, right after he said, "No need to ask! I did it all myself. The design was mine, and the deed was mine . . ." The hand fastened to his wrist loosed and fell away. —Right after he said, "When the claw is caught, the bird is lost . . ." Mr. Feddle went on, muttering, withdrawing, looking at his own hand. —Or was that The Power of Darkness? Nikíta, in The Power of Darkness . . . ?

—Benny, tomorrow morning Benny . . .

—In Rome I'll be at the Dingle. —The Dingle? —The Dingleberry, baby. —What are you sailing on? -One of the Queens of course . . .

Esther did look in need of aid, returning across that room; so everyone avoided looking at her. They renewed their assaults on one another instead.

—I can't imagine cutting my wrists in Pokheepsie.

—Hemingway? Well he said he's staying at the Ritz, but I say the Ritz was torn down simply years ago . . .

—He joined the Church? I knew him when he joined the Yale Club.

—Then do we all get scared when we get old?

Esther reached the bathroom door as Arny Munk came out led by Sonny Byron, who was saying, —We'll find her, and she doesn't need to know a thing about it. Now tell the truth, wasn't it nice? while Mr. Crotcher sang, —Today is the day they give babies away . . .

In the bathroom Esther leaned against the wall and wet a washcloth. She stared at her mirror face until she realized that it could do nothing but stare back, and then thrust the washcloth between her eyes and their image; as she drew the wet cloth across her skin the bloodlines on the whites of her eyes claimed the eyes for flesh, the firmness of the bones softened, the lines of life, and the insistence of the mouth, all of it fused into one soft inanimate flesh. She had already asked him to stay the night; now she turned to seek him.

In the room the critic turned, to the hand of the Duchess of Ohio. —I can't just listen to this prwetty music without dancing, will you dance with me? . . . The critic left him sprawled on the floor where he'd pushed him.

—And the oddest joke about the Pope, I don't understand it at all.

—I mean Chrahst, I can't have lost him.

—Flo-flo?

—Florence, baby.

She was not really surprised, in the bedroom, to see him lying there in (the green wool shirt, that and nothing else. She turned quickly to close the door and bolt it: it seemed to take her an age to reach it.

—President McKinley had one

—I can play The Stars and Stripes Forever, or Violets lying under the piano

—The far lockaway rocker room story

—And the garbage cans

—The Pope

—The Swiss

—The Wright brothers and the ships of the Russian navy

—Loved him —This time it was a kitten

—Hated her

Most penetrating, just outside the door she closed, unmocking, —Some sleeping pills that my mummy sent me up for, I know which bottle it is if you'll just lift me up.

Esther held to a corner of the Bureau stepping out of her shoes, and she pulled off her skirt. Then she reached to turn out the light.

—Don't. Leave it on.

The woollen sleeve scratched her uncovered shoulders, her legs gave, soft against the hard tense muscles where she strained her hollowness to him. —Are you going to ... take this off?

—Yes, in a ... minute. His cold hand wrenched her shoulder down.

—But now, I don't know . . . whether I dare . . .

—No, you just . . .

—But what are you, I thought only little boys,

—It's all right, I,

—But what am I supposed to do? she cried.

—You, just . . . watch, he said breathlessly.

The long streets were straight tunnels of wind charged with snow which bit the skin of any out struggling against it, the paving hard-packed with that snow, its whiteness gone under a thousand dirty wheels, spotted and streaked from leaking oil-pans, dug here and there by a desperate heel. The undisciplined lights, most of them red for they hung before bars, shone through it, instructed by the tireless precision of the traffic lights turning green to red, red to green, halting precarious passage, releasing it.

Down the subway steps came a figure on all fours, and those who glanced at it looked away, or stopped to stare, almost as little able to stand up themselves though, if they had gone down like he was, they would have been as unable to move with his forceful ease, down, to drop his coin in the slot with his lips and pass through the stile, out onto the platform and, with hardly a minute's wait, onto a train.

—Arthur! What are you doing? Get up on your feet.

He turned his head, to look up and see a small woman in a black silk dress, tight up to her throat, a woman three times his age, who had lived twice the years she had given him since she gave him birth. He looked at her.

—Get up on your feet, I say. She clutched at the black-and-gold book in her lap, and nothing else moved but her thin lips as she spoke in low intensity, —Get up this instant. Where did you get that furpiece? You stole it! Get up this instant. Suddenly she reached out, and though he was very near her thin knees, with a motion as slight as an animal's evasion, and as seemingly careless, he avoided her hand. She clutched the book again. —Get up on your feet this instant, I demand. The train roared on. He looked at her.

Mickey Mouse semaphored annul. —It can't be that late. She held it to her ear. —I think it's stopped, she said. —He can't have stopped, she said, halting under a streetlamp.

—Wait here. There's a cab. Abruptly, she was alone, and she sank back against a building, watching him run toward the curb at the corner, where he slipped and fell. Behind her, one of the indistinct shadows articulated itself.

—Oh no, stop!

—What happened? he asked, brushing snow from himself with one hand, supporting her with the other.

—He stole my purse . . .

—But let me go, I can catch him . . .

—Oh no, she said, clinging to him. —He stole my purse. He stole my purse, she cried, all of her weight on him, laughing and crying at once.

He looked round desperately; then his whole expression, and his bearing, changed. He murmured something, and without much difficulty guided her up the cathedral's steps, and he took her in.

—Can you kneel? They were struck down by that vast silence, dropping like a weight from stone arches out of all reach; they struggled to the surface again, and it was penetrated with a bell's ringing like a rapier through stone. —I can't breathe, she said. She fell back in the pew, pulling at the front of her dress as her coat fell open.

He stared before him at serenity which, transfigured in light, seemed to move for him. —Could you take communion? he asked her, shaping the silence which lay between them, cutting a hard bit out of it to pierce her.

—I ... it isn't . . . not now, she whispered, hacking his silence into shreds of shale, irregular fragments of its weight thrown against him. He started her to her feet, toward the liberation of the nave's channel which flowed in one direction from which the silence seemed suddenly to be gathered and hurled back with all its weight upon them.

—qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis . . .

She fell over against him, dead weight.

—miserere nobis ...

He supported her, as she regained her feet.

—dona nobis pacem . . . He turned and followed her, where she ran from the rapier that struck behind them, out through the gigantic doors which spilled them together into that unholy night.

He might have caught her had he not fallen on the steps, a thing which she, for all her gyrations, somehow managed not to do. He did not reach her again until almost a block away where she stopped, breathing hard, under a red-lighted doorway. Even then, before he could hold her, she was inside the bar, where a battered man ran his hand over his uncared-for chin and stared at them, and the bartender came forward.

—Now I'd like a martini, she said, speaking clearly, seating herself.

—But Agnes ...

—And you, sir?

—Nothing. A glass of water. Agnes ...

She looked at him, glazed, without recognition.

—Agnes . . .

The bartender tapped his fingers on the bar, waiting.

—Agnes . . . He looked up at the bartender, surprised. —Oh, here, he said then, and handed over the twenty-dollar bill from his pocket. —I'm sorry, that's all I have. Agnes . . .

The bartender walked slowly toward the back of the bar, looking idly at the bill. —What'sa matter, you never saw American money before? said his battered client. —I see it alia time. I'm Santy Glaus.

—Agnes, please . . .

—I'm going to a hotel, she said, straight before her, to no one, a she set down her empty glass. —I'll write him a letter.

The bartender had taken the bill over to hold it under a desk lamp which he turned on beside the cash register.

—Agnes, wait a minute . . . She got down from her stool.

—Wait a minute here, you two. Stanley turned. The bartender had him by the arm across the bar. —Wait a minute. Stop her.

—Agnes, wait . . .

—I can't stop her. I'm Santy Glaus.

—Agnes, my glasses. You forgot to give me my glasses . . .

A few minutes later Stanley stood, eyeless enough in this reduction of Gaza, waiting for a patrol car. —You could tell it a mile away, the way the front of it's smeared, said the bartender to the patrolman who held Stanley's arm. —He had a dame with him, but she beat it. Thanks, Mac. He went back inside; and the patrolman turned his attention to his charge, to where the falling snow clotted the mustache, and gathered in the folds of hair on the back of the round head, silently, with a tourist's dull curiosity, the patrolman gazed as a tourist might upon the pitted figure of a saint in indefatigable stone, left insensibly exposed in the weather a century too long.

Roaring alight where the night never ended, underground, she said, —Arthur, get up on your feet. Don't you know me? Don't you know who I am?

He looked at her.

The train halted. Its doors opened, and before she could move they closed behind him and left her, recovering from her moment of indecision, seated and staring straight ahead.

On all fours, he trotted down the emptied platform. He paused for a moment and raised his head to look round him; then he went on, and bumped open the door to the men's room with his head. It was empty. He rose to his knees and reached into his pocket. The crumpled picture he threw into a toilet. With his other hand he undid his clothes, and opened the razor. He paused so, staring up at the dim illumination of the weak electric bulb, his voice audible only then, —In nomine . . . though his lips continued to move, without a tremor, as his hands worked quickly, with deft certainty, unseen.

—Why you could tell it a mile away.

—And the broad with him . . .

—The broad with him . . .

—You could have told her a mile away. Hello Jimmy. Merry Christmas. Come on in and have one for Christmas.

—Happy Yom Kipper. What're you doin.

—I'm drinkin, what's it look like I'm doin? Set one up for our friend here, Barney.

—It's a free country.

—Cozy fan tooty.

—The same to you. What does that mean?

—That's fuck you in Latin.

—That's not Latin.

—O.K., so why should it mean anything? Cozy fan tooty, that's just an expression.

—Well here's good luck. Happy Yom Kipper.

—That's how much you know, "happy yom kipper." Happy Yom Kippur was around Hallowe'en.

—So you're meine Yiddische Sendy Glaus?

—That's no joke now, that's no joke. If it wasn't for the Jews there wouldn't be no Christmas.

—So you're a Jew? —So I'm a Jew. Tell him Barney, ain't I a Jew?

—Come on, you're no more Jew than my dick.

—Quiet down, now. Quiet down.

—I been pissed off at him for five years.

—Yeah, well you ought to be good and wet then.

—Quiet down, now.

—O.K. Barney. Thanks for the beer. Just tell Santa Glaus here to hold his water.

—You both better quiet down or go. It stopped snowing.

—It finally stopped snowing?

—You're not being a perfect host, Barney. You're supposed to be the perfect host.

—It finally stopped snowing? Well I'll be damned.

—Merry Christmas,

—And it finally stopped snowing,

—Happy Yom Kipper, —Well I'll be damned.