SHOTA IKEMORI loves abura-age, the deep-fried tofu used to make inari-zushi, named after the fox deity Inari, since foxes are said to favor this type of sushi. Shota yowls from time to time, his face is long and pointy, and sometimes a white mist billows from his mouth into the air.

I’d feel more comfortable calling him Shota-san instead of Shota, since we’re not related or anything, but every time I tell him that, he just shakes his head. So Shota it is.

Since last year, I have been visiting Shota’s home as a part-time caregiver. Shota is ninety-three and lives alone. His only close relative is his niece Tatsuko, who is seventy-seven years old herself. The year before last, Tatsuko fell and broke her right leg, after which she supposedly became a little senile. Every so often, Tatsuko will phone Shota and spend over an hour spouting a steady stream of invective about the ways she was mistreated by his older sister—her own mother—dead now for twenty years.

Shota loves to mimic the way she speaks. Mom never should have done what she did; don’t do this, she said, don’t do that; she was after me all the time; that’s why I ended up like this; what’s my condition called? That’s right, “adult child syndrome,” that’s what she gave me; I caught it from her; that’s why I could never marry.

Adult child syndrome? Shota laughs. What does she mean, she caught it from my sister? It’s not a cold, after all! Shota goes on merrily like that, adding his own comments from time to time. Listening to him, I find it hard to believe that Tatsuko is really senile. Rather, it seems she just can’t stop talking.

Shota’s house has three eight-mat rooms, two six-mat rooms, and a kitchen with an adjoining storeroom, more than big enough for someone living alone, one would think, were it not for the books and magazines piled everywhere. No space is left empty. Books are even stacked under the kitchen sink. Until my arrival, porno magazines and paperbacks filled the bathtub, and Shota used the public bath.

I was able to get him to let me clean out the bathtub, but that was it. “It’s a waste to shell out 400 yen every time you bathe,” I chided, but he wouldn’t budge. It’s just once or twice a week, he said, so it doesn’t amount to that much. When it comes to money, Shota isn’t hard up. He once ran a used bookstore, and keeps a hand in the game by selling books by mail order. He owns other properties too, which he rents out.

“Isn’t it sacrilegious to keep books in a bathtub?” I asked him. He laughed at me. Sacrilegious, hell, he said. They’re just skin rags.

“But what about the paperbacks?” I said. Shota took a moment to think; then he let out a yowl, that whining, growling bark he uses when someone pushes him to do something.

I work at Shota’s two days a week.

SHOTA TAKES daily walks. There is no set route. He simply heads off in a random direction for however long he chooses.

“It’s good for your health,” I said. Shota’s face darkened. You sound like a goddamn NHK announcer, he snorted.

“Could that be Shota-san’s secret to a long life?” I went on, ignoring him. Don’t call me Shota-san, he fumed.

“Shota’s secret to a long life,” I corrected myself. Shota nodded at first, but then he turned sullen again.

What would you say to a short-lived person, he asked. The secret to your short life?

“If you put it that way, no.”

What you can’t say to men, you can’t say to women, Shota told me. What you can’t say to the short-lived, you can’t say to the long-lived either. The vacuum cleaner drowned out my lukewarm response. Shota stalked off to his six-mat room in a huff. The northernmost of the two six-mat rooms was where his futon was permanently laid out, with ten ashtrays at its head. Shota smoked his cigarettes down to the butt. They were lights, very low in tar. When he finished one, he would jam it down hard to put it out, so that each filter formed a right angle in the ashtray. Cleaning the ashtrays was part of my job. All ten were always full to the brim.

I sometimes accompany Shota on his walks. He asks me along. You’ve done enough cleaning, he says. Today, you can keep me company.

Shota puts on his cap and a cardigan sweater. Then he grabs his cane and takes off. He walks at a rapid pace, despite the cane. And he wants to hold my hand.

“No way!” I say, whereupon his tone changes. How can you deny an old man, he wheedles, his voice pitiful. I’m begging you.

What can I do? I extend my hand, and he grabs it immediately. His hand is dry, and big. He is a big man.

“My, what big hands you have,” I say. He nods. “Not an old man’s hands at all.”

He frowns. Cut that old man crap.

“But you were just playing the ‘poor old man’ game.”

I use whatever works, he says.

We come to a house whose gate is encircled with roses. They’re beautiful, aren’t they? he says.

“Yes, they are.”

Smell good too.

“They certainly do.”

I wanted to show them to you.

“Thank you.”

How many times a year do you have sex?

“What?”

I slap his hand away. Shota just stands there. A white mist rises from his mouth. It looks like white smoke. It’s not cigarette smoke, though. Shota never smokes on his walks. He only smokes in bed.

Shota yowls.

“You’ve crossed the line,” I say. “You can’t ask a caregiver such things.” He gives a distracted nod. His mind is elsewhere; the words had just drifted out of his mouth. Sorry, just go on home ahead of me, he mumbles.

I hurry back and rush through the rest of my cleaning. I work for a number of people, and surprisingly, more than a few act like Shota. Not everyone, and not only old people—you find such behavior among the young as well. When it comes to humans, I guess it takes all kinds.

I waited a while, but Shota didn’t come back. So I draped a cloth over his dinner and left a note telling him to heat up the soup. Shota’s house smells of mildew. The musty odor of old books. How was Shota spending his days when I wasn’t around? I tried to imagine, but couldn’t. I loved him a bit, I guess. I didn’t like his yowling, though.

I’M FIFTY-THREE. Forty years younger than Shota. I’m not a big woman, but I am strong. Working as a caregiver is right up my alley. I’m no good working with other people in any kind of group setting. Sex? A few times a year. Eight times last year, if I remember correctly. My partner is a man I used to work with. I always have to wait for him to get in touch with me, though. I’m never the one contacting him. For one thing, I don’t know his phone number. I have no desire to find out, either.

When Shota asked about my sex life, the last thing I wanted to do was mention the eight times.

During the five days a week that I don’t see him, I find myself fantasizing about Shota more and more. I regain my composure and my distance, though, when I see him in the flesh.

Would you get mad if I asked to see you naked? Shota questioned me one time. He said this in an almost comically serious tone.

“Aren’t you being a little too forward?”

How so?

“Why must you see me naked?”

Because I love you.

“So, if you love a woman the first thing you want is to see her naked?”

Old people like me have no time to waste.

“Aha! Once again, you act old only when it’s convenient.”

All right, then, let me put it another way. It’s because I’m a frank and open sort of guy. I don’t dress things up.

I laughed, but I kept vacuuming. Please strip for me, he asked again.

“Okay, when I’ve finished my cleaning,” I replied. It’s a deal, then, he said with a grin. Shota’s face is pointy and deeply furrowed. He has a beautiful voice, relaxed and resonant.

When I finished cleaning up, I removed my clothes. My body looks good, if I say so myself. It’s pure white, and though my tummy sticks out a bit, I’d be quite okay parading my nakedness in front of the world. So why not to Shota?

You’re beautiful naked. May I touch you?

“Sure, go ahead.” So, he began fondling me. Gently at first, but when I didn’t protest, he became more forceful. He certainly knew what he was doing. I became excited, and so did he. But he soon grew tired.

He retired to his six-mat room and his futon. I put my clothes back on and began preparing dinner. What would sleeping with Shota be like? Was it really impossible? I made him the dried daikon with abura-age dish that he liked, and added more abura-age to the miso soup.

I peeked into his room, but he was fast asleep. Shota sleeps a lot. Like a baby, in fact. Perhaps he spends the days I’m not there sacked out, dead to the world.

THE TURDS of the past, Shota said.

“The turds of the past?”

Yes, they should still be there.

There was an outdoor privy, Shota went on, beside the house in the nearby town where he lived until he went to college. He thought it should still be there. It had been boarded up after a thief had taken refuge in it. The thief hadn’t stolen much of value, but the men of the town had him surrounded, so he had no choice but to hole up there overnight. The following morning, he threw a rope over the ceiling beam and hanged himself. Everyone steered clear of the privy after that. Even the nightsoil collectors wouldn’t go near the place.

Ever since, the turds of the past have been sitting there, he said. It always scared me.

“Now that you mention it, there were nightsoil collectors back then.”

Yes, they carried shit off to fertilize the fields and things like that. Returning it to the soil.

“Now it all gets flushed away.”

Flushed and flushed. Sent to meet the water. The sky. The earth.

“You’re probably right.”

Those turds would have lost their shape, though.

“Ah yes, their shape.”

I find it unnerving, Shota went on, to imagine that the turds in the privy beside my old home might have retained their original form.

I was chopping onions as I listened to Shota talk.

“Turds that old may just dry up and turn to dust.”

I hadn’t thought of that.

“Insects would get at them too.”

I hope that’s true.

Shota went off to the six-mat room for a cigarette. He sat formally on his futon, legs tucked under him, to smoke. When he had finished the cigarette, he took a sheet of paper and began drawing something on it. After a few minutes, he brought it to the kitchen to show me. It was a sketch of turds. Some were long, some were spiral, some were round. Shota is good at drawing.

There are turds like these in the outdoor privy where I grew up, still.

“You’re like a child!” I laughed.

He flushed. I admit the sketches are silly. But am I childish in what I say as well? Am I always childish?

“You’re not childish at all. You’re a fine-looking man,” I replied as I peeled the carrots.

I thought a little about the turds of the past. Anything frozen in time provokes anxiety. Ancient turds make me uneasy too. Shota began to yowl. I hurriedly sauteed the carrots and some burdock root. I added broth, mirin, and soy sauce to the pot. I sprinkled chopped green onion over the miso soup. Shota retreated to his room. I could hear him yowling in there, once, twice.

SHOTA’S NIECE Tatsuko was hospitalized.

This time, I was told, the cause was a broken left wrist. That in itself didn’t require hospitalization, but she thought she would have trouble looking after herself, so she asked the hospital to admit her.

I was asked to take a change of clothes to her hospital room. Her ground-floor apartment was three stations down the line from Shota’s place. It had a small garden. The garden was filled with flowers in full bloom. They lined the short flight of steps leading down from the veranda: purple, pink, white, yellow—you name it. When I looked at them from the window, though, I grew bored in no time flat. I’m not a big fan of cultivated flowers. Perhaps that’s connected to my aversion to organized groups: I can’t bring myself to like either.

Tatsuko’s apartment was clean and tidy. Not a whole lot of books, though. Quite a contrast to Shota’s home.

I pulled a set of clean clothes from Tatsuko’s chest of drawers—panties, undershirts, a nightgown, socks—and wrapped them in a furoshiki carrying cloth. I had borrowed the cloth from Shota. It was decorated with their family crest. The cloth stank of cigarette smoke. A smoker’s belongings are always filled with that odor.

When I entered Tatsuko’s hospital room carrying my bundle, I was greeted by an old woman’s voice. It came from the occupant of the bed across from Tatsuko’s. Why do some people still sound youthful as they age while others don’t? Shota’s relaxed, resonant voice popped into my head.

Tatsuko was lying there vacantly, her eyes swimming through space. She seemed unable to focus on anything. Her roommate was rattling on and on about someone she couldn’t stand. All six beds in the room looked occupied, but the residents of the other four had all closed their curtains. Only Tatsuko and the woman across from her allowed themselves to be seen.

“Good afternoon. It’s me, Yasuda,” I said. Tatsuko nodded blearily. The old woman in the bed opposite closed her mouth. She was watching us closely.

I placed the underwear, the nightgown, and the rest of the clothing in the small cabinet next to Tatsuko’s bed, and the buttercups and asters from her garden in the glass vase I had brought from the desk in her apartment. The other old woman was keeping a close eye on my movements, her mouth hanging open.

I glanced at her, whereupon she rolled on her side. When I looked away again, however, she turned her whole body back to face me, as though on a string. Tatsuko stayed mum throughout.

“Your uncle Shota is well,” I said. She managed an almost imperceptible nod.

“Is there anything else that you need?” I asked. Again, no clear response.

The old woman in the bed opposite spoke up. Are you her uncle’s wife? she asked me. I smiled and shook my head no. Really? she continued. You never come to see her.

The woman’s face was changing into something inhuman. I didn’t want to watch, so, still smiling, I bent over and started rubbing Tatsuko’s back. I could hear the woman making noises that I couldn’t place, but after a while those subsided.

Tatsuko didn’t say a word during my visit. Perhaps she had transformed into something that didn’t speak. Whatever it was, I was sure it was very soft. Moss, for example, or fresh fallen snow, or a spring breeze.

When I left the room, the face of the other old woman had changed to that of a tiger beetle. I had encountered those beetles on my walks in the hills. Cute little things, for sure, but a tiger beetle’s face doesn’t suit a human body well at all. I could hear her shrill gii, gii again and again as I walked out the door.

SHOTA SEEMED a bit sad when I told him of Tatsuko’s condition. So that’s the story, he said.

“Still, her complexion is good, and she seems to be in good shape.”

Why do we always say old people are “in good shape”? Shota was talking to himself as he looked over a pile of books. “Well written,” “witty,” “sexy”: aren’t there other ways to describe these things?

Come to think of it, besides his strolls, Shota spends a lot of time rummaging through his books. When he finally finds what he’s looking for, he takes the book back to his room and stretches out on top of his futon to read it. He reads like that for about half an hour. Then I hear him snoring. Shota is well built, a big man. His back is slightly hunched. He sleeps facing the door, with his back to the far end of the room. When I place a cover over his shoulders, he opens his eyes. Ah, he says, and goes back to his book. He is a very focused reader.

“Have you ever been married?” I ask him.

No, I haven’t. And you? How about you?

“I married twice, and divorced twice.”

And you’re only half my age. You’ve been busy!

“Half your age? A bit more than that, I’d say.”

The first of my two husbands was human to the bone—he stank of humanity. He never changed into anything else, no matter what happened. In my heart of hearts, that frightened me. Before long, though, he fell in love with an extremely human (or so he told me) woman like himself and left me. I still remember what a relief it was to have him gone.

Like Shota, my second husband loved abura-age. He didn’t yowl, but there was something animal-like about the way he moved. I really loved that guy, but, sure enough, he also fell for another woman and flew the coop. It seems I’m just not built to keep a man—they all eventually run away. I see a basic similarity in the natures of Shota and my second ex.

“I’ve had it with marriage,” I said. Shota laughed.

I’ve had it with almost everything, he murmured. Not just marriage.

“Almost everything? Like what?”

You name it.

Shota made no move to get up. I kept working. A conversation between a recumbent man and a busy woman. For a moment, the world receded from view. I felt like a lonely blade of hoarfrost before the dawn, poised to push its way up through the earth. It left me somehow forlorn, deserted. I wonder if Shota’s yowls meant that he felt the same sadness. How about the old woman with the tiger beetle head, and her shrill gii, gii?

“Is there anything not included in ‘almost everything’?”

Maybe I’ve still got a few things left to do.

“What sort of things?”

Like seeing you naked.

“You did that the other day, remember?”

Like feeling you up.

“You did that too.”

I remember now. I think I really do love you. But what the hell is love, anyway?

“I’m not sure either.”

Shota seemed to have shrunk. When my heart turns into a blade of hoarfrost, the world becomes so small. Shota’s head looked like the head of an ant, his broad shoulders no wider than a single dandelion petal. Everything felt cold and unfamiliar now. The air, living creatures, objects—everything.

I slipped under Shota’s covers. I was so sleepy I couldn’t resist. Maybe I caught this sleepiness from him. Side by side, we lay there in the depths of sleep, happily dead to the world.

I QUIT going to Shota’s home as a caregiver. Personal relationships between caregivers and clients are forbidden. True, no sex was involved, and there was little chance that we would be discovered, but if someone blabbed about our “personal relationship,” I might be fired by my temp agency.

Instead, I began staying over at Shota’s two nights a week on an unpaid basis. Shota didn’t say yes to this, but he didn’t say no, either. In fact, nothing much had changed. The only differences were whether I came during the day or at night, and if I received money or not. I continued to clean the house, prepare dinner, and spend time talking with him. There was no room to lay out another futon, so he allowed me to share his.

When I asked if he would like to see me naked, he usually shook his head no. Sometimes, though, he nodded yes. He seemed fine either way. When the weather was warm, I wore almost nothing. On cold nights, however, I bundled up. It appeared that Shota was no longer able to have sex.

“Don’t you feel anything when you see me naked?” I asked him. He grunted.

It feels good, he allowed, but my pecker doesn’t answer the call. Maybe my blood flow is the problem. Old age, I bet. I’ve been around a long time. Everything’s weaker, my circulation, my pecker.

Pecker? The word made me laugh. Shota and I fell asleep holding hands. The moment we drifted off, however, our bodies drew apart. We slept back-to-back. We were separate when we slept. We were separate when we were awake. We would be separate when we died. Obviously. Only in those few moments before falling asleep did that distance between us disappear. Then we pressed close together, as if trying to become one body.

I BEGAN leaving for work from Shota’s home.

I cleared out of my apartment. I thought of keeping it, but decided it was a waste of money. I knew it would be difficult to find another one at my age. Yet the building would probably be torn down in a few years anyway. At least this way I might be able to stay on in Shota’s house after his death. I could claim to be his common-law wife—that should do the trick. I might well die before he did anyway.

Tatsuko left the hospital a little while ago. I suggested that she move in with us (I figured that would help me establish my common-law status), but she politely declined. Instead, she quietly slipped out of the hospital and returned to her apartment. I go there to visit her twice a month. She seems to be in good shape (yep, that’s how we compliment old people).

Tatsuko is sure to serve me jasmine tea on my visits. To accompany the tea, she offers me sakura mochi in spring, bean jelly in summer, sugar-coated azuki beans in fall, and steamed buns in winter. Like Shota, Tatsuko is a landlord. Back in the old days, this whole area belonged to the Ikemori family. In fact, it is said that you could walk the entire three-station distance from his house to her apartment without ever stepping on another family’s land. That was more than a hundred years ago, however. By Shota’s grandparents’ generation, the family was already crumbling—the main house splintered and the branch families went their separate ways. Today, only Shota and Tatsuko remain. When they are gone, no more Ikemoris will walk the earth.

I work hard. In all, I cover fifteen homes each week. There is an old person in each. That’s because my agency regards senior care as my specialty. There are other people who live in those homes, too. Some are young and some are middle-aged, while others are on the cusp of old age.

Each and every home contains at least one member who has something inhuman about them. Only rarely do I come across a person like my first husband, who is entirely human. It’s surprising how many are like Shota. Take the teenage grandson of one of my clients, a tenth-grader, for example. His face is pointy, he loves abura-age, and he yowls from time to time.

Tatsuko’s lengthy phone calls to Shota came to an end. Or perhaps Shota had been imagining the whole thing, and Tatsuko never phoned him in the first place. Yet this shouldn’t be seen as a sign of his advanced age. Heck, I make similar mistakes. So do tenth-graders. We can’t remember more than a little of what took place last week. It’s said that our recall of childhood events is much clearer, but in fact those memories are hazy too. The flow of time doesn’t stop, nor does memory. We do retain some memories from the past, of course, but no one can be sure if they are real or not.

Shota and I are living together. I love him a bit. He says he loves me too. Yet I still can’t figure out what love means, what it really is. I do know that I hate his yowling, even now. Our life together would be so much nicer if he’d only cut that out.

EVERY SO often, Shota grabs a few of the porno magazines he used to stash in the bath (they’re now heaped in the storeroom) and studies them intently.

“Why don’t you check out my bod instead,” I tease him, but he just laughs. I laugh too. There’s no similarity between my naked body and those of the young women in the magazines—they’re completely different things. Shota says it’s like the difference between a raw egg and the seal that we use to stamp documents. Both are necessary. Though, he is quick to add, of the two the personal seal is the more important. Shota can display a surprisingly thoughtful side.

The magazines overflow with images of naked young women. Many aren’t Japanese. Some are photographed in normal positions, but others are forced to pose in abnormal ways, even beside piles of excrement.

Shota spends the most time engrossed in the ones with excrement. He doesn’t spend that much time looking at the girls. He focuses on the shit.

“Are you thinking about the turds of the past?” I ask him. He nods. Since that topic came up, it has often popped into my mind too. That old house in the neighboring town is apparently still standing. No one lives there anymore—it’s just a dilapidated shell. Shota is the legal owner of the property. That means, of course, that he owns the privy as well. I’ve been thinking that you and I could go take a look, he says.

“Take a look?”

Yes, take a look.

Shota’s attention is riveted on the excrement in the photographs, and on his earlier sketch of the turds of the past (which he has carefully preserved). Although we still take our daily walks, these days we don’t go very far. He is back under the covers within ten minutes, poring over his pictures. All I have to do is look at them, he says, and I’m half asleep. Perhaps it’s because they make me feel half dead.

“The poo in the privy is almost eighty years old,” I said. “I bet it’s evaporated into thin air by now.”

No, it wouldn’t have evaporated. Could have dried up, though, turned to dust.

Shota seemed obsessed.

“Well then how about if we go take a look this Sunday?” I said. “I could make a box lunch, whip up some inari-zushi.” Shota was over the moon. A lot happier than when I stripped for him, that’s for sure. He yowled a high-pitched yowl. I turned on the vacuum cleaner and pretended not to hear.

THE HOUSE where Shota had lived before entering college turned out to be a real mansion, with dark and gleaming pillars. Back during the heyday of the Ikemori clan, I could imagine people walking back and forth along corridors whose boards creaked as they passed. In the kitchen, the maids would have been cooking rice day and night, the steam rising into the air.

Now, though, the house was a deserted ruin. Spiderwebs hung in every corner, and the smell of mildew was even stronger than in Shota’s home. Yet the air inside was bone dry. It appeared that vagrants, thieves, delinquents, and other riffraff had hung out there, for shoe prints ran along the crumbling halls and across the spongy, decaying tatami mats. How long ago had they been there?

The outdoor privy was tightly sealed. We had brought along tools—a small crowbar and an electric saw—to do the job, but I still couldn’t remove a single board. By the time I finally opened a hole big enough to allow us to peer inside, the sun had risen high in the sky.

Exhausted, Shota lay down and fell asleep on the grass. As I watched him lying there, that familiar desolation hit me again, the feeling that I was a lonely blade of hoarfrost poised to break through the surface. Everything seemed so terribly small—Shota, the clouds, the sun. Shota no bigger than a locust, the sun the size of a sesame seed. The locust was sleeping on the grass.

“Shota,” I called to him. He didn’t respond. “Look, Shota, there’s a hole. We can see inside.”

But Shota didn’t stir. He just lay there on the grass in his tiny locust body. His face was shifting back and forth, now human, now fox. A tiny locust-sized fox face.

The feeling that I had been abandoned was snowballing. Who was there on the grass? Was it really Shota, or just a fox? I peered into the boarded-up privy but couldn’t make out much. The shaft of light from the hole I had opened illuminated a spiderweb stretched across the privy’s seat. A gnat buzzed nearby.

“No sign of the turds of the past,” I called to Shota, but he still didn’t budge. Had he died? His face had become that of a fox. Fur seemed to be sprouting from his body, an unpleasant, thick coat, visible in those places not covered by his clothes: the backs of his hands, his neck. Without question, Shota was now a fox pure and simple. Suddenly I was terrified. Terrified by Shota. Terrified by humans in general.

The only way I knew to smoke out a fox spirit was by burning pine needles. I ran to the front of the house to collect them. I gathered up old fallen needles and stripped some young ones off the branches to add to the pile. Then I set a match to the mingled brown and green needles. The fire sputtered to life. The smoke smelled good. The smell that foxes couldn’t stand.

Shota stirred. His face was still that of a fox, his body the size of a locust. I felt desolate, forlorn. Frantically, I heaped more needles on the fire. Shota coughed. His eyes snapped open. He yowled. What are you doing? You’ll burn the house down.

Shota’s body returned to its normal size. His fox face disappeared. I happily tossed more pine needles on the fire. His coughing grew worse. Please, no more needles, he gasped. My terror returned. I knew in that very moment that Tatsuko and Shota were not long for this world. They would die soon. And I would die too, in no time at all. In thirty years, we would all be gone. The old folks I was looking after would be gone too. Heck, even that tenth-grader might be dead by then.

Shota was in pain. The smoke was making him cough. I picked him up (I may be small, but I’m physically strong) and carried him to the front of the house. The smoke wouldn’t reach there. Shota was shrinking again. I opened the box lunch and laid out the inari-zushi that I had prepared in front of him. I had simmered the abura-age skins in sweetened soy sauce. Tiny Shota flew at the sushi. He began munching away. I started munching on them myself.

The ten inari-zushi disappeared so fast it was as if we were competing to see who could eat the most. The smoke from the back garden wafted to us on the breeze. Shota dozed off again. I lay down next to him. I wanted to hold his hand, but that doesn’t work when the person beside you is the size of a locust. So I picked him up gently and placed him on my palm. We lay there together as if dead. The fire that had started with pine needles was now spreading to the front of the house. Shota yowled. I no longer doubted my love for him. I didn’t even mind his yowling. In any case, we all die. We all die. Such were my thoughts as I drowsily watched the flames approach where we lay.