41

liiQuarterly41

LONGER FICTION

JOHN BARTH

ARTHUR A. COHEN

CHARLES NEWMAN

lliQ

Editor: Elliott Anderson

Executive Editor: Mary Kinzie

Art Director: Cynthia Anderson

Managing Editor: Michael McDonnell

Associate Editors:

Mariam Lease, Michael Schleif, Mary Elinore Smith, Mitchell York

Advisory Editors: Lawrence Levy, Charles Newman

Fulfillment:

Leigh Alexander, Joyce Bang, Judy Marrs, Mary M. Zakrasek

Contributing

Editors:

Robert Alter, Michael Anania, Gerald Graff, John Hawkes, David Hayman, Joseph McElroy, Peter Michelson, Robert Onopa, Tony Tanner, Nathaniel Tarn

TriQuarterly is an international journal of arts, letters, and opinion published in the fall, winter, and spring at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60201. Subscription rates: One year $12:00; two years $20.00; three years $30.00. Foreign SUbscriptions $1.00 per year additional. Single copies usually $4.25. Back issue prices on request. Contributions, correspondence, and subscriptions should be addressed to TriQuarterly, 1735 Benson Avenue, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60201. The editors invite submissions, but queries are strongly suggested. No manuscripts will be returned unless accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. All manuscripts accepted for publication become the property of TriQuarterly, unless otherwise indicated. Copyright © 1978 by TriQuarteriy. All rights reserved. The views expressed in this magazine are to be attributed to the writers, not the editors or sponsors. Printed in the United States of America. Claims for missing numbers will be honored only within the four-month period after month of issue.

NATIONAL DISTRIBUTOR TO RETAIL TRADE: B. DEBOER, 188 HIGH STREET, NUTLEY, NEW JERSEY 07110. DISTRIBUTOR FOR WEST COAST TRADE: BOOK PEOPLE, 2940 7TH STREET, BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA 94710.

REPRINTS OF BACK ISSUES OF TriQuarterly ARE NOW AVAILABLE IN FULL FORMAT FROM KRAUS REPRINT COMPANY, ROUTE 100, MILLWOOD, NEW YORK 10546, AND IN MICROFORM FROM UMI, A XEROX COMPANY, ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN 48106.

5 from Whitejass

Charles Newman

Arthur A. Cohen

Charles Newman is the author of a novel made up of stories about an American boy in the suburbs (New Axis, 1966), a novel about a young man who learns that culture and affection are only metaphors for business (The Promisekeeper, 1971), a meditation on the American conscience in the 1960s (A Child's History of America, 1973), and most recently a collection of novellas about war and social servitude

John Barth is the author of four novels: The Floating Opera (1956; revised edition 1967), The End of the Road (1958), The Sot-Weed Factor (1960), and Giles Goat-Boy; or The Revised New Syllabus (1966). He is also the author of two volumes of shorter fiction, Lost in the Funhouse: Fiction for Print, Tape, Live Voice (1968) and Chimera (1972), which won the 1973 National Book Award for Fiction. John Barth's novels and

Arthur A. Cohen has founded two publishing houses, in 1952 Noonday Press (with the poet Cecil Hemley), and two years later the distinguished series of paperbacks in literature and philosophy, Meridian Books, which he ran until 1960. After serving as editor-in-chief of Holt, Rinehart & Winston from 1964 to 1968, Cohen founded and now manages Ex Libris, an enterprise dealing in rare and out-of-print

(There Must Be More to Love Than Death, 1976). He has taught at Northwestern University and until last year was chairman of the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins. He lives in the Virginia Blue Ridge, where he adds to his property, cures his own prosciutto ham, and manages his Hungry Mothers Farms and Kennels, home of America's newest and most versatile dog breed, the Uplander.

stories have been variously compared with the work of Mary McCarthy, Henry James, Boccaccio, Fitzgerald, Philip Roth, Joyce, Kierkegaard, Camus, Robert Musil, Ebenezer Cooke, Sir Thomas Browne, McLuhan, Rabelais, Descartes, Cervantes, Twain, Franz Kafka, Balzac, Walker Percy: Hawthorne, Homer, Sartre, Virginia Woolf, Petronius, James Branch Cabell, Thomas Mann, and Norman Mailer.

books and journals relating to twentieth-century art. He lives in New York with his wife, the painter Elaine Lustig Cohen, their daughter Tamar, and a superb collection of antique combs. "The Monumental Sculptor" and his earlier novella, "Hans Cassebeer and the Virgin's Rose" (TriQuarterly 33), will be published together under the title Fatal Attractions in the fall of 1978.

from Whitejass

Charles Newman

Love affairs (Iii'v, lii'vd, luving) lulu, lief, ljuby, 1. To praise; also to appraise. 2. A game of forfeits, no score for either side. 3. A small engagement, that which is done or to be done, used with intentional vagueness. 4. The benevolence attributed to God and other manifold personifications. 5. Very pleasing (applied loosely). Intransitive: to feel, frequently a vulgarism for like. 6. Sexual passion, or, rare, gratification. 7. Illicit relations (obsolete). 8. A thin silky stuff, to make borders. 8. In somewhat disparaging use, amatory relations as distinguished from friendship. Coleridge: necessary to completeness. Dryden: We loved and we loved, as long as we could/Till our love was loved out in us both. Dalrymple: This piece is highly curious. There is no love. The whole plot is political.

As the stimuli become more and more similar, learning takes more trials

-E. A. Feigenbaum

Continued hybridization of varieties tends to bring about reversion to the mean of the race

-K.Onstott

From Heaven it has a certain symmetry, this synapse, where the Interstate bisects County Line Road, the cloverleaf like two pair of perfect buttocks in cosmic alignment, or a cluster of genes which coyly holds the history of our future within its simple fastness.

In the four respective swales of each cloverleaf are groves of twice transplanted pin oak, the curious infiorescent leaves of which will, at improbable maturity, photosynthesize all the emissions we can manage.

They have brought us in, room by room, module by module, the nine motels which compete so cursorily in the purview of the pin oaks, the adjacent infrastructure, shopping mall of salient franchises, each an infinitely expandable version of THE WIDE LOAD, our basic brick, measured by the eighteen-wheelers which so incessantly and intransigently ply our routes.

But let us travel leisurely the old roads which parallel the expressway, Frontage Road North, say, as distinguished from Frontage Road South, which parallels the opposite side of the expressway, both roads' oaks recently replaced with cyclone fencing, which serves to protect, among others, the Left Bank, a young adult community, everything a body could want: valet parking, Olympic pool, pitch 'n' putt, all-weather exercise pits, mansard-type attic "garrettes" advertising "earned autonomy."

Sandy's room is second tier rear, wide as two six-footers, and five six-footers long what kind of man is it who lies exactly twice across such a room? How many such men, end to end, would it take to round the world? The window is picture pleated with rubberized drapes, all mums and finches aswirl here, trees, flowers, birds, and a plashing streamlet, the motif carried into the bedspread and the shower curtain which shrouds the variegated onyx tub. In the commode a long illegal Monte Cristo Cuban cigar ash floats as intact and expensive as a Polaris missile. Despite the air conditioner, which perpetually micturates a dampness upon the wall-to-wall orange and yellow shag, this room is hot-sparks fly from redundant brushes of polyester at the inner thigh, the acoustical tile ceiling's holes seem to be growing larger and further apart, just like the universe, the fancy expansion of which is just another misreading taken by yet another instrument upon a sinking platform.

The walls are paneled in facsimile pecan; the seams are like those one finds, not without delight, at the insides of elbows and the backsides of knees, the stretch marks, not of birthing or of a lifetime's work, but those very grooves we enter the world with, our only indication of prehistory. The walls have no give and take, they move as one, a muscle sheath, nothing can be extinguished here, nothing ever quite ceases. There is always some noise, some light, some movement, and when the air conditioner is full on, the paneling moves apart imperceptibly, exposing between the cheap sixfoot centers, a bit of God's foam.

There is also light, of course. A cowled fluorescent above the bed, infrared in the bathroom that turns the nipples and eyelids black as you step from the detumescent shower-spritz, one superceramic candlestick upon the Danish combo dresser/desk/rack du baggage. Above the onyx octagonal coffee table, a translucent globe is suspended from a chain, looped once to the ceiling, thence

in increasingly less dramatic swags to its power source; all energy outlets are framed with a pattern discovered in a Pompeian atrium. Three Empire chairs dwarf the coffee table, the webbing of the armrests matches that of the wastebasket, and this rattan motif appears again in miniature about the pedestal of the TV. The nightstand has a built-in ashtray, a circle for your glass, and a groove for your pencil-this room is ready to roll.

Ah, Sandy, spread-eagled alone in bed, packaged between blue and brown striped sheets, his parts routinely engorged, pointing at his heart. Ah, after years of roomies and relatives, Sandy has his own place now.

Sandy's Pontiac emerges from beneath the Left Bank, takes up its position in the thunder of Monday mom. Its metallic violet grows darker with the sunlight, his white whip aerial is tied in a perfect reptilian arc to the bumper. The citizens band radio is off. Don't want to talk at nobody just yet. The convoy of commuters moves desultorily southward down Frontage Road North to the eight-way stoplight at the overpass.

Sandy is on his way to work, to the Department of Human Resources, a private consulting firm working on a government subcontract to catalogue the vision that man might be. His work, as the indubitable crow flies, is directly across the expressway from the Left Bank, in the shopping mall where the glass tower of the community college rises, but there is no way no crow will ever fly that distance. From his window at home, Sandy can see his long impermeably sealed window-at-work, like a child's coffin in the dawn. View has always been important to Sandy, inordinately so. When he gets a raise, he will move from his "garrette" to a corner suite overlooking the entire interchange, a panoramic view of all the lights and lubricants of the wars of happiness.

He awaits the green arrow, negotiates the overpass; out here at the interface, he is side by side with the old folks, their goggled faces set upon babies' bodies, men's noses tipped with zinc oxide, ladies' lips and nails laminated with the same metallic lacquer as their carriages; they have forgotten, apparently, the outline of their mouths, lost where their lips leave off, and a new one has been drawn for the golden years, slightly off center, less pursed; the phil-

trum has been filled in with epoxy. They have become ventriloquial in spite of themselves. As they come more to resemble a souffle, their preference for the tubular increases, the immediately graspable, the handle in the bath. Their skulls justbarely clear their headrests, and suspicion and fear emanate with their refined exhaust. Sandy hates old folks almost as much as he hates children, which is why he lives at the Left Bank, where neither are permitted to abide and are only barely tolerated as visitors.

Ahead of him on the overpass are teens packed into a sedan like some imported unnamable commodity in a can to be opened with a key. They are spoiling for a fight, they give him the finger, Sandy returns it in spades. He will pull their lips over their skulls, God will drive his Peter through their brains! Above the overpass, on a grassy embankment, there is a sign of Chamber of Commerce advertising the Interchange;

FOUR WAYS TO GET ON

FIVE WAYS TO GET OFF

it says. Each day in the morning traffic, Sandy studies the cloverleaf, no less intently than an amateur botanist cataloguing the garden of the New World, but he has never discovered that fifth exit. He diagrams the air with an index finger, but is interrupted even with the aerial down; the CB has picked up a teamster who has just slid beneath him.

"Breaker breaker, that there purple Pontiac four-wheeler on this here bridge, you got your ears up?"

Sandy moves dutifully, hesitantly to reply. It is a kind of vote.

"You got the Sandman, braker, come on."

"Thanks, old buddy, just checking out my reception. How you read me?"

Sandy watches the needle of the S-meter jump.

"Just for fine breaker. You're pushing seven pounds. What's your handle?"

"This here's Maintenance Man. But I'm gone, Sandman, I got my hammer down. Maybe I'll catch you coming back, I do this trip twicet day."

"Have a good day, Maintenance Man, and a better one tomorrow." 9

And indeed the traffic on the bridge has broken loose, heavy motes of exhaust rise suddenly as if from a diver descending, and Sandy has the Pontiac eased into his reserved parking place behind the Department of Human Resources.

He draws his computer console across the cubicle on casters, and logs in.

The encrypted password is verified, the nonpresence of mail is announced, no message for the day is forthcoming, and, somewhat rebuked, Sandy inhibits the receipt of messages, retrieves his own file, canonicalizes his file with a reverse hire for a one-pass funding, concatenates it into a standard output, and initiates the command argument for the project at hand which is finally shaping up.

AN ANSWER TO ALL OBJECTIONS

ThE) r'e is 1"1(;) wa\:l to tE'll \:101 1 how so,' 1"::1 (ij 11 of us are that \:lOU have suffered this inconvenience. We pride ourselves on the perfect condition of our products and their safet'::l.

Unfortunatel'::l, however� the combination of man and machine is not alwB'::Is infallible. And with the numbers involved, there is alwa\:ls, statisticallYy the �ossibilit� of a br'eakdown.

Our intention- indeed our be-all and end-all, is to provide dependable Guality control, one that merits your continued confidence, and we deeply resret hearins of inc :i. r:.if?nts �.;uch d<;; t.hf' one wh i c h '::/01..1 brousht to our attention. Infre8uent as the\:l m<:l'::1 j:·.)f:� p w�· r'f:-�a]. i �:�€:' th :i. S do e s not make them easier to endure when one is personall!:1 a rivo Lved

Sandy is also moonlighting on his master's thesis, a cross-referenced concordance of his own personal filing cabinet. After going through Bank, Benefits, Book Clubs, Budget, Car, Correspondence, Father, Foodstuffs, Fruit by Mail, Funny Things, Insurance, Job, Mexico, Mother, Other (Family), he is up to Parents (deceased) and has Travel and Vita to go. But Sandy is always

nervous the first of the week. His trachea is sticky, he is allergic.

"Petrochemicals perhaps, dry cleaning fluid perhaps," his allergist says, "how could we know?" "There being no such thing as pure air," Dr. Onarga continues, "we eliminate the variables one by one, and if they are isolatable, you will be desensitized. Once nature is mastered, you see," he winks, "she no longer behaves as she once did, i.e. regularly."

Dr. Onarga has four offices at four different interchanges along the Interstate, spending one day in each. Each office is manned by four attractive girls, doubling as para-periodontists, all in white, disciples of a sort, white dresses, white stockings, and clean sharp genitals. They make up the serums, give the injections, and make you pay.

"Sure I'm a Gypsy," Dr. Onarga admits. "It's true, you know. I don't think we'll ever find out what's wrong with you."

Today Sandy is leaving out salts and frozen things. Yet the headaches persist. They are localized and constant. They appear to be unrelated to stress. At 10 A.M., on the Monday, the Sandman develops an egregious ongoing erection. Ten more hours until EI Cielito Lindo opens!

w€� ui s h to dS;=il.lrf.·· '::101..1 that th(':! matt.(,:"y' ha!;; been brought to the atLenLion of the repre�; errt a t, :i. Vi,') :i. n c h d J' �3f·.· i:) f ":101 IT' ;;' r ,:.\ a';:; 0 t h<:l t:. an� recurrence ma� be p�evented.

I f '::1 o U h 3 V €� C) C C ::l ':; .j o n to US P 0 i..J r F' Y" D Ij 1..1 C t. again, please sive us annther chance! We hate I..Innecessar� problems as much as �Ol..l.

The humanist busywork persists until lunch.

In the lunch line he keeps one hand in his pocket to disguise his adventitious dream of EI Cielito Lindo.

EI Cielito Lindo is located in the Breakers Motel and no one knows who owns the Breakers Motel except that the same architect who did the Left Bank and Dr. Onarga's offices also did the Breakers Motel, just as no one knows who had the idea for EI Cielito Lindo lounge, which has made it far and away the most profitable enterprise within its eight sister motels in the Inter-

change; nothing finer, nothing finer at all than to spend a few hours in El Cielito Lindo each evening. The lounge is always filled to capacity; salesmen fight viciously to be transferred within its territory, to be transported, transformed.

At four-fifteen Sandy is out early, on the overpass, and the aerial, like his parts, is no longer attached to the bumper.

"Hey, there, little purple four-wheeler on that bridge! You got a smoky report for me?"

"Haven't heard nothin' myself."

"You gettin' on? I'll watch your front door."

"I'm just crossing over, good buddy, we'll see you one day."

Arriving home, Sandy goes poolside for his daily fifty laps to relieve the swollen pupace, laid along the inner seam of his tank suit, as always pointing in the direction that he is going. Sheila, the legal secretary, giggles into a rum and coke as Sandy sidestrokes; the cusps of her muff protrude from her tank suit. The Sandman removes himself to the sauna where the redundant oompah may be sweated out, the whites of his large blue eyes now stained a cloister red from chlorine. Then out of those flared slacks and wide tie into the navy turtle-neck and crotch-respectingjeans for dinner while the TV serial blares its relaxing continuity.

ANNOUNCER'S VOICE: For several years now, the Beauregarde Bunch have built their reputation on a unique ability to extricate large American conglomerates from the serious situations they encounter in this topsy-turvy world, and cannot handle with internal procedures. Were it not for "the boys," the nation's economy, not to mention her spiritual well-being, could well be imperiled. In their last adventure, of course, we witnessed their astonishing simple and speedy solution to the gold drain problem for the United States government, and two episodes ago, you will recall, it was the boys who put AT&T back on its feet when threatened by the increasing use of telepathy for communication. Their name derives from an old Ugro-Finnish myth, little known in this part of the world. The legend, in brief, is as follows: Beauregarde, or "Great White Horse," originally was one of four, much the same, more or less their leader, though none of them really led, for they spent all their time just floating about the skies, enjoying each other's company. Once, however, a malevolent God sent a storm through the

air. None of the horses had ever seen or heard of a storm, so they were not sufficiently wary of it. They had never been wary. They had only seen sunlight, stars and moonlight, and an occasional comet. They knew no fear. Thus, when the storm came about them, they were all destroyed, dashed from heaven to earth. However, a benevolent God noticed this unfortunate situation and plotted to amend it. From the bodies of the original four, he was able to fashion a single new horse, white like the others and just as much of a flyer. There were several differences with this one, however. For example, he was able to come to earth on his own, slowing his reentry by means of a parachutelike tail and mane. He also had a considerable sophisticated sense of fear. He was very, very wary. And not without cunning. His reproductive ability was most unusual. He was unable to give rise to a horse. He could impregnate a horse, but a horse would never be born. He could also impregnate any type of animal, bird or fish as he chose-within reason, of course. So that a shark might give rise to a bass, and an eagle give rise to a mockingbird. A horse might give birth to a deer, and a giraffe a small bear or cow, though not vice versa. Even with his many variations, he soon became weary and bored, longing for someone to accompany him and cease merely populating the earth. With this in mind, he set out to create for himself a companion. He searched for a beautiful woman, with the intention that she produce a man he could carryon his back, so neither would ever be alone again in heaven or earth. Such a woman he found and this he did. However, to his considerable surprise, the woman died in childbirth, and instead of giving rise to man, gave rise to four shrewd and fully developed private investigators, three men and a woman, all gifted in strange and different ways. The legend goes on to describe their various gifts, their long companionship, and their travels together

Ah, dinner, dinnertime.

The traffic is loosened, the pavement smoothened, the overpass vibrates as a suspension bridge hung from the stars. Once over the bridge the pavement becomes viscous, all that oil and vinegar leaking into it all day, the asphalt is shredded head lettuce, the Pontiac pickled cabbage.

In Bruno's Pizza the waitress is nice enough, a college girl; the garbanzos are crunchy, the croutons are crunchy, the celery sticks are very crunchy, but across the small pond of his beer, Sandy spies the thick-armed counterman taking down a five-gallon can of dehydrated onions and pouring a bucket of water into them. The college girl takes his order, "a fifteen-incher with everything." Then, as his pizza is slipped into the oven, Sandy slips out into the night; this will keep them on their toes! Pizza with Everything for Nobody.

He retreats to Pauline's, where he orders the standby, a Polish with jalipinos. It appears from a small, screened window which is immediately slammed. The police watch Sandy eat from their patrol car, wide-brimmed hats pulled tightly over their thick brows, check the alignment of Sandy's bite, a chomp achieved over a period of four years at a cost of nearly $7,000. Reflect on that, porker and peppers, as the bun is forced upward past the pointed incisors into the upper palate. At twenty-five, Sandy is beginning to respect reticence more than anything.

Gazing at the Smokies, his mouth full, Sandy is aware of irrational team allegiances, and he has made it a fairly moral point that the internal rhythms of whatever game he is watching never become his own. He eschews the dangerous precedent of "the season"; he watches baseball only during the series, and then only if it goes to games six and seven, only the fourth quarter of the crucial game four of the home basketball play-offs; and as for football, only the instant replays at halftime in the last half of the season before the play-offs, when betting and theory both peak. Sandy respects selectivity more than anything.

He is back in the garrette with only two more hours till opening. He works his CB base station on the wicker trunk at the foot of the bed. Above the bed, thumbtacked to the Spanish-type headboard, are two Polaroid photos his dead parents, Tyler and Travis. Sandy took the photos a few years ago. The once nearly fluorescent colors have faded; they are standing on a dock. A lake spreads out behind them. They are wind-tanned. The wind is blowing in their brittle hair. They wear matching sweat shirts with the lake's name on them. It is a fine sharp fall day. There is a mess of fish in a corner in the picture. Lake trout. Great northern. Ohhhhhhhhhhh. He experiences an xanthein rush. He holds himself.

The wiring for the base station was completed months ago. Sandy has a new crystal in a jeweler's vise; with a diamond cutter he makes a groove, its slight fresh dust immediately absorbed by the room's normal banal dust. Between the factory marks, through a thick lens, the Sandman cuts the groove for a new channel exactly between the government/military and citizens' bands270407 megahertz. At first there is discernible silence, and then is some primordial formulacic static. Then static in a siren pattern. If not birth exactly, continuity. Reassurance. The sirens of incredulity. He has divided static from silence and the static is good.

"Breaker, Breaker," Sandy intones. "This be the Sandman. Anybody out there, hey? Anybody got their ears up?"

Comforting static ensues. Only a matter of time before a new synapse will be bridged. The campanile of the community college strikes ten.

Sandy removes his jeans-the one rule at EI Cielito Lindo is no jeans-slips into his beltless cuffless pocketless cowboy twill slacks with the eight-button fly, the Mexican wedding shirt cut deep at the throat, an intricate series of flaps pleats and ruffles, brushes his teeth carefully, after a disclosing agent has revealed the plaque, seals his armpits, winds the gold chain twice about his neck, slips into the angora socks with the dancing pads, and the magenta penny loafers, the color of state police cars.

The Pontiac nudges into one of the few spots left at the Breakers. Above him two hundred feet in the air a marquis revolves, no ballyhoo, here, just

CIELITO LINDO LOUNGE DANCE

in bold type to attract the barefaced types, italic bedfellows.

On the double glass doors of the Breakers a "No Vacancy" sign sways as if lacking certitude. In the lobby a man is belaboring a phone concerning an aborted rent-a-car agreement in Cincinnati two days before.

A nuclear family of six has been caught innocently in the action. Mom is splayed with the unfed youngest in a sling chair, Dad's tummy conforms gelatinously to the molding of the front desk, the eleven-year-old girl trembles thin as an alder in the dark vestibule of vending machines, while the seven-year-old boy twins push ob-

solescent styrene autos about the long bladed feet of two cocained Cubans, who are only slightly less revulsed by this spectacle than Sandy himself. The autos stall in the heavy shag, the Cubans salute desultorily, and only a dozen feet away is the smoky entrance to the lounge from whence issues the Cielito Lindo theme song.

Ay yi, yi-yi

Come to your window

Sandy skirts the pride of Cubans who have repaired to a circular red plush banquette where they cross and cross their bandy legs. They are waiting for the lounge to overflow, a periphery to coalesce, break away as algae on a stream; they will pick off the stragglers and inoculate them.

Strictly Amateur Evening so far: milling swilling yahoos, dumb cunts, poor fuckers, the Skanks who never scare, the Nerds who never score. The Skanks, hairpieces piled on their thin skull plates, as carefully arranged as goat droppings in the high passes of Montenegro; they are so demanding, the Skanks, and yet they seem to get so very little for their efforts, the Skanks. What happens to such enormous ongoing unsatisfied demand? Does it rise into the ozone and acidify the rain? Some evenings it seems almost palpable, impacted like old chewing gum against the ceiling, aerosoling in the corners. It hovers, melds with dust; if it cannot rise despite its lightness, is it possible that this is what Sandy is allergic to?

Of the Nerds, let us not judge. Their lot is the more hopeless, since they cannot blame their lack of success on looks or money, only their lack of effort. Many a Nerd has made it through sheer willfulness; the entire world is their exhibition, they succeed in spite of themselves, and if we are not amused, we nevertheless make way for them. The Skanks do not believe in luck, though perhaps increasingly in collective will. But whereas the Nerds must actually produce power, the Skanks must not only transmit information, they must maintain a state, until power, an effective procedure, is plugged in. Then the rules change, and they enter another state; they make the transition if they care to, and mostly they do. If it sounds easy to achieve a state, this has always been a great misconception, one whose debt is only now being amortized; it is said the Skanks are capable of an astronomical number of states. It is too early yet for the Aficionados.

Over in the serving bar, Sandy can make out the ovulate buttocks of Wanda June, roll girl at the Laughing Turtle by day, queen of the Lindo barmaids by night; she spies Sandy and brings him a tinkling Scotch, not the bar Scotch but Johnny Walker, laughing in a nice imitation of anticipation. An ounce of justice has been meted out and the litigation has begun.

Sandy's Scotch is inverted, and the twin lucite shells, one on his chest, one in his ass, begin to lose their mucilage. His lungs are rescored. He reaches down through his elastic waistband, through the striped thunder-shorts, and massages a whorl of hair. He walks the long bar, not recognizing a single expectant face, faces hung with vine and tendrils. On the very last stool a pale long-jawed woman in a red gown is crooning:

Oh Johnny Walker

I love you

I'll luck you

But every time you put me down

You put me on the floor

Sandy's shields fall with a clatter. Wanda June kicks them out of the aisle. At the inner circle, in the pit below the stage, the bestest baddest dancers always sit at the tiniest tables, athletic professionals awaiting the unsingable national anthem. An outer ring of tables for four forms the second tier, each with a plastic candle bowl, illumined fishnets encased in amber; the netting projects a webbing across the faces, everyone has been scarred in exactly the same way and here comes the band! Ruby, Nimrod, and the Conquerors of Babylon: big-lipped drummer, two poker-faced guitarists, and one solemn fellow who does nothing but diddle with the amplifiers, Maestro Luncheon. As for Nimrod, we are glad that he is employed, that he is heavily taxed for both his pleasure and his profession. Of Ruby we can say only her fine throat and navel compensate for her nasal; her charisma lies in her state, such a state, her knowledge that her appeal is lodged in our mind's eye; nothing she could ever do will ever sway her charm, as long as she can wink that navel, all shall blink. Charm can get you anything, Sandy knows, anything except competence. And he has plenty of that to throw around. Yes, no one person can satisfy you in EI Cielito Lindo, nobody here says you're wrong and I'm right.

Sandy is a touch melancholy, for when the shields clatter to the

carpet no one is aware. He sidles up to a loudspeaker and cocks his cheek against the vibrating cloth, all ears. He is filled with the beat, the base line enters every orifice; melody has no place in these interstices of extreme quiescence. But as his body is filled, adumbrated, Sandy realizes there is nothing, nothing coming out of Sandy.

He breaks with the sound. The dancing has become wilder. Nimrod raises two fingers in the V sign for the EI Cielito Lindo stomp, in which your instep is knocked gently against your partner's, then shin to back of knee, and, penultimately, the flat of the ankle to ass WHOA, the evening's mission has announced itself. Two large married ladies in their early thirties on their night out, taking their slumming very seriously indeed. At home on TV, four plots of four detective series are resolving themselves simultaneously: gun battles on a hydroelectric project, in an unfinished skyscraper, in a warehouse, and down in a sewer.

Sandy grabs Wanda June, sets her tray of drinks on the lap of an astonished cowboy-looking fellah, pulls her to the perimeter of the flail and stomp, and, tucking in his shirt, does it half-time, in syncopation the ladies' eyes are upon him. His joints pop like flounder dropped into the hold. Inurgently, the passional auditing has begun.

These are really big ladies, six-foot mothers! One in a below-theknee pink riding skirt and flowered halter, seashell necklace, bracelets of tortoise, a blonde racing stripe across her bangs; the other one, prettier possibly, in open-toed pumps, sleeveless tricot blouse, Gucci scarf, a bit of macrame here and there, and a nice mandala of bewildered earnestness in the middle of her face.

Wanda June kicks a toe above the Sandman's brow; he snaps his thickening fingers. The Conquerors have taken a break, but the tape of their newest album takes right over, Words of Life on the Wings of Melody. Sandy pecks at Wanda June's wet nape, the soft kiss melts into the forest of eyes at the bar. The salesmen have arrived in their dramaturgical double knits. One stands out, a leader in some larger town, very handsome silvery-haired man in gray and white double-breasted seersucker, every inch an executive, here on some mysterious debriefing. Sandy breaks from his slight despond; he simply cannot believe his luck. God has provided him with a stalking-horse! The handsome gentleman is now bending

courtlily between the two ladies. Don't be a pig, hey, Mr. Vice President of Internal Operations! She of the riding habit responds with alacrity, but she of the macrame looks straight ahead of her where Sandy was dancing in space. The mandala has become a gear! A predestined slow mood-piece comes on and the gentleman has the haltered lady out on the floor. They are dancing on their toes!

Sandy takes over the dancing lady's empty chair, appropriates her Cielito Lindo doily-in the silent toast his fat Scotch displaces his companion's face. She aligns the stem of her whiskey sour with his nose. He is careful to say nothing that might deny him the votes of the large industrial states. In the lovely unspokenness, the undancing lady loosens the chin strap on her sunbonnet.

A sunbonnet! Sandy very nearly exclaims but bites his tongue.

Sandy mulls the meaning, the options here. Either she wants to get fucked or she can't dance. This is a problem, a world in which there is no difference between dancing and fucking, everyone moving about in a slow, lilting semiotic flickstrot.

They are speaking now, Sandy and the pretty lady, but it's not clear at all who's saying what in all the din. Wanda June has brought two more drinks, but then she always does. It's apparent, however, from their expressions and unhurried gestures, that this is no impromptu routine, no game, no crass negotiation, or keeping score. All conversation in EI Cielito Lindo is charged with infinite innuendo, a common purpose, a single people with one language with one unmistakable meaning; no division, no confusion here, they will treat one another as equals and show mutual respect and dignity without old-fashioned reserve or role-playing, conversation between adults, straight talk.

"My dad," Sandy reminisces, "said that to be free, to be, successful in your beingness, is like being a good hitter. Everyone wants to be free, everybody wants to play every day, but there's no way if you can't hit, no matter how well you field, or how much spirit you have, the mastering of the little things, the intangibles, the great attitude, the unselfishness that makes a winner, you'll play just as long until they bring up a hitter, then you'll be on the bench and the bench is no place for a free man. But nobody, see, knows what makes a hitter; hitting can't be taught; the best hitters can't even tell you how they do it. Oh, sure, they say things like be free up

there, but they can say that to you on the bench, be a free swinger up there they say, but most great hitters are lousy coaches and even a good hitter is still guessing up there, even the best Punch and Judy hitter is not a free swinger, he can't afford to guess. To be a real hitter you have to be smart enough to take a pitch or two, to guess

"My dad was into fishing," she eagerly rejoins. "The only bamboo that was good enough for him was a special one that came from a tiny province of China, Kwangsi; Tonkin cane he used to call it, honey, Tonkin cane, Arundinaria amabilis, he used to say, honey, isn't that pretty, honey, Arundinaria amabilis? It's the cellular structure of the cane that gives its elasticity and resistance to fatigue, all the subtle requirements that you might expect from a fine rod. You might just know that all female bamboos flower only once every thirty to one hundred years, depending on the species; and when this particular species flowers in Kwangsi, its near relatives flower all over the world at the same time, and after they all flower, they die; they go to seed, so to speak, all at the same time, and this causes great hardship not only to anglers, but whole communities in Asia are virtually wiped out, and they have outbreaks of bubonic plague. Rats really go for female bamboo that's gone to d " see

"You're my quarterback," Sandy interrupts. She is scanning him like an air comptroller, head lowered, neck sunk down in the collarbone, resisting the impulse to ignore the true blip-blip in the radarscope and gaze down the long ribbon of landing lights, those lights which have nothing to do with the actual traffic and only serve to make everything darker. Sandy has wings over his eyes, and a small pair over his heart, a pelican's pair on his haunches, wings everywhere except where they should be. Then all the pairs of wings go rigid; they are ailerons, brakes. The nacelles of the engines flare orange. The lady's thumbs are up, he has asked for and received clearance, she checks her chronometer-such a large watch for such a little wrist-and then they are arm and arm in the lobby, a matched pair of high-stepping trotters, hauling a driverless sleigh filled with unlabeled but beautifully wrapped packages to be opened one by one. It is not difficult to resist degradation in the lobby-the mauve couple in the comer,

for example, with their hands thrust up one another, and the Cubans with their hypodermic dicks.

She opens her own door, on a room very much like Sandy's, very much like the other three hundred and sixty-odd in the Breakers, as wide and clean as an express lane. The mist from her recent bath condenses upon the windows, the mirrors turn opaque; she nevertheless draws the drapes and they are surrounded on all sides by modular panels of mums and finches, trees, flowers, and the plashing streamlet, the scene replicated every six feet, lying naked now arm in arm, repeating now what will be repeated eventually in every room about them, just as the trees and flowers and plashing streamlet repeat about them, in the evening of their day.

At the chimera of midnight the waters have been divided from the waters-all, thank the Lord of Waters, is lubricious; there are waters over here and over there; the fundament has appeared beneath the firmament. Still dark, it is technically barely Tuesday; the campanile of the community college will let no one forget it. Rivulets of saliva, perspiration cascade down the inner creases, the seams we have spoken of, commingle in inexplicable declivities; sternum, the fault between the stomach muscles, everything slips effortlessly, huge slabs of cordwood, barked and split, shine around their sawmill; once cured, they will be lathed into Mediterraneantype TV pedestals, lathered with polyurethane gloss, but for now the wood gleams and soaks in its resin, the grain has been exposed to the elements, and it marbles spectacularly in their daze. The lady, however, has mistaken exhaustion for morning, which at the Breakers does not begin until noon, when the inventory is taken and the cash flow begins. She balls her tiny fists, stretches her arms, and her breasts pull not quite flat. Sandy knows: it was not the campanile which woke them, but the phone.

About the only unattractive thing about the lady was her laugh, or rather its involution. Her youthful jubilation had been so unabashed and full throated, and her parents and peers had teased her about it so severely, that she had taken to arresting it by opening her mouth so theatrically wide as to cut off the epiglottis, and it

was this noiseless image of a guffaw which now spent itself upon Sandy's clear brow.

He entered the bath from the mirrored door, the fifth of Johnny Walker in hand, and, bending from the waist, like a maitre d', kissed the dark and massy islet rising from the water. When she laughed, he sat back startled on the commode.

"Why are we so good together, Sandy? Just because we're new to each other?"

"Because we've got nothing to prove?" Sandy offered, staring at the blinking message light.

"It's odd you should say that. It's just lately that I've wanted to prove something."

"With me?" Sandy said nervously.

"Not exactly just with everybody," she said very softly.

Sandy seemed distracted. He sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on knees, rubbing his eyes. Then her knees were on the red spots his elbows had left, her arms wound about his head, softly biting his nape. Sandy steadied himself on his palms, blowing her hair aside so he could watch the message light.

"You know," she said from over his shoulder, "from the back you don't look more than fifteen."

"It's a bad back, though. Inside, I mean. I have to sit down to urinate now."

"This is not a problem she began argumentatively, but the phone rang again sharply, and the lady's hands went to her heart. Sandy picked up the bath extension without a word as she dried herself furiously.

"Mommy," the phone crackled, burned in the Sandman's hand. "Mommy!"

She snatched the receiver from him. "Oh Christ, Brucie, what's wrong?"

"When are you coming home, Mommy?"

"Tomorrow, honey, just like I told you."

"Well uh," a deeper voice broke in. "Nothing's wrong here, dear. We just wanted to call before bed. I didn't see the harm "

"Christ, it's after midnight, Fred! That child has school."

"It's only ten here."

"Get your goddamn time zones straight, Fred!"

Water streamed from Corinne's eyes.

"All right, Brucie?" Fred said. "See, Mommy's all right."

"Mommy'sjust fine, Brucie. You bless Mommy in your prayers, hear?"

"Bye-bye, Mommy. I miss you."

"Yes, of course, give your Daddy a big kiss." She replaced the receiver gingerly.

Sandy was smoking a small cigar.

"How's everything at home?"

"Fine, to hear them tell it."

"Is what you're trying to prove, have to do with him?"

"Not exactly."

"Sounds like a nice family."

"Of course. I have a talent that way too."

"I don't have a family."

"You don't seem like the type, if I may say so."

"As a matter of fact, I don't have anyone. And you know what?"

"What?"

"It doesn't seem to matter to me."

"Of course."

"Of course what?"

"Just, naturally. You know."

"Yes, well of course I'd like to have one, a family, some day."

"Course. "

"Course I guess you don't want to talk."

"Dammit," the lady yelled, pounding her thighs, Sandy dropping ashes over his chest and then flailing madly at the sparks, "Damn you, don't you know what's happening with women?"

Sandy looked around for an ashtray, both hands cupped with ashes. His chest was smeared with charcoal, his parts become quite small.

"You mean women in general?"

"If you like. In America."

"You mean they're more outgoing and all?"

"Go on."

"No, I don't know much about it, I guess. It's a lot easier to get laid, a course."

"So that's how you think about it."

"Look, lady, were you saving this number for me?"

"You appear to be a sane, strong, and decent young man, who

ought to know better. Who ought to know what's coming off."

"Know what?" Sandy had absentmindedly slipped on his crimson acetate thunder-shorts.

"Don't you ever talk about this with your girlfriends?"

"What business is it of mine ?"

"They don't tell you what it's like to be a woman?"

"They don't complain much, if that's what you mean."

"They have their life and you have yours. Is that it?"

"Well I wouldn't say that. That's presumptuous."

"And I suppose I'm the exception that proves the rule."

"Which rule?"

"Kiddo, don't you believe there're some things people can't express, but they can feel them happening all around them? That we're on the edge of things?"

"Personally or politically?"

"In between."

"And down the road?"

"You're not going to like it."

"I'm not liking it right now much, ma'am."

"Well, put it this way. Why were you attracted to me?"

Sandy thought for a while, his clear brow knotted like an intestine and, as if it were a prerequisite for reflection, he slipped on his slacks and socks.

"Well, lady, you're smart, and pretty, but maybe what 1 think 1 like best about you is that you're tough enough but don't have to show it all the time."

" Very disarming," she said desperately.

"Hey, you want something to eat?"

"I can't bear the thought of getting dressed again."

"OK, let's have something sent up."

"I'm not hungry, and that's it, sonny, that's what's happening. We are getting tougher and we're going to show it more."

Sandy paused, respectfully. "I don't think that's what you meant to say."

She lay back and, wrapping an ice cube from her drink in a washcloth, laid it upon her sinuses.

"You know, lady, 1 just don't get it. If you just could say what you wanted you'd probably get it."

"How could you know what I want?"

"That's what 1 just said."

"Look, sonny, 1 simply can't decide whether 1 want to throw off everything inessential or get more of everything. Can't you understand?"

"Oh, lady, that's just how a man feels."

"Go get something to eat yourself. Go home. I've got to beat this cold before 1 leave tomorrow."

"You want me to come back later? 1 can do it."

"Suit yourself."

"I will not," Sandy said with some dignity, "take the onus for this snafu!"

"You know sonny, you are beginning to smell like my husband."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. Scotch."

Sandy thought for a moment as he slipped on his shirt.

"Well, then," he said, "you smell like your husband too."

Then he left without another word, for some reason carrying his loafers on his two longest fingers like a part-time fisherman with two incredulous champion trout. As he shut the door softly, he heard the woman who thought like a man begin to cry.

She woke to hear moans. She reached out to embrace Sandy but found only slick sheet. Then she thought she was dreaming, not awake in a strange town; her difficult breathing had startled her, and this was somehow indicative of her life, forever being shaken out of real release, prevented from dreaming by her own banal breath. But slowly the inventory of the room took stock of her; the dumb mums and lousy finches, the stiff vinyl drapes, the emphysemic whine of the air conditioning enforced themselves. The moans reached a crescendo. A woman's moans, and not three feet from her through the wall-that conventionally rhythmic cry, somewhere between ecstasy and pain, a wordlessness refined to the point where it could be taken in whatever way its interpreter wished, named by every man to suit his fashion. It was the first time she had heard it from another, and she lay rigid, nearly comatose, waiting anxiously for the silences to come.

Then she was in her robe in the hall, standing before the adja25

cent room where moaning had given way to the low squabble of a late-night talk show. She was startled by a stunning black maid in a pinafore, at least six feet two with the face of a West Indian goddess, who strode peremptorily down the hall and disappeared through double swinging doors into the help's respite room. She watched the doors until they ceased shuffling against one another, and then she heard voices again, charmingly accented, then tearful, and finally more sobbing. From behind every door, the voices of women whispering, sighing, weeping.

Back in her room, she bolted the door, then unlocked it, realizing Sandy would misinterpret if he chose to return. At three P.M. she turned on the TV and spun the dial-Charlton Heston, Jesus -snapped it off; then, her lungs crackling with dehydration, she tried to open the window. But it was sealed, of course. She filled a water tumbler with the last of the Scotch, and began to count the finches. There were 247 fucking finches in this room. She tried the lyre-back chair at the writing desk; under the glass desk top a card garlanded with puppies and rhododendrons announced: "We shall do our utmost to please you." Above the desk, she reached for a book but found that the spines of the leather editions had been sawed off and glued to a board. And then in the mirror she caught sight of her damaged bed, the pillows and sheets scattered about the floor, exploded as artificially as in a store window display, a buyer's market then she dialed long distance. But when Fred's cloudy voice, circumspect even in sleep, answered, she banged the receiver down and felt, for the first time in her thirty-odd years, that she was perfectly capable of both inconsequence and betrayal.

Now it was dawn, She sat cross-legged in her chair, eyeing herself in the mirror in a way that she hadn't since her teens. She opened her robe slowly, then let it fall back. She touched her stomach, ran her hands over her crispness, as if it were a stranger's pet, and then lay back, strangely calm. She had come to that irrefragably momentous American knowledge, contracted her nation's most recent humor. She was, in the most complex way, simply fed up. She didn't want to go home. She didn't want to stay away and live it up. She didn't want to apologize to Sandy, she didn't care if she saw him again but knew she would. She didn't want to take the night flight to Acapulco, she didn't want to buy one more single

thing, she wanted her husband and son in the worst way, but not the way they were; she didn't want to be anybody else, or with anybody else, and she didn't want to be alone. She knew then that no person, feeling, or idea would ever solve the common problem of this slightly overheated, overdecorated room. The abiding question of self-esteem seemed, if topical, nevertheless out of order.

She put the night latch on the door, confirmed her plane reservations, left a heavy tip for the mysterious beautiful maid, and after a heavy dose of antihistamine and the last of Sandy's Scotch, watched the room close about her, a foot at each blink.

In the air again. We are patient, relaxed, only at incredible speeds. It is only then, when there is no wheel to grab, no pedal to push, that our fatalism is wholly convincing. Pale, without makeup, hair tied severely back, on the aisle this time, she has requested the bulkhead seat facing the galley. Beyond, the closeted controls. Each time the stewardess passes, her elbow brushes her hair, and, with a couple of Bloody Marys under her belt, this is all right. Everyone on the flight is drunk.

She is wedged in among the conventioneers, fedoras still high on their foreheads, sweating even at 32,000 feet, like the one pecan in the packet of cashews just handed her labeled "mixed nuts."

The men all have on heavy college rings, wedding bands, and nameplates: Harold, Dick, and Fitz. She has the same, except hers are a bit smaller. In fact, everybody on the entire plane seems to have on rings and nameplates, from the Jewish rear stewardess, T. Rich, to the imperturbable Scandinavian Captain Anderson. The men are talking a highly technical language, perhaps out of some long-forgotten embarrassment. They are not your everyday salesmen, but some kind of engineers, probably petrochemical or geomorphological. She winces out of the window. The landscape below the light cirrus appears like a load of soiled diapers. The men are elbowing each other, fighting for breathing room; they are talking about getting mugged; the windows are steaming up. Somebody says, "Well, what the hell do they expect me to do? Start over at forty-two?" She wishes her laugh was not soundless. She would like the sound, not just the shape, of her laugh back, please.

Somebody has left the cockpit door open; the navigator is re-

clining and reading a comic book, welded in the curve of his brown hands. The pilot and copilots' heads are bathed in the Caribbean light of their incredible instrumentation. A tight-lipped woman emerges from the forward toilet. Her eyes are also red and wet. Garbage is mounting about them: discarded newspapers, cups and napkins, gutted mixed-nut sacks, Kleenex. The cold has gone to her chest. Why do they give you a menu when there's no choice, she thinks. Why do they build the shore so close to the sea? The man next to her is singing to himself. When their elbows brush, he jerks an unspoken, involuntary apology. She has no more questions, so she watches the stews. In the island of the lavatory, they exchange their pumps for flats, their slacks for culottes, their jackets for blouses and apronettes. Their epaulets and braid are piled in the comer with sanitary napkins and airsickness bags. They slam everything, even the tiniest doors in the galley. All the little doors and windows have made them crass. Girls without grace, but this is impossible between takeoff and landing, a good plane with no blood on it. The intercom has been found defective. The primary stew coils the microphone's impotence about her wrist, grinding her teeth. Another holds the yellow scrotum of an oxygen bag above her head, blowing on a tube, while yet another reads the prepared text as best she can without amplification. She knows no one can see her and certainly no one listens to her, even in three languages, except perhaps one random disguised inspector. To their everlasting credit, they are laughing at themselves. The eggs are under radar, the baby's milk is being boiled. Shit, they say. Another baby. The champagne has been broken out. And the clouds, the cirrus, are becoming themselves as we cannot.

Our lady has resolved to worry no more-about herself, at any rate-and releases her seatback. But as she does so, a strange and constant pressure exerts itself upon her kidneys. She glances over her shoulder and sees a little boy behind her, clutching his mother's wrist, his legs stiffened in fear against her seatback. The woman is about her age, but puffier and paler; nothing, clearly, but a mother. But then she hears her own voice, if not exactly her choice of words, as well as that of Brucie and them all.

"Don't kick the seat. Didn't you see that lady turn around?"

"I'm scared, mama."

"Look. Here're the directions. It says sit straight up and fasten seat belts. Are we doing it right? Fine."

"Would he like some breakfast?" a stew leans over, "or maybe even a hot dog?"

"I want to go down," the child whines, and squirms.

"Sit back and shut up!"

"The engines went off. We stopped," the child says, without a quaver.

"That always happens when we're through climbing," the stew says. "Don't you watch television?"

"I always thought that too when I first flew," the mother said.

"I can't see any lights any more," the kid says.

"Look out the window," says the stew. "See, we're not stopped."

"Do what the nice lady says, and wave to Daddy and Aunt Ella and Chipper." She feels the child's feet relax just for an instant but then kick forward with redoubled force. It reminds her of Sandy's competent but programmatic thrusting. The male rigido.

"There's a hole in the wing!" the child yells.

"Those are just flaps, honey," the stew said. "We're leveling off now."

"He got that from television," Mother says.

"Hello, Aunt Ella!"

"Don't yell, child. Aunt Ella can't hear you. She's deaf."

"Daddy?"

"You promised your daddy you'd be good. Now read the instructions again. Out loud this time. Come on, how about a hot dog,honey?"

The stews are passing up and down the aisle, absorbing the leers and fears, relating the captain's anticipation of turbulence. "Please stay seated," they say. It is getting darker outside. They are going faster than the sun. It isn't fast enough. Outside, on the wing, where the labial ailerons have been retracted, it is written thrice: NO STEP. NO STEP. NO STEP.

"We're going down now, mama."

"Yes, dear, we're going down."

"Where to?"

"When we get home, we'll go to the filling station and get some steaks?"

"I don't want to go down."

"You can't fly all day. You can't fly any more than to home."

"But 1 don't want to go down."

"You didn't want to go up before. Maybe you'll grow up to be an astronaut."

"Are we down now, mama?"

"Not yet." The stew passes a hot dog to the kid.

"Oh, now you've got mustard allover. Wipe it off." "No."

"Shut up or I'll leave you here. You want to be left here?" "No."

"You want to take the bus home all by yourself?"

"Will Daddy be there?"

"We just said good-bye to daddy. He's in Newark. Be a big boy. Be a man now. Or you'll have to find your own way home."

She lay back. There wasn't much she would have added to that bit. What man had ever forgotten it? It wasn't the sort of thing one could be intelligent about. She conjures Sandy above her; with each thrust he closes his light eyes. Well, there's something nice about flying, really; about the futility of giving contrary directions at such a height, where fear and toughness are all of a piece. Not at all like coming back from a party with old double-vision Fred, grinding your teeth in the swerving car, wearing out an imaginary brake pedal with a toeless pump from the death seat. The trees which line the road in Fred's wandering lights are the same color as our fuselage

The child was stamping now. And the man beside her had evidently succeeded in singing himself to sleep, for he was slouched heavily on her shoulder, an enormous two-tone brogue like a fallen plinth against her calf.

She was just about to request a change in seating when the cockpit door reopened and the Captain emerged. He was exceptionally handsome in a stereotypical way, tanned with silvered temples and golden eyes. The Captain touched the bill of his cap over the halfsupine lady, but did not look down.

"We have an announcement. There will be increasing turbulence the rest of the way. Please keep your belts on. Also, we're stacked

up in an indefinite holding pattern. But if you look out the window," he finished proudly, "you can see the lights of Akron."

Then as the plane suddenly broke its plane, the Captain smiled self-consciously and braced himself against her seatback. His manicured nails were an inch from her mouth. The child's feet were relentless at her hams. The gentleman to her left had begun to snore. The Captain's hand was ringless, whorled like Sandy's with golden hair and large veins. Large light-blue veins. Also, a raised scar, like Akron from the air, another ganglion of strangulated energy. Like what lay in her lap. Like what kicked her in the back. Like what drove the plane. Like what lit the clouds. Though not enough alike.

The Captain thought the lady was about to scream or vomit. But it was only her suppressed laughter again. Pretty lips drawn up from pretty teeth, offense she was taught not to commit, defense against the tears she would not permit.

"Too many," she was thinking, "just too many damn people to love."

2

Brusha, brusha, the mirror's flecked with the suds of Sandy's violent toothbrush-gums, like all his tissues, thickened and coarse from abuse. A cloudburst has lengthened the great lawn surrounding the complex of the simple life, la V-Boheme, the pips of the cherry trees have appeared in one long smooch. Even the pear, bulldozed and pushed a thousand yards and left on its side in the trash pit, has miraculously rerooted horizontally and is fairly loaded with ovoids.

Before he leaves for the office Sandy checks out his new secret channel on the CB. The static has become less dramatic, less fulsome, and has lost its internal harmonies and echo. And there is, well, a voice-unattributable, laconic, conversational. At first

Sandy thinks it's another channel drifting in, but while the tone is casual, it's clear the person is talking to no one but himself. He has been caught somehow unawares, tinkering with his own set, feeling out its spectrum, talking to himself as Adam must have as he contemplated his dominion, before it was necessary to chat and trade off conversation for sexual favors. The voice makes no literal sense, an androgenous voice unaware of audience, and Sandy must resist the temptation to make contact, to interrupt, to talk. This out of a respect, the depths, the architecture of which he has no understanding, a respect for respect. He tries to listen-not to the sense of the words, but simply to the equable self-absorbed squabble of human speech at singing play before it became attentive to another. While he does that, he occupies himself with changing the Color Pak on his kitchenette. Each appliance has four mylar sheets to accent the day. He exchanges the avocado for brushed chrome, rejecting the harvest gold and magenta for another day. He hopes he can live with the brushed chrome, that he will never have need of the harvest gold and/or magenta.

Summoned into the office, his clock has started over, he wonders how to categorize the human resources of the woman who thought like a man. He can still smell of her, he misses her, he wishes he had a supportive response for her; above all, he wishes that she did not so devoutly desire categorization-this is what, in his guarded way, which some mistook for indifference, he was trying to tell her. At first, he consigned her to the largest category to date-Guilt-but that was too easy. He scanned the file, from Asshole to Undefeated, but with so little data to feed, her exponency was quickly determined Perdurable; the screen flashed ah, put her down under Perdurable-not a bad job, that.

Understandably, Sandy had come circuitously to his interest in computer processing. While it was certainly true that his vocational guidance counselor had pressed the field upon him, his motivation was negative, if disgust can still be called such. For while the popular impression of such engineers was one of self-absorption, and while he had found his schoolmates insufferable overachievers, his mentors were the only men he knew who had genuine humility about the processes and effects of what served them materially and interested them conceptually. Most of them, like his terrific boss Haas, were prodigies. Haas himself had doctorates in

astrophysics and economics at the age when all Sandy could think of was snatch and smelled of his fingers in the bus to out-of-town games. Haas was already assistant director of the department and kept a harpsichord next to his console in his office.

It was as if, in their incredibly accelerated lives, these gifted children knew that their only chance for a moment of repose was to spread the suds of enormous patience about the flashpoint of their talent. They seemed to understand the perils of curiosity, which in normal people is not curiosity at all, but only a vague and spurious list of options. But what Sandy admired most about Haas was his ability to be cheerfully dowdy and stubborn in the face of the world's ignorance, when the proper response would certainly have been baleful cynicism or paranoid arrogance. Ah yes, it is not blackheartedness that most offends people, but purity of mind. Invariably when Sandy met younger faculty from the community college at EI Cielito Lindo, they dismissed his work as "genocide," with the ignorance only people with nothing left but a constricting sense of irony can maintain. They all looked, dressed, and talked the same; they were congenitally incapable of making a first move. Haas was the only person Sandy knew who did not check out EI Cielito Lindo at least two nights a week. Indeed, as far as he knew, Haas had never been there.

Sandy himself was on the furthest periphery of the computer field, what is known in the trade as a "hacker" because he was master of a few specific processes upon which minds like Haas were dependent, but he was unable to understand either the cause or consequences of the machine in total. Perhaps this is why he found EI Cielito Lindo so necessary-as a kind of Canaanite temple of temptation to counter the authoritative mystery of the Real Church. Haas chided him, in fact-Haas of the terrible complexion, heavy black glasses, pustules bursting as often as ideas, and a forehead in which the wrinkles were mostly vertical. "You'll never be more than a hacker until you stop getting your kicks from asserting your power over the machine. You'll never understand a thing until you relinquish that. You want to demonstrate power, not receive pleasure."

But Haas was uncharacteristically imprecise about what that pleasure state was like, even with an 10 in excess of 180. "There are only two enterprises which are in themselves interesting," he

says-"describing the world as if it were human and describing human behavior in terms other than human. The more complex the description, the more expressive of reality. You can't agree with that, I know. Your virtue, you believe, is in your directness."

Haas himself seemed an embodiment of a theory too complex for anyone to understand. He acted as though he was in touch with those tacit axioms that ruled and described the universe, those space-time frames within which one could observe physical events working out their destinies. It was as if, having the ability to genuinely grasp the theory of relativity or the principle of uncertainty, he accepted the fact that his work would be forever incomplete, rather than using scientific notions as metaphors to excuse some small bathetic deviation from the norm. The enormity of this theoretical understanding made him calm when making everyday prosthetic decisions; for Haas, the next best possible guess was quite enough, and the fact that something lacked evidence was proof that a judgment had to be made and a procedure developed, no matter how arbitrary. He thought conceptually, as most people walk. Unlike most people, he believed in his mind precisely because he knew he could never understand how it worked. He knew that his knowledge was more than he could tell, more than he could put into any language, even mathematics, and this fact, so much the topic of fashionable despair of those who cannot even balance their checkbooks, did not seem to bother him in the least. "The suspension of disbelief is the hardest thing in the world," Haas said, "and you'd better remember that computers have prevented this country from thinking about itself. They preserved and stabilized institutions which otherwise would have changed or collapsed. Now that we are committed to them, the computers cannot be factored out of the system; like it or not, we are indispensable. The old question of whether we create demand or meet intrinsic demand is no longer an interesting or even a real question. No system has meaning unless change is predictable."

Since Sandy's mind was above average, perhaps, but hardly exemplary, he could claim no intellectual fascination with the machines. On the whole, indeed, he found them less predictableat least, in his experience-than human beings. Most of the people he knew acted far more regularly, predictably, and routinely than even the simplest of the machines, and for this reason he never en-

vied their speed or accuracy or prophetic skills, but only their immunity to tedium. Also, it was Haas's observation that Sandy, in spite of himself, was an emblem, that Sandy envied the computers because, once in a system, they required an irreversible commitment; once integrated, they could never be removed from the system-and that, to put it crudely, was what the Sandman desired for himself, not security so much as total synapse. "What we must be willing to concede," Haas said, "is that our Great Experiment is a failure. The machines represent our only holding action, until we can admit we have failed and then change ourselves."

It was also true that the basic working principles of the machines seemed to tell Sandy more about his own behavior than any history or psychology did. He knew very little about the past-not that he was ahistorical, just that he knew what he knew was hopelessly homogenized and oversimplified. He was certain he had no superego whatsoever, and not enough of an unconscious to write home about. He had been told by relatives that there was never a child who took after his father and mother in exactly equal proportions. He seemed to have inherited all of both their genes, since he was so much a recognizable composite. And indeed the basic principle of their life had seemed to be that they must produce a creature of greater intelligence and adaptability than themselves; and clearly, if he was not twice as smart he knew twice as much as Tyler and Travis, and was at least twice as complicated. To make his way, then, he needed twice as much power, twice as large a hierarchical structure. But lacking what Haas called the "calculus to extrapolate," he knew so very little about his parents-that is to say, this is like Father, that was like Mother-that this redoubling of energy seemed mere redundancy. On a fishing trip once, Tyler had told him, "Someday I'll tell you about myself," which had literally scared the pee out of the boy, and it was odd that even when his father had died he was extremely relieved that he had forgotten to tell him.

The question was really one of memory. Ignorance in itself did not bother him; he simply wanted to know whether he never knew or had forgotten. His memory was apparently just as bad as Tyler's and Travis's, though he was superior in every other respect. This was perhaps the definition of being human: that we are the only animals capable of passing on formalized memory, which is to say

we are the only animals that pass on defective memory. This fact alone seemed to bear Haas out. "We are not free to respond to needs. We are the needs. Technically it is true that a machine cannot feel love, respect, etcetera. It doesn't bother me. Most people don't either. Certainly not the ones who control things. And when I work with the machines, it's simply like working with average normal people, i.e. those who routinely deny their humanity." Then that boyish laugh again.

It was Haas who introduced Sandy to Transistoradentalism, an attempt to describe how we are in the world in an unambiguous language. "Precisely because we know so little about the brain," Haas says, "we must compare its activity to models we can understand. It is just that people choose the wrong models, flattering ones usually. But the living truth is that everywhere man only meets man; that is what this little century has laid upon us. Historically," Haas usually spits this word, "it took some time to search a while and find yourself. Now all you have to do is walk right around the corner, don'cha know. There is a machine somewhere that resembles everybody and all machines can imitate one another. Me, for example; I'm most like a mass spectro-analyzer, but there's too much deep theory there to get into. My synapses are perfectly circular, which is why I'm quick. Most people think of themselves as transmitters or receivers, though in a technological democracy the differences are gradually eradicated. You are neither, Sandy, you are the rare transducer; the only time you feel alive is when you are transferring energy to another system. Yet you are ignorant of both systems. That is why you treat the computer as you do, as an extension of yourself. But you'll never really get anything out of it till you acknowledge its autonomy. And indeed the autonomy of your own mind, such as it is. I have the distinct impression you're incapable of that. Look, isn't this how you do?" Haas snatched an envelope and drew on the back of it. 1000010

"My guess is this. For some reason, genetically-that sounds irrefutable, doesn't it?-you have a loose electron, which wanders in search of positive energy. Also you have in your system impurity -like all systems, but just enough of impurity, just the right impurity, let's call it a hole or a wandering vacancy. When stimuli are applied, the loose electron is paired with the hole, but when it moves it leaves a new hole-where it was, see-and the next elec-

tron gradually moves into it. That's why you complain so much about your memory. It's not that you've forgotten so much; it's that the new electron, with its own distinct memory, masks the knowledge of the hole. It's what we call horizontal psychology. The holes move negatively; the electrons move positively in the opposite direction. That's why you can transmit considerable power. Now, isn't that a little more believable than Freud? It takes a unique system to handle that-one that's invulnerable to shock, to overheating, you might say, because most people are basically made up of material which resists transference. They have the wrong impurity. They lack free electrons; they lack, in most cases, even wandering holes, or they have too many. Such people break the cosmic circuit; they are deadweight. Isn't that better than Nietzsche? Your parents each probably had a semiconductor gene to produce a rectifier like yourself. If you by chance made it with the right woman -statistically minuscule, incidentally-it's possible you could produce an amplifier, a person who could actually control the flow of his holes and electrons at will, a kind of superconductor. Such a person would not only have an unprecedented amount of power at his disposal but, more important, could modulate it synchronously with other systems. Isn't that better than Marx, heh?"

"Would such a child be better at remembering?" Sandy asks, feeling stupider by the minute.

"Such a child would not be self-conscious, because he would be completely effective. He would be a kind of true common denominator."

"That would be difficult to live with."

Haas shrugged. "Both of us, my friend, are rare variations in the blueprint. Might as well make the most of it."

At EI Cielito Lindo later He is surrounded by Skanks, Skanks mocking the cruising salesmen, calling them in deep whispers old cockers, old farts under their breaths. Imagine Skanks calling them old cockers, old farts. His drink grinds across the table, his chair gerumps on the floor. There is a buzzing in his ears, a dream of flu, a premonition of a social virus which settles in the frontal lobes; his brain is perspiring like a packhorse into his sinuses, and there are suddenly pointless petty commercials for childhood, manhood, selfhood, and seafood.

He has made the error, earlier on, of ordering the trout stuffed with crabmeat in the Billy Budd Room, where the days are ambivalent and the salad bar is preferable to the monster trout fattened on chows and tagged like a Jew at the gills, the ubiquitous three-bean salad, cottage cheese, dilled onion rings, capers, chowchow macaroni salad, and groovy Jell-O-ah, he should have stuck to that.

The Conquerors of Babylon are playing their newest hit, Cush:

Son of God, daughter of man

Do they resemble us?

We shall be vagrants, wanderers

And anyone who meets us may kill us.

He shall bruise your head, and she shall bruise his heel.

Ifyou're going to killyourself, don't leave a note.

Please Don't leave a note.

Maestro Luncheon is working feverishly on the synthesizer; the chords fly out, a cloud of algorithms, an astronomical number of possible chords commingle in the feral air.

Sandy checks out the bulletin board in the foyer. In the Positions and Situations section there is a new card.

Hi! Smiling, very attractive healthy young woman (22), disillusioned with university and city hassles, needs to feel a country breeze in her face and total self-sufficiency. Is there a so inclined male out there, energetic, affectionate, intelligent, who desires life partner whose song will harmonize with mine? No drinkers, dopers, or heavy religion. Reply in your own handwriting with photo.

Tonight Sandy has on a three-piece ice-cream suit and wide pink woolen tie; tonight he is Peter MUller of Russian/French parentage, a landscape architect at work beautifying the boggling median strip of the expressway. With an aplomb just short of exquisite, he is explaining to a group of Midwestern sorority girls on vacation the difficulty of moving 150,000 hybrid forsythia with root balls which meet the specifications of the state. "Everything now is paperwork," he concludes to a chorus of wows.

As they break for the ladies' room, one remains; one always remains.

"Hi," she says. "I'm Finished."

"Aw, come on, you can't be more than twenty-one."

"No, I'm Finnish. There's a statue of my great uncle in Helsinki."

"What's his name, love?"

"I can't ever remember it. A big track star."

"Paavo Nurmi!"

"Boy, are you ever smart!"

Tell her about the quaking aspens in Colorado, the rare copper weeping beech of Languedoc, Pierre Moliere, the brittleness of fastigiates, the malleability of the prehistoric ginkgo, Johannes Pytor Muller, and the striated liquidambar, if you are such a man. On the way back to the Left Bank, Willi appears resigned, nearly relieved, in the seasonless air. She says she is involved in a relationship which is going to the shits.

They kick off their shoes and pull the gold spread over their knees like a septuagenarian couple with swollen joints taking the cure in Graz, their eyes like embers, unidentified cowed animals at the rear of a cave. Willi enjoys thumping the base of the penile shaft; it falls like an oak, to her amusement, but then she resuscitates it with an amazing feat. Willi begins skillfully to revivicate the entire forest, scrambling through the understory, hugging and howling as the shadows begin to jump. "Hey, take it easy," Sandy says. "I've been in the same place you are myself."

In an aureole of haze they lie-footsteps outside in the garden, footsteps down the hall. They have overreached themselves. They have placed themselves at the center of things. Sandy lies as always, his left arm flung over his left eye. Willi's shoulders have become unhunched. They exchange fantasies.

"When 1 think," Willi says, "that others might be watching me give pleasure, that turns me on."

Sandy mulls. "I'm dreaming I'm President, I'm sitting at my desk. 1 free the slaves. 1 take a swim in the big pool alone." Sandy confesses that he is not actually Peter Muller.

"I don't care who you are," Willi says.

And in the shower, before she rejoins her friends, Sandy can hear her singing one of the Conquerors' old hits.

I'm just as good as new I'm just as good as you.

Sandy wishes he had more to say. He has this theory, for in-

stance, that men and women are different, very different, but he cannot prove it; it does not test out.

"There is not enough data," Haas says. "We need more talk!" Sandy wishes he had more to say. He wishes he were a better listener. Haas has devised a basic questionnaire for couples.

PLANNING A STORY OF YOUR OWN (TO DO BY YOURSELF)

Choose something about which you can make a story to tell your friends. It may be something that has happened to you or someone you know. It may be something you have done, seen, or heard. The following questions may help you:

1. What surprise have you had?

2. What exciting thing has happened to you?

3. What dumb thing have you done?

4. What funny thing has happened to you?

5. What funny or exciting things have you heard on the radio or seen at the movies or on TV?

But Sandy has not yet had the guts to hand it out. Each time he simulates the subroutine in the computer, he gets only the most cursory advances.

ThE� aSSUIJIF,t i on<" a r'E� cor,';; :i. S t!'.�nt. Sha 11 I �10 on f

"I don't get it, Haas, the man/woman thing. I mean what is there to say?"

"You'll never know until you start asking the right questions."

"Can you analyze a steady state, Haas? Everything else around us is growing exponentially, but about us we know less .than ever."

And then, like a steam cloud from Maestro Luncheon's synthesizer, a typical Haas rejoinder, the ultimate Haasism:. "In a time of irreversible inflation, the only people who win are those whose assets are subject to speculative bidding."

Willi has rejoined her sorority sisters. Sandy lies in the bed gazing upward at his parents at the lake. A wind has come up, a flotilla of sailboats are luffing on a squall line. Upside down his parents seem to have more dimension. He goes to the closet to get his pajamas, or rather Tyler's pajamas. He never wore pajamas until Tyler died. He never wears them now except when he is alone and there is no chance of interruption, of his being caught out. The

longnightshirt, monogrammed T&T on the pocket, washed a thousand times-there is no crotch in this nightshirt; it falls from the collarbone straight to the floor, it covers his parts with a long fold which begins at the sternum and ends at the ankles. In the closet, below the pajamas, is Tyler's fishing tackle.

Sandy opens Tyler's tackle box, the trays unfold layer by layer: Tyler's crude computer, a stacked memory drum, equidistant rectangles of subjective options; it is a box of memories, a box of philosophy, the sun on his neck, great Canadian steel-colored lakes, the rocks exactly the same color as the water, dammed southern mountain lakes, their level dictated by electricity demand, rims desiccated with scum and mud flats as the gates are opened to supply a chemical factory; bobbers, sinkers, serrated knives for fileting, net, scale, plastic worms, plastic pink salmon eggs for the weed beds and stickups, spinners for the sloping clay points, the small handgun to land the meanest muskie of a lifetime; at dark, Tyler says, "the stripers move into the shallows and the smallmouth leave"; how can a fish believe in this food, believe that these are brothers, these lures with glaucomic eyeballs and hinged midsections? Is it the same necessary suspension of disbelief which bubbles the silty waters of EI Cielito Lindo Reservoir-a thousand lures and not a single fish? The lures roiling the air, out of their element, their resistance is not convincing; they leap out of their respective plastic rectangles to wiggle and scrooge, adopt their new names-Hell Riser, "Baby Torpedo, Darter, and our good friends, Creek Chub Plunker and Deep Dive Runt.

Sandy takes the lures and throws them one by one, throws them desultorily against the plashing streamlet. They do not stick in that stylish water, and slide routinely by natural laws to the field of orange shag. Sandy has never been fishing without Tyler. He has had no reason to fish without Tyler. Fishing actually seemed a little silly to Sandy, even with Tyler. What is he going to do with all this fishing equipment-seven rods, for God's sake, the two tackle boxes? Look at these things, fish must really be real bored to go for that stuff. Haas gets peeved when Sandy puts Tyler's and Travis's things through the computer: their obituaries, the baby books, the trunks of wartime letters, the bills, the years of income tax, every canceled check including two audits, even though Tyler was a tax

lawyer, and the enormous file of letters of respect and consolation from people Sandy did not know. Haas objects. "You cannot disembody memory," he says; "you can only forget it." A lot Haas knows in the end; all Sandy is trying to do is process the information faster, information that would otherwise take him a lifetime to reflect upon; for to speed up, accelerate remembrance is finally, exponentially, to escape it-there's a Hassism for you, Haas, a cheap and noble action, indistinguishable really; no, not cheap-just a decent trade-off. But if these emotions are incalculable, Haas-like you say, Haas, in that high-pitched, realistic voice which derives from first principles even beyond you-if confused emotions are slave emotions, then why not submit them to a slave function, eh Haas? I don't want them any more

The left arm is thrown over the left eye again, but this time the eye moistens the arm, not the other way around; what froth remains is his alone. Was it because he had ignored their lives that he was now destined to dwell on their deaths? And then Sandy dreams-knowing, as always, that it's a dream, a dream of dreams, a reconstruction of Tyler's and Travis's "life," of how he imagined Tyler died-because surely he did not die, just falling over like that on the ninth hole, while his lawyer friends muttered that it was against the law to give in contemplation of death?

Tyler hoisted the red chair on his stomach as Travis held the porch door, thighs and trapezius taut as guy wires, his feet hidden from him as he walked. The door rocketed shut as he cleared it. Tyler screamed at Travis, but the chair's bolster muffled it.

Tyler looked up and down the street. The Dibbles were throwing away clothes the dog had chewed, and a pole lamp. The Morrisons were throwing out a mildewed wicker ottoman, picture books with warped bindings, and a stone. Tyler surmised the stone was not being thrown away but only holding down something that was. The Williamses were throwing away hangers, a ream of frayed twine, a great quantity of newspapers, and a wagon wheel. The Forresters were throwing away an orange crate, a portable bar that had apparently burned up, and several lengths of anodized aluminum drainpipe. The Thompsons were throwing away carpeting, under-carpeting, carpet cleaner and carpet tacks, Wallpaper, plas-

terboard, outre light fixtures, and a rusty green tricycle. There were other less attributable piles all the way to the corner.

Tyler got a playful nudge from behind. "You forgot the cushion," Travis said, dropping it at his feet. "If we're going to get rid of the chair, let's not leave the cushion around."

Tyler snatched up the cushion, made like to hit her back, then flung it into the chair.

"You really think they're going to pick up all this junk for nothing?" he said.

"Anything two men can carry," Travis cried over her shoulder. "That's what they said."

Anything unpulpable you had to get rid of yourself.

Propped like an omen out against the garbage cans, still the garbage people wouldn't touch that old headboard. It had taken Tyler a week to get rid of it all. It was rock maple. He had to chop it into pieces to fit it into the incinerator. Each piece had to be soaked in gasoline and then, by law, he had to watch each piece burn. Even if there was no law he had to watch it burn away, to prevent the Dibbles' magnolia from getting singed. Dibble's tree hung over his incinerator and the smoke went up through it like God's own muffler. He had given a good deal of thought to the legal complications of this, even to the extent of having one of the boys at the firm do some research for him. He knew that if the magnolia were a fruit tree and some fruit dropped over on his property, he was entitled to pick it up, though he was not allowed to pick it from the tree even if it occupied his air space. But then, he figured, if the smoke did not go across Dibble's property line but straight up, where the tree was alleged to bloom, then could not his infrequent smoke rising be interpreted in the same light as Dibble's hypothetical fruit falling?

Travis often watched Tyler thinking out there, silhouetted against the night fire of the incinerator, her husband's own winking cigarette the focus of the conflagration. She had decided to get rid of the chair on just such a night, after sinking into it to watch the washer. The dancing clothes in the round window had reminded her of spring cleanup. When Tyler got back from the club, she had told him to carry out the chair. After he had carried it out, though, and she had come upon the pillow he had forgotten, she had second

thoughts. It was an English club chair they had bought just after their honeymoon. Red leather, presynthetic, it had aged to a deep splotched orchid hue. She never used it, even when Tyler was at work, because she liked to put her feet under her when she sat, and when her feet started to sweat, the leather would get exotically slippery. Monthly saddle-soap baths could not keep Tyler's body from wearing it out, discoloring it with night sweat. Finally Tyler seemed to wear out the very notion, the being, of the chair. When he got up, the indentation of his body didn't rebound for days. And when they came back from two weeks in the Bahamas and his pre-vacation dents still had not been absorbed, Travis told him to take the chair to the basement. She sat in it down there when her back got tired from watching the washer.

Making highballs later, Tyler asked Travis, "How you suppose they pulp a chair?"

"I expect they will rummage it, dear, or give it to one of those places where the cripples make them over."

"Well, they'll have to get a different truck. They sure as hell can't pick it up in the pulper."

"They have the trucks, Tyler," Travis snapped. "Don't you worry one minute about that. They've got the trucks."

Tyler carried the highballs into the den. Travis came in and for some reason put her head in his lap. "Remember when you tried to cut up the mattress?" she giggled, and snitched from his drink.

Tyler crossed his legs expertly beneath his wife and nodded. They had tried, Lord knows, to give away the old mattress with the headboard when Travis decided to get twin beds, but there was a law against used mattresses, so they had left it behind the garage, where it had become rain soaked and consequently unliftable.

"So wet's already pulp and that'll jam the pulper sure, to put what's already pulp in it," the garbage people said.

So Tyler let the mattress dry for a week or so in the sun and then tried to chop it into incinerator-sized pieces. But the ax sprang back, and his upswing became more vigorous than his downswing. Then Travis suggested the shears, and with one of them snipping and the other chasing down enormous fluffs of escaped stuffing, they worked until most of it was finally in the "incin," as Travis called it.

"Anything else you want out?" Tyler asked. Travis shook her head. Breezes cooled the whole house.

Usually when Travis washed her hair it made her look younger, but late that night it didn't. She stamped into the den looking merely wet and worn out.

"Tyler, there's somebody fooling around in the front."

Tyler looked at her from the very tops of his eyes.

"I heard them from the bathroom, I tell you. They're going to take the chair."

"Who'd want the chair, hon? We couldn't give it away."

"Look, that's a fine chair, and there's a lot of people who would like to get their hands on it you can bet, and there's somebody out in the yard right now thinking about it."

"What the hell. Who cares who takes it as long as it's gone?"

"Tyler, if you think for one minute that I'm going to stand for someone to walk right in here and take what's ours "

"Matter of fact, Trav, it just occurred to me that the parkway is public property. We're obliged to keep it clean, of course, but if perchance a pedestrian should find a hundred-dollar bill on the parkway outside our house, there isn't a court in the world "

"Tyler, if you don't get those strangers out of the goddamn yard I'm going to call the cops."

Tyler looked after Travis as she disappeared up the staircase, then went into the foyer and parted a starched curtain. There was a white station wagon parked before the house and there was indeed movement about it. He could hear Travis above him taking a last rinse, though still apparently listening for his pending action through the rush of water. He drew in his breath and went out to the kitchen.

Laying various utensils before him on the cutting board, he determined that the most efficient weapons couldn't be hidden, while those he could secrete on his person did not seem sufficiently threatening when and if withdrawn. He finally decided upon an anniversary corkscrew, a reindeer and chrome auger which he could fit within his jacket pocket without mutilating himself. Then he slipped quietly out the front door.

The station wagon was cruising slowly up the street now. As its windows were dark in the moonlight, he presumed it was full of people. The chair was lashed securely to the roof of the car. It stopped again before the Dibbles' pile.

Tyler found himself running toward them, a cry stuck in his throat, right hand jammed in his jacket pocket. As he neared, the car accelerated, ran the stop sign, and careened out of sight.

Tyler returned to the house to find Travis in the doorway, hair in curlers, arms afold, kimono-clad.

"For a lawyer," she said, "you certainly don't have much respect for the law."

She confronted him on the sidewalk. Her shivering in the night air was catching.

"I never thought I'd see the day when 1 wouldn't feel safe in my own front yard."

Tyler retreated from her, staggering slightly, and as he did so, Travis emitted a triumphant cry. "The pillow! Son of a bitch, Ty, they forgot the pillow."

Tyler slumped into himself and looked like he was listening.

"They wouldn't take a fine piece like that and leave the pillow, I'll tell you. They'll be back, all right." She was ecstatic.

"But Trav, they saw me coming Travis balled his fist in his pocket.

"Don't tell me, Tyler. 1 know their kind. They'll be back, and when they do, we'll be ready for them."

Tyler's head cleared, his heart ceased roaring.

"Well, 1 won't have a thing to do with it. I divest myself of all

She stalked away from him, and wrapping her kimono about herself, squatted deliberately down among the evergreens which bordered their lot.

"Can you see me, Tyler? Tell me now."

"Of course 1 can see you."

"No. From the front," she shrieked, "if you were in a car, say."

Tyler walked to the grassy parkway and did an about face. "Well, no. Not very well."

"Okay. Pillow there?"

"Pillow there, Trav," he said quietly.

"Okay, now, divest yourself!"

Tyler went back into the house and down to the basement. There he began methodically to carry large, carefully tied bundles of

newspapers and rags out to the incinerator. He made several trips, and when the pit was filled, he slung his jacket over his shoulder and tossed a kitchen match into the rubbish. A curtain of flame rose up, enveloping Dibble's magnolia in a corona of ornamental fire. Then it subsided. Ribbons of newsprint slithered orange and diaphanous through the trees and out toward the stars. Enameled sheets of advertising carbonized before his eyes, floated like chiffon in the smoke, powdered against the underside of the branches. The sweet smoke in his nose elated him like Scotch and soda. His heart was knocking him about.

Tyler stood in the shadows at the rear of the pit, eyeing the clump of evergreens which concealed his wife. Looking up the side yard, the pillow appeared as some undersea sponge trap in the moonlight. He heard a car turn the corner, but remained by the fire as the white station wagon reappeared at the front of the house and doused its headlights.

Then, as if on a prearranged signal, Travis rose out of the bushes. Her kimono billowed from her arms, her curlers were undone. Strands of damp hair uncoiled across her face. Tyler strained forward but could hear nothing above the roar of the fire. Travis's arms were going up and down like semaphores. The car's windows were lowered menacingly and then raised halfway. Tyler left the fire to face them.

One foot on the pillow and with a knee against its white flank, Travis berated the phlegmatic auto. Tyler walked around to the driver's side to have a look.

"Hello, there," he said affably, and extended his hand through the half-open window. Nothing grasped it. All he saw was

Teeth & Eyes

"What's your name, hey?" he continued, feeling about in the gloomy interior.

Teeth & Eyes

"Trav," Tyler raised his voice as he withdrew his hand, "if you will kindly stop yelling, perhaps our visitors can explain what they want."

Travis howled at her husband's famed politesse as Tyler again peered through the window. Then a high soft voice spoke from within the car.

"You Motha you."

Tyler dropped his hand into his pocket. He would twist the anniversary corkscrew right between the malevolent eyes and the blood would envelop his fist like a carnivorous flower.

Tyler did not know how many he had to contend with. He stepped away from the car to check the back seat. But the rear window was closed and he could see only his own face eclipsing the moon in the glass. Retreating even farther, he wondered how they had gotten the chair up on the car without scratching it. It faced backward, lashed tight with clothesline, girdled in complicated professional knots. He thought of Egyptian slaves, inclined planes, and golden rope.

The moon went behind a cloud, taking his face with it, and the glass cleared. Then he saw that the back seat had been folded flat and on it, surrounded by his neighbors' discarded personal effects, lay a lovely dark girl. She wore blue jeans and a man's undershirt. Her small hard breasts peeped from shoulder holes shaped for pectoral muscles. Her waist was soaked with perspiration. For a moment he believed he recognized the Morrisons' potted geraniums and a portion of the Forresters' rose arbor. But as the moon reappeared so did his face, initially as a ghost crowned with fire and ultimately, as the glass again mirrored, a Technicolor refraction which absorbed the dark girl.

From the other side of the car, Travis's moans were growing fainter. Awed by his own indolent image before him, Tyler decided it was time to get to the root of the matter.

"Well," he said, leaning against the door casually, "how about some identification?" There was some shuffling in the car's interior, and finally a wallet was belligerently thrust from the window.

Despite the many Plexiglas containers, it was empty save for a single business card. The card read:

DUMP-PICKUP-DUMP

Tyler drew in his breath. All his interior organs seemed to be swelling.

The wallet was snatched back into the car and an unintelligible conversation ensued. Travis, who had by now moved in behind him, snorted.

At last the high soft voice which had first spoken spoke again. "You gunna call the police, yoo?"

Travis smiled and clasped her hands.

"It's none of my concern," Tyler said. "Actually, you are welcome to the chair, but the law was made for a reason and you're breaking it."

"You better put that chair right back where you found it," Travis yelled behind him. Tyler motioned her to be quiet and then they both stepped back from the station wagon to see what would happen.

The car swayed slightly on its overloaded springs, but there was no conversation. Tyler wondered about the girl, if she were really boss, what they would do with the junk. She'd look just fine, he thought, curled up in the comer of that red chair in big rich old white man's underwear.

"Trav," he whispered, "why don't we just let them have it?"

She looked, to him, sweet for the first time in years, and then all her strength seemed to evaporate.

"It was silly, really, to throw it away."

When he was younger, Tyler reflected, he would have had them all arrested. He knew what his life had been like.

Confident they would not dare to expose themselves in the welllighted street, Tyler mounted the rear bumper and hauled himself, with considerable difficulty, to the roof of the car. As he stretched past the rear window, he caught a glimpse of the dark princess through the gilded glass. She was lying on her stomach and elbows, breasts bunched beneath her like expiring party balloons, making a plaything of coat hangers and twine. On all fours, Tyler jabbed violently at the ropes with the corkscrew. A strand began to unravel and he rested. He could see the last coals of the incinerator from his vantage point. Dibble's magnolia glowed, bloomed, through the smoke. Travis, calmer now, refolded her arms and smiled benignly up at him. Tyler's jacket was soaked. He worked frantically at another rope.

At first he thought it was simply the princess gone berserk beneath him; the roof of the car had buckled slightly and he could hear her sighing up to him through the concave steel. But when he saw Travis drawing imperceptibly away from him, he knew he was moving.

As she became smaller, her mouth enlarged and her arms dropped helplessly at her sides. The acrid smell of burning rubbish

filled his nostrils, and advocate Tyler was flung in a burst of shifting gears back into his chair. Only then did the trees tell him of the speed. The Dibbles, Morrisons, Williamses, Forresters, and Thompsons flickered peripheral to sight, then recongealed in the familiar distance. He tried to grasp an overhanging branch but it broke off in his hand. Then, very deliberately, as Travis was absorbed into the darkness, Tyler settled back, loosened his belt, stretched his legs, and, grasping the arms of his favorite chair, allowed the terrible wind to course up his pant legs.

On his way out to the Pontiac, Sandy saw a man doubled over in the dappled shade of a honeysuckle hedge. He approached cautiously, then trotted as he recognized him. Art Entelechy was vomiting into the honeysuckle.

"Art, you okay?"

The large stocky man grasped his thick knees; his knuckles were badly skinned. He nodded affirmatively as he retched redundantly. "You sure, Art?"

The nodding was more vigorous, with a short twist of the head to indicate leave-me-alone-please, which he did.

Art Entelechy, quarterback for the Rough Grouse, had only recently moved into the Left Bank, the most recent victim of the home-buster syndrome of EI Cielito Lindo. Prominent athletes like Art had been attracted to the lounge like everyone else, and ultimately he had taken up with one of Wanda June's peers, a spunky Skank by the name of Moira. Mrs. Fran Entelechy, upon discovery of this lapse on her famed husband's part, kicked him out of the house, attaching a goodly portion of his $800,000 annual salary on behalf of their three attractive children. Art now lived with Moira in her Left Bank efficiency. Entelechy had taken to Sandy because Sandy never discussed sports and was probably the only person

who had never once acknowledgedEntelechy'sprofessional identity, despite the fact that, secretly, Entelechy was the only athlete who could sustain Sandy's interest. Why? Perhaps because, of all the professionals Sandy had encountered, Entelechy was the only one who utterly lacked an identifiable style. While his efforts were wholly predictable because they were consistent, the way he achieved them varied not only from game to game but from quarter to quarter. Every time you tuned him in, he was different, unrecognizable if it wasn't for his number, though his statistics never varied by more than a factor of 5 percent. It was as if Entelechy were driven, not by a desire to surpass himself or even win, butby infinitely functional disguise-to put himself at one remove from the image his celebrity conferred on him.

Sandy's low opinion of Moira was confirmed by Entelechy's silent suffering, the stomach problems which had more to do with his mistress and recessive family than the coming play-off game on Saturday, the twelfth time in fourteen seasons that the Grouse had been involved in postseason play. He didn't understand Moira's physical attraction either, having once experienced her desperate, despondent, balled-fisted heaving and, even more enervating, her "open and upfront" manner: item-"A man talks to you more if you play with his cock." She believed such rhetoric to have political force. It was hard for Sandy to imagine how anybody could leave a family, any family, for a mortification such as Moira. He recalled Haas's warning, tongue in cheek though it was: "Unless what you do to a woman is not formulated with the greatest precision and care, you will be punished. Usually not immediately, however. The historicallack of societal-role strength makes it necessary for them to accumulate hatred in a measure which cannot be quantified, much less imagined, in the stoical mode."

Art's explanation of marriage was less scientific but more convincing. "It's like a wrestling match I had in high school once. With a blind boy. At first you don't fight too, hard because you don't want to take advantage. But you end up fighting harder than ever, because you don't want a handicapped person to beat you at anything."

"I think sometimes," Art had told him as they watched TV together, Sandy's apartment being the only place where he could get

away from Moira, "that I've traded in a '58 Plymouth for a '59 DeSoto."

As an athlete, Entelechy's notable achievement was his consistency. "Mr. Constancy" was the nickname the Grouse front office gave him. If he had never had it truly great game, he had never had anything approaching a bad one. This made him less memorable than he deserved Sandy left his friend reluctantly. As he pulled out, Entelechy had sat down on the grass and crossed his legs. His rugby shirt was soiled with spittle.

It was from Art Entelechy, quarterback and philanderer, that Sandy had learned the perils of replication. He had lost his only hero through a series of technological refinements which he never would fully comprehend. It had begun with instant replay, a process which had first caused him to lose concentration on the game itself, and indeed he believed it had affected his perception of things in general: the repetition of the real from different angles, so that the unwary and sloppy perceiver might have the illusion of considered judgment. Then "The Highlights," an anthology of the games of the week. It was only necessary to set the alarm to keep abreast of Entelechy's progress. But then, Art had become only one of sixteen other quarterbacks, and as the most consistentwhich is to say the least dramatic-he was not often seen. The final humiliation was yet to come, however: one night Sandy turned on the tube and saw Entelechy dropping back in slow motion, only to be felled by a tackle's subcutaneous swipe across the face guard, his legs spasming up in a slow spiral until he is standing on his head, the ball squirting loose and bouncing off out of camera range, and at the very top of his undignified arc he is stalled, frozen, by the megalomaniacal director, who then runs the film backwardthe tackle runs backward, the ball bounces back into the picture, into Entelechy'S trembling hands, the background music changes from semiclass to funky funny. What's going on? Why are they making a joke out of this? And then the great collage comes forth -snippets from history's great games, choreographed grunts falling into each other; they are reprocessing it, of these moments strung together they are making art-A-R-T, Haas; and then a jump backward, "25 years ago today," a funny short man running the length of the field like a catarapid in a cartoon; and then the final indignity, Entelechy's head appearing superimposed upon the

body of a Grouse, indignity to both man and bird-the bird has a team turtleneck sweater on, is naked from the sweater down, with no genitals but little bandy legs with dewlaps. Oh, Art!

Haas was after him again.

"What do you do this for? What's this predilection for predation? You need to settle down. Don't you ever get lonely?"

"What do you mean why do I do it?"

"Is it really fun?"

"Sometimes. Let's just say it's an effective procedure."

"Don't jazz me around," Haas pouted, "don't make fun of me."

"Look, Haas, it's better than TV. Demeaning, maybe, but not insultive. I mean, what am I supposed to do with my time off? Hang gliding? Whitewater canoeing? Surf casting? Bird-watching? This seems very natural to me, if you want a word for it."

"But how can that be, when you can't even explain it?"

"Let me work on it," Sandy said. "Give me the afternoon. I'll put it in your lingo-you know, supportive commands?"

WHAT YOU DO WITH A GIRL, HAAS

1. Ruggedize existing systems.

2. Circumvent random access memory with single instruction stream.

3. Exercise patience if gate delay.

4. Reach nonzero state gradually.

5. Take into account parasitic impedance of passive elements, power dissipation, and intrinsic delay.

6. Avoid bipolar relationships which are faster but require enormous energy reserves.

7. Nonvolatilize memory.

8. Negatize resistivity.

9. Technify responsive times.

10. Match access time with logic circuit speeds.

11. Instigate associative array process.

12. Clear all registers!

13. Tie in sense amplifiers with put-out registers.

14. Reevaluate potential integrals through iterative process.

15. Interrogate need function.

16. Correlate trends.

17. Extrapolate viability.

18. (Viability availability, reliability, maintainability, flexibility)

19. Observe Yes, And, or No gates. Proceed.

20. When costs and size are determined, trade-offs are available.

21. Once convergent trends are established, initiate subroutine.

22. Interleave the interface.

23. Think of yourself as sapphire on silicone.

24. Simplify interface, or the other way round.

25. Initiate consensual trade-offs.

26. Buffer memory.

27. Try asynchronous ripple carry.

28. Recall: the larger the memory, the greater the parasitic impedance and reduction of response time.

29. Initiate fault detection.

30. Read real time.

31. Sponsor back-up system.

32. Increase transparency to alleviate software problems.

33. Fault detection.

34. Exercise fault-line toleration.

35. Bubble.

36. Compile command junction in cylindrical domain.

37. Roll back.

Sandy handed it over and watched Haas read it without a blink. Haas, why would anyone want to simulate something as intangible and imprecise as the mind? Jeez-us!

Remember, Sandy, Haas said very patiently, that God was sorry that he made man, but the fact he was sorry didn't make him change his mind.

It's Fish and Fowl Night at the Wharf Rat. Sandy cares for neither. The Wharf Rat wears Bermuda shorts, an ascot, homrimmed glasses, and a beret. He points out the choice on the place mat, a frozen flounder stuffed with crabmeat, or a Rock Cornish game hen stuffed with crabmeat. The Wharf Rat is dancing on his hind legs, more of a frug than your conventional cavort. Having left all fours late in his evolution like us, he will have nothing but lower back pain for this effrontery.

Sandy noted the Positions and Situations board as he entered the Breakers at ten on the dot.

Very attractive healthy handy elastic divorced young woman desires life companion for courtship. Age or looks not that important. What 1 lack in experience 1 make up for with enthusiasm. Am seeking serenity seeking man, realistic and slender, who will love and respect his special person. No creeps sissies or crusaders. Monogamous, non macho relationship, must know goals, be past planning, have financial security. Desire nothing but peace, quiet and hard work. I'm tired of having God do the choosing for me. Let's, together, see the humor of it all.

The

Dreamer

Sandy had never lied to a woman in his life, and it was precisely this fact that made his seductions so effortless. Actually, any promiscuity on his part could only be viewed as part of a larger asceticism. If one was to believe Haas, whatever the girls found in him was generated by some very crude electricity-which, if channeled properly, could focus on the most profound questions of existence-but in his case had only acted kinetically to date, like those diffuse globes which illuminate nothing save the moths attracted to them. Maybe it was better to lie and be caught than loved like that.

When he saw her, though, alone at a table, he ceased questioning himself: a pink lady with a blue guitar. She was one of those blondes who were darkening; face done with arm-length scoops, eyebrows which would grow together if not plucked, veins like water beads upon an amber tumbler, ears pierced aristocratically, with mismatched pearls. When she reads, she bites her nails and tucks her feet beneath her buttocks. She walks slashingly, legs so formidable that her arms seem perfectly dispensable. When she sits, her calves evaporate and reappear in her upper thighs. She does not know the difference between education and experience, her mouth is farthest open when she is silent, she doesn't know which is her best feature, and when she lies down there is nothing like a pie.

She now stood in Sandy's vestibule in an elderly camel's-hair coat, too short for her long legs, too heavy for the season, the nap dry cleaned to a patchy blonde pelt, like her once fine hair, now brittle from a protracted adolescence of permanent waves.

"You look a little pale," he said.

"I'm nervous," she said.

He helped her off with her coat, conscious of the light damp hair whorled at her nape. She had on a new dress, a crimson stretchshorty, with panels cut out exposing her hips. Her front hairs were swept into a kind of horizontal bouffant, eye sockets sprinkled with sequins, lips tumescent, fried and frosty. In one hand she carried a manila portfolio; in the other, Lord love her, her guitar.

When he came out of the bathroom, she was already in bed, her new dress wadded on the coffee table. Sandy fixed two triple gimlets, handing her both while he undressed, his back to her.

What the hell does he think this is, she thought, a movie?

The light hair along his spine was iridescent in the sunset. He

balanced perfectly on one leg as he drew off his trousers by the cuff. She laughed inwardly at his posturing, like a vicious jay strutting and pecking at his reflection in a hubcap, but she also felt that whatever failures were to come would likely not be attributable to him. In the dresser mirror, the half-light, she blurred as he tried to take her in. With the two gimlets, between the sheets, she looked like a fey scales-of-justice stand-in. As a child she must have been all eyes; as a crone she would end up all chin. Yet in her present prime she seemed somehow blunted, diffused-like those blockedout unfinished torsos whose interest derives not from what's been chiseled but from the veil of marble they still carry-a calculated enigma, her face straining through its enviable softness toward character. He felt himself across the chest, sighed silently until the diaphragm relaxed. Once relaxed, he backed into bed and snapped the sheets over them. She's nasal, demanding, real wiry; she loves the apartment, exceptionally so. "It's so modem," she says; she moves like a nineteenth-century man. A swimmer once, she explains, which accounts for the hair that tapers like a wood duck at her nape, the freckled solid shoulders, ribs like those on a crown roast of lamb lattimus dorsi like the leading edge of a harp, and everything shaved from the eyebrows down, all the ligaments ligature, buttocks like biceps, pigeon toes with a tendon like a velvet restraining rope, which starts in her big toe, is stretched across her high arch, and loops the ankle twice, emerging on the inside of that most interesting muscle of all, the calf, runs on, surrounds the knee with more spirals, then up diagonally across the thigh to the hip's ball joint there, through swamps, peatbogs, hillocks, grass as high as a man's eye, it splits after steak and spaghetti up each side of the prehistoric spine-ivy, trumpet vine, clematis, the kudzu up the old lichened gatepost where with resignation it attaches its tendrils to the medulla, and from there on it's not felt except when the horses bite

First they were chaoses; then they were carcasses. Their eyes a single violet transplant between them. She arched and lifted so that his elbows and knees were airbound: she raised a mortal to the skies / he drew an angel down. He licked the salt from her ears, the brine from her eyes; the sweat from his brow pooled in her clavicle. Somewhere in the complex, a kitchen exhaust fan and a disposal kicked over. Gradually she ceased to become a blur. Then he was

aware of a shape hovering on the edge of his sight, and glanced up to find his own right hand, slung under her neck and reappearing, a jester's claw, above his left ear. "Everywhere," Haas has said, "man meets only himself."

She poked her head out from beneath the blankets, emerging loving and tender, ad majoram gloriam, incapable of pursuing the discussion further. Sandy didn't know what women like her lived for anyway. Drawing her clutched thighs along his hip, she kissed him on the chest like a child. Then she looked to him, every feature softened, a slight convulsion in her cheeks, her voice no longer nasal.

"What are you trying to do to me?"

He didn't know how to answer.

She rolled over and spoke sibilantly into the pillows.

"Is it always the same for you?"

"Pretty much. Why not?"

"Why do you do it, then?"

"

She barrel-rolled and stared into him.

"I feel you'rejudging me. That you're watching me."

"You make me feel so self-conscious. Don't you know what it's like to feel inadequate .?"

Then she was up in a fury, and stalking to the bathroom she proceeded to dash the three available water tumblers into the basin. The shards exploded about her most impressively. The dull powp of distant artillery, the light, dry rain from the bunker ceiling. Sandy remained in bed, disconsolate, staring at his long bare feet. She was wailing.

"All you want to do is tuck me!"

""

Sandy pulled the covers over his naked head. She stalked from the bathroom and began to jerk her clothes on as if she were dressing a manikin, cramming her girdle and bra in her purse. Sandy noticed that her legs had begun to go. A new pair of oblate buttocks were beginning to emerge below the originals. A pale network of veins crept down the backs of her thighs, ending in varicose nebulae at the crease of her knees.

She was standing by the window now, hands rammed in her coat pockets.

"Are you using me? Experimenting with me somehow?" "No."

"Aren't I good for that?" "Yes."

"Don't you know what you're doing to me?" "No."

"Don't you really care?" "Yes."

"For God's sake, do you have to be of two minds about everything? When did you get to be you?"

She put her hand to the knob and left with the horsey grin of an unconvincing madwoman.

It took him most of an hour to sponge up the glass. Then he went out into the sulfurous room and pulled a chair to the window. Rivulets of condensation were forming between the double panes of glass. His legs were blessedly heavy, but he refused to regard himself and resisted sleep. Spying her guitar beneath the coffee table, he opened the fiberboard case and slung it into his lap. It was a commonplace instrument, with some surprisingly fancy inlaid fretwork and the basic fingering positions scratched on the sounding board.

He laid his bad hand soundlessly across the gut.

4

The sky swarms with snow geese, brant, and canvasback driven in from the coast by a hurricane. The drainage ditches roil with catfish and unlikely snook following the brackish waters. High winds, heat, and in the quiet of the Left Bank late afternoon, Sandy sits in a sling chair, holding his plug, creating a life all his own. He is

bringing his journal up to date for night school. In the catalogue he checks off the requirements he has avoided so far: "Properties Defined by Forbidden Subroutines," "Minimalization of Transmission on Optimal Rendezvous," "Estimation as an Inverse Problem," and the ball breaker, "A Scattering Theory Framework for Recursive Smoothing of Deterministic Data." He computes that he has only one elective left, and notes that for next term there is a new course offering, "Horticultural Therapy 762," "soothing work with exotic material, feel the power of propagation, self-image and esteem raised by accorded accredited status of peers and counselors, aggression lowered

Holding his plug, Sandy writes in his journal. "What happens to aggression that is lowered? Is it rechanneled, recycled, or displaced? Can it be leached out of the garden?" Professor Jordan would go for that. Professor Bob Jordan taught the Humanities requirement course at the community college. He was quite old, very old, older than he looked even, utterly white haired and bearded, once a very large active man apparently, to judge from his bone structure, limp, and numerous scars. As well as the occasional inappropriate boyishness. He was teaching past retirement because he had no pension, as he constantly reminded them in a spare monosyllabic monotone, the simplicity of which was highly mannered.

Sandy is Professor Jordan's favorite student because he is the only one who can pronounce Diderot properly. "Why, Professor Jordan, when I drive to work each morning do I encounter no ennobling images to uplift our hearts or even to make them beat faster? All I see are grotesquely fat cowboys, bearded legendary figures from our bearded unlegendary past, and pigs, mice, horses, birds that would embarrass a dog, I'll tell you, all nature pantalooned and begloved-why, Professor, they're not that cute, these animals; what does this have to do with us, especially when we're simply on our way down the road to diagram our interpersonal sentences? It's just not the food, Professor; we can take the food. It's possible that we can take anything. Except these animations of ourselves. They may be very sharp, but they don't have all their fingers, these figures. All brains and talk and plots and personality but no history or genitalia. They should be in the government, not just beckoning us out there, celebrating our most habitual and

banal functions. Whatlovers should never have to know is up there on those signs!" He had asked Haas first about the animals. "It's because, of course," he said, a new keloidal pustule glowing on the very tip of his nose, "it's because most people are unspeakably ugly." The Professor was more theoretical when he took him aside. "It's the natural process of democracy, son, to represent something intrinsically grotesque as sweet and capable of entertainment but you err when you believe them to be intimations of us. These are the modern cherubim, a divine security guard which guards the way to the Tree of Life."

Tonight the classroom smells like a new car. The seminar table is simulated rosewood. The chairs are airliner swivel recliners with infinitely adjustable lumbar support. The lights are recessed and the cement-block walls are painted a comforting beige, with lime polyurethane trim, easy on the eyes. All audiovisual equipment is hidden for the day, panels are down, flaps enfolded, lenses shuttered, speakers recessed and stuffed with Handywipes.

The class swivels, snivels, swivels, making infinite adjustments to its quite individualistic postures. Professor Iordan enters angrily. He has a sheaf of last week's essays under his arm, and despite the protest of the young lady who has paid her good money for a dialogue, he lectures them, chalk-scratching definitions on the green blackboard, slivering the spines of his words with the screech of chalk, breaking up their cursive note taking with his tax-dollarsupported cynicism. "Do not do this to me again," he says. "It is not that you are improficient or unself-disciplined or lack selfexpression but this work is airless; it lacks point of view and conviction and bold characterization, narrative momentum, versimilitude, and corroborative detail, compassion, endurance, and prevelation. "

He had an odd way of teaching world literature, of seeing things in books that weren't there. They were doing Hemingway that week. It was not a good week. But as good a week as you could expect. They always ruined it somehow. They always ruined the good weeks in the end. Usually by Thursday.

Professor Iordan asked a question:

"Why doesn't Nick Adams fish the swamp at the end of the Big Two-Hearted River?"

"He's already got two fish?"

''No.''

"He knows that if he goes over the limit some day there won't be any fish left?"

''No.''

"He's hungry and it's getting dark."

"No."

Sandy raised his hand. "I think he misses his father "Urn," Professor Jordan said, "now we're getting someplace. There's a theme there, isn't there?"

"He's afraid," Sandy went on.

The Professor shook his head. "It doesn't say that anywhere, sonny boy."

"That doesn't matter."

"True enough. If you can't prove it, write it down," Professor Jordan said. "Write it down as a fine experience. Let's break for five minutes."

This was the way things had gone. He always got you in the end, no matter how perceptive you were. The sky was dark, and the wind was warm on Sandy's shoulders. At the Laughing Turtle, before class, the turtle was sitting upright, flippers across his chest, in the fey manner of multiple sclerosis. This turtle had on spats and a Greek fisherman's hat and from his beak there issued a soundless apoplectic roar. The pompano was dry and flat but the baked potato was delish.

This was the week from whom the bells toll.

"Salud;" the Professor said as he reentered the classroom. "Let us get on with it."

"I'm tired," a girl yawned. "I've been on my feet all day."

"We should continue," the Professor said.

"It's been a terrible day! Do you know what it is to work all day?" the girl went on.

"We will rest at the finish," Professor Bob Jordan said. "Adelante;" Professor Bob had a surprise for them. He pulled down what was presumed to be a map of the world or perhaps a chart of the elements, but it was a movie screen, They were going to see the movie of the book and compare genres, the Professor said. This seemed to calm the class.

Sandy wasn't prepared for this. He had trouble identifying with Gary Cooper, but he sure did like that young Ingrid Bergman. At

the very moment Ingrid Bergman was grabbing phantom cock in a sleeping bag, EI Cielito Lindo's doors were opening and Maestro Luncheon would be reigning at the bisexual revels, and it was truly wonderful to watch Ingrid Bergman squint her gray eyes and brush her cropped hair.

When the lights came back on and the class rubbed their eyes, Sandy was never more agitated.

"Well?" Professor Jordan said.

"Oh, shit," Sandy exclaimed, "what a silly, stupid ending. In the book you don't care about Maria. Just another pretty face, right?"

He looked around for support from the class but could adduce nothing but minor apathy and middling terror. "But Ingrid Bergman? How could he let Ingrid Bergman go!" Sandy was shouting. The Professor was grimacing and gritting his teeth.

"He must stay. He hates to leave her. But he must stay," the Professor insisted.

"That's ridiculous. He can hold them off for a while and then catch up. He's got everything going for him logistically. If you plotted a curve ."

The Professor stared balefully at the class, grasping his thigh.

"The leg it is broken. The big nerve is hurting. Such swelling."

"For Christ's sake. You're not going to let Ingrid Bergman get away because your leg's broke. It's not even a compound fracture!"

"The bone, it is in the muscle," Professor Bob Jordan whined.

"So you're gonna let her get away because of a lousy hematoma? You know what? I figured it all out. It ends like that because he didn't want a happy ending. That's all. Either that or he wants to die. He's got half an hour by his own admission. He wants some fucking bullshit tragic adventure, that's what!"

The Professor released his leg and stood up. "Well, son, I suppose you could do it better?"

"I can tell you what a right end would be," Sandy sniffed, swiveled. "This asshole does try to shoot the Fascists as they go by, but just like he forgot his brandy flask to kill the pain, he forgot his gun grease too, and the gun jams so he can't kill 'em. So he's just there, see, this guerrilla guy, helpless, and some Republicans find him and set the leg-you know, with old sticks or something. Jesus, Professor, Art Entelechy once played half a football game with a broken leg. Anyway, Professor, he meets back up with

Maria in Madrid and marries her like he said he would 'cause it was his duty, and the kid is born and lives this time; he remembers to tip the doctors this time; and they live well and like cheaply in Spain till Franco wins-and then they go to France and when the war starts he's drafted and he's put to work translating artillery manuals into Spanish because of his involvement with losers, he can't get security clearance and they live on an air base in the English midlands for the duration, where Maria has the flu all the time and runs at both ends and the earth no longer moves when they do it, even the mattress no longer moves when they do it, and Maria, like many women of Iberia, gets pretty fat pretty young, and the kid is lovely in his way but he's also dumb and ugly, as peasant stock often is, and if he was wirehaired and could hunt on all fours he would be a lot happier at sixteen, when his father's sixty, that boy's going to be doing a lot of walking around kicking tires and spitting in the street, you know and after the war's over and the great victory he returns to his alma mater to teach two sections of intermediate Spanish for beginners and three sections of freshman comp for $3,200 a year, and they no longer can afford servants, and Maria gets fatter and fatter and fatter and fucks a Puerto Rican dry-cleaning deliverer, and he gets softer and his cheeks get rounder and finally he doesn't get tenure because between 1938 and 1949 he had published only three translations of Quevedo, as well as the artillery manuals, of course, of the obsolescent Spanish cavalry-which is not the same as Calvary, the humorous Dean says, ha ha ha-and Maria's English is runny and the kid is runty and he runs off with a graduate student who in fact does restore him for a time-I believe that's the phrase-until his salary is attached in an alimony decision; the lawyer for Maria gives fee-free assistance to wives of veterans of the Spanish Civil War and the grad student finds out she can earn $7.50 an hour working for Air India, with unlimited travel benefits and all the chutney she can eat, and she leaves him, and he develops bursitis, sinusitis, pancreatitis and spends the rest of his life teaching Spanish to ignorant Americans, English to ignorant spies in an interdisciplinary modern college close to the expressway-now there's a very tragic adventure for you, maybe that's why he doesn't want to go into the swamp, sir

Professor Bob Jordan had become strangely ecstatic.

"Yes, yes! That's what I've been trying to get through to you all, all along. Life does go on when the book ends, doesn't it? Well, all of us are characters like that, aren't we? Words stuffed in our mouths, our little destinies forced upon us by somebody's notion of what's shapely. No you can't buffalo old Bob Jordan. You live in the most interesting of times, my young friends. I know what it's like to live in the most interesting of times-it's not easy-and how it is necessary to hold the secrets of the age to your breast, to withhold information lest you be betrayed. I know that you all have tales of power locked within you, you live fascinating perishable lives larded with emotional crises so profound as to put a poet out of business, despair and thrills are your everyday lot; I say, listen to your people, graph their heartaches, capture their speech, reveal their innermost thoughts; there are a million stories out there between every man and every woman; don't be tricky, don't be cute, bring those stories in dead or alive; give us all a break!"

Sandy scribbles furiously in his personal journal, holding his pud; you can't both type and hold your pud, that is the secret of the scribe, he realizes as Professor Jordan adumbrates another line of inquiry-i.e. that eroticism is a notoriouslyslippery foundation on which to base a society already in a sea change he rails against those minds that think against themselves, those who refuse to acknowledge what is most human about men and women, though he does not tell us what it is, particularly those artists who reflect only on the despair and alienation of the age, their art presumably transcending illness by being itself sick; sickness is a sick and old-fashioned idea; everyone knows that even in this country life is more rich, more varied, more frangible than these nasty brutish caricatures, these puppets who are trotted out to demean us all let us have art worthy of us, not these easy surreal anti-life easy ironies, these pessimistic abortions, and as you leave this class, open your eyes and your feelings so that your great humanity and the beauty of the world may integrate it is for you, bright youths, that these doors were opened: enter the armory and equip yourselves!

The night school class disperses into the night. Sandy calculates that over the last hour he has completed an additional 0.16 of a credit toward his M.A. which, prorated over an earning lifetime, has just increased his aggregate earning power by $1.52 in nonadjusted dollars.

Sandy is beguiled, light-headed in fact. He will walk home; fuck the Pontiac. The night is clear and warm and the stars, if not bright precisely, are well lit through the clouds of exhaust. He walks sprightly across the vastness of the empty parking lot. The Pontiac is as lonely as the last tulip. He looks down at the intersection from a balustrade. Professor Bob Jordan is right. There is more out here than is commonly told. What look like rodents to a diseased and cynical mind during the hard press of the day are more like molecules and atoms, more like, yes, stars in a way he saw that it was good. He makes a ring of his forefinger and thumb, encircles the taillight of a truck, gradually enclosing the ring until the agate is extinguished; then, looking to the heavens, he performs the same sensuous trick upon the North Star. How he envies the truckers, the only ones without hard-ons, their parts softened by fatigue and the vibrations of the felt life, kidneys eventually moussed by their eternal partings

Then, it seemed, the bridge exploded. Like it did in From Whom the Bells Toll except that this burst of flame hurt Sandy's eyes terribly. He made his way down the median strip, between the stinking ginkgos and honey locusts, the lanes now slowly clotting with irritated unsuspecting traffic. Blue and red strobes, sirens, approached from every direction. Apparently an ammonia truck had come on the ramp too fast, struck the guard rail, the tanker plunging off the bridge onto a gaggle of autos, while the cab remained caught on the railing. The ammonia was burning furiously, a pool of flame covered all eight lanes, the pin oaks were alight in one of the cloverleafs like a Hanukkah candelabrum, and at least a hundred cars lay about in various stages of wounded and maimed desuetude. A police helicopter held the truck in its searchlights, the eighteen-wheeler tank detumescent over the rail, resting on the broken pavement beneath. Above and across this chasm the Cielito Lindo's sign turned slowly in the glare and Sandy thought he could hear a chorus of their theme drifting above the shouts and the honks

Ai, yi yi-yi come to your window

Returning to the Pontiac, he switches on the CB, always in hopes that overhearing a conversation will change his life.

Hey there, Beaver Lady, I got an eyeball on your seat covers down there, but I can't get through. Everybody must be walkin' the dog. Threes on you. It's your nickel, good buddy. You're wall to wall and walkin' tall, but you're whompin' on me, and I'm gone. Mercy me and great day there, Beaver Lady, why you gettin' off at Exit 9?

Well, we kinder live here on Exit 9, Bucketmouth. Well, hang my needle. Clear there with you, Y.L. What's your handle anyways?

This be the Dreamer, Struttin-Style. We clear. We down. We gone. We out!

Well then, Dreamer, have a good day today. And a better one tomorrow.

It was four hours before Sandy was permitted to cross the bridge, and by then Cielito Lindo had closed down. He realized the good Professor Bob Jordan had dynamited his bridge just before the technology available to the individual for the destruction had been refined. As Haas put it, "Disaster, once the province of the isolated skilled professional, is now, given the system's transparency, the domestic democratic prerogative of anyone capable of a single moment of inattention."

The stars seem to be closing in, a curtain falling to its own reflection. Sandy feels constricted in his room, the walls of which are collapsing on him for the first time in years, and against his best impulses, he furiously masturbates.

5

This is the afternoon Sandy has been waiting for all week, for the time has come to reconstruct an algorithm of Tyler's and Travis's early life together, the part which Sandy cannot remember except

that it seemed so happy and promising, at least for him. His data breakthrough had come in the Vacation file and the bills. It seemed that Tyler had kept every bill for forty years, in perpetual fear of audit. The Accounts Receivable graphed an ascending exponential curve of consumption and expended energy astounding in its are, and Sandy realized that if indeed he was heir to this progression he was already off the paper, plotted beyond the frame. Sandy has taken Haas's advice, has suspended disbelief, has formalized his discourse. This once, he will not try to overmaster the machine; he will allow the data to be subject to cumulative existing programs. His attention now is to one great question: How did they Fly the Distance?

He logs into the software, settles back in his chair. The program has begun.

No ,jokf�' ·T�lf�r' anci Tr av i s now have S(�F""" arate bedrooms. No problem, as there are fOI.Jr' nice orie s s t LLl av a iLe o Le St.i.ll tht:� smallest in the famil�, Sand� retains the least large roomy the one with the radiator which flakes toxic lead paint and the ridiculous closet space. T�ler, tallerv uses the master one, the king-sized mattress with the bloodstains and the French wallpaper stippled with blue paisle�. An octagonal ba� sives out on the sard, his prerosative. Travis has bousht herself a cannonball bed with an extra firm mattress for her slight curvature of the spine, as well as an Empire campaisn desk and dresser ensemble. The peasant curtains clash with the pointillist wallpBPerv but what the hell, it's Travis's first private room since she was nine. She has even more masazines now than then.

The remaining room has been designated an office/guest room� taxwriteoff. But there will be no guests for a while. Since their crisis. these two are on bad terms with

their respective families and friends. And that is somehow more painful than their own estransement: a perfect word. Twler and Travis are both thirtw-one nowv and this first shared crisis of their ten-�ear marr i age, t.h T'ou�.�h wh :i. ch Sanl.'.!�:1 has 1.'.1(,')(:')1"1 w:i. th them from the beginning. other crises, at fortw-four and fift�-seven --the first related to Twler's career, th� second to Travis's slands--and of course it will also be difficult when Sandw soes. But this foreknowledse, which the� know makes their species uniaue, does not suff'icf:� • Their friends speculate about this attractive couple, universall� admired for their refusal to offer advice or confess a thins. The diagnoses fall short of the mark. Travis refuses to see a shrink because she knows she is smarter than the� are, and T�ler openl� concurs with this. With obliaue masculinitw, he assumes that he is the cause of her problem and must bear with it. One thins, thoushv is that T�ler, once auite competitivev all elbows and knees, has come to love practicall� ever�one auite fiercel� except Travis? while Travis, once 50 open and charmins, a real credit, has begun to moon and bark. She even accuses Tyler of fuckins on the side, which he wishes were true and thus cannot convincinslw refute.

With Tyler, it isn't a auestion of startins over. He's not mad i�QY1 anyone else. He's no lonser even mad at Travis. Even when, like the other night, she lay srovelins, sobbins at the bottom of the stairs w h i leT � Le r- d T' a n k :i nth (.� t a;o(�.J r' i teo f f' S Y" :i. n ding his teeth, thinking that as Ions as he wasn't Soing to leave Travis, he'd be damned if he'd have to go downstairs. Their friends felt sorr� for Travis feelins so sorry for herself, and sorry for Tyler because he had

never been allowed to feel sorr� for himself. T�ler's trees were in trouble too. T�ler owned two of the larsest elms in Elm Cit�, trees more than four hundred �ears old. In the summer, the� threw a canop� over the entire lot. In the winter, the� held tons of snow in their massive crotches. T�ler could sit in the taxwriteoff and watch them for hours. Those anaconda limbs dwarfed even the pink sun as it slid through them. And at sunset T�ler would alwa�s do some figurins' let's see, the sun's 2?000�000�000, the trees are 400, the country's 201, the state, uh, 102, the town 50-some? we're 31, Sand� will be 10 in March, and the cannonball bed is about one week now Dutch elm was ravasins Elm Cit�.

Travis deSPised the trees in particular, though in general she knew that Elm Cit� wouldn't be the same without them. She had seen pictures of neighboring towns after the chestnut blight, real nice respectable towns like Elm Cit�, which suddenl� looked as common without the trees as some Nebraska burs. But Travis hated the wa� the trees huns over the house ·.if even a small limb should fall? The roots pressed against the basement walls causing them to sweat; the� slurped UP water and fertilizer that was meant for the mock orange, no Brass or sarden would Brow beneath them, and the few seedlings that Travis managed to start in the interstices of sunlight that the limbs permitted were soon trampled b� Sand� and his friends. Pans�, hibiscus, rose of Sharon--which, when Travis's mother grew them, were as large as softballs split at the seams after l�ing in a rain� outfield for a month--were unknown here, and even the miracle shrub, which the catalogue said would be resplendent with immense white flowerlets all summer, luscious purple berries in the fall, colorful red bark in

the winter, and cream and lime varie�ateJ foliase to fool the sprins forsythiav never lesall� died but took no notice of the Sf:) a !ii C) n s UBI (J o m v b C) o III e (I T \:11 Eo' Y' y If b I o 0 IT, y �ou bastards!" � lot he knew. The poppies he claimed he ordered never arrived. What had arrived was the arborist. T�ler crinsed in the taxwriteoff with Sandy. Travis met the man civilly at the door but made him wait outside. Then she knocked on T�l.f:)Y" (:; do o r n .Je s u s y T!:11<:�r'," !:;hf:·) f:;a:i.d v nthe arborist's southern. His name is Fondue Reed�, or somethins like that.·

T�ler finished his beery and after a limp handshake took the arborist out to the trees. He seemed Quite soft for a treeman, a moo of a red face and bell-bottomed denims. Over his left ar�y shirt pocket was a faded rectansle where his military ni:1mf:! had b(.;)<::.'n.

T�ler hussed the larsest of the elms, his Ions thin arms reachins not even a Quarter C) f t h f.".) C i rcum f <:.� Y' (;·'nc (0 V "'-'€:' d;':.l:i. ,., :-.:J h i �; loa f t:� r s between the roots.

·You think it's Bot it?"

Fondue stared upward where Tyler was pointins: a larse lower branch with a lemony hue.

"If'n it don't, it's a pretty sood imitat i on.

"We've had a cold summer • Tsler bpsan hc)pt.� I (-:"55 I !:I.

"If'n it donet come down by me, the cit�'ll take it. Just a matter of time. Suit UP yerself."

"Have �ou seen any elms this bis in town?" T�leT' stall€�d.

"Not st and in v "

Tyler peered at the man.

"You want some recommendations� "No ••• no," Tyler was distracted. how much to take them down?"

"One Brand per sentleman."

"Isn't that an awful lot?" m i s t.e r I a l.oJf? 11 �

"I'm not gonna wampus around UP in that gentleman for the love of itv mister."

"Well, I didn't expect •••

"Hold �er taters, mister- You know what I Bot to do? I got to top that sentleman if it don't flip m� ass across this count�. Then I got to drop it so it don"t fallon �our garage or on that power line. Then I 90t to cut the son-of-a-bitch UP into twO-y three-foot pieces, then I sot to truck 'em fift� miles to the burnin' place, then I got to bring that truck back empt�. We all got problems. I'd onl� do for �ou what I'd do for m�self."

"There's no wa� to save them?"

"Yeah, there"s stuff. I injected a hunnert trees with it in Tennessee. it ain't been governmint tested �et. a hunch, that's all."

"How much for that?"

"Five taters per diameter inch. antee."

"What do �ou think, though?"

"Wal, a grandls worth eleven hunnert, But It·s No guarmister."

"All right, Mr. Reed�, let:s take a sood swins at the pitch." And T�ler shook hands and turned rapidl� toward the house.

"In the mornin" if nothin: don't happen."

As soon as the arborist had left, T�ler looked outside to check the �ellowness. It seemed to have spread an inch or so since Fondue Reed� had left? and if he couldn't arrest it, the cit� inspector would spot it for sure. The� had taken down all the elms along the parkwa� only three blocks from Twler in the last week. He looked at the trails and favorite hiding places Sand� had made in the privet hedge, and then he glanced UP at Travis's room where the shades were down. T�ler picked UP the newspaper, which was so wet it disintesrated in his hands.

Sandw charsed b� him and into the housey where he threw himself mewling Ofl the sofa. A short and sudden peace descended Ofl Twler, which made him verw itchw.

Travis had been watching Twler in her housecoat from the small slits? made with cuticle scissors, in the shades of her new own room. Be�ond him, she could see the neighbor ladw, Ricki, already at work in her new Spanish Provincial kitchen. The neishbors, Ricki and Frankliny were Travis's and TYlerJs best friends. Franklin worked with T�ler at the office? where they respected one another. Until recently, Travis and Ricki talked about every thins and shared their problems. Once Ricki had even taken Travis to a group where they were to "act out their problems," but despite a sood deal of cryins and kissing and husgins, it depressed Travis more than not. Just as TYler felt responsible for his failure with Travis, Travis felt responsible for her inability to respond to the sroup. Ricki had perhaps compounded the problem b� sUBgestinB in the group that Travis's problem might be her relationship with Sandy. "He obeys me, but he won't plaw with me�" Tra�is explained. The group suspected Travis was not tellins the whole truth, that if she were more honest with herself, and open with them� she might be able to put things in perspective. "But I am beins honest and open," she insisted. T�ler doesn't love me as much as I want him to. What could be more honest and open than that?" One of the women besan to stroke her soothingly. ·Please," whimpered Travis, "don't ••• MsYbe I Just need something better than the truth."

Later on, Ricki suggested that it misht be fun if the two couples all had sex together. ·You can love more than one person�· she said.

"Maybe,· said Travis, "but what if the� all don't love you?"

·We all love each other, don't we?" Ricki said.

When Travis asked Tyler about this, he was of the opinion that it would cIlmplicate his relationship with Franklin. "I need a sood accountant more than I need to set laidy" he said. Travis agreed for once.

To tell the truth, Tyler had had sex with Ricki once, a Ions time aso. He had been weedins under her kitchen window, havins begsed off solf with Franklinr and Ricki had invited him in for some coffee. Ricki had no furniture in her living room then except enormous vinyl-covered beanbass. She lay down on one, and asked Tyler if he wanted to have sex. Before they didv Ricki put on a �air of earphones and turned the stereo up. Tyler wondered what she was listenins to, and envied Franklin out there duffing around.

Afterward� T�ler went back home and urinated, spattering the toilet seat and shag rus. Later, in the taxwriteoff� he could hear Travis muttering ·Pis, pig,· as she cleaned UP after him.

That evening, after takins his turn putting Sandy to bed and havins a few drinksy Tyler knocked on Traviscs door to say sood-night and gave her the summary of a TV show that he had digested intermittentlY between chores.

"There were these three couples, YOU seey and the emcee sends the wives out and tells the husbands to draw pictures of their wives in their most characteristic activities. They sive them easels, and one does his wife on the phone, another does her washing and drYing, and the third wife. I think, was taking a nap. None of the wives, when they came back on stage, could suess which drawins was of her. Of course, they weren'� very good

drawin9s. How do �ou think I would draw �oUY Travis? What would �ou be doins7"

Travis didnct answer directl� but gave T�ler a summar� of the evening news. Verisimilitude she had, perhaps, but her sadness lacked somethinB.

Fondue Reedw arrived Just before noon. The family do. toddled out to Breet him but cowered when he saw the unnamable tools. Fondue had brouBht his club-cab pickup with two 500-gallon drums and two silent, surlw helpers of rusticated mountainous origin. These two began to drill holes in the Bround at the perimeter of the front elm's drip line, while Fondue began to pump the contents of the two drums into the holes. Then Fondue Jerked himself UP the trunk with a lineman's belt and boot spikes. Just below the primarw crotch, he drilled into the trunk and inserted two pipes, which even before he descended began to drip an opsaue froth.

·What's the idea here?" T�ler asked.

"Ain't no fact of the matter, mister, Just something in m� head. When somethi�'s soin' to bad, �DU use what medercine wou got."

"It doesn't sound verw scientific,· T�ler s a i d

"The wife wants me to get out of this line of work,· Fondue replied.

Then he looked UP into the great web of branches, fe i f.�rl :i. n�.! an s dm i.T' i ng sou i nt.

"Can't get m'belt around her,· Fondue went on, ·she's 50 wide aroundy and YOU know what, mister, she gets thicker as she soes. I never hardly saw a tree like that." Then he grinned for the first time. ·Sure would like to have a woman like th�t."

The comparison puzzled Tsler. "I don't see wh� he began.

F 0 n d u f.� t U T' n f:' d C� U :i. c k :I �:! 0 r·�l n o:J T �:! I e 1"' c o U 1 (,1 see that, below the 50ft facey Fondue's neck

cords were as thick as his fin�ers. And that his fingers had the texture and diaffipter of seaffian's rope. In fact, Fondue was the onl� man T�ler ever saw whose forearffis were larser than his biceps and calves, and whose trapezius, thuffibsp wrists, dick? and ears appeared to be of eGual weight.

·Sa�p" Fondue said softl�, slowl�Y neck cords still pulsatins, "when I was UP in that there tree, I saw a lad� lookin' at ffie froffi the winder- Is that �our wife an�wa�1·

·Of course."

"Bo�, oh, bo�. You sure sot �ourself a pill there. A real leffion

Tyler was so taken aback that absolutel� nothing occurred to hiffi, even astonishffient. But Fondue had alread� turned awa� and, droppins his useless safet� belt to the ground, began again to cliffib the elm, chain saw dangling from a cord about his wrist.

As man� tiffies as T�ler had stared UP into that tree he had not �bsorbed its enorffiit� until he saw Fondue dwarfed in its crown. The arborist moved gingerl� toward the diseased limb, jerked the saw into a whine, and the �ellowness shuddered just before the liffib crashed with tremendous force into the lawn. T�ler cursed in dela�ed action� he saw the leaves crackle where Fondue was and then an odd flash of lisht. The two helpers were starins openmouthed, rubbernecked� T�ler could hear the dos running in nervous circles behind him. Then T�ler saw the chain saw hurtling in the sunlight, but even before it disappeared into the privet hedse, he was aware of Fondue's crumpled bod� on the sidewalk not five feet from him.

The scream of the chain saw assumed a more human tone as the two helpers ran for the truck. T�ler stared incredulousl� as the� peeled awa�, though it was true that incredulity alwa�s seemed to relax T�ler- He step�ed over Fondue's bod�, strangel� unblood�,

reminding Twler somehow of a documentarw he had once seen on elk hunting in Manitoba. The chain saw had ceased its chatterins in the privet, and T�ler regarded the severed limb, its �ellowness now more menacine than ever, sunken in the lime-green turf. And then glancing UP, he saw Travis's face, impassive at the window of her room. Her Ions black hair was spread over her shoulders where she had been brushins it, and in her risht hand she held an oval hand mirror. T�ler carried the trembling pup into the house, propped him UP in an eas� chair, wiped his nose and e�es, and, after a few soothing words, turned on the Auburn-Missouri game.

After the police and doctors and reporters and law�ers had milled around the front �ard for a while, Twler came out on the front steps to answer an� Guestions, which weren"t all that tough. Travis gave Sand� his dinner and put him to bed. Their friends, the neighbors, were there, Franklin staring puzzled at the corpse, and when Travis suddenl� appeared on the front porch in a dashing matador pantsuit, Ricki embraced her and Travis began to weep and shake. When the men turned Fondue over, everybod� looked UP into the elm, mans perhaps for the first time in their lives, far more than Just a glance, except one man who was entranced with the torn end of the fallen limb. He touched it, smelled of it, and then walked slowl� to each �f the large trees, markins them 823 and 824 respectivel� with an aerosol paint can.

Ricki was hugger-mugsering Travis. Tyler stood UP straight and felt his underchin unfold. Ricki took Travis home to listen to some stereo.

A week later, T�ler got a notice from Elm City Hall that he had two weeks to get the two elms down or thes'd slap a tax lien on him, and take them down themselves in the public interest.

On the pretext of savins his marriase, T�ler arranged for a Caribbean vacation.

The air approach to the island was disappointing. A sreen puddle in a blue sloush. As thehl disembarked from their aircraft, T�ler and Travis sported identical white linen suits and madras ties, matchins attache case and slins bas in moroccan leather. Ricki had offered to take care of Sandhl and the pup. The island was overine with karatet�pe waves on one side and a hotel strip on the smooth and tepid lee.

Travis loved the sun and the chanse of routine, and took Ions afternoon naps in a hammock, the first time she had slept durins the da� since she was nine. A Quick tan brousht out the beaut� of her bones, but as much as Thller enjo�ed Travis's new health, he was never more bored.

"The Iowa of oceans,· he srumbled into the flat wavelets which lapped into the la900n whenever T�ler looked UP. There were no sunsets, much less an�thin9 to frame them. At five-fift� everhl da� the red sun fell Quite suddenl� into the sea like a spansle into dishwater. Floating face down with his disBustins snorkel, Thller traded slares with the jellhlfish and coral bunnies, wonderins if resarding them was the point.

The fishins was ridiculousl� straightforward: �ou simpl� threw some barracuda bait from a boat and five minutes later horsed in an enormous s�ouper or something of the sort and watched the natives hit it on the head with an oar.

The dolphin fish, iridescent in their element, turned a Dutch elm color upon beins horsed over the sunwales. On the fO'c'sle, expirins in the heat, trickles of black blood from the corner of its parrot mouth, a blue marlin stared T�ler down. And as the� made for home, its great sail sraduall� retracted into its bod�, and the sold-

en iris turned green and then extinguished altogether. ·So that's what happens to �OU,H T�ler thought.

T�ler took his laps in the saltwater pool where he could at least count how far he swam. One dahl he swam out to a small, classhl hlacht anchored in the la900n, and was welcomed aboard b� the owners, a retired plastics executive and his kind-of wife, who explained to him the Jows of the simple life. Looking around the tinw gallehl with all the instrumentation, Twler was once again incredulous --drivins that thins around the ocean would be like commuting to work in a VW in the midst of a truck conVOhl while watching a test pattern on TV and listenins to Officer Bob with the weather report over and over. If that was retirement, he thought, if that was the simple life, herd rather work until he toppled over at his desk with thundering apoplexw.

Even the predictable soporific climate save Twler no solace� indeed, the entire idea of the eQuator struck him as absurd. It reminded him of havins sex with Ricki with earphones in the beanbag. He:d rath�r have Travis snoring softlw through the wall, their vast silences over dinner, than the whole damn archipelago.

Worst of all, Twler was taller than anhl tree on the entire island. And when he looked out on the horizon and saw ill tanker, all he could think of was how his house would look without the trees when thehl got back� Just like that tanker, a stupid rectangle in a larger prison of air.

The one thins Thller did like was lwins on his back in the sand--not the actual warmth and certainlhl not the leisure which save so much life to Travis, but simplhl the illuminated tissue of his ehlelids, a night watch in dShllisht, blood pumping through the fine csp-

illaries, bacteria slobbering discreetl� on his re t i ne s

If Travis was in her element, T�ler was alread� converting it to energ�. The onl� wa� he could deal with it.

They accompany their matching outfits to dinner, the first to act on the gong struck b� an uncompromising Ma�an. The natives think they a r e handsClITI(:'), thf?y think tJ'H:) nativei-6�autiful. And th�-�ord is passed, on both sides: "Behave." T�ler's hand� reachins for a corn chip to do the dip into pummeled avocado, is gray beneath the mosGuito-warding lights. "My handy" he thinks, "is not actuallY sray."

Through mutual admiration, they are given the best table at the edge of the parapet where the lagoon and the angelfish slop Just six feet below. Travis x's their window on a picture postcard of the hotel to send off to Ricki. FABULOUS, she writes in a bold script, EVEN THE OLD FART SEEMS_TO LIKE IT. ,Tyler has received a cable from his law�er saying that the trees will be down within the week, and it appears that Fondue Reedy was not bonded, so Tyler is being sued for half a million dollars by Reedy's wife in l erme s s.e e

Tyler wonders about the trees--whether they will leave stumps upon which he can put at least some birdseedv and he short-dreams that one of the trees will fallon their house so he can collect insurance and move to a tree house. But then, after the first daiQuiri, he realizes there is no escaping Dutch elm on the North American continent. And he recalls reading of a new hybrid poplar which grows five to eight feet in a Year, and calCUlates that he will be fifty-two before it is even half the height, much less the width, of his lost elms.

It�s hurricane season, that record year� there are only Tyler and Travis and a convention of roller-bearing salesmen, enormous men who apologize often for carrwin� on, who amaze the natives with touch football on the beach before cocktails. Fun-lovins, homesick men who wolf their venison, wild turkeY, tuna, artichokes, and enchiladas after smiting each other with heavy forearms, flinging a ball in the shape of this ancestral island, and engasinsly, shyly, ask Twler's permission to dance with the onlw lady, Travis, and she is fantastic, no doubt about it: the mariachi band with saxophone is all Mawan siggles as a dozen men take turns with Travis on the floor, their heavw sandw hands on her bare midriff, 50 polite thew break your heart. She hardly has time to eat her dinner, and Twler refuses to dance� he hates dancing, in fact, along with movies, cards, and nisht clubs. On leave from a particularly dramatic rumba, Travis asks Twler whw he's got his head in his hands. "Jealous?" she adds.

"I'm Just sorrw I don't sive YOU what wou want,· he says. "And 1 can't imasine why wou want it."

·You've always done everything for me but really love me, Tyler."

Not a bad track record, Tyler thinks to himself.

"I've never had a better time in my life,a Travis saws. "I could staw here forever."

Tyler withstands the obvious. "What 1 hate most of all," he saws, "is that we have begun to treat each other like everyone else does."

Travis sives him a devastating but genuinelY affectins smile. She has resained her wouth somehow� the sand, the tan, her eyelids still pale from the sunglasses, slow like plankton from her thermal face. Her lips are frostw, and the nice Indian bow who brinss their chiles £!11!QQ§ can"t keep from staring. It is now a

Question of which one of the diners is nuts. Travis has a sinking feeling, a suspiciony that it might not be she.

·You alwa�s put things in such a nesative way,· she besins. "What's wrons now?"

"It Just seems, Travisy that �ou are setting smaller--smaller and smaller."

"I'm sorr�, T�ler. I suess in a wa� I'm just a mess."

"A tiny mess, then.·

·You are like an animal. I don't know what kind. Or rather a lot of different animals-a pack of bears, maybe� in one case." Then she begins to weep softly� her turQuoise pendant shivers in her cleavase. sot sunstroke,· she sa�s.

·Ma�be I've

·You were born with blood� sunstroke, Travis." A conventioneer wedsed behind T�ler to the railing, and fluns a tortilla into the floodlit lasoon. Orange blunt lipless mouths rose to scarify the surface. "Here's some Mexican meatloaf for �a, fishies."

Travis excuses herself� taking her napkin with her. T�ler moves to the bar amons the chorusing, pummeling salesmen. It takes fifteen minutes to explain to the crestfallen waiter why they didn't finish dinner. "Hotv· 5a�s Tylery l�ins, sticking out and pointing to his stippled tongue, and the Indian performs the "this no Popsicle country" shrus.

Travis walked down to the beach in front of the other hotels, clenching her fists, regalnins control in the soft night. At the end of the beach was a coral promontorY and a cross soused into the packed rock. "A sallant diver?" the inscription read, "Jesus Jesus was lost here.· The path wandered off-i�-� swamp. Travis turned around and walked back past the hotels where everyone was eating. Just before she entered the hotel, howevery in a bar of moonlight between the stunted palms, she saw a couple� at least twent�-five �ears oLder

than she and Twler, holdins hands, the woman kissing the man:s shoulder as he kissed her forehead. Travis burst into tears and ran UP to her room.

Twler lurched in an hour later after a medlew of collese favorites.

1:11 eat the ves-a-tablesYou eat da meat, etc.

Travis was lying face down on the bed, half naked, a water tumbler full of crushed cigarettes spiraling ill blameless aureole of menthol about her body. The paleness where the bra strap was contrasted nicelw with the dark racing stripe between her buttocks. "Don't slam the door," Travis said into the pillow, ·please don't kick the chairs. Why do YOU set in these moods?U

Tyler law down on his back with Travis and slipped off his shoes and socks. Then she undid his zipper but couldn't set the slacks over his numb hips. "I was never verw sood at this,· she said softly.

It was the first time they had been in the same bed for four months. Tyler stared at the two pairs of feet, one up, ladylike, the other's arches hooked down over the edge of the bedi fish and fowl. Then he turned on hi� back to take his own pants off.

'There's a fly, Tyler. batso.U

Tyler sot UP and turned out the lisht. 'When he soes' to the lisht in the johnv It's driving me we:ll lock him in."

II miss Sandw,· said Travis, sobbins.

'Shit, I miss 823 and 824!"

'Tyler, isn:t there anw way we could make a living down here?"

"Do YOU realize, love, that m� little toe is almost the same length as my bis tbe?

That is rare

Travis's foot was beneath Tyler's thigh. "The foot is indeed the noblest of beasts,"

he thousht, ·smarter than the stomach, more erotic than the brain." T�ler srinned to himself, and began ab5entmindedl� to knead Travis's delicate browned foot as he would SGueeze the roe from a trout.

Graduall�, effortlessl�, Travis's toes assumed their own space, her feet parted from one another then flexed as the� raked Tyler's thighs, her le95 locked about Tyler's waist, whose toes were now definatelY dancing, down and out.

In the morning, T�ler and Travis went out on their balcony in their lemon shortsleeved knee-length Caribbean pajamas. Beneath them in a clump of yucca and hibiscus a larse lizard had already swallowed the legs of a tropical Guail, but the bird was almost reflectively, it seemed, battering the lizard's skull to a pulp.

·I'm the bird,· Travis said, "and you:re the snakething, T�ler.·

·Nope," Tyler smiled. "I'm the little birdie with the big bill."

"Look, they've stopped,· Travis said.

"Let's set dressed,· Tyler said, spankins Travis more than playfully. "I hear there'S some great art down in the valle�."

But the tale by the machine of loving grace served only to make Sandy more impatient than ever. He has forgotten his vow, has gone one step too far, he is once again outside the calculus. He draws the console to him and types with one finger:

Then how to grieve?

There is an uncharacteristic pause of several minutes; Sandy's throat is waxen. There is some humorless judging going on somewhere.

Sandy retypes the command, and there is no caesura in the circuity this time.

Not to pass on the sadness please This facilit� is closins down.

At Cielito Lindo the air is incipient fire, an air of unprecedented seriousness. The Conquerors are moody, and they phlegmatically stomp out the bitter white jass.

The thing about the dead man blues Is that a dead man

Don't have any blues

So it's a kind of joke Those blues.

Dontchaknow Dontchaknow

The Sandman hides in the murmuring meadow of the bar, the weeds come to his chest, the undergrowth is damp and tangled beneath the brittleness of a sea of seapods. He will take it easy. He will be selective as hell. He feels that he is on the threshold of something and, while knowing this feeling is an illusion, nevertheless savors it.

The marginally popular white jass is swinging:

The sons ofgod Fuck the daughters of men The gods are all humbled Sit and weep, yeah sit and weep Their lips drawn tight They crowd like flies Around the sacrificer

Sandy is aware of a dark head on his chest, and brown arms about his waist. He cannot see her face. She is rocking on the balls of her feet as if drunk. She whispers in his ear.

"You could have any woman you want, I know You'll be good to me, I know."

Sandy is inattentive, abstracted. Another winsome lissome loser, he is thinking, but it turns out he has made a mistake and back on the Left Bank he asks her, for some reason staring fixedly into her blooming labia, how it was.

"All right," she said.

"Just all right?"

"All right is just that. Listen to the word. Allllll11 right."

Sandy listens, looks.

"Why you looking at me like that, hey? Hey, stop that. You make me nervous."

The Sandman rolls over and throws his left arm over his left eye. He senses they are being watched. Slowly, like a gun turret swinging out to sea, his right eyeball rolls westward in its socket. The tear ducts are swollen but the valves hold. He swallows his gasp. He has rarely been so astonished. For Tyler and Travis are sitting at his coffee table, each a little diaphanous perhaps, but palpable enough for all that. Tyler is sitting cross-legged in his weekend clothes: khaki slacks, combed cotton shirt, and boating shoes. Travis is dressed to the teeth, the yellow angora suit for traveling, nylons and walking shoes, exposing her best feature, those trim ankles which never left her, and which were the last things he saw of her. He remembers the doctors better than the patient. The agonized Filipino internist, the Dutch anesthesiologist wringing his hands. Tyler is absently drumming his fingers on the table staring around the cornice of the room; Travis is fingering the rubberized curtain, taking stock. They seem pleased enough or at least uncritical. The room is neat. Sandy whews and then cries out.

"Well, was 1 gentle enough! Did 1 last long enough? Am 1 good on the clit?"

"Wow," said the girl, "are you ever insecure?" "I wasn't talking to you. I'm sorry."

"Then you're crazy, 'cause 1 can tell you're not a cruel person." So sweet and sensical she is, the Sandman thinks. He turns his back on Travis and Tyler.

"You're holding me too tight," she says. "Don't worry, I'm not going to leave."

Sandy screams at Tyler and Travis, "Get out! Leave me alone."

"I know you don't mean that. You're being irrational again."

"Don't pay any attention to me," Sandy gasps. "I don't know what's happening to me."

"I'm scared too. You want to talk about it?"

Sandy gazes at Tyler and Travis. They are chatting now, but he cannot hear what they say. They are covering their mouths with their hands.

"What," he yells, "what?"

The girl is now the one who is abstracted and amused. "Does your craziness scare you? You know many people who are crazy?"

But his thoughts are only with Tyler and Travis.

"I used to think I was crazy," she went on; "all I could think about was how fast I would lose everything. First the crow's feet, then the behind goes, the breasts removed, the pituitary, cysts on the ovaries, a lot of cancer in my family I'll tell you; anyway what I was scared of, it turned out, was not craziness, what worried me was benignity, if that's a word please don't hold me so tight. I can't get my breath there, that's better. Don't look so forlorn. You change your face so much. You look like a little child. Then like a king for a while. But now you look so sad. Come on, I'm the only one who's got anything to lose. The cost-benefits ratio is all on your side. I'd say you need me offhand. You might get tired of me, of course, but I won't bother you. How do we work things? I mean give me a plan."

Tyler and Travis had begun to play hearts. "Get out, get out," Sandy moaned.

"Look, I will if you really want me to, but not until you stand up straight, look me in the eye cold sober, and tell me to get the hell out."

Sandy could barely hear. He couldn't help himself. He screamed and raged at Tyler and Travis.

"OK. But you've really got something, you know. There are a lot of slugs out there, believe me. There's a couple of things you should know, though. First, I'm somebody special, you'll see. Second, it's better if you're devoted, you'll see."

Tyler stopped in the midst of the deal. Travis had an index finger against her lips. They were listening carefully to what he would do.

"The third thing to remember is the hardest," she said. "And that's this: sometimes you only get one chance. So I'll be going now."

Sandy nodded almost with relief. He was stunned by her confidence without diffidence.

"Look," she said, tying her shoes: "I don't care how strong you are. Look at you lying there like a board! You wouldn't know what to do with help if you got it. But me, I need support. And freely

given too. You think you could get it up for that? I don't care if you'redepressed even. Just treat me right, hear? That's my theory."

She dressed inconceivably fast, smiling at him. She was not striking-her ears stuck out, she was pigeon-toed, knock-kneed-but her smile and bright eyes gave him a surprising ache. But this was nothing compared to his astonishment when Tyler and Travis threw down their cards, sprang to their feet, and, without so much as a wave or a nod, followed Theory Girl out of the room with unconcealed disappointment.

The arm falls again over the left eye. Haas will not believe this. Some age-old assumptions are going to have to be put on the line. Well, it's come to this, Haas, I guess I got to show my love, show my love, Haas. Haas? How do you show your love? Haas? Haas?!

6

Today the big events were the zoo fair and the game of the week for those who wanted to stick around the house, or so said Ron Flaherty, who claimed he was vice president for corporate affairs for Channel 27-407. He signed off, instructing all to have a good weekend with the station's new motto: "There's nothin' I'd rather do than happy talk on the raid-e-o."

Although Sandy would have preferred the zoo fair, it was, after all, Art Entelechy'S last game. While he had taken them to the playoffs twelve out of thirteen years, the big enchilada had always eluded the Rough Grouse. Perennial bridesmaids was the charge. There was no way to get to the zoo and back in time for the game. He would have to endure Saturday until game time. It would be his greatest challenge in a great while. Sandy was thinking about going into the swamp.

The Sandman's projects were going badly. He was hopelessly behind on the Human Resources catalogue, as he had run out of categories; the Restaurant Guide was stalled, as he could not come up

with a code to differentiate, much less evaluate, them; the Bravery Index was still in such a theoretical and unrealized state that he got no kicks from working on it; he had exhausted his data for the Tyler & Travis file; and he could not find an execution algorithm for his own personal concordance. The Sandman was losing his concentration. He had clipped all his nails to the quick.

The complex was disintegrating. Maintenance Man had disappeared, and down in the foyer the last free service had been crossed off.

YOURS FOR THE ASKING! WHAT DO YOU NEED?

Bieyele

Bridge Table

EJttra Blanket

Pille'll

First Aid

Heatiftg Paa

lee

Iron Hair Deyer

TYfJe'llriter

Sewing Kit

S�et Refftever

Haas was after him again, being moralistic this time. "There is, historically, nothing more overrated than modem communications, you're wasting our time." Haas also reminded him that within the year they would achieve total transparency in the system, the lubric simplifications of all interfaces, so that programmers would not have to be concerned with knowing how the system worked to operate it. This represented the true and penultimate stage of democratic technology. The machines would work without anyone understanding an iota of their architecture. "Total transparency throughout the entire society," Haas sneered; "it should suit you to a tee."

Sandy tried not to be insulted. The signs of depression had been posted in the main entry of the community college, and he had them all. There was also a touch of paranoia, since the implication of Haas's breakthrough was to make people like Sandy infinitely replicable and thus totally replaceable. He would be moved on to other projects, no doubt-the partially understood gradually evap-

orating to a few patches and fixes of memory, his expertise leaving him just as Tyler and Travis had done, without a clue to what had brought and kept them together. Indeed, the only thing he seemed to hold in common with his deceased parents was one of the few original ideas America has given the world; i.e., that experience becomes less relevant as it is accumulated.

But Haas had made one crucial miscalculation, due to the very symmetry of his own mind. For Sandy's ancestral motto could well have been, "I forget. Therefore I am." As the hierarchies of the system increased, it became increasingly impossible for anyone else to discover what Sandy had programmed, without the considerable risk of rendering the system inoperative. In fact, he had already forgotten much of what he had done, and whether he was removed or not, the tiny part of his will would remain alive and untouched within the system, for which he would receive neither credit nor blame and which could never be removed or even identified, except at the expense of the entire system. So it was that the Sandman discovered Modern Revenge.

How he endured to game time, no one would ever know. And even then they tricked him with an hour of introductions, banners, commercials; Entelechy would tell him later, privately, that his arm had stiffened during the festive interlude of God Bless America.

The first half was a hard-fought but cautious affair. The Rough Grouse's collapsing defense forced the Mad Dogs to settle for three field goals. Entelechy engineered two model time-consuming drives, mixing off-tackle slants with his two mediocre setbacks, with short flare passes to his small wingback, who had neither spleen nor drive but remarkable balance. All other receivers were kept in to block, nearly doubling his set-up time, according to Sandy's stopwatch. On their second drive, the Rough Grouse had third and one on their own forty-five. Entelechy ran both backs into the line on the crossbuck, trotted with false dejection into the vacated backfield, faked a flare to the small back who was smothered by a reddogging linebacker, and hit his tight end who had corrie off a block with a wobbly spiral twenty yards from the nearest defender. The most remarkable thing, however, was that Entelechy had also faked out all three cameras completely, so that the play was forever outside the proscenium of sight, rerun, and history itself. If not the

most spectacular ever, it was certainly the only play of Entelechy's career which would never be subject to interpretation: a pure statistic on the page. When the half ended, the Grouse seemed in thorough command as they moved collectively off the field in their high arching tub-thumping Grouse walk.

Sandy opened a beer and leaned back, closing his eyes, dozing during the first-half highlights with much ado and commentary on The Lost Play. The halftime show was punctuated by cutaways to the zoo fair, where there was a contest to costume wild animals, domestic animals, and reptiles to see which could be made most human. In the reptile class, an abstracted anaconda, dressed up in wire-rimmed spectacles, porkpie hat, and a striped cravat eight feet long, took first place. But when they introduced a new commentator, one Fran Entelechy, he started. She came on as a good-looking strong woman, with long ash-blonde hair.

"It's only fitting, Fran, that at the very moment your husband is ending his career, you're beginning your own-which we hope, of course, will be no less illustrious in its way."

"Yes," she pursed an odd little ironic smile, which Sandy recognized as agony but which came across as total cool, "of course I don't intend to trade on my husband's name."

Gary, the co-anchor person, pulled at his thin lapels and selfconsciously checked the monitor. "Well, Fran, the Rough Grouse are ahead, 14 to 9, and it looks as though they may finally pull it off. Would you care to analyze the action so far, a kind of insider's point of view, you might say?"

"Well, all I can say, Gary, without betraying confidences, is that the Grouse have followed their game plan to a tee, and if they stick with that, there's no way they can lose. Art can't throw long any more, it's no secret. If Art has to play catch up, go for the big one, you can forget it. The Grouse will go down again."

"We appreciate your frankliness, good to know where you're coming from, Fran, and we'll be looking for any deviation from the game plan, you betcha. I see the teams are back on the field, no injuries so far--of course, Art has never missed a game due to injury in his entire career. What do you attribute that remarkable stamina to, Fran?"

"Well, Art has played hurt, plenty. Maybe most people don't

know that. 1 think the answer is basically that Art has a high pain threshold. Basically Art's insensitive to pain."

"Remarkable, Fran, remarkable. Well, we've only got a minute to go hey, what's it like really like to share the life of a famous man like Art?"

The smile went sour, but only for an instant, as Fran's hands fluttered, then clenched. The voice was only slightly nasal.

"I put off my life for the children and my husband, and now it's time to start my own career. I'm going to write all about my life with Art in a book."

"But what's he like off camera?"

"Exactly the same." There was just a touch of harshness here.

"We wish you well with your writing, Fran. There's always room for knowledgeable women in sports, but can't you give us, you know, in the thirty seconds we have left, say, just an idea, to sum up, of the thrills and sorrows of thirteen seasons in the league?"

"Sure. Monday night we go over Sunday's game films. Tuesday, the next opposing team's latest films; Wednesday night, the opponent's old films; Thursday night, Grouse versus opponent films; Friday night, selected slow-mo individuals, so Art can get in his rhythm; and Saturday Art usually brings home some great-gamesof-alI-time films, you know for inspiration, like?"

Sandy saw then how Fran had lost her hero, too.

"Well, nobody," Gary broke in, "seems better experienced to help us with our play-by-play than Fran. Fran, we've got the kickoff coming up right now."

Sandy was anxious. Could Art have known about this? Art was in fact on the screen now, with a can of low caloric beer and two long-legged beaver ladies. "Consistency is the name of the game in beer as well as ball," an omniscient voice related. Art's weak chin and nose nevertheless radiated a rare dignity as he stood blushing between the two girls, clutching the beers like grenades.

The Rough Grouse received the kickoff, and Art had them moving inexorably once again. The game plan had not changed, except that now he often flared his wide receivers, hitting his backs just over the line whenever the drive stalled. Sandy calculated that Art had earned some $41,000 for his workmanlike performance in the first half, but he also figured that Art's presence in this game earned

him perhaps 10 percent of his entire salary over thirteen years, in terms of the additional viewers he was responsible for. He wondered what would become of him when Art retired. For in the seasonless air, his life for thirteen years had been calibrated, punctuated by Entelechy's playing schedule.

"Oh Jesus, it's fucking Jell-O time."

This was Fran, who had apparently forgotten to turn off her headset.

Of course she was right, and, as Gary corroborated, this could spell big trouble for the Grouse. The Grouse had never fared well on gelatin, their only loss of the year coming on it in the second game of the season. It destroyed the home advantage, it varnished the precision of the attack, Entelechy could not set up on his bad knees properly in the stuff, and their light no-block lanky setback's quickness was negated. In the days before the gelatin era, Entelechy would simply change his cleats to appease the elements, and his completion percentage was a remarkable 55 percent on mud or snow. But on gelatin the Grouse were 3 and 27 over the decade. Gelatin had been introduced when the Rough Grouse had moved into their new indoor stadium, an enormous A-frame with no stands, where they could play for the cameras and announcers only and the crowd could stay in their sacred homes paying a subscription for the season-an ingenious device which reduced overhead to a minimum and allowed the club to use computerized direct mail to hype its audience. But when subscription income slumped, at the same time that normal attendance was also dropping all around the league, the ownership (reportedly religious) decided that the only variables they had failed to take into account were Acts of God. So it was that cowled ducts were placed at each yard stripe, and at random intervals, determined by a secret code scrambled by a computer, great quantities of foamy gelatin oozed forth upon the artificial playing surface-simulated wrath, challenging the best-laid game plans, skewing the gambling odds, and sending superbly conditioned athletes into gyrations, pratfalls, and goofy stunts worthy of the most violent cartoons. And whenever this happened-it was indeed the most gelatinous season in recent memory-by a special arrangement with the networks, bulletins went out, "Jell-O disaster!" increasing viewers as much as 50 percent. There was indeed

a special clause in all advertising contracts that if one was lucky enough to have one's spot occur during a Jell-O disaster, there would be a surcharge of 50 percent additional, a bounty gladly paid.

The players slowed earnestly, having made fools of themselves on gelatin before. And it was a particularly heavy flow today, ankle deep in some places on the field, so that the rhythm was more slogging than slipping-not all that different from the Cielito Lindo stomp, in fact.

The Grouse's small backs fumbled twice, but even without these lapses, the superior bulk of the Mad Dogs would have in all likelihood prevailed under such conditions. Entelechy's receivers could not get free, and when they did they invariably dropped the short passes which became wobblier as the half went on. While his spirals were never picture book, Gary interpreted, Entelechy had everything to be the greatest ever, except for his smallish hands. He couldn't get a good one-handed grip. "If his fingers had only been a quarter inch longer," Gary said, "he could have been better than near great."

Ultimately the Mad Dogs recovered a shanked punt on the Grouse's forty. The Mad Dogs' mediocre but sturdy quarterback, Pelgesac, afraid to risk a pass or even a handoff, ran repeatedly and utterlypredictably off tackle behind his two massive pulling guards, as well as both backs, until finally he slithered into the end zone for their only touchdown of the game, and even that was disputed vehemently by the Grouse, as the goal line was obscured in pinkish gelatin. With two minutes left, Entelechy did exactly as Fran had predicted: tried desperately to go long with third and eighteen, and threw two dying quail-the first of which dropped harmlessly out of bounds and the second of which was picked off perfunctorily by a Mad Dog defender, who ran in small excited circles and then fell joyfully as a horde of desperate Grouse descended upon him. As the scoreboard counted them out, 16 to 14, Art Entelechy took off his helmet and smashed it to the ground in a hapless fury. They sought him out for the postgame show, in the losers' locker room, decorum breached by the justification that his retirement represented the end of an era. Entelechy was hunched in front of his locker, in nothing but a towel and shower clogs, his upper body considerably bruised but otherwise unremarkable, aged beyond his

years, in fact; drooping pectorals and a small pot like a baby. Gary was at his side, one arm around Art, the other cloying the microphone.

"I guess the Jell-O was the main factor, eh, Art? Tough luck, good buddy."

"I don't make the Jell-O. I just play on it."

"I know you're taking this hard, Art, your last game and all."

"People can't be too hard on themselves."

"That's a fascinating perspective, Art. Your heart's always been in your throat since you were a rookie, I know. You think there was a psychological letdown in the second half?"

"If you can't play for the Grouse organization, you can't play for anybody."

"No, I mean did something go through the mind of the team?"

"The mind of the team? That's funny. Well, I've had some good times too. Good times most people haven't had."

"Well we're gonna miss you around here, Art. Will you miss the game, do you think?"

"Puke is the same color at home as it is in the locker room."

I see. Well, what are you going to do, you think, now that you've retired?"

"Do? How the hell should I know? All I've done since 1 was eight is toss a football and talk to do-nothings like yourself."

"You could play several more years, Art, you've never had a serious injury. Is it that you want to go out at the top?"

"This ain't the top. I'll never watch another darn movie, I'll tell you that. If you'd'a lived in my water for a week, friend, you'd understand.

"But I think the audience would like to know what your plans are, Art."

"Hmmmpf. You got the straw. 1 do the grasping, huh?"

"I don't catch your meaning, Art."

"Well, I'll be all right. I've got some creative urges I'd like to get rid of. Now I'll have the time."

"Do you have any regrets? Like not winning the championship ever?"

"Well, if it has to be, 1 rather lose and play good myself than we play bad and win."

"You were always a tough interview, Art, one of the toughest Gary had clearly run out of questions, and he desperately looked to his director, rolling his eyes.

"Hey," Gary said, suddenly elated, "here's your wife! Whad'ya know. Maybe she can cheer you up."

Fran entered the frame tentatively, and Gary put his free arm around her, hugging both the Entelechys with considerable force.

Then Gary intoned: "This is probably a first of some kind, folks. Fran, why don't you do an 'up front and personal' on your husband here?"

Art was having some phlegm problems. Fran was earnestly trying to appear bighearted.

"Art, honey, could you set the scene for us in the fourth quarter when the Mad Dogs scored their only sustained drive of the day?"

"To tell you the truth, I don't remember."

"What were you thinking when they were marching? Do you think you overrelaxed?"

"I wasn't thinking anything."

"Were you surprised that Pelgesac ran the ball so much himself?" "No."

"How do you feel?"

"I seem to be all right."

Fran Entelechy's voice was so soft you could barely hear it.

"Do you think the Grouse game plan was too conservative?"

"I forget how conservative it was."

"Did you feel you could beat them right up to the last moment?"

"I won't comment on that."

Fran was getting more and more nervous.

"Don't you think you ought to be more open with the people who have followed you all these years and who have fed your family? I mean that's just sportsmanship."

Gary broke in, "Art? How strong a contemporary statement are you willing to make?"

Entelechy raised himself up, took the microphone from Gary, and spoke for the first and last time in his life directly into the camera. There were tears in his eyes, Fran notwithstanding. His tone was measured and he took care to enunciate properly.

"Being a good sport is one of the most outstanding qualities a person can possess. When a team has lost a game, many people think sportsmanship consists of just congratulating the other team, but there's more to it than that. Not everyone can be good in sports, but everyone can be a good spectator. When a person is watching the game, he shouldn't constantly talk to the players or ride them because when he does it causes the players to become nervous and then they might commit an error. If the members of the team lose the game they are playing, they should congratulate their opponents with all their hearts as well as their mouths. But spectators should be good sports too, inside as well as out."

Art Entelechy turned and disappeared into the clouds of steam in the shower, like a Norse god returning to the heavens. Except that his parts were very small. For a moment all sixty millions could see was condensation on their screen, and all they could hear was the dignified final clippity clop of Entelechy's clogs on the tiles.

It was Entelechy's finest moment. Art Entelechy had been refined to a single image, frozen, framed, while still alive; most of us remain always frozen, and always envious, beyond the frame. Of Entelechy, all that can be finally said is that even the simplest of his movements was moving, and it was a happy day to see a man escape finally from what Haas has called "the terroristic triumph of the visual." 7

Day of gracious purpose rendered, our company completed, time at last remembered, heritage of woe abeyant at the Cielito Lindo's famed Triage Brunch where, amidst the throng's mutual inspection and approval, there swirl rumors of a startling announcement. Sandy is uncomfortable, unfathomable. The Breakers' transient clientele have moved in on the buffet. Maestro Luncheon weaves

like a praying mantis behind the food, petting the ice sculptures: the mandatory swan, pineapple pig, sublime rooster crouched above the capers and screaming with mock pain. An entire bologna is turning on a spit, basted with cherry jam. Sandy lines up with the strangers. It is very dark; through the sliding doors he can make out Wanda June cleaning the pool with a vacuum hose, a horrid ribbed tube in her little hands. All the Bloody Marys and creamed chipped beef you can down for two bucks. Sandy fantasizes an a la carte: shirred eggs with kippers and bangers , corn muffins, crisp hash browns, the grits with tomatoes and cheese which are missing too. Despite the buffet, they have not been able to clean up from Saturday night. The floors are still littered with ashes and broken glass, and the air is heavy with the unmistakable scent of semen, which rises as from a chain gang in a misty morning chow line.

Sandy takes two plates, they are all he has in this world, and is startled by the PA system, much as God must have been taken aback when Moses first opened up:

The management wishes to show its appreciation to its faithful customers. Please join us on the roof garden for free liquid refreshments and an announcement.

Sandy blinked as he emerged into the hard light. Out on the roof, tar and gravel acrunch underfoot, the huge air-conditioning units were swathed with bunting. Plastic orange trees in tubs were placed at strategic intervals, inflated circumcised cherubim floated in the brief breezes. Even the gravel had been raked into semi-Oriental swirls, and overlooking the pool, beneath a striped canopy, a bar had been set up under an enormous rubber rubber tree. The Conquerors were as relaxed in the sunshine as he had ever seen them, and Ruby looked wonderful out here.

Oh, you put your right hand in. You take your right hand out.

1 give my hand a shake, shake, shake And turn you inside out, Oh

"They are just children, you have to remember," Wanda June said, suddenly at his side, "big, sensuous children with time on their hands."

"Hey, Wanda. How's tricks?"

"I've got my troubles, Sandman, but days like this I just don't care."

Sandy downed his brunch leaning against the parapet of the roof garden. Everyone was here, it seemed. Dr. Onarga, the Gypsy allergist, dancing over there with one of his para-periodontists. Art Entelechy with his popsy, his mortification, swollen limbs protruding from his Bermuda shorts and Alligator polo shirt. Entelechy was filling up with fluid, becoming a caricature of himself even as Sandy watched. Retired Grouse stuffed with human hematoma. Even the woman who thought like a man had flown in from Akron for the event; she was having an animated conversation with Paavo Nurmi's great grand-niece and the pink woman with the blue guitar. Sandy could only wonder what people saw in him. He was comforted only by assuming they could say nothing much about him as he had so little to say for himself.

So everybody was here, everyone except Maintenance Man, of course, and Theory Girl. Sandy ached for her. He missed her, it's the truth. Her spunk without spleen. Her energy without static. He was proud of her for not showing.

In his confusion and pain, hung over and hung up, a credible person only to himself, the Sandman wanders the long roof of the Breakers. Dr. Onarga, still dancing on his toes, waves to him without missing a beat as he twirls in the sunlight, his platinum digital watch like a laser. "Hey, Sandy, you're due for a checkup soon. I can probably cure you, ha, ha, but you got to want to be cured." He spins twice more. "You got to be ready, hear!" And then he spirals away, snapping his fingers high above his head. Sandy turns with something like anger and nearly knocks a drink from the hand of the woman who thought like a man. She is absorbed with the Caribbean maid in a pinafore, moving like Nefertiti among them with a tray of elastic canapes.

"Sorry," he blurts.

"So it's you, my man," she sizes him up scornfully. "You know it's over for people like you. You're going to be punished. Terribly punished. "

"Hey, don't kid a kidder."

And with that she throws her Dubonnet in his face. "Happy motoring, you asshole," she says softly. Such a bad way to begin

a brunch. Wanda June is beside him again with a napkin. "I'm down, Sheba, down," the Sandman moans. She wipes his eyes and neck.

"Are you ready, Sandy?" Dr. Onarga pirouettes by him.

"Wanda, you are a pal." The Sandman reconstitutes himself. "You are a true resource, a credit." He looks into her perfect eyes, reaches round and cups a small breast.

"1 could fall for you, Sandman. 1 always had a crush on you. But what you'd do with a Skank like me, 1 don't know."

"I'm off my feed, Wanda June, but is there something 1 could do for you?"

"Ah, Sandy. 1 believe you've already fucked your brains out. Let's just relax today."

They tour the rooftop's entourage arm in arm. The crowd is crushed about the bar. And the Conquerors are picking up their beat with a swing version of one of their first and least known arrangements, The Eternal Parting from Oneself, Assassination Raga:

You can get it all if you give yourself up. Put yourself at the center, at the very most center. You can get anybody if you give yourself up. But you got to be willing, oh, you got to be willing

Someone has challenged Wanda June to a game of Ping-Pong, and Sandy is on his own again. But there, by God, standing in the door, there is Haas, looking defensively at the festivities, and is that Mrs. Haas with him, perchance?

"Hey, Haas, you finally made it, hey!" Sandy hugs him. There is something eerie, something strange. Mrs. Haas is shy and dowdy to the point of transparency. Sandy can see straight through Mrs. Haas. There is nothing the eye can fix on there, no bones or organs, and Haas chooses not to introduce her.

"I'm down, Haas, down, I'm a drag on the race. Let's hang one on, hey, let's really get soaked."

Haas seems very nervous in the crowd. Sandy offers to introduce him around but Haas demurs. "Nothing," he says softly, arms asweep, "nothing but the richest possible inner life could justify all this." Even when Sandy finally recorrals Wanda June, Haas shakes her hand limply and stares over her head.

"Meet my terrific boss, Haas, hey, Wanda June." And when

Haas turns his back, she rolls her pretty, perfect eyes and shakes a limp wrist imitating detumescence.

"Haas, listen," Sandy's voice was urgent, "there's something I got to ask you." Haas relaxed visibly as always when he was asked advice.

"Haas, in a perfect system is it true that you sometimes only get one chance?"

Haas screwed up his forehead.

"The general trend in a perfectable system would be variety replacing intensity. But it's still possible, theoretically, that you could get only one chance. Yes. The whole of our efforts is to improve on that, however."

"And Haas, there's another thing been on my mind. I mean, it's easy enough to predict what's going to happen-but how do you go ahead and choose, knowing what the odds are, in spite of the odds?"

Haas smiled his baby smile.

"You're getting curiosity, Sandman. That's not like you."

"Things are changing so fast, Haas. The complex is going to hell. None of my projects seem to be working out. I think I'm going through some kind of crisis, Haas. What do you think, Haas? You must have had a crisis once."

Haas's eyes widened and lightened. His acne scars seemed to tum a shade darker. Sandy knew he was about to get a lecture. Then Haas spoke.

"You're programmed to think of yourself in flux. You blame change for your confusion. You believe that sloppiness is the price we have to pay for constantly adapting to new conditions. But this," Haas waved from the roof garden, "this is not ephemeral. This will not go away. This cannot be changed. A culture that romanticizes truck drivers, for God's sake, is seriously deranged."

Haas went over and slapped a wall.

"This is concrete, reinforced with steel. Its stress points are exactly calibrated by computer even before it's erected. This is anodized aluminum and polyurethane secured by a bed of indestructible fire-retardant styrene. It is not obsolete. It's concrete! This building will last for thousands of years, as long as this roof is kept on it. For your children, your children's children. It will exist for them whether you procreate or not. You're not a speck of sand

in the cosmos. Anyone can spout your Einstein, but we all still behave by the laws of Newton. The fact that there is no ultimate framework to fix the destiny of the cosmos has absolutely nothing to do with us. It is not a metaphor. It is no excuse for irrationality. You think because we occasionally cannot measure the velocity of a few molecules in a gas, that legitimizes this sort of thing!"

Haas waved his hand in disgust at the throng.

"You refuse to believe that society operates by a few inexorable laws which any primitive could grasp in a few moments. Technology exists to make money. That's all there is to it. You seem incapable of understanding or accepting that, when you moan about your lack of options. There is no such thing as randomness. The Jell-O fate, which apparently causes much concern in these parts, is simply a procedure explicitly calculated to appear uncalculated. You're so easily pleased by theories. To make an egg, my associate, my colleague, it is necessary to subject a great many hapless omelets to unthinkable pressure."

Sandy broke in, totally frustrated. "You're not going to get me to rebel against my work, Haas. That's old hat."

But Haas was positively, inspirationally pissed.

"At age twenty-six-in less than a year, Sandman-the bones in your back will join, and you will have produced your last living cells." "This," he slapped the wall again, "is not obsolete. This is concrete. It is not dreck, not trash. It is aluminum, urea, titanium, magnesium, nitrate, all brick and bitumin. It will outlast Roman villas, the great chateaus and cathedrals. Of course, it looks shabby and cheap. But so does Orvieto. It is here to stay, my friend. This road, no matter what eventually traverses it, will be occupied always by people very much like yourself, and someone, some small mutation like myself, will always turn up-behind schedule, no doubt, and at very high wages, almost insupportable wages-to service you. There are perhaps 100,000 people in the country who can do what you do and perhaps 5 percent of them can do what I do. Just who do you think it is who programs the Jell-O fate? Things may be running down, as you say, but nothing here is running down as fast as you are."

"It was nice to meet you, Mrs. Haas." Sandy excused himself peremptorily. She was barely palpable in the harsh light.

"I don't like that man at all," Wanda June sneered.

"Well, liking him is not the point."

Sandy saw Professor Bob Jordan weave toward them, the blood vessels in his nose so dilated that his face seemed actually efflorescent. He avoided Professor Bob as he did not wish to discuss literature, specifically the next week's assignment of Huck Finn, a thoroughly unbelievable story of a boy who runs away from his father and as a result experiences many difficulties and deprivations, only to find out at the end that his father was dead in the first place and that the journey was unnecessary.

The dancing was getting wilder, the Conquerors shifting into a viscous four-quarter beat.

There are many different gods but only one kind of man. If I must live alone, let it be with somebody. If it is so pleasing, pleasing to behold, then why do you keep saying so, keep talking about it, keep pointing at it like that?

Sandy sought out Art Entelechy in desperation. He would not tell him who was responsible for the Jell-O fate. For Haas, in any case, a boast, a threat, is not a confession. And what difference would it make now? Moira seemed strangely subdued, depressed even. She held Entelechy's passing arm very tight as if in the knowledge that what she had done to Fran could easily be done to her at any moment. Old Entelechy wouldn't have left young Ingrid Bergman holding the bag, you can bet. But when Entelechy dumps Fran, he gets no Bergman. That he deserves, but Moira the Skank -how is that? He experienced a considerable wave of emotion as he glanced at downcast Moira and then at the competition. Such human resources gathered here, such expertise and sensuousness under the heavens' own roof vault. Why was it they got so little for their efforts? And then he broke his vow never to speak of Entelechy's profession in his presence. "Hey, Art? What are you gonna do now?"

Art rolled his eyes. Moira looked the other way. She was bored. Sandy could see his jaw muscles bunching, and Art's jowls were just beginning. Entelechy's new life awaited them all: a buffet of unnamable dishes, each covered, stretching away to infinity.

"Trouble with sports," Art said, "is that it's too serious. I'd like to get into total entertainment."

Moira nodded affirmatively.

"Endorsements," Art muttered, "things like that. With a script. No more interviews "

"I thought you handled Fran, Art, as well as could be expected," Sandy said. Entelechy was kneading his right forearm.

"Yeah, you knew she got fired, 1 guess." "What? No."

"Sure.

"She blew it. They canceled her contract. Said she was too difficult off camera. She blamed me, of course. Said 1 was uncooperative. Well, shit. And 1 thought I'd get some of that alimony back. They sure pay pretty good dough, those TV people. But sports is like sex, you know, there ain't no words left to describe it, right? You got no idea how 1 envy people like you all."

The Caribbean maid in a pinafore passed by them with a tray of water chestnuts wrapped in bacon. She was losing her good humor.

Moira broke in with her mouth full. "We got our whole lives ahead of us now," she said emphatically.

But Art was rambling on.

"First I'm gonna get my knees rebuilt. Then I'm gonna go to one of those schools where you teach what can't be taught, ya know

The crowd was becoming unruly, and Sandy slipped away before Art had a chance to finish. He couldn't believe that Entelechy now was going to have to live more or less like Sandy, that they would be alike. Was it really possible that Art Entelechy envied the Sandman? Would Entelechy now be interested in films of Sandy's life? Would it be up to Sandy to entertain him? That might be a good idea for everybody, actually-to exchange films of their own poor banal lives; total entertainment, everybody their own star, looking for the repetition in the reruns, the pattern which is in itself the weakness to be exploited.

Sandy again searched out Wanda June, put his arm around her, cupped a breast, and attempted leisure. "Wanda June," he lamented, "this isn't funny any more. This is serious."

"I think," she said, "we're about as serious as we're ever going to get."

A cherubim balloon was released somewhere in the crowd. Somebody popped it with a cigarette and caramels fell out.

"Then we've been de-seriousized somehow," Sandy said.

Over Wanda June's shoulder he noticed a new couple had arrived at the bar. They were almost magisterial in their entrance, arm in arm, apparently absolutely devoted to one another yet quite aware of the effect their presence had upon the flaying throng. They seated themselves on bar stools-the crowd actually made way for them-and drank cordials, toasting each other with supreme consideration, arms intertwined. They were inseparable, insuperable.

Wanda June spied them, too. "They must be cops, plainclothes," she said. Sandy didn't answer. He was puzzled by a convoy of trucks led by police cars advancing at cortege speed along the expressway. Wanda June spoke again.

"Maybe it would do you good to hit the road for a while, Sandman." She kissed him softly on the shoulder.

"I been there before," Sandy nodded abstractly as the PA system instructed them to move to the westernmost railing for the special announcement. "Haas is right. Things will be finished here. And it will all be one thing or the other."

The Conquerors shifted into a final inchoate medley.

"What is it you want exactly, Sandy?" Wanda June inquired. "I've never understood."

"I want," a tear appeared in the comer of each eye. "All 1 want," he choked, "I want to be a man known for his pleasures."

"Oh, don't give me any of that jive, that guilt talk, Sandy." Wanda June shook her finger in his face. "We play hard maybe, but we work hard, too. We made it our way, the hard way, and nobody can take it away from us. Why, just look around. Aren't we the uniquest people ever? We cannot be effected."

Sandy was about to reply, but he was interrupted by some uncharacteristically classical chords from the Conquerors. Directly across the expressway the convoy had left the cloverleaf, following a bulldozer to a patch of coppery earth. As the green sod was removed, a mist rose up.

All eyes were on the mobile crane as its claw hoisted a burnished girder system into the setting sun. It went up slowly, jerking and subsiding in little turbinic fits, to general commotion and applause. But in short order the tower was erect, and grayish concrete gushed forth about its base.

As the trucks were unpackaged, the sign at the top of the tower was plugged in. All powers connected, it revolved slowly in their direction:

CIELITO LINDO II

Washington burned, Baltimore threatened: two lettersfrom Letters

John Barth

Baltimore, Md. Summer 1977·

Dear Reader,

LETTERS is a 7-part fiction-in-progress', 517ths·complete; subtitled An old-time epistolary novel by seven fictitious drolis·& dreamers each of which imagines himself actual. It composes "88 letters exchanged among 7 correspondents in the period March 2) zhrough September 26, 1969

The following are Letters 53 and 54 (i·.e., sand & in the novel's rearrangement of its subtitle) from Part 5 (i.e., E): 2 of 12 letters over the signature of Andrew Burlingame Co�k of Ontario ahd Maryland. Ofthese 12, the 1st 4 are addressed by A. B. Cook iV· to his then-unborn child in March, April, and May of 1 S 1f: they set forth the genealogy and history of the Coolg/Burlingame line (whose surnames alternate by generations) from Ebene r Cooke, 17th..:century laureate.of Maryland, to the present write The 5th '1slrddressed1e-ifte·AtHb.Q.{ by A B.�� VI_i�ne 1 9: it retails thesubsequent genealogy of the family down to himself ook VI), also a self-styled laureate of Maryland.

The 6th and 7th, here appended, are (rom the same correspondent to his grown son, Henry Cook Burlingame VII, of whom he seems to have lost track: each summarizes a later letter from their aforementioned ancestor A. B. C. IV to his wife, Andree Castine. Likewise the 8th, 9th, and 10th, as Cook explains herein. The 11th (9/10/69, same addressee) will rehearse its author's own multifarious and equivocal go at the Game of Governments, or Action Historiography, which has by then involved the other characters in the novel. The 12th (9/13/69) is A. B. C. VI's envoi to H. C. B. VII, who will himself append a postscript to

Yours truly,

J.B.

s

Andrew Burlingame Cook VI "Barataria"

Bloodsworth Island, Md. July 9, 1969

Henry Cook Burlingame VII (address pending)

My dear son,

So: after five months' silence, your laconic message-undated, unaddressed-from which, as from your fifth-month stirring in your mother's womb, I infer that you are alive, or were when you wrote. Further, from the postmark, that you are in Quebec, or were when your note was mailed. Finally, from your curt questions, that you have somehow acquired and read your great-great-great-grandfather's four letters to his unborn heirs.

Not very graciously, you ask whether those letters are authentic. How am I to reply, when (a) you do not mention which texts you read or how you came by them (the originals, authentic indeed, are in my possession, awaiting your firsthand examination; I have copied them only twice: once for a certain historian, again for a certain novelist; we shall see which you saw), and (b) you do not give me a

return address? I must hope that this latter omission means that you're en route to Maryland to re-put your queries in person-and less brusquely. Meanwhile, like Andrew Cook IV in 1812, I am too full of things to say to you to await your arrival; I must address you as it were in utero and begin to explain not only our ancestor's "prenatal" letters to Henry and Henrietta Burlingame V, but also his "posthumous" epistles to his "widow" (Andree Castine II), which neither that historian nor that novelist has yet seen. May you interrupt me, here at our family's second seat-close and breathless this time of year as the womb itself, and as humid, and as saline: a better season for Castines Hundred!-before I end this paragraph, this letter

At least, before I shall have indited this series of letters.

Dear Henry:

The undisguised, unbecoming suspicion of your note prompts me to re-begin with a confession. A. C. IV's four letters are genuine, if perhaps disingenuous. Mytranscriptions of them-first for Germaine Pitt, Lady Amherst, whom you may remember, and later for the author of The Sot-Weed Factor, a historical novel, with whom I am collaborating on a new project-are faithful. But my motive for providing those two with copies of the letters was, while I hope defensible, not without a measure of guile. So be it: the originals await you; Lady A. and I have no further business. (Mr. B. and I do: was it he whose path somehow crossed yours, and who showed you what I neither granted nor explicitly denied him permission to share? I should like to know. Indeed, as I plan to send him summaries of these "posthumous" letters too, I here ask him directly: Are you, sir, in some sort of correspondence with my son, Henry Burlingame VII? If you sent him the four "prenatal" epistles, will you kindly forward this as well, and the ones perhaps to follow? And tell me where he is!)

Revelation of the Pattern, Henry: that was to be the first stage of your conversion to my cause. As it has been revealed to you willynilly, by whatever agency, I attach a copy of my letter of June 18 last to the aforementioned author, summarizing the consequencesrather, the pitiful inconsequence!--of its revelation to Andrew Cook IV, and of his revelation of it to his heirs. I pray you pause and

review that letter now. All the man wanted, Henry, was to clear the generational decks: better, to unstack the deckof History and deal "Henry or Henrietta" a free hand. Weep with me for the Cooks and Burlingames!

And having wept, let us proceed-straightforwardly, sans ruse or stratagem-to the second stage of your conversion. No need to rehearse to you, of all people, what our Revolution is about, or wherein lies its peculiarly revolutionary character: I know you know it intimately, and I well know you oppose it utterly. But I know too that while it may come to pass without your aid--even despite your best efforts to thwart it-I have small interest in its realization, the consummation of our history, if you are not its Consummatorin-Chief.

My son, I love you. You are twenty-nine, about to commence your second "Saturnian revolution." You approach that point-nel mezzo del cammin, etc.- where many a journeyer before you has strayed right off the map, to where (Homer tells us) "East and West mean nothing," nor any other opposites. What follows is propaganda, meant to win you to me. How franker can I be? But it is as loving propaganda as ever was penned. I do not expect you to take this letter on faith: you are a Burlingame! But read it, read it-and come to Bloodsworth Island for confirmation!

Read what? (I stall. I dawdle. Why do you not appear between subject and verb, in the midst of this parenthesis, as you have more than once astonished me by appearing, without sound or apparent vehicle, as if materialized from ether, with your mother's eyes, your mother's accent?) Why, read my digest of my transcription of my decipherment of the first of Andrew Cook IV's "posthumous" letters: three removes from an original (before me) whose author's own wife would not accept it as bona fide. My cards are on the table!

Read on. I said decipherment. Andrew Cook IV was reported killed by an errant Congreve rocket just before dawn on September 14, 1814, during the British bombardment of Fort McHenry in Baltimore harbor. The five letters which arrived at Castines Hundred over his initials in the seven years thereafter were all in what their author himself refers to-in code-as "the simple family cipher." (I exclude a sixth letter, the 1827 one from "Ebenezer Burling" of Richmond to Henry and Henrietta V, inviting them to join their father in Baltimore; it is in as plain English as this.) The

code is simple, by cryptological standards: a systematic anagrammatizing of individual words, usually by mere inversion, followed by the substitution of numbers and other symbols for alphabetical letters. The phrase Drolls & dreamers, for example (which opens the first letter), is "scrambled" into SLLORD & SREMAERD and ciphered )Oot (t&) (8958 (t. With a little practice, one can read and write it as readily as English. Omit the first step and you have the code cracked by William Legrand in Edgar Poe's story The Gold Bug (1843) : a coincidence I cannot explain beyond observing that young Poe was "Ebenezer Burling's" traveling companion in 1827 and that he met the Burlingame twins in Baltimore five years later. Surely Andree Castine knew this code. Her apparent refusal to decipher it (or to acknowledge her decipherment) argues that she regarded her husband's final departure from Castines Hundred in 1812 as an abandonment. She did not disclose these ciphered epistles to the twins in 1825, on their thirteenth birthday, when she disclosed to them the four "prenatal" letters; neither, on the other hand, did she destroy them. Henry and Henrietta themselves, characteristically, professed only mild surprise and equally mild curiosity when "their" son, Andrew Cook V. turned the documents up in the library of Castines Hundred in the 1890s; if they recognized the cipher, they chose not to acknowledge the fact.

That Andrew, my grandfather, was by his own testimony an able counterfeiter but no cryptanalyst beyond his telegrapher's Morse. Interestingly, he seems never to have mentioned the coded letters to my father, nor did my father to me. It was my mother (Andree III) from whom I first heard of them, just after my father's death at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945. Among Mother's gifts was a prodigious memory for dates: she remarked, in her grief, that my father had been killed on the 27th anniversary of the Bolshevists' murder of the Romanovs at Ekaterinburg, which she had deplored despite her own bolshevism, and the 130th of my ancestor's "second posthumous letter in the great code." She spoke distractedly and in French; I could not imagine what she meant by lettres posthumes or Ie grand chiffre, and I was at the time too bereft myself-and too busy in the immediate postwar years-to inquire. During her own untimely dying in 1953 (cervical cancer), she alluded to them again, this time even more cryptically, so to speak, as le chiffre le grand.

1953, Henry, was the mezzo of my own cammin, a road I shall retrace in another letter. True to the family Pattern--of which I was not yet aware-I spent that orphan winter in the library of Castines Hundred, executing Mother's estate, redefining for myself the Second Revolution, and, in both connections, reviewing, like my ancestor before me, the archives of our line. I did not then discover (would I had!) the four "prenatal" letters of 1812. I did find what I would come to understand, in the spring, here on Bloodsworth Island, to be les cinq lettres posthumes of Andrew Cook IV, written in what I instantly recognized as resembling "Captain Kidd's" code in The Gold Bug: Legrand's cipher!

After a few false starts (SLLORD looked Welsh to me, SREMAERD vaguely Gaelic; I knew neither tongue), I saw the inversion device and set about deciphering and transcribing the first letter. After half a dozen pages, I could almost sight-read the text aloud. And indeed, as I began to comprehend what I had discovered-not so simple a matter for one who had not first read, as you have, the "prenatal" letters!-I put by my transcribing, read straight to the end and changed the course of my life.

As shall be told. But to the letters. I found the five to be divisible into a group of two dealing with their author's adventures in the 1812 War; another group of three dealing with his efforts in behalf of exiled Bonaparte and the Second Revolution. The first two are dated a year and one week apart: July 9, 1814, and July 16,1815. The second three, oddly, are also dated a week apart, but over a period of six years: August 6,1815; August 13,1820; and August 20, 1821. Nothing in the letters accounts for this curious sequence, which I therefore presume to be coincidental, or conformable to some larger pattern unknown to their author. The additional coincidence of your note's arriving this morning--of all mornings on the calendar!-reminds me of what another has called the Anniversary View of History; and while I don't yet know what one is to do with such coincidences (beyond tisking one's tongue), it will be convenient for me not to resist so insistent a pattern. Unless, therefore, as I profoundly hope, you interrupt me by appearing and demanding the originals, I will summarize for you les lettres posthumes over the coming weeks on the anniversaries of their inditing, and (poor second choice!) post them to you when you deign to give me your address.

Some similar constraint must have obtained in the case of the first of our ancestor's letters, the date of whose composition you will have remarked to be not "posthumous" at all, but a full two months and more before the British attack on Baltimore. Yet the annals of Castines Hundred (in this case, a memoir of Andrew Cook V, my grandfather) declare that no word from Andrew Cooke N reached there until well after the news of his death at Fort McHenry. The explanation is that the letter headed Off Bermuda, July 9, 1814, has a brief postscript dated Fort Bowyer, Mobile Bay, February 1815, in which the writer explains, not altogether convincingly, why it has taken him nearly two years to write to the wife he said au revoir to in 1812, and (what I pray may not be the fate of this) another seven months to mail the letter!

Drolls & dreamers that we are, he begins, we fancy that we can undo what we fancy we have done. He had left Andree and the newborn twins early in June 1812, with the object of hurrying (by the standards of the age) to aid Joel Barlow's negotiations with Napoleon-the same he had previously tried to obstruct. Thoroughbred Cook/Burlingame that he is, he decides that the most effective, perhaps even the swiftest, course is not to take ship for France directly, but to rush first to Washington and expose to President Madison or Secretary Monroe the fraudulent nature of the Henry Letters, urging them additionally to negotiate in person with Tecumseh and to dispatch himself by fast frigate to Paris as a special diplomatic aide to Barlow. To our modern ears the mission sounds absurd; but this is 1812 (the numerical equivalent, I note, of AHAB) , when our high elected officers were almost bizarrely accessible, and such white whales as this of Andrew's were occasionally harpooned. No matter: Joel Barlow has already reported from Paris that the "Compte de Crillon" is an impostor; the Henry Letters, authentic or not, have done their bit to feed the Hawks; Cook reaches the capital on the very day (June 18) that Madison signs the Declaration of War passed by the Congress on the day before. He is dismayed. He dares not permit himself to wonder (so he wonders plainly on the page!) whether a fortnight's shorter pregnancy at Castines Hundred might have aborted the War of 1812. The War Department, he learns, has already ordered General Hull to invade Canada from Detroit; incredibly, the orders have been posted to Hull in Frenchtown by ordinary mail! Cook knows that Tecumseh

and General Brock will hear the news at least a week earlier, via the network of John Jacob Astor's voyageurs which Cook himself has organized. He considers intercepting the mail, forging counterorders to Hull; he considers, on the contrary, sending counterinformation through the fur trappers to Brock. Shall he rush to aid Tecumseh? Shall he promote the secession of New England, the defeat of Madison in the coming election? Shall he sail for France after all, and help Barlow juggle the delicate balance of international relations? (Still annoyed at Napoleon's Berlin and Milan decrees, the Congress came within a few votes of declaring war on France and England together; only Barlow's assurances to Madison-that a treaty indemnifying U.S. shipowners for their French losses is forthcoming-has made England the sole enemy. The British cabinet, in turn, is confident that America will revoke its declaration of war when news arrives that the Orders in Council have been repealed; perhaps even now it is not too late ) Or shall he do none of these, but return to Castines Hundred and be the first father in our family to parent what he sired?

He cannot decide. To clear his head he crosses the Chesapeake, first to Cook's Point at the mouth of the Choptank, then hither to Bloodsworth Island, with the vague project of locating the site of that Ahatchwhoop village where the dream of an Indian-Negro alliance was first conceived by his forefathers (and where, he remarks in an illuminating aside, Henry Burlingame III learned "Captain Kidd's Cipher" from his fellow pirates Tom Pound and Long Ben Avery). "The longest day of the year"-I presume he means the literal solstice-finds him wandering aimlessly along these marshes, "devouring [his] own soul like Bellerophon." A strange lassitude overtakes him: the fatigue of irresolution, no doubt, combined with a steaming tidewater noon. "On a point of dryground between two creeklets, in the shade of a stand of loblollypines," he rests; he dozes; he dreams

Of what? We are not told; only that he woke "half-tranced, understanding where [he] was but not, at once, why [he] was there," and that he felt eerily as though he had aged ten years in as many minutes; that he was-odd feeling for a Cook, a Burlingame, but I myself am no stranger to it-"a different person" from the one who had drowsed off. He fetches forth and winds the pocket watch sent to him so long ago in France by "H.B.IV"-and suddenly the meaning of his

unrecorded dream comes clear, as surprising as it is ambiguous. He must find his father, and bring that father to Castines Hundred, to his own children!

You sigh, Henry. I too! No more reenactments! But our ancestor sighs with us-nay, groans, not only at the by-now-banality of this familiar imperative, but at its evident futility. What father? "Aaron Burr," in his cups in Paris? "Harman Blennerhasset," God knows where? Or perhaps himself, who, we remember, closed his last "prenatal" letter by referring to himself as his own father, and who surely feels a generation older since this dream?

Sensibly, he returns to Castines Hundred for Andree's counsel. She is startled at his changed appearance-even suspicious, so it seems to him. The twins are healthy; but she remains reserved, uneasy. Napoleon crosses the Niemen into Russia. General Hull receives his mail in Frenchtown and crosses the Detroit into Canada. By way of desperate demonstration of his authenticity, Andrew forges in Andree's presence a letter from Governor-General Sir George Prevost to General Brock describing mass movements of Indian and Canadian troops en route to aid him at Detroit: a letter designed to fall "inadvertently" into Hull's hands so that he will panic, take flight from Canada, and surrender the city. Andree cautiously approves a provisional strategy: to prevent or minimize battles where possible and promote stalemate. But she seems to require, "like Penelope, farther proof," that this much-changed revenant is her Odysseus.

In August the false letter will do its work (not, alas, bloodlessly), but its author, heart-hurt by Andree's continuing detachment, will have left Castines Hundred for France. Is it that he could not, Odysseus-like, rehearse the ultimate secret of the marriage bed? We are not told; only that he goes. He will see Andree at least once more; she will not ever him.

Mme de Stael is nowhere about. Having fled Paris for Coppet, Coppet for Vienna, Vienna for St. Petersburg before Bonaparte's advance, she must now flee Russia for London, maybe thence for America if Napoleon cannot be stopped. Andrew seeks out "Aaron Burr" and confirms at once that his dream must be reread: not because that wrecked old schemer could not imaginably be "Henry Burlingame IV," but because he is so indisputably the fallen father of the woman whose brilliant letters, imploring him to return to

America and rebegin, Burr ungallantly exhibits to his visitor. "My daughter, don't you know. In Charleston. Theodosia Andrew winds his watch. Burr gives no sign. Go to her, the younger intrigant urges the older. Rebegin.

He himself then rebegins by presenting himself to the only real father he has known. Disguised as one Jean Baptiste Petry, a minor aide to the Due de Dalberg, he enters a familiar house in the Rue de Vaugirard. There is rubicund Ruthy, there gentle Joel, who nonetheless sternly informs his visitor that he is fed up with the foreign minister's deliberate procrastination and equivocating. Seventeen more American vessels have been taken as prizes by the French Navy, which seems not to have been apprised of the Decree of St. Cloud. Secretary Monroe has written (Barlow shows the letter) that an early settlement is anticipated with the English, after which the full hostility of both nations will be directed against France. It is time for a treaty of indemnification and free trade: a real treaty, not another counterfeit like that of St. Cloud, more worthy of the impostor Compte de Crillon or the legendary Henry Burlingame than of the Emperor of the French.

"Jean Baptiste" smiles. The son of that same M Burlingame, he declares, has reportedly come to Paris to offer his talents to M Barlow. Indeed, the fellow has audaciously gained access to privy sanctums of the Due de Dalberg disguised as the aide now speaking these words, whom he happens to resemble, and has ascertained that while de Dalberg is indeed equivocating with Barlow on instructions from the Due de Bassano, he regrets this equivocation as genuinely as does Barlow, whom he regards as a true friend of France. He has urged the Due de Bassano to urge Napoleon to put an end to the business with a solid treaty of commerce between the United States and France, and expects daily to receive word of the Emperor's approval. All this ("Monsieur Petry" indignantly concludes) the false "Jean Baptiste" has no doubt promptly communicated to Monsieur Barlow, at one can imagine what detriment to the real Petry's credibility. It is too much, this Burlingaming of Bonaparte as if he were some petty Algerine bashaw!

Andrew pats his brow in mock exasperation; reaches for his watch chain. No need: Barlow's eyes have widened, squinted, re-widened; he scowls, he grins; now they are clapping each other's shoulders,

kissing each other's cheeks, whooping Ruthy into the library to see what on earth

Then Andrew doffs all disguise (except his irrevocably aged "real" features) and to the two of them earnestly puts his case. What he has reported is the truth: the Due de Dalberg (who has only got as good as he gave) is expecting word momentarily from Wilna, the Emperor's Lithuanian headquarters, that Barlow should hasten there to conclude his treaty with the Due de Bassano. Napoleon cares little for American affairs; his mind is on Moscow, which he must take before winter comes. But not everyone in the Foreign Ministry is as sanguine about the Russian expedition as is their Emperor: it will be imperative, once the summons arrives from Wilna, to move posthaste and get the matter dispatched.

Ruthybegins to cry: another separation! Joel too is sobered. Wilna is no carriage jaunt to Coppet, but 2,000 and more kilometers across Germany and Poland! He too has heard opinions that Napoleon has overreached himself this time, that the Muscovites will burn their city before surrendering it. Moreover, pleased as he is to see le grand Andrew again (and to hear of the twins) he cannot be expected to swallow unskeptically such a story from such a source. About his own objectives he is quite clear: like Mme de Stael, he has become anti-Bonaparte but not pro-Bourbon; for France's sake, for Europe's, he hopes Napoleon is defeated without too great loss of life, and the empire replaced by a constitutional monarchy on the English model. For the United States he wants an early and honorable settlement of this "Second War of Independence," for which he holds no brief. For himself he craves the speedy success of his diplomatic errand and the family's return to Kalorama in Georgetown, to end his days, like Tom Jefferson, cultivating his gardens, writing his memoirs, perhaps establishing a national university. A dozen years into the nineteenth century, he is weary of it already, its Sturm und Drang and gloire and romanticisme. He prefers Mozart to Beethoven, Voltaire to Goethe, reason to passion; he wants to go home. What does Andrew want?

Our progenitor points out that he has disguised himself this time simply to put by that disguise, in warrant of his good faith. He explains what he has learned from Andree about the family pattern; his chastened resolve that the "second cycle" of his life neutralize its

misdirected first. Indeed, he affirms, neutralization can be said to be his program: he too hopes to see Napoleon neutralized before he ruins Europe; then a quick settlement of the American war before the United States can seize Canada on the one hand or, on the other, a Britain done with Napoleon can turn her whole might against her former colonies. It is his hope that an equitable treaty will guarantee Tecumseh's Indian Free State below and between the Great Lakes; for himself he wants no more than to return to Castines Hundred, raise his children, and perhaps write a realistical eighteenth-century-style novel based on his adventures. To this end he puts himself again and openheartedly at his old friend's service. He is confident that together they can reenact and surpass their "H.B.-ing" of Hassan Bashaw; that they can Burlingame Bassano, Bonaparte, and the British Prince Regent into the bargain, if need be, to their pacific ends.

For Ruthy's sake, Andrew imagines-she maintains through these declarations as apprehensive a reserve as Andree's=-Joel does not immediately consent to the proposed alliance, nor does Andrew press the matter. While Tecumseh's Delawares attack white settlements in Kentucky, and his Chicagos besiege Fort Wayne, and Tecumseh himself heads south once more to rally the Creeks to his confederacy; while Madison decides to invade Canada from upstate New York despite Britain's lifting of the Orders in Council and Hull's fiasco at Detroit; while Brock gathers his forces on the Niagara frontier for the fatal battle of Queenston Heights (his Indians are Iroquois led by John Brant, the eighteen-year-old son of our old friend Joseph); while Beethoven meets Goethe at Teplitz and Goya paints Wellington's portrait and Hegel publishes his Objective Logic and the Brothers Grimm their Fairy Tales and General Malet conspires to restore Louis XVIII in Napoleon's absenceCook and the Barlows carefully renew their friendship. Young Tom Barlow and "Jean Baptiste Petry" do Paris together through September, to improve the lad's postgraduate savoir vivre. But on October 10, when the Due de Dalberg himself brings the word to 50 Rue de Vaugirard that the Due de Bassano awaits Barlow's pleasure at Wilna, for all his and Ruthy's misgivings Joel makes no secret of his delight, especially when the aide assigned to accompany the American minister is named to be Monsieur J. B. Petry!

81[86082851 Andrew's letter here cries out, as if in ciphered

Slavic: EVEILEBEM! Believe me! It would have workt, had not that dear great man, with half a million Frenchmen, froze to death at the bitter end of the alphabet!

Toward October's close-as the Grande Armee begins its retreat from the ashes of Moscow (in Canada, Brock is dead, but his battle won; the U.S.S. Wasp has defeated the sloop-of-war Frolic but surrendered to H.M.S. Poictiers; Decatur in the United States has taken His Majesty's frigate Macedonian; the war is a draw as Election Day approaches)-Joel, Tom, and "Jean Baptiste" leave Paris. In mid-November they arrive in Wilna, where the ground is already frozen. Despite all, it is a joy to be adventuring together again; if Andrew is older and more grave, Joel is in as youthful high spirits as when they caleched across Spain in 1795, en route to Algiers. He writes Ruth almost daily-so Andrew blithely reports, without explaining why he does not follow that loving example!-he drills his nephew in German; with M Petry's inventive aid he translates passages of the Iliad and the Columbiad into imaginary Polish. There is a merry if uneasy fortnight in the old city, crowded with the ministers of half a dozen nations; they pool their consular provisions, dine with the Due de Bassano, make merry with the Polish gentry, and prepare their negotiation strategy-there seem to be no serious obstacles-while, what Barlow will not live to learn, his friend James Madison is very narrowly reelected over De Witt Clinton of New York. That state, New Jersey, and all of New England except Vermont vote against the President-but do not secede after all when a few Pennsylvania precincts decide the election. The War of 1812 approaches 1813; the Duke of Wellington enters Madrid; the French army dies and dies.

Believe me! Andrew cries again: Despite all, it would have workt! The Due de Bassano still assures everyone that Wilna will be the Emperor's winter quarters; M Barlow may expect his treaty in a matter of days. True, the retreat from Moscow has become less than orderly; nevertheless By early December the panic is general; everyone flees Wilna before the Cossacks come. No winter has ever been so cold so early; the crows peck vainly at frozen French corpses along every road, and flap off to seek the not quite dead. Joel is revolted into the last and strongest poem of his life: "Advice to a Raven in Russia" (" hatch fast your ravenous brood, / Teach them to cry to Buonaparte for food," etc.). Andrew reads the poem

in Warsaw on the bitter day-12/12/12, with the mercury at -12°P-when Joel writes to Ruthy, in a cipher of their own, that Napoleon has overtaken and passed them already in his closed, unescorted sleigh, fleeing his own as well as the Russian army.

'Twas with no advice from me he advised that raven, Andrew declares, whose image must haunt me evermore, till I find another poet to exorcise me of it. Now is the time, he nonetheless believes, to take best advantage of the Due de Bassano, when Napoleon needs all the goodwill he can buy. On the eighteenth they leave Warsaw, hoping to overtake that gentleman before the Cossacks do. On the nineteenth, in the valley of the Vistula, Barlow himself is overtaken by a cold, to which a fever is added on the twentieth. His condition worsens rapidly; at the little Jewish stetl of Zarnowiec, "the bitter end of the alphabet," on "the shortest, darkest, meanest day of 1812," half a year exactly since Andrew's imperious dream, Joel declares he can travel no farther. The mayor and postmaster of the village, one John Blaski, is something of a Kabbalist. Appealing to the coincidence of initials ("Jean Baptiste" does not mention his own too-Christian surnames de guerre, but invokes their old Algerian comrade Joseph Bacri) "Petry" overcomes the man's fear of Cossack reprisal and persuades him to take the American minister in. Doctors are summoned, to no avail beyond the diagnosis of pneumonia. On the day after Christmas, which out of respect for their host the visitors do not observe, the Plenipotens Minister a Statibus unitis America, as Joel Barlow's burial tablet in the Zarnowiec Christian churchyard denominates him, Itinerando hicce obiit.

Tom Barlow and Andrew bury him at once, thank John Blaski for his courageous charity, and flee: the Cossacks need no particular excuse for ravaging a Jewish settlement. The two reach Paris three weeks later, no longer friends. Indeed, while he charges no one, by name, of slandering him and specifically "absolves" Ruthy (of what, we must infer) by reason of her "inconsolable grief," Andrew concludes this portion of his letter with the meaning observations that, as Ruthy's favorite and Joel's nearest relative, nephew Tom will surely inherit the Barlow estate upon Ruthy's death; that "of all the calumnies ever suffer'd silently by those whose profession does not permit reply, none stings me so sore as that 'J. B. Petry' saw to it

Joel's treaty was never sign'd! As well accuse me of his pneumonia, who gave up my own pelisse to warm him at the end!"

Be that as it may-and I for one, Henry, do not credit for an instant the insinuation that Andrew derived "the blanket trick" from Lieutenant Ecuyer's bacteriological tactic against the Indian besiegers of Fort Pitt during Pontiac's Conspiracy-he acknowledges frankly that the death of his "father" liberates as well as grieves him. Negotiations with the Due de Bassano cannot now be resumed until a new minister arrives from Washington, late spring at the earliest. Though Napoleon executes General Malet for treason and welcomes the declarations of war on France by Prussia and Austria as his excuse to raise yet another army and atone for the Russian debacle, he has little interest in the British-American diversion. For one thing, the Americans seem to be holding their own without assistance; though Tecumseh's Indians have been victorious around the western Great Lakes, and Admiral Cockburn has blockaded the Chesapeake to playoff the mid-Atlantic states against New York and New England, the new u.s. invasion of Canada bids to be successful. General Prevost is repulsed at Sackett's Harbor on Lake Ontario, and the Americans loot and burn the Canadian capital at York (Toronto). The British virtually evacuate the Niagara frontier from Fort George at the mouth to Fort Erie at the head of the Niagara River; only the timidity of old General Dearborn keeps the Americans from pressing their advantage and seizing Canada. The u.S. Navy, too, is flexing its new muscle; though of insufficient force simply to destroy the Chesapeake blockade (which, however, generates in Baltimore an enormously profitable fleet of privateers and blockade-runners), American captains are distinguishing themselves in individual engagements. One brig alone, the Argus, after delivering Joel Barlow's successor to Paris, wreaks such havoc with British merchant shipping in the English Channel that marine insurance rates shoot up like a Congreve rocket-a mode of economic warfare so effective that the Prince Regent now considers seriously Czar Alexander's offer to negotiate a settlement of the war.

Non grata in the Rue de Vaugirard, Andrew follows these developments attentively from across the Channel, where he went in March to test the British political weather before returning to Andree and the twins. The Americans, he concludes, are doing

altogether too well to consider yielding to the British demand for an Indian Free State, especially while Napoleon remains a threat in Europe. Cockburn's depredations in the Chesapeake are little more than a nuisance; only Tecumseh (and Dearborn's pusillanimity) is keeping Canada in the British Empire. But word has it that young Oliver Perry is building an American fleet from scratch at Presque Isle on Lake Erie, to help William Henry Harrison defeat Tecumseh finally and for keeps. It is time, Andrew decides, the scales were tipped a bit the other way.

Before leaving London, he pays one call on Mme de Stael, who with her entourage is enjoying great success in the city. He finds her in good spirits but indifferent health; the last pregnancy, her fifth, took its toll on her, and its issue has proved unfortunate. "Petit Nous" is imbecilic; they have named him Giles, invented an American parentage for him, and left him at Coppet with wet nurses. Germaine is tired and no longer attractive; her young guardsman-husband, though devoted, is crude and given to jealousy; she is using far too much laudanum, can't manage without it. She is not displeased to see that Andrew, too, has aged considerably. She introduces him to young Lord Byron, whose company she enjoys despite his unflattering compliment that she should have been born male. At her request, for Byron's amusement and by way of homage to the memory of Joel Barlow, Andrew for the last time recounts his and Barlow's adventure with the Algerian "Consuela del Consulado." The poet attends, applauds politely, suggests that "with some reworking" it might appeal to Walter Scott, but believes that Gioacchino Rossini may already have made use of it, mutatis mutandis, in his new opera bouffe, L'italiana in Algeri. Germaine herself, this time around, declares the tale palpable rubbish. The truth is (she announces pointedly to Byron) she is surfeited with Romanticism, almost with literature. She prefers Jane Austen to Walter Scott, Alexander Pope to Wordsworth and Shelley, and would rather read Malthus and Ricardo and Laplace than the lot of them. Her own novels have begun to bore her: so much so that she is writing a quite eighteenth-century essay against suicide to counter the "Wertherism" so morbidly in fashion, from which her own Delphine, for example, suffers. Oh, that she were Byron's age! She would devise an art that saw through such improbable flamboyances as Napoleon and "Consuela" to those complex realities which (as her financier

father knew) truly affect the lives of men and nations: the commodity market, currency speculation, the mysteries of patent law and debenture bonding.

Byron is bored. Andrew has heard the argument before; he coins the terms "post-Romantic" and "neo-Realist" and, begging their pardons, wonders casually whether Germaine's new passion for economic and political history as against belles-lettres is not as romantical in its way as Byron's fascination with "action" as against "contemplation." He also wonders whether (this fancy much pleases both Byron and de Stael) "romantic" unlikelihoods such as his Algerian interlude with Consuela are not more likely to occur in reality, even to abound, in the present Age of Romanticism than in other ages, just as visions and miracles no doubt occurred more regularly in the Age of Faith than in the Enlightenment. The most practical strategists in the Admiralty, for example, have been unable to deal with the Argus nuisance in the Channel, whereas any romantical novelist deserving of the adjective would recall at once how Mercury slew the original "hundred-eyed Argus" by first charming the monster to sleep. Suppose, instead of wool and timber and wheat, the Argus were to capture a ship loaded to the gunwales with good Oporto wine, whilst over the horizon a British man-of-war stood ready to close when the Yankees were in their cups

Germaine is impatient; the effect of Lloyd's marine insurance rates on British foreign policy intrigues her, but not the application of classical mythology to modern naval warfare. Byron, on the other hand, is enchanted with the idea. He has a naval cousin, Sir Peter Parker, on H.M.S. Menelaus in the Mediterranean, and other Admiralty connections to whom he must rush off at once and propose the scheme. Mr. Cook is quite right; it is an age in which the Real and the Romantic are, so to speak, fraternal twins. He himself, now Cook has put the bee in his bonnet, would not be surprised to learn that Lady Caroline Lamb, who has been forging letters over his signature, is Consuela del Consulado, up to her old tricks!

They part. (Andrew wi1l not see either again; he cannot interest Byron in Barlow's raven, for which the poet declares the only useful rhyme in English is craven; the Kabbalistic business of BacriBarlow-Blaski appeals to him more, not only because he shares the initial but because he is considering a series of "Hebrew melodies" to be set by his friend Isaac Nathan. But off to the Admiralty, and well

met!) On the first of August, his' conscience stung by Byron's reference to twins, Andrew takes ship from Ireland to Nova Scotia. There is a lull in the war: Madison's peace commissioners are in St. Petersburg with John Quincy Adams, but the Prince Regent, perhaps in view of Dearborn's failure of nerve, declines after all to send representatives of his own. Napoleon's momentum in Europe, like Dearborn's in Canada, shows signs of flagging; President Madison has recalled the old General, but there is no one to recall the Emperor. Andrew will not learn of this until he reaches Canada, or of Admiral Cockburn's sack of Hampton, Virginia, or of Commodore Perry's improbable launching of his Lake Erie fleet, or of the capture on August 13 of the drunken Argus by His Majesty's brig Pelican. Meanwhile, as if his baiting of Germaine de Stael has provoked the gods of Romance

Twenty-four hours out from Cobh, as he stands on the quarterdeck with other passengers anxiously scanning the Channel for the dreaded Argus, he fetches out and winds the old Breguet. A veiled lady beside him catches her breath. Not long after, a sealed, scented envelope is delivered to his bunk in the gentlemen's cabin "Rossini, von Weber, Chateaubriand: your pardon!" Andrew here pleads. "Above all yours, Andree!" But there she is, like the third-act reflex of a tired librettist. A still striking, if plumpish, thirty-three, she has been the mistress of the Spanish minister to London; but her implacable ex-lover, Baron Scarpia, now a royalist agent in Rome, continues to harass her for her disobedience in Algiers. It is to flee his operatives and begin a new and different life that she has taken ship for Canada. But what honorable profession, in 1813, is open to a woman of no independent wealth who would be depend.ent on no man? Only one that Consuela knows of: following the examples of Mrs. Burney and Mrs. Edgeworth, above all of her idol Mme de Stael, she is determined to become una novelista! Indeed, she is well into her maiden effort: an epistolary account, in the manner of Delphine, of her imbroglios with Senor Barlow and the wicked Scarpia. There is a new spirit abroad in Europe-perhaps Senor Cook in America has not heard of it-called romanticismo; as she has had, alas, no luck with the booksellers of Madrid and London, who advise her that the novel is a worn-out fad, Consuela intends to introduce el romanticismo to North America and become the first

famous Canadian novelist. For old times' sake, will her carissimo Andrew read through the manuscript and help her English it?

Three weeks later they part, affectionately, at Halifax. Andrew says no more of their shipboard intimacy (he is, after all, writing to his wife, and tardily) or of his friend's novel, except that, searching promptly for the truth about the poisoned snuffbox, he finds it metamorphosed into a poisoned letter opener (";,Mas romantico, no?") and suggests she rework that passage, among others. But that their reconnection was not merely editorial we may infer from Andrew's immediate guilty assumption-when upon reaching Castines Hundred in September he finds Tecumseh there with Andree-s-that in his long and newsless absence his wife has turned for consolation to her Indian friend.

He does not "blame" her-or question her, or even make his presence known. For three days he haunts the area (the same three, ye muses of romantical coincidence, of Tecumseh's single and innocent visit to his "Star of the Lake"), surreptitiously satisfying himself that the twins are well, his wife and Tecumseh likewise. He hears the news that Perry has met the enemy at Put-in-Bay and that they are his; he understands that this victory spells the end, at least for the present, of British control of the Great Lakes, and that Perry's fleet will now freely transport General Harrison's army to meet Proctor and Tecumseh somewhere above Detroit. It wants no strategist to guess that another, two-pronged American invasion of Canada is imminent: one thrust from New England against Montreal, the other up from Detroit. Does Tecumseh understand that the battle to come is the most crucial of his life?

Comes again the baleful plea: EVEILEBEM! If he acknowledges now his rueful return to Halifax and Consuela the Consoler (Ia Consoladora), it is because he had rather Andree tax him with infidelity than with the least complicity in Tecumseh's death. "To the charge that I might somehow have aided our noble friend, and did not, I plead nolo contendere," he writes. "To the charge that I idled and self-sorrow'd in Halifax whilst Proctor cowardly fled the field at Thames and left Tecumseh to be shot and flay'd and unmember'd by the fierce Kentuckians, I plead guilty. But believe me, Andree: to the charge that I wisht Tecumseh dead; that I pointed him out to Colonels Whitely and Johnson on the field; that I myself

gave a strip of his skin to Henry Clay for a razor-strop-innocent, innocent, innocent!"

He does not say whose charges those were. "Soul-shockt" by the loss of Tecumseh so hard upon that of Joel Barlow-and with Tecumseh the only real leadership of an Indian confederacy-Cook languishes in Nova Scotia while Andrew Jackson massacres the Creeks in Alabama and Madison's two strange replacements for General Dearborn launch their Canadian campaign. John Armstrong, strong, the new Secretary of War, is the same to whom in 1783 Henry Burlingame IV dictated the infamous "Newburgh Letters"; General Wilkinson is the same Spanish spy who conspired with "Aaron Burr" and then testified against him to save his own skin. Like its predecessor, this expedition will be a fiasco of mismanagement; by November's end it too will have failed, and in December, with the British capture of Fort Niagara, the tide of war will begin to tum. But the retreating Americans will have burned Newark (Niagara-on-the-Lake) in addition to York; they will still control the Lakes; no one will have remarshaled the scattered Indians in Tecumseh's stead-and Andrew lingers on in Halifax. But he is not altogether idle, and nowise inattentive. Prevost's burning of Buffalo on New Year's Eve in retaliation for Newark, he observes, while thorough and brutal, is scarcely of so demoralizing a character to the U.S.A. generally as to prompt Madison's peace commissioners to cede the Great Lakes to Canada. Who cares about Buffalo? Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane, commander of the British blockading fleet, before leaving Halifax for winter quarters in Bermuda, proposes a letter to Madison threatening further such retaliation: he would begin on the coast of Maine, come spring, and burn one town after another until the Americans yield, working south if necessary as far as Boston. This too, it seems to Andrew, will be a blow from the wrong quarter. The Federalists will simply be driven into supporting Madison's war, and the southern states will be privately delighted to see New England get its comeuppance. Admiral Cockburn's season in Chesapeake Bay, on the other hand, while of limited military effectiveness-a few buildings burned, a few women raped, much tobacco confiscated, and the port of Baltimore closed to normal shipping-strikes Andrew as having been of considerable symbolic import and strategic promise: his fleet has cruised half a year with impunity at the front door of Washington;

the city newspaper is even delivered regularly to his flagship, so that he can read the editorial denouncements of himself and keep abreast of the war. Now he is wintering on Cumberland Island, off Georgia, and allegedly armingNegroes for a general rising. The plan is not serious-Andrew has seen copies of the British directive to accept in service any free or escaped Negroes who volunteer, but not to permit a slave insurrection, lest the example spread to British coloniesbut it terrifies the southern whites. Andrew admires Sir George Cockburn's panache; Prevost and Cochrane, he believes, are looking at the wrong part of the map

Making use of his earlier connections with the Canadian secret service, Andrew spends the early months of 1814 establishing himself as a special liaison between the Governor-General and the Royal Navy attache in Halifax, while "assisting Consuela with her novel-inletters." Except for Jackson's campaign against the Creeks, who are finallydestroyed in March at Horseshoe Bend, there is a general pause in the American war; all eyes are on Europe, where Wellington's Invincibles have crossed the Pyrenees into France and Napoleon's fall seems imminent. In the wake of the second Canadian fiasco, American Federalists are calling for Madison to resign or be impeached; Armstrong and Wilkinson are too busy now vilifying each other to prosecute the war. Ruthy Barlow, having wintered with the Robert Fultons in New York, returns to Washington and reopens Kalorama. In London, Mme de Stael, unenthusiastic about the prospect of a Bourbon restoration, hopes Napoleon will defeat the Allies but be killed in the process; in any event she and her friends make ready to end their exile. Byron writes his Corsair, Walter Scott his Waverly, Consuela her Cartas argelinas, 0, la Delfina nueva. Her collaborator and translator, as he privately prepares to avenge Tecumseh's death, amuses himself with certain problems raised by the manuscript. He has persuaded Consuela that a new realismo must inevitably succeed the current rage for the Romantic; to buy into this growth stock early, so to speak, she has reworked her story to include all manner of ghosts, monsters, witches, curses, and miracles, in whose literal reality she devoutly believes but which she had omitted from her first draft as insufficiently romantico, there being none in Delphine, Corinne, or The Sorrows of Young Werther. Andrew is delighted-and gently suggests that she revise her ambition and residence to become the first great Mexican or Venezuelan

post-Romantic novelist. It is too cold in Canada anyway, no? And the Halifax literary community has not exactly laureled her like Corinne. Why do they not sail down to Bermuda together, where he has business, and assess the literary situation from there?

Consuela agrees; the Allies enter Paris; Napoleon abdicates and is banished to Elba. Admiral Cockburn returns to the Chesapeake and renews his subscription to the National Intelligencer; General Ross in Bordeaux receives orders to take Wellington's brigades to Admiral Cochrane in Bermuda for the purpose of "chastising Brother Jonathan" in some as yet unspecified way; Andrew Cook completes his strategy. As soon as Lake Erie is free of ice, he is certain, the Americans will re-retaliate in some fashion for the burning of Buffalo. Prevost waits for that occasion to prod Admiral Cochrane into action (the letter to Madison has not been sent, though Andrew has offered the Governor-General numerous drafts). Sure enough, in Maya raiding party from Erie, Pa., crosses the lake to Ontario and pillages the Long Point area. Prevost, into whose confidence our ancestor has by now entirely made his way, sends him at once from Halifax to Bermuda with instructions for Cochrane both to demand reparation from Madison and, without waiting for reply, to initiate forthwith his proposed schedule of retaliation. Aboard the dispatch boat, as Consuela prays to Maria Stella Maris to preserve them from sea monsters, cannibals, and other such realidades, Andrew adroitly redrafts the order (and terminates abruptly, in mid-forged-sentence, this first and longest of his posthumous letters, whose postscript, you remember, he added later and whose interrupted sentence he resumes at the commencement of his second), substituting, in the catalogue of Cochrane's targets, for Castine in Maine, Boston in Massachusetts, and Newport in Rhode Island, the words Baltimore in Maryland

And here I too break off, to resume in his fashion, quoting our forefather quoting himself, when I take up his second letter on the anniversary of its composition one week hence-by when surely you will have interrupted

Your loving father

ABC/ss enc1

cc: JB

&

A. B. Cook VI

Dept. of English

Marshyhope State University

RedmansNeck, Md. 21612

July 16, 1969

H. C. Burlingame VII

(address pending)

Dear Henry, &* t;364)5$!

Thus (missing, silent son) our ancestor opens this second of his "posthumous letters" in "Legrand's cipher," the first of which closed with his forged-and interrupted-alteration of Governor-General Prevost's order to Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane to destroy, not "Castine in Maine and Boston in Massachusetts," but Baltimore in Maryland &NOTGNIHSAw!

(Where are you, Henry? Better your suspicions, your rude interrogations, your peremptorosities, than this silence. Why can I not share with you my amusement at writing this from my new and temporary office-formerly tenanted by that historian I mentioned in my last, now mine-as "Distinguished Visiting Lecturer in English" at this newly christened university-to be transcribed, as was my last, by my new and formidable secretary, who consoles me for the loss of her predecessor? My appeal to you last week-to join me here in Maryland for good and all after so many years, nay generations, of strained and partial connection; to take up with me the formulation and direction of our Second Seven-year Plan-seems to have been as futile as Andrew IV's postdated postscript to his "widow" from Fort Bowyer, Mobile Bay, February 1815, imploring her to join him there at once with the twins, now that the War of 1812-whose most memorable event he will rehearse for us today-is ended. This

second letter is dated a year and a week after the first: 154 years ago today. It is headed (without immediate explanation) Aboard HMS Bellerophon, Off Rochefort, France, 16 July 1815. Napoleon, his 100 Days done, has just surrendered there to Commander Maitland; Apollo 11, after a flawless countdown and a 9: 32 A.M. liftoff from Cape Kennedy, has left its earth orbit to land the first men on the moon; my father has been vaporized at dawn in and with a certain tower in Alamogordo, New Mexico; your father feels ever more deeply, though he understands no more clearly, the Anniversary View of History. Et cher fils, au es tu?) & WASHINGTON!

We review the strategy with Andrew. The British government is convinced from the start that Madison is the tool of his mentor, Thomas Jefferson, at whose instruction he has coordinated the 1812 War with Napoleon's activities in Spain and Russia; while Britain is thus stripped of her allies and engaged in the peninsular fighting, the U.S. intends to add Canada and the Floridas to Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase. From the time of the Emperor's retreat from Moscow, and more particularly in the first quarter of 1814, the cabinet's strategy becomes not only to retain Canada by sending new forces to Prevost's aid but to capture New Orleans as well and, by tightening the Chesapeake and North Atlantic blockades, to force the secession of New York and New England. The Canadian border will then be adjusted to include a buffer state extending one hundred miles south of the Lakes (i.e., most of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio as well as western Pennsylvania, upstate New York, and New England); British jurisdiction will extend from Hudson Bay td the Gulf of Mexico. The United States will thus be contained effectively by the Hudson and Mohawk rivers on the north, the Allegheny, Ohio, and Mississippi rivers on the northwest and west. The Floridas are perhaps negotiable.

Only the Duke of Wellington is not sanguine. Even from the perspective of southern France, the map of America depresses him: that endless wilderness, the terrific problems of supply and reinforcement. "The prospect in regard to America," hewrites to Earl Bathurst, the Prince Regent's Secretary ofWar and the Colonies, "is not consoling."

Admiral Cochrane, on the other hand, even before Andrew reaches Bermuda with Consuela and his doctored orders, is so full

of ambitious plans that he cannot decide among them. He will kidnap Secretary Monroe, say, maybe even Jefferson, as hostages to be ransomed by "all the country southwest of the Chesapeake"; or he will capture and destroy the Portsmouth Navy Yard and send Wellington's army across New Hampshire to join forces with Prevost; or he will exceed Bathurst's instructions and recruit a large cavalry of disaffected Negroes, a kind of black Cossacks, to terrify the South into capitulation; the chain of Chesapeake islands from Tangier up to Bloodsworth will be armed and fortified as their refuge and training base. Or he will seize New York City, or Rhode Island; or he will take Philadelphia, or perhaps Richmond, and either destroy or indemnify them. New Orleans alone, when his black Cossacks and Creek Indians win it, ought to fetch four million pounds' worth of goods and ransom, of which his personal share will exceed £ 125,000!

As Cochrane schemes, unschemes, reschemes, Byron's cousin Peter Parker in the Menelaus, together with 16 other ships and 2,000 of Wellington's Invincibles under General Ross, sail west from Bordeaux to rendezvous with him in Bermuda, and Andrew and Consuela sail south to that same rendezvous in Prevost's dispatch boat. La novelista's confusion makes her cross with her lover and adviser. En route to Bermuda he has pressed upon her Jane Austen's new Pride and Prejudice as a refinement of eighteenth-century realism of the sort that might anticipate what nineteenth-century novelists will be doingfifty years hence, when the Gothic-Romantic fad has run its course; at the same time he translates aloud for her E. T. A. Hoffmann's Phantasiestiicke. But Consuela finds Austen's meticulous interest in money-its sources and the subtleties of its deployment-as exotico as the rites of a strange religion; whereas Hoffmann's goblins and revenants she accepts as the most familiar and unremarkable reportage, less marvelous by half than the table talk in Colmenar, her native Andalusian village. Mexico, she is now convinced, will be a desert, as inhospitable to romanticismo as La Mancha, and Venezuela a jungle full of monkeys and alligators. As for Bermuda, it bores her in two days; it is not Prospero's island, but Nova Scotia with more sunshine and fewer booksellers. Most unromantical of all, she brings her Gulf Stream seasickness ashore, cannot eat yet puts on weight. In her fortune-teller's opinion, she is with child.

What confidence Andrew has in Andree, so candidly to acknowledge this news! Which, however, he does not instantly credit. He knows for a fact that Consuela cannot be more than five weeks pregnant; what's more, in her pique at his cavils about realismo she has attempted vainly to rouse his flagging ardor by permitting herself a small romance with a junior officer aboard the dispatch boat.

Andrew has been advanced a sufficiency for his mission from Prevost's secret-service budget. When Admiral Cochrane, on receipt of the (emended) instructions, orders him at once to Chesapeake Bay to report on Cockburn's black Cossack enlistments and to sound the man out on Cochrane's own inclination to ransom rather than burn the Yankee cities, Andrew gives Consuela half of this advance. He informs her that his errand may keep him in the Chesapeake all summer; he declares that she no longer needs his aesthetic counsel, and suggests that New Orleans-with its links to France, Spain, and England as well as to the United States-might be the most romantic and fertile soil available for the future of the novel. He himself saw and admired the city during his pursuit of Aaron Burr and Harman Blennerhassett some years since; he would be delighted to discover, should he revisit Louisiana with his wife and family after the war, that his brave and handsome friend has restored that poisoned snuffbox to their adventure and become the founder of Cajun neoRealism or Gumbo Gothic, whichever.

Consuela is tearful and excited; Andrew gives her a letter of introduction to a Louisiana legislator he once caroused and swapped pirate stories with, one Jean Blanque, who he is confident can recommend a good physician and midwife if the need arises, or a hoodoo lady if she wishes to postpone motherhood. iHasta la vista, Consuela la Consolada!

Andrew is happy to be off in the dispatch sloop St. Lawrence. He feels more self-reproach for encouraging his friend's literary 'aspirations than for sleeping with her, and Admiral Cochrane's combination of ambitiousness and irresolution bothers him. George Cockburn, on the other hand, he finds immediately appealing upon their rendezvous at the mouth of the Patuxent, which the Rear Admiral is already charting for invasion purposes. Prevost, declares Cockburn, is timid, has no style, and cannot see beyond the St. Lawrence River. Cochrane, though no coward, is the sort who will change his mind a dozen times before making it up and another dozen after-

with little sense either of real opportunity or real improbability. The kidnapping scheme, for example, is a piece of foolishness: nobody in Madison's cabinet is popular enough to command a decent ransom! And the black Cossack business is another chimera: despite their best efforts, Cockburn's men cannot recruit more than one or two blacks daily. Unlike your red Indians, who in a vain effort to preserve their sovereignty form desperate alliances with either Madison or the Crown, your Negro has no more wish to fight one white man's battle than another's. But Cochrane knows neither blacks nor Indians. Moreover, the man is greedy, in Cockburn's opinion, beyond the permissible prize-taking activities of any responsible commander. In order properly to be feared, one must sometimes destroy instead of ransoming; but the destruction must be calculated for the best psychological effect. It astonishes Cockburn that either Prevost or Cochrane has had wit enough to suggest what he has been urging upon them for above a year: the seizure of Brother Jonathan's capital city-and he is not surprised that Cochrane is alreadyequivocating on the matter.

Andrew takes a gamble; confesses that he himself has altered Prevost's instructions; demonstrates on the spot his knack for forgery. He volunteers his opinion that the capital should be seized first and briefly, justlong enough to destroy the public buildings, with no discussion of ransom whatever; then a joint land and sea attack should be made on Baltimore, the economically more important target, whose privateering harbor should be destroyed and the rest of the city indemnified. If the Americans do not then sue for peace, the two cities should be garrisoned as a wedge between North and South while campaigns are mounted against New England and New Orleans. He, Andrew, knows the capital fairly well and is acquainted with several high elected officials, including the President and the Secretary of State; he will be happy to serve Cockburn as guide, spy, or whatever.

The gamble pays off; Cockburn is as charmed by the counterfeit as by Andrew's further proposals for exploiting sectional distrust among the Americans. Compromising documents should be forged, for example, to confirm the rumors that Secretary of War Armstrong has deliberately neglected the defenses of Washington because he wants the capital relocated farther north-perhaps in Carlisle, Pennsylvania-to weaken the influence of the Virginia Combine.

Letters should be written to Madison by "a spy in Cockburn's fleet," warning the President of the attack-and be found later in War Department files. A well-timed sequence of false and true reports, from false and true double agents, ought totally to confuse the already divided American defense planners. Above all, the operation should be decisively executed, to point up as demoralizingly as possible the Yankees' disorganization. To this end, both Admiral Cochrane and General Ross-the one irresolute, the other reputedly overcautious-will need a bit of managing if they are not to spoil the essential audacity of the plan.

That word carries the day: It is audaciousness, exactly, which Prevost & Co.--even Wellington himself!-are short on and which Cockburn and his friend the Prince Regent admire even in their adversaries. Old Bonaparte, damn him, has it aplenty; likewise the Yankee Commodore Joshua Barney, whose Baltimore flotilla of scows and barges has effectively hampered Cockburn's Chesapeake activities this season. Cockburn fancies himself not altogether without some audaciousness too, and is encouraged to fellow feeling, if not to unreserved trust, by the plain evidence of that trait in our ancestor.

To the audacious man, Andrew ventures further, the settling of old scores is as agreeable as the taking of prizes. He himself has a little grudge against Josh Barney (at whose house in Baltimore their mutual friend Jerome Bonaparte was introduced to Miss Betsey Patterson) for nearly capturing the St. Lawrence en route to this present conversation. Like the picaroon Joseph Whaland before him, Barney strikes quickly and then runs his shoal-draft boats up into creeks too shallow for his pursuers to follow. Moreover, the fellow has good tactical sense; the current presence of his flotilla in the upper Patuxent argues that he anticipates an attack on Washington. Let him, then, be hoist with his own petard: along with other diversionary maneuvers, let the main landing force go ashore at Benedict on the Patuxent and strike first at Barney's boats, which Cockburn's fleet will prevent from escaping. The Americans thus will be kept guessing until the past possible moment whether Baltimore, Washington, or Annapolis is to be attacked first (and indeed the target can be changed if unforeseen defenses should arise), or whether Barney's flotilla is the sole objective.

Cockburn is now clapping Andrew about the shoulders like dear

dead Barlow, eager to be on with it. July is running like the tide; Cochrane will have changed his mind seven times since Andrew left Bermuda; the Americans have captured Fort Erie and won so decisively at Chippewa, just above Niagara Falls, that their gray uniforms worn in that engagement have been officially adopted by the Military Academy at West Point. It is time to move. The St. Lawrence is redispatched to Bermuda with detailed plans for the operation: one small diversionary force to be sent up the Bay to feint at Baltimore and the upper Eastern Shore; another to move up the Potomac and take Fort Washington and Alexandria; the main force to ascend the Patuxent, land at Benedict, march on upriver between Washington and Baltimore-and then swing left to assault the capital. By the time the dispatch boat reaches Bermuda, the convoys from France and the Mediterranean ought to be there too; unless Cochrane in the meanwhile has dreamed up some harebrained alternative, Washington can be theirs by the time of the Perseid meteors in August.

Shall Andrew fetch the plan to Cochrane himself, to insure its effective delivery? Cockburn smiles: Mr Cook will remain where he is, to insure its accurate delivery. Once the St. Lawrence is safely out of the Chesapeake, he may either begin his campaign of sowing the Eastern Seaboard with doctored letters or join the Royal Marines in their sporting raids upon the Maryland tobacco crop.

Andrew opts to do a bit of both; on July 27 he drafts an anonymous letter to President Madison, informing him plainly of the British plan (the same classical tactic used by my father in 1941 vis-a-vis Pearl Harbor), and with Cockburn's approval "smuggles" it ashore to be mailed:

Your enemy have in agitation an attack on the capitol of the United States. The manner in which they intend doing it is to take advantage of a fair wind in ascending the Patuxent; and after having ascended it a certain distance, to land their men at once, and make all possible dispatch to the capitol; batter it down, and then return to their vessels immediately (Signed) Friend

A few days later, he lands with a foraging party from H.M.S. Dauntless near the village of Tobacco Stick (since renamed Madison after the addressee of the foregoing), thinking to make his way to the place where, in 1694, having escaped death at the hands of the Bloodsworth Island Ahatchwhoops, his ancestor Ebenezer Cooke was reunited with his twin sister. Andrew wants to review his own

position from that perspective, to reassure himself that he really means to aid the destruction of Washington rather than its preservation. His woolgathering separates him from Lieutenant Phipps's party, who are guided by a liberated slave-woman. The tender leaves without him, runs aground in the Little Choptank, and is captured by the local militia, who jail the eighteen Britishers and return the black woman to the mercies of her former owner. Andrew must make his way back to the fleet via Bloodsworth Island and a stolen bateau. He confides to Andree that Cockburn's confidence in him has not been increased by this episode, and while he does not report any change in his own attitude, he sees that he must do something to reestablish his credibility. Cockburn grants his request to make an intelligence-gathering visit to the capital, charging him specifically to report whether Madison and Monroe have managed to prod Secretary Armstrong into any real measures of defense since the receipt of Andrew's letter; if not, then either the Americans still doubt that Washington is the target, or they plan not to resist its capture, or their plans mean nothing. If, on the other hand, real defense measures are at last being taken, their strength must be expertly assessed before Ross's and Cochrane's arrival.

Where are you, Henry?

On August 1, as Andrew's false true warning is postmarked from New York, Madison's peace commissioners (now in London) are being depressed by the tremendous joint celebration there--of Napoleon's exile to Elba, the hundredth anniversary of the Hanoverian accession, and the sixteenth of Lord Nelson's victory on the Nile; in the mock naval battles accompanying the festivities, the "enemy vessels" ignominiously vanquished include a significant number of "American" along with the customary "French." On August 3, while Andrew broods at Tobacco Stick, Admiral Cochrane's reinforced Bermuda fleet weighs anchor for the Chesapeake. On the eighth, as Andrew makes his way unchallenged into Washington, the British and American treaty negotiators meet for the first time in the Hotel des Pays-Bas in Ghent, each to confront the other with unacceptable demands and each hoping that news of fresh successes in the fighting will weaken the other's bargaining position. Why do you not appear, so that we can make plans together?

Andrew goes first to Kalorama, to advise Ruth Barlow (through 136

an old servant-friend from the Rue de Vaugirard; Ruth will not receive him) to place her valuables and herself under the diplomatic immunity of her former tenant, the French Ambassador Serurier. By the simple expedient of installing himself then in the lobby of McKeowin's Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, where orders and counter-orders come and go like transient guests, he quickly ascertains that no serious measures of defense have been accomplished. Of the 1,000 regulars and 15,000 militia authorized by Armstrong for the district, only 500 of the former and 1,600 of the latter actually exist, most of them in Baltimore, which the Secretary still believes to be the British target. The rest, but for Barney's flotilla, are scattered all over southern Maryland; the city is virtually open. Only Madison and Monroe appear to believe that Washington is truly in danger; they seem about to take its defense into their own hands, but, as of the Perseid meteor shower on August 12, they have not yet done so.

Thus Andrew's report to Cockburn, Cochrane, and General Ross aboard the Tonnant on August 15, Napoleon's forty-fifthbirthday. As Cockburn foretold, Cochrane's resolution has faltered en route from Bermuda: their 5,000 men are insufficient to assault a capital city some 40 miles inland, in absolutely equatorial summer heat. Ross inclines to agree; they will do better to pack it in and head north to Rhode Island. Only Andrew's report. (together with a little demonstration raid up the St. Marys River for Ross's benefit, and a final review of the options open to them if any real resistance should materialize) saves Cockburn's plan. On August 17 the final strategy is outlined to the assembled captains: a squadron of eight ships to go at once up the Potomac, destroy its fortifications to clear an alternate route for the army's retreat if the Patuxent should be cut off, and capture Alexandria; Byron's cousin to take the Menelaus up the Bay, make a reconnaissance-feint at Baltimore and the upper Eastern Shore as if to cut off the roads to Philadelphia and New York; the rest of the force to navigate as far up the Patuxent as possible and march on from there. On Thursday the eighteenth, Andrew with them, they labor up the narrowing river against contrary winds and tides; by anchoring time, at steamy sunset, they are strung out for nine miles, from Benedict to Broom Island, the deeper-draft ships farthest down. The Patuxent, with its high, handsome wooded banks, is deserted. Tomorrow the troops will disem-

bark with three days' rations for the forty-mile overland march to Nottingham, to Upper Marlboro & WASHINGTON!

Here Andrew interrupts his narrative to quote a New York Post editorial published some days later: "Certain it is, that when General Ross' official account of the battle and the capture and destruction of our CAPITOL is published in England, it will hardly be credited by Englishmen. Even here it is still considered a dream." He goes on to invoke Andree: Give me the wcrds, Muse to whom these words are all addrest, to tell that dream, your dream come true: Prevost's revenge for York, ours for Tecumseh! As if to re-persuade himself that his conviction is firm, he reviews the moments when he might have "undream'd the dream": a forged letter from Madison to Armstrong, say, urging him to "maintain his pretense of indifference and confusion, till the enemy may be cut off from all retreat," would have alarmed Ross and Cochrane past all of Cockburn's suasion. A tip to Secretary Monroe to place sharpshooters at Benedict to pick off Cockburn the moment he stepped ashore-the fleet would be altogether demoralized.

Now in the three days' march from Benedict come new such cruxes. The tidewater August weather is unnerving; hardened veterans of the Peninsular Wars fall out by the dozens as anvil clouds pile up through the afternoon, then huddle awed as a furious American thunderstorm, like nothing they've seen in Britain or Spain, shocks their first night's bivouac in Maryland. A bit of a night ambush on the heels of the storm, by a hundred or so militiamen painted like Indians, and Ross would have packed his army back to more civilized carnage. On Sunday the twenty-first, permitted to reconnoiter on his own, Andrew crosses paths with James Monroe himself, alone on horseback, down below their encampment. Frustrated by inaction and discrepant reports, Monroe has persuaded the President to let him leave the State Department, saddle up, and scout the enemy personally-the first and last time a cabinet officer has ever done so-and he has got himself behind the enemy he is trying to locate. Andrew makes no sign, either to warn Monroe or to capture him. By that same Sunday evening, Ross is fretful at the slowness of their advance, their distance from the fleet; he has half a mind to forgo even their immediate target, Joshua Barney's flotilla at Pig Point. Cockburn must be at him incessantly with encourage-

ments, till Ross agrees to give that objective one more day. When Cockburn leaves him on Monday to lead a little force of attack barges up to Pig Point, Andrew considers telling Ross that Barney has already fused his ships for scuttling and removed their cannons to defend the approaches to Washington. He refrains; the boats are blown; Ross settles down nervously with his army for the night at Upper Marlboro.

Seven miles away, at Long Old Fields, the American defenders are noisily encamped under General Winder, a Baltimore attorney. The threat to Washington is clear now to everyone except the Secretary of War, and a bit of defense is beginning confusedly to rally; 3,000 infantry, mostly militia, and more than 400 cavalry-of which Ross has none-are strengthened now byBarney's 500 flotilla men and their artillery. Andrew contemplates the map. An open road shortcuts from Long Old Fields and under Upper Marlboro to the Patuxent; in one hour Winder's cavalry can cut off the British rear while his infantry move against their left. Even if the attack cannot be sustained, it will move Ross to withdraw, the more readily now that his token objective has been accomplished. Andrew says nothing.

Even so, General Ross is so inclined to retreat that his junior officers secretly send for Cockburn again to give their commander another pep talk. It would be no problem to have the Admiral ambuscadoed en route to Dr. Beanes's house, where Ross is billeted

The fact is, Earl Bathurst's orders to the General explicitly forbid his engaging in "any extended operations at any distance from the coast"; it is Cockburn's task, and those ambitious junior officers', to persuade Ross that Bathurst himself would rescind the order before such an opportunity. For the moment they succeed: Andrew and one of Cockburn's lieutenants are dispatched on August 23 back to Cochrane's flagship at Benedict to report the destruction of Barney's flotilla, the taking of thirteen schoonersful of prize tobacco (which the Royal Marines are now sending downriver), and the army's intention to move on Washington next day.

Here is Andrew's last, best chance. As apprehensive as General Ross, Admiral Cochrane seizes upon the news. He too has been looking at the map: how easily a modest force of cavalry could cut off the army's rear, and-more alarming-how easily a few barges, scuttled across the lower Patuxent channel, could bottle up his fleet,

make them sitting ducks for artillery mounted on the river banks! They have accomplished something, with very small loss; who knows but what Barney's boats and those tobacco schooners might have been a choice bait to lead them so vulnerably far upriver? He gives Andrew and Lieutenant Scott an emphatic and unambiguous letter for Cockburn, to be eaten and delivered orally if they are in any danger of capture. He and Ross have done enough; they are to return to the fleet at once. Under no circumstances are they to march on Washington!

The messengers return by different routes to improve their letter's chances of delivery: Scott by the main road back to Dr. Beanes's house in Upper Marlboro; Andrew by that shortcut road toward the Wood Yard and Long Old Fields, where the army will have moved to a new bivouac during the day. Our ancestor is mightily tempted: his and Andree's program (he reminds her), at least until Tecumseh's death, had been to promote stalemate; any youthful relish he might once have taken in spectacles of destruction has been long since sated by the French Terror and the Napoleonic Wars. With Barney's fleet destroyed, Cochrane can put enough blockading pressure on the U.S. economy to force concession of an Indian Free State; it is not necessary to destroy the young capital city. Barney's men, at least, will stand and fight; this will be no bloodless "Cossack hurrah." And this time Andrew need do nothing on his own initiative. Cochrane's letter is genuine; Lieutenant Scott will deliver it; he, Andrew, need only not impede its delivery, or at most confirm it with the news that Secretary Monroe is pressing for an attack on the British rear that same night.

This last he learns from a rapid visit to the city itself (which he enters unchallenged, so ill organized is its defense), together with the news that Winder has rejected that proposal. The General fears it will be the British who attack that night, to nullify his advantage in cavalry and artillery; he has therefore withdrawn his army from Long Old Fields back into the city, where they lie exhausted in the Navy Yard. There is no order; the place is pitifully exposed; the approach bridges across the east branch of the Potomac have not even been mined; only a few trunksful of government records have been packed out of town for safekeeping. There is a token guard at the President's House, which Andrew approaches without difficulty. He chats with the guards; they cheerfully inform him that Madison

has rejected the idea of blowing up the Capitol before it falls to the British; it will "stir the country more," he has decided, if the enemy themselves destroy it. Incredibly, through a window of the house he catches sight of James and Dolley Madison themselves. Someone is gesticulating at the little man, who wearily shakes his head. Dolley, turning a wineglass in her fingers, seems to be directing servants; with her free hand she briefly touches her husband's shoulder. People come and go with messages, advice.

The streets are empty. Andrew rides out of town about midnight with a defense party dispatched at last to burn the Potomac bridges. They tell him that a slave revolt is rumored to be in progress throughout Maryland and Virginia; that the British have armed two thousand blacks, with specific instructions to rape all white females regardless of age and station; that the nondefense of Washington is New England's revenge on Madison for sending up southern generals to lose the Canadian campaign, which if successful would have added more nonslaveholding states to the Union. Holding his peace, Andrew passes with them through the sentries at the river. Except for a force of militia at Bladensburg, the northeastern approach to the city, there are no American troops beyond those sentries. Far from fearing capture in the five-mile ride back to the British camp, Andrew suffers from loneliness on the vacant country road, where "nothing stirr'd save the owls, and their prey." The night is sweet after the oppressive afternoon; he takes his time. As he finds Ross's and Cockburn's quarters, about three A.M., he sees a glow behind him from the burningbridges.

The General and the Admiral are up and pacing about outside. Lieutenant Scott stands by with other aides, his letter delivered uneaten-and evidently undigested by the addressees. The tableau is clear: Ross shakes his head like Madison; Cockburn gesticulates, expostulates, curses, coaxes. Ross points to the fire glow; no matter, Cockburn replies, they will attack by way of Bladensburg, a better approach anyhow, since the river there is shallow enough to ford if the bridge is blown. The local militia will never stand againstWellington's Invincibles, who, after their victory, will surely be renamed Ross's Invincibles. On the other hand, Earl Bathurst and the Prince Regent would be furious to learn that such an easy, spectacular plum had been left unplucked, should they turn back now.

The decision must be Ross's, and he cannot make it. Cockburn

looks about, rolling his eyes. A whippoorwill starts, the first voice that Wednesday morning besides their own. Andrew himself, remembering Dolley Madison's hand on her husband's shoulder and missing Andree (but perhaps mindful also of a third tableau: Andree walking and talking with Tecumseh at Castines Hundred), decides to grant this much to the American, at least the Maryland, line of his descent: if his advice is solicited, he will point out that symbolic losses meant to demoralize can sometimes have the reverse effect; if they do not crush your adversary's spirit, as the loss of Tecumseh dispirited the Indian confederacy, they may unify and inspirit him instead.

There is a pause. Ross looks his way but does not ask, may not even recognize Andrew in the darkness. Then he claps his brow, "as reluctant a conqueror as ever conquer'd," and declares to Cockburn, Yes, all right, very well, God help us, let it be, we will proceed. On to Bladensburg& WASHINGTON!

I write these pages, Henry, in my air-conditioned office on Redmans Neck, on another torrid tidewater Wednesday. The leaves I decipher and transcribe-and must now, alas, more and more summarize (the afternoon is done; I have business of my own in Washington tomorrow, which I will enter as Ross's army did, via the Baltimore Pike through Bladensburg)-our ancestor ciphered on a milder July 16 on the orlop deck of the Bellerophon, where Napoleon surrendered the morning previous to escape arrest, after his second abdication, by officers of the re-restored Bourbons. Andrew will not explain until his next letter (August 6, 1815) what has fetched him to Rochefort; how it comes that he has not only witnessed the Emperor's surrender but is about to dash overland to Le Havre and London with Allied dispatch couriers to negotiate British passports to America for Napoleon and his suite. He merely announces, in this letter, that such is the case and that he must therefore leave "to another day, another Muse," the full singing of the fall of Washington, the bombardment of Baltimore, and his own "death and resurrection."

It is a song, Henry, your father had thought to sing himself, in the years before I turned (to cite the motto of this Border State) from parole [emine to [atti maschii: from "womanly words" to "manly deeds," or from the registration of our times to their tum-

ing. (Now do you sing it, B., who may be this letter's only reader. Sing my Marylandiad!)

Sing of wee scholarly Madison's kissing Dolley farewell that Wednesday morning, buckling on the brace of big duelingpistols given him by his Treasury Secretary (who has quit and left town in disgust), riding bravely out to Bladensburg, right through the center of his troops drawn up for battle and almost into the British columns assembling just beyond the rise. Sing of the heat of that August forenoon: temperature and humidity both in the high 900s, and the redcoats dropping already of heat exhaustion as they quickstep to Bladensburg. Half a canto then to the confusion and contradiction among the Americans, now some 6,000 strong as new units rush in at last from Annapolis, from Baltimore, and opposing an attack force of no more than 1,500 British. But those are Wellington's Invincibles, the scourge of Spain, under clear and unified command, where these are farmers, watermen, tradesmen, ordered here by General Winder, there by General Stansbury, elsewhere by Secretary Monroe, elsewhere again by Francis Scott Key, the Georgetown lawyer who wanders up now full of advice for Winder, his fellow attorney. Some units are in the others' line of fire; many do not know that the rest are there, and think themselves alone against Ross's regulars; many have disapproved of the war from its outset, or believe it intentionally mismanaged; most have never seen combat before.

Half a canto, therefore-and no more, and not without sympathy -to the "Bladensburg Races." The battle is joined; men begin to die. Unbelievably, the Americans have not blown the Bladensburg bridge; it must be seized at once. For the last time, Ross wavershomespun militia or not, it seems to him a very large number of Yankees are over there, defending, after all, their own capital cityand for the fifth, sixth, seventh time Cockburn cries Attack, attack! Between artillery blasts from the American earthworks the British race across the bridge and take cover; lacking artillery themselves, they open up on the Americans' second line of defense with Congreve rockets fetched in from the fleet. Marvelously inaccurate but fearsome to behold, the Congreves fall among the soldiers, the horses, the crowds of spectators come out from Washington and Georgetown to see the show. The rockets are easily and quickly launched from a simple tube; flight follows flight of them,

sputtering and shrieking, as the bright British bayonets move toward the front line-and suddenly all is panic. Horses whinny and bolt; onlookers scream and run; the whole center breaks, and the left, and the right, and the second line, not a quarter hour after the first redcoat crosses the bridge. Cannon are left behind unspiked, muskets thrown away; the swift trample the slow; Madison's party is swept back in the general rout. General Ross looks on astonished: the battle has not yet properly commenced, and the Americans run, run, run for their lives. Some will not stop till they reach Virginia, or western Maryland. Everyone runs!

Almost everyone. For who are these rolling in like an alexandrine at the canto's end, kedging forward against the shameful tide?

Jerome Bonaparte's old comrade Joshua Barney, with his stranded flotilla men and the twelve- and eighteen-pounders from their scuttled ships! All morning they have ransacked the Navy Yard for mules and ammunition; the sailors themselves are harnessed to the guns, which they hurriedly place now across the turnpike almost at the District of Columbia line. They know how to aim (no deck so steady as terra firma) ; they know how to stand and fire (no place to retreat to on a boat, till your officers decide to turn the thing around). Now whole companies of British die, who had survived the horrors Goya drew. Ross's advance is stopped; Barney's marines even mount a brief but successful charge against the King's Own Regiment, driving them back with bayonets and cutlasses and cries of "Board 'em, boys!"-but there is no President's Own behind them to follow up with a counterattack.

The flotilla men withdraw to their guns, yet hold on aggressively a while against the regrouping, readvancing, reencircling British. They begin to die now in numbers themselves; they cling to their line for yet another salvo and another, even when their ammunition wagons (driven by scared civilians under contract) desert them. Under Winder's orders then, reinforced at last by Barney's own, they spike their guns and go, leaderless. For (also at his own orders) they must leave their wounded Commodore behind. Barney has taken a musketball in the hip, and concealed the wound till he falls. He will die of it after the war, en route to settle in Kentucky, like Odysseus wandering inland from the sea. Now he is discovered by his old adversary, Admiral Cockburn, who has suspected all along where such accurate resistance was coming from. "I knew it

was the flotilla men!" he cries to Ross. The General pays his respects and forthwith paroles his wounded enemy. The two old sailors congratulate each other on the most effective fighting of the day (those rockets were Cockburn's idea); the Admiral orders the Commodore fetched back to Bladensburg for medical care and release, then rejoins Ross to pursue the battle.

But the battle is done. British casualties, most of them from Barney's naval gunnery, are twice those of the Americans, who are not present to be killed. Catching up with them is out of the question; it is an oven of an afternoon. "The victors were too weary," Cockburn reports later, "the vanquished too swift," for evening out the casualties. The redcoats rest. As the sun goes down, a fresh party is brought forward to enter the city, which Ross expects to be better defended by a regrouped American army.

But the invaders march down Maryland Avenue unopposed toward the Capitol. Not only have the defenders fled; they have looted as they flew: had Dolley Madison not seen to it that George Washington's portrait was evacuated from the President's House, it would as likely have fallen to American looters as to British, as did Madison's dueling pistols. The President's butler has packed a few last valuables, left the front-door key at the Russian ministry, and gone in search of his employers. Save for one volley from Robert Sewall's house on Maryland Avenue and Second Street, N.E., there is no resistance whatever. The house is quickly fired with rockets. A few blacks stand about to watch; there are no other Washingtonians in evidence. In vain, as the building bums, Ross orders drum rolls to call for a parJey; he is still more inclined to indemnify than to burn. There is no one to reply. No interim authority has been delegated, no orders have been given, no provisions made. Admiral Cockburn is delighted: nothing for it now but to proceed with their business.

But Muse, before you sing the sack of Washington, say: Can you see, from the heights of Helicon or Black Rock in Buffalo, where is our ancestor all this while, my son's and mine? For this Marylandiad is no history book, but the epic of Andrew Cook at the midpoint of his life. He was up all night; has he slept through the day's most epical set piece? Was he lost in the confusion of battle like Stendhal's Fabrizio at Waterloo? It is past eight; that glare in the east is the WashingtonNavy Yard, fired by its retreating com-

mandant; those explosions are the fort at Greenleaf's Point, ditto. Now it is nine; British demolition teams have broken into the Capitol, chopped its woodwork into kindling, piled up chairs and tables in the Senate and the House, added buckets of rocket powder; Cockburn has seated himself in the place of the Speaker of the House, gaveled for order, and put the mocking question to his men: "Shall this harbor of Yankee democracy be burned?" Where is A. B. Cook N?

Why, Henry, there he is, there in the doorway, just entered from the lobby, his throat so full of a heartfelt, self-surprising nay that he can scarcely keep it in! Like Madison, whose near-blundering into British hands he has earlier observed from across the lines of battle, Andrew has been a mere spectator of the Bladensburg debacle. He has not been impressed with Ross's generalship; after so much prodding and vacillation, the man in Andrew's opinion made a foolish and bloody decision to attack frontally across that bridge (no doubt in his surprise to find it intact). He could as easily have forded the river upstream and fallen on the Americans' flank while Cockburn fired his Congreves into their front; British casualties needn't have been so high. Nevertheless, Andrew has felt personal shame at the panic and rout of the militia, and contrariwise such admiration for Josh Barney's resistance that with Cockburn's permission he has accompanied the wounded Commodore back to the Bladensburg tavern, pressed into service as a field hospital. It is Andrew who, when Barney complains that Ross's soldiers don't know how to bear a stretcher properly, finds four willing sailors from the rocket squad to relieve them, and suggests they soothe their patient en route with fo'c'sle chanteys.

It is not simply Barney's physical courage that Andrew is moved by, but his particular brand of patriotism: complex, at times selfinterested (it was Barney's vanity, piqued by the promotions of others before himself, that led him earlier to resign his commission in the U.S. Navy for one in the French), but strong and unambiguous where it matters-by contrast, say, with the contemptible soullessness of Secretary Armstrong, or his own confusions, equivocations, blunderings. In this, Barney seems to Andrew a rougher cast version of Joel Barlow; indeed they could pass for brothers, both in appearance and under the skin. When the Commodore thanks him for his attentions and asks whether he hasn't seen him somewhere

before-perhaps in William Patterson's house a dozen years ago?Andrew fakes a Cockney accent and denies it.

The old man seen to, Andrew makes his way back into Washington, wishing as fervently as ever in his life that he could spit out "this Father business" once and for all and be himself. By the blaze of Robert Sewall's house he rides down Maryland Avenue to the Capitol, its windows shot out, its great doors battered open. He contemplates the imminent destruction, not merely of Corinthian columns and marble walls, but of the infant Library of Congress upstairs and the Supreme Court's law library below; of the records, the files, the archives of the young republic. He passes through the lobby to the House chamber, his head full of the slogans of the American and French revolutions, together with the ideals of the Magna Carta, of English common law and parliamentaryprocedure. Why are these destroying these? Futile as the gesture would have been, when he sees Admiral Cockburn in the speaker's chair and hears him call to his rocket-wielding troopers for the question, the nay comes near to bursting from him

But then it strikes Andrew that the official incumbent of that chair is the man perhaps most singly responsible for the war: Henry Clay, the arch-hawk of Kentucky, at that moment in Ghent with the peace commissioners to make sure that no Indian Free State is let into the treaty, and brandishing in token of his belligerence a razor strop made from the skin of Tecumseh. "Aye!" our forefather shouts before the rest, who chorus affirmation. It is exactly ten o'clock. The motion carries; Cockburn raps the gavel; rockets are fired into the piled-up combustibles; the party retires from the blaze and moves down Pennsylvania Avenue to the President's House and the Treasury Building. Over his shoulder, as he moves on with them, Andrew sees the Capitol of the United States in flames.

Now the men are weary. All but the indefatigable Cockburn complete the night's work methodically, with little horseplay. If Ross has been less than resolute or brilliant as an attacker, he is an admirable executor of this occupation, for which he has no taste. There are no rapes, no molestations of civilians, no systematic pillaging of private property. Even the looting of the public buildings he keeps to the souvenir level, and he frowningly detaches himself from Cockburn's high jinks. At the President's House they find dinner laid out for forty: as Cockburn's men fall upon the cold

meats and Madeira, and the Admiral toasts the health of "Jemmy Madison and the Prince Regent," and steals "Jemmy's love-letters" from a desk drawer and a cushion from Mrs. Madison's chair to remind him "of Dolley's sweet arse," Ross quietly gives orders to fire the place and move on. The officers retire to Mrs. Suter's tavern on Fifteenth Street for a late supper; Ross's frown darkens when the Admiral rides roaring in upon the white mule he has been pleased to bestride all day. Such displays Ross regards as dangerous to good discipline and unbefitting the dignity of such events as the destruction of capital cities.

Andrew agrees, though in the contrast of humors between the General and the Admiral he sees a paradigm of his own mixed feelings, and he is mindful of the resolve and bold imagination that entitle Cockburn to his present entertainment. Since the firing of the Capitol, Andrew's heart is still. He quotes here an ironic editorial comment from a British newspaper printed weeks later, when the news reaches London:

There will be great joy in the United States on account of the destruction of all their public and national records, as the people may now invent a fabulous origin

The destruction itself, reports Andrew, from the moment of that gavel-rap in Cockburn's congress, has seemed to him to move from the historical plane to the fabulous. Like one "whose father's certain death releases one at last to love him," Andrew feels the stirrings of a strange new emotion.

But first one must see that father truly and completely buried; and so he not only follows Ross and Cockburn through the rest of the night's destruction, and the next day's, but finds finally "a fit chiaroscuro" in the contrast of their manners, "apt as Don Quixote and his ribald squire." It is getting on to midnight. From Mrs. Suter's tavern the trio ride to their final errand of the evening, another of Cockburn's inspirations, which Ross reluctantly assents to: private property or not, the Admiral vows he will not sleep until he burns the offices of The National lntelligencer, which for two years has been abusing him in its columns. The General goes along to make sure that no other private buildings are damaged or further mischief made, Andrew to see "the funeral rites" through to the end and confirm his sense of the increasing fabulousness of the occasion. They locate Joe Gales's Intelligencer building between Sixth and

Seventh streets on Pennsylvania Avenue, and by the light of the still-blazing Capitol read the lead story of its morning edition, fetched out by the soldiers who break down the door. The city is safe; there is no danger from the British. Just at midnight another thunderstorm breaks theatrically upon them. Cockburn yields to the entreaties of two neighbor ladies not to burn the building, lest their houses catch fire as well. It is too wet now for burning anyhow; he will wreck the place in the morning. He commandeers a red tunic and musket from one of the 3rd Brigade troopers, bids Andrew take them, and orders him to stand watch at the Intelligencer till they return at dawn. Cook has been witness long enough; time to earn his pay. But don't print up any more false letters!

The officers retire then for the night: the 3rd Brigade to Capitol Hill, the others to encampments outside the District. For the next several hours, Henry-till Cockburn eagerly goes to't again at fivethirty next morning-Andrew Burlingame Cook IV is in sole charge of the capital of the United States!

When not pacing his beat, he employs the time to begin drafting not a "false letter," but this true one, the record of these events thus far, which will not be redrafted, dated, and posted till nearly a year later. His sense of "fabulosity" does not diminish, even though (perhaps because) he verges on exhaustion. As in a dream, he watches Cockburn's men destroy the newspaper office, piing the type into Pennsylvania Avenue and wrecking the presses. The Admiral himself, with Andrew's help, destroys all the letter Cs, "so that Gales can defame me no further," and thenceforth calls himself "the Scourge of the Cs." While fresh troops from the 1st Brigade re-ignite the Treasury Building (extinguished by last night's storm) and burn the State, War, and Navy Department Building, Cook and Cockburn make a tour of the ruined Navy Yard; confronting there the allegorical Tripoli Monument (to American naval victories off the Barbary Coast), Andrew is dispatched to snatch the bronze pen from the hand of History and the palm from the hand of Fame. Back in the city, he hears General Ross declare that he would not have burned the President's House if Mrs. Madison had taken sanctuary there, nor the Capitol building had he known it housed the Congressional Library. "No, sir," Ross declares emphatically, "I make war against neither letters nor ladies."

The Post Office is scheduled to go next, but inasmuch as the

Superintendent of Patents argues that the building also houses the patent models, which are private property, and Andrew adds ironically that by the same reasoning all the letters in the Post Office are private too, the burning is postponed till the officer in charge can get a ruling from Cockburn, still enjoying himself down at the Intelligencer. Meanwhile he and his squad have another mission: to destroy the powder magazine at Greenleaf's Point, which the Yankees have forgot. Since that officer and his men will never return, the P.O. is spared; most of the letters are eventually delivered (Andrew wishes he had got this one posted in time), and the Congress, upon its return in September, has one building large enough to enable it to sit in Washington rather than in Lancaster, Pa. (the second choice), where, once established, it would very possibly have stayed. And the reason for those men's not returning begins the end of Andrew's "fable." This Thursday, the twenty-fifth, is another poaching tidewater August day: stifling heat, enervating humidity, dull haze, and angry thunderheads piling up already by noon to westward, where Ross imagines Madison to have regrouped his government and army to drive the invaders out. The demolition party goes to Greenleaf's Point, the confluence of the Potomac's east and west branches; they decide to drown the 150 powder barrels in a well shaft there, not realizing that the water is low; they dump the barrels in; someone adds a cigar, or a torch (it cannot be Andrew; he is back at the Post Office, writing this letter). The explosion is seismic; the whole city trembles, blocks of buildings are unroofed, windows shatter everywhere; the concussion sickens everyone for half a mile around. Greenleaf's Point itself virtually disappears, the demolition squad with it; no one even knows how many men die--one dozen, three. Debris lands on the Post Office a mile away. And as the mangled casualties are collected, nature follows with another blow: no mere terrific thunder squall, but a bona fide tornado, a two P.M. twister that unroofs the Post Office after all, sends letters flying, blows men out of the saddle and cannon off their carriages, picks up trees and throws them, tears the masts out of ships-all this with an astonishing deluge of rain, lightning bolts, and thunderclaps that make the Battle of Bladensburg a Guy Fawkes Day picnic. Unprecedented even in the experience of seasoned Marylanders, the tornado quite demoralizes the redcoats, still assembling their dead and wounded; they cling to fences, flatten themselves in the lee of

the burned-out Capitol, wish themselves in hell rather than in America.

Andrew is stunned by the first explosion; the second seems to awake him from the daze in which, by his own acknowledgment, he has witnessed and participated in this "funeral service for his fatherland." The storm is as brief as it is tremendous; "wash'd clean, blown clean, shaken clean" by it, he quietly advises Ross (not Cockburn) to bluff the surrender delegations from Alexandria and Georgetown, who expect him to negotiate indemnities. American reinforcements must be massing already on the northwest heights of the Potomac; units from Baltimore could still fairly easily cut off their retreat. It is time to go.

Ross is of the same mind. Even Cockburn is weary, his adventure successful beyond his most histrionic imaginings. The officers feign interest in negotiation; they decide in fact, privately, to let Captain Gordon's Potomac squadron continue up to Alexandria and ransom the town; they impose an eight P.M. curfew and order camp fires lit as usual to signal their continuingpresence-and then they march the army by night back out Maryland Avenue, back through Bladensburg (where more wounded are entrusted to Commodore Barney against a future exchange of prisoners). With only brief rest stops, they march for forty-eight hours, back through Upper Marlboro and Nottingham to Benedict and the waiting fleet. Though scores of exhausted stragglers, and not a few deserters taken by the possibilities of life in America, will wander about southern Maryland for days to come-a number of them to be arrested for foraging by Ross's and Cockburn's former host, Dr. Beanes, with momentous consequences-the expedition against Washington is over; seven days since they stepped ashore, General Ross and Admiral Cockburn are back aboard Sir Alexander Cochrane's flagship, toasting their success. Cockburn wears President Madison's hat and sits on Dolley's pillow; Ross frowns and tallies up the casualties; Cochrane considers how quickly they can get back down the Patuxent, and where to go next, and what to do for an encore.

So does our progenitor. His letter, Henry, is shorter by half than this, which is meant for less knowledgeable eyes as well as your own (and yours, Author, who no doubt learned this little history by rote in your Maryland grade school) Andrew merely mentions, for Andree, what I have rehearsed more amply here. What is to come

he treats even more summarily, an anticlimax in his letters as it is in the history of 1814, though it cost him his "life": the bombardment of Fort McHenry and the abortive attack on Baltimore. (As for the Battle of New Orleans and the Treaty of Ghent, further anticlimaxes, they are relegated-the former to a postscript, the latter to a parenthesis within that postscript-to the foot of this posthumous letter. )

In his epistle, I remind you, the burning of Washington is but the apocalyptic mise en scene for the final burying of Andrew's inconsistent and equivocal, but prevailing, animus against the American line of his own descent, an animus that peaked at Tecumseh's death. After that explosion and tornado on August 25, his head is clear but neutral: the odd emotion of patriotism is still there, but still nascent and tempered; he would not now snatch from the U.S. Navy History's pen and Fame's palm (he has conveniently "mislaid" them, to Cockburn's chagrin; they are in my cottage on Bloodsworth Island; one day they shall be yours), but he would not yet restore them, either.

He has encouraged General Ross to withdraw. Guessing Cockburn's eagerness to follow up the Washington triumph with a quick and wholesale attack on Baltimore, he casts about now for ways to forestall that move; he is not yet ready to arrange for British defeats, but he is prepared to do what he can to counter further victories. He anticipates, correctly, that when news of the Washington expedition reaches London and Ghent (in early October), the U.S. peace commissioners will be inclined to accept the British ultimatum that the Indians be restored at least to their prewar boundaries, nullifying Harrison's defeat of Tecumseh; indeed, they will be relieved that the British are not insisting that the Indians themselves send commissioners to the Hotel des Pays-Bas. As Andrew puts it, he has interred his father; time now to tend the grave and look to a fit memorial, not to drive a stake through the old man's heart.

He is relieved, therefore, to find that Cochrane and Ross are already of a mind to leave the Chesapeake for the present. As the fleet works its way down the Patuxent (old Dr. Beanes has been seized and put in irons on the Tonnant for arresting those British stragglers), Cochrane announces that while he has every intention not only to attack but to destroy "that nest of pirates that most

democratic town and the richest in the union," whose fleet of privateers has sunk or captured no fewer than five hundred British ships since 1812, he will not do it until mid-autumn, when "the sickly season" in the Chesapeake is past. They will rendezvous off Tangier Island with Captain Parker's Menelaus and Captain Gordon's task force from the Potomac; reprovisioned, they will dispatch Admiral Cockburn and the prize tobacco to Bermuda and take the army on up to Rhode Island. Newport once captured, they will rest and wait for reinforcements. Then, when the Americans will have frantically dispersed their forces to defend New York and New England, they will sweep back to destroy Baltimore, maybe Charleston too, and end their campaign at New Orleans. That should wind up the war, even without further successes on the Niagara Frontier. Andrew is delighted. The trip north will give him time to make his own plans; from Newport it should be easy enough to slip away to Castines Hundred; perhaps by late October a treaty will be signed. Ross agrees with Cochrane; Admiral Cockburn cannot prevail against them. On September 4 the orders are given: thirteen ships to remain on patrol in the Chesapeake; the main body of warships and transports to re-rendezvous south of Block Island; Cockburn to join them there after his errand in Bermuda-all this as soon as they are provisioned at Tangier Island. There the fleet anchors, on the sixth. A dispatch boat is sent off to London with Cochrane's reports of the Washington victory and his plan to move north. Gordon's ships are still working down the Potomac with their prizes from Alexandria; the Menelaus arrives from up the Bay with Sir Peter Parker in a box, shot by an Eastern Shore militiaman during a diversionary raid. (In London, Byron will merrily set about composing his "Elegy.") The army disembarks for the night to camp on a Methodist meeting ground presided over by Joshua Thomas, the "Parson of the Islands." Next morning early, Admiral Cockburn grumblingly weighs anchor and points the Albion south toward the Virginia Capes.

And then, Henry, at mid-morning the whole fleet makes sail, not for Block Island and Newport, but back up the Bay, toward Baltimore!

Andrew declares himself as baffled by this sudden change of plan as all chroniclers of the period have been since. It cannot have been Cockburn's doing; he and the Albion must be sent after and sig-

naled to return. Some have speculated, [aut de mieux, that the Menelaus fetched back, along with her dead young captain, irrestible intelligence of the city's vulnerability and accurate soundings of the Patapsco River up to Baltimore harbor; other, that Joshua Thomas's famous sermon to the troops on the morning of September 7, warning them that their attack on Baltimore was destined to fail, actually reinterested Ross and Cochrane in that project. We have seen how cautious a general Ross is, how fickle an admiral Cochrane; one can even suppose that the very dispatching of their withdrawal plans to London, and of Cockburn to Bermuda, inclined them afterward to do what they'd just decided not to do.

And there is another explanation, which Andrew ventures but, in the nature of the case, cannot be sure of. It is that the three commanding officers had secretly agreed from the first, upon their return to the fleet after burning Washington, to move directly upon Baltimore, and that the unusually elaborate feint down the Bay was calculated to deceive, not only the defenders of that city, but spies aboard the fleet itself. No one is named by name; no one is clapped into irons to join Dr. Beanes in the Tonnant's brig or hanged from the yardarms. But it is as if (writes Andrew) his alteration of heart has writ itself upon his brow. He finds himself politely excluded from strategy discussions. To his remark that Cockburn will be particularly chagrined to miss the show if the dispatch boat fails to overtake him, the officers only smile-and by noon the Albion is back in view.

That same afternoon the Tonnant is met by the frigate Hebrus carrying a truce party of Marylanders come to negotiate for the release of Dr. Beanes: the U.S. prisoner-exchange agent John Skinner and that lawyer whom we last saw at the Bladensburg Races, Francis Scott Key. They are given immediate audience with Ross and Cochrane, the more cordial because they've brought letters from the British wounded left under Joshua Barney's supervision; they are told at once that though Beanes will be released to them in reward for the kind treatment of those wounded, the three Americans must remain with the fleet until after the attack on Baltimore, lest they spoil the surprise. The Tonnant being overcrowded with senior officers, they are then transferred, as a civilized joke, to the frigate Surprize, and Andrew Cook (without explanation) is transferred

with them. Indeed it is from Key, whom he quickly befriends on the basis of a common admiration for Joel Barlow's nonepical verse, that Andrew learns for certain that their target is not Annapolis or Alexandria-whence Captain Gordon's task force has yet to return -but Baltimore.

Our forefather's words here are at once candid and equivocal. I described myself, he writes, as an American agent who, to remain useful to my country and avoid being hang'd, had on occasion to be useful to the British as well. Whose pretense to Cochrane & Co. was necessarily just the reverse. Whose true feelings about the war were mixt enough to have carry'd off this role successfully for a time; but who now was fallen into the distrust, not only of "John Bull" and "Brother Jonathan," but of myself. Key rather shares these sentiments; he regards the war as an atrocious mistake, Baltimore as a particularly barbarous town; he is disposed to admire the British officers as gentlemen of culture. But with a few exceptions, he has found them as offensively ignorant and scornful of Americans as the Americans are of them; the scores of desertions from the British rank and file-desertions from the "winning" to the "losing" side!-have shown him the appealing face of democracy's vulgar coin; and the destruction of Washington has touched chords of patriotism he has not felt since 1805, when he was moved to write a song in honor of Stephen Decatur's naval triumphs at Tripoli. The defacing of the navy's monument to that occasion has particularly roused him: did Andrew know that the invaders went so far as to snatch the pen from History's hand, the palm from Fame's?

There was a vandal with a poet's heart, Andrew uncomfortably replies, to whom the fit response might be another patriotic ode, one that would stir the indignation even of New Englanders. Pen has a natural rhyme in men, for example, does it not, and palm in balm. Shall they give it a go?

Their cameraderie remains on this level, for Key is either ignorant of the actual defense preparations of Baltimore (which information Andrew solicits in the hope of both restoring his creditwith Ross and Cochrane and misleading them) or distrustful of his new companion. The combination of pens and statuary suggests to Andrew that graven is a more promising rhyme for Barlow's raven than the one Lord Byron came up with; he volunteers it to Key and resolves

to send it on to Byron as well, for consideration in some future elegy to Sir Peter Parker.

When the fleet turns off the Bay and up into the Potomac on September 8, they wonder whether they have been yet again deliberately misled; whether a follow-up attack on Washington is the real, at least the first, objective. But on the ninth they meet Captain Gordon's flotilla returning from Alexandria; the diversion has been a standby for rescuing Gordon if necessary. The combined forces stand back downriver, anchor overnight at the mouth of the Patuxent, and on the tenth run north past frantic Annapolis. They sail through the night, and by afternoon on Sunday the eleventh begin assembling at anchor off North Point, at the mouth of the Patapsco, within sight of Fort McHenry eight miles upriver. "The Americans" -so Admiral Cochrane now refers to them, without a glance at Andrew-are transferred from the Surprize back to the flag-of-truce sloop they'd arrived on, still monitored by a British junior officer; Dr. Beanes is paroled to join them, and Andrew is included in their party without comment. He sees his erstwhile companion Admiral Cockburn rowed over from the Albion to the shallower-draft Fairy to confer with Ross about their landing strategy (they are to take the army and marines overland from North Point to fall on Baltimore from the east, while Cochrane moves a force of frigates, bomb-ships, and rocket-launchers upriver to reduce Fort McHenry and move on the city from below). He sees Admiral Cochrane transferred from the heavy Tonnant to the lighter Surprize in preparation for that maneuver-wherefore "the Americans" have been shifted. Andrew waves tentatively, still hopeful; but if Cochrane, Ross, and Cockburn see him, they make no sign.

Say now, Muse, for Henry's sake, what Key can't see, nor John Skinner, nor Dr. Beanes, nor Andrew Cook, from where they languish for the next three days. Speak of General Sam Smith's determination that the Bladensburg Races shall not be rerun: his mustering and deployment of 16,000 defenders, including the remnants of Barney's flotilla men, behind earthworks to the east of town and fortifications around the harbor; his dispatching of an attack force at once to meet the enemy at North Point when he's certain they'll land there. Declare what Major Armistead at Fort McHenry knows, and no one else: that the fort's powder magazine is not, as

everyone assumes it to be, bombproof; that one direct hit will send McHenry, himself, and his thousand-man garrison to Kingdom Come and leave the harbor virtually undefended. Tell my son of the new letter that now arrives bydispatch boat from Governor-General Prevost in Canada to Admiral Cochrane, reporting further American atrocities on the Niagara Frontier and urging the Admiral again to retaliate, not with indemnifications but with fire. The British and even the American newspapers are praising Ross for his restraint in Washington: his firing only of public buildings, his care not to harm noncombatants; such solicitude is not what Prevost wants, and Cochrane is determined this time that Ross shall be hard, that the Governor-General shall get what he wants. Say too, Muse, what Ross and Cochrane themselves can't see: that even as this letter arrives, its author, at the head of an invasion force of 14,000 British veterans in upstate New York, is suffering a double defeat. His naval forces on Lake Champlain are destroyed before his eyes that same Sunday morning, and just as he commences a land attack on Plattsburgh in concert with it, he intercepts a letter from Colonel Fosset of Vermont to the defending American General MacComb, advising him of massive reinforcements en route to his aid. That very night, as Ross's army lands for the second time in Maryland, Prevost panics and orders a retreat back to Canada.

The letter from Prevost to Cochrane is authentic; the one Prevost intercepts from Fosset to MacComb is false. Those ten thousand reinforcements do not exist. The U.S. Secret Service has forged the letter and entrusted its delivery to "an Irishwoman of Cumberland Head" whom they know to be a double agent; as they hope, she dutifully betrays them and delivers it to Prevost instead of to MacComb. Was it you, my darling (Andrew wonders at Rochefort a year later, from the deck of the Bellerophon), who forged that letter for the Secret Service, or who posed as that Irishwoman? Were you reversing the little trick we play'd on General Hull at Detroit? May I believe that you too thot it time to end the British dallying at Ghent and conclude a treaty, now that our Indian Nation seem'd assured?

Andree does not reply. He will never know, nor we.

Say on then, Muse, for Henry, what you saw and Andrew didn't of the Battle of Baltimore, which like the Battle of Plattsburgh never quite took place. It is Monday the twelfth, still warm in Maryland

and threatening rain. Ross and Cockburn begin their overland advance, pause for breakfast at a convenient farmhouse, and decline the owner's cautious invitation to return for dinner; he will dine that evening, Ross declares, "in Baltimore or in Hell." A few hours later, on Cockburn's advice, he rides back a bit, alone, to hurry a light brigade along in support of his advance party, who have got too far ahead of the rest and are meeting the first desultory American fire. As Ross trots down the North Point Road, the anonymous, invisible Americans fire again from their concealment in a grove of oaks. One bullet strikes him in the arm and chest: he falls, he speaks of his wife, he dies. The invasion will go forward, that day and the next, under Ross's successor and Admiral Cockburn, who commands only his own small band of marines. The American advance line will retreat, but in less disorder than at Bladensburg; they will regroup with the main force of militia at Sam Smith's earthworks to await the real assault. On Tuesday the thirteenth, Colonel Brooke (the new British commander, even more cautious than his predecessor) and Admiral Cockburn will position their forces before those earthworks and wait for news of Cochrane's success at Fort McHenry before mounting their attack. And for all of Cockburn's exasperated urgings, that attack will never be mounted, because that news will never come.

Can you see, Muse, through the rain of that sodden Tuesday, the letters going back and forth between Brooke and Cochrane, army and navy? Cochrane has written Ross on the Monday afternoon that, as best he can see from the river, the flank of Sam Smith's earthworks may be turned without a frontal assault. His letter comes back that evening unopened, together with the news of Ross's death. Unperturbed, perhaps relieved, Cochrane orders the body preserved in a cask of Jamaican rum and dashes off encouragement to Colonel Brooke: Prevost says bum, burn; I will take Fort McHenry (the harbor, alas, is blocked with scuttled privateers) ; you take the city. On Tuesday morning his bomb- and rocket-ships open fire, out of range of the guns of the fort. Three hours later he is already wavering; another letter goes down the river and up the North Point Road, this one to Brooke via Admiral Cockburn: It appears we cannot help you; the city is too far away, the fort too strong; consider reconsidering whether Brooke should attack at all. But he sustains

the one-way bombardment into the afternoon, and the garrison at McHenry must take their punishment without reply. Even Cochrane cannot see the one bombshell, out of hundreds and hundreds, that lands directly on the powder magazine, goes through its roof with fuse still sputtering, and, like the one bullet that felled General Ross, might have rewrit this chapter of history had not a nimble nameless fellow leaped to douse it. Cochrane moves his ships in closer; the Americans, at last and jubilantly, return the barrage; he moves back out of range. Nothing is working. Here's a letter from Brooke, fifteen hours late: he will be in Baltimore by noon! But it's past three, and there's no sign of action at the earthworks. Cochrane can't see what you can, Muse: that Brooke has got his letter, explored the enemy's flanks and found them defended, and agreed with Cockburn that a night attack is the best strategy. As Cochrane reads this letter, Brooke is writing him another: the army and marines will attack at two A.M.; will the navy please stage a diversion on the farther side of Fort McHenry, as if moving up to threaten Baltimore from the west?

Letters! This second of Brooke's received, unhappy Cochrane replies (to Cockburn) that the plan is folly: the navy can do nothing; McHenry will not fall; New Orleans is a richer city anyway; retreat. It is Tuesday evening, rain coming down hard now. Cockburn scoffs at this letter-Washington all over again!-and urges Brooke to ignore it: attack, attack. Brooke's junior officers are of the same mind; retreats do not earn promotions. But command is heavy: if the army takes the city but the navy cannot take the fort to load prizes, there will be nothing but an expensive bonfire to show for possibly very high losses. If the army fails and the navy succeeds (as seems unlikely), the fall of Fort McHenry will mean nothing. The officers-not including the disgusted Cockburn-argue till midnight, when Brooke wearily pens his last to Cochrane: We are following your advice; as the navy cannot take the fort, we shall retreat to North Point and reembark.

But on that same midnight (you can see and say, Muse, what they cannot)-suspecting that Cockburn might persuade Brooke to ignore these letters and attack-Cochrane dispatches after all, reluctantly, the diversionary force Brooke has requested but no longer wants. And here our ancestor, Henry, comes back into the tale. You

have seen him, all this while, fretting through the bombardment with Key & Co. back at the main fleet anchorage. He is truly saddened, as you have seen, by the news of Ross's death; the man was overcautious, perhaps, but brave and not bloodthirsty, an officer and gentleman. You have seen Andrew fear for the fate of Baltimore if-as seems likely from Prevost's letter and Cochrane's first to Colonel Brooke-Cockburn has his way with the city. Rumors abound like Chesapeake mosquitoes; every dispatch boat leaves its message like a wake behind. Old Dr. Beanes has suffered from his confinement and complains he can't see a thing; Andrew borrows a spyglass from the British lieutenant in charge of them and confirms through the day that Armistead has not yet struck his colors at McHenry. There is a bad moment toward late afternoon, just after the one heavy exchange of fire from the fort, when they lose sight of it, the big 30' x 42' stars and stripes, in the smoke and rain, and wonder whether, after all, the fort has died. But John Skinner recollects that there is a second flag there, a smaller storm flag for squally weather; he optimistically proposes that the renewed silence means only that the bomb-ships have retired back out of range, and that MajorArmistead may be using the lull to hoist a banner more appropriate to the wretched weather. Key is unconvinced. Dr. Beanes fears the worst.

Andrew volunteers to find out. He has seen (as you have) how fretful is their young warden to be upriver with the action. Without much difficulty Andrew has insinuated that his own status is different from that of "the Americans," some sort of special agency. When the message sails through that Brooke plans a night assault and wants diversionary action west of Fort McHenry, in the "Ferry Branch" of the Patapsco, he declares to the Lieutenant that he knows those waters like the back of his hand (he has in fact crossed once on the ferry, in 1803, en route to Joshua Barney's hotel and Jerome Bonaparte's wedding) and pleads to be fetched to Cochrane as a guide. Whether or not the Lieutenant believes him, he sees a chance here to move his own career upstream, and so delegates his wardenly duties to a midshipman and fetches Andrew in a gig to theSurprize. The Americans are indignant; Key in particular feels himself imposed upon, though he has never quite taken our forefather at face value and though Andrew has done his hasty best to intimate

that this present defection is another ruse. When Andrew presses on him a hurriedly penned note "in case we see each other no more," Key at first will have none of it. But there is a winking look in the fellow's eye At last he stuffs the letter into his waistcoat and turns his back; Skinner and Beanes shake their fists at the departing gig.

Colonel Brooke's final message, that he is withdrawing, has yet to be written, much less delivered. It seems likely to Andrew that Cockburn may prevail and the attack succeed, especially with the help of this new tactic; he is resolved, therefore, to do what he can to divert the diversion. What with the firing ceased and the rain still falling, the night is dead black. There is no need even to make his case to Admiral Cochrane: their gig is taken at once for one of the little flotilla assembling about the Surprize under general command of Captain Napier, and the Lieutenant stays mum, recognizing the opportunity. Twenty small boats with muffled oars and light artillery, about fifteen men to a vessel, they head out at midnight in a quiet file. Andrew's boat is ninth in line; a single tap on the Lieutenant's shoulder (even whispered conversation is forbidden) is enough to turn them, and the eleven boats behind them, up the wrong river branch almost at once, into the line of scuttled ships across the harbor mouth. The Lieutenant presently sees their peril-they are right under the guns of the fort-but cannot proclaim it or denounce its cause; he gets the boats somehow turned about and headed back toward the Surprize.

Having assumed the lead, they are now in the rear of the line. Once out of earshot of the fort, and before the Lieutenant can say anything, Andrew whispers angrily that his signal was misread. The other boats are clearly glad to abandon the mission; their crews are already scrambling home. The Lieutenant must turn at once into the west, the left, the port, the Ferry Branch, and catch up with Napier, who in that darkness cannot even know that he now has nine boats instead of twenty. No time to argue: it's that or explain to Admiral Cochrane what they're doing there in the first place:They go-west, left, port-past looming dark McHenry and opposite the smaller forts, Babcock and Covington. In their haste they make a bit of noise. No matter: it's one A.M. now on Wednesday the fourteenth, and Cochrane recommences, as per plan, his bombardment

of Fort McHenry. Under cover of that tremendous racket and guided by bombshell light, they actually locate and joinNapier's reduced flotilla at anchor.

By that same light, the Captain is just now seeing what's what and clapping his brow. The shore gunners see too, from the ramparts of Babcock and Covington, and open fire. Napier gives the signal to do what they're there for; the nine boats let go with all they've got. Fort McHenry responds; the bomb- and rocket-ships intensify their barrage. For an hour the din and fireworks are beyond belief; if Brooke's army needs a diversion, they've got it!

And the Ferry Branch is no place to be. Andrew sits in the gig's stern sheets, stunned by the barrage. Eighteen-pounders roar past to send up geysers all around; they will all die any moment. He has hoped the diversion would include a landing, so that (his credibility with Cochrane gone) he might slip away in the dark and commence the long trek back to Castines Hundred; now he considers whether swimming to shore is more dangerous than staying where he is. At three A.M., by some miracle, Napier has yet to lose a boat or a man. But their position is suicidal, and there is no sign of Brooke's expected attack over beyond the city; those earthworks are deathly quiet. The Captain cannot see that three miles away Brooke's sleeping army has been bugled up and fallen in, not to assault the city but-to their own astonishment and the chagrin of their officersto begin their two-day withdrawal to North Point, minus three dozen prisoners and two hundred deserters. Napier has done all he can. He gives the signal (by hooded lantern) to retire. Theyproceed back down the Ferry Branch as they came, along the farther shore from McHenry, whose gunners now lose them in the darkness and cease their fire. It looks as though CaptainNapier, against all probability, will complete his assignment without casualties. Andrew tests the water with his hand: very warm in the cool night air. "We must signal the fleet we're coming," he whispers to the Lieutenant, "or they'll take us for Yankees," and without asking permission he snatches up the launcher and fires a rocket to the Surprize. As he intends, it is seen at once by the Fort McHenry gunners as well as by the fleet. The Lieutenant wrestles him down; the world explodes; the boat beside them goes up in shouts and splinters. All the batteries of McHenry let loose, and flights of British rockets

and bombshells respond. Andrew gets to his knees in the bilges among the straining, swearing oarsmen. His last sights are of the Lieutenant scrambling for a pistol to shoot him with; of Major Armistead's cannon-riddled storm flag-sodden and limp, but lit by the shell bursts over the McHenry ramparts-and of a misaimed Congreve whizzing their way, some piece of which (or of oar, or of gunwale) strikes him smartly abaft the right temple, just over the ear, as he dives into the bath-warm river.

He will wake half-tranced some days or hours later, knowing neither where he is nor how he came there. (It's William Patterson's house, by a series of bonnes chances; Betsey's elsewhere, avoiding Baltimore and making ready to return with nine-year-old Jerome, Jr., to Europe, now that war's done. Her father, after making a tour of his beloved city on the morning of the fifteenth, has volunteered his house to shelter the wounded defenders, for one of whom, by reason of his civilian clothes, Andrew was mistaken by the Fort McHenry garrison when they found him on the shore that same dull dawn.) As he can neither say nor see now what he will piece together in the days to come, you sing it, Muse, if you can reach that high: how F. S. Key, that leaden A.M., has glassed Mary Pickersgill's 17' x 25' $168.54 auxiliary stars and bars, standing out now in a rising easterly, and has shared the good news with his companions. How their joy increases through the morning at the retirement of the bomb-ships and frigates downriver to the main anchorage, and at the obvious preparations on North Point for the army's return. How in his elevation Key hums the English drinking tune he'd used for his ode to the Tripoli chaps, and searches vainly for something stirring to rhyme with stripes-or, for that matter, with {lag, McHenry, Armistead, or Sam Smith. Not Cook's raven certainly; he will entertain that word no more. He slaps about his person for paper to make a list on, and fishes forth the turncoat's letter; is at first repelled by the notion of employing such compromised foolscap to so patriotic a purpose, stars-wars-bars, fight-night-sight, but comes soon to savor the paradox, Baltimore-evermore-nevermore? Dum dee dum dum dum dum: anapestic tetrameters actually, one quatrain and a pair of couplets, a b abc c d d, feminine endings on the b lines, plus an internal rhyme to perk up the fifth line, he unfolds the sheet to see what the rascal wrote after all and reads

o Francis Scott Key, Turn the bolt on our plight! Open wide Music's door; see her treasure there gleaming! Golden notes bar on bar-which some more gifted wight than Yours Truly must coin into national meaning. For the United States of America's fate hitherto's to have been, in the arts, second-rate. We've an army and a navy,' we're a country (right or wrong): but we've yet to find our voice in some national song/ ABC

Surprised to find it an apparently earnest, unironic exhortation (he has thought only to write some local sort of ode, for the Baltimore press perhaps), Key rereads the letter, Anacreon dum-dee-dumming in his head-et voila. By the time Andrew is enough himself again to leave Baltimore, the lyrics of Defense of Fort M'Henry have been run off in handbill form, rerun by the Baltimore Patriot & Evening Advertiser, rerun by presses in other towns, taken up by the tavern crowd; by the time he reaches New Orleans, Americans from Castine (Maine) to Barataria are straining their high registers for the rockets' red glare and the la-and of the free, and have given Key's anthem a different title.

Andrew goes, then, after all, not home to Castines Hundred but to Louisiana. The reason he gives, here at the end of this second posthumous letter, is that, his patriotism having been both excited and gratified by the McHenry episode, he hopes to forestall the battle he knows is to come. That New Orleans will be Admiral Cochrane's next objective he is certain, and that to atone for the inglorious retreat from Baltimore-as well as for Prevost's retreat from Plattsburgh-the British will commit their forces to a major assault. But it is the opinion of William Patterson, whose judgment our ancestor respects, that the British economy, drained by the long campaign against Napoleon, cannot sustain this war into 1815. Patterson believes, and Andrew concurs, that when the news of Baltimore and Plattsburgh reaches London, the Prince Regent's cabinet will settle a treaty at Ghent before the year ends, with or without their Indian buffer state and Mississippi navigation rights. Andrew fears that a decisive victory by either side at this point will upset the stalemate which he and Andree have been working for and which, despite his new feeling for the U.S.A., he still believes to be in the Indians' best interest. Inasmuch as the Niagara Frontier is quiet (on Guy Fawkes Day 1814, General Izard will blow up Fort Erie and withdraw across the river to Buffalo, the last military action

in the north), and Andrew Jackson has been authorized by Secretary Monroe to raise and command another army for defense of the Gulf Coast, the danger is clearly from that quarter.

But we do not forget, Henry, that our ancestor, no homebody at best, has been struck a severe blow to the head. (The Lieutenant of that gig has happily reported him killed; John Skinner and Dr. Beanes are not sorry to hear it; but Francis Key, less certain that the fellow was a turncoat, dutifully reports the news to "Mrs. Cook, Castines Hundred, Canada," and somehow the letter reaches her despite the war and the vague address.) Even as he closes this letter, two years later, Andrew is subject to spells of giddiness and occasional blackouts, from each of which he awakes believing himself to be on Bloodsworth Island, thirty-six years old, and the War of 1812 not yet begun. Though he never loses sight of his larger end-"the rectification, in [his] life's 2nd cycle, of its lst"-his conception of means, never very consistent, grows more and more attenuated. We remind ourselves that he is completing this letter in France, from the Bellerophon, Napoleon a prisoner on board, himself about to set out on an urgent errand in that connection, and yet nowhere in these pages explains how he got there, and what business it is of his to get the fallen Emperor a passport to America! No wonder Andree was skeptical, if she read these lettres posthumes at all.

There was also talk at Mr. Patterson's of the Baratarians [Andrew concludes his letter glibly], a band of freebooters led by the brothers Lafitte, of whom the younger, Jean, had been a captain with Napoleon. When the British in the Gulf solicited their services against New Orleans, Jean Lafitte sent their letters to his friend (and mine) Jean Blanque in the Louisiana legislature, hoping to raise his stock in New Orleans, where his brother Pierre had been [ail'd as a pirate. But the Governor's Council declared the letters forgeries, sent a Navy force to destroy Barataria, and jail'd Lafitte'S band. Thot I: Here is a man after my own heart, who might serve as a go-between to mislead both Admiral Cochrane and General Jackson into avoiding a disastrous battle. Thus I determin'd to seek out this Jean Lafitte at once, and solicit him to this end, before rejoining you and our children.

Incredibly, Henry, here his letter ends!

But for its postscript. In this mission [he writes below his signa-

ture], I both succeeded and [ail'd. I did not prevent the bloodiest battle of the war (fought after the Peace had been sign'd in December), and the most decisive of American victories on land. But in Jean Lafitte, I, who have never known a father, found a true brother, with whom I fought on the American side in that battle, and whom one day I hope to include in the happiest of all reunions, yours and mine!

Defeated again, Admiral Cochrane seizes Fort Bowyer in Mobile Bay as a sort of consolation prize, and Andrew (inexplicably back with the fleet again) mails his first "posthumous letter." Cochrane is still hopeful of a fresh expedition in the Chesapeake come spring, to destroy Baltimore, perhaps Washington again as well. He and Admiral Cockburn (who, operating off Georgia for the winter, has been spared the New Orleans fiasco) will mend their differences, go on to greater glory. News of the peace treaty thwarts that plan. Leaving Rear Admiral Malcolm the disagreeable chore of disposing of the blacks and Indians recruited to their cause, Cochrane retires to England to litigate with Cockburn over prize money.

The Ghent Treaty is bad news for Indians. Sobered by their losses at Baltimore and Plattsburgh, by rising marine insurance rates and falling export trade, by the uncertain peace in Europe and the rallying even of dissident New Englanders to Key's new national song, the British have abandoned, on no less grave advice than Wellington's own, their demand for the Great Lakes, half of Maine, and the rest-including the Indian state. There seems nothing now to prevent American expansion right across the Mississippi to the Pacific!

Unless (here the postscript closes)

He it was [Jean Lafitte] who re-excited my interest in Napoleon, many of whose followers had fled to Louisiana after his first abdication. As Emperor of the French, Bonaparte was the curse of Europe. But suppose (as Jean was fond of supposing, whose loyalty was less to America than to France and freebootery) a new Napoleon were to govern a French-American territory from the Mississippi to the Rio Grande? Lafitte wisht to rescue the man from Elba and fetch him to New Orleans or Galvez-Town. I scojt at that idea-till Napoleon himself show'd me in March of 1815 it could be done, by escaping from that island and returning to France for his 100 Days. The news

reacht us at sea, where (between other activities) Jean was planning a reconnaissance of Elba. He shrugg'd and return'd to Galvez-Town to try a second Barataria, as his hero was trying a second Empire in Europe. But I went on, by another vessel, with another plan in mind, the likelihood of which, events have conspired extraordinarily to advance. But that, dear wife, must await another letter!

As, dear son, it must likewise with us. A week has passed since this commenced! Americans on the Moon! Senator Kennedy disgraced! Where are you?

Your

father

ABC/ss

cc:JB

The monumental sculptor

Arthur A. Cohen

One suspects that coincidence, made routine by repetition, is the origin.of superstition. A lightreading, this, of our commonplace insisterke·upon a stem and impersonal'causality, but-s-however on�'s

philosophy-a-not at all irrelevant .to the life of that remarkable /sculptor Estienne Delahaye-who died of fright last month in Mougins, where he had passed the winter in,his country house, attended by his beautiful wife and their mutual secretary, a young man whose namehe had refused to commit to memory.

It hardly mattered to Estienne Delahaye that war was regarded as imminent by all the knowledgeable habitues of Les Trois Fleches, the cool and cask-lined cellar where he went every afternoon to drink a glass or two after his last class was dismissed. The existence of Les Trois Fleches was, it seemed to everyone, quite inexplicable, even to Monsieur Delagrave, its patron, who had become a wine merchant by accident several years before. The story of Monsieur Delagrave's inheritance of the enormous stock of wine-amassed over four generations by the family of the late Comtesse Ambrosie de Valois, the immensely capable widow of Comte Victor de Valois, killed during a cavalry charge of the French army in the first Great War-is another story and would interfere with our own. (Moreover, there are sufficient resemblances that they can be, at best, suggested, but not exposed.) Nonetheless, shortly after his inheritance of the more than twelve thousand bottles that constituted the cave of the late comtesse-and her accommodating stipulation that he be granted a long-term lease at modest rent and permission to reconstruct the entrance to the cave if he chose to become a proper wine merchant and leave off his years of cheese making ("Cheese, my dear, even your remarkable chevre, is still useless without a fine burgundy. Chevre serves the wine, not the other way about. Become a connoisseur of wines. Anyone can supply you with cheese'tj-c-Hector Delagrave opened Les Trois Fleches to the modest traffic of Vezelay, Hector Delagrave had undertaken the remodeling of the cave, whose entrance lay a half-dozen feet below the street that leads down from the basilica. The cave was situated in a stone house that had been added to the considerable castellar construction of the family of the Comte de Valois-originally built, one would construe from its architecture, in the early sixteenth century after that family had retreated from the countryside and become the largest grain and wine merchants in the region. In other words, the De

Valois's were early bourgeoisie, a not unfamiliar development when aristocracy failed on the land, and were astute enough to acquire a foothold in the growing merchant towns of France-and Vezelay was not merely a merchant town, but in earlier days had been a great center of crusading Catholicism, hospitable to that ferociously humble saint, Bernard of the neighboring monastery village of Clairvaux. At all events, the cave of the Comte de Valois was situated-as were his stocks of grain and barley, stores of tubbed butter, vats of oil, dried Spanish olives, and Moroccan dates, his accountants and overseers, the storerooms of his leases and currencies-in a stone house, connected by an underground passageway to the magnificent manor house in which the greatest of his great-grandfathers had established the fortune of the family. There, in that cool but essentially plain, unembellished stone edifice, fronting what had become a quiet residential street of the resolutely medieval city of Vezelay, Monsieur Hector Delagrave sold the young wines of the district, the whites of Chablis only thirty kilometers to the north, the Sancerres from a bit further south, and the Beaujolais and old burgundies that constituted his inheritance from Madame la Comtesse. The casks lined the walls, their spigots dripping; the smoke of large candles on sturdy wooden tables served by three-legged stools gave the cave its intimate, however lugubrious and unhealthily dank, atmosphere.

On that early February afternoon, a warm sun having turned the light snow of the previous day into slush and mud, a group of peasants were gathered playing dominoes and drinking wine from unlabeled bottles. Monsieur Delagrave, fattened by his prosperity, leaned over the long oak counter, smoking, the cigarette hanging over his lip, almost singeing the shaggy ends of his red mustache that in previous years had given his presentably oval head and its soft covering of tightly curled red hair an aspect of charm, even of sophistication.

Estienne Delahaye descended slowly into the cellar, holding on to the metal railing that had been installed to accommodate the elderly and the poorly sighted. Estienne was of course neither elderly nor astigmatic, but he was fastidious. It was more important that he maintain his dignity than run the risk of missing a stop (as many did) and tripping headlong into that peasant gathering.

There were other cafes to which he might have gone of an afternoon after his classes in art history, life drawing, and sculpture at the "Academie Seraphique" (as he called the girls' school presided over by the stern and military Argentieres sisters, Floride and Isabelle) on the outskirts of the town where Estienne and five other masters conducted forty young ladies of good provincial (and several foreign) families from puberty to early marriage; but he preferred Les Trois Fleches. His need at that hour was for silence, not salubrious conviviality. When his classes were completed, usually by four in the afternoon, and the girls had gone with Floride Argentiere-s-a husky spinster with glaucous eyes hooded by darkly shadowed lids, to the soccer field for an hour of skinned elbows and bruised chins, Estienne went to Les Trois Fleches for Monsieur Delagrave's hot wine.

"Your glass, Monsieur?" the patron asked solicitously as Estienne put down his cap and stretched his legs beneath the table. Estienne nodded without speaking. Monsieur Delagrave shrugged. He was quite tolerant with artists. His wife painted watercolors on silk and never spoke with him when she was in the midst, as she said, of "creating." A moment later the ceramic jug was at Estienne's elbow; a hot poker was plunged for an instant into the ruby liquid; a sizzle, a bubbled surface, and the wine was heated. Monsieur Delagrave went away. Clearly, Estienne Delahaye chose to be by himself.

It did not seem sensible (or, for that matter, quite intelligible) to Estienne that he should be having difficulty sleeping. For the past three nights, however, he had been unable to sleep It wasn't the bed; he had thought to blame the unyielding bedsprings and an insubstantial mattress, but they were at most the proximate causes of his discomfort. Indeed, he eliminated the bed from the inventory of his scrutinies, since the night had found him insomniac even without the effort of lying down to sleep. He suspected that it was perhaps his own trial of creation. Shortly before Estienne had left Paris to assume his teaching position at the academy of the Argentieres, he had received an important commission from a bank in Lyons. Its directors had admired his submission to the Salon d'Automne the previous year and having reviewed his credentials with old Aristide Maillol, to whom Estienne had referred the bank officials, they had commissioned him to develop a. bas-

relief in bronze to elaborate the entrance to their new offices. In due course, after weeks of sketching, Estienne prepared a series of drawings as well as an installation plan to assist the visually unsophisticated bank directors to apprehend immediately the weight and scale of the relief.

The imagery with which Estienne Delahaye worked seemed both intelligent and appropriate. It avoided the obvious vulgarity and commercialism of the neoclassical style then in vogue for the decoration of stock and bond certificates (recumbent ladies with cornucopias in hand from which tumbled coal or ingots of lead or iron), even though Estienne was well aware that the bearded gentlemen who conducted the affairs of the distinguished Banque de MidiFrance wanted their sculpture august but unmistakably traditional. He had conceived instead something joyfully irrepressible, having in mind Matisse's La Luxe. Installed in his bas-relief tableau, therefore, were three women and a fluting faun disporting about an underground well that burbled and streamed in their midst. The women, their breasts rippling beneath a filmy drapery, their heads clasped by ivy, their bodies turned in the cubist manner toward the faun who held his pipes in one hand, lowered to his furry thighs, and bore aloft in the other a cutting of grapes, which he extended toward the women, the graces of Lyons. The work, to be executed in bronze upon a panel four feet high by five feet long, was to be called (alluding to other connections in the history of the modem movement) "The Three Graces-The City of Lyons." Such a simple conceit, in which subject is less significant than execution, is the case, most generally, with the best of modern art. It was not Estienne's intention to narrate or describe; far from his intention was the impingement of literature upon the plastic arts. Indeed, as he conceived it, the art of his century-the twentieth century at the close of its fourth decade-could no longer narrate. The patient accretion of detail that had characterized the historical style of the nineteenth century had degenerated into conceits and stylizations. However, with Rodin and later his own Maillol, what had been recovered were the majesty of the materials and the perception that what a sculptor removed was every bit as important as what remained behind. In a word, Estienne Delahaye, who had assisted Maillol for three summers when he was working at Marly-le-Roi near Paris, knew that he himself was a romantic abstractionist, an

artist who adored touch and texture, the skin of bathing women glinting in the sun, but who adored as well the peeling away of those realistic details that made women too definitely and historically precise, too peasant or too aristocrat, too young or too old, too delicate or too voluptuous. Indeed, what he sought and had the ambition of achieving (no differently, one supposes, than all those great sculptors of human flesh in his time) was to elaborate the universal embedded in bone and tissue, the flicker of recognition that permits the creator for one moment, and the viewer forever, to acknowledge the translation of figure into idea and the latent shapes of bronze, marble, and wood into form.

When the commission bestowed by the Banque de Midi-France was confirmed, Estienne was celebrated by his Paris acquaintances, each of whom was subtly transformed by the bright dawn of his success from peer into admirer-a situation which pleased Estienne, who never dealt well or comfortably with peers. Estienne did think it prudent, however, to humble himself, if ever so slightly, to his master and sometime colleague, Aristide Maillol, to whom he wrote a brief, but respectful, letter of thanks for having applauded his credentials to the bank directors. As difficult as Estienne found peers over whom he had little or nothing to lord, how much more difficult did he find accomplished masters, masters like Maillol who could, in Estienne's view, afford to be generous, even to the point, it would appear, of tolerating the theft of a commission by a distinctly junior collaborator such as Estienne Delahaye. But this, too, this so-called theft, will be described in its time and can be judged if indeed it was, in anything but a technically moral sense, a theft. At the moment it didn't even cross Estienne's mind as he contemplated the misunderstandings of the bank directors, their refusal to allow him the license which they would have never dared to question had it been proposed by an eminence such as Maillol. Or, lacking Maillol's reputation, if only Estienne Delahaye had had the financial independence to stand his ground.

Unfortunately at his young age (he was only thirty-four), and despite the inauguration of his maturity as an artist and the acknowledgment of his gifts and achievements by astute critics and discerning collectors, Estienne Delahaye was still so poor that he was obliged to teach in a young ladies' finishing school two hundred fifty-one kilometers from Paris, cut off from the circle of his

friends who considered him a sculptor of great promise. He would have been content to eke out an existence on the occasional commissions that had begun to come his way, but his old father, who had been gassed during the First War, was failing in a nursing home and relied upon his only son to supply his needs. From time to time, he resented the obligation he had assumed, but having carried that broken body in his arms so many years, he remained profoundly moved by his father's condition and, however tempted, always refused to forsake him. There was nothing to do but teach from October until May, fleeing on holiday weekends for a respite among his friends in Montparnasse, but returning punctually from Paris on the last bus to resume his instruction of the young ladies of the Academic.

His particular gloom then, that dreary day in February, he ascribed to the arrival of two letters, one from the director of the building committee of the Lyons bank, objecting to the manner in which he had delineated the bodies of the three women of grace, contending rather that they "seemed most unnatural, hence uncomfortable, and for that reason not at all full of grace," while the other came from his close friend, no less poor than himself, but carefree and without constrictive responsibilities-a young painter as fluent as Vlaminck-who informed him that he was to be married after Easter. Neither of the letters should have disturbed him (since he could cope with the incomprehension of the bankers and was objectively quite pleased with the prospect of his friend's marriage), but both put him in a wretched mood. Indeed, whether from lack of sleep or the anxiety aroused by the letters, he had ruined a drawing of one of his students that morning, reworking her charcoal too energetically, leaving little more than a smudge when he finished his expostulations on her clumsy understanding of the connection between neck and torso. He had been unaccountably rude to a new student, the fifth to join his workshop in sculpture. He had snapped at this young woman-she was, he recalled, quite beautiful, although he gave himself little time to assimilate her presence-telling her to sit herself down and watch what the others were doing.

"What's your name?" he thought to ask her after his irritation with her unannounced appearance in the studio had passed. "Helene," she had answered.

"Helene what, child?" Estienne snapped with irritation, not looking up from the letter of his friend, which was on the table before him.

"Helene Miravilla."

"Not French?"

"No, Monsieur, although my father admires France." Estienne merely grunted, looking up briefly, observed the young lady with long black hair, tied in braids which circled her head, and dismissed the interruption from his mind. He returned to contemplate the marriage of his friend and the letter which he had to compose to the bankers, explaining the reconception of the human body undertaken since the cubist revolution.

At the cave Estienne drank off the mug of mulled wine and called out to the patron for paper and pencil. Thinking that he intended to sketch, Monsieur Delagrave hurried to bring the tablet and charcoal which he reserved for notations of deliveries.

"Not these, Monsieur Delagrave. I don't intend to draw. I wish to write."

"Are you a writer as well?" the other, retaining his illusions, demanded.

''Not at all, but even artists write letters from time to time."

"To be sure, to be sure," the latter replied, not without an edge of sarcasm.

Estienne Delahaye had no interest in opposing his own mood of depression to the blunt weapon of the proprietor's wit. He drank off the dregs, put a coin on the table, brushed back his long brown hair with thin, white fingers, and, settling his cap securely upon his head, departed Les Trois Fleches before the proprietor returned.

The following morning, after a more satisfactory night of rest, Estienne Delahaye seated himself in the studio classroom in the garden wing of the vast country house of the Academie Argentieres and awaited the four, now five, young women who attended his sculpture class. He drew idly, sketching a marble fountain which occupied the center of a small copse of fir and beech trees just outside the bay windows of the studio. Hearing a low knock upon the door, he called out "Enter," and continued to draw. When he looked up he recalled her immediately, with evident pleasure and surprise. "Mademoiselle Miravilla, yes?"

"Yes, Monsieur. Helene Miravilla."

"Won't you sit down?" He rose and, with untypical politeness, moved around the desk to draw up a chair, and gestured to the young woman to be seated. He felt exceptionally well that morning. The coffee had been strong. Obviously the old woman who cooked for the assembly had responded to his pleas for morning coffee that was not only hot but strong; and, more important, Estienne had slept well. His tall and lanky body, usually crimped and discomfited by the struggle for sleep, was free of aches and the crackings of his bones. He felt erect, strong, and, exactly speaking, young.

"And now, Mademoiselle, what can I do for you?"

"The truth is, Monsieur, that I have a particular interest in artmore so, I should imagine, than most of the young women here." She spoke with astonishing self-assurance for one so young, eighteen or nineteen he supposed; but her tone, which suggested no contempt for her fellow students, registered her own gravity and self-possession.

"And why is that?" Estienne asked, smiling, delighted by the amusing innocence and seriousness of the young woman's announcement.

"It's a long story but of no particular importance, I should think. My father wanted to be an artist when he was a young man, but it wasn't possible. He had to come to the assistance of his own father, who was a pharmacist on the Ramblas in Barcelona. All thoughts of pursuing painting as his first love came to an end. The remainder of his life

"Is he dead?" Estienne interrupted, wishing to register his acknowledgment of the palpable sadness of her story, although its analogies to his own were not exact and unfortunately his father owned no pharmacy.

"Oh, no," the young woman replied, smiling slightly. "I did make it sound like that, didn't I? No, not dead in fact, but there are many ways of dying, are there not? One sometimes dies long before the heart stops beating." Estienne nodded, surprised by the girl's intensity and understanding. "At all events, although he became quite wealthy from several herbal decoctions that he bottled and distributed throughout Spain, he longed to have a painter in the family. No sons, you see, only daughters-and I am the el-

dest of these. I have four younger sisters. There is no need for me to become a painter, but I should like to know art."

"I understand. You wish to please your father, to give him the satisfaction of knowing that his youthful enthusiasm is sharedpassed on, as it were, from his generation to yours."

"You do understand, Monsieur. You do understand." Helene Miravilla looked up from her long and graceful fingers, upon which her eyes had been modestly fixed, and thanked him with a look.

Estienne Delahaye observed the loveliness of the young woman seated before him. When occupied with her petition, she had sat, her head lowered, speaking through half-closed eyes, with shyness, he thought; but having come to agreement-although it had not yet been formulated properly-she had relaxed her formal posture, lifted her head, and smiled, her even white teeth radiant in the morning sunlight, as though an offering fire had been set in the grotto of her face, a pale white ever so lightly mixed with burnt umber, giving her complexion the richness of milk flavored with pastis. Her head was aureoled with long black hair braided and fastened into a bun. She was wearing a silk dress patterned with red roses against a black field and fringed with a white tulle collar that guarded her modestly, hanging down as it did a good three inches to disguise the suggestion of what Estienne guessed must be her utterly white breasts.

"So it is agreed. You will enter my class in sculpture. Besides that, we shall arrange a tutorial for you and review the history of art together." Estienne half rose from his desk and extended his hand toward the young woman to confirm their contract. She stood up as if to accept his gesture, but unaccountably turned away from him and left the room.

2

It was approaching Easter in Vezelay. The last snow had melted and only the winds of the valley in which that little hill city was

situated continued to blow contentiously, reminding the spring planters that the season had not yet changed. The young ladies of the boarding school of the sisters Argentieres were already preparing for their recess-arranging their luggage, which had been returned from the manor house basement to their rooms preparatory to their departure the following Thursday. The term was nearly over. During the previous year, the first that Estienne Delahaye had passed in this position, he had looked forward eagerly to the departure; he had written letters to his Parisian friends alerting them to the day when he would be back among them, arranged several rendezvous at La Coupole, and seen to the packing of the small plasters he was taking to the foundry where his work was cast. Unfortunately he had accomplished little during the term and had to make do with a sketchbook full of half-finished notations and croquis. He knew perfectly well that his well-disciplined and rigorous schedule had been disarranged. Before the arrival of Helene Miravilla at the Academic, he had had little provocation to distract himself from his work. Women-much less the attractions of a young woman, a Capricorn just beyond her nineteenth birthdaywere not on his agenda. Occasionally he fell into bed with one or another member of his group, for there were always girls who took particular pleasure in offering themselves to what they called vaguely "creative people"-thinking not that the gift, like gold dust, would make their skin radiant, but rather, like hierophants, imagining that carnality was more efficiently spiritualized and indeed justified if consummated with some young artist. That was the extent of it. Estienne Delahaye, undeniably handsome, was cooperative from time to time, but in general regarded such hangerson as dissolute and wasteful. He had no time to fall in love. It was much more urgent, he thought, "to get on with it"-a phrase he used to encompass everything from earning his keep to making his art. His best friend, a strikingly ugly and sexually insatiable young poet from the Dordogne, Alain Malburet, always found such phrases laughable. He chided Estienne for his aloof and (to Alain's lights) cold and businesslike conduct of his life; but Estienne dismissed such criticism, always reminding Alain that he could afford the luxury of his libertinism, since his father paid him an annual stipend to stay away from the ancestral village of Brantome. (Alain's father, a wealthy provincial lawyer, settled on this

course after the third young woman of the region had brought suit for alienated affections against his son and on one occasion even produced evidence of her pregnancy-happily miscarried-to confirm her claim.)

"I have the advantage neither of your looks nor of your father's self-righteousness," Estienne would reply cruelly when Alain would try to involve him in one of his weekend escapades. It didn't bother Alain Malburet. His ugliness was splendid (overly full lips, puffy cheeks of a purplish cast, and vast soupy brown eyes) and he knew it, but he also knew that writing poems-the kind of poems for which he had already a considerable reputation-was not in the least compromised by the adventurous and amatory exuberance with which he pursued his life amidst the underworld of Paris, the Gypsies, the ex-convicts, the pimps, the bars and boites where any evening he could be found with his marc and a prostitute. It was all quite incomprehensible to Estienne Delahaye. "Who does he think he is?" he would mumble to himself when he parted from Alain at La Coupole at midnight and returned to his room to sketch before he went to sleep. But he knew the answer and phrased it to himself as he examined his face in the cracked mirror that hung above his bathroom sink. "He's an ugly poet," Estienne would reply to his own good looks. "He needs everything he can arrange," he would add meanly, but in fact he admired the energy and conviction with which his friend pursued his life, disappearing for months on end and returning with fabulous stories of a walking tour he had taken in the Dades mountains of southern Morocco, or meeting a millionaire diamond merchant from Carpathia whom he had served as bodyguard for three months in Persia. There was energy in Alain Malburet, Estienne conceded---electric energy, automobile energy, fast ships and airplane energy-and his poems proved it. Most recently, Alain had published a book of poems, arranged on the pages in the shape of jewels he had handled for his Carpathian merchant: poems in the form of tiaras, pendants, bracelets, single strands, and even a poem admired by Blaise Cendrars, called "Solitaire." He had written the suite of twenty poems in a month, and one of the best avant-garde publishers, Simon Kra, himself an old circus man like Cendrars, had brought it out. Alain had given Estienne one of the copies on Lafuma, not from the very top of the edition-which had annoyed him, since Estienne

regarded him as his closest friend. Estienne, however, could not help admiring the volume. The jewels were precious, but not the poems. They were not, as might be thought, little evocations of ice or descants to the color of the gems, but rather fabrications of memories, immensely sensuous and concrete, of his days in the Middle East, its aromas and textures, its architecture and its sunsets, its hieratic styles and titivations, all linked by a consciousness explicitly European, explicitly humane, and explicitly vagabond and independent.

The critical difference, if one may describe it precisely, between Estienne Delahaye and his closest friend, Alain Malburet, did not lie in the discrimination of their circumstance, or in the difference in their looks, or in the habits of their sexuality, but rather in their view of the purpose of their art. Estienne Delahaye wished to be successful, whereas Alain Malburet was as indifferent to success as a tree is to its shadow.

3

Estienne Delahaye was unaware that he had fallen in love with Helene Miravilla. One would have thought, given the calculation and care with which he pursued his career, that he would have devoted at least the same degree of reflection to the mounting blood pressure and perspiring palms which attended each appearance of his young Spanish student. Not at all. Indeed, a man with the temperament of Estienne Delahaye would not have been aware that the presence of the young Spanish student encouraged his hunched shoulders to relax, propelled his features into bashful smiles and stolen glances. If observed and brought to his attention, such involuntary gestures he accounted as accidental, nothing more than a response to fortune.

The word "fortune," it seems, occupied an exceptionally prominent position in the glossary of Estienne's interpretation of the world. Despite work, study, endless hours copying the classical

statuary of the Louvre and days spent before Rodin's Burghers of Calais, Estienne still regarded his achievement, his modest bursaries, his first commission (the curious circumstance to which we have already alluded but reserved for later exposition), his invitation to teach at the Academie Argentieres as the workings of fortune-that mottled notion which enfolds coincidence, destiny and fate, chance and causality. Estienne would, as likely as not misusing the word coincidence, describe an unfortunate event-a drowning, an automobile accident, the collapse of a building-as coincidence, when, in fact, the episode exhibited none of coincidence's characteristic marks: the conjunction of two independent orders of causality, their intersection at a specific instant which, bursting with fullness and meaning, overflows into the unforeseen. For Estienne coincidence was redolent with the heavy incense of the occult, as if the orders and unfoldings of nature entailed conjunctions and synchronizations which were planned in the caverns of hell or the secret cabals of magicians and alchemists.

For Estienne as a boy, it was not enough to study hard, to help his mother in the tobacco shop that the family owned in a working class district on the outskirts of Paris, to help his father up and down the stairs of the ancient building in which they had their rooms; these steady and onerous obligations he supplemented with musings about his destiny and the operation of the stars, with reflections on the tarot whose reading he learned from the son of a Rumanian emigrant who lived beneath his family, with dabblings of palmistry which he thought foolish (preoccupied as is the reading of the hand with fixities of line that he thought more fatal than free), and lastly with the uses of numerology, which he found particularly attractive as the numbers lay at the base of all the other devices of scanning the world-the times and degrees of the horoscope, the ranking and station of the tarot's arcana; indeed all the intellectual disciplines of reading fortune turned upon the intelligence and the significance of numbers. Numbers he played with, determining that one day was preferable to another, afternoons preferable to mornings, certain times more suitable than others for special engagements and rendezvous; and among these the numbers one and five were for some reason of particular attractiveness. All this parsing of his world enabled Estienne to transcribe into mystery what was in fact enacted according to the rigors imposed by

inadequate diet, the absence of luxury, the obligations of a working mother and a wounded father. The stars, the arcana, the numbers were permutations of release, as though Estienne-having the right word, employing it appropriately, speaking it correctly-would be able to pull the dropcloth from his world and reveal things of gold and crystal and bright color beneath. As it was, try as he would, the dropcloth remained secure; the world beneath remained covered; and, however diligently he tried to plan the escapades and adventures of his adolescence for Mondays and Fridays, for one o'clocks and fives, for January and May, for every option of the solitary one and every five-fingered grasp of the hand, his world remained pretty much unchanged.

After several years of this attention, Estienne Delahaye appeared to give it up; by the age of seventeen he determined that it hardly mattered, that what would come to pass would come to pass notwithstanding, that only talent and work would save his life, that there would be no elf, no sprite, no magic lantern, no secret word, but that everything would come to pass as it was intended it should. Estienne concluded with a sigh that his name was not mentioned in the councils of heaven, that if indeed unseen powers and invisible orders planned out the venue of each day, separating the living from the dead, affixing the numbers to be called by the black angel and the numbers to be drawn by the national lottery, he was too young and too unimportant to be bothered with. When Estienne determined, therefore, to become a sculptor, to leave his father in a home after his mother's death (in Estienne's twentieth year), to give up his job in a foundry where he had learned the methods and techniques of casting-it appeared he had abandoned his pursuit of the world's mystery, packing away his books and manuals, forgetting the tarot, ignoring his numbers, and deciding that in their place there was, at the most, fortune and coincidence, for which we can read luck.

His meeting with Aristide Maillol in an empty room of the Louvre, where the old master had come to see a small sculpture of Venus, was therefore luck. The fact that Estienne had the courage to address the master and reveal his knowledge of ancient sculpture some would call arrogance, but Estienne thought it good fortune, since normally he would have been tongue-tied, and that the old man was returning that afternoon to his village outside Paris,

Marly-le-Roi, where Estienne had a friend whom he had promised to visit, and that Estienne had seized the opportunity to accompany Maillol on the train ride-that he would call coincidence. It was more complex undoubtedly. Like a man, blind from birth, who imagines that the fingers create the face they feel, Estienne had devised a schema for the world: it discerned what conformed to its touch. When, however, the workings of the world, like the chiaroscuro of the face-a matter of light and dark, unrecognized by the blindman's nimble fingers-exceed the premises of the schema, the the interpretation frays and thins. It is at such times that blindmen become frightened and that believers in the tarot, in horoscopes, in numbers, and coincidence become the prisoners of fearful obsession.

At the beginning of his instruction of Helene Miravilla, Estienne was warm and impassioned, feeling the need to transmit to her in a few months the excitement he had won over the years from the researches of the impressionists, the [auves, and the cubists. She would sit beside him in the classroom, and while he talked of La Grande latte or the various estates of Cezanne's Bathers or Matisse's La Danse, his arm would rest upon the back of her chair, his left hand pointing to the color reproductions which he had set upon an easel. Occasionally, when the need to underscore occurred in his conversation, he would employ-almost unconsciously, one thinks-the arm which lay behind her to press emphases upon her graceful shoulder. These gestures, a small tap, a minuscule poke, an indenting depression of his index finger, were at best aids to teaching; only once, when he wished to suggest the sweeping folds of rose silk which swathed a Bonnard woman dressed for promenade, did he move his fingers slowly over her back, suggesting the rippling smoothness and breathing hug of the fabric upon the body of its subject. He was unaware, it seems, that

by the end of March, after the first five weeks of their tutorial had passed, that Helene's chair, earlier positioned more than a foot from his own, had moved closer by inches with each session, until only the smallest bit of sunlight, the shape of a lozenge of glazed lemon, could be seen between their bodies.

Helene, for her part, although she could not be described as having come to love her art instructor, found him immensely reassuring. She had been ejected, she felt strongly, from a home in which the presence of five daughters allowed no one of them to enjoy the concentrated attention of their father. Rather than competing with his business, his club, his social ambitions for the time and affection which a single daughter would regard as her first dowry, to compete with four others-even from the privileged heights of the firstborn -was inevitably unsatisfactory. Even though their father, big and blustery as he was, dispensed love with the same enthusiasm with which he distributed medicaments and the all-purpose remedy of his decoction, from the viewpoint of the sisters what each received was at the most a single bite from an undifferentiated loaf. Their father had no interest in personalizing his love. After the death of his wife in a street accident shortly after the birth of the youngest girl, he had virtually separated himself from the love of women, regarding himself as bounteously supplied with feminine charms and coquetry by the presence of his daughters, whose names he had formed into an anagram so that he might call to them all in a single word when he returned to his comfortable apartment each evening. And, indeed, when he returned from the pharmacy approximately at the hour of eight, word had already passed from the youngest, who was watching the street for his arrival, to the eldest, Helene, who by custom assisted him to remove his overcoat or offer him his dressing robe, while the others awaited him with his newspaper, his mail, his glass of sherry, each receiving for her smiles and ministrations an affectionate kiss, a pinch of the cheek, an inquiry about school or a comment upon the weather. "Papa," as they all called him, would disappear into the study, and only reappear when supper was convoked an hour later and the same ritual, slightly modified, would resume. The passing of dishes, the saving of the finest cuts and unbruised plums for him, their father, the weighing of words and the transmission of bits and pieces of information, often in French, which he had obliged them to learn, each serving to

aggrandize the offerer in his eyes, left the children by the time of their arrival into adolescence and beyond, to the age of nineteento which point Helene Miravilla had come on the fifth of January, a month prior to her arrival in Vezelay-tense and unsettled. The girls had little preparation to estimate, much less to cope with, the formidable passion which lay coiled within them. Each of them, in her own way, despised other women; each, in her own way, thought that only Papa would love and protect them. Papa, on the contrary, thought ultimately only about Papa, his pharmacy, the distribution of his patent remedies which, interrupted by the civil war, could now be energetically resumed as its conclusion neared. Although he had remained nonpolitical, nodding warmly to Republicans, Anarchists, Communists in the days when Catalonia was securely Republican, he was prepared to serve the Falangist conquerors with equal solicitude. It was the medicine and its dubious therapy which inspired him-"the luck of the decoction," he called it and, for the sake of its dominion, he served. He confessed once to the foreman of the small bottling plant which he maintained in a building behind the Ramblas that he had once dreamed of the greenish-purple syrup covering the globe.

Papa Miravilla determined in the winter of 1938, when his oldest daughter had turned eighteen, that he would conclude her education in an appropriate finishing school in France; he thought it important that he supplement her provincial education with the expanded horizons of French culture. Indeed, it was his ambition that each daughter in tum be sent abroad to complete her education, to decorate the substance of Catalan and Spanish culture with the graces of the French language, the manners of the wellborn, and the conversational aptitudes of the cultivated. He had, after all, to consider his daughters' fitness for marriage, and a finishing school in France would be like so many swirls and curlicues applied by gifted masons to the plain exterior of solid architecture. He could not have known that his proposal, descending as it did most immediately upon his eldest born, would be received less with gratitude than with ferocity. Helene deeply resented his decision, wanting neither to go abroad nor to receive the advantages of France. She was quite content to contest her preeminence with her sisters from the pinnacle of maturity and beauty, but doubted she could maintain her dominion nearly two thousand kilometers from home. She

anticipated displacement and loss, but, unable to mitigate her father's decision, she was obliged to accept it, wrapping herself in the coat of misery which she drew more tightly about herself as her sisters in tum, delighted by the prospect of her departure and the redistribution of position and the pelf of affection, became increasingly cheerful and solicitous of Helene's well-being as the date of her departure approached. It passed smoothly, they thought. Papa Miravilla, attended by his four remaining daughters, arranged for her departure on the night train, which would bear her first to Paris and then, by another route, to Vezelay.

Having entered in midyear and late even for the term, Helene Miravilla was installed in a small and isolated room at the Academie Argentieres=-e room smaller than most, since she was not obliged to share it with another girl, and situated at the front of the house, away from the noise of the athletic fields and the gossiping chatter of her schoolmates, whose rooms were located on the two floors below. The only other residents of her floor were employees of the Academie: the housekeeper, a slightly deaf and addled old woman who, when she was not about her duties, was locked in her room telling her rosary; the invalid aunt of the Argentieres, who it was rumored had guaranteed the loan which enabled them to acquire the property and establish the school a decade earlier; and a young sculptor, up from Paris, a bachelor without ties in the region, who taught the young ladies drawing, sculpture, and the history of art.

Have you understood the mystery of the human back?

The face-to-face encounter is hardly mysterious, even if unaccompanied by speech. Face to face, the imagination conjures from such a wealth of detail: the setting of eyes, the folding and tension of skin, the elaboration of lips and color-yes, color, ruddy or pale, drawn with the beige lines of thought or hued with the reflected color of hair, abundant or spare, deep cast or lightly blended. There is little mystery in the face, for even if the imagination construes in lies, reality-forcing the ultimate correction of its opinion, to meet and confront, and finally to divest plastic silence with speech-deprives the imagination of its erotic trajectory, its commitment to hope, wholly unsupported by conviction and trust. To come, then, upon a mysterious back; to watch it rise up a stairwell, dimly lit by cut-glass fixtures which sheltered light with-

out shedding it; to follow behind, each step more guarded lest a footfall be overheard and, head turned, the mysterious back be instantaneously dissolved by face and expression; to have the sense of following behind, to become implicated in the significance of a back by being its follower, as the number five follows the number four, without being necessarily connected or modified by the simple sequence, and yet gradually, as the ascent from the entrance foyer from which the grand escalier commenced, having said good-night to Mademoiselle Floride and nodded to the few other strangers who remained, Helene on the evening of her arrival at the Academie put her foot to the lowest step and felt a body pass her in a bound as the front door slammed shut, a figure leaped past, calling out its "Bon soir" and taking the stairs in a burst of energy, slowing to a simple ascent four steps before her, moving upward past the first floor of rooms-becoming accustomed to the substantial back at first and as the slow movement upward continued. Becoming aware of trim waist and firm buttocks (since the back was constrained by a brown leather jacket cinched above the hips), agitated and moving as each leg rose and descended, and the shoulders, not too broad but curved toward the connection of arms which hung loose, dropping to his sides, the thumb of each hand hooked lightly into side pockets, and at the last, reaching the third floor, bounding the final steps, disappearing down the hall, a door opening, a door shutting, and silence and darkness once more, one could not but be persuaded that the back of a young man might prove to be a mystery.

Helene fell behind on the last ascent, suddenly aware of the region into which her imagination was bearing her, suddenly uncomfortable. She realized as she entered her room and removed her dress that in the next that trim and muscled back was now lying lengthwise on the bed or perhaps poised erectly before the window facing away from the copse of trees before the residence and that some minutes later it would be uncovered and bared. At that moment Helene felt herself dreadfully homesick. She wanted to be anywhere at that moment but here, in a room adjoining one in which could be found a naked and mysterious back.

Helene Miravilla had decided that she wanted to study art somewhere between Lyons and Paris. She was thumbing through maga-

zines, bored by her traveling companions, when she came across a photograph of beautiful women and handsome men arranged about a marble sculpture of an immense and almost mythically gigantic bird. The photograph, it seemed, was advertising an aperitif, but no matter; for neither the beautiful women nor the handsome men appealed to Helene as deeply as the majestic marble bird. Why not, she thought? Art courses, like sewing and cooking, were always favored by women and she was quite able to handle a fifth course beyond the requirements. It was not her intention, however, to elaborate the origins of her interest in art when she entered Monsieur Delahaye's classroom; but she first observed him bent over a student's sketching pad, his powerful shoulders drawn together, his tapered fingers holding a stick of charcoal which he moved rapidly over the drawing. He was wearing a brown leather jacket which clasped his slender waist-alluding to, without demonstrating, the contour of his hips and thighs. When he finally noticed her, he had returned to his desk and seated himself; she, for her part, knocked lightly on the door which she continued to hold open until he had given her permission to enter. The rest-the frustrated artistic career of her father, his need to support his family and forgo his ambition as a painter-all that came to her mind without embarrassment, a natural consequence of her wish to ingratiate herself, to be warmly received and specially regarded. There was no reason to question the authenticity of her confession; it was of that species of deception so intimately bound to the unconscious propensity for the fantastic and for self-enlarging found in all human beings as to be absolutely convincing. The young instructor seemed moved by her evocation of her father's frustrated passion and touched by the tender and nervously delivered confession. Moreover, her accurate description of her father's successful pharmacy and its notorious decoction returned him to sources of envy which he hardly recognized at the time.

Neither Estienne Delahaye nor Helene Miravilla was aware of what had been set in motion. For Estienne it required a brief visit to Paris the weekend before the Easter recess for his ugly friend to confront him with the truth of his own emotion. Malburet, listening to Estienne's description of his four students, nodded distractedly as Estienne rehearsed their cloddy sensibilities with con-

tempt, treating his work of instruction as no more than a custodial preservation and enhancement of trivial skills, art instruction being no different, in his view, than teaching the young ladies graceful handwriting or the placement of the pinky finger in tea pouring. It was only when Estienne came to speak of the arrival of his fifth and final student and began not with her name and background or the wealth or aristocracy of her parents, that Alain Malburet left off twirling his cigarette holder and listened, his lips parted in a frozen and perhaps ironic smile. Estienne did not mention her intelligence or her gifts until he had finished with her braided black hair and burnished complexion. The girl, still nameless in his telling, he called at first the "girl of the raven hair," or the "Spanish beauty," one cliche of admiration following upon the other, until in his description it became quite irrelevant whether she was a capable and ambitious student or yet another parvenu putting on culture like nail polish.

"Clearly, old friend, you are mad for her."

Estienne stopped. "Only you would say something like that," he snapped with irritation.

"But it's clear, Estienne, for heaven's sake. Don't be an ass. Have that beauty, by all means. Have her before you lose her."

In the past, Estienne Delahaye would have dismissed his friend's effusions as yet another example of his provincial vulgarity or, worse still, his libertinage, but now Estienne, for some reason, fell silent. After some minutes, he stood up from the table (they were at that moment finishing a bottle of wine in a cafe on the Rue de Rennes), flung down some change, and left without a word, but his expression (quite unlike the haughty dismissals to which Alain had become accustomed) was one of confusion-his face highly drawn, his green eyes squinting as though to see a microscopic point that had, until that moment, eluded him. He cut short his stay in Paris, returning to Vezelay on the Saturday night bus, which arrived at five in the morning. He let himself into the country house and wearily climbed the stairs to his floor. As he passed the room he had come to learn was occupied by Helene Miravilla, he heard a cough, light and insignificant, and several soundswords he thought she had spoken in her dreams-and decided to enter if it was unlocked, or knock upon the door, high up beside the porcelain tablet of the number five which marked it, hoping to

rouse her to admit him, drugged from sleep but still awakened to his desire. He did none of these; he went to his own room, fell clothed upon his bed, and slept deeply until Sunday noon.

Mademoiselle Floride commented upon the unusual presence of Monsieur Delahaye at Sunday lunch, observing with not a little tartness that the girls might consider themselves fortunate that their handsome instructor had seen fit to pass a portion of his weekend in their company at Vezelay. Estienne, not to be humiliated by such witless asperity, immediately proposed that he would lead a group to the Basilica of Sainte Madeleine that afternoon at four and interpret to them the splendor of its achievement. And so, precisely at four, three young women of the three score who attended the Academie were awaiting him in the foyer as he descended the stairwell from his room. Helene Miravilla, a long yellow silk scarf wound about her throat and trailing behind her black loden coat, whose infinity of buttons were fastened up to her neck; Mademoiselle Simone, a smart girl whose acceptably docile features were flawed by a birth mole from which a strand of ugly black hair had been allowed to grow; and another young lady, the youngest of the three, whose acquaintance Professor Delahaye had not made (since, as a first-year student, she was not permitted to enjoy the luxuries of art), introduced herself as Jeannette, whispering her first name with breathless confusion.

How was it possible for this last child, so new to the Academic, to have conceived an attraction for Professor Delahaye? The question struck Helene with amazement. She had no doubt, however, as they walked down the road which wound from the high point of the countryside toward Vezelay, that this young Jeannette-her eyes darting surreptitiously to appraise the face of Estienne while he spoke in generalities about the rise of Romanesque architecture and the monastic ideals of the Benedictine monks who founded the basilica-was in fact enraptured of this man whom Helene, for her part, had already begun to call, beneath her breath, "mon Estienne." It annoyed her that this Jeannette could imagine Estienne Delahaye would bother with someone so young and immature, a first-termer whose teeth were crooked and whose hair hung snarled and untrimmed like a penance. Only when they reached the courtyard of the basilica and Estienne had pointed up to the twin towers

and begun to describe the history of its construction, surmounting the secular community which clustered about its foundations, did Helene emit a gasp of recognition, at which she was given a cross look by Estienne, whose commentary she had interrupted. Helene blushed and apologized, but her dismay was too intense, and she bolted the little group, fleeing down the road which they had taken. Not until she had left the city ramparts behind her and retraced her way along the highway that led back toward the school did she disappear into the high grass and throw herself dramatically to the ground. Weeping with rage, she acknowledged what she had been unable to face before: she was jealous of that immature child and must therefore-in the logic of her native Catalonia -be in love.

It was the day before Easter recess. The girls were counting the hours before their departure, arranging their dresses, ironing organdies and taffetas for the Lenten gatherings they anticipated in Lyons, Geneva, and Paris, from which they principally came. Only Helene Miravilla was obliged to pass the holidays in Vezelay. A long letter from Papa, arrived the week before, informed her of reversals in the family fortunes stemming from restrictions placed upon the distribution of his syrupy decoction: it was contended that the little amber bottles, containing more than 30 percent alcohol along with sassafras root, nutmeg, several other favored occult essences, and water, were more an aperitif than a medication and hence were required to be sold as an alcoholic potable, with consequently higher tax and diminished profit. Of course, this entire procedure was nothing more than interested officialdom's way of extracting from Papa a fearful soborno which he was quite willing to pay, although he rightly suspected that it would become annual, and with such an expense added to the cost of fabricating his beverage, he instituted immediately the appropriate measures of economy. It was decided that Helene could survive the two weeks of Easter recess at Vezelay; the Argentieres sisters offered to keep watch over her; and in fact Helene, quite reconciled to the time of solitude, prepared herself by entering that familiar cavern of the Spanish personality, the dressing up to misery. From her trunk she took out a ball gown of peach silk which descended below her knees, but cut ragged-daringly cut, one would think, for it had

belonged to her mother, dead since the late twenties, a vivacious woman who adored dancing at La Paloma, an old-fashioned hall as large as an arena, in which she and Papa had tangoed throughout the only decade of their marriage.

It was for the candlelight dinner which preceded the spring recess that Helene put on the ball gown of her mother, and drew upon her legs gray stockings flecked with iridescent white threads, and stamped her feet into the small but passionate dancing pumps which she knew her mother had favored for contests at La Paloma. She demanded of herself that evening, beginning her descent into a satisfying gloom, that she remind everyone that she was Spanish and beautiful. She put powder on her face, so that the whiteness almost glared at her in the yellow light; and into her braided hair, to which she had added a chignon, she inserted a black tortoiseshell comb over which she formally draped a splendidly worked mantilla of gray lace.

The dinner was called for eight o'clock; a better grade of wine was to be served and champagne poured with the lemon sorbet. It was a tradition, so to speak, although the school was only ten years old and traditions were still decreed rather than transmitted. The faculty members, the several women who assisted the Argentieres, their husbands if they were married, and Estienne Delahaye were seated at the head table, which for the occasion was set with tablecloths and made festive with boughs of dogwood and lilies. The other tables, lit by candles, lacked only tablecloths, although their floral arrangements offset the grim stolidity of Burgundian oak from which the tables were hewn. Everyone was seated; the clock in the hallway had struck; indeed, the familiar benediction was about to be delivered by the curate invited for the occasion-when the double glass doors, already closed against intruders, were opened, and Helene Miravilla entered. She had not wished to create a commotion; a commotion was not at all her explicit intention. She had designed herself for herself, noting at most one other for whom she dared to dress. It was not from the wish to shock that she had dressed herself for the Lenten dinner but, as we have said, to celebrate her entrance into the lonely world where she would be obliged to amuse herself by herself.

The curate had already risen to his feet and was about to rap his crystal goblet with a teaspoon to silence the chattering assem-

bly when Helene made her entrance. She found her seat and stood behind it as the other girls rose, anticipating the grace, and while the priest struck his glass and beseeched heaven, the Argentieres sisters opened their eyes wide in consternation. It appears that only Estienne Delahaye turned away from the inspection of Helene Miravilla, the erratic flicker of candlelight concealing the pleasure which flushed his cheeks.

Helene Miravilla was unaware of the assembly; she knew without a doubt that she was very beautiful that evening, very beautiful indeed, and it would not have mattered to her if she had dined alone, she was so secure in the knowledge that she had pleased herself in her dress-up for the occasion-pleased the memory of her mother, pleased her father in her loneliness, and pleased the imagination of a lover who remained, up to that moment, hidden around a bend in time. The dinner became curiously subdued, the assembly almost solemn. It was true, as Estienne told her later, that her presence imposed a new solemnity upon the gathering, making all the girls painfully aware that none was as beautiful as Helene Miravilla-the new girl who lived above them, removed and separate in a private room. It goes without saying that on that evening Helene Miravilla, dazzling though she was, acquired many enemies, young women who would have been quite willing, given the opportunity, to tear her apart or at the least to compromise her name and reputation. Already they whispered that her dress was a scandal, her mantilla an affectation and so "typically" Spanish, her stockings and shoes brazen, her pallor anemic, her high look of serene indifference provocative and pretentious. But the fact remained, a simple truth, that she was exceedingly beautiful and that if her appearance was daring, even a bit outrageous, it became her. She had passed over the fragile line of unawareness, shattered by deliberation and decision. Helene Miravilla had determined to assert, indeed to celebrate, that what she had endured silently until then-that is, her father's embarrassing exclamations about her beauty-was now a fact, one which she was prepared to detail and exaggerate at will. Throughout the dinner she refused to flinch, her head high, her black eyes, warm and affectionate, moved from face to face, discerning envy and appreciation mixed with wonder. She scarcely spoke; she was hardly addressed. Only once, toward the end of the festive dinner to which shrill voices and gay laughter

had returned, did she turn away from her dinner partner-with whom she had been exchanging perfunctory comments, wishing her a pleasant dinner dance and exclaiming politely upon her good fortune to be seeing opera and ballet on successive holiday nights -and caught Estienne Delahaye eyeing her; his words were addressed to Mademoiselle Floride, but his glance passed over her head to the first table, where for the longest time all he could see was the gentle curve of a peach shoulder, a shoulder graceful and inclined, a thin line of strap visible beneath the silk, a thin line of strap holding with tenderness another beauty he could only imagine.

The first morning of the Easter recess was incredibly busy. Every floor, excepting the third, resounded with shouts, for the train from Vezelay to Paris departed at noon and the young girls, packed since dawn, dressed in their city clothes, with hats and suede gloves, in stockings and walking shoes, their suitcases assembled in the downstairs hall, were tense with excitement. Breakfast had been leisurely and casual: the special jams, the croissants warmed and abundant, the aroma of chicory and tea; cheerful faces, light glaze of rose lipstick, young girls moving from table to table, shifting places, ignoring their familiar assignments, promising to write, remarking on grades, noting addresses and telephone numbers, bliss of adolescence, unaware that the earth was already shaking, that the foundations of their secure world were trembling, that it was the last feastof resurrection that would be celebrated in peace. And the girls did not notice that neither the master, Estienne Delahaye, nor the beautiful Spanish girl, Helene Miravilla, had made an appearance.

The third floor was still silent. It was as it might have been on any morning, musty and dim; the windows at the end of the hall remained unopened, for Estienne had not bathed at the end of the corridor, throwing open the double window to the courtyard below, touching briefly the breezes that blew down from the hills before shutting the door to the bathroom and turning on the hot water, an activity which had always dominated the ritual of his levee. Estienne had not appeared; nor, for that matter, had Helene. Indeed, consummations of the mind, they had slept beside each other through the night, fully clothed, dreamily embracing cloth-

ing, pants and stockings entwined, flannel and silk, gray bestriding peach, black tie descending like a hand, gently caressing the treasure of a breast that the true hand had merely described in the sculptor's manner with a cupping of flesh and a weary sigh that signified willingness to remain outside long after the imagination had entered the very grain and density of the material it sought to model.

It had almost, but not quite or not just yet, still around the bend in time, come to pass early in the morning of that day of recess, a number of hours after the dinner had concluded and the lights had been dimmed in the drawing room where the girls had taken their coffee and a special fruit liqueur, after several hours in which Helene Miravilla, fully dressed upon her bed, concentrating a kiss upon the wall which separated her room from his, while he, Estienne Delahaye, one shoe unlaced, caressed her face through the distance of a dozen feet of empty space and wall. The only difference, perhaps, was that through it all Estienne Delahaye smoked, addressing a languorous kiss, puffing his cigarette, touching his body, kissing the emptiness again, and tamping the cigarette into a tin ashtray which lay beside him on the bed.

It was three in the morning, deadly silent, moon-silver streaking the room, when Estienne got up from his bed and opened the door. It creaked-an almost desperately slow and attenuated sound that struck his ears like a boom, so loud to his fright that he almost slammed the door in alarm; but hearing nothing, no echoing sound, the silence continuing, he pushed it further, edging out his body, folding his slenderness around the door and withdrawing himself from his room into the corridor, carefully holding the doorknob, replacing the door in the jamb, releasing the knob by slowly turning, turning until it clicked into the lock. He breathed deeply and passed a sleeved arm over his damp forehead. At last, although in reality but four feet away, he stood before the door of Helene Miravilla. He put his ear to the door, hoping to hear her wakefulness, but she, on the other side, thinking she heard a sound, a muffled thickness in the air as though suddenly a body massed before her door had stifled the free passage of breeze from the floors below, cramping the air, constricting space into a form, and fearing to provoke what she conjured, bit her palm, holding back the cry

which wanted to escape from her lips. She heard him knock. Could it have been a wind, the scurry of a mouse at her door, a bat's wing brushing the panel, a sound he prevented from reaching the corridor by muffling it with his cupped hand, obliging whatever noise his single rap produced to be focused inward; it struck her ear like the breaking of an immense wave, so many hours had she hoped that it would come to pass. For her part, she got up from the bed, moved before the mirror of her armoire, which caught the silvered face, white powder glistening with moonlight, and went on stockinged feet to the door, pressing her lips against the knuckle and whispering the name she had fantasied a thousand times, now to speak aloud and to be heard.

"Estienne. C'est toi?" The tall figure stepped into her room, closed the door carelessly, although no sound could be heard, so deep was the silence of the night, and then drew the white face toward his own until face upon face passed into each other and the moon disappeared into a bank of clouds.

5

It depends more upon your willingness to construe the world according to its manipulators or its victims (and the admiration or sympathy which you might feel for the one or the other) whether you regard Helene or Estienne as the seducer. There is no clear opinion on the matter. Many who discussed it later (for it became a matter of discussion in the years after the war, when Estienne Delahaye began his precipitous rise to eminence and wealth and his wife Helene made public a succession of handsome and unqualified secretaries) found for one or the other. At the very least, there was no unanimity. It depended. qa depends. The fact remained that by the end of the spring recess-that is, by April 20, when the girls returned from their Easter holidays, Helene was already married; and Estienne, aware of the dangers, for it was 197

neither his inclination nor his style to philander like his friend Alain, had begun to fantasize the comforts and ease which would enter his life if it was cushioned by the doting Spanish bourgeois who enjoyed wealth from medicines and decoctions.

Estienne found his good fortune delicious. It smiled upon him, this fortune of events. The beautiful Spanish girl would remain behind at Eastertime and he, already her lover (although the act of love had not been consummated in more than word and expectation), would cancel his plans in Paris and play her guardian. No one would suspect; the coincidences would be immense, the excuses dangerous, but there seemed no reason to imagine that they would be exposed. He wished for the affair; it seemed a splendor. The black-haired student of room number five, which adjoined his own, would become his mistress; and by year's end, knowing her well, perhaps obliging her with a child, he would compel her to accept his plea for marriage, his wish to do right by her, and reject her willingness to be noble and leave his career unimpeded; they would marry and her rich father would be morally constrained to support them through the early years until his turn of success arrived. Indeed, the new Estienne seemed quite able to model fortune to his needs.

The lovers spent their holiday idyll wandering the countryside near Vezelay, visiting historical sites, eating in local inns, and fixing picnic panniers which they enjoyed at the side of the road. However, they conspired to produce each evening, for the approval of the Argentieres sisters, decently turned charcoal studies of trees and farm horses, each drawing outlined by Helene and corrected by Estienne (crudity of line softened day by day into talented little sketches upon whose gift Estienne would exclaim and Helene, smiling silently, a trifle smugly, would accept as both truth and ruse).

The sisters did not discover them until the holiday was nearly over. Quite by accident the bead-telling housekeeper had knocked at an irregular hour upon Helene's door to clean her room, and Helene, thinking it was Estienne, had called his name, a curious fact which the housekeeper had noted and remarked upon to Mademoiselle Floride the next morning. While the young lovers were off that day, exploring somewhere or other, passing the afternoon in an inn a dozen miles away, the sisters had entered both

rooms and discovered the shoe of one in the room of the other, an errant sock, a mysterious odor which neither could identify but which they considered suspicious, and finally a half-dozen hairpins under the pillow of the young instructor, and they concluded that something disgusting, an indecency, a compromise, had taken place.

When Helene and Estienne returned in the afternoon, they were confronted and accused. Helene bit her lip stoically when she was told her father would be notified (in fact, Mademoiselle Floride attempted to telephone her father's pharmacy, but was informed that it would be at least fourteen hours before the lines to Barcelona would be free); and Estienne was dismissed on the spot and ordered from the Academie within the hour. Despite their efforts to restrain her, Helene resisted; strong willed as she was and quite mature enough to deal with even the more muscular of the two sisters, she determined to accompany her lover when he departed the schooL Estienne protested Helene's incaution, proposing rather that she wait out her father's anger, pacify it, and then follow Estienne to Paris; however, she insisted. They had little money between them, the sisters having refused to return to Helene the small deposit of spending money which had been given to them by her father; as for paying Estienne's monthly salary, they would hear none of it, telling him instead to sue if he hoped to be paid. The two had a hundred francs between them, perhaps a bit more, enough to take the bus to Paris with sufficient left over for several days of modest living. When they arrived, they made straight for Alain's hotel, where Estienne felt certain he would be received and given a room on credit until they could straighten themselves out, communicate with Senor Miravilla, receive some advance on Helene's dowry, and make arrangements for their living.

None of the spirit of calculation, the combination and permutation of sums and essences which characterized Estienne Delahaye's habitual transactions with the world, seemed to pervade his actions. Viewed dispassionately (but that would not be quite in order since the seduction of Helene Miravilla was in fact an affair of passion, despite the truth that not all passions are amatory), Estienne Delahaye's behavior, always so careful and circumspect, removed from casual flirtation and transitory involvements, was 199

inexplicable. Alain, who sat with Estienne in his room for several hours in the late afternoon while Helene napped, was quite literally bouleverse.

"It doesn't make sense, old friend. My God, the girl's beautiful, but she's still after all just a girl, a child, just nineteen. What's a man of thirty-four, a promising sculptor, doing with a nineteenyear-old? Tell me it's madly erotic, that you can't live without her -my God, tell me something stupid like that, and 1 would at least understand, even though 1 would still counsel caution and a night in the Turkish bath to think it over-but, poof, my unromantic friend, proper teacher, serious artist, falls into bed with a student, compromises her, gets dismissed, and is talking marriage. And all in the matter of a week. No. No. There has to be something else. Let me see. But of course. She's rich, isn't she?"

Estienne looked crossly at Alain and replied crossly, "What's that got to do with it?"

"But is she, old friend? It doesn't bother me. All the better if she is. You know what they say. 'Better a pearl in the oyster than a grain of sand.'

"I don't know for certain, but 1 imagine she is. It costs a bit to go to the Academie. At least six thousand francs without the extras. Oh, 1 suppose Helene is rich or will be. But you're disgraceful, Alain." Estienne was embarrassed and delighted. He had no doubt that Alain would guess his motive, and it pleased him somewhat that it proved so unalarming when it emerged. "But she is ravishing, isn't she?"

"Absolutely. A stunning girl. And Spanish, is she? The first crop that they export after their war and you're there to pick the best. You are a devil, aren't you?"

Estienne glowed. He was pleased again. "Yes, beautiful and rich. Beautiful and rich." He repeated the phrase several times, embracing Alain and hugging him with delight.

Outside the door, Helene stood a moment listening. Her face, impassive and beautiful, betrayed no emotion. Perhaps she heard and perhaps she was surprised, but again at this point it is uncertain. At all events she did not knock. She turned away after a few minutes and went down the hall to the stairwell, considered returning to her room, but after a brief hesitation descended to the street. At the first cafe she passed, she sat down and ordered a pastis. She

200

had never had a pastis, but so many events of recent days were absolutely new that it did not seem unusual to add another, although she confused pastis with absinthe and knew that too much of that kind of alcohol could destroy one.

The lovers had determined to write, rather than telegraph, Senor Miravilla. They had composed the letter together, announced their love, described its good fortune, intensity, and miraculous coincidence, signified their willingness to struggle and endure, begged his blessings, and besought his assistance. Having mailed it the first evening, they received a reply in eight days, a simple letter accompanied by a postal order for five hundred francs. Estienne was relieved, as their money was almost gone and the postal order was more than enough to get them quite comfortably through several weeks. Senor Miravilla's tone was, however, not as generous as his gift. He began not by congratulating his daughter or, for that matter, reproving her. His emotion seemed impersonal, less directed to her and her welfare than to himself and his own situation. Intelligent Catalan that he was, he interpreted his eldest daughter's announcement not as a betrayal, but as a cost. The first daughter to leave his home and board meant ultimately a considerable saving, whatever the cash outlay of the dowry, for since the couple would elope there was no wedding and the necessity of display was obviated. He described his shock at her decision, cautioned the lovers perfunctorily, encouraged them to marry immediately, and invited them to visit him whenever they went south. The check for five hundred francs was, he asserted, a down payment; more would follow when his own financial embarrassment ("about which Helene can tell you more") was relieved. It was the first Estienne had heard of an embarrassment, and Helene observed his concern as he reread the letter. There was little disingenuousness in his inquiry, and when Helene had finished her description of the difficulties of living in post-Republican Spain, the dislocations of the war, and the precarious profits from an herbal decoction, Estienne's expression of concern had turned to a frown. But Helene dismissed her father's nervousness, asserting that, as far as she knew, the business was thriving, the decoction was now advertised throughout the country (and parts of South America); as best as she could judge, his income, given the precarious times,

was substantial. Estienne's relief was audible; he kissed Helene tenderly and left her to rest before lunch. Indeed, they had determined to be married that afternoon, with Alain and his girlfrienda massive black girl with a vast laugh-as witnesses, at the local registry.

A month later their lives appeared settled and resolved. A letter of congratulation arrived from old Maillol, containing an invitation to the young couple to settle in the deep south at Port Vendres, near the Spanish border, in a cottage not far from his own atelier which had an ample shed in which Estienne could work in peace, and if his bride chose, she could take up spinning and weaving, a craft in which Maillol excelled as a teacher. Estienne was delighted by Maillol's suggestion. He had had no idea until the letter arrived that the old master was, indeed, that fond of him. He had assisted him many times during the previous years, and had supervised the construction of a number of public commissions, but he had doubted that Maillol cared for him, particularly after Estienne had succeeded in taking for himself a small design competition for a bas-relief to be installed in a railway station in Bourges. It was not at all clear to him at the time-two years earlier-that Maillol could not have been less interested in a competition for a work described with such aggravating detail by the town committee of Bourges, and carrying with it a fee which could be described best as niggardly; it was required of the artist as well that the maquette be approved, cast, and installed in four months' time to accommodate the Armistice Day commemorations of that November. Maillol had left the letter lying unanswered on his worktable in Marly-le-Roi, and Estienne, accidentally discovering it, had removed it without permission, replied on his own, and submitted photographs of several wo�ks' in fact designed by Maillol but rejected by him; and receiving a letter of acknowledgment addressed to him as assistant to Le Maitre Aristide Maillol, went for the interview and took the commission for himself. Maillol never missed the letter; he had probably had no intention of answering it, trusting to the passage of time to desiccate its urgency. Estienne was pleased with the ruse; never once did the mayor of Bourges suspect that really and truly it was not Aristide Maillol, but Estienne Delahaye, assistant from time to time to the master sculptor, who would

be the artist. A stroke of good luck. Throughout the interview Estienne had so skillfully bound his name to that of Maillol that the committee of town fathers could not have but thought that they were acquiring a work, if not directly from the hand of the master, at least supervised and approved by him-sufficiently so that when the work was installed and unveiled, it carried beneath the signature of Estienne Delahaye the legend "avec i'approbation du MaitreAristide Maillol." It satisfied the mairie of Bourges to consummate this deception, for they took Estienne's appearance as an answer from the master, but realized quite well that the great Maillol would not work to such distracting specifications and in such a short time for a sum that did not much exceed ten thousand francs. They were pleased, however, to rationalize. Estienne had counted on precisely this confluence of cheapness and provincial cupidity, the wish of the town fathers to have their cake and eat it.

Fortunately it worked well because Estienne was an intelligent, indeed a gifted, sculptor. The work was elegantly turned, the somewhat classical soldiers--clothed but still visibly striving in the flesh, frontal in the attitudes of death but transfigured by the various nobilities of youth, courage, clarity of face, and strength of armspleased the crowd which gathered for the commemoration.

Estienne Delahaye had passed successfully from struggling artist to a maker of monuments, albeit on the strength of a bit of deception, but one which neither party to it-the mairie of Bourges or old Maillol-would ever fully discern. From that bit of good fortune Estienne Delahaye had begun to prosper. Several reliefs and table sculptures followed as commissions; he had had the installation in Bourges photographed and sent it with an accompanying letter to nearly fifty mairies throughout the country, soliciting their interest in case they wished to commission memorial monuments or celebrations of labor, produce, viniculture, or any historical personage of France. Several inquiries resulted, including the project for the Lyons bank on which Estienne had been working at the time he met Helene Miravilla. An accident-reading Maillol's unanswered letter-was converted by guile into luck and thence, by degree of work, invention, and energy, into fortune. Coincidence, the concatenation of wandering eye and unscrupulous hand, had augured well for the beginning of Estienne's career.

The career of Estienne Delahaye had, so to speak, grown on the

back of Aristide Maillol, whom he had served well, whom in his way he admired, but whom, quite clearly, he had betrayed. At all events, Maillol's letter replying to Estienne's announcement of his nuptials contained no present of funds or the gift of a work of his art (as Estienne had foolishly hoped), but an invitation to live and work with him, altogether a more appropriate and generous gift. The young couple left Paris for Port Vendres after enjoying a private dinner tendered them by Alain, who promised to visit them once they were installed. Moreover, since Port Vendres was virtually on the Spanish border, Estienne suggested they take the train from Paris to Barcelona, where they could visit Helene's family before moving back across the border to the little village where they would establish their first home.

Helene Miravilla, now Delahaye, did not whistle during the journey south as did her husband. She kept her eye on the six pieces of luggage in the rack above their seats, making certain that the parade of travelers who entered their compartment and departed it at each of the principal stops along the route did not steal any of their possessions. She became positively obsessed with their belongings-after each stop counting audibly the two suitcases, the basket which contained a set of fragile glass given them by Alain, a footlocker of shoes and books, a wicker hamper in which Estienne had packed his carving tools with a number of plasters on which he had been working in Paris, and a large umbrella. Her brow furrowed with anxiety at each stop, and she climbed upon the seat opposite their own to check and count, noting to Estienne that everything was present and in place. He, for his part indifferent to the prospect of robbery, wandered through the corridors of the train, whistling contentedly as he roamed, descending into each station for a look around, a magazine, a box of sweets. The prog-

ress of the train was slow and, to their view, interminable: stops of thirty and forty minutes at Lyons, Marseilles, Perpignan, until late afternoon, when they changed trains at the frontier between France and Spain.

The delay at the frontier was exceptionally long. Both the French and Spanish police were protracted and scrupulous in their examinations. With the civil war in Spain concluded, it happened that Spaniards were trying to sneak back into their homeland without proper papers, or with papers validated by a republic which no longer existed. It was no surprise that when they came to the Delahayes they questioned Helene with particular circumspection. They were obviously disturbed that she carried papers in her maiden name, that her Republican passport was clearly that of a Miravilla, whereas Estienne introduced her as his wife. When she explained, producing the marriage license, that she was just married, the police, even more dissatisfied, suspecting such marriages to be political, asked her for the address of her father's pharmacy, indeed even questioned her about the politics of her family. Helene's answers were innocent, insubstantial, and obviously unsatisfactory. She said that she didn't know if her father had a politics, a reply which the officer of the Guardia found ridiculous. Throughout these inquiries, Estienne Delahaye stood to one side. It was not really his business, he temporized, even though this woman was his wife. Clearly, however, the police knew that the young and beautiful woman with her limp and crumpled documents was neither a spy nor a communist trying to reenter her country illegally. It was only that she was beautiful, and they derived some obvious pleasure from her discomfort. When the police left, after nearly a half hour interrogation, Helene and Estienne, alone in the compartment, fell silent. After some minutes, when the train commenced its slow descent from the Pyrenees, Helene began to cry softly. Estienne, no longer whistling, put out his hand to coser hers, but she hid it behind her.

"What's the matter, cherie?" he asked teasingly. "Did the police upset you?"

"Finally, not at all. You did, however. Very much! You said absolutely nothing to protect me."

Estienne looked at her with something like amazement. Her

complaint was hard to understand. It wasn't that he didn't understand what she meant. It was more that he had never really thought of other people that way-needing or wanting or, much less, deserving his protection. He thought of his dying father in the nursing home. Nobody protected him. And of himself. No one, absolutely no one, had ever bothered to protect him. Whatever he had made of himself, he had done by application and gift, elaborated, to be sure-although on this occasion it was not recalled-with occasional descents into stealth and guile. Her complaint stood, however, as a reproach, and the reproach dismayed him. It was the first time in many years that a criticism of his personal behavior, made by a virtual stranger, had caught in his flesh like a fishhook. Whenever his friend Alain would take him to task, it was always with a lightheartedness, a bantering, an attitude of teasing which enabled him to dismiss it as unserious and irrelevant. But this woman, whom he thought he had married simply as a delicious convenience, had obviously become something much more. In the three months which had passed since she entered his classroom and told him the story of her father and his love of art, he had somehow contrived to dismay even himself, whom he thought he knew so well. He had fallen in love with the astonishing woman, this woman, who was able, tears falling from her eyes, to criticize him for not intervening to protect her from the police. "Tiens," he said to himself. Obviously he had to take notice.

7

Estienne Delahaye examined the living room of Sefior Miravilla's apartment slowly. His wife had joined her sisters in another room, and he heard bits of laughter and the lowing of muffled voices while they awaited the return of their father, who had been notified that his eldest had just returned home. At the very least, the atmosphere of the apartment was lugubrious, it being customary

never to tum on lights unless at least a gathering was present; hence the maid had seated him upon a sofa, the curtains having been drawn much earlier against the afternoon sun-curtains sewn, embroidered, and tasseled in gold and blue thread. Estienne scrutinized his surroundings with the aid of a single lamp, held aloft by a scantily clad nymph whose gilt sheathing was pocked with age: a room stuffed with bric-a-brac and ungainly furniture, heavy and monstrous. Cheap oils of village scenes, painted by incompetents, were particularly surprising; lace coverlets were everywhere --on head rests and tables, on little foot stands tucked under each chair.

It would have been an unbearable passage of time, alone, already the ignored husband in the assembly of his in-laws, had he not been fascinated by a cluster of photographs, fading sepia and waning tones of gray, which formed a company of intimates upon the lamp-lit table. There he could examine each of the daughters in their unfolding, grouped before a cathedral, dressed in communion white, their hands clutching rosaries and bunches of sweet peas; Helene among the girls, staring off into a space above the photographer's glass eye, already aloof and removed, half a head taller than the next girl, enfolded by the large-immense, it seemed -open arms of thei. iather, who gathered them to himself; and to one side, smiling, her mouth shyly opened to lovely teeth, a woman he took to be her mother, it seemed not many years older than her eldest; frail-petite would be correct-little bones, small hands, her black hair pulled back to a barely visible bun, but immensely beautiful, a reminiscence in prophecy of what would come to be, presently, laughing in the next room, the bride of his seduction. The photographs were principally of the father of the household, the Senor Miravilla he awaited, as a young man in his early maturity, remarkably thin, his suit tightly buttoned, the dark trousers rising above his patent pumps, only bushy eyebrows anticipating the suspicious corpulence that would emerge by the time of the communion photograph, and by degrees, a photograph in his smock behind the marble counter of his apothecary shop, behind which rose the sensuous curves and carvings of his turn-of-thecentury establishment on the Ramblas, his widening girth and drooping jowls competing unfavorably with the grace of his art

nouveau environment; and pictures upon each birthday, stuck like calling cards into larger picture frames, snapshots really, memorabilia of the progress of the body, a personage, but impersonal, nothing revealing the time through which the photographs had passed, time in which the streets of his world had been torn up and flung in riots, formed into barricades, blown apart by revolution and war. The timeless indifference of a bourgeois, it seemed, who cared that the photographer note and observe him alone, as if time could observe the aging of a man without reference to his epoch.

"My gallery," Estienne heard a voice remark, and he stood up and turned from his examination to receive the hand and the clumsy irony of the unmistakable Senor Miravilla. No sooner said, the voice in fact booming with pride, and the double doors opened wider, and the graying gentlemen (he was in his middle fifties at the moment of this telling) was inundated by his girls, the rituals unfolding as we have described them-business jacket removed, home alpaca opened to his arms, slippers, sherry, his mail upon a tray, foot rest-but he ignored these and turned to look at Helene, who stood to one side not resuming her role, perhaps wanting to resume her role but avoiding it, watching her husband, who remained standing, one hand in his pocket and at ease, comfortably smoothing his hair with the other; Helene looking from one to the other and back again, her eyes passing quickly, nervously like a sparrow hunting provender, nervously, darting with agitation, not knowing yet to whom she belonged and who would feed her.

"My beloved eldest," Senor Miravilla said, hugging Helene warmly, "and her husband Senor Delahaye, I take it. My pleasure, I suppose, although you deprived a father of his first pleasure, the wedding celebration of his eldest daughter." Helene flushed with enbarrassment; Estienne began to reply but stopped. The other girls, the four younger sisters, had disappeared as quickly as they had appeared, although one imagined them breathing heavily behind the double doors, listening to the first interview.

"And so, sir, you are an artist?" the father began. "Not a very promising career, is it?"

"In what way, Senor? In money perhaps not, but in fame quite considerable. I am mentioned in many articles, if you'd care to see the clippings."

"Not necessary, young man. Not at all. I'm hopeful-no, more to the point, confident-that you are talented, as they say. But talent doesn't put food in my daughter's stomach or clothes upon her back. How do you propose to deal with that, although it's a little late to be having this conversation?"

"I thought, sir, that with your love of art, you might give us some help in that regard," Estienne replied, not brazenly but with professional dignity.

"My what? 1 don't know where you get that idea, young man. I don't care at all for art. Look at those paintings. Junk, undoubtedly. Pleasant scenes, painted by gitanos and bought for a few pesetas. The frames cost more than the pictures. No. No.1 don't give a damn for art, so put that out of your mind." Helene smiled at this, but Estienne turned white with confusion. "It's much more to the point that you will need some help from me, and 1 propose to give you some, although my favorite daughter should really be thrashed for allowing you to embarrass her against her will." (Helene opened her mouth to protest because the truth deserved to be spoken even if it did involve protecting her husband.) "Don't interrupt me, dearest, with some explanation or other! A man can avoid these things if he wants. A woman can't. That's the way it is in this world. So you took advantage of my daughter's youth and frailty, embarrassed her and her family, and 1 should thrash the two of you and send her to some damn fool convent for a life of penance and incarceration. But that went out long ago, and 1 made a promise to my dead wife not to punish, and 1 will keep the promise. It's too stupid to punish people. The long and the short of it is that I'm not a rich man at the moment. 1 will be rich again soon enough, if we can stabilize this country, but it takes time to make money. It's not something you fall across like a coin in the road. It will take time. I've put aside a sum for each of my daughters' dowries. 1 can't pay it all at once, but 1 suppose it will do." Senor Miravilla removed a pad from his jacket pocket and with a pencil wrote a figure on it and handed it to Estienne. Estienne received it and nodded, and the transaction was concluded. No money had been discussed. Like two persons bartering in foreign languages who resort to number notations as the common language of exchange, the sum written was sufficient to seal the understanding. Estienne

209

said "Thank you," and Sefior Miravilla observed: "Instruct me what bank you propose to use, and the funds will be sent monthly without fail. I'm like clockwork, you understand. My word can be trusted. But now, time for my nap. We will meet again at dinner. By the way, Helene, are you with child?"

"I don't think so, Papa."

"Ah, then he loves you as well. Bueno."

It was not discussed again. A sum had been arranged, enough to keep the young couple provided against hunger and cold-not munificent, certainly not what Estienne had imagined, or for that matter what Helene had supposed, but sufficient. For the remainder of their days in Barcelona, the loving father provided: restaurants, what there were of them so soon after the war's end, a picnic in Montjuich, an evening at El Molino, a turn in the bay aboard a rented sailboat. Sefior Miravilla could hardly say that he admired Helene's choice of husband; Estienne developed a nagging summer cold which left him irritable and snappish; however, it surprised her sisters that Helene was not in the least solicitous of her husband's health or wishes, refusing to forgo a visit with friends on their last night, despite Estienne's mild fever. They, for their part, found her husband handsome, his manners terribly exotic, casual and informal, quite Parisian they thought, and they attended to him in a ratio of four to one, treating him to the regality they had habitually reserved for their father. Estienne was, needless to mention, given tumbler portions of the family decoction, which he found more potent than therapeutic. He packed several bottles against his departure.

The following week Helene and Estienne left Barcelona and Spain. They were not to return again together, although the train that bore them beyond the borders of that exhausted land protracted their departure by' an abnormal six hours, stretching each kilometer of terrain into an indelible memory, so slowly did the train proceed northward to France. It appeared that the track had been blown up near Gerona by a band of Catalan Loyalists who had held out in the mountains near the border. They were forced into the open and defeated only hours before the train passed through. By the time the train arrived at the frontier, no sign of the violence which had just claimed five lives remained.

It was a serene summer day. August. Yellow dust had settled back upon the olive trees. Even the birds were lethargic. It was silent, as if already night, when they crossed the checkpoint into France.

8

Europe went to war the week that Estienne took up his tools in old Maillol's work shed and Helene went by bicycle to spend the afternoon sunning herself on the beach at Collioure. When she returned to the cottage at about seven on the evening of September 3, having struck up a conversation with a young fisherman who insisted to her smile of incredulity that he had posed for the painter Matisse several summers earlier, she was flushed but pleased. She liked the young fisherman, who was gold and blue and brown, and he had bought her an aperitif and she had agreed to meet him the following Friday when his trawler sailed into port with the week's catch. She wasn't at all certain whether his name was Jean or Joan, since his accent seemed to her like Catalan, although he spoke a French of the region filled with expressions she did not understand; but it hardly mattered, since she would certainly recognize the wave with which he said good-bye and the unguarded candor of his face. As she pedaled home, turning into the lane which led to their cottage, Helene realized that although she was married to Estienne, many words had been spoken, many conversations had been overheard, many gestures had been described in the air which made her bond to him, if not fragile, at least less than secure. "Rich and beautiful," the words which she thought she had heard his friend Alain speak indistinctly through the closed door, returned to her, and although she knew that they referred to herself and, like the episode of the railway compartment, that her husband had not bothered to protect and guard her from such misrepresentation, she was not quite ready to charge him with guilt. Complicity, or not even complicity but complaisance, a readiness to succumb, was the

extent of her reservation with Estienne; young as she was, young and in love (but careful about love's nurture and sustenance, as though love were really an emotion felt privately rather than a feeling exchanged which either grew and extended in the sharing or, humiliated, withdrew and withered in solitude), Helene refused to judge Estienne harshly, at least so far as she was aware.

When she entered the little living room, snug and fitted like a ship's cabin, everything in place, she smelled the dinner which Estienne had prepared: a sea bass grilling upon the outdoor brazier, salad chopped with dandelions and fresh basil, small tomatoes and red peppers, and a running Camembert alongside two exquisite peaches (perfect "sunsets," Estienne called them when their orange, red, and purple skins glistened) on the sideboard. He came in from the garden, which dropped off toward the sea, and embraced her, but she hardly paid attention. It wasn't until much later that they made love, although Estienne had stopped work hours earlier, smashing a plaster in disgust, and paced the atelier waiting with the hands of his watch for the time of her usual return.

They had arrived in Port Vendres three weeks before. There hadn't been very much to do. After several days of scrubbing and cleaning, turning out the blankets, airing the cabinets, stocking the shelves with dry goods and the hamper with onions and potatoes, Estienne went to work in the atelier across the road. Helene heard him hammer and bang, curse and whistle, and only once during the week that followed did he return unannounced to show her a little head he had carved. It was rough, unfinished, but she recognized a suggestion of her face, although she disclaimed its fidelity and dismissed it as a poor likeness. Estienne muttered something like "That's not the point," shrugged, kissed her nonetheless, and returned to the studio. Helene read several books, studied the French subjunctive, in which she was maladept, glanced at some magazines, walked to the village several times during the first week to shop, but claimed that it tired her out and persuaded Estienne to let her buy a bicycle By the end of the third week, despite Estienne's concerned warning that she had better find an interestindeed, consider Maillol's offer to teach her weaving when he returned to the south-Helene had begun her little tours of the region, covering a dozen kilometers daily, begging rides when the roads were hilly, visiting old villages, examining churches where

occasionally she lit a candle; or she sat in the town square under a bell tower and wrote long letters to her sisters, to whom she described her peaceful life, her empty and carefree days, her boredom; "although I do love Estienne very much, he really has so much work to do, there's terribly little time for me."

The outbreak of the war, however, changed the order of their days. It was being fought very far away in the north of the country, but it reached down into their valley of contentment. The second week after war had been declared, Estienne Delahaye was notified that he would have to report for the army, but that exigency was disposed of when the army doctor noted that his heart was unusually large and beating irregularly. Estienne, not having considered seriously the possibility of being called to war, took the news of his exemption as casually as if he had been told that a mysterious benefactor had paid an outstanding bill for him. It wouldn't have mattered. He didn't think in terms of an outside world, except insofar as matters of his art were concerned. He could not help regarding the outbreak of war and the inevitable death of his countrymen as an opportunity to be seized as inexorably as Maillol, a generationbefore him, had fallen into the good fortune of producing monuments on commission (except, of course, that Maillol had done comparatively few and those under very special circumstances). Estienne Delahaye had fewer reservations. The war, foolish though he regarded it, was something to keep the idle hands of men engaged, and its conclusion in death or armistice would elicit the wish of survivors and patriots to recall its dubious accomplishments. By early 1940, Estienne had already devised several alternative schemes of commemoration that were easily adaptable, with movable and removable parts, which could be employed to memorialize soldiers, sailors, pilots, civilians, innocents all, children all, transfigured faces, the resurrected flesh which memory wished to conserve. Indeed, it was during April of 1940 that he received a letter from a family in the Gironde whose patriarchal head, shot down over Belgium during the first weeks of the war, had been returned to be buried in the historic crypt of the family; Estienne was requested to devise a relief incorporating an abstract bust portrait of the colonel in uniform with the inevitable "mort pour fa France" incised beneath his name and dates. The commission encouraged Estienne and he set to work; Helene, for her part, undertook to

work in the mairie every morning folding bandages, and in the afternoon to help a neighbor, whose son had left for the war, take care of the chickens.

The war created a regimen of busyness, and days which had been blown dry by the mistral were suddenly filled with enterprise and martial elation. Of course, it didn't last. By the end of the spring of 1940, the war was being lost; the Germans were destroying the French army, and the unconquered part of France was soon to be turned over to the authority of sentimental patriots and political miscreants. Every Frenchman of the south came to understand that survival was no longer a responsibility shared with other Frenchmen, but an enterprise to be pursued alone. Estienne and Helene Delahaye, the industrious sculptor and his young wife, who was carrying her first child, had to devise ways of enduring. Despite the deposits of money which Sefior Miravilla continued to make, although the sum decreased and the regularity of its transfer was impaired by the difficulty of even such simple transactions (there were several months when it would have been easier and quicker for Helene to take the bus from Port Bou to Barcelona and return with the money in hand), the support assured by Helene's dowry was modest. On each occasion in the month when the bank informed them by post that the sum had been credited to their account, Estienne would become irritated. "My rich bride," he snorted once in her presence, and she replied with anger that she had never promised him riches. "That was your friend Alain's idea," she added, although Estienne failed to understand the reference. Nonetheless they managed. Their rent was nothing; old Maillol assured them by letter from the north that they could stay on without payment if they wished, and the rest of their requirements-food, clothing, artist's materials-were amply provided by occasional commissions, the sale of an odd wood or stone carving, and gifts of eggs and poultry which Helene received for helping the chicken farmer down the road. They managed.

On May 5 Helene lost her baby. She tripped in the chicken house while carrying a tray of eggs to be packed for market, fell, and, covered with egg yolk and slime, began to hemorrhage. It was necessary that she be hospitalized. Old Dr. Malebranche, superannuated but recalled from retirement to active practice in the absence of all the younger doctors, told her the grim news: "No baby now,

my dear; no baby ever, I'm afraid." Helene Delahaye received the news with tears, bit her lip, and reaching out to find her husband, who had been standing near the bedside only minutes before the doctor came, touched air, her fingers groping to find his absent hand. Estienne, as he explained later, had become so unnerved by the doctor's arrival that he had fled the room. "I couldn't take it," he said. It was, Estienne believed, the beginning of a run of bad luck.

The months that followed were marked by intense industry on Estienne's part. He worked constantly, almost feverishly; he had received another commission to undertake a monument for the defeated army of France, a small pyramid to be placed at the entrance to the new section of the national cemetery at Verdun, and, regarding the assignment as both a challenge and an opportunity not to be missed, he was diligently occupied for many months with the drawings, the maquette, a trip north to present his conception to the colonel in charge of Graves Registration and the Ministry of Monuments and Public Works

It was during his absence, pursuing the intricacies of this prestigious and profitable commission, that his wife took her first lover. She had never seen the young Jean or Joan again; when she had returned the following week, war had already been declared and the young sailor had joined up. But Helene had returned to Collioure to meet him and it was there, late in the fall of 1940, that she met Octave Picone, already a veteran of the war--or should we say a victim of the war, since he had lost an arm to shrapnel during the retreat from the lowlands. Octave worked in his father's bar which fronted on the wharf, and Helene-attracted, she admitted, by the fact that he had been wounded in the war-was determined to win him if it were at all possible. During the weeks of Estienne's absence she bicycled to Collioure every day in the late afternoon, and by the time the town closed down at eight and the regulars had gone home to supper and the evening news broadcast from London, she had Octave to herself. The flirtation lasted about a week; the affair about three months. It was satisfying; it persuaded Helene, as apparently Estienne had not, that to be beautiful was sufficient. Being rich didn't matter at all to Octave. Her body was quite enough reward.

It was not the return of Estienne from Paris and Verdun which

ended the romance. Indeed for several weeks after his return, Helene revised her routine only slightly, persuading Estienne that it was preferable to dine in the Spanish manner (that is, beginning their supper not earlier than ten o'clock each evening) and convincing Octave that, since there was no business after seven and he could close the bar an hour earlier, at least two hours of intimacy could be managed. Octave obliged, knowing full well that Helene's husband had returned, and Estienne, preoccupied with his pyramid and two other small commissions he had received while in the north, was quite willing to wait for his light meal until a later hour, since this allowed him more time to work. He obviously did not suspect; he thought Helene's little trips were amusing recreation appropriate to her youth. It was not a matter of discovery that ended the affair, but rather a fatuous and casual remark of Octave's.

"Will you be my mistress even when I marry?" he asked her one evening. The question concealed not one, but a suite of alarming implications. It suggested that Helene was not uniquely loved (a bearable supposition), but more, that since she felt herself obliged to insure the ignorance of her husband, Octave or any other married lover would be bound to do likewise; moreover, as they would both be married, she could count upon little more than occasional afternoons or odd evenings of passion, artificially fabricated and rushed to completion against the demands not of one clock, but of two. But even more important, she realized that were Octave or any other lover to marry and take her as a mistress, she would cease to steal her pleasure, to deceive her husband, to control, as it were, her little universe of recreation, and become instead chosen and controlled. It was a terrible question which Octave had put. When she did not answer, he repeated the question, adding as though it were common information: "You know, I am to marry the postman's Blanchette next spring. It was fixed long ago." Helene got up from the bar stool, pushed away her aperitif, and left. But only when she approached the turnoff on the highway leading toward her village did she realize the full extent of her decision. She had no intention of ever again having an affair with a man even remotely marriageable. And on the two occasions during the several years which still remained until the war's end, when she became briefly involved with men whom she discovered to be married, she punished them mercilessly for their deception before

she terminated the relationship. No, the seeking and seizure of her lovers, some lasting nearly a whole season, others an escapade of a weekend, were drawn at first from a wide range of ages and proclivities, from elderly widowers (including an old baron who insisted upon rouging and wigging himself before he took her to his bed) to the exceptionally young and precocious. While Estienne struggled with art, maintaining an exemplary discipline, securing commissions from the occupied as well as seeking them from the occupier, collaborating-if that is the appropriate term-in the hope of decorating and monumentalizing the victorious German army, Helene, increasingly isolated and alone, became exacting and scrupulous in the refinement of loving, deciding that all her lovers should be not more nor less than five years her junior, raising the age of requirement with each year that she advanced, determining that these flirtations were best pursued with young lads too unskilled to be her masters and too young to desire her bed en permanence. By 1943, when her lovers were in their eighteenth year, her pleasure and her romance were at their most exalted, for the sexuality was intense and satisfying, the exuberance unabated, and the quality of thoughtfulness and fidelity minimal. Nothing was paid, no gifts exchanged other than movies or perhaps a meal, no pledges demanded or given, and no seriousness invested in her behavior. Estienne, whatever curiosity he professed in her activities and whatever gossip Helene's association with the young men of the region aroused, drew little more than passing interest. It was a precarious time. The gossiping propensities of the bourgeoisie were otherwise employed; Estienne's relative ease in wartime was more sourly observed than the apparent waywardness of his beautiful Spanish wife.

9

It was during the summer of 1944 that Aristide Maillol, Estienne's master, indubitable friend, and unwitting patron, was seriously injured in an automobile accident while being driven to Paris from 217

his summer home in Marly-Ie-Roi. The old man, then seventyseven years of age, suffered immense pain, and-recognizing that his life was coming to a precipitous conclusion-asked to be returned to the house in which he was born in the village of his childhood, where he had passed his productive youth and the genius days of his early maturity: Banyuls-sur-Mer, four kilometers from the cottage and atelier which he had lent his former assistant and erstwhile colleague, Estienne Delahaye, and his beautiful wife, Helene.

The old man was installed in his home, and a message was sent by his housekeeper that Estienne should come to call and be so kind as to bring with him his wife, whom the master looked forward to meeting. Estienne received the message spoken in haste by the housekeeper, who frowned while she delivered it. He thanked her for her trouble and she replied: "Je suis ici pour Ie maitre, pas pour vous, Monsieur. Pas de remerciements."

Estienne was aware, increasingly aware, that the townspeople disapproved of the contact he had with the German conqueror; although he had explained to the mayor that he was given little choice in the matter, and was promised even less compensation for his work, whenever he passed through the village of Port Vendres or took a cognac in the cafe, hardly anyone spoke with him. The resistance had begun in the southwest, and even if there were many who took no part in its activities, working for the Boches was considered equal to collaborating with them. Clearly Estienne had done little more than take advantage of good fortune, of being the only sculptor of his generation who had accommodated himself to do monumental work in the classical style, and at a time when all sides-the French, France's Allies, and the enemywanted commemorative stones, memorial marbles, bronze reliefs. The German dead had as much right to be remembered as had the French, Estienne temporized, and it was in the spirit of this rationalization that he made the mistake of flying to Berlin in the early fall of 1944 to consult with the adjutant of Albert Speer, who was under orders to plan a heroic monument to the German army which would be built in all the occupied countries of Europe. When Estienne De1ahaye returned from Berlin, ten days after Maillot's housekeeper had delivered her message, the master was dead. Estienne was in time for the funeral, but not to say a living

good-bye. It struck him, at that moment, that something was wrong with his life, that he was mistaking the proper order of events, the correct priorities. Helene, who had failed to meet the old sculptor, sat beside him in the village church of Banyuls-sur-Mer. The sun was brilliant, streaming through the tinted windows behind the choir, bathing the unadorned casket in gold. The priest, an elderly monsignor, spoke affectionately of Maillol, citing his achievement as a sculptor, noting the breadth of his internationalism, encompassing the friendship and patronage of noble Germans like Count Harry Kessler as well as the admiration of modern Greeks who thought him the legatee of Praxiteles; but more than all this, he celebrated the utter simplicity of Maillol's vision, its clarity and precision of focus, its celebration of the human form ("ideal and transfigured," the priest said, "as if already in the estate of resurrection"). Not a word was spoken of Maillol's fame, his immense and diffused fame, his success, his glory; none of these notions had apparently struck the worthy monsignor, who tugged at his chin diffidently as he spoke, as though engaged in drawing out his thought by depressing a hidden key beneath his lower lip. Indeed, the monsignor scarcely addressed the congregation, some of whom had come from long distances to be present at the obsequies. It was rather that the priest, his soutane shining, his leather boots cracked with age, was performing an introduction of Maillol to his creator, making certain that the Good Lord learned well in advance who was en route to his serene'kingdom-s-a fine man, a passionate man, a loving man, and, above all, a great celebrant of the world, which God had created.

Helene, strained by the funeral-the first she had attended since the death of her mother-sat with her hands folded in her lap, hardly looking up, although once she started and almost rose in fright. Estienne, however; was immobilized by the funeral-not moved or overcome, but immobilized. "Petrifie," the French say, or "frightened and turned to stone," the double meaning which that curious process of carbonization has in most languages. His plane had landed in Marseilles the night before the funeral, and he had been returned in a German staff car to the village very late, after the public vigil had concluded and the mortal remains of Maillol had been given over to the care of a sodality of nuns from a neighboring convent. The meetings in Berlin had gone well, he

had been flattered and admired, and his work at Verdun was complimented; but it was clear to Estienne that the commission would go elsewhere, to a German undoubtedly, and that his invitation to Berlin was a courtesy extended to the Vichy government; his picture had been taken and was published, but that was the extent of it. Estienne was nonetheless quite satisfied. He was well regarded and one day, he assumed, he would be rewarded for his gifts. Judging by the atmosphere in Berlin he supposed that the war was not going well for the Germans, and he concluded from the idle jokes and drawn faces in the Chancellery that the end was not far off. It was just as well that he had not received the commission to design a German victory monument. And with Maillol's death, which Helene had reported to him as he came through the door of their cottage, he supposed the authority and reputation of the master would fall upon his assistant, his disciple-in fact, the one among all others who had strained to apply the principles of "ecstatic naturalism" (as he was fond of calling it) to all manner of public monuments.

The death of Aristide Maillol, however fortuitous its occasion, was not unforeseen. The man was old, indeed frail. He had been moving slowly for some time now. Even at the time of their meeting in the galleries of the Louvre, Estienne had taken the elbow of the master and gripped it as they descended the slippery marble stairs to the entrance foyer. Maillol was an old man even then; death was not a stranger to him, and Maillol acknowledged once in conversation that he regarded its advent not with horror but with interest. He suspected death of wearing the disguise of youth, of being-not, as popular imagination would have it, a skeletal anatomy with grisly visage, bearing scythe and hourglass, reminder and scourge of mortality, warning and threatening by turns, but rather a youth, well boned and muscled, splendid in his carriage, full-haired and fair, through whose luscious cheeks and reddish lips the blood of centuries ran. Death, then, was a glorious youth and the master delighted in such an image, being unafraid of the attentions of such a memorable creation. Not a fallen angel, not a species of devil, not punishment or rebuke, death came in the guise of a messenger, a Hermes, who invited his guests to attend upon a more marvelous banquet, one eternally in process, one forever replenished with new guests.

But at the funeral of the master, the preaching monsignor had not known of Maillol's fancy; he spoke, rather, of death as a ministry of release, as the closing of the door to the antechamber of life, as a finality whose only promise of renewal lay in the great faith of the Church that the tomb of Gethsemane had been empty and that the Jesus of the flesh would pass into the Christ of judgment.

"Judgment," Estienne heard and whispered to Helene, his voice hoarse, and she started, hearing the word and thinking her own thoughts, and half rose from her seat in fright.

The death of Maillol allowed the Delahayes to pause. As a complex machine, raised upon blocks, is required to respond to the ignition, turning over, whirling, but abrading no surface, the Delahayes were being tuned.

It was not death in an abstract way or even the particular death of Maillol that was the occasion of taking their lives off the road and submitting them to scrutiny; but rather it was the sheer unnaturalness of time which is the proper atmosphere of death. Somehow the vigil, the funeral itself, the interment, the gathering of friends and family at the house afterward, the closing of the house and the inventory of its contents-in which both Estienne and Helene participated, working long and exhausting hours to complete the task-provided a stasis in which to recollect their existence. In the time of death one becomes used to sitting for endless hours-merely sitting, not even talking particularly, sucking on familiar thoughts, old illusions, pulling without real energy at frayed ends and loose buttons, perhaps unraveling, perhaps not; snagging, devising, temporizing silently with one's own history; rising occasionally to pass somebody a cup of tea or a cake, remarking upon the dead, noting one or another gentility or gesture of the departed, and returning again to one's thoughts. And so an hour or

more would pass, and distant neighbors come to call would depart, making way for others; the tight circle would remain-the intimates, the family, the servants, the assistants and colleagues, among whom were Estienne Delahaye and his wife Helene, who returned after the body had been settled in the cemetery and passed the remainder of the day at the house in Banyuls-sur-Mer. Helene rose after a half hour and passed into the kitchen, with which she was unfamiliar, to help the housekeeper and her daughter, while Estienne began a quiet conversation with the monsignor, who confessed, not without a moist eye, how much he had loved Maillol and before him Maillol's old aunt, who had raised the master and given him a smile or two when he was an orphaned boy. Unnatural time it was, vortical time, a cone of time which enfolds death and inserts it like a shaft in the midst of the ordinariness of ordinary days, causing everyone whom it touches to freeze and for a moment to hold steady.

A month after the funeral, Helene went to Estienne's atelier to help him clean the windows. She hadn't been in the studio for more than a year.

"My God, it's been a long time."

"A very long time. I don't understand why," he answered. The worktable, long and narrow, fashioned of planks that lay athwart wooden horses, was covered with plaster dust and wood shavings. The storage space at the back seemed like a frozen regiment: every species of soldiery from dwarfs to giants, grimly white, drained of blood, stood upon pedestals, some artificially supported by rods, others standing free, while others hung from the air as if seized by the nape of their necks; and in another comer, separated from the military, observing them walleyed, were women of incomprehensible beauty, not as many women as soldiers, fewer than a dozen, several in black marble, one in dull bronze, several roughly carved in wood, a complexity of planes and surfaces; and about their pediments, recumbent at their feet, a sleeping panther carved in sandstone, a smaller puma whose tail curved down in high relief, an Abyssinian cat, ears pointed, its front paws raised upon a bronze base as though about to jump to the shoulder of the naked woman who smiled above it.

"An immense amount of work!" Helene admired.

"And much of it gone already. That's what we've been living on, you know."

"Yes," Helene replied, not quite comprehending, for at the time she knew nothing of the proceeds from the sale and delivery of sculptures.

Helene set about cleaning the table, using a duster which she whisked about the objects, but leaving a thin layer of dust at their base, as though afraid of coming too close or touching them. She was intimidated by these strange people. Estienne, handing her the scouring brush, directed her to the pail of soapy water which he had prepared for washing the windows. Helene was pleased to turn her back to the room and begin cleaning the large bay windows that looked out upon a rolling field.

They hardly talked for the next hour. Not until they returned to the cottage for lunch did Helene grip his hand suddenly, while they were drinking their coffee: "It's six years we're married, and you've made all the children."

11

A telegram arrived from Alain Malburet one Monday morning in April. Paris was liberated and the Allies were driving north into Germany. It was a typical announcement: "Ugliness will descend into the midst of beauty any day now. Amities. Alain." The following week he arrived on foot from Port Vendres, where the bus from Perpignan had left him in the town square near the gendarmerie. It was late in the afternoon. Estienne and Helene had gone for a walk through the pine forest that came down almost to the sea. Alain let himself into the cottage, which he recognized instantly; Estienne had described it to him in considerable detail when they had seen each other in Paris the year before. No other cottage on the road was painted white and blue wash, with a carved oak door and windows that looked like the gingerbread openings

in the house of Hansel and Gretel, small panes of glass through which distorted images and spectral light could pass, Alain thought. "Cozy, cozy, cozy," he repeated with disgust, but he was delighted and relieved that his friends did not lock their door, even though French circumspection dictated a more fastidious and ungenerous response to strangers. He made himself at home in the living room, fetching a bottle of wine and pouring himself a tumbler, taking out his notebook of the road, and jotting in it a line or two he had fashioned on the bus ride, and an observation about an abandoned German tank the bus had passed along the highway, overturned but intact-not a mark upon it, but somehow wrecked.

Alain learned the directions to the cottage by asking at the mairie. The notary who was busily writing in his ledgers had looked up when he inquired about the Delahayes and examined him carefully. "Those!" he exclaimed with disgust, but told him nonetheless, carefully and precisely, adding that he was a neighbor although he never talked with them.

"They don't seem well loved, if I can judge by your attitude, Monsieur. "

"Quite right, Monsieur. Not well loved at all. They've done pretty well, you know, while all the rest of us have been fighting the war."

Alain, disgusted, although curious about his friends' poor reputation, remarked to the cracked old scribe, "I don't think you've done all that much fighting, sir," and left.

It was after dark when they returned; they had not really enjoyed their walk together and, although expecting Alain's arrival, found him asleep on the living room floor, his head resting upon a cushion he had removed from the window seat. He seemed to Helene too easily at home, perhaps because she recognized that after nearly six years she had still to make this loaned cottage into something of her own; it still belonged to Maillol; the furniture, the crockery, the bedding-nothing, with the possible exception of the food she bought, had been introduced by her own taste, not even the little head Estienne had carved of her which stood upon the mantel of the fireplace, since he had neither given it to her nor, as we have noted, had she accepted it as an authentic transcription of her beauty. They began to tidy up around the sleeping figure of their friend, straightening and cleaning, hopingthey could finish and

have dinner prepared before he awakened. Estienne was returning the ashtrays to their places and Helene was piling the magazines when they heard a voice behind them: "A beautiful head, but not up to the beauty of the living." Helene heard him, flushed with embarrassment, but turned and bent down to kiss Alain's cheek. He was bearded. Neither of them had noticed, as he had slept buried in the comfort of his arm, half-submerged in the pillow. "My God, Alain, what have you grown?" she laughed and, thinking again, kissed him. "How you must tickle your girlfriends!"

"They love it," he laughed. "Estienne, mon vieux, how glorious to see you and Helene, as 1 said, more and more beautiful." He stood up and embraced Estienne and kissed Helene, and hugged Estienne once more. He was a bear, a warm, immense bear, with a face turned to sag, his beard, full and black, covering virtually everything up to his cheeks and growing wild beneath his chin, obscuring the ridged and coarse skin which had earlier announced the ravages of his untrimmed life.

"When did you grow it?" Estienne asked when they had seated themselves and broken out a fresh bottle of wine.

"While 1 was in the hospital," he answered with a sudden note of grimness.

"Hospital?"

"I was wounded ten months ago during a diversionary attack we made on a German emplacement in the Dordogne while the Allies were making a parachute drop. 1 got one in the thigh. Don't move as smoothly as 1 used to. Bit of a limp, but while 1 was recovering 1 got a long look at myself and, having become bored with my ugly face, decided to cover it over with the beard. I'm quite splendid now, don't you think?"

Helene smiled and touched Alain's leg with a reassuring palm.

"No. Not that one."

"No. No.1 didn't mean," she said, flustered. "You're teasing me again."

"Again? We haven't seen each other since you married. My dear girl, we haven't enough history, certainly not of teasing."

"But 1 only meant affection."

"I know that, dear Helene. Don't be upset by my bearish ways. 1 am, you see, a true bear now, not simply one shorn and naked. And 1 can assure you, after the life I've seen during the past years,

my bear teeth are all but worn out. Is it all right if I rest up with you a bit? Not long, a few weeks at the most. It's another inferno in Paris. Good to be here. Good to be here. Especially for both of you. They're shooting collaborators right and left."

"And what's that supposed to mean, Alain?" Estienne demanded, suddenly angry and defensive.

"That's all I wanted to know. I know you when you become outraged. It isn't true. Thank God for that."

"It most certainly isn't true. I know what these villagers think. I never made a sou from the Germans."

"But did you work for them?"

"Not a single piece."

"But they say, over at the mairie, that you've prospered. Yes?"

"We've just survived, like all the rest of France."

"I see, old man. Let's forget it. It's obviously jealousy. They never understand the artist, do they?"

"Never. Never. Damned bourgeoisie. If it continues we'll have to clear out."

"Oh, it'll pass, once things settle. But stay here for the while. It's too furious in Paris, everybody explaining to each other. It's like a mass confessional-recriminations, expiations. More like a public urinal, I say, everybody pissing on their neighbors. 'I'm a better Frenchman than you.' It's a pain in the ass. I decided to clear out and come down to see myoid friends." His face lit up; a smile, Helene thought, came across his face, but it was hard to be certain; only the crinkles beneath his eyes suggested a smile, but then his face was weathered and she wasn't sure.

12

I

During the days of Maillol's decline and death and the period of mourning which followed, and now with the arrival of Alain Malburet, Helene had little time to think about the young student she had met in the village several months earlier. Paul Verace had just

finished the lycee that spring, and although it was uncertain whether he would be able to attend courses in the local college in Perpignan -he wanted to become an engineer-he described to Helene the bridges he would rebuild, the highways, tiered and interlocked, with which he dreamed to replace the miserable road which linked France and Spain-as though these schemes were near at hand, awaiting only opportunity to be realized, omitting from his dreaming the years of study and apprenticeship which would of necessity intervene. They had met, ordinarily enough, in a crowded cafe in the square of Port Vendres. Exhausted from shopping, Helene had asked to sit at his table where he was reading, buried in a biography of Georges Eiffel from which once or twice he raised his head to look off into space, his soft brown eyes wandering, while he cogitated.

Helene had left the cottage that morning after an agitated night during which she had tried to arouse Estienne to love her. Each time she sought to coax him, he had muttered, "Not now, not now, tomorrow," and turned over, indifferent to her need. It had been that way for some time, Estienne unable or unwilling, she had no idea, to reply to her importunings. They had not made love for ten days, and although she was not desperate, she had at that moment no alternatives, with the result that she began to feel an eerie hollowness in the pit of her stomach, the slight ringing of confusion in her ears, which she always mistook for sexual need. She had left their bed and gone out into the warm night air, where she smoked one cigarette after another, trying to solicit calm. It was something of a pattern; she was familiar with its history although, not dissimilarly from millions of others who at that hour sat in their own gardens, containing the anxieties of the night, she resorted at last to removing it by the indulgence of an easy and familiar release which bore in its wake a vast physical exhaustion into which she sank, falling asleep huddled in the canvas lawn chair. When she awakened, the sun having already risen from behind the wall of cypress trees a mile away, she was again disgusted with the remedies of the night, and her anxiety returned. She wished to speak to Estienne, to ask the few questions which she needed to ask, to solicit the simple clarifications which her confusions demanded, but she had never learned to speak directly to a man. Such speech had always been conducted in circumspection, in gestures and rituals, and hav-

ing failed to speak with her father, who, until the moment of Estienne's descent into her midst, was the only man with whom she had had a prolonged contact, she was without the means of securing reassurance, except of course by making love. Unfortunately, as she had come to learn, making love was as much a language of gesture and ritual, without settled meanings-quite as susceptible of deception and misreading-as her father's tender kiss when she presented him with his alpaca each evening.

Paul Verace, on the other hand, obliged her to speak, to find a language to accompany intercourse-to exclaim upon the emotions which were generated by making love, to describe perhaps too meticulously, for he was an aspirant to engineering, upon the connections and links which enlarged their lovemaking from caressed thigh and kissed buttock into lines from French poetry which he had learned in school. But the point of importance was that the simple machinery of arousal and release had acquired the elevation of engineering-that is, process with design-and hence a kind of eloquence, although he inevitably resorted to ergs to describe passion and ohms to signify resistance. He used that language; she nonetheless responded happily, for it was metaphor, and making love required more than Estienne's delicious smile of contentment and falling asleep.

They had made love more than a dozen times during the weeks when Estienne was busy with the monument to German conquest, but by the time Maillol returned to die, Helene had become alarmed by the increasingly desperate intensity of Paul's loving. He held her long after they had been satisfied, and once he cried when she rose from their bed and announced that she had to return home earlier than he had supposed. He despaired of keeping her interested, and at subsequent meetings he had arrived almost prepared with new material to fascinate her, but she had exhausted her curiosity about engineering, and although he had, it must be acknowledged, spoken marvelously of the difference between the Egyptian and the Mayan pyramids and of the flying buttresses in the cathedrals of medieval France, her own intellectual curiosity was flagging. But this was not true really. It was what her smoking during his little talks, which he conducted upon her naked stomach (building the pyramids upon her groin and demonstrating the flying buttress in a way which might be considered obscene), was construed

by him to mean. As he became persuaded that he was losing her, his importunities increased and his desperation became more severe; but actually it was her feeling for him, growing deeper and more frightening, that required the smoking in bed, the application of lipstick, the need to pee just as he became excited-all means of evading not him, but herself, her own feeling that this was a young man who loved her not because she was beautiful, not because she was rich, but merely because she appeared to love him in return, to be there when they agreed, to be always on time. It was in fact the case that she began to feel something which might have been love for this dark-haired, moody, serious young boy.

The return of Maillol to die in Banyuls-sur-Mer was an intervention, obliging Helene for the first time to leave a written message at the shop where Paul worked that she would not be able to keep their rendezvous and that for some time to come it would be impossible for them to meet. She had thought to leave the note at that, but recognized that its bleakness constituted an inexplicable termination which would undoubtedly bring Paul to despair. Of course, had she been certain that she wished to end it then and there, it would have been appropriate to leave the message without hope, but she added a "Ie t'aime" and followed that with a series of exclamation marks which could not but soften the blow and transform it from rejection into something more mysterious, the declaration that, despite her love, she was prisoner to another obligation. And such it was, an obligation which Helene sensed, not alone to Estienne, who was her first love, her husband, father of her uncompleted child, and artist-let us not forget artist-but even more to her own father, whom she adored and, one assumes, despised and to whom the haste and thoughtlessness of her marriage and the succession of her lovers (essentially carnal boyfriends) were offered in tribute and rebuke.

During the weeks that passed since Helene had last seen Paul, the passion of "1 love you" had waned to the evocative and sweet "1 remember you," as she did at odd moments, sitting with Estienne in the garden at sunset or recalling Paul's face with a shudder in the church when the monsignor had spoken of the Judgment. Even these faded, and only when she made love to Estienne in the desultory and offhand manner to which she had become accustomed did she superimpose upon the occasion the remembrance of Paul's

tenderness and enthusiasm. She understood, however, that it was no longer Paul himself whom she recalled but only a ritual memento which enabled her to bear the irresolution of her marriage.

In all this, however, the recurrence of memory and association, the Paul Verace of life, the lanky boy who worked in a stationer's shop and dreamed of becoming an engineer, was all but forgotten. Several times she encountered him unavoidably, but on the last occasion she did not even see him. She had bought a newspaper the day after Alain Malburet's arrival in Port Vendres. She had paid the money to the old woman at the kiosk and was about to thrust the paper into her shopping basket when her eye was caught by a photograph on the front page. A woman, her head shaved, was being marched through lines of citizens who shouted at her, their fists raised in the air; the woman, no older than Helene, shielding her face with her arms, walked through. The photograph, taken in Bordeaux, carried the editorial caption: "A Warning to Collaborators!" Helene gasped in horror and Paul, who had undoubtedly noticed her from the stationer's shop and watched her reaction, rushed out to help her, but she had already turned and begun to run down the street.

When she arrived at the cottage, Estienne and Alain were sitting over a drink, talking about art and poetry. Helene did not give them a chance to speak, but threw down the newspaper on the floor before them. "I don't want that to happen to me," she cried, bursting into tears. "I'm no collaborator. I don't care about politics. I don't know anything about politics." On and on she went, shouting, until her speech became incoherent, virtually hysterical, and Estienne, who had taken her around the waist and held her to himself, quieted her. When she was seated, rubbing her red eyes and sipping a cognac which Alain had poured, Estienne began to speak with remarkable quiet and firmness. "Once and for all, let's be done with this business. The Germans wanted sculptures from me. I made the mistake of meeting with them on several occasions to discuss the work. I was probably misguided, but like you, Helene, I have no politics. I make my work and I sell it; I am asked to make work and I execute it. In this case, it turns out, it is best that no work was commissioned by the Germans and I made none for them. I did make a number of pieces for Vichy, but they were not political pieces-they were commemoratives which honor our

dead, French dead, and who can blame me for that? Don't be afraid, Helene. I will protect you." And then, as an afterthought, as though what he had said had not been enough, he added, "I will certainly protect you. lowe you that much."

It was later, perhaps a week, and several days before Alain announced he was returning to Paris, that Helene asked Estienne casually, "And whatever did you mean by that line about owing me something?"

Estienne, who had been drawing at the dining room table while Alain paced before the fireplace cracking walnuts, stopped and thought. Alain remembered instantly, but Estienne, perhaps genuinely not remembering, asked, "When did I say anything like that?"

"You remember. It was last week, when I was upset."

"Did I really speak of owing you something? I can't imagine what I must have been thinking. Do you recall my saying anything like that, Alain? It doesn't sound like me."

"Indeed, it doesn't, but you said precisely that. I remember the line. You said, 'At least I owe you protection.'

"How remarkable! Well, of course I owe Helene protection. She's my wife, after all."

"No, Alain, that wasn't it. It meant something else. I can't remember the exact words, but the phrase caught me like a fishbone in my throat: I can neither swallow it nor, it appears, am I able to bring it up again. But the sense was different, as though Estienne were saying that, having failed in other respects, he at least owed me protection."

"Failed? Do you think I've failed you?" He paused and then continued. "We might as well. It's easier with Alain here. He can moderate the dispute," Estienne added with jocular unease.

"I'm not looking for an argument, although it's about time we argued. We haven't stopped for a minute pretending that we're miraculously happy, but I must confess, Estienne, I have not been miraculously happy since our last week in Vezelay, and that was before we were married."

Helene spoke with unfamiliar directness, unqualified by that tentativeness of phrasing which had always marked her almost supplicatory questions to Estienne, as though she were afraid, not of the confrontation itself, but of what it would reveal. The same

afternoon, while she was sitting in the cottage bedroom, combing her hair, Estienne's curious phrase had come back to her and for the first time in years she decided to leave her hair loose and long rather than to wind it about her head and bun it at the back. She kept repeating to herself, as her resolve to speak grew, that she could take the consequences, that she could leave, that she could go to Paul if she wanted, that she could return to her father if that were necessary, but that she couldn't stand another moment without understanding.

"I didn't know."

"That's true. You didn't know. I have been a very young girl to you for many years, but I stopped being a very young girl to everyone else some time ago."

"What do you mean?"

"Isn't it clear, Estienne? I've had lovers besides you."

Alain Malburet shifted uneasily, suddenly finding the conversation disagreeable, too serious, too full of truth without metaphor.

"Do you really need to go into that, Helene?" he interposed.

"Not you, Alain?" asked Estienne.

"Don't be stupid. Even if I had wanted her, when could I have arranged it?"

Estienne Delahaye sat becalmed. He could hardly speak, although it wasn't the shock of unjust betrayal, but that the simple disclosure of what all along he had hoped for had come to pass. For his part, over those years of war, while he had applied himself to his work, each day rationalizing yet another decision of compromise and complicity-for he had desperately sought commissions from the Germans, but had been denied them-he had hoped that Helene would betray him, but he had no wish to learn of it. He had lost passion for her body, if indeed it had ever been authentic passion. Estienne was not a man beset by such emotions; he was too troubled by the struggle to stretch his talent into a major career to allow himself the indulgence of wild passions. Of course, it is true that many minor talents press the faulted energies of their imagination into the living of large and exuberant lives-drinking and drugging their flesh into an excess which remains memorable long after their works have been sold off to interior decorators, but Estienne, born poor and understood as oppressed, was not allowed

the license of such a burning-out; for him, the avoidance of renewed poverty, the conversion of talent into wealth, was a project which allowed no interference. Helene was beauty (and adornment) and wealth (and a buffer against poverty) and youth (and passive). Unexamined, this was all true, and the decision to seduce her was consummated precipitously against the background of irritations and competitions. In fact, however undeniable her beauty and youth, her wealth proved modest, and whatever function it served until Estienne Delahaye's career was securely launched, it was not enough to justify the decision to marry. Helene was, in a word, used; and she, surmising the use, was using in turn. The familiar and desperate human orbit was activated and spinning. The punishment of which Estienne had dreamed when he observed Helene's discontent and unhappiness was to be betrayed. He was well aware that he had served her badly, that he was virtually without interest in the marriage or its consolations, that he would be childless, which the world could use to explain the malaise of their relationship, although he knew more profoundly that children would have been a diversion, not a solution, and the absence of them was a blessing. He wanted Helene about for her enumerated virtues, but he wanted her free of any obligations. In effect, he wished the appearance of being married-industrious artist and his handsome wife-but was perfectly willing to be punished for havingbetrayed her first.

"And so what's to be done?" Estienne asked, rousing himself, having run through the argument in his head. Confronted by the question, Helene was suddenly without ideas. All those that she had entertained now appeared foolish. She could not admit to him that she had thought of returning to her father, and Paul Verace had become a memory. She, for her part, was losing the conviction of her resolution to understand. It was a relief to both of them that Alain began to speak.

"It's quite amazing, the two of you. The world is just emerging from the most disastrous war in its history. Armies are still fighting. Most of Europe is destroyed, and the two of you sit at the foot of the sublime Pyrenees, hidden away from history, and discuss your domestic infelicity. Why don't we have dinner?"

History, of course, was to be the occasion of the considerable financial and social success of Estienne Delahaye. Not history construed by the historian who wishes to describe the complexity of the course of men and nations, but history conserved by popular imagination, a record of large events and oversized persons, its victories and its victorious, its catastrophes and its dead.

During the fifteen years which passed since the end of the war, Estienne Delahaye succeeded to an enviable uniqueness, having become the most celebrated of monumental sculptors. He had expanded his repertoire from memento mori to the living, being called upon by the cities of France not alone to commemorate their fallen, but to immortalize their rich and powerful. He was sculptor to the government, but he was also sculptor to industry, commissioned to make large historical reliefs for public centers and concert halls, to provide for them improvisations of French history in a style which would be willingly appreciated while remaining significant and modern. He preferred marble for those of his sculptures which stood free in gardens, and for those in the foyers of industrial centers and for wall reliefs, polished brass afforded the shimmer of gold. Whatever original talent for sculpture Delahaye had possessed as he had learned it in the atelier of Maillol had been suppressed in favor of a pleasing style, virtually anonymous in its palatibility, but always dated and signed with his monogram. He never exhibited his sculpture in museums; he had no need for galleries and dealers; he had contempt for art critics and connoisseurs. He knew, perhaps, although his behavior belied the recognition, that he had passed over from sculptor into a maker of sculptures, as very often architects of promise end as wealthy builders, and as abstract painters, losing nerve, resume the craft of portraiture. He served society to replicate its vanity, enhance its misconstruction of the past, and in the process acquired the styles, manners, and

habits of luxury which expressed his gratitude to the society for having favored him.

Estienne Delahaye complained about success no differently than he had remonstrated with the tedium and difficulties of poverty. Both entailed concentration, long hours, unflagging energy, and the connivance of fortune; in the case of poverty there was added the nagging hostility of impatient tradesmen, the condescension of patrons, the wearying contentions with an imagination which dreamed on a generous scale but had to be content with modesty of proportion and meanness of materials; while success, no less exacting, placed an unfamiliar value upon social flexibility, the willingness to be employed as artist to fashionable tables and salons, wit without acerbity, opinion without repetitiveness, and throughout-keeping well dressed and attractive-the continuous production of works which commanded attention (that is, money), and in its train public comment (that is, enough controversy to provoke and secure both jealous enemies and sympathetic friends), and, in consequence of all this, to be talked about and hence to be desirable and sought after. Estienne Delahaye knew that patrons collected art and paid for it; his wife had learned and come to understand, even better, that patrons collected artists and, paying less for them, paid longer.

14

The country house in Mougins, white and wicker, had been built during an earlier prosperous decade by an English family whose money derived from land in Lancashire. In the aftermath of the war, death duties and the decline of rents obliged the Playfairs to dispose of the property and, although amused to think that an artist could afford such an establishment, they were willing to allow the local estate agent to effect the purchase at a price somewhat below their original stipulation. Helene, not at all impressed by the distinction of the country Playfairs, bargained astutely, and tele-

grams passed between them and the agent for more than two weeks, while she and Alexandre, their secretary, a young aspirant to sculpture whom she had met at a vernissage six months earlier and invited home to take up his duties, drove about the countryside, eating splendidly and rising late.

Estienne did not begrudge Helene her trip south to negotiate the property. It had been an exhausting fall; two enormous sculptures, one for a garden in Neuilly-sur-Seine and another for an automobile plant in the Midi, had to be installed and the press openings coordinated, and in both of these activities Helene's dexterous management was called upon to the fullest. He did not begrudge this to her, nor, for that matter, did he question her casual announcement that Alexandre, whose impossible Slavic surname he was unable to remember, would accompany her so dictation could continue. He accepted the young and attentive secretary, whose eyes fastened upon everything with a glow of interest and familiarity which belied the fact that he was, like most of his generation, virtually without information or opinion. Alexandre Whatever was nonetheless handsome and he pleased Helene, whose age, though still less than his own, was advancing with the same inexorability.

When Estienne Delahaye joined Helene for her birthday in the south of France on the fifth day of January he already felt unwell. He had been urged to visit a doctor, but, other than for an attack of bronchitis, he had seen none since an army doctor had declined his services at the beginning of the war. He contended, as do most robust and industrious workers who are unfamiliar with sickness, that all he needed was a rest, but his ashen complexion and unusually slow pace, walking from the train station to the automobile, suggested differently. They arrived at the country house about noon, and the cook had prepared a small birthday feast-a terrine, a fish soup, and a simplepouleta l'estragon-whichtheyconsumed slowly, taking their brandies to the garden where they sat in sweaters and admired the view. Estienne suggested a nap, while Helene urged a drive through the countryside. It was agreed that both should have their way and remeet again in the late afternoon.

Estienne Delahaye slept, awakened several times by a pain in his right arm. It was probably after four in the afternoon that he awakened fully, his arm smarting as though he had slept upon it and

suppressed its circulation, but that explanation, good for the arm, did not explain the constriction in his chest and his difficulty in breathing. Imagining that he was suffering a further implication of his weariness, he put on his robe and walked to the study, where his desk had been straightened to await his arrival, the papers from his briefcase unpacked by the secretary and arranged, and the appointment pad, turned appropriately to the day of his arrival, set out near the telephone. He would not have known the time of the attack had not the white porcelain clock, which Mrs. Playfair had insinuated as appropriately "country" into her husband's subdued study, sounded the hour. The small chime and hum of the mechanism, the striking of five, at the first stroke a pain, but with each successive stroke oxygen arrived more slowly, and with the last, as silence returned to the study and a group of birds to the feeder outside the window, Estienne lost consciousness.

It was during his recovery that his doctor in the hospital in Nice set in motion a course of recollection which-like the disjointed road markers on a map through which the anxious traveler has drawn a line, binding together into a route what had been merely arbitrary notations on the map--obliged Estienne Delahaye to convert simple coincidence into fatality.

The doctor's interview, begun the week after intensive care and the light-headed confusion of sedation had passed, commenced with his innocent assertion, "And so it all began at five o'clock on the fifth." The doctor continued, eliciting from Estienne's brief replies the patient's observation of his symptoms. Only after his departure did Estienne recollect the phrase and with it fragments of his life, long ago accessioned in the vast and dusty archive of his memory.

"At five o'clock on the fifth," he kept repeating, urged by some prescience to pursue the phrase, to compel fives and fifths to reappear, until the first approached, unbidden: the oldest daughter of five, and fifth among his students, the accidental fifth who entered the classroom to win compassion with her tale of an artstruck father. He annotated these fragments within a numerical order of abstraction, signifying by five and fifths not a stream of recollection but a determination of his fate, fixed long ago in the experiments of his childhood, remembering as though yesterday his

grave preoccupation with one and five, his plottings of the tide of days, Mondays and Fridays, January and May, one beyond midday and five in the afternoon, until by the end of the evening, when the nurse came to give him his night pills, he was so alarmed that he dared not fall asleep until the ticking clock was covered with a towel and the lamp in the corner of the room was illuminated.

By the time he returned to Mougins, the list of coincidences had lengthened into a coherent document of obsession, each five diagramed to form a configuration of his life; events of the seduction (even the number five above Helene's room at Vezelay was now installed into the system) crossed with interpretations of sculpture, with hidden significances that none but he would have observed, the placement of five panels in his commemoration of the Allied landing at Cherbourg, a commission he had won in competition with fifteen other sculptors; and thereafter, even though he was obliged, as Helene pointed out, to force and misconstrue, he insisted upon the discovery of pentagraphy in each and every one of his major works-until, listening to him discourse upon the subject, one would think that where before there had been an enlarged heart which, strained by work and exhaustion, had weakened and collapsed, a febrile five had now been inserted by a malign divinity.

The obsession became awesome. Days which he should have passed in the sun, warmly wrapped in blankets, drinking nourishing beverages, reading books, visiting with friends who, learning of his illness, passed through to cheer him, turned now into tiresome discourses on the fatality of numbers. Helene, hardly suspecting the implication of his obsession, was at first baffled and disturbed, confusing the fixity of his notions with a derangement of his mind, and repeatedly telephoned to Paris, consulting with a specialist who treated such disorders, but was advised by him to disregard this manifestation and to trust that as strength returned the obsession would pass. The attack, however, had been massive enough to require that Estienne alter his habits: only morning work was permissible, late day rests were mandatory, and modest diet and modest drink vigorously enforced. The judgment of the learned specialist was for a time confirmed, for it should be noted that the obsession retained its almost heraldic character, never acquiringas it might have done were Estienne Delahaye to become paranoid

-bizarre patterns of magical contrivance. Estienne did not object, for instance, to five people in a room; or, as a madman might, avoid five successive steps, counting and interrupting in order to move but four, and then stopping so that the sequence might be recommenced; or alter clocks to abolish five from the repertoire of time. It was not, therefore, that Estienne feared the assault of five and consequently avoided its presentation, but rather that he imagined his life, having come under the dominion of a number, would unfold according to its regulation. His fear, then, was not of a number but of ineluctability, not of the open course of life but of the certainty of death by which he had already been threatened: this fear prompted his preoccupation. Or so the Parisian specialist explained. "Lightly, then," he cautioned, "treat it lightly. It's not life he fears, but death."

Late in April, three months after his attack, the matter took an unanticipated turn. Helene had driven into the countryside with Alexandre, whose presence Estienne hardly acknowledged other than to motion to him from time to time to bring him the paper or remove an empty cup. Estienne had complained of tiredness, and after luncheon together, during which he had been unusually irritable, refusing to address a single word to Alexandre and churlishly demanding that Helene pass him something which lay directly in the young man's reach, she had recommended that he rest in bed that afternoon and promised to return not later than six or sixthirty. They drove off and Estienne, who had not bothered that day to dress properly, contenting himself with a blue silk robe and slippers, returned to his bedroom where he read, napped, took his medicines, and somehow ignored the time of day.

It was, one would think, sometime before five in the afternoon that he left the room and moved to the sun porch which overhung the garden, a small veranda covered with a retractable awning which at this hour of day was drawn to conserve the coolness and shade. He sipped a glass of cold water and, stretched out comfortably, admired the valley of pine trees through a glaze of harsh light, no longer hot but nonetheless intense and blinding. His senses charged by the light, the bits of conversation which announced the early return of Helene and Alexandre were lost to him; only when they were seated beneath him in the garden, out of his view,

turned like himself to the brilliance of the glistening valley, did their voices rise up to him, distinct and clear, their speech apostrophized with terms of affection, each telling by turns the details of their life, an afternoon of autobiography about to be concluded. Alexandre's childhood was soon exhausted, for he had no maturity, but hers she recounted from Barcelona days: the early death of her mother, the other girls, the patriarchal pharmacist who suffered now from kidney stones, the marriage to Estienne, and the loss of their child.

"A child? I didn't know you'd had a child," Alexandre said, unaccountably amused.

"But of course. It's done, you know, at least once."

"And what became of it? Boy, girl? You've hardly made it clear."

"I believe a girl, but I'm not certain. It was long ago."

"And what happened?"

"Eighteen years ago I tripped and lost the little thing. Couldn't ever have a child again. Yes, eighteen years now. For a while I missed it. I've always wanted to make something of my own. It's curious, isn't it-almost confirms Estienne's obsession-that the miscarriage took place (I'll never forget that date), on May fifth."

Estienne had heard it through the sun which pierced a bank of clouds, burning his eyes; rubbing them, blinded in red, whispering to himself the incantatory fifth, he began to cry. He recognized what he had all his life known he must fear-the conjugation of judgment which is terminated in death. Fives and fifths were little more, he understood, than warnings to prepare and to avoid; make conscious the system that governs life, and a small time-not vast in years, but reckoned in parcels borrowed against collateral accumulated in a lifetime-might still be his. He wept, but not for long; they were tears of resolution, little more. Beyond the point of middle age, but old; the grayness returned; the ashen face, drained of blood; a slight giddiness as though nauseated by the swallowing of a bitter medicine the system requires but cannot easily digest.

The conversation below continued, but he had no wish to interrupt it; softly he moved from the veranda and returned to his bed.

In the days that followed, resolution condensed a strategy, for

no longer did any five or fifth disturb him, and he no longer spoke of his obsession. It was a simple maneuver but one incontestably confirmed by convergence to the fifth and five of days. Several minutes before the hour of five in the afternoon, Helene would join him in the bedroom, a warming cup of chocolate on a tray, and there, hand in hand most strangely, they would sit until the hour struck and passed, and then, putting aside the beverage, he would draw up the covers and sleep through his hour of remission. The consolation of her presence, its assurance that, if the signal sounded and his heart exploded, she would be there to tell him her forgiveness was enough to inhibit the governing machineries of his fate. The clocks of the house were all checked and certified-a repairer come to call from Nice had spent most of a day examining the mechanisms; the porcelain clock of the study, the night clock with phosphorescent hands that stood beside Helene's dressing table, all wristwatches and pendant watches, and finally an elegant timepiece which stood upon the armoire that faced his bed-a splendid mechanism set in semiprecious jewels, fashioned for a general of the czar-were all scrutinized, all synchronized, all monitored by the specialist of clocks and set according to the master clock that somewhere was regarded by connoisseurs of time as absolute. It could not have been otherwise that the prisoner of obsession should fall, one day, victim to his own devising. He was so irrational to begin with, so lacking in science, so tied to a melancholy which passed speech and understanding, how could it not be that on the fifth of May, at five o'clock in the afternoon, Estienne, full of fear, went up to his room some minutes before the hour, having alerted Helene to the awesomeness of the day and the hour. She had heard him warn her of the time, and both at once had looked from the veranda to the porcelain clock upon his study desk, and noting that ten minutes remained before the hour of five, he departed, and she-still irritated by some remark of Alexandre, who sat dark and glowering before her, immaculate in his white flannels-turned back to reply.

How many minutes had passed, who could be certain, for the scream shattered any precision of accounting. They mounted the stairs and' reached the bedroom as Estienne died. The hand of the jeweled clock had passed the hour of five-just passed, two

minutes now, perhaps three. Helene returned quickly to the study and there, astonishingly, the clock began to sound the hour, to chime and hum, and each stroke of five rang through the quiet room and drifted out to the veranda and the soundless valley.

Helene Delahaye, born into the family of Miravilla, returned to Barcelona several years after the death of her husband, the monumental sculptor. She had managed to conserve his wealth, to distribute authorized editions of his major works, selling several at considerable prices. She invested the money and, during the prosperous decade that preceded the recession still in progress, she accumulated substantial wealth with which, added to the modest inheritance she received upon her father's death, she bought an apartment in the fashionable section of old Barcelona. She kept the shutters closed; she enjoyed her spacious garden; and she managed, her failing beauty enhanced by wealth, to maintain from time to time one or another young man who accompanied her each week across the border into France, not far from Port Vendres, where she gambled in the casino, winning and losing of an evening considerable sums which she could easily afford.

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