IV

“I’ve had a good dream, gentlemen,” he said in a strange voice, with a new light, as of joy, in his face.

—Dostoevski, The Brothers Karamazov

—Sempre con fè sincera . . . la mia preghiera . . . ai santi tabernacoli salì . . .

No sound but this, the radio, behind Esme’s door. Otto raised his clenched hand to knock again; and as his knuckles hit the door it came open an abrupt four inches. His smile warped into surprise, every line in his face converted to its contradiction.

Chaby faced him over the chain. Chaby had on a suede jacket, the collar turned up in back; and his hair looked like a pastry-cook’s triumph.

—Nell’ora del dolore . . . perchè, Signore, perchè me ne rimuneri così?

—Is Esme here?

—No.

—Do you know where she is?

—Jesis how should I know. She went to get some coffee.

—Do you know where?

—Jesis how should I know where. Chaby did not slam the door until Otto had reached the stairs.

Esme was sitting at a counter eating toast. She wore no make-up but faint sharp lines on her eyebrows. She smiled, and held out her hand to Otto, who realized, as he sat beside her, that she was breakfasting with the heavy-necked person on her right. He was showing her pictures of snapsnot size. —They came out nice, he said. —Much better than most of the girls we get, innocent-looking like. But look at these, look at these of me. The photographs showed him in theatrical attitudes. In one he held a knife. In another, a pistol. In another, a cord, ready for garroting. In all, he wore a hat (as he did now), and a cigarette stub stuck in the corner of his mouth (as one was now). —Whadda you say?

—It’s very kind of you, Esme said smiling to him.

—I’ll come see you Friday, huh?

—Who was that? Otto asked when the man left.

—He’s a nice man who is going to act in movies, Esme said.

—What did he want from you?

—I think he wanted me to act in the mo-vies.

They had both smiled, and for a moment they were together. Then Otto said, —I just called at your apartment, and he withdrew his hand.

—And did you see Mister Sinis-ter-ra? she asked, still with her smile.

—Yes. What’s he doing up there?

—He came to see me.

—So I gather. When, last night?

—Otto, that isn’t nice, she said, sobered, disappointed.

—I’m sorry. Otto, suddenly, could not afford to be left so: he had withdrawn as a woman withdraws, to be followed. There was no pursuit in Esme’s eyes, as she turned them from him. —Esme, I’m sorry.

—You’re not sorry, Otto. You only say that. It is a habit. There was no admonition and no feeling of hurt in Esme’s voice, she spoke to him simply.

—Esme . . . Oh look, that isn’t what I meant . . .

—Why do you say he slept with me?

—That isn’t what I meant at all, said Otto (and in that instant almost retorted, —Well did he?). Then Esme was smiling happily again. She was smiling at someone behind him.

—Hello Stanley, she said gently. —And do you know Otto?

Stanley nodded and said, —Hello, putting the book he carried from his right to his left hand, so that he could shake hands; but he got no further. His right hand dropped empty to his side.

—Poor Stanley. Why are you so dole-ful?

—I’m all right, Stanley said. He stood there, his only motion a slight weaving toward them, as though his mustache weighed him in their direction. Finally he said, —Did you hear about Charles?

—No, what?

—He’s in Bellevue. They took him there last night.

Max came in. He was smiling. He greeted them, and ordered coffee. —How’s your play, Otto? he said.

—Well as a matter of fact I’m sort of upset, Otto said. —I misplaced a copy or two of it. In a dispatch case. A pigskin dispatch case. You haven’t heard anything? . . .

—No, I haven’t heard a thing, Max said agreeably.

—I heard about your play, Stanley said.

—You found it?

—No, I mean I just heard about it.

—What did you hear, that it’s plagiarized?

—No, I didn’t mean that. I’d like to read it.

Otto murmured, —You would, would you . . . Esme said, —Otto has a guilty conscience, and Max raised his coffee cup and said nothing.

—I think I’d better get back uptown, Otto said in a strained tone, casual with great effort.

—Really, Otto? Esme said, surprised, as he took her breakfast check. —Then thank you for my breakfast.

—Did you have bacon and eggs and fruit and pastry?

—No, that was the gentleman from the movies, said Esme.

—All right, he said, crumpling the check in his hand.

—Thank you, Otto.

—Do you want me to go?

—But Otto why should I want you to go?

He lit a fresh cigarette and ordered another cup of coffee. They looked up and Stanley was gone. Esme turned to see him standing undecided outside, on the street corner. —Poor Stanley, she said gently, and smiled.

—He just needs a woman, Max said.

—He needs money, said Esme.

—Money is simply a substitute for the mother in Stanley’s case. He has guilt feelings about her being in the hospital, and anyone who gave him money would be filling the mother’s place, the nourishment substitute.

—I guess Hannah gives him what he needs, Otto said in morose confidence.

—She’d like to.

—Well she was sleeping with him a couple of nights ago.

—Where’d you hear that?

—She was there undressed at five in the morning. I don’t know what else she was doing.

—Was Stanley there?

—Sure he was there, Otto said defiantly.

—Well, so she finally made him, said Max. He smiled and finished his coffee. —You haven’t seen my pictures yet, have you Otto. The show opened two days ago. I’m going up to the gallery later, come along?

—Not now, Max. Otto looked at Esme.

—They’ve sold seven of them, Max said as he left.

—I hate him, Otto said when he was out the door.

—Otto, what a silly thing to say.

—I do, I . . . I just mistrust him so much. When he’s around I’d like to have a gun in my pocket. Not to do anything with, just to have it there, he added, and brandished the sling.

—Yes, Esme said, suddenly putting her forehead in her hand and running her fingers into her hair. —Because he will survive.

—Esme, I want to talk to you. Esme . . . She looked up, surprised, and she looked frightened. —I want to talk to you.

—Talk to me, she said, and smiled.

—But not here, not in this place, I . . . We’re liable to be . . . Someone’s liable to . . . Will you go for a walk with me.

Otto paid for five breakfasts, and they went out. They walked toward Washington Square.

—What, Otto? she asked him, seated on a bench.

—I don’t know. I mean, look.

—What did you do to yourself? she asked, pointing to his cheek.

—I cut myself with a lousy razor blade. Look, Esme. I mean, are you really with me? I mean, are you and I, well, together? I mean I always feel like I’m sharing you with everyone in sight.

—Otto, you make everything so difficult for yourself.

—I do?

—Yes, Otto. You push something and push it until it breaks.

—I don’t want to do that, Esme. I don’t mean to.

—And then you do all the more, Otto.

—I love you, Esme. I’ve kept telling you that. I love you.

—No you don’t, Otto.

—I do. I love you.

—No you don’t, Otto. You don’t even know who I am.

Esme spoke to him calmly, explaining, as though to a child, an adult truth.

—But I do. And even if I don’t, is that my fault?

—You had me all filled in before you met me, Otto. There was no room for me at all.

—Esme, don’t be ridiculous.

—It is not ridic-ulous, Otto. It is only true, you do not know who I am.

—But I’ve . . . you’ve . . . and I don’t even know if you’ve been faithful to me, he burst out.

—You can only be faithful to people one at a time, Otto.

He sat staring at her face turned half from him. Then he reached up and turned it to him with one hand. Esme looked frightened. —Why are you beautiful? he demanded. Her eyes opened more widely, and she tried to lower her face. —Why are you? he repeated, looking at her. She did pull her chin back, and lower her face, silent. —Because you . . . I look at your face, this flesh and bone so many inches high and wide, and the nose sticking out and the . . . the punctures of nostrils, and your lips and I . . . and those two things that are eyes, and I . . . why should that be beautiful, anyhow. What is it? . . . and Otto’s voice was suddenly constricted, —What is beauty . . . He cleared his throat, —that your face should be beautiful? . . .

—If it is not beautiful for someone, it does not exist, she said.

—Yes, well . . . well . . . he muttered, lowering his eyes. —Look, he said when he raised them again. —Is it my fault if you haven’t even let me know who you are?

—But you never tried, Otto. No part of you ever tried.

—Look, I’ve done everything I ever could for you, haven’t I? I . . . I’m sick and tired of all this foolishness, this . . . I apologize for behaving the way I have with some of your friends but . . .

—You are the only one you make unhappy when you behave badly, Otto. You become the victim of your own observations.

—Do you love me?

—It is not so simple, Otto.

—But you’ve said you did. She was silent. —I . . . damn it, I get all mixed up with other people, he broke out finally, clenching his free hand over the hand protruding from the sling. —I . . . it’s like trying to tie a knot before a mirror, I know just what to do and then do everything backwards. He sat looking down. Then suddenly he raised his eyes and said, —Do you . . . do I look like Chaby?

Esme looked up at him. She did not smile, but her face cleared and it was lightened, as a smile would have lightened it. —Otto, she said. —No. Why did you ask me that?

—I don’t know. Never mind, he said lowering his eyes again. —It’s just that I . . . sometimes I feel my face and . . . or I feel myself moving or looking at something in a way that I . . . well never mind, never mind that. Never mind it then.

Suggestion of the smile she had not smiled faded from her face, and quietly she said, —All right.

—But no, I mean, I don’t know. Sometimes I do, sometimes I almost do, and then I lose it. Like a story I heard once, a friend of mine told me, somebody I used to know, a story about a forged painting. It was a forged Titian that somebody had painted over another old painting, when they scraped the forged Titian away they found some worthless old painting underneath it, the forger had used it because it was an old canvas. But then there was something under that worthless painting, and they scraped it off and underneath that they found a Titian, a real Titian that had been there all the time. It was as though when the forger was working, and he didn’t know the original was underneath, I mean he didn’t know he knew it, but it knew, I mean something knew. I mean, do you see what I mean? That underneath that the original is there, that the real . . . thing is there, and on the surface you . . . if you can only . . . see what I mean?

She had rested her head back and closed her eyes. He put his arm over her shoulders, and she sat forward.

—Esme . . . The brief strokes of anxiety and sharp strokes of detail broke the fragments of expression on his face, and he seemed able to catch none of them and fix it congruent upon that image of original honesty which he clutched at so desperately beneath the surface, and the second surface, with each instant more confused in the succession of mocking streaks of parody which he could not control. A moment came when he might have thought, and even understood; but he had not time to embrace it, and it passed. —It’s just . . . damn it, Esme . . .

—Please don’t swear at me, she said dully, her lowered eyes on a pigeon passing before them.

—I’m sorry, but I . . . Then he laughed with abrupt hoarseness. —Do you remember once when . . . Look, don’t you see? I mean, you can’t just live this way, you can’t . . . wait, where are you going?

—I have to go now, Otto.

—But don’t, Esme please don’t go, I want to talk to you.

—We have talked, she said, looking him in the face; and Otto reached up and drew an alterant stroke on his mustache.

—I want to marry you, Esme. I, you can’t go on this way, I mean so insecure, the way you live, and I want to, if I can save you from . . .

—Save me from! she broke in, mocking. —It is always saving from, she said lowering her eyes, —and never saving for. Everyone fights against things, but people do not fight for things.

Otto stood unsteadily beside her, as though ready to curb her if she turned away. —And I . . . even if you don’t love me now, I . . . like Saint John of the Cross said, “Where there is no love, put love, and take out love,” and I . . .

She looked up at him, surprised, at that. Then she said, —Is that how he meant it? Before Otto could answer she went on, lowering her eyes again, —No, how did he know what he meant. When people tell a truth they do not understand what they mean, they say it by accident, it goes through them and they do not recognize it until someone accuses them of telling the truth, then they try to recover it as their own and it escapes. The saints were very mean people.

—Yes, I . . . yes that’s it, and I . . . I want to marry you.

She looked up and smiled at him. —How could I marry you, if I haven’t got any stomach?

—Esme, stop it, I really mean it. I mean, you know I’m sincere. I’ve always been sincere with you.

She put her hand on his. —Otto, she said. —Sincerity becomes the honesty of people who cannot be honest with themselves.

—Esme . . .

—I have to go away.

—All right then, damn it, go.

She turned and walked away from him. Then he was beside her again.

—Esme . . .

—What is it, Otto? she asked in a quiet voice, looking at him like a stranger whom she did not know.

—Esme, I . . . look, please . . .

—Goodbye, Otto, she said gently.

—Esme . . .

She walked away from him easily. It was only eleven o’clock in the morning.

Gazing wistfully into a shop window filled with ladies’ lingerie, including a brassière in black lace with black satin hands cupping the mannequin’s composition bosom, Anselm stood with a six-year-old girl by the hand. In his other hand, Anselm had Tolstoy’s Kingdom of God, but it was folded in a magazine with a girl and an umbrella, and nothing else, on the cover, so that all that showed of the small book was the spine. The little girl was looking up the street, in the direction of Stanley’s approach, and she pulled her escort in that direction, but he hung back, rubbing the rough inflammations on his chin, and staring into the shop window.

Stanley might have gone on without disturbing that reverie, and so home to work (he was carrying his cardboard practice keyboard and a book), but Max was approaching from the other corner, pausing now to greet Otto, who came from the direction of the park.

Without a word Anselm took Stanley’s book from his hand, looked at it and handed it back, muttering something. Then he said abruptly, —I dreamt about you last night. Stanley looked anxious. —I know it was you, it must have been you, Anselm went on, before the others came near. —I was crossing the street in this dream and somebody, somebody I knew well, it must have been you, was coming across the other way with something cradled up in his arms like a baby. It was wrapped in a black shawl, I just took for granted it’s a baby, and then he said, then you said, I want you to meet my mother. I look and it was a tiny little old woman, this tiny little old woman was in the shawl . . .

—Yes, but . . . all right, but . . .

—What’s the matter? Anselm was looking at him with intense curiosity.

—I just wish you wouldn’t . . . Stanley looked one way and the other and down. —It’s sort of . . .

—It was, it was strange, it was kind of a nightmare.

Stanley raised his eyes, and they looked at each other intently until Max was upon them. Then Anselm laughed suddenly, pulling the little girl round between them, and spoke as though carrying on the same conversation. —Come on, play us something. Look, Stanley brought his instrument, he said, brandishing his magazine at the practice keyboard which Stanley held defensively in front of him. —He’s going to play us something by Vivaldi. Come on, Stanley, for Christ sake don’t be so bashful, some of that nice Jesuit baroque music, be-do-be-boo, be-be, boody doody boo . . . did you hear the one about the boy who sat up on the rock? and fitted fiddle strings . . .

—Please . . . Stanley began.

—Here comes Otto, Max said.

—And with every erection he played a selection from Johann Sebastian Bach.

—I have to get home, Stanley said.

—To what, your five-fingered honeymoon?

—To . . . to work, Stanley said, as Anselm turned to look across the street, where a tall man hunched in a green wool shirt gave a nod of recognition slight enough to be disavowed if it were not returned. Max nodded back agreeably. —Who is that? Stanley asked Max.

—Some half-ass critic, Anselm said, —a three time psychoanaloser. He spat into the gutter. —With his fake conversion to the Church. You remember that little tiny girl that used to be around? she came about up to his waist. He used to take her home and dress her in little girl’s clothes and rape her.

—Too much Dostoevski, Max said.

—The stupid bastard with his half-ass conversion, Anselm muttered, looking from the child who held his hand, glazedly at the sidewalk. —Christ, he said, rubbing his chin, —that’s what kills me, a guy like that . . . as a colored girl, in a plaid skirt which Max identified from behind as the Stuart tartan, passed saying —Reading Proust isn’t just reading a book, it’s an experience and you can’t reject an experience . . . to the boy she was with.

—It’s the Black Watch, said Anselm, and turning to Stanley, —Why don’t you change your luck, Stanley. You . . . God damn it what are you looking at me that way for? . . .

—I . . . I’m cold, Stanley said lowering his eyes. His jaw was shaking.

—Cold! You . . . you . . . What did you do to your face, anyway? What’s the matter with your chin, anyway? Anselm burst out suddenly.

—I got mixed up this morning, Stanley said handling his chin, —and I shaved with the toothpaste instead of . . .

—With the toothpaste! Anselm said, withdrawing with a quick shock of a laugh. —You ought to try a cored apple filled with cold cream, you . . .

—And last night I had a terrible experience, Stanley went on, agitated, looking up at both of them. —I went into a delicatessen to get a can of soup and some bread, and the man behind the money . . . I mean behind the cash register was counting up the money and there was some in a paper bag on the counter, and I picked up the wrong bag and almost went out with the money, and when I went back with it and said I was sorry they . . . they weren’t nice about it at all.

A blond boy in tight-fitted dungarees passed saying, —Zheeed . . .

—Well what the hell would you go back with it for?

—They almost called the police.

—Stanley’s Christian spirit will undo us all, said Max, who had been standing back.

—Yeah, we’d make him a saint if it wasn’t so God damn expensive, Anselm retorted, looking at Stanley. —Three million lire for a lousy canonization, he muttered.

—No, he won’t do. Max stepped back and looked Stanley up and down. —He eats meat. His body would putrefy before they could get the halo on. Poor peasant girls from southern Europe make the best ones, brought up on beans.

—That’s true, said Anselm, musing, looking down. Then he looked up querulously at Max.

From the drugstore behind them came a fat youth who looked, at this distance, to have his beard painted on. It dripped to a point at his chin. —If she won’t pray for me, I don’t know who will, he was saying animatedly, tossing the words about before him with plump fluttering hands. The boy with him took his arm as they crossed the street.

Max had nodded. —He gave my show a good write-up, Max explained.

—Do you know him? Stanley asked.

—You can’t go to a single vernissage without seeing him. He says stupid things with a manner, you know, he has a certain style, so that people remember him as clever.

—People like that make me nervous, Stanley said.

—People like what.

—When they’re so . . . queer.

—Queer! Anselm burst out, and continued to watch them cross the street. —That one, queer? He’s not a homosexual, he’s a Lesbian. Max laughed; and Anselm went on, —And that boy poet with him, for Christ sake. Poet! . . . these limp flabby-assed little . . . boy poets who sit around waiting for somebody to give them the business in their . . . Jesus Christ, these boy poets and their common asphodel. Anselm laughed again, a tight constrained laugh looking across the street at the receding couple. —Their common asphodel, he laughed, taking the magazine from under Max’s arm, and recovering the fit of abstraction he’d sunk into a moment before as he turned the pages.

—I liked your poem, Stanley said to Max. —The one they just published? That line about Beauty, serenely disdains to destroy us?

—Yes, you . . . almost dropped this, Max interrupted quickly, righting the practice keyboard which was gripped in Stanley’s hands, with a quick glance at Anselm. But Anselm had apparently not heard. He looked up from the magazine to nod over his shoulder at the approaching figure, and said,

—Otto? He’s the guy who’s been laying Esme?

—She’s been laying him, said Max.

Otto approached with his head down, as though it were weighed so by the rampage going on inside, and his features declined to the edges of his face, the look of one seeking something, or perhaps someone, a person he could talk this over with, someone who had suffered good intentions put to bad use by others, and would understand (by which Otto, talking to himself, meant sympathize); someone sensitive (he meant weak) enough to appreciate, and experienced (he meant bitter) enough to justify his dilemma. Stanley appeared in the interior rampage, bowed, understanding, sensitive, experienced: he raised his eyes and Stanley appeared, talking with (untrustworthy) Max and (odious) Anselm.

—What does he wear that stupid sling around for? Anselm asked; but Otto did not look affronted, for as he crossed into hearing they were talking of Charles. —I saw him this morning, Anselm was saying. —Who was the old bag with him?

—That was his mother, Max said. —She came from Grand Rapids to get him out of Bellevue.

Stanley had stepped back looking pained, and as always, about to depart but unable to do so. Otto and Max exchanged sounds, and Max reached for the magazine sconced under Otto’s slung arm, leaving a newspaper rolled there. —I just picked that up, Otto said for no apparent reason, as Max opened Collectors Quarterly.

—You had it this morning when I saw you, Max said, looking up to smile.

—Oh yes I . . . I saw you earlier, didn’t I, Otto said discountenanced immediately, and sought a cigarette as though reaching for a shoulder holster.

—Christ! Look at this, will you look at this? Anselm brought out, holding up the magazine he’d taken from Max. It was large, on heavy coated paper, full of pictures, the most popular weekly in the country. The page Anselm exhibited was a fashion photograph. —Will you look at her? Can you imagine putting the boots to that? What man would want to lay her? He rolled the magazine and thrust it under Otto’s arm, exchanging it for the newspaper. —Skinny, flat-chested, no hair on her head and no more in her pants than a ten-year-old boy, that’s what they’re trying to make women look like, these queer . . . what’s that smell? He stopped and sniffed. He looked at his own shoes, then at Stanley’s. —Did you step in it, Stanley?

—In what? Stanley asked helplessly.

—In what! Christ! . . . you wouldn’t say shit if you had a mouthful. Then he glanced up to see that Otto had detached himself from them, and stood scraping his shoe on the curb. He started to say something more, but his eye caught the reproduction in Collectors Quarterly which Max held open. It was Velasquez, Venus and Cupid. A sound of admiration escaped Anselm. —Jesus, how’d you like to hang that on the wall and play hide-the-baloney every night? The little girl pulled his hand. He yanked her back, almost dropping the book folded in the magazine under his arm, and opened the newspaper to the front-page story. It was a vice probe, and he broke out again, —Look at this. In a city of eight million they find a half-dozen girls peddling their ass and it’s the greatest clean-up in history. That kills me. Here, I don’t want to look at the God damn thing, he finished, pushing it back under the slung arm as Otto returned, muttering to himself.

—I have to go, Stanley said.

—They did a great thing when they cleaned up the whorehouses out of New York City, a great thing for the high-school girls, Anselm said as the newspaper fell to the sidewalk. —If a nice girl isn’t clapped up now before she’s sixteen it’s her own lousy fault. Then he turned on Otto, who attempted to raise his eyebrows as he straightened up, knocking the dirt from his newspaper. —How’d you like to go in business with me and Stanley? Anselm demanded abruptly.

—It hardly sounds . . .

—Artificial insemination, Anselm went on more loudly. —We bootleg the stuff. We’re going to advertise in the movie magazines. Girls! Have a baby by your favorite movie star. I fill the barrels and Stanley peddles it . . .

Stanley had stepped back, looking down at the little girl whom Anselm pulled forward as he waved the nude with the umbrella in the air. —Which end of the business do you want to go in?

Otto muttered something, looking at his newspaper.

—Come on. I’ve got some nice pictures, Anselm went on more excitedly, —nice bodies with movie stars’ heads montaged . . .

—Come off it, Max interrupted him.

Anselm turned to Max. —What’s the matter, he said. The spots on his face had become inflamed by the wind blowing down from the north, and his hair was standing up. —You’ve never had it look up and spit at you?

—Come off it, for Christ sake. You’re crazy.

—Who wouldn’t be, in all . . . this, Anselm said breathlessly, waving the magazine so that the book folded inside it flew out. It slid along the sidewalk and went into the gutter. —Isn’t any madness preferable to . . . all this?

Anselm stood there shaking. Then he saw Stanley going to pick his book from the gutter. —Leave it alone! he cried. —Leave it alone! Leave it alone! Leave it alone!

Stanley stopped and stood back, not before he had seen the title of the book. Anselm stooped before him to pick it up, hawking and spitting into the street as he straightened before Stanley. He wiped the book on his trousers, covering it with his hand as he did so. —For Christ sake, he muttered, getting his breath.

Stanley put his hand out with the palm up, and took a step toward him.

—And stop . . . stop being so . . . Anselm took a step back. —Stop being so God damn humble, he said, as the little girl got his hand and drew him back another step. Max had taken Stanley’s arm.

—You know God damn well that . . . that humility is defiance, Anselm went on disjointedly. —And you . . . that simplicity . . . simplicity today is sophisticated . . . that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication today . . .

They had turned their backs and stepped into the street. Max was guiding Stanley by the arm.

—Hey, what did the chicken say when she laid the square egg? Hey Stanley, I’ll dream about you again tonight. Hey Stanley, I’ll dream about you again tonight. What did the chicken say when she laid the square egg? . . . Anselm cried after them.

None of them spoke as they walked together, until Otto, after an apprehensive look over his shoulder, said —God, he is crazy, isn’t he. He reached up to stroke his mustache, which was quivering, and asked, —Who’s that little girl?

—Don Bildow’s daughter, Anselm takes care of her sometimes.

—I wouldn’t let a daughter near him if she was five. I wouldn’t even if she was one, I wouldn’t even trust him as a baby-sitter, you know? I’m not kidding, I wouldn’t.

Max glanced up from Collectors Quarterly smiling. —That story he told about that fellow, dressing that girl up in child’s clothes, that was him.

—Who? Stanley asked quickly, and stopped short.

—Anselm. He’s the one who did it, himself.

Stanley came on with his head lowered, staring at the pavement, walking carefully. —Do you think it’s true, that he lives on dog food? he asked finally.

Otto laughed unpleasantly. —Where’d you hear that?

—From him, he told me himself. Canned dog food, he said it isn’t bad if you have enough catsup.

—Somebody ought to shoot him, Anselm, said Otto, —his crazy yammering about God.

—But have you ever read any of his poems? Stanley asked across Max, who walked between them with the magazine open. —There was one that was a beautiful poem, it was about Averroes, the Arab thinker in the Middle Ages, and should we understand in order to believe, or if we should believe in order to understand . . .

—Look at this, Max said holding up Collectors Quarterly open to a picture of a piece of sculpture by Lipchitz, titled Mother and Child II. —Who do you think writes these program notes? Listen, “It was some time after the sculptor began a series of studies of a woman’s torso that he suddenly recognized in them a resemblance to the head of a bull. He developed the bull’s head further until he achieved . . .”

—But there’s more, Stanley broke in, —when he says . . . when Anselm says that God has become a sentimental theatrical figure in our literature, that God is a melodramatic device used to throw people in novels into a turmoil . . .

—Fairly obvious guilt feelings, Max murmured, lowering the magazine to look up as they approached the curb. On either side of him, they walked watching their way carefully; though Max, who scarcely glanced up from the pages, was the only one of them who knew where they were going.

—But it isn’t that simple. Don’t you wonder why . . . why everything is negative? Stanley craned round to look up at both of them. —Why just exactly the things that used to be the aspirations of life, those are just the things that have become the tolls? I mean, like . . . well like girls having babies? They used to be the fruit of love, the thing people prayed for above everything, and now, now they’re the price of . . . Everything’s sort of contraceptive, everything wherever you look is against conceiving, until finally you can’t conceive any more. Then the time comes when you want something to work for you, the thing you’ve been denying all your life, and then it won’t work . . .

And Stanley’s voice fell behind them, as they crossed the street and he waited for a cab which turned in front of him. He caught up again saying, —Everything is so transient, everything in America is so temporary . . . But Max was talking to Otto, who stopped at that moment wide-eyed on the opposite curb to demand,

—Her? I didn’t even know you knew her. She needs a doctor? You mean, some man . . . ?

—What do you think I mean, a duck? Max laughed. —That’s what I’ve heard, anyhow, he added, walking on with the magazine open again. —I guess we were just lucky.

—Lucky? Otto repeated, pausing, then hurrying up beside Max. —You mean you . . . you’ve slept with her?

—Not for years, Max answered; and with a sidelong glance at Otto, went on in the same casual tone, holding up a two-page reproduction in Collectors Quarterly, —Look at this, they describe it as the “algebra of suffering,” this Flemish painting. Hugo van der Goes. Otto muttered something, and looked at the picture if only because it was something to take his attention. But the confusion did not leave his face, and the lines round his eyes, gathered in a wince, became fixed so staring at the Descent from the Cross until Max turned the page.

—But . . . he murmured, commencing to raise a hand, commencing to speak (for though he had been seen carrying this magazine, which had cost a dollar, he’d only had it open once, and then, with chance venery, upon the Velasquez).

—This Dierick Bouts is remarkable, isn’t it, Max went on of the reproduction on the next page, paraphrasing the caption, —the canniness, the control. Even in black and white, the rigid lines and the constrained attitudes, there is a sort of “algebra of suffering,” isn’t there.

—That van . . . the one on the page before, Otto commenced again.

—Van der Goes, there was an overwhelming uncertain passion about it, wasn’t there, Max commented, turning a page, not back, but over to a portrait, —Van der Weyden, it’s rather saccharine . . .

—Saccharine . . . ? Stanley stayed his hand, with the first evidence that he was looking at the pictures over the other shoulder.

Max shrugged. —Ingratiating then, he said, lowering the magazine from Stanley’s hand, to turn another page, —there’s nothing like the perfect control . . . Max added and, having turned the page whose caption he was paraphrasing, went on, —There is a great sense of lucency and multiple perspective about these early Flemish . . .

—The separate multiple consciousnesses of the . . . things in these Flemish primitives, that is really the force and the flaw in these paintings, Otto said, —you might say, he added.

—What do you mean?

—Well, you might say that the thoroughness with which they feel obliged to recreate the atmosphere, and the . . . these painters who aren’t long on suggestion, but pile up perfection layer on layer, and the detail, it’s . . . it becomes both the force and the flaw . . .

—Where’d you get that? Max asked him; and when he got no immediate answer, looked up. Otto looked down immediately, but his expression did not change: it was fixed, like the dull compulsive tone in his voice which had come to it when he interrupted. —Like a writer who can’t help devoting as much care to a moment as to an hour . . . he went on, now slightly more hurriedly, his voice, like the anxiety mounting with slight stabs in his face, straining an automatic effort of memory whose fullness he could not grasp, but only repeat its thrusts. —The perfection . . . Then he silenced, staring down ahead of him.

—There is an illusion of increased powers of eyesight, looking at these, even in reproduction. They’re almost perfect, Max commented, flicking over pages. He glanced at Otto’s averted profile, and turned to Stanley. —Isn’t there, Stanley?

—Yes, but, Stanley began, faltering, —these men, these painters who were creating right out of themselves, and all of this, all this harmony with everything around them, with all the things, all the spiritual things around them that supported them, that they knew would be there tomorrow, and, in the Guild, why in the Guild it was the opinion of your fellow artists that mattered, not competition before a lot of people who didn’t know anything but the price. The Guild even took care of your burial, he added plaintively.

Max laughed, his brief cordial mockery. —I’ll bury you myself, Stanley. You can go home and make up all the music you want to now.

—But it isn’t making it up, inventing music, it’s like . . . remembering, and like, well van Gogh says about painting, when he would take a drawing of Delacroix as a subject and improvise with colors, not as himself, he says, but searching for memories of their pictures, the “vague consonance of colors,” the memory that was himself, his own interpretation.

They stopped together at another curb. A store loudspeaker poured out upon them a vacuous tenor straining, —I’m dreaming of a white Christmas . . . with insipid mourning hope. And Stanley, escaping, abandoning his companions to that lugubrious assault, moved from the curb as though called forth by Cherubini: trumpets and the clash of brass: the horn sounded, and he leaped away from the immense and silent automobile guided by a brittle dame hung like some florid gothic tracery behind the steering wheel, her chin jutting just above it, sweeping round from Washington Square.

Max picked up the practice keyboard from the street and brought it up to him on the curb opposite, where he stood quivering. —What happened? he asked. —That moving Christmas music?

—Well it isn’t . . . they have no right to . . . Stanley tried to speak, out of breath, accepting the cardboard keyboard like a delicate instrument.

—What do you want on Sixth Avenue, The Messiah?

—They have no right to . . . cheapen . . .

—Ask them to play, Yes We Have No Bananas, Max said, smiling. —That’s from The Messiah, and it’s more their line.

—What do you mean? Stanley was trying to wipe the tire marks from the length of the white keys.

—I mean Yes We Have No Bananas was lifted right out of Handel’s Messiah. Come on, Max said taking his arm, and looking round for Otto. —What’s the matter with both of you today?

—You don’t have to . . . tell me things like that, Stanley said, pulling away.

A man standing with his back to a shop window said, —It won’t snow, it’s too warm to snow. And Otto, looking where the man was looking, over the buildings at the northern sky, realized that he was not shivering with cold, but simply shivering. And he heard Max say,

—You want everybody to be like you, that’s your trouble Stanley.

—I want everyone to be like I want to be, Stanley answered.

Otto met Stanley’s eyes. And though the sky was dull, and there was no such color in sight, they appeared green, brilliant, burning into green in that prolonged moment as Otto stood bound and apparently unable to mount the curb between them. But it was only a moment, the passage of a shadow, and Max’s voice, breaking between them, brought Otto up.

—You might say that the man who wrote Yes We Have No Bananas was searching for memories? a vague consonance of sounds? . . . Max began good-humoredly. Then looking at Otto he said, —What’s the matter, you look all disjointed.

—I don’t know, but . . . yes, disjointed, Otto said mounting the curb, speaking unevenly as he fell in beside them. —Like . . . do you know what I feel like? Like when a clay reproduction is made of an original statue, and then they take the copy and cut it behind the head with fine wire, and behind the arms and the legs, and those are all moved and it’s cast again.

—Why? Where’d you hear that?

—To be sold as part of a series, a series of the original, a series that never existed, I . . . I read about it in a book a friend of mine had, a friend a long time ago, he . . . listen . . . Otto groped.

As though spurred by his faltering confusion, Max interrupted, —I knew there was something I meant to tell you. That story you sent to Edna, for a magazine that publisher she works for owns, they’re bringing out my book you know.

—What about the story, I sent it in for some guy I met at your party.

—She thinks you wrote it, Max told him. —That you wrote it and sent it under another name.

—She thinks I wrote it? But why would I have written it? I didn’t even read it, I . . . why would I do a thing like that.

—I guess she thought you were playing it safe.

—But she . . . but God damn it . . . Otto brandished the sling.

—She says you used to be clever when you were in college, writing, but you sort of faded out, Max went on agreeably. —She says the reason you were clever was because you didn’t know how to be honest.

—Well the only reason she’s honest is because she’s too God damn dumb to be clever, I mean if she was honest, but she . . . why the hell should she go around saying a thing like that about me? for no reason?

—No reason? Max repeated, and put a hand on Otto’s shoulder. —Nobody resents you more than somebody who’s loved you.

Otto twisted away from him, but unsteadily as though trying to retain the hand on his shoulder but turn his face to hide the trembling lip. —Why do I . . . why do people have to be so . . . so . . . he mumbled brokenly as detailed fragments of expressions broke over his face one after another until he grabbed with a whole hand round the eyes and drew the hand down, as though to wipe away these abrupt strokes on the surface which mocked the clear image of his anger beneath. Then he brought out a cigarette, and caught both lips round it.

—Forget it, Max said, and patting his shoulder before he removed his hand went on as cordially, —Say, I’ve meant to tell you again how much I liked your play, Otto . . . Otto mumbled something without looking up. —Because when other people have said they didn’t like it, I’ve told them . . .

—You’ve told them what! Otto broke out. He looked up to see Max smiling at him.

—Don’t be so touchy, Max said to him.

—It’s just . . . all this . . . damned . . . Otto hunched again, looking down before him. —And when people say I stole it, that I plagiarized.

—Somebody, I can’t think, who was it, Max appeared sympathetically thoughtful, —said they thought you’d lifted parts of The Sound and the Fury.

—The what?

—Faulkner’s novel, The Sound and the Fury, that you’d plagiarized . . .

—I’ve never even read it, I’ve never read The Sound and the Fury damn it, so how the hell . . . Otto looked over to see Stanley look troubled and start to speak. —I mean, damn it . . .

—What’s the difference? Max laughed. —I noticed a couple of little things you’d picked up, but what’s the difference.

—What do you mean, what little things?

—Little things, lines here and there. That line of Ben Shahn’s, “You cannot invent the shape of a stone” for instance.

—But . . . who the hell is Ben Shahn? That line, a friend of mine, a long time ago, somebody I used to know, said . . .

—What’s the difference. Max smiled. —As Stevenson says, we all live by selling something. He raised a hand to Otto’s shoulder again. —What’s the difference. The money? You have a real complex about money don’t you Otto, a real castration complex without it.

—Yes, the money, Otto muttered, —but, damn it . . .

—It doesn’t have to be money, just money, Stanley broke in, —if he . . . if it’s his work, if it’s his own, and he wants . . .

—His own! Max repeated, and his laugh this time was sharper, more unkind, edged with contempt. —Look, he said to Otto, —that magazine of mine you’ve got there, open it. Max made no gesture of surrendering Collectors Quarterly, and taking the other magazine himself. —Just open it to . . . there, here it is, this thing on Sherlock Holmes, “the first authorized Sherlock Holmes story to appear” since Arthur Conan Doyle died. See? Authorized. It “was written after exhaustive study of Sir Arthur’s literary methods . . .” he read, as Otto held the magazine before them. —See? these two men who wrote it, “They studied such minutiae as Doyle’s sentence rhythms, his use of the comma, the number of words in the average Holmes sentence . . . The authors have felt no temptation to vary the pattern which Doyle usually observed . . . Special pains have been taken to reproduce certain Doylean literary tricks . . .”

—But what do you mean? Otto asked him.

—What’s the difference? Max asked in return, bringing Collectors Quarterly up. —Authorized paintings by Dierick Bouts? van der Goes? Who authorizes them? Somebody says, One wishes there were more stories by Conan Doyle, somebody else wishes there were more paintings by Hugo van der Goes. So, after a careful study of the early Flemish painter’s technique . . . such minutiae as his brush-stroke rhythms, his use of perspective, the number of figures in the average van der Goes canvas . . . What’s the difference? You fake a Dürer by taking the face from one and turning it around, the beard from another, the hat from another, you’ve got a Dürer, haven’t you?

—But only on the surface, Stanley said.

—On the surface! How much deeper do people go? the people who buy them?

—But this, this isn’t a . . . forgery, Otto said holding out the large picture magazine. —It’s no secret, they tell you right here . . .

—That’s just what I mean, Max said impatiently. —What’s the difference now? In our times? He laughed again, and folded Collectors Quarterly under his arm. —As long as it’s “authorized.” Isn’t that right, Stanley?

Stanley answered immediately, —No.

—No? He studied Stanley’s face with mock interest and shock. —Is there something diabolic about bringing Sherlock Holmes back to life?

—The devil is the father of false art, Stanley said quietly. He was walking carefully on the pavement along the edge, his face expressing a concentration which Otto’s echoed, but a vague echo, as Otto walked staring at the pavement, not listening to them.

—Stanley believes in sin, don’t you, Stanley? Max persisted.

—If we believe that love is weakness? Stanley brought out, —and people resent it, because they think it’s an admission of weakness, and they draw away from it . . . and that’s why you kill the thing you love, because it’s your weakness personified. If you kill it, you kill your weakness before it kills you.

—I said sin, Max cajoled him.

—But, was there love? before sin, a sense of sin, made it possible? Stanley said in the same low tone, without looking up. —Before there was sin, to be suffered and forgiven?

—Love! You in love? Max laughed.

—Art is the work of love.

—Art is a work of necessity, Max said.

—Was it a good story? Otto asked finally.

—The Sherlock Holmes thing? It was lousy.

—No I mean, I mean, the one that I . . . that was sent up to . . . her.

—It was lousy too, Max answered.

—But isn’t there a moment . . . Stanley went on, —a moment when love and necessity become the same thing?

They reached an open square where the sky was almost black, looking north, as most people were doing. Shops were lighted, and the lighted windows of the buildings stood out against the sky, holding it off, and themselves to earth.

—Where are we going, anyhow? Otto asked.

—I’m going right up here, Max said, nodding ahead. Then, noticing Stanley’s careful walk again, he said, —Step on a crack, Break your mother’s back . . . and Stanley stopped. —Come on, Max laughed, and when Stanley came on, now obviously avoiding cracks in the pavement, Max said to him, —I can believe you’d really believe that, Stanley. What an unspotted soul for the devil to bid for. What do you think he’d give me, if I sold you to him?

—You couldn’t, Stanley said.

—All right, we’ll sell Otto. You wouldn’t mind, would you Otto?

—Christ no, not at this point.

—You couldn’t, Stanley said again.

—Well Faust did, damn it, Otto broke out morosely, —Faust sold his soul to the devil.

—No. That’s a fallacy, Stanley said looking round at him soberly. —That evil can take entire possession of the soul like that. Evil is self-limited.

—Damn it, it was his soul, Otto said defiantly, —and he sold it to the devil.

—No. It was not his to dispose of. We belong to our souls, not our souls to us.

—Ontological dialectics, said Max, as they approached a subway entrance.

Otto stood unsteadily, as though afloat, away from them, as Max clapped Stanley jovially on the shoulder and said, —Stanley’s fired by a divine spark. The words seemed to come from the great distance of sounds over water before a storm. He turned to Otto without breaking his smile. —But you and me . . . ?

Otto stood there, his arm shivering in the sling, the wind blowing his hair up from behind. —Yes, he said, raising his eyebrows, —sometimes it’s difficult . . . he curled his lip slightly against its tendency to tremble, —it’s difficult to shed our human nature. Then he turned away quickly and stepped back to the curb, where he stood with his back to them, scraping the edge of his shoe. He heard Max laugh, and call to him, —A little always sticks . . . And when he turned, Max was disappearing into the pit of the subway. There was only Stanley, frail against the dark sky.

—What’s the matter? Stanley asked him as he approached slowly.

—There was something . . . Otto said, looking him in the face again, in the eyes, which were dull with the sky beyond. —Something . . .

—What? . . . Stanley looked at him anxiously.

—I don’t know, earlier, that moment . . . Otto said, looking more confused. —For a moment, a feeling that you . . . that you and I . . . It was as though you were someone who had been . . . He faltered, broke off, and looked up, recovering. —Damn it. He’s gone, Max?

—Yes, he’s gone, down there, Stanley pointed.

—And this damned thing, he left me this and took Collectors Quarterly, it cost a dollar.

—Do you want it back? Stanley commenced helpfully. —If I see him . . .

—That painting, Otto murmured, looking down again. He rubbed his free hand over his face. —The Christ in that painting, I wanted to look at it, I wanted to look at it again, there was something . . . familiar . . . he went on vaguely, mumbling, —and the Virgin . . .

After a pause, Stanley said, —But there should be, Christ . . .

—Not that, not that, Otto waved him back, and stood gripping his temples in an open hand. Then he dropped his hand and shook his head. —Never mind, he said. Looking at Stanley, he tried a strained smile. —The divine spark . . . he muttered, at the anxious face being weighed toward him by the uneven mustache. —And what are you going to do with it, anyhow? he brought out in sudden derision.

—But that, Stanley said, coming a step nearer him, —that is what undoes us all. He stood before Otto looking into Otto’s eyes, waiting; but saw them narrow.

—I hate him, Otto said, changing again as abruptly.

—Who?

—Him. Max.

—But, why?

—Yes . . . because he’ll survive.

Every street she crossed, the black sky showed to her right, as though these were tunnels through to the “chilly hell” of the poet’s Elegy on the Thousand Children, through to Boreas, and beyond the north wind. And so every time she stepped from the curb, going west, she tried not to look; and always had looked before she stepped up on the curb ahead.

As she came nearer the river, the pavement and the walks were wet with the light snow which had commenced since she started. She passed an empty baby carriage, and stopped, a step beyond it, to look back and make sure it was empty. Then she looked up and smiled at the woman who had been shaking a mop from the window above, and that woman only stared at her until she went on; and even then looked up, and a minute later stopped shaking the mop again, seeing her pause down the block and kneel on the wet walk to help a child with an entangled mitten-string, kneeling there, the narrow eyes of the woman in the window had it, a moment too long.

On a trestle at the far end of the street an engine smashed a coupling closed with a shattering sound which was gone immediately, leaving a wail from the river beyond suspended on the particles of silt in the air, to be exhausted slowly as they were borne to earth by the scales of snow shed from above.

Where a crate lay broken on the sidewalk she turned in at the doorway in this last block of Horatio Street. She sought the bell with no name and then, leaning against the door it came open before her finger found the bell, and his door was just inside. In front of it stood a wastebasket full: some bottles and tubes, electric-light bulbs, and that door was not tight closed.

—Asleep? she whispered, entering. And she closed the door behind her silently, a hand on the knob and her back against it, slowly, as she looked round. Then she coughed, and covered her mouth quickly, for the room was full of a bitter cluster of smells from the smoldering pile in the fireplace. In fact some of it had burned on the hearth and lay smoking spilled out on the floor, and she hurried over and kicked the burning pieces back up on the bricks seeing, as she did so; the blackened edges of photographs, details of brushwork highly enlarged.

There were torn bits of paper, torn pieces of canvas and splinters of wood, a few books, some eggshells, a small squirrel-hair brush, strewn among the bright pigmented spots on the floor. Beside the low bed, where she went and sat on the edge, was a broken glass, a box of Dutch cigars unopened, a coconut, and a leather box filled with cuff links, collar buttons, paper clips, two penknives, another knife, bladeless, and a knifeless blade, buttons, pen points, studs, a number of keys, some brass wood-screws, a single pearl earring, and prominently, two large archaically studded hoops of gold. She leant down and wiped her wet cheeks with the end of a blanket that trailed from the welter on the floor. Then she straightened, on the very edge of the bed, and turned putting a hand forth, gently. —You . . . she whispered.

She sat like that a minute more, seeming not to breathe, then she whispered again, —You . . . but more tartly, —if you keep your eyes closed, then where are you now without me?

The bare bulb glared on her standing up, and she said, —It is very warm in here, taking two, and three, and four steps, taking off her coat. She laid it on a high stool and looked round her again, stood singly beneath the bare bulb and casting no shadow until she turned and walked toward the only whole canvas in the room, turned face-to-wall, where her shadow fell on it and on a single plane expanded over the rough and soiled back of it. She got hold of the frame and turned it from the wall.

—Do you reproach me? she said, after a time of looking at it though their eyes did not meet, and then she extended her hand and traced its features. Then she whispered something and abruptly turned her back.

Frank, Bishop of Zanzibar, lay on the floor at her foot; and she kicked the book away. Then she walked over to where the hinged mirrors stood against another wall, turned them open and closed them again quickly.

—You . . . she said again looking back to the bed, for she’d turned quickly.

There on the floor at her feet was a drawing, it was a meticulous self-portrait, and she took a step before she saw it, saw it was not a detail of brushwork that is, and leaned down to pick it up. —You, she said, —all upside-down. Then she righted it and repeated, —all upside-down.

She stood there staring somewhere between the bed and the drawing as though a hand were on her; and then turned and pulled the mirrors again. She cocked one leaf open with the toe of her right foot, holding the picture up with effort as though it were a great weight, and looked at the prompt emergences, settling her eyes on the even image, the same that she held in her hands; then raised her eyes to the second image of her own face, and let the leaf go closed with a clap, so that a part of it broke out and fell to the floor separating as soon as it sounded, to reflect the glare of the bulb in the ceiling back, in shapes of breakage, to the ceiling.

The room was filled with the odor of destruction: as though there might arise on the smoke a difference, when a storehouse of chemicals burned: here in the squat fireplace were chemicals, some of them inorganic, and the organic transmutations suffering oxidation with the immediacy of a chain reaction on the page of a chemistry text; but where, in this consummation, the law of the conservation of energy? Could brush strokes make the difference, then? Science in magnitude, biology and chemistry as triumphantly articulate as subordinates are always, offer no choice but abjure it in frantic effort to perfect a system without alternatives, the very fact of their science based on measurement; and measurement, designed to predicate finalities, refusing the truth which shelters in possibility: in the weight of the smell of the smoke there was more than the death of the body, the cellular sucking construction, hunger of tissues unconscious of any end but identical reproduction. But if strokes of creation fed the flames, strokes in whose every instant possibility had been explored for the finality which is perfection, torn apart in the attempt to free it into the delineation of that baffled enclosure of its own medium, here were brush strokes whose future had been dictated by the thwarting enclosure of the past, a past whose future was struck dying with every instant of the delineation of its everlasting life.

—You, she whispered, back seated on the edge of the bed, and then kicking out, —Go away egg . . . in a mocking voice as the coconut rolled away from her foot. She raised her eyes across the room again to the picture she’d turned from the wall; and faint under a single thin coat the Byzantine earrings showed through. —But . . .

—with your eyes closed, she whispered, turning back to the bed there. —I dream and wake up. The love I have from others is not love of me, but where they try to find themselves, loving me. I dream and I wake up, and then at that moment you are somewhere being real to other people; and they are a part of your reality; and I am not . . . But you are the only person I am real with . . .

She sat staring down.

—If you are the only person I am real with . . .

Her eyes strayed; and suddenly she had the leather box, spilling everything but the archaic hoops of gold which she held in a hand and was up, raising and dropping her shadow across the room in an instant as she crossed and went into the bathroom.

When she came out, wearing the Byzantine earrings, there was blood on them and on her shoulders, running down in singular unpaired lines over her bared breasts, breaking where they broke away from her, mocking their slightness by assailing it, respecting their fullness by parting above the two swollen stains whose color they ridiculed in passing, down, to delineate the unbroken rising below along the sharply broken lines that her walking so quickly forced with each step, to come apart and disappear where that rising fell away in the white hollow of her thighs.

—Then with your eyes closed, she whispered, pulling a blanket from the welter of blankets over her.

The fire had died under the steady censure of the electric glare, and its emanations contended bitterly until, one by one, their poisonous violence was exhausted by such severe emergency, and left only lavender to rise and spread in a diffusion which penetrated without edge, which cut without sharpness, impetuous without haste, filling without distending as a color deepens in saturation and exalts in brilliance at once.

—Oh yes . . . she whispered fiercely, —Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes . . .

As the fire died even the lavender became indistinct, and lay in with the smell of Venice turpentine, and stand oil, burnt photographic prints, burnt canvas and tortured gesso until, when she woke, there was neither triumph nor dissension in the air she breathed, standing, looking round her, back to the bed suddenly, and round her again.

She put on her coat, and sat on the stool where she’d got it from. She sat there for some time, almost under the light, so that her shadow lay steady and small over an irregular blow of verdigris on the floor, confining its elation within the clear and casual bounds of her retreat.

—Why did you not write to me? she said, still unmoving, not even to look toward the bed.

Then the green she had retired leaped out under the light as she stood, and began searching everywhere, pushing aside Kinder-und Hausmärchen with her foot, picking up a piece of paper, kicking Thoreau and a crumpled twenty-dollar bill, stepping on an eggshell, stooping again in a distracted pause to pick up an unopened container of indigo, kicking, again, Frank, Bishop of Zanzibar, and the broken glass, finding more paper, slipping, and almost falling in a pool of stand oil, picking up, with the same distracted pause, an unopened container of rose madder, and another piece of paper which she threw down because it was smeared on one side with blue paint, and on the other had written in large characters, semper aliquid haeret, and going on so until she had a number of pieces of paper in her hand, which she laid out on a drawing board and commenced to write with a broken penholder, and a point she got from the leather box.

—Here is the letter, she said sitting over it, and turning to look across the room. —Because you must not close your eyes now because you cannot, she said. —Because now you are alone, she said. Still looking over there she put down the broken penholder and picked up the rose madder, running her thumbnail to open it. —Because you cannot, she said, as the rose madder spilled into her hand, and she looked down at it, and shivered in the open coat.

Then she began to write. She wrote there for some time; and when she broke, between words, or in the middle of words, seldom between sentences or paragraphs, she would look over across the room, all the while, with the fingers of her left hand, applying the coarse rose madder to her lips, and the indigo around her eyes. She wrote for some time, and before she was done the rose madder was half gone, and the indigo had caked wetly round her eyes.

When the letter was finished she laid it in the middle of the floor, and looking round for something to weigh it down, found the coconut and stationed it there. Then going to the door she closed her coat, twice, each time after stooping and straightening from the floor, and went out. The crumpled twenty-dollar bill, which had stuck to her shoe with the stand oil she’d stepped in, came off before she reached the street.

Here is the letter she wrote, and left there.

You:

The demands of painting have the most astonishing consequences In my life at this moment you are one of them

Perspective since De Chirico manipulated it plastically; resolved it in his painting paradigms, now exists in the mind; a nostalgia; a co-relative isolation; a plenary; a playa, where, one must, to see the water, go immediately after the rain, and to see the broad level ground, must visit before. Painting is exquisite as the punishment for the thinker: denied the thoughts of his grave-diggers, his own death-face and his final curiosity, a vision of his bones—the skeleton: of which he was always aware, moment by moment emerging to that static release he, the thinker, cannot joyfully sit, a separated thing, shaking his bones Perhaps a heart petrified, or a brain, an eye, an unborn child, would roll deliciously inside it, to rattle there, the way a dead man rattles in the sea nor find a solution to deny all this, a solving, nor a solvent, to disappear those bones, make it an improbability the other’s joy, nor to deny the priceless departure into death.

Since paintings are in the service of my desires, I can disdain no ruse to accomplish them.

To paint to intensify, to remember but what could I remember here, in this place, where, in truth, I have never been before? a street of accidents all designed to happen to me?

Chroniclers, replacing instinct, become us more and more to lose our sensibilities, but, how can I refuse this slan-derous name when I shall paint, and then insist upon it?

It would doubtlessly, be kinder not to insist so, or investigate less directly, more discreetly: ask my mother, not my brain; “what sort of little girl I was?” and lover: “what woman I became” in order to define the strange significance of the avowal of these episodes of paint, like circumstance divorced from motivation

This, though, would place it, in sum, upon another level of being, every delusion of my energetic brain engages itself alone, then, in this enterprise, this demonstration of itself.

The mere coincident of materials at one’s disposal cannot make a painting, nor, even a journey where nothing had been selected, nor lost by traveling, a journey, indeed, that might as well never had been taken.

To paint without means, desire or justification—a dubious use, habit sloughed away from reason or, in an indecisive moment, “wasn’t it good of it to rain?” or “who was it, came to see me at three in the afternoon?”

A law-maker, unable to formulate laws, can be a painter, or a land, where, laws when broken, punish, not the offender, but the law-makers, can produce painters. A painter in any other place must struggle to be what he is.

Rooted within us, basic laws, forgotten gladly, as an undesirable appointment made under embarrassing pressures, are a difficult work to find. The painter, speaking without tongue, is quite absurdly mad in his attempt to do so, yet he is inescapably bound toward this.

To recognize, not to establish but to intervene. A remarkable illusion?

Painting, a sign whose reality is actually, I, never to be abandoned, a painting is myself, ever attentive to me, mimicking what I never changed, modified, or compromised. Whether I, myself, am object or image, they at once, are both, real or fancied, they are both, concrete or abstract, they are both, exactly and in proportion to this disproportionate I, being knowingly or unknowingly neither one nor the other, yet to be capable of creating it, welded as one, perhaps not even welded but actually from the beginning one, am also both and what I must, without changing, modifying, or compromising, be.

The painter concerned for his mortal safety, indifferent because he fears to scrutinize, paradoxically sacrifices that very safety, for he will not be allowed to escape painting.

He will make paintings or they will revolt and make him, unhappy being in the grasp of them. He compulsively must, then, live them cold as they are, static, perversely with warmth and movement he cannot know but feel painfully, a bird with broken eggs inside.

On the other hand, a no-painter—resourceful as he may be, cannot paint. He cannot say, well, “I did not get the job but I shall say I got it anyhow”—by this distortion of fact he deludes, not himself, but other persons, until, that moment arrives to receive the reimbursement. With nothing of value to show the fact will disappear. There is no fact but value.

The painter knows, sadly enough, that experience does not suffice unto itself, has no proportion, dimension, perspective, mournfully he eats his life but is not allowed to digest it, this being reserved for others, not knowing, but who must somehow, at any sacrifice be made to know, then punished for the sight of this knowledge, by aiding it on its journey from brain to brain.

It does not seem unreasonable that we invent colors, lines, shapes, capable of being, representative of existence, therefore it is not unreasonable that they, in turn, later, invent us, our ideas, directions, motivations, with great audacity, since we, ourselves having them upon our walls. What rude guests they prove to be, indeed: although paintings differ from life by energy a painter can never be a substitute for his paintings, so complete so independent as reality are they. Imagine the pleasure they enjoy at this.

They by conversion into an idea of the person, do, instantaneously destroy him. A tragic gesture that actually leads to tragedy but diabolically exists only in an absence of tragedy, nevertheless procreating it, however, they are unreasonably enough, insufficient, because they are not made of ideas, they are made of paint, all else is really us.

Paintings are metaphors for reality, but instead of being an aid to realization obscure the reality which is far more profound. The only way to circumvent painting is by absolute death.

——Close your eyes for the next sixty seconds and try to walk around the room . . .

The man behind the bar reached up and turned it off.

—I got a friend he’s got a glass eye with the American flag on it, said the man on the outside.

The man behind the bar poured whisky until it ran over his fingers. —This’ll put lead in your pencil. He pushed it in a wet trail across the bar. —Now if you got somebody to write to you’re all set.

—Here’s Rose.

At the far end of the bar Otto stepped aside for the dumpy woman who came in the door. Her nose was red, so were her eyes.

—What’s the matter, Rose? Cold enough for you?

Otto joined the cold coin on the bar with a warm one from his pocket, signaled with his empty beer glass, and put it back down beside the newspaper, folded there on the bar across one of the girls in the vice probe, whose dark glasses he had been staring at.

To his left, the mirror and the window conjoined at such an angle that vehicles on the street outside appeared to come into one another head-on. A bus telescoped and disappeared. He withdrew his bloodshot eyes and turned them straight before him; but he did not see his face for the sign FRANKS AND KRAUT 20¢ was pasted on the mirror just above his collar. Below, where his hands met sensitively on the empty beer glass, twitching somewhat, touching at the fingertips, frankfurters turned on hot rollers, slowly, receding and coming forward, passing each other forward and back with dull nudges like fat jointless fingers in meditation. He withdrew his left hand back into the loose sling.

—Here, pussy pussy pussy, said the dumpy woman.

—We got three of them.

—I lost mine, said the dumpy woman. —I raised him from this big. He had blood in his kidney.

—Human beings has to go too.

—I lost two husbands that way. Overnight.

Otto signaled with his empty glass. Then a tall blonde, in a fur cape, wearing dark glasses, walked to meet herself in the glass. Otto turned and looked out the window. He could not see her. He looked in the mirrored pillar behind him, and saw her coat-sleeve disappear. He looked before him, and saw her merge into herself. He looked out of the window again, and saw a man in a Santa Claus suit.

—Could I have a beer here? he said. He waited. Then he put down his empty glass and walked toward the back, taking out his wallet.

In the telephone booth a moment later he sat with the receiver to his ear, listening to a clock ticking in the Sun Style Film office. Finally a voice came through.

—Hello? Otto said, and named the man and himself in introductory greeting. —I’m sorry I’ve been so long calling you, but I . . . Yes, but . . . What? No, about Central America. You remember, I . . . When can we get together for a . . . No, it was Peru and northern Bolivia, you remember . . . Yes, I . . . What? But I . . . you . . . Well that bastard, he repeated to himself, leaning back against the wall of the booth. —“We have nothing to discuss.” Well that bastard. That bastard. Then the sling gave way.

He came out with his wrist pressed against his wallet. He had forty-one dollars. —And why I gave a five-dollar bill to that Harlem nigger yesterday, to keep an eye out for that damn dispatch case. Damn it. That black bastard too.

The dumpy woman was drinking a manhattan. —I can feel it down to my toes, she said. Her stockings sagged over her broken shoe backs.

—Who you saving the cherry for, Rose?

The man behind the bar turned the radio on again, and left it while it warmed to strains of Mozart. Otto’s glass was still empty, but he stood there as though unable to call and command, staring at the man’s striped necktie, the signal of another final club which had not invited him to join.

—What’s the matter, Rose? You blushing?

Otto waited a moment longer. Mozart continued, rising and gathering to exquisite pauses: and each of these apertures was obligingly filled by a saxophone. Otto picked up the two cold coins, and left the newspaper on the bar. Mozart measured a subtle withdrawal; and a voice from the saxophone world heralded,

—Here’s an oldie, friends, Rudy Vallee singing, Love Made a Gypsy Out of Me.

—Hey Jack, you want your newspaper? the man behind the bar called after him.

—Never mind, Otto answered over his shoulder. —It’s yesterday’s.

The tropic breeze ruffled Otto’s linen, boarding that banana boat, then standing on deck gazing out over the Caribbean, a whisky-soda in his free left hand, skin warm with memory of the sun: so he stood, serene and unapproachable, in the memory of the unsteady figure appearing now (wearing a new green muffler which enhanced the yellowness of his skin), an old friend whom Otto only now fully appreciated, and would like to see again. He passed the steamed windows lowering a handkerchief, where two black rings witnessed what desperate barriers are the fine hairs of the nostrils, and pulling open the door of the Viareggio, interrupted this with his entrance:

—Philogyny? I thought you said phylogeny.

—I said, misogyny recapitulates philogyny.

—Misogamy . . . ?

—Never mind.

—What’s the name of this book you’re writing?

—Baedeker’s Babel.

Noting only the striped tie on the taller of these two, Otto brought the handkerchief up again, and got by them.

—And you say you’ve become a misologist?

—Whisky-soda, Otto ordered at the bar, slurring his tone in casual rudeness as he imagined one used to command.

—Where’s the head in this place? Someone bumped him. —Right through that door, it’s called Tiffany’s here.

—But I ordered whisky-and-soda.

—You said whisky sour. Sixty-five cents.

Max’s back was turned to him at a near table, where a battered copy of Collectors Quarterly lay open to Mother and Child II, under the elbow of a man hunched in a green wool shirt who was saying to Max, —You had some work at the New School, well look. Would I have to prepare my lectures? or could I just bullshit. Otto took a step toward the table. He was blocked by a haggardly alert face, speaking to someone behind him, —She would have drownded herself if she could have found something to drownd herself in. And the response over Otto’s shoulder, —She’s been way out for a long time, man. You can’t fool with horse without getting hooked.

—That magazine, Otto said to a girl standing behind the table, —do you know what happened . . . where it . . .

—A bear chewed it.

—What? I mean that . . .

—Oh I thought you meant this Vogue. She held up a tattered copy of Vogue. —A bear chewed this in Yellowstone Park, the craziest bear . . . She turned her back and went on with her conversation, —Oh very very very very very much . . .

—Hello. Can you buy me a beer?

—Hello Hannah, of course, I’d be glad to. Otto ordered it, handed her the dripping glass, and said, —Really, I’ve just had the most maddening . . .

—Thanks, said Hannah, and returned to the tall colored boy she’d been talking to, and shared her glass with him in the corner. At Otto’s side a blond boy in dungarees said, —I tell you I felt just for all the world like Archimedes in his crwazy bathtub . . . But how could I? I tell you I was stuck. And at the near table, a green wool elbow knocked a glass of beer over Mother and Child II.

Otto winced, saw Stanley seated staring at a cup of coffee, started to approach, saw it was Anselm seated with him staring at nothing, and stopped. The haggard boy came up to their table and dropped into a chair with neither invitation nor greeting.

—You know how I made her the first time I made her? Anselm went on. —I described a wet dream to her, one I’d had about her, she listened as though it had really happened, and then before she knew it I was in again. He laughed, but sounded weary, not really interested in what he was talking about, and sat drumming blunt nail-bitten finger-ends on the table.

—She was probably high then, the haggard boy commented dully.

—You shouldn’t . . . Stanley commenced.

—What are you pretending you’re worried about her now for? Christ, she didn’t make it, did she?

—She could never make anything real, man. The gas was on all right, but there was air coming in all over the place.

—Just the same, Stanley appealed, —if her intention . . .

—Her intention! what’s that to you? Christ, wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? She ought to get her ass into a nunnery.

Stanley said nothing. He lowered his eyes, sipped his coffee, and opened a newspaper.

—What does Saint Jerome say about women? Anselm persisted. —She’s the gate of Hell. “A foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil,” says Chrysostom . . . And he broke off, watching Otto’s approach without recognition.

Otto got round the two young men whom he had interrupted with his entrance. —I’m doing for writing what Bruckner did for music, said one. —So what did Bruckner do for music? —Well put it this way, I’m doing in writing . . .

—Freud! . . . came borne in a pleasing Boston-bred voice from a tall girl. —Hahaha . . . Freud my ahss.

—You know what the trouble is, like Pascal says, all the malheurs in this world come from a man’s inability to sit alone in a small room, said the taller of them. —Can I buy you a drink? He was wearing a tie from the first crossing of the Queen Elizabeth.

—But why . . . ? why? Stanley repeated, plaintive and incredulous. —Why would Max say a thing like that? He’d know it’s not true, that Hannah and I were . . . sleeping together . . . ? He looked up and included Otto in his appeal. Anselm was laughing. He shrugged.

—I am one to tell you, my lord, Stanley and a palindrome are making the beast with two backs, he said, and took Stanley’s newspaper.

—But why do they . . . people have to . . . say such things?

—People? You sound like it’s the first time in history somebody got laid, Anselm said, his tone musing and vague. —Das Unbeschreibliche, hier wird’s getan . . . He did not look up from the paper, whose pages he turned without apparent pauses to read. —Das ewig-Weibliche, for Christ sake, he mumbled.

Otto stood unable to turn away, bound by the hurt accusal in Stanley’s eyes, which lowered uncertainly back to the table.

—The last time I saw her, the haggard boy said, —she had to have somebody around her all the time, so she could ask if she’d really done something or gone somewheres. She looked like she was going to flip then.

Anselm tore something out of the paper and pushed it across the table. —This ought to cheer you up, Stanley, he said. —The bell tower at Saint Mark’s is ready to flip too.

—She told me once the reason her eyes bug out like that is some doctor gave her henbane, did you know that? She said she can even see the stars in the daytime. If she’d really wanted to make it she would have sliced her wrists like Charles . . .

—For Christ sake! will you . . . stop talking about it? Anselm broke out at the haggard boy suddenly, then looked at Stanley who was staring dumbly at the headline. —You better get over there before the whole thing falls down, Anselm said to him.

—Hannah . . . Otto interrupted, —tried to kill herself? I just saw her.

—Hannah! Anselm looked up and laughed at him.

—It was Esme, Stanley said quietly. —Last night.

—But what happened?

—You’re spilling your drink. What are you drinking whisky sours for anyhow? Anselm demanded.

—She flipped, man. Chaby found her with the gas on. Then the haggard boy returned to Anselm. —Did you hear about Charles? His old lady came from Grand Rapids to take him back there, she’s a Christian Science.

Otto put his glass on the table. He looked back as though minutes were hours, and the hours had been days since he’d seen her: he had driven her to it. His chest expanded as he got his breath and turned away.

—She came on all sweetness and light, you know man. She thought she could turn him on with Mary Baker Eddy, but she won’t give him a penny unless he comes home with her. I don’t blame him for flipping.

Anselm reached for Otto’s glass as Otto hurried toward the door, pressing on between the two young men, interrupting

—Scatological?

—Eschatological, the doctrine of last things . . .

—Good lord, Willie, you are drunk. Either that or you’re writing for a very small audience.

—So . . . ? how many people were there in Plato’s Republic?

Otto passed through the streets in a great hurry, but he was moving almost mechanically, one foot before the other and the load of the sling pounding against him, so that his excitement did not show until he passed the head of her stairs and stood breathless at her door. All the way his lips had been moving, and slight single sounds escaped them, chirps of forgiveness which he was trying to draw together.

Chaby opened the door. His sleeves were rolled up, and his shirt, the back of the collar turned up, was unbuttoned to the waist, showing a blue tattoo line which came, apparently, from the shoulder. Otto stared at the miraculous medal swinging from his throat, and then looked up at Chaby’s small good teeth. —Is she . . .

Chaby nodded over his shoulder and turned away, leaving the door ajar. Otto pushed it open.

She came out to him from the other end of the double room. She wore a clean red cotton dress, and had a spotted blue coat on over it. She greeted him with almost a smile, her tranquil face looking as though she were going to smile, and then not.

—But you . . . are you all right? he asked going in to her.

—No. She must go to the doctor, she said to him. In her hand she held the book she had been reading, finger still between the closed pages. It was Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

It was only as he came close that he realized how heavily made-up she was. From the door, there was an almost bluish look to her face, but this proved to be a reflection of the careful make-up on her eyes, which seemed to be diffused over her face by the paleness of her skin. Her lips were as carefully made-up, with a slightly softened but still brilliant red. On the wall where she had just come from hung a mirror, rather an unsquared piece of mirror going off to a sharp point at one side.

—There, Otto said, holding out an empty hand which he let fall slowly. —I’m sorry about . . . I can . . . She waited, with this same unachieved smile. —Are you all right? . . . he repeated, noticing the great hoops of earrings for themselves for the first time. Until that moment they simply served to complete her figure.

—She must go for a long walk, for today she has had nothing to eat, she said to Otto, —and the doctor put barium sul-phate in her stomach so that he can X-ray her and find out if she has a stomach. Isn’t that silly? she added after a pause.

—Yes, but you . . . I mean I heard that you . . . that something happened to you last night . . .

—Last night, she repeated, looking away from him, —last night she did a very foolish thing, turning on the gas . . . She swung round to him suddenly, her tone mocking laughter and her eyes bright open: he looked from one to the other, saw in both his own distended reflection. —Turning on the gas, when the bill was so high already . . . ! And she allowed him a moment longer to stare at the image on the surface of her eyes, before she turned away to say, —But then Chaby came and everything was all right.

Otto rubbed his hand over his face and muttered something without turning round to Chaby (where she looked then, over his shoulder) who was seated smoking a cigarette in the room behind him. —Oh yes . . . he said and took a step away from her, dropping his hand, looking down to where the rug painted on the floor came to an end between them.

She went over to a drawer, looking for something, a handkerchief, and left him standing there looking round, but keeping his eyes from the room behind him. —I see you’ve finally got a mirror up, he said, rather distastefully, glancing into it to see his face shorn off at the jaw. When she said nothing he added, —You must need it, to get all that paint on your face.

—Oh no, the paint is not for the mirror, she said looking at him, half turned from the opened drawer and clinging to it. —But now a ghost lives here who is not happy. And when it comes she hides in front of the mirror where it cannot find her.

Otto muttered —Oh . . . , glanced in at the other room, and took a cigarette out. He lit it and tapped his foot on the floor, looking for a place to throw the match. —What’s this? he said suddenly, over near the bookcase, turning a drawing round with his toe on the floor where he’d found it. —Why . . . who is this? he asked, and stooped over to pick it up and look at it close.

—Some one, she said.

—But where did you . . . how do you know him?

—It is just some one, she said.

—But it’s . . . what’s wrong with this? He stared at the face: it stared back, exactly like, but exactly unlike he remembered, faithfully precise but every honest line translated into its perfect lie, as a face seen from behind.

—It’s a funny joke, she said suddenly, speaking more loudly, and she laughed but the laugh was gone by the time he looked up to her face.

—No, it isn’t funny, he said, looking back at the picture. He started to hold it up before the mirror out of curiosity, and then abruptly he threw it down and turned to her. —Can you come out for a walk?

—She must go for a long walk with the chem-ical in her no-stomach, she said. She was pulling on gloves.

As they went out, she stopped in the door. —You will be here? she asked Chaby. Chaby nodded.

—But you will! . . . she said with a desperate step toward him.

—Sure, I’ll be here, Chaby said from the chair, and he winked at her and smiled, hardly raising the ends of his hair-line mustache.

At that she lost her rigidity, and wilted against the edge of the open door, smiling at him.

Otto waited at the stairhead. As they went out he tossed an end of the green scarf over his shoulder and spoke as casually as he could, —Where’d you get those earrings, anyhow?

—She has always had them.

—I never saw them on you. I didn’t even know your ears were pierced. She said nothing. —Don’t they hurt? I mean, they’re so big.

—Yes, she answered turning away, —they hurt her.

Otto thought of taking her arm, but he did not, yet. Also he was walking on her right, and could do no better than bump her with his slung elbow. He was thinking about the picture he had found, and left, on her floor; was, in fact, intensely curious about it, but put it off, as he was putting off taking her arm until they should be well away from her door (as though once into territory strange to her, she would be at the mercy of his protection): all this, though the self-portrait hung square before his eyes, as he said to her, —I have to meet my father in a little while, in an hour or so. When she did not comment, he added, —For the first time.

—That will be nice, she said.

—I don’t know how nice it’ll be, he said. —Imagine, being my age and meeting the old man for the first time. He paused as they turned the corner and sorted themselves out from strangers walking there. —Put off the old man, says the Bible, put on . . .

Suddenly she took his arm, his whole slung arm in hers. —Do you know? . . . she said.

—What? . . . He tried to reach his hand out the end of the sling, and snare her gloved hand, but he could not find it.

—I have discovered that there is no one, she said, in intimate confidence.

—No one?

—Last night there was a knock upon the door. I went and opened the door, and no one was there. No one was really there at my door. No one had come to call.

Otto mumbled and looked at her quickly, at the blue hollows of her eyes in the light of the street. —And . . . did no one come in? he managed to say, reaching across with his right hand to find hers.

—No, she said, and let him go as abruptly as she had caught him.

—Now look, you know . . . you mustn’t get . . . you mustn’t be too upset, you know, I mean after what happened . . .

—Do you know what happened too? she asked, looking up at him quite surprised.

Otto looked at her excitedly. It is true, he was confused; but she was with him, they were together after what seemed a very long time, and —All this . . . he said, —All this . . .

—He made love to her, and then she went away.

—What did you say? . . .

—Love that smelled like lilies of the Madon-na, she went on, her voice rising evenly to a plane of wonder and distance. —Yes, she said intently; then her voice dropped. —Like the pus of Saint John of the Cross.

He had started to get round and get hold of her, but she held him where he was with a look of infinite reproach.

—That smelled of Madon-na lilies, she said in this low tone, a tone of infinite regret.

—Now look, you . . . he who? . . . Otto burst round to the other side of her, started to take her arm and realized that she was still carrying Uncle Tom’s Cabin. His mind churned a vast array of irrelevancies, from the faces passing them which turned here and there in dull curiosity to that incunabular joke which said that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was not written by hand because it was written by Harriet Beecher Stowe . . .

—He in the mir-ror, -who, she said in her mocking tone.

—Now look, that photograph, and his . . . look, what is it? . . . Have you been modeling? . . . for him?

—Sometimes she did.

—But where is . . . but where are the pictures?

—He did not show them to her. Her voice was brisk with disappointment. They were passing outside a bar whose door just then came open and poured out a heavy broken stream of German music which was gone with their next step, leaving her face in the blue and red lights of the window sign for beer, exposed in the expression of fear he first remembered on it when he had gone down on her in the chair in the afternoon and something, somewhere, broke: but in this instantaneous conspiracy of lights and make-up that immaculate fear became terror, and jaded terror sustained beyond human years and endurance, and he shuddered at this hag before he knew it.

—When the witnesses come, she said to him, not taking his arm but touching it with her fingertips, —will they identify her? or will they turn from her to the pain-tings of her which are not of her at all, and shudder as you shudder and look away.

So he had looked away, passing the window of a fun store, a bright litter of novelties, of colors and false faces, pencils, puzzles, a kiddies’ toilet seat, Christmas cards, ashtrays, a paint set, rings with false stones, a phosphorescent crucifix, —jingle all the wa-a-ay, came from the transom above.

—We are the gypsies, she said to him as he turned quickly back to her, and she spoke in that low tone of earlier, of deep remorse, —the Lost Egyptians, and we pay penance for not giving Them asylum, when They fled into Egypt. What harsh laws they make against us, she went on, her voice becoming dull. —They will not permit us to speak our own language, she said looking up at him again, —for they believe we can change a child white-into-black, and sell him into slavery! She laughed at that, suddenly, looking up at him; but with his hand tight closed on her wrist the laugh disappeared and left her surprised, staring into his eyes. They had come to a stop, and she took up walking again though he seemed to try to hold her back.

—Now look . . . he said. —Look . . .

—He even said once, that the saints were counterfeits of Christ, and that Christ was a counterfeit of God.

—Now look, where is he? I mean does he still have that studio? that place on Horatio Street.

—Perhaps he does, or he does not. She does not see him any more.

—I want to see him, I . . . but you, look can I see you later? at home.

—If you want to.

—Will he be there?

—She does not see him any more.

—I mean Chaby, will he be at your house?

—If he wants to be.

—But he . . . I mean damn it he’s always there, he . . . what’s he doing there anyhow?

—Now he is there doing bad things to himself with the needle.

—Look when will you be home?

After a long pause, when they’d reached a corner and she stopped there, under the streetlight, she said, —She does not know, she must take a long walk with the chemical in her stomach that is not there, and then she must go to the doctor.

—But the . . . I have to meet my father in a little while, but look, I want to see you. I mean, I have to talk to you, it seems like months since I’ve seen you, and you . . . and I still love you, even if . . .

He broke off, and gave her wrist which he still held such a quick tug that the book fell to the ground. He got it quickly, and came up with, —Because I’ve believed nothing, or I thought I didn’t believe in anything and maybe I’ve been pretending I didn’t believe in anything, but only tried to use my head and figure things out and . . . because that’s the way everybody seems to have to be now, because you can’t trust . . . and you . . . and now . . . and then when I found you, I found you really didn’t, you really didn’t believe in anything and you have to, you have to . . . he finished breathlessly and reached for her wrist again but she withdrew it and he stood with his free hand quivering on the air between them. Then he took a deliberate breath, deeply, and spent it all saying, —Do you love me?

—If there were time, she answered him looking him full in the face.

—Or . . . or . . . he started to falter again, raising his hand to the razor cut on his cheek and pressing his fingers there when he found it. —It’s like . . . he commenced again, lowering his voice, and his hand, and he caught her wrist this time, —It’s as though when you lose someone . . . lose contact with someone you love, then you lose contact with everything, with everyone else, and nobody . . . and nothing is real any more . . .

She stared at him, patient now in his grasp which loosened slightly as his voice ran out; though he found enough of it left to repeat, —Or things won’t work. Then he drew breath again and stood looking at her under the streetlamp. She had relaxed in his hold; even taken half a step closer to him, and he studied her face in the light from above them, as it seemed a faint and expectant, and a receptive, anxiety spread over it; while his own slackened slowly over the cheekbones, and the excitement drained from his eyes as he marshaled his senses. He loosed her wrist, and lowered his hand, and stood before her as he had stood on the dock before the glare of that white fruit boat; and as he had counted out change for the beggar in whose face he saw no beauty, so suddenly had it come upon him, he computed his emotions, reckoning how much he could spare, and how much retain for himself. —You can depend on me, he said to her.

She withdrew; and there, like small coins slipping through his fingers, he began to lose what he had balanced and accounted with such practiced care, having given the two-and-one-half cent piece, which looked like a dime. He whispered her name hoarsely, and raised his arm to put it round her.

—Don’t.

—But I . . .

—Leave her alone.

The safety pin came undone, the sling dropped as he put both arms around her, and his hand opened, everything spilled. But she made no move, no effort to move, she stood and waited with her head drawn down as far as she could do. Then he closed his hands, looking beyond her, so quickly gathering up all that he had almost lost.

—You’ll be all right alone? he said to her.

—Now she will.

Otto stooped and picked up the sling. —I’ll see you later on, he said. Half a block apart, he turned and looked back, to see her walking away from him.

Balloons, a watch, a poopoo cushion, textile paints and stencils, a gold-finished silk-tasseled watch-case compact, Your portrait in oil (a genuine original oil painting) from favorite snapshot, 4 1/2 × 5 1/2 inch canvas, decorative wooden easel and palette free; a dusty imitation ink-blot; a dusty imitation dog spiral; a talking doll; Blessed Mother, Infant of Prague and Saint Joseph, 24K gold-plated, in pocket-identification case, 25¢; Venus de Milo with a clock in her belly; a sewing kit (resembles quality bone china) figurine; a Christmas card with 180-page genuine Bible postage-stamp size attached; a ventriloquist’s dummy; a false face, mounted on another false face; all these, as well as many more durable, beautiful, useful, inspiring things lay stretched before Otto’s gaze where he stopped to pin up the sling. The pin was gone. He knotted it, unsteadily stealthy with both hands, and felt for his wallet before he put his hand into his trouser pocket, for it was shaking. People passed in both directions. One bumped him below, and cried,

—Yaa, yaaaa . . . The arm in the sling flew up in horror as he stared at his triumphant assailant, a person under three feet tall staring up at him with wide eyes, an immense red nose, and a great brush of a mustache all hung on by the empty wire glasses. With a few steps he was inside the bar where Eine kleine Taverne im Golf von Napoli was being played on the juke-box, and he ordered beer. He was suddenly very cold. He brought his hand out with a coin clenched in it, and tapped it on the bar, looking unwaveringly straight ahead, at the eyes of his image in a mirrored cabinet above the rows of bottles behind the bar. He was alone in the place, except for the bartender; and he lit his last cigarette.

The door opened again, and a man in a battered Santa Claus suit came in, beardless and hatless, but with a well-stubbled chin. He looked jovially down the bar at Otto and then said, —Pour us something with a smile in it, Jimmy. My special. Toot sweet, Jimmy . . . He winked at Otto. —And the tooter the sweeter.

Unwinking, Otto turned back and put his forehead in his palm, that elbow on the bar and the coin in his slung hand, waiting. He closed his eyes for a moment.

The bartender came down empty-handed, opened the mirrored cabinet to take out a bottle of Old Heaven Hill Bourbon, and returned to the man in the battered Santa Claus suit.

Otto sniffed, and opened his eyes. On the shelf behind the bar, well out of reach, was a donation box for a Sacred Heart Society. Mounted on it was a colored print of Christ exposing the Sacred Heart, looking, from Otto’s half-open eyes, like a C.I.D. man showing his badge. Otto stared at it and muttered something to himself. He sniffed again. It was his hair burning from the cigarette between his forefingers. —Damn, he said, and then, —damnation. He put the cigarette in an ashtray at arm’s length, and looked up for the bartender who was just then coming with his beer.

—Fifteen, said the bartender. He waited while Otto fumbled through pockets, and finally joined the warm coin from his slung hand with a cold one from his jacket. —We only take American money here, Jack. The bartender tossed the cold shiny two-and-one-half cent piece back to him and waited, looking absently at Otto’s cigarette smoking in the tray until Otto found a dime. Then he took the coins, picked up the cigarette, and went back up the bar.

—But . . . Otto caught the word before it came out. He clenched his hand round the glass and stared straight ahead of him. And it took him a good half-minute to realize that neither the stubbled chin, nor the flattened nose, nor the bunched ears, nor the yellow eyes he stared into, were his own.

He turned and went straight back for the telephone booth. There he dialed SP 7-3100. —Hello? he said into the phone. —I want to report a case of drug-taking. Heroin. If you go to this address immediately . . . What? No, I’d prefer not to give my name.

The glassed doors came closed upon him slowly, and from outside he could be seen staring through the scribbled configuration on the glass, a dedication which might, under other circumstances, have recalled Sir Walter Raleigh’s cunning advance upon Queen Elizabeth, scrawling “Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall” upon a windowpane with a diamond.

The juke-box played Fliege mit mir in die Heimat. The bartender put out the cigarette half-smoked, as though it were his own. The man in the battered Santa Claus suit stood with his back to the bar and his elbows resting on it. —That’s a nice muriel, he said, looking at the wall painting, where a moose stared out over an empty lake. But the clock, though hung high in the sky where the sun might have been at high noon in the fall weather of the moose’s landscape, was running withershins, as a convenience to bar patrons who could see it right in the mirror.

—I knew a guy once, he had this muriel, said the man in the battered Santa Claus suit. —Except where it was, it was on the ceiling, he added reflectively, —And it was a dame.