The Answer Is Always Yes

But to take this view, my friends, would be to underestimate the force of desires and sufferings long-ingrained in the lonely-child’s psychology, which like the roots of pernicious weeds retain their hold even when they are by the conscious rejected. And indeed, oh my youthful confederate, so it is for us all, we are guided by currents of our subconscious over which we have no power. The only difference between us and yourself in these matters is that your experience was simply Erlebnis for you, while it is now Erkenntnis for us, so to say it was only what you lived through, not what you recognized; then you did not apprehend or know, as we know in seeing all of your errors made plain. Now that we are helpless to intervene.

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¹⁹ Our hero’s first criminal act. (I dismiss as a youthful prank his and Sophie’s attendance at the film for which they did not purchase tickets.) (As well as the immature consumption of alcohol.) (For are not this nation’s laws on that point so excessive as almost to provoke rule-breaking? Your legal age is not only five years higher than that of Germany, it is the highest of all the world.)
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²⁰ In the Hayden Hall office, a small wooden chamber impregnated with that scent of deep pipe-smoke which recalls very old railway waiting rooms, I discovered one custodial labourer who not only remembered Matthew but even expressed a liking of the boy. And I must now take this moment to mention a profound debt of gratitude: the extra uniform donated to the cause by this same kind spirit, whose name I am sure I should not mention here, which enabled, in comfort, my hours of surveillance at Third North. Gracias.
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²¹ Now, why is it that Matthew’s mother could not even once speak out on the subject of her son?!! As a result, we may never know the answers to many mysteries concerning their relationship: a situation, it now strikes me, that queerly mimics the uncertainty experienced by Matthew. And by so many other children, I wager. For I confess, I know a similar uncertainty in my bond with my father; often in the past I have wished to inquire if he has always intended to make me feel as one embarrassment to him, if his sharp remarks are as scornful as they appear or merely loving jokes that express a fatherly concern with an eldest son, who has made certain wasteful mistakes with his life? However, now I shall wish to delay any inquiries until he has perhaps been so generous as to help defray whatever sum my legal expenses eventually tally to.
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²² Our homosexual friend Jason possesses a most interesting theory. (For, Jason, it will not be wrong to say we are friends?) Now, what is Matthew’s birthdate? 22 June 1977. And what is the gestation period of the normal human baby? Nine months. And when did Matthew’s mother labour at the boardinghouse? Upon her graduation from high school. And how old was she when Matthew was born? If you will visit my early “Excursus,” you will find that Ms. Acciaccatura was thirty-six years of age when Matthew was eighteen. So, although it is purely a speculation, Jason has it as follows: Robin, then Falwell, graduates from high school, works at a boardinghouse at the New Jersey Shore, meets Matthew’s father, engenders a child in the weeks after Labour Day, weds, the hasty marriage falls to pieces in part due to the arrival of infant Matthew, and the mother blames Matthew passively thence on for having doused the rosy promise of her life, etc., etc. Jason is the solitary author of this hypothesis, which he indicated was never suggested by Matthew. Is it not a riveting theory? Lacking Robin Acciaccatura’s cooperation, it must remain so. (Unless a Mr. Acciaccatura will see this??!!! Great God, why did I never think of this? Hello, Mr. Acciaccatura! Please write to me!)
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²³ Perhaps the least useful interview in all my months of research.
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²⁴ At the time of my inquiries, Allison Carleton was in India for the year observing the Samarkand tiger and taking those photographs which have been printed in the official school newspaper (Washington Square News) of local residents with exceptionally gleaming white teeth.
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²⁵ The genial Kim (a bad pun, sorry: it is my weakness, or better to say one of them) demonstrated equal absent-mindedness when approached for aid in my researches. A most unhappy loss, as he could have provided a welcome outsider’s viewpoint on a critical incident.
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²⁶ Here we are! Some fanfare is in order, is it not? For it is this identical night-club with which so much of our investigation is concerned. Now I am surmounted by a wave of nostalgic impressions—leaving aside my initial visitation of the site, I estimate that between September 1996–April 1997, when my work was prematurely snipped by the approach of policemen, I attended Cinema three nights/week, which thus became for me as a “second home.”
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²⁷ It pains me that I can provide no first-hand account of this exchange. Of the three persons present, one has gone beyond the reach of my call, another, discovered to be working for a night-club in Tel Aviv, no longer remembers, and the last refuses interview on the grounds of potential adverse publicity. Perhaps someday when the long shadow of government no longer hangs over this affair, when the barking dogs of the media have definitively run on in their heedless quest of the next prey, I may speak with this remarkable individual and obtain his version.
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²⁸ How interesting. Perhaps now I possess a further understanding of that occasion in which Lisanne told me she wished me in future to avoid approaching her office in my black-and-yellow tennis trainers; they did, it is true, bear the markings of their reliable use. At the time I only laughed in an indulgent fashion and pulled on her nose affectionately, With a good will, my little young-hare! (do you say this in English? is there perhaps a better translation for meine Häsechen?); making a small note in my mind of an I must not but remaining ignorant in regard to why, I considered it as other of her nonsense-commands (Do not walk naked in the apartment, Do not speak of your yoga practise to my colleagues, and so forth).
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²⁹ Misspelling? This word is not in my available dictionary. Cojoin, cojudge.
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³⁰ I should conjecture so! When I visited this store, I did not locate a shirt for less than four hundred dollars.
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³¹ Some readers already may be cognizant that Marshall Demopoulos (alias Mad Marshall or Marshall le Marquis but usually simply Marshall), an addict of heroin and a former celebrity of the nighttime entertainment sphere, vanished in February 1996 within hazy circumstances. My understanding is that, “on the lam” from the authorities for thirteen counts of narcotics-and conspiracy-related charges, he has repatriated to his native Greece.

I am fond of this word charges, which contains no kernel of guilt-imputation as does our Beschuldigung. I enjoy learning all your American legal idioms. This week I like also hearsay, felony, and deposition. What mysterious and official sounds they have! Particularly felony (our clumsy schweres Verbrechen), which seems a beautiful woman’s name. (Or is that merely because my sister is named Felicia, called by us Felly?) (She is not beautiful.) (Fortunately she will never read this.) (For why should some one member of our family take interest in Hans?) (However, in this case: Es tut mir leid, Felly. Aber du weist gern, dass du keine Schöne bist.)

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³² Who has not felt delight in assuming a new identity? I remember when I wed Lisanne telling repeatedly to the mirror I am the man of the most beautiful woman in the world. Ha! Let us laugh. Let us laugh loudly so it will not be possible any one misunderstands we do not see the humour, the real hysteria of this black humor.
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³³ On this day, Monday 11 December, I experienced a grave, hurtful shock of my own: Lisanne and I had a first of our “blow-outs,” in the D’Agostino’s of 21st Street. There we met the pompous Malcolm Barrow in his absurd checked jacket and exaggerated smile by the refrigerated cheese and after he left, I noticed how Lisanne’s hand stayed on the same wedge of Appenzeller Swiss for the entirety of a minute, as long as I required to find flatbreads and one packet of the organic style of pita from the deli counter which I liked. And when I asked, not at all harshly or with anything but a friendly tone, what was occurring the corners of her lips turned down like a snake’s tail, so that I felt a small chill at the bottom of my spine, and when I tried to take the cheese to put it in my basket, she dug her new maroon-painted nails into the back of my hand.
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³⁴ How well I recollect this magical snowfall! From the point of view of the night before: Lisanne and I had enjoyed an intimate evening, unusually, for hours in our studio and then, though late, perhaps three of the morning, we wished somehow to have fresh bread. We replaced our clothing and wandered east, where we came upon one bakery beginning to place bagels on trays. That scent of fresh baking! And how the snowflakes settled on her wavy hair. Tiny pieces of confetti, melting like the dark spot in my throat had earlier when, wishing to reproach her for a negligence, she came home from her final obligation for the term carrying a paper container with champagne and a gay mood and, glowing, kissed my shoulder mole while I stood at the stove over my garbanzo stew. I thought: see, Hans! Ein kleines Wölkchen verbirgt oft die strahlendste Sonne—a little cloud often hides the most brilliant sun: after some minor disturbances, are we not happy? are we not the identical H+L as before, adventurers in this strange country together, beloveds, man and wife, now that certain inconsiderable clouds have escaped?

I am grateful for the opportunity to reconsider these incidents, which appear in a new light to me. For perhaps the trajectory into which I then gathered all of these small occasions was one made out of wish rather than right judgement—they now can be linked in a quite other line. As I have said elsewhere in regard to young Matthew, what was Erlebnis becomes Erkenntnis, what was lived through is now apprehended, recognized.

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³⁵ Like the sheep who scolds her lamb back toward the shepherd’s flock from which it strays, Robin Acciaccatura, perhaps with instinctual maternal close-mindedness, did not strike far from a right point. For it may not be denied that her son was more likely to encounter certain dangers in a night-club than in his custodial employment. Ein blindes Huhn findet auch ein Korn, even a blind chicken will find a corn.
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³⁶ Quite possible. I lived in New York for nearly one academic year before I had heard of this night-club.
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³⁷ What did our hero, in fact, study, at his famous university? I have reconstructed Matthew’s schedule for Spring 1996: Conversations of the West (so-called “ConWest”); Natural Science II: Evolution of Human Nature (succinctly: “Sex”); Expository Writing (“Expos”); and one elective beside those required MAP courses, The Greek Heroic Age (I like this one: “Heroes for Zeroes”).
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³⁸ As a Bretonne, also Lisanne was unaccountably charmed by this, it must be admitted, inauthentic “rustic” bistro. But then, this liking came during that phase in which she refused to eat my cooking. Of course, one may comprehend that after lecture and office hours and seminar and committees she had no strength to join with me in the cooking, and what other labour did I have to do besides? Yet let us be clear on one subject, my food is both tasteful and satisfying, even though vegetarian. Let her try again my aubergine wraps, or better: my Moroccan tagine with plums. Yes, let her try it again! Lisanne, it is a dare! Do you hear me?
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³⁹ And why should it have been so extraordinary for Matthew to participate in the love oath? Has he not, we may wonder, been engaged in a love relationship for months, even without the saying of this explicit phrase? Perhaps it is only, as Sophie suggests here, his lack of experience with words that come as second nature to many others; what may be a meaningless expression to them is for him a solemn and mysterious sacrament. I have had experience of the love oath only in a single relationship. When now I imagine that out beyond the walls of this detainment facility there are those who say love to two or three (or perhaps four? can such double-dealers exist?) individuals over the course of a few short years, I have the same sickly taste on my tongue as when by a boyhood dare I swallowed a teaspoon of Vegemite. Perhaps the truly wise man would, instead of joining his life to a woman, obtain a dog, or a cat, or a pair of large-eyed, sympathetic fish who never fail to respond to your overtures, whose constancy can never be in question.
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⁴⁰ “Magic”! Perhaps a charlatan’s magic! An ignis fatuus? What else should this love be called if all that may be required for its illusion to depart is that someday a bald-pate, with tenure, from Seattle, encounter your wife at a reception after a lecture of obscene stupidity—if instantly it seems to her he is pleasing, he is desirable, and you are not? What then may you do with all the many precious vows of love you have stored up, ever trustfully? Es ist nicht alles Gold, was glänzt, it is not all gold, what shines! Some is iron with gold-coloured coating, which melts easily away!
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⁴¹ The Champagne Lounge and the Booty Den are the two other rooms which on Friday evenings also contained parties organized by promoters in roles parallel to Matthew’s. Though to distinctly different effects: the Champagne Lounge was in command of “Baby” Brett, whom we have once overheard Vic Spector phoning, and the Briton, Carl-B, who imposed a style of music and dress which has for its shorthand the simplistic, besides inaccurate, label “Euro” the Booty Den is the place where flock those interested in dancing to varieties of African-American music, managed again by two men who appeared very friendly at first but whom I must have in some way offended, for I was swiftly shown how little I was welcome there.
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⁴² Liza Andrewes no longer resides here but, it is said, on the isle of Ibiza, where she is involved in the creation of a handbag/jewelry line. (To call this loss from my research disappointing is to state the case in humorously low terms, but one must bear with the limitations of a meagre budget.) The rather famous television comic who answered her former door allowed me to inspect this extravagant loft complex, still rubbing sleep from his eyes as my knockings had woken him from an afternoon catnap, and in fact shared with me a glass of very mellow Irish whisky as he tried to recall (unsuccessfully) whether he had met her.
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⁴³ I hope you never received that associate professorship, Joan. In objectivity I may now tell you: you are boring and cruel and, in light of your pear-shaped rear, should in future avoid white trousers.
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⁴⁴ I fear that I cannot place much confidence in New York University’s “home help,” the Resident Coordinators. My opinion has not been improved by the course of Dr. Saarsgaard, who by the time of my research had moved to the state of Florida, where as I understand from the office I phoned he now performs management seminars for business executives and where he lost no time in peevishly replacing the receiver on each of my attempts to question him. How many youthful tragedies needlessly occur each year through lack of properly skilled hands in these vital official positions, it may not be numbered.
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⁴⁵ I note in passing that with this displacement Matthew has shifted significantly nearer to my own residence of that period, 108 E. 18th; a mere seven streets separated our two flats.
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⁴⁶ Also called Wagyu. At one of the unendurable cocktail parties to which Lisanne began increasingly to draw me this second semester, I sampled a morsel of this overpriced cow’s flesh. You may recall I am a vegetarian; I am ashamed to admit I tried the meat in reaction to one guest—Malcolm Barrow, who appeared to laugh disrespectfully, then said, in the hearing of several present, Oh, I forgot, you can’t eat this. I smiled and accepted a piece. Mm, I replied, though it was revolting, and even lukewarm, as if from the living cow.
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⁴⁷ And if Matthew had learnt of Marshall’s disappearance and the serious criminal actions which as it is commonly supposed caused him to flee—what should then have occurred? The course of Matthew’s (and therefore our) life may have run in a different stream-bed, so to say, if he had perceived the risks of certain schemes.
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⁴⁸ Expertly done, this drugs-dealer Jonathan’s exploitation of Matthew. 1) There is no evidence suggesting Vic Spector knows of the Ecstasy sales; still less is there evidence suggesting Spector wishes his employees to become involved in that trade. 2) Yet Jonathan has only to gain from Matthew’s misapprehending the scope of his tasks. 3) Therefore, the criminal makes use of what may have been Matthew’s obvious weak spots: a) a desire to succeed in his position, combined with b) a willingness, as evidenced elsewhere in the exchanges between Matthew and Jonathan, to play along even when in a position of ignorance. From start to finish, therefore, Jonathan’s representation here may be one virtuoso piece of deception.
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⁴⁹ Just so—and they would turn on him with equal suddenness, equally willing to leap for conclusions.
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⁵⁰ I did not succeed in obtaining access to the Kent family flat (prevented by some efficient porters on each attempt); in this, as at certain other regrettable points, we have had to rely upon others’ accounts. And was it too much to hope that Peter Kent himself would meet with me, he whom Matthew regarded so kindly? Or at the least make his refusal personally?
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⁵¹ Yes, Matthew, rise! But we who look over these pages of his life are mere witnesses, powerless as that mask.
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⁵² Only by grossly inflating my German accent and hinting—well, let us be candid each with the other, it is after all not a crime—rather dissembling that I served on the staff of a well-known women’s magazine based in Berlin was I able to persuade Brett Nevers into an interview lasting no more than fifteen minutes and composed exclusively on his dog-hearted part of ruthless “pot-shots” aimed at our hero. Those sympathetic among you may be pleased to learn that, due to an all too foreseeable attack of clumsiness by the office exit, I succeeded in knocking over a spoiled orchid in its sumptuous glass container. (Is this a crime? Impersonation? I note in passing, it is amazing what a European accent permits in your country.)
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⁵³ Disgusting joke. We may be grateful for the blinds of innocence protecting Matthew from perceiving this vulgar jest.
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⁵⁴ But this is not the way to nourish a fond love-relationship! So: I see this now, though not then, when also I gave way to silences, similar makeshift measures to maintain a peace I was desperate for. Readers, perhaps you will think I make some joke, but often I feel that being placed in a detainment facility for seven months (seven months and eight days; only twenty-four such days remain to me!) while I await a trial to determine all my future is an advantageous event in my life. After all, how simplified my day is made! “What shall I buy at the market for dinner?” “What film shall I view tonight?” Such lesser questions vanish, so I am left to turn over the leaves of my own past under a clear new light, an instructional experience.
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⁵⁵ I was not so fortunate. My father’s seventieth birthday occurred on 18 March; thus I was summoned, at incredible expense, in an absence I would later learn was exploited for abominable ends, back to München for a difficult celebration.
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⁵⁶ I cannot help but note it was on this day, 26 March, that also I received signals of a portentous nature. Or rather, I made the acquaintance of someone who would later be the source of much trouble. This occurred at a reception given for him by the psychology department after one of the most absurd lectures I have heard, I do not recollect the title but can inform you it dealt with a Freudian reading of a popular, vegetable-themed children’s toy. He and I were standing some metre apart by a table on which those standard American cocktail items were lit up by the same ceiling fixtures that caused the bald ellipse on the centre of his head to shine with sweat. All at once he looked diagonally behind me with an expression of dull interest: I turned and saw Lisanne entering the room in her navy sheath dress, carrying her blazer over one energetic, jogger’s arm, her beautiful thick wavy hair straining at the metal clip where she had forced it into a chignon. She was drawing to my side—or so I only thought, because she walked two paces past me and put out her hand to shake the clumsy paw (even from my distance I could see it was clammy and without force) of that “celebrity” visiting us for the evening from Seattle, chair of an entire department of toadies and frauds with whose numbers my wife, ex-wife, now counts herself among. Amazing now to consider that for weeks I kept an alert eagle-eye for any exchanges she might have with Malcolm Barrow: though, in all fairness, as I should have seen, my quick-witted pet could do no more than dally briefly with one so simple-minded, such a common Jack-a-dandy. Yet arrogant youth errs in dismissing as romantic rivals its elders, with their floppy bodies, besides lack of hair. Thus Malcolm Barrow stayed the focus of my suspicion/surveillance—while the real threat grew like one mandrake-root beneath our marriage-bed.
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⁵⁷ Oh, Lisanne! Is that how it began? Is that how it felt for you?
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⁵⁸ Did you think upon me? Did you once mention my name? Did you attempt some stop on yourself, or him? Lisanne, do you listen?
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⁵⁹ But I would have forgiven you. You know this, do you not? You know your Hans, who does not begrudge, who is gentle—I would have disregarded everything, if you had asked only.
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⁶⁰ Do you remember this moment, Lisanne, this same Friday’s grey afternoon? Do you remember the fight we had, when I came home from waiting for you at your office and found you putting on black hose? And you said, “We are going out,” only you said, On sort ce soir, and I said, Pourquoi? And you murmured under your breath, Fou, le con, or was it only Fout-le-camp? Then you brushed past me and pointed to the calendar, Malcolm’s cocktail party.

Another cocktail party? At Malcolm’s? Why why why couldn’t we be alone for once and do something real, like love-making, instead of standing up with small glasses of Gewürztraminer by tables feeding endless pieces of cheese into our mouths whilst chattering about nothing?

And what a cocktail party it was. That ox-brained gossip Joan was whispering in your ear all night while Fritz Haven, like a one-note trumpet, wanted to tell me about the Goldberg Variations, on and on, which do you know I do not think are so very good after all? And I said, let us go, it is already midnight and I believe in America the cocktail party ends much earlier, and you snorted in that pig way you get when you are evil. “In America, in America,” you tapped your fingers against your wineglass, “you know so much about America.” Your eyes glazed over. “Yes, I do. Or I am trying to.” “Ah—you’re trying,” you said, “is that what you call it?” “Yes,” I said. I was confused. Someone was calling you in the other room and you ran off like a skipping schoolgirl. I saw the open door and the lamplight on the bed and it was Joan, and next to her was just a man’s leg and jacketed arm but he was cut off from my view. Joan was sitting on the bed holding something in her hand she wanted to show you, and you started laughing. You were laughing wildly, and I came up behind to see too.

“Oh,” I said, “do you have a headache?” For Joan was only holding six pills of aspirin. I was next going to tell her that she really should not take six pills of aspirin at once, particularly if she has had more than three alcoholic drinks since that is so damaging to the liver. But they were laughing, Joan and Malcolm, and also you. Malcolm coughed. “Rich,” he said, offering Joan a handkerchief to dab at her eyes, “rich.” “It’s Ecstasy,” you hissed, and glared at me. Did you want me to pretend I knew what Ecstasy was? You should have kicked me or found some other expedient; you did not do a very good job. Then when I asked about what they meant regarding ecstasy, they were laughing again, until finally you made Joan explain what it was. “You feel good, open, you feel like talking,” she said at the last. “You feel like dancing,” you said, your eyes flashing. “Oh, that’s you,” said Joan, “I don’t get as dancey as you.”Ssshhh, Malcolm and you said, and then Malcolm coughed. How much I hated those self-satisfied coughs. “We had a little party before,” he said, and coughed!!!!!! again, “while you were away. In Germany. A couple of weekends ago.”

“Oh, I see,” I said, but of course I didn’t see because you were staring across the room at an absurdly huge photography book of Robert Mapplethorpe sitting on the tiny table at the far wall and would not catch my eyes. “And you swallowed Ecstasy,” I said to Malcolm. “We all did, chum,” said Malcolm, “not a big deal, just a bit of fun.” And he coughed. I wanted to press against his stomach so hard that whatever was making him cough, whatever fluid was trying to get up and out, would feel my pressure and come flying from his mouth so he could never cough again. “Wasn’t it, though?” said Joan, and coughed!!!!!!!!!!!!!! “just a bit of fun.” “It was nothing.” You looked me finally in the eyes. “So you swallowed too?” “Yes, I ,swallowed’ too,” you said, and made an exasperated smirk as one hand shot up from your knee into the air while Joan gave a little giggle. “Anyway, are we going to do it, or are we going to talk all night?” you asked them.

That was when I realised that you meant to do it again. Ecstasy? I don’t even like it when you would smoke marijuana with your friends from the H-E Conservatory. Now you wanted to consume a true illegal substance with these silly people who weren’t even our genuine friends, this Joan and Malcolm and God knows whom else here too? “Would you excuse us?” I said to Joan and Malcolm, and you groaned and got up and followed, your smart new heels clicking down the hallway after me as we passed the living room, where Fritz Haven was pulling out a record from its paper jacket, no doubt another ridiculous Goldberg Variation recording, and pushing his glasses higher on his toucan nose. Then we were in the kitchen, and you came from behind and jumped up on the travertine counter and said, “You can do it or not, but I’m going to.”

In your face I saw nothing sorry, apologetic, not one part of you sad that you were keeping things from me and mocking me openly in public in front of your new, so wonderful psychology-department associates. “Oh, you are,” I said. I admit it, I was not very expressive. There seemed to be nothing to say. You had made up your mind. “Then I will too.”

What else could I do? Leave you to those vipers Malcolm and Joan so you could laugh at me all night in that bedroom? “Hmm,” you said, and hopped down, “you don’t have to. You could go home.” You looked up at me and you seemed very short and yet powerful, like certain dogs with chests like barrels: this was not so becoming, it must be admitted. “No,” I said, “I think it is going to be fun.” “Oh, you do?” you said, and I think if I am not mistaken that you were being as lack-of-words as myself. “Well, let’s do it then.” You walked from the room towards the bedroom and jerked your head backward at me as you said to them, “We’re both in.” “Isn’t that nice, then,” said Joan, I think authentically glad, as if my presence would enable her to have more Malcolm for herself; that woman, formed like a building crane with the lean top and the overwhelming bottom, was nothing beside you. And then Malcolm went into the other room while you were sitting with your knees bent on the floor and I got down cross-legged opposite Joan. I thought, I want to be with you, you, you, Lisanne, and at each you I was as a little boat that is scraping against the dock with a wave that is pushing it toward shore; I want to be with you even if you will do something stupid like this. You were examining your new bangle, and I think you were seeing how many of your small black freckles it was obscuring on your wrist for that long moment when none of us was talking.

I heard people leaving in the outer room—Shireen Winters; her husband with the bizarre paunch that makes him seem as if with child—and then Fritz and his wife appeared in the doorway and waved goodbye and so did some other people I had never met, although one of them had produced a very bad impression on me earlier when she reductively dismissed Jung as a collaborationist fraud. And it was she who winked at you and Joan and said, “Have fun, you guyyyyyys…mm,” with that broad American accent which, until coming here, I had always thought was only a comic thing actors did for cinema and television productions.

Then Malcolm was in the doorway, he said that we should enter into the living room. Everyone was gone and the lights were switched off except one low lamp above the dark-green leather armchair—an imitation or perhaps real version of Tiffany; it must have cost a great deal of money, along with his other ridiculous antique furniture—and several lit candles wavering in the breeze from the open window. There were cushions on the floor about the small round table in the centre of the room and a tray with glasses and two pitchers of water. Except for the water and an opened packet of some obviously high-flight tobacconist’s black cigarettes, it looked as though we were going to have a séance, because you two sat down on the cushions while Malcolm stood in a very important way with his hand up. “We have six hits,” he said. “Now, I am going to take two, because I really do need two to feel anything, so which one of you would like the other extra hit?” He turned to Joan and raised his eyebrows. “Not me,” she said, “I don’t want to go crazy.” She laughed, I think nervously, at you, my pet. Then she tucked back her short hair behind her clumsy ear and turned to me; Malcolm and she were looking but you stared dully ahead at the water. “Same,” I said, “I will only have one.” We all looked now to you.

“I’ll do it,” you said. How did I know you were going to say that? I remember the time we went mountain climbing in the Sauerland and Werner’s shirt got hooked on a branch in a place that was dangerous and hard for his large body to squeeze into, and though there were seven of us, men and women who practised this often, and though it was your first time, you said the same then. “I’ll do it.” I remember watching you scurry along the cliffside, finding your handholds, a natural, like a spider, biting your lip with concentration. Of course you would take both pills, my dear, your brash little voice claiming it like a diminutive fist. And it seemed that it must be the dim lighting or a breeze lowering the candle flames strangely, because for a moment I thought I saw Malcolm’s eyes gleam and his face flash excitedly. Then he placed the pills in our palms, and I saw Joan watch you carefully, as if to make sure you’d taken yours, and you tossed your head back twice, triumphant, and banged your empty hand on the table. Then Malcolm grinned and took his.

I put the pill inside my mouth and, in the moment when I forgot about the water, tasted its chemical flavour. It seemed almost to be made of metal, and as little flakes of it were peeling off in my mouth, I thought of them as pieces of metal, little slivers like the metal splinter I once received from my skis’ edge when I was fifteen, which had to be removed with a very painful pair of scissors. Then you said ugh and placed your head on your knees while Joan kindly (okay, Joan, for one time you were kindly) passed me a glass of water. So I swallowed and it was gone. And I realised with a small shock it was over, it was too late. I could not now change my mind. This metal was inside me like a seed and was going to germinate in my stomach and spread its metal vines through my bloodstream.

But of course I didn’t feel anything though I waited anxiously. We were all being jittery and nervous, except for Malcolm. You lay back on the Persian carpet with the cushion under your back arching it so your breasts stood up and open deliciously, and you put your hands just beneath the lower vault of your ribs as though you were indeed concentrating on letting whatever was in your stomach grow over you. Joan was busy drinking more water. “But I shouldn’t drink too much, isn’t that right?” she asked Malcolm, “because that’ll wash it right out?” Yes, for five, ten, twenty, forty minutes it was it, this unsaid thing, this mystery to me, it. “Do you feel it yet?” you three kept asking one another. “I can’t wait for it.” It sounded like God, like some Messiah. Perhaps that was because you attributed it to strange actions, I can’t wait for it to come, for it to start, amazing when it takes over…remember last time when I thought it peaked but then it just kept going and going...

Then you felt it first. Your face was flushed, unbearably rouge as after our very best, best incidents of sex, glowing and warm so that I almost wanted to come up to you and open the buttons of your tight ivory sweater, but it was curious to see you looking like that alone, not just without me but without anyone, as if you were having sex with yourself, or it was having sex with you. “Oh my God,” you said, your lips curved, rocking back and forth on your cushion in an equal, regular motion, “I feel it.” You looked at Malcolm and smiled, your face glowing toward him with—no, I know now, I know it was my mistake: not love but ecstasy. You reached out and gripped his hand above the table tightly, and then Joan said, “Ohhhh,” and gasped, and you reached out your other hand and gripped hers too.

What could I do? “Ohhh,” I said too, though I did not feel anything. And it worked. You and Joan ungripped and reached for my hands too, Joan cackling, saying, “Mm-hmm.” “What does it feel like?” Malcolm asked me; perhaps he was having doubts. “It’s—it’s—”did I feel anything? nothing “it’s—” “Ha-ha,” said you and Joan, “he feels it, all right.” And you were nodding like black women in a gospel meeting. “Mm-hmm.” “All right.” Then you broke my grip and Malcolm’s and reached for a cigarette. “Lise!” I said, without meaning to, because I had not seen you smoke since you quit more than two years ago. Luckily you did not take annoyance at my reproving outburst. “Smoking feels great when you are on Ecstasy,” you said, “you should really try it,” this despite the fact that I have not smoked since I was first at university, “the smoke goes right into your lungs, it feels like,” you lit the black cigarette with Malcolm’s ostentatious palm-sized lighter, “ahhh, as if it’s going inside each room, each space in your bronchial passages, it makes you feel fabulous.” Then you grinned at Malcolm. “Thanks for this,” you said, making the cigarette vertical a moment, “thanks for all of this.” You grinned wider, and while Joan murmured, “Yeaah, of course, thank you, Malcolm,” you rubbed Malcolm’s arm with your free left hand. “That feels great,” he said, and eyed you so openly, I think if any man did that on the street you would be forced to call over a policeman. “Keep doing that.”

And of course you did, but first you put down your cigarette. “Wait, wait, I can do better than that.” You started rubbing his back and he was making sounds, Mm, ohh, and then Joan came up and started rubbing you on the back and you were making the same sounds, Mm, ohh, and then even Joan, the idiot, was making these sounds even though no one was rubbing her, so that there were so many sounds I wondered with the open window whether Malcolm’s neighbours might not think we were having a sex party. Joan got distracted by looking at her hand and she suddenly jumped up, almost toppled over, and declared she wanted music. Then she was leafing through Malcolm’s records and found something she liked, and as she turned around to take it from its jacket, I saw how you were surging toward him as you rubbed his back so that your hair was deliberately playing across the nape of his neck, and then he looked up at me and grinned.

I do not know whether the Ecstasy had its one effect right then on my temper, but I was certain of two things in that instant: that Malcolm was the Lucifer, and that I needed to leave the room and go far enough away where I could not hear him saying mm and ohh. I raised myself up and walked to the hallway and turned right toward the kitchen. Malcolm had put out all the lights but there were long white tapers, two in a cylinder, in three places around the kitchen. One cylinder was on the counter by the sink, and I went there and turned on the taps, and even though there was water in the other room, the beautiful streaming water glinting and twisting under the candlelight seemed so wonderful that I put my hands in it and started cupping it to my face, cool, long smooth draughts that were so sweet in my mouth and throat and on my hands that I put my face in too and let the stream wash over it, turning my face again and again to get the different angles of the water.

That was when I decided that I wanted to put my whole body into it, and I thought, why not? They are having sex play in the other room; I think it will be acceptable if I take a shower in this stranger’s house. I went to the bathroom, outside there was a linen cabinet and I took a big, huge, firm bath towel, still folded up neatly, and stepped inside. I put the toilet seat down and placed the towel nicely on it. Then I took off my clothes and let them fall to the ground. I remember not caring about them, I remember trodding them under my feet on purpose, kneading with my toes my only good wool dress pants that I had “dry-cleaned” the day before with those little dry-cleaner bags in the launderette along with a batch of your clothes for next week’s seminar. I turned on the water in the shower and watched it stream, through the clear transparent curtain, as I waited for it to heat up. There was a knocking sound, not the door, something much lighter, lighter even than knuckles, tinier, like a skinny fish bone tapping against a plate. I looked up to the window. Another two long tapers were arranged in a cylinder stationed on the windowsill, casting a circle of light against the closed glass. My beloved, you will not believe me if I tell you it was a luna moth tapping against the pane within the circle of light thrown on that glass. You know that I have always wanted to see a luna moth, and you know they only live in North America, and you will say that I am inventing this. You will remember that luna moths only live in the summertime, where they are eggs, and then they cocoon, and then they gestate, and then they break out and when their wings are dry they open them, fly away, mate and die—all of this in the months of June and early July, all of this in deciduous forests where they can find hickory or walnut leaves. But I am real and the moth was real. Both wings were only just smaller than my hand, and it was greenish, a light pale green lighter than our celadon bowl from China. I opened the window and the luna moth hovered outside, inquisitive, it seemed, about the flame but not coming any nearer out of its fresh darkness, only flapping there its two huge wings, ungainly and beautiful at once, alive. I watched the moth flap and dart in the square of black framed on all sides by the white of the window casement; I watched it I do not know how long, and as it shook its gawky large wings together and then suddenly raised, blew off, flew up away, for the first time in months I felt my heart surge outward out of my body toward it with what was real supernatural love.

I put my hands on the cool porcelain sink and lifted myself and placed my bare feet there; sweaty, they readily gripped the slippery porcelain; then I managed to get one foot on the narrow windowsill, and—amazing, so tiny a square, but in just a moment I flowed easily through. Then I was standing outside on the fire escape and I saw not the luna moth but the city spread out everywhere, or rather I saw darkness, perfect ermine black in the midst of which lights shone out like stars, and I took in big breaths through my nose of the wet breeze and shook with both hands the fire-escape railing, which made a whole line of droplets fall down into the below out of sight. It seemed strange that I caused them to fall, quite accidentally of course, and then I wondered about them lying stories below on the pavement or if they had touched someone’s head and what would happen to them now, I fantasized that they would droplet-walk over to the Hudson River and be happy there, streaming with all the others like them.

That was when I turned back into the bathroom, where I dressed and closed the shower-taps. Do you remember what you were doing when I emerged into the other room? Joan was turning circles, her arms in the air—I suppose she had managed to feel dancey after all—while you and Malcolm were staring at each other, very near, and you told me, Ssssh. “You ruined it,” you said after another minute of motionless staring. “You distracted me. We were trying to remove our masks and gaze at each other without any boundary between us.” “That is funny,” I said, “because do you know what the Greek etymology of ecstasy is?” “ Mon Dieu,” you said, and fell back on your cushion and started to laugh in small eruptions, irregular, as if land mines were exploding in your stomach, blowing it upward without mirth at odd intervals. Malcolm had picked up a cigarette and I could see he was cupping the lighter to his face to avoid letting me see his smile. “What does it mean?” asked Joan, still swooping her arms in arcs through the air, but bending closer a little to hear me. “Ek-stasis, the state of being put out of place, being put out of oneself or beside oneself. It has an interesting history as a psychological or spiritual term. Paul—” But Joan had already said oh and moved on, absorbed in the flights of her arms.

“Well, my dear,” I crouched next to you, “I think I am going to go home.” “You are?” You opened one eye and looked at me from its glaze of blue. “Yes,” I said, “I am tired.” You started to speak, but I broke in. “You can stay.” “Okay,” you said, and began walking me to the door. Good night, Malcolm, Joan. Then I saw you standing, I was outside on the stained red industrial carpet and your body was inside, your hand resting on the doorknob, your hair unkempt—when did you take it out from your rubber band tonight?—gorgeous, lustrous and wavy, spilling above your smooth brow and down over your shoulders as you bobbed your head, tossing it, uncertain, your hand still on the brass knob and your one socked foot unconsciously toying with the long scarlet carpet runner at its edge where it met the hardwood floor, and those two sweet feet, in their white athletic socks you’d hidden so professionally all night with your ankle-height boots—had hidden, it seemed, from me all year—those white athletic socks reminded me of days of studying for our oral examinations together and how you used to draw pictures of Freud and Jung and Erich Fromm and pin them up on the wall with caricatures of what they’d written, just to keep our spirits up besides the coffee and the chocolate and the sex, the sex, sex, oh God, the sex; and remembering that girl you once were, I leaned in and kissed you, but as I did—I must have been imagining it, I had seen you drink glassful past glassful of water, besides smoking those nasty dark cigarettes—tasted that chemical, the metal flavour sunk into the flesh of your tongue.

“Goodbye,” I said, even though I’d only meant to say good night. You nodded, looking down at the floor, and your long slim nose and fair hair and strange stiff pose reminded me of a Meister des Marienlebens Visitation you would have seen if you had ever wanted to come home with me to München, the left arm angled up, the right held down straight along the door-frame. Whatever has happened afterwards, that is how I will remember you, poised at something, uncertain, on the threshold of what we all know is inevitable. Then I turned and travelled down the hallway and the three flights of stairs outside to 16th Street, where the atmosphere was fresh and rare and breezy, and as I descended the marble steps of the pediment into the rain, I heard myself singing, Luna moth, luna moth, wondering where in this strange city, over what block, the Columbia University, the nearby St. John the Divine, or tacking eastward, perhaps, in the direction of Central Park and all of those mansions constructed like Gothic palaces which line the side streets about Fifth Avenue, or perhaps farther east yet, above the East River clotted slick with oil and the refuse outpourings of factories toward the Atlantic, yes, it might be, the slate-grey Atlantic, where in this weird universe right now it was flying off.

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