II

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

—The Clementine Recognitions, Book V

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Yes sar, but Mister Brown, sar . . .

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

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

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

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

—Yes. Of course.

—You have really observed one, sar?

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

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

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

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

—I've never been there.

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

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

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

—For what purpose, Fuller?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Fuller . . . ?

—Sar?

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

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

—Yes, yes, Michelangelo tried it.

—What appearance he give to Him, sar?

—An old man.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—And you find them unnecessary, do you?

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

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

—And you just believe God is there.

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

—The preacher?

—Sar?

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

—Reverend Gilbert Sullivan?

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

—But what requirement, Fuller? What requirement?

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

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

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

—The mermaids . . . the mermaids . . .

—Yes, sar.

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

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

—Yes, there does. There does.

—But the mermaid womans . . .

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

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

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

—Sar?

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

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

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

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

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

—Effluvium? Brown muttered, under his breath.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wild Gousse Chase, Otto read on the title page.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lay heavy on her perspicacious Now.

(Still on the dreadful teeth of time she trod,

And marveled at the maleness of god.)

Sweet Norah Winebisquit, bedewed with sleep,

Awoke this decorated painted heap

Of present woman: could she doubt her sin?

Sought furiously for the flame within,

Presented in a naked leaping cry

The burning plunder of the present I.

Pride drew her garments up, and swathed her face

In lineaments incapable of disgrace.

Slipped then away, her face bedewed with do,

Beyond the glass, and knowing all, she knew

That the immortals have their ashcans too.

—Yes sir?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Not only that . . .

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

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

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

—He says you lifted . . .

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

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

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

—Where'd you hear that?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Who?

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

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

—Your modesty is overwhelming, as always.

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

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

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

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

—You've seen him? What about?

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

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

Valentine raised his eyebrows. —My what?

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

—My private life is hardly any concern . . .

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

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

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

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

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

—I could tell . . .

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

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

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

—We're in business.

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

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

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

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

—And if these forgeries were discovered?

—What do you mean, discovered.

—I might have said, exposed.

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

—But if he ...

—He?

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

—What do you mean?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Sar . . .

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

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

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

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

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

—Fuller? he said suddenly.

—Sar . . . ?

—What have you been up to, Fuller?

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

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

—Fuller?

—Sar?

—Isn't there any more regular brandy?

—Yes sar but . . .

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

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

—Little dogs in the street bark at me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Sar?

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

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

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

—Where the hell is her face?

—Sar?

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

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

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

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

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

—Yes sar.

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

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

—A supralapsarian criminal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

—You?

—A cigar.

—My boy . . .

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

—Indeed.

—My boy ...

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

Nevertheless, the smoke rises.

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

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

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

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

—A girl?

—How long is it since you've had one?

—Had one?

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

—But the cost.

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

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

—God damn it, my boy. God damn it ...

—Without love?

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

—Reverend Gilbert Sullivan . . .

—God damn Reverend Gilbert Sullivan!

—Exactly.

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

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

—Are you getting anything from Esme?

—There remains the complication of the mermaid men.

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

—I hear singing.

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

—My bachelor room

—Fuller!

—Sar? drops from above.

—Stop that God damn noise.

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

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

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

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

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

—Sit down.

—That is Fermat's last theorem.

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

—I'm pretending I weigh three hundred pounds.

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

—It isn't difficult.

—Sar?

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

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

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

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

—Get out. Get out. Get out.

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

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

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

—Get out!

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

—Now? Now?

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

—Beautifully. Excitingly. Wondrously.

—Good. Good, my boy. Good.

—But not van Eyck.

—What do you mean?

—Not Hubert.

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

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

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

—Suppose ...

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

—I ...

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

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

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

—It's too late now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—A brilliant man?

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

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

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

—What is laughter?

—It makes me nervous.

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

—Where are you going now?

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

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

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

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

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

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

—You are so damned familiar, Brown.

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

—So damned familiar.

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

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

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

—Ellery, Esther interrupted.

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

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

—I feel ill, Esther said.

—Listen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Twenty or so, she said wearily.

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

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

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

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

—Isn't one enough?

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

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

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

—Rose!

—Or even Doctor Biggs of Lima Peru.

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

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

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

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

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

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

—But you, you . . . here you are.

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

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

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

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

—Well you . . .

—I ...

—Oh, this ... is my husband, Ellery?

—How do you ...

—This is a ... friend, Ellery.

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

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

§ announcement § As a Token of his Appreciation

To every bitch who presents him with a Champion heir

Dictator will give an additional service with his compliments

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

—My eyes. May I show him my eyes?

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

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

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

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

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

—Wednesday.

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

—What is it, Rose?

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

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

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

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

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

—Not lately, no. Not lately.

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

Beneath, another ad said, stir up your liver bile

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

SORE FEET?

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

—Ellery, please . . . Esther said weakly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Or was it?

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

—The mirror, there?

—I've seen you in it too.

—To correct bad drawing. There.

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

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

—Not myself?

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

—When you loved me?

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

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

—Goodbye, for I have to leave.

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

—And can carry away.

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

—Ellery, don't . . .

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

—But in the name of God . . . ?

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

—Esther, goodbye, please God . . .

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

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

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

—Yes. Yes, gone.

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

—Oh take it, take it, take it.

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

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

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

—What . . . ?

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

—Ellery, you've got to find one.

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

—Ellery, for the love of God . . .

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

—Zap, approved by doctors everywhere. Tell Mummy about

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Do come over here and sit down.

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

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

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

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

—Here, here, Hungarian . . .

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

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

—Transdanubia ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—My dear fellow . . .

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

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

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

—Tell rne what you mean, you warned him.

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

—Now wait a moment . . .

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

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

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

—Sit down, Basil Valentine snapped, behind him.

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

—My dear fellow ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Caused? I caused it?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—What did you say to Brown?

—I asked him, What's laughter.

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

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

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

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

—That? Valentine repeated, and smiled. —Vald'es. Juan de Vald'es Leal. You know him?

—Where'd you get it?

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

—And he gave it to you?

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

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

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

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

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

—Now really, if you can't . . .

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

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

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

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

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

—Where are you going?

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

—You're not going anywhere. Sit down and tell me what you propose to do. If it's a rest you need, there's money.

—Ish Kerioth bought a cemetery with his ... thirty pieces, do? do? he went on loudly. —While there's still time, we ... follow our training, there's no way out. I'll go to North Africa, and tempt Arab children to believe in the white Christ by giving them candy. That's accepted procedure. They're prejudiced. They accept Him as a prophet of their own Prophet. That's worse to fight than if they never heard of him at all. Charity's the challenge.

—If it's simply some childish obsession with the priesthood . . . ?

—And you? for you the priesthood is just, spreading damnation?

—Nothing can be given, which cannot also be withheld.

—By all that's ugly . . . yes, if they had but one neck? Do you remember the seventeenth-century messiah Shabbetai Zebi, but . . . he faltered, backing to a doorway, —What's that to do with . . . Dominus ac Redemptor.

—What's that? Valentine asked quickly, surprised, but he sat down.

—Yes, Clement the fourteenth, his brief suppressing the order? Remember? I know . . . the Church must punish, to prove it has the power to punish? But you . . . you . . . ?

—You remind me of a boy I was in school with, Valentine said quietly. —You and Martin. The ones who wake up late. You suddenly realize what is happening around you, the desperate attempts on all sides to reconcile the ideal with reality, you call it corruption and think it new. Some of us have always known it, the others never know. You and Martin are the ones who cause the trouble, waking suddenly, to be surprised. Stupidity is never surprised, neither is intelligence. They are complementary, and the whole conduct of human affairs depends on their co-operation. But the Martins appear, and cause mistrust . . .

—There's Lent! Martin's? Martins? you killed him with much cherishing?

—I was a syndicus then. Martin was below me. In such a school the first thing one learns is obedience. Not encouraged to think for one's self, because one is not yet ready to do so. And you understand, one is encouraged to report the . . . breaches committed by others.

—A spy system! ac redemptor, I know. And you! he cried out from the doorway where he stood. —For you, if you hate their hands, and you hate their faces, and you hate their suffering . . . and you a priest! You . . . you . . . yes, a pope ... a pope's ...

The telephone rang behind him.

—Ici Castel Gandolfo ... A Mister Inononu calling the SS Basil Valentine . . . hurry . . . the forty days is almost done . . .

Basil Valentine wrested the telephone from him, and he went through the doorway taking the lamp to the floor with him. The phone was dead in Valentine's hand, but he stood holding it, staring in the dark. .

— The Triumphal Car of Antimony. Now I remember your name, Basil Valentine, the alchemist who watched pigs grow fat on food containing stibium, wasn't it ... you tried it on some fasting emaciated monks and they all died . . .

Valentine dropped the telephone into its cradle, and the figure retreated before him, its back to the window.

—And so they named it antimony, anathema to monks . . .

Basil Valentine stood still in the near darkness, feeling every physical detail of his body, every one but his eyes; for the figure against the window was indistinct, its shape and size ambiguous, but for the eyes. —Preach to them, then, my yetzer hara, speak to them, then, my evil heart. While I fly like a piece of cloth on the wind, or the color itself, the street is filling with people like buttons in Galilee. Speak to the Am-ha-aretz, preach to them, pray. Tell them, as the composer predicted, there's nothing left but knowledge and evidence, and art's become a sort of tailbone surviving in us from that good prehensile tail we held on with then. Tell them that Peter died an old man, and right side up. Tell them that Mary broke her vows to go off with a soldier named Panthera, and wandered away to give birth to his son. Tell them, the ones who are conscious of what happens to themselves only in terms of what has happened to themselves, who recognize only things they have seen with their eyes, tell them the whole thing hangs on a resurrection that only one lunatic saw, one and then twelve and then five hundred, for visions are contagious, and resurrections were a stock in trade, and the streets were full of messiahs spreading discontent, that Jesus Christ and John the Baptist would both be arrested on the street today, and jailed, and for the same reason. Tell them the truth, then, that Christ was thrown into a pit for common malefactors, tell them the truth, then, not that power corrupts men, but men corrupt power. My yetzer hara, speak to them, preach to them, my evil heart, to the ones who look out the window and are not surprised to see the sun, burning itself out, ninety-three million miles away, the ones who dream of the dead and expect themselves to be dreamt of, the Am-ha-aretz, filling the streets and seeking authority and no further, write with a brass pencil on a clean tin plate, I A O, I A E, corruption is no more than knowledge that comes too soon, tell them of Atholl's coronation with a red-hot iron crown, and of how the Egyptians burned red-haired men and scattered their ashes with winnowing fans, tell them of Justinian's pavement made like an ocean and destroyed when the roof of Saint Sophia fell in, and of the son of the ruler of Cairo, Ibn Tulun, sleeping on an in- flated feather-bed on a lake of quicksilver, tell them of Antiope and the goat, of Pasipha"e and the bull, and the egg that Leda laid to make them laugh if they'll listen. The Am-ha-aretz, whose memories include nothing but their own failures, tell them their suffering belittles them, tell them that, my yetzer hara, tell the ones who trade only in false coin where they can buy clothes to wear when they are alone. That is all, and Gresham's law, and Gresham's law, and Gresham's law for love or money. Go out among them and tell them that their nostalgia for places they have never been is sex, the sweating Am-ha-aretz, and when they hear music, tell them it is their mother, tell Nicodemus, tell him there is no other way to be born again, and again and again and again of a thousand other mothers of others-to-be, tell him, my yetzer hara, tell them, tell them my evil heart, that they are hopeless, tell them what damnation is, and that they are damned, that what they have been forging all this time never existed.

On the couch, Basil Valentine rested a hand on his forehead, and moved it gently. —You are feverish, he said. He got up to turn on a soft light near the windows, and returned to the couch. —Just lie still, he said. —A little cognac . . . there . . .

—Yes, you see . . . ? You see?

—Don't try to talk now for a minute. And close your eyes. Basil Valentine held the hot squared sides of the skull between his hands, and rested his thumbs softly on the eyelids. —There's no need to say a word. You're safe here.

—You see, if ... I became the one who could do more than I could.

Valentine moved his fingertips gently against the temples throbbing beneath them. He shifted slightly; and loosened his dressing gown. —And the one you left behind? he whispered, —the one you lost?

—Yes, yes, came the answer in a whisper. —Yes, I miss him . . .

Valentine lowered his face slightly, out of the light from over the back of the couch; and both his hands moved against the skull. —We're safe here, he said.

The telephone rang. Basil Valentine's hands drew together for an instant, pressing the skull between them. He raised his hands, and the eyes remained closed.

He got over to the telephone quickly, glanced back round the corner of the door, and picked it up, talking in a low voice, facing the wall directly before him, his eyes lowered. —Yes, it's all right, he said, —but . . . this telephone? Of course it may, no private telephone is safe . . . Meg van az informacio ami kell, itt vannak a papirok. Eh . . . ? nem most, hivjon holnap reggel . . . At that he hangs up, and stands for a moment with his weight resting on the instrument. Then in to wash his hands, where his face and the one in the glass exchange confirmation at the speed of light, as palms abrade knuckles and thumbs fret cuticles under warm water.

He walks back slowly, registering resolution in his steps, watching them placed before him in a path between there and the windows, does not raise his head until he stands looking out, movement compassed by the soft lamp in a black leap on the ceiling. —Even down among them, he says, —the stupid, thick-handed people, is there any one of them who doesn't know him, who has not suffered the indignity of his stare, and heard the mockery of his laughter, this other self, who can do more, who always escapes, but . . . now you are here, my dear fellow, and we ... Basil Valentine pauses, to seat half his weight on the window shelf. —Would you be surprised, if I told you about myself, as much about myself as I know about you? Why I know that I hate them, where you wish you could love them. Direct in his view, ascendant in lights, the Empire State Building rears its stiff glans fourteen hundred seventy-two feet above the street. —There is their shrine, their notion of magnificence, their damned Hercules of Lysippus that Fabius brought back to Rome from Tarentum, not because it was art, but because it was big. S P Q R, they all admired it for the same reason, the people, whose idea of necessity is paying the gas bill, the masses who as their radios assure them, are under no obligation. Under no obligation whatsoever, but to stretch out their thick clumsy hands, breaking, demanding, defiling everything they touch.

Though his tone remains calm, he raises his hand to his temple and finds the vein standing out there, suppresses with two fingertips the life pulsating through it, and lowers his hand to his knee rearing half his weight in the window.

—We live in Rome, he says, turning his face to the room again, —Caligula's Rome, with a new circus of vulgar bestialized suffering in the newspapers every morning. The masses, the fetid masses, he says, bringing all his weight to his feet. —How can they even suspect a self who can do more, when they live under absolutely no obligation. There are so few beautiful things in the world, Basil Valentine says, taking a step toward the back of the couch, where it is quiet, where he has not yet raised his eyes, —that they must be protected. He stands looking down, to say the few more words, as though they were simply that, appended, when all this time he has been making toward, —The pity which none shall have who demands it. I called your work calumny once, so it was. But the face of Christ in your van der Goes, no one could call that a lie. And now, he says, advancing again, —here you are, and I shall teach you, I shall teach you the only secret worth knowing, the secret the gods teach, the secret that Wotan taught to his son . . . His hand reaches for the gold cigarette case and finds the pocket empty. When he looks up he notices first not the empty couch, but the empty pedestal where the gold bull stood: the egg is still there, unbroken.

Then Basil Valentine put a hand to his throat, as though to stem the rising nausea; and he leaned forward, still with the hand to his throat, the hard rings shifting on nothing in a rise and a fall between a thumb and a finger, swallowing, while the shadow on another wall and clear because unobserved, figures a steady hand pouring cognac.

A swallow of the stuff crystal-bound in his hand, and he clears his throat with abrupt loudness. —Of course the Athens of Socrates was a phenomenon, he says, glancing at the couch he passes, —the most civilized thing that has ever happened on earth, while the rabble of the Roman Republic, he goes on, nearing the windows, —Rome, you know . . .

Three stars in his belt, Orion lay out of sight beyond tons of opaque building material now dissolved in darkness, serving only to support fixed points of light, the solid firmament of early Jews where stars were nailed lest they fall; beyond, the flight of seven doves Orion hunts, out of sight.

Look darling he found my necklace

(The capacity of this bus

The new Wonder Gems Developed in the laboratory

(Please do not speak to driver while bus is in motion

More brilliant than diamonds

(Expectorating in or from this omnibus is a punishable offense

(Step down to open doors

Above hung the cliff that Alexander climbed in India, the cliff studded with diamonds, hung with chains of red gold, five hundred steps to the house of the sun, to paradise.

Though Sir John Mandeville (in his Travels, among the earliest and most heroic of plagiaries in the French) confessed, "Of Paradise I cannot speak properly, for I was not there": what matter? Here above, the concrete cliffs had disappeared, only their lights studding darkness which posed as space and postured firmament.

—John!

—You? . . . bumping into you again on the street like this? But I have to hurry, I have to get a train.

—Yes, a train, a train.

Lights flashed past, their beams tangled in darkness to confirm it. —Are you all right? What's that you're carrying? is it real gold? Where are you going?

Through the world of night, lost souls clutching guidebooks follow the sun through subterranean passage gloom, corridors dark and dangerous: so the king built his tomb deep in earth, and alone wanders the darkness of death there through twenty-four thousand square feet of passages and halls, stairs, chambers, and pits. So Egypt.

—Back.

Red in the west as it set, because of the fires of hell says the Talmud: red in the east from the roses of Eden.

—Back where?

—Can we stop for a minute? a glass of brandy?

—I have to make this train.

—Gentlemen . . .

Few anywhere disagreed, but that the sun and the moon and the planets issued from a hole in the east, descended into one in the west and returned, by night, through a subterranean passage.

—Gentlemen, I have a religion too. I'm a drunkard.

Raging up and down the sky like a beast in a cage, says the Talmud, and unable to escape, enclosed in the firmament, the gates of its entrance and exit only at opposite ends.

—All right, yes, a train. Wait.

—Gentlemen ...

—Hurry . . .

Down: down went Tammuz (slain by the boar's tusk), entering at Babylon, the center of the earth, for there was the lid-stone to the lower world.

Thus the Assyrians invoked the bull who guarded the gates: O great bull, O very great bull, which stampest high, which openest access to the interior . . .

Please show your ticket at gate

—Leaving on track seven

Their death pursuing its descent, the Piute Indians followed the sun to that hole where it crawled in at the end of the earth, creeping constricted to earth's center, there to sleep out the night, and to waken and creep on to the eastern portal. The sun emerges, eating the stars its children as it rises, its only nourishment; and those on earth at the dawn see only its brilliant belly, distended with stars.

This ticket is your receipt and baggage check. Please keep it with you until you reach destination.

May the bull of good fortune, the genius of good fortune, the guardian of the footsteps of my majesty, the giver of joy to my heart, forever watch over it! Never more may its care cease.

(So reads the inscription of Esar-Haddon, whose father, the murdered Sennacherib, had destroyed Babylon; and he, the son, returned to restore the sacred city, to rebuild the temple of Baal, and refurbish its gods.)

Thrown open, the gates on the eastern face of the temple meet the dawn as the golden tips of the obelisks burn, and the red rim appears from the underworld. Those on earth prostrate before it, and the gates close upon Baal, Who has entered His Temple.