Hot Night in the City

As a reward for her heroic two-hundred-year-long dash to warn of the coming of Pale-eyes, Turtle was adopted into the animal family, an honor that she accepted for fear of offending them, but deep down she regretted forsaking her honored position as swiftest of the rocks to become slowest of the animals. But as she became an animal after all the animal voices were used up, Turtle still speaks the silent language of the stones. Listen very carefully to her someday, and you will hear it.

AFTER HOURS AT RICK'S

Last call was announced by Sam One and echoed at the far end of the bar by Sam Three. In obedience to the phoney traditions of Rick's Café Américain, a scratchy disk of As Time Goes By was put on the turntable to signal the end of the drinking day. The clock read two-ten, which meant it was five minutes before two. It is another tradition at Rick's to set the bar clock ahead fifteen minutes to create a little leeway for moving drunks out. All the regulars know this gimmick, so it doesn't work; but that doesn't prevent it from being one of Rick's instant traditions, like playing As Time Goes By and hanging huge blowups of stills from Casablanca on the walls, and calling all the barmen Sam. This last had a particularly precious embellishment: the barmen are known as Sam One, Sam Three, Sam Five, etc., because some wag once described them as an odd lot.

Rick's has been the city's most popular meat market for the past four months, and four months hence, it will surely be out of fashion and probably no longer even in existence. That is the mutable way of things in Dallas, city of glass, Naugahyde, chrome, and Tomorrow.

I had drunk enough to feel surprisingly sober and to regret having wasted money on hooch that failed to dissolve the crust of my devilishly attractive bitterness. I tipped back the last of my scotch-and-milk and asked Sam One for another before last call. When he told me that last call had already gone, I opened my eyes wide and demanded to know why nobody had advised me of so significant an event. He sighed operatically and made up another, taking care to label it 'a quick one'.

I surveyed the bar with that dolefully sardonic expression I effect. Nothing but losers left at this hour. Two men sat arguing with hooch-blurred intensity: young, hard-charging sure-to-succeed types wearing the uniform that made mid-Seventies Texas businessmen look like ticket agents for minor airlines, white belts and white shoes, double-knit polyester slacks, and jackets in centennial primaries. Spaced out along the bar were three single males staring into their glasses, trying to figure out why they had failed to make out, not realizing that they were Darwinian rejects from the mating process—the kind who drive Volvos. At the end of the bar was a boozy, buxomy gal with big hair and an eyelash that had come unstuck at the corner. She was still waiting for the guy who had excused himself to go to the men's room half an hour ago. And two stools up from me was a woman in her mid-thirties, 'dressed for success' in a feminine version of a man's business suit. She had come in an hour ago when the action was peaking, and now she seemed a little embarrassed to have missed the tide of lust and ended up beached and alone.

A sad lot, I evaluated. The culls, the losers, the shucks. And yet, there was I—me—sitting in their midst. Ironic. Ironic!

An hour earlier, the bar had been full of action, with its clientele of mercantile types of both sexes, all playing it for more interesting than Nature had designed them to be, all hunting for crotch in this pasteboard jungle of music, laughter, hooch, and single-entendre jokes that elicited loud guffaws, not because the mots were bons, but because the laugher wanted to show that he had got the joke and was—if only to that modest extent—with it.

I had hooked an easy fish early in the evening, but I let her off the line—off my dizzyingly clever line, that is—out of fatigue and boredom and age. Age looms large with me. Lots of men have trouble with the arrival of male menopause, but with me it's worse; I just cannot accept the idea of being forty; and that's awkward when you're almost fifty.

I downed my scotch-and-milk, pushed myself off the stool, and signaled Sam One for my tab.

"That'll be thirteen-fifty, Mr Lee."

"You took care of yourself, Sam?"

"I always do, sir."

"Wonderful. I have it on excellent authority—one Virgil, an Italian tour guide who works the rings of Dis—that the most attractive feature of hell is that the service is compris."

Sam One guessed from my tone that this was supposed to be clever, so he made a weary effort towards a laugh but produced only a slight nasal sigh.

Slight though it was, this sigh had an astonishing effect: the lights went out, and Rick's was plunged into darkness.

A crash of thunder seemed to split the tarmac of the parking lot, then the lights flickered and came back on. All the drinkers were startled and frightened, so they laughed.

I went to the window and looked out. A storm had broken over the city; hailstones the size of moth balls clattered onto the parking lot and bounced up to a height of three feet. The tinny rattle of the hail obliterated the sound of As Time Goes By, now playing for its second and last time.

The only warning of an oncoming storm had been an odd greenish light at sunset, a kind of bathospheric afterglow. I had noticed it as I dropped into Rick's at six-thirty on my way home from the university.

By the time the other customers joined me at the window, the diagonal streaks of rebounding hail had stopped and rain was drilling down, rapidly melting the hailstones almost before they stopped bouncing and rolling.

"O, mutability!" I muttered.

"Oh, shit!" muttered the woman at my side, the 'dressed for success' thirtyish one I had noticed up the bar.

"No, just rain, I think," I said.

One of the customers called back to Sam One, telling him that no Christian barman would send customers out in shit like this.

"You see?" the woman said to me. "I told you."

As everyone drifted back towards the bar, Sam Three was quick to explain that he couldn't sell any more drinks without risking his license.

Fine, someone said. Don't sell us another round. Give us another round.

And because most of us were regulars, Sam One shrugged and nodded to Sam Three, who, with cheerless fatalism, began to make everyone another of the same.

"I hope you realize," I said, taking the barstool next to hers, "that the fact that these yahoos agree with you about the rain being shit does not constitute proof. The vox populi is almost always the voice of ignorance, which is why democracy is the least efficient thing since early experimental substitutions of waxed paper for toilet paper in an effort to reduce time wasted in the john. In the case of that particular guy, it was his inability to distinguish shit from Shinola that ruined his career as a television meteorologist."

"He wouldn't make much of a shoe-shine boy, either."

"True. Except in West Texas, where a wedge of dung under the heel of the boot is a symbol of status."

"To say nothing of rural chic."

"You're fun to banter with, lady. You have a well-developed sense of the ridiculous and a firm grasp on the whimsical. And what is more, you're quick on the uptake. I like the cut of your gibe, sailor."

"Thanks, mister. What's that you're drinking?"

"Scotch-and-milk."

She made a dubious face. "Is it good?"

"I've never thought of it as a moral issue."

"You seem to have a low opinion of our fellow drinkers, stranded here in this Casablancan hailstorm."

"Oh, they're all right in their way. Just a pack of moonstruck kids who sit all night on barstools in the hope of striking up a relationship that occupies that satisfying middle ground between romance and getting a quick lay."

"Yeah, I know the type. Pitiful."

"Yes, pitiful."

And the conversation lay there for a while, as she pushed ice around in her drink. Mentioning getting laid by its name often has a stunning effect on the social flow.

"What's your name?" she asked, without looking at me.

"Marvin Lee. And yours?"

"Martha Zinberg."

"You don't look like a Martha."

"Fifteen years ago, I didn't look like a Martha, maybe. But I'm afraid I'm growing into it. But you, you really don't look like a Marvin."

"Thank you. It's unfair that Marvin Lee should be so patently wimpy a name, while Lee Marvin sounds all sinew and balls."

"Poetry's a funny thing."

"True. I remember giggling all the way through Paradise Lost."

She smiled. "Do you come here often?"

"And what zodiac sign was I born under?"

"Hey, give me a break. I'm new at this sort of business."

"Ah, the cry of the Sabine women. All right, yes. I come here often."

"To pick up women?"

"Certainly not! Or, to be more precise... why else? And how about you, Martha? Did you come here to get picked up?"

"I thought so an hour ago. Now I'm not sure. It's my first time."

"Your first time at Rick's?"

"First time anywhere."

"Married?"

"Divorced."

"Recently?"

"Very."

"Children?"

"None. You?"

"Which?"

"Any of the above."

"Married, yes. And I have produced an F-1... she who just yesterday was a little girl, all sugar and spice and unanswerable questions, but who will soon be entering Yale as what the acceptance letter called a 'freshperson'."

"How do you earn your money, Marvin?"

"I don't actually earn my money. I'm a university professor. 'History of Western Thought.' Creating faculty positions is our culture's way of providing for brilliant people who are emotionally underdeveloped."

"That has the sound of a rehearsed line."

"Just what it was. What about you, Martha? How do you earn your money?"

"I'm a lawyer. My husband and I were in practice together."

"Zinberg and Zinberg?"

"No. Just Zinberg."

"Ah! And was that the problem? Insufficient recognition for your contribution?"

"...No, that was more a symptom than one of the problems. You want to hear about them? The problems?"

"Nope."

"Oh." She blinked. Then: "Well then, do you want to tell me about your problems?"

"Sure. My wife is a wonderful human being. My daughter is a blend of beauty and wit. I got tenure eight years ago. And I publish articles in the major journals of my field with machinelike regularity."

"These are your problems?"

"Seen from the inside, yes. You see, I always wanted to be captain of a tramp steamer on the South China Sea. Or a novelist. Or a movie star. Or an apple grower in Vermont. And instead? Instead, I have a departmental committee meeting in the morning. Now there's excitement for you. What about you, Martha? Did you ever want to be an apple-growing movie star adrift in the South China Sea?"

"No. All my life I wanted to be a lawyer."

"Well then, you've won life's great battle! You've made out."

"Not tonight, I haven't. My first shot at the swinging singles scene wasn't a screaming success. I realize that zaftig isn't in this season, but still... I mean, come on! This place was steamy with libido earlier on, and some of the boys were too drunk to discriminate. And yet... here I am. Still sitting here. Advise me, Marvin. What should I do? Offer green stamps?"

"Do I understand you correctly? Are you asking me for guidance on how to get yourself laid?"

"I think I am. I'm not sure. After all, this is my maiden voyage... if a matron can have a maiden voyage. This is my first time out since the divorce. Maybe I just want to talk. Share ideas, dreams, insights, wisecracks." She tilted back her head and looked at me narrowly. "Come to think of it, maybe you're not the person to ask for advice. I mean, you're obviously no hotshot at the business of seduction."

"I resent that!"

"Well, you're still here, aren't you? You didn't find anyone for tonight."

"Yes, well... that's the part I resent."

She laughed. "You're sort of fun."

"Fun? Wow! Like a barrel of monkeys? Gee! Actually, Martha, I did make out tonight. I ran my patented, all-purpose, never-fail Switch Routine on a girl, and she fell like the Roman Empire. So you see, when you assume that I am here, rather than sweating on the belly of some highly desirable chick, because I lack persuasive skills, you are full of shit up to your pink, shell-like ears—if you don't mind my waxing poetic."

"Wax away. Are you drunk, Marvin? You sound pretty drunk."

"Only my mouth is drunk. My mind is perfectly pellucid. Hey, if I had slurred that 'perfectly pellucid', that would have been funny. So? Do you want to learn how I made out, or not?"

"Is it still raining?"

"Like a cow pissing on a flat rock, as wits say in the Big Bend country."

"In that case, teach me, Marvin. I'm all ears... pink, shell-like ears, that is." She crossed her legs and assumed an acutely attentive look.

"All right, here's how it went. I approached this fish, dangled my classic 'switch' line in front of her, and pow! She was on the hook. All we had to do was down our drinks and in half an hour we'd have been in her apartment, making the beast with two backs."

"So why weren't you?"

"Well, you see, once the bait is taken and the hook is well set, my interest in landing the fish evaporates. I'm more a hunter than a killer. It isn't the tickle and squirt that attracts me. It's the constant reaffirmation that I can still harvest young flesh. Does that make any sense to you?"

"Sure. In fact, it's transparent. Even trite."

"Trite?"

"So how does this classic 'switch' sting of yours work?"

"Like most landmark discoveries in mankind's slow rise from the stone axe to the atomic bomb, The Switch is based on simple principles. All these bumbling butchers around here run standard, banal dodges. They grope the fish's emotions by telling her she's beautiful; or they grope her mind by saying she's interesting; or they grope her self-esteem by faking a common interest in the Rolling Stones or Fellini or art nouveau. Me, I cut through all this tedious persiflage and do a complete switch—hence the name—on those worn-out ploys. Playing it for bittersweet, burnt-out, and tragic, I frankly admit that both she and I are here to get ourselves laid. Then I shake my head and say what a sick and silly thing that really is. Here we sit... so much finer and more sensitive than these animals sniffing each other all around us... and yet we find ourselves shopping in the same meat market as they, victims of corporal impulses that we can't fight, even though we know how stupid and ultimately unsatisfying it all is. I sigh and say that at least we can preserve our dignity by not conning each other with shams of tenderness and affection. We can call a spade a spade. (Note of caution for potential switch users: The 'call a spade a spade' line is a little dodgy when the target fish is Black.) And there you have it, Martha. My sure-fire switch scam... patent pending. After it's been run, the two of us finish our drinks while raking those around us with glances of superior scorn. We're a team now. We've both accepted reality, both admitted we're there to get laid. Ergo... let's get to it."

"And that really works, Marvin?"

"More often than not."

"Hm-m. It doesn't sound very romantic."

"We're not talking about romance. What we're talking about is more like giving blood, or taking a vitamin capsule, or pissing—which are, as a matter of fact, excellent analogies for the three major impulses that drive us towards random sex."

Martha probed the bottom of her glass with a plastic swizzle stick. "Would you mind telling me something? Why didn't you take a shot at me? Didn't you notice me sitting here?"

"I noticed you."

"And?"

"Well, you see... I've got this problem. I only target young fish, sprats. Lurking in the corners of my mind there is this notion that youth is a communicable disease that one can catch through direct contact."

"Does it ever work, this chasing after youth?"

"It always works... for about thirty minutes."

She took the swizzle stick out and licked it meditatively. "I don't think your sting would work for me. Too complicated. Too devious."

"Don't lick that. Plastic causes cancer." I must have swallowed too much hooch that night, because I found myself feeling something like compassion for her. So I decided to play it straight with her. "Martha? I told you about the switch game where the angler lays it right on the line with the fish. Well, there's a more advanced version of the ploy, one I call the Double Switch. That's where I tell some intelligent fish at the bar all about the switch game."

She was silent for a couple of beats. "You're saying that I've just been a victim of the double switch?"

"That's it. But remember... it's reserved for the smartest fish."

"And that's a compliment, eh?"

"Indeed it is."

"Hm-m. But what about your taste for young flesh and all that business about youth being a communicable disease?"

"Martha! Do you really think I have so little imagination that I am incapable of lying?"

"...I see."

"Like everybody else, I take what I can get. But because you're bright and witty, I thought I'd warn you. Particularly as this is your first night out on the hunt. Seems only sporting to give you a chance to get away."

"I'm not all that sure I want to get away. Do you mind if I ask—do you love your wife?"

"Sure."

"But then... why?"

"It's all about being fifty and not being a captain on the South China Sea or a farmer in Vermont. You're parked out in the lot?"

"Yes. A cream Mercedes."

"Convertible?"

"Yes."

"How did I know that? When this rain breaks, I'll follow you to your place."

"Ah..." She put her elbow on the bar and her cheek in her palm, so that she was looking sideways up at me. "May I use the confessional now?"

"Sure. I was almost through anyway. Confess away."

"We can't go to my place."

"Roommate?"

"Sort of. There's my husband and my children. I don't think they'd understand."

I looked at her, and suddenly I felt very tired. "You're not divorced."

"Nope."

"And this isn't your first time out cruising the meat markets."

"Ah... no. Say, could there possibly be such a thing as a triple switch?"

I rubbed my face. "So the Master Stinger got stung, did he? Well, how about that? Not bad, Martha. Not bad at all. Especially for a woman who found my crotch-scam too devious." I pushed off the barstool and went to the window. The rain had thinned to little more than mist, and streetlights were reflecting in shallow pools faintly opalescent with automobile filth. I couldn't tell if the hail had done any damage to my battered old Avanti, but I was sure it had harmed her Mercedes, and that was a comfort.

"Marvin?" She joined me at the window. "One morning a woman who has been a good wife and a busy mother lifts her head from life's tasks, blinks and looks around, and she realizes that she's forty and the parade has passed her by while she was making plans for others. You know what I mean?"

"Please don't batter me with this truth and sincerity stuff. I can't handle it. My whole life has been a celebration of artifice. Down with meaningful relationships! Up with the psychological barriers? Bring on the colorful hang-ups!"

She was silent for a moment. Then: "I see. Well, at least we could console each other by making—what was it? The beast with two backs? I have enough money for a motel."

I sat heavily in a chair by the window. "I'm sure you have, Martha."

She sat across from me. "Your ego's hurt, isn't it."

"Sure. Of course. But that's not really it. It would be pointless for us to make it in some motel with 'Genuine Western Oil Paintings' on the walls. In the morning, our strongest desire would be to shower until the scent of the other person was flushed down the drain. We'd be obliged to make up stories for people who no longer believe us. And a week from now, we wouldn't even remember each other's names. We don't have anything to offer each other, Martha. There's nothing we even want from each other. All there is between us is a low background fever of sexual curiosity."

While I spoke, she smiled at me with amused patience that made it difficult for me to keep my eyes on hers. I felt burned out, vitiated.

Sam Three started up the worn record of As Time Goes By, and Sam One went along the bar telling everyone that the storm was over and he really had to close.

Martha continued to look at me, her eyebrows arched calmly.

"It would be absolutely pointless, Martha. We probably wouldn't even perform very well."

"So what happens now?"

I sighed and stood up. "I'm going to take a walk."

"And me?"

"It's a big night out there. There's room for you to take a walk, too."

"But not together."

"But not together."

She narrowed her eyes and evaluated me. "Marvin, you're really a washout, you know that?"

"Yes, I know."

I left Rick's Café Américain and walked around the empty streets for a couple of hours; then I decided I had to get away... go to someplace new and fresh! Canada, maybe. Or the South China Sea. I found my car standing alone in the lot, and I got in and drove north, with the rising sun glancing and glittering through the passenger side window.

But about ten miles out of town, I ran out of gas. I took that as a sign—hey, maybe even a metaphor for my life!—and I managed to get to my committee meeting at the university, unshaven but only a little late.

THAT FOX-OF-A-BEÑAT

The people of my village share with all Basque peasants an inborn reluctance to give out any information that might be used to our disadvantage, or, if not actually to our disadvantage, then at least to some other fellow's advantage, which must ultimately be the same thing, for God in His wisdom has seen fit to fill His world with fewer desirable things than there are people chasing after them, and so what the other fellow gets, I don't.

Nowhere is our disinclination to burden others with accurate information more evident than in financial matters. It is common for a shepherd with a fruitful flock to complain long and bitterly, not only because God hates a braggart, or to prevent relatives from asking to borrow money, but also because the posture of poverty gives one moral leverage when selling one's cheese to the traveling wholesalers. The only peasants who do not claim to be impoverished are the truly poor, who seek to avoid the scorn of their neighbors and—even more galling!—the pity of those who might assume that their poverty is God's punishment for wrongs committed by past generations of their family.

No one in my village is fooled by the conventions of speech and behavior that oblige the fortunate to minimize their possessions and the miserable to pretend they haven't a care in the world. Oh, those dim souls from Licq, our neighboring village, might be fooled by such dodges, but not us. We all know that those who pretend to be content with their lot are probably as poor as stones (and perhaps deservedly so, within God's Great Scheme of Retribution), while those who bemoan their poverty most shrilly are secretly well-off, like the Colonel, who became our village's richest man from his practice of snapping up land from the feckless and the unlucky, but who was so tightfisted that he even resented having to pay his share to repair the school's roof. But the Colonel no longer worries about collecting other people's land, not since God reached down last winter and collected him.

Oh yes, we all know how the rich moan while the poor sing, but the glory of the Basque mind lies in its capacity to see subtleties within subtleties, so it is accounted a great gift to be able to judge just how rich are those who complain, and exactly how poor—and therefore vulnerable in commercial dealings—are those who walk about lighthearted and smiling, like an idiot stunned by a loose tile falling from a roof.

But a wise old Basque dicton tells us: Every rule has its exceptions, even this one. Such an exception was the case of old Uncle Arnaud, who never complained about losing his best sheep to wolves and the lightening and never cursed the rich merchants of Paris (known collectively as 'the government') for depressing the price of wool so they could steal it from us. He accepted these strengthening Trials of God with a resigned shrug and a calm smile—exactly as though he were poor, while all the time he was as rich as a tax collector! But even the sly and subtle Uncle Arnaud was not so admired for craft and obliquity as the man who came to earn the title, 'that Fox-of-a-Beñat'.

Beñat was our village idiot (or 'village innocent' as our parish priest insisted we call him, reminding us that the Treacherous Apple was the fruit of knowledge, and that those who know the least are often—indeed, almost always—better Christians than those burdened with facts and understanding). Every village in those days had at least one village idiot—save for Licq, of course, where nearly everyone could lay claim to that title—and it was not uncommon for dark and dire histories to be attached to these poor souls. Our Beñat attracted more creative biography than most, for he lived in the loft of the late Widow Jaureguiberry's barn, where he sustained himself on bread and raw onions—no doubt in penance for some (probably unspeakable) sin. Equally suspect was Beñat's custom of taking long walks—not walks such as some lazy dunce of a Licquois might take—but long walks from which he would return with muddled tales of Saint Palais, fully forty kilometers away down the valley, or of Saint Jean Pied-de-Port, half again as far, and over the mountains! Sometimes people encountered him on the road as he slouched along in his awkward, jerky gait, muttering and grinning to himself in that mysterious way of his, and there was no mistaking our Beñat, with his wide, crooked mouth and his huge ears, and eyes set not quite at the same level, to say nothing of the baggy, low-crotched trousers he had worn from longer ago than the collective memory of our village stretches. There were even rumors that Beñat had walked all the way to Paris and back, and the fact that he never spoke of Paris lent a certain credibility to these rumors; for isn't it just like an idiot to imagine he has only been to Saint Palais, when in fact he has been in Paris?

The widespread suspicion that he had visited Paris was finally substantiated. Each fall, foreigners from Paris and Bordeaux appeared in our village, dressed in crisp new hunting costumes and filling our café/bar with talk of their prowess as hunters of the palombe. The money these northern hunters spent was important to our narrowly balanced economy, and it was a source of some puzzlement and distress to us that many of them were so stupid as to allow themselves to be seduced away from simple, clean accommodations in our honest village by the tarted-up restaurants and overdecorated hotels of Licq.

These northerners sometimes mistook us for quaint rustics and amused themselves by imitating the chanting music of our speech, though they could never achieve the melody of our expression because they were crippled by the Parisian's inability to pronounce final e's. Naturally, we repaid their discourtesy by renting them only the worst bird blinds in the valley, while we ourselves shot and netted the palombe from the best positions and always had a few extra to sell to them, so they could support their boasts of manful skill when they returned to whatever Paris or Bordeaux they came from.

One day several of these northerner 'hunters' were in the new café/bar that Monsieur Aramburu had made out of his father's old-fashioned wineshop by the simple expedient of changing its name and keeping a pot of filter coffee on the back of the stove. Aramburu was also our mayor, as he had the village's only telephone. Well, that Fox-of-a-Beñat (though he had not yet earned that title) came shambling past the window in his ragged old clothes, grinning and muttering to himself as always. One of us asked the tableful of boasting Parisians if they had ever happened across old Beñat on the road to Paris. The loudest and best-equipped of them (the ones with the fancy costumes never bag the birds, as Basque palombes are not so stupid that they cannot recognize a hunting jacket) winked at his companions and told us that indeed he had often seen our village innocent in Paris, riding through the park in a fancy carriage filled with young and beautiful girls. Well, of course none of us missed the wink, and we knew better than to think that any young and beautiful girl would ride about with a man who ate mostly onions, but we could discern a seed of truth in this story, nevertheless. Any man who was such a fool as to be unable to tell a good hunting blind from a miserable one would be perfectly capable of passing within ten meters of our Beñat without recognizing him. So here was this Parisian trying to ridicule us by pretending to have seen Beñat in Paris, when in fact he had seen him and was too stupid to know it! The laugh was on him!

But it was not only because of his enigmatic wanderings as far as Saint Palais and Saint Jean Pied-de-Port (and now even to Paris!) that our village innocent attracted so many stories to himself. There was rich fodder for gossip in Beñat's very peculiar drinking habits.

Beñat didn't drink. Never. Not a drop.

It is true, of course, that our village priest (a man who had been educated both in Pau and in Bayonne, and who therefore knew something of this world, unlike that simpering simpleton who babbled from the pulpit of the Licq church) had often reminded us that good Catholics drink only in moderation. But who can claim that never touching a drop is 'drinking in moderation'? It is quite the opposite! There were two bodies of opinion concerning Beñat's strange immoderation in the matter of drink. Some suspected that perhaps the old idiot was not a Catholic but a Jew or a Saracen—or, worse yet, a Protestant!—and was therefore not obliged to drink in moderation like the rest of us. Others dismissed this view as ridiculous, pointing out that Beñat spoke excellent Basque—for an idiot—and all the world knows that speakers of Basque must be Catholic, for Basque was the language of the Garden of Eden and is currently the language of heaven, although there have been efforts by French-speaking bishops of Paris to suppress this historical fact. The most widely accepted explanation for Beñat's suspicious refusal to take a little glass now and then was that in result of some grave sin committed while drunk during his youth, he had made a vow to give up the pleasure of wine forever. His great sin was understood to have involved you-know-what, and this meshed nicely with the newly uncovered reports of beautiful girls in carriages in Paris!

When teased about his abstemiousness, old Beñat used to grin and say that he didn't drink because he was too poor. And this always elicited guffaws as men tugged down the lower lid of their eyes with their forefingers and nudged one another, because it was universally understood that Beñat was very, very rich. Not just rich as some miserly old piss-vinegar of a Licquois might be rich, but rich! As rich as an Amérloque!

The evidence of his wealth was overwhelming. For one thing, following the rule that everyone who is poor pretends to be comfortable and everyone who is rich pretends to be wretched, it was obvious that old Beñat was wealthy beyond the dreams of a coin-biting merchant. Also, here was a man who was older than the church tower and had in all those years spent nothing on clothes and eaten nothing but bread and onions and the occasional blood-of-Christ apple 'borrowed' from the village's most famous apple tree. How could such a man fail to be rich? And what about all these mysterious voyages to Paris... and perhaps even beyond! Do poor men travel in search of poverty? No. Rich men travel in search of yet greater wealth. Poverty is something you can enjoy at home.

Oh, yes, the evidence of Beñat's wealth was overwhelming. And it must be confessed that his hidden riches (in search of which the boys of my era spent many afternoons, digging in all the unlikely places a fox of an idiot might bury his gold) were a source of concern among the men of the village. You must not think that we envied him his good fortune. It is not within the Basque character to be envious—save for the grasping people of Licq, where it is understandable, as they have everything to be envious of. No, it was not envy that our people felt, it was a keen sense of the injustice of it all. We rankled at the knowledge that when poor old Beñat died, his fortune would pass to his family, the Hastoys, those rich and haughty owners of an espadrille factory in Mauléon. It twisted a man's heart to think that all those good gold francs scraped together throughout a long life of eating onions and wearing tattered old clothes would end up in the pockets of people who were already too rich to pass, as some camels are said to do, through the eyes of needles, particularly as one of the Hastoys had recently lost a chance to marry a plain, honest girl from our village and had ended up marrying a dolled-up strumpet from Licq, and we all know the circumstances under which that occurs.

It was widely accepted that old Beñat was a distant and maybe oblique member of the snooty Hastoy clan, their overweening pride being the reason they had cast him out and now denied him. After all, what family likes to admit being related to an idiot, even a rich one? To be sure, whenever anyone suggested to Beñat that he was a Hastoy, he denied it with a grin. But what credence is to be given to the word of an idiot? And what significance must one give to that grin? Eh? Eh? And whenever a Hastoy was confronted with the question of relationship, he denied it with an angry vehemence that would make anyone suspicious. Obviously a sore point.

One afternoon, some men giving themselves a little rest from life's cares at Mayor Aramburu's café/bar saw old Beñat pass the window with his jerky, uncoordinated stride.

"Eh-ho!" the witty and teasing Zabala-One-Leg called out. "Come join us for a drink, Beñat!" And everybody laughed.

"No thank you, sir," old Beñat responded, grinning and nodding as idiots do on such occasions.

"Don't you like wine?" another wag asked, winking at his fellows.

"It is too expensive for me, sir," the idiot answered, standing at the entrance but not entering, for he was shy of the company of gentlemen with fine work clothes.

Everyone laughed and several eyelids were tugged down at this well-known bit of cupidity.

"Say, where have you been, Beñat?" a young shepherd asked. "I've not seen you for a week."

"Ah, sir, as for that, I have been walking."

"Oh? Whither?"

"As the road took me, sir. From stone wall to stone wall."

"All the way to Paris?"

"Paris? Paris? Well... I suppose that's possible, sir."

"On business, were you?"

"Business, sir?"

"Harken, old man. Don't make too many sous. They will only end up in Hastoy pockets."

"My sous? In the pockets of the Hastoys? But I don't understand. Why will that be so, sirs?"

"It is ever so. The family inherits. Unless you make a will with Maître Etchecopar to the contrary. What's wrong, Beñat? Don't you want your money to go to the Hastoys?"

"Well... no. No, I need my few sous."

"For what?" the young wit cried. "To buy onions?"

Everyone laughed when old Beñat said, "Just so, sir. To buy onions."

"Well, Beñat," Mayor Aramburu said from his throne behind the bar, "if you don't want your money to go to the Hastoys, you'd better make your will with Maître Etchecopar next Thursday."

"If you say so, sir. But... what is a will?"

"A will is a thing you make with a lawyer when you think you are going to die," informed the mayor, who not only had a telephone, but who also read the newspaper all day long behind his bar and therefore was—after our priest, of course—the most knowledgeable man in the village.

Old Beñat's face twisted with the effort to comprehend this. At last he said, "Then, yes, I must make a will. For I have a feeling I shall die soon. Well, thank you, sirs. I must be off."

"I'll say you're off! 'Way, 'way off!" cried Zabala-One-Leg as Beñat left the doorway and departed for his nest in the barn of the late Widow Jaureguiberry—God comfort and reward her.

The ambience in the mayor's bar became suddenly heavy and morose, and men sat staring into their glasses. It is not wise to speak of death, for it is widely known that mentioning bad things beckons them.

"Hm-m-m. Could it be that he is going to die soon?" the mayor wondered aloud. "It is possible, my friends, that idiots know things that others do not, for idiocy is largely a matter of the mind."

The men nodded gravely as they silently hefted this morsel of insight.

Now, those envious, backbiting Licquois always try to make much of the fact that our village does not have a full-time lawyer, and that Maître Etchecopar comes over from Licq only one Thursday a month to attend to our legal business. The truth be known, we are a peace-loving village and our men are brave, so the few disputes we have are settled honorably with fists, unlike those thieving cowards from Licq who are forever at one another's throats in the safe, cowardly way of litigation and are therefore obliged to have a full-time lawyer.

Thus it was that old Beñat had to wait until Thursday to consult Maître Etchecopar in his ad hoc office in the sitting room of the priest's house. And when the idiot shambled out of that office, grinning and muttering to himself, all the men at the window of the bar and all the women watching from behind their curtains experienced a satisfying sense of justice done, and the pleasure of knowing that those haughty Hastoys had been cut out of his will. Now the new Hastoy wife, that strumpet of a Licquoise, would not be lording it over us with money that belonged to the village in which it had been hoarded for more years than there are loafers in the government!

That afternoon the men giving themselves a little rest from life's rigors in Mayor Aramburu's café/bar were more than usually silent as they sat over their glasses of strong emerald green Izarra. (The weaklings in Licq drink the milder urine yellow Izarra.) After a time, one of them drew a sigh and gave voice to what everyone was thinking, "But then... if not the Hastoys, who?"

The mayor stopped wiping his glass and scowled at the bigmouth, for he had been considering that very thing for several hours, and he could see no advantage in everyone in the village troubling themselves over the issue of Beñat's inheritance.

"Ah-ha. I think I know who'll get it," said a man standing by the window. "Regard." He gestured to the church across the square where Beñat was walking down the stone steps with the village priest. All the men gathered at the window and looked across the square with fatalistic shakes of their heads. To be sure, it was the priest's duty to grab for the Church as much as he could from old people who, approaching death, seek to assure their places in heaven through acts of charity. And we were proud to know that our priest, who had studied both at Pau and Bayonne, could grab more in a day than the bungling old fool of a priest at Licq could grab in a year. But there were so many things a man could do with those piles of buried gold. Useful things. Enjoyable things. Perhaps... who knows?... even good deeds.

The men shrugged and sighed, then returned to their tables and conversations. It was evident that the Church would have old Beñat's gold, and there was no point in weeping over a stillborn lamb. But our mayor pondered the matter at greater depth, for people with telephones listen and learn things, and they become craftier than others. The mayor reasoned that old Beñat had seen the priest after he had visited the lawyer. Therefore, it was not necessarily true that the Church had the old idiot's gold firmly in its holy fist. And while there is time, there is opportunity.

A week later, the men who gathered at the mayor's café/bar to discuss plans for the fête of the village's patron saint were surprised to find old Beñat installed at the table by the window, drinking a pressed lemon as he listened to our long arguments and debates with his vague grins and friendly nods. We learned that the mayor had employed the idiot to do light chores about the café, and in return for this labor he received a nice little room overlooking the mountain stream that runs through our village. Also, Beñat took his meals with the mayor's family, sitting between his host's two plump and pretty daughters, who were solicitous of his comfort and often put the choicest morsels on his plate. The work required of Beñat was minimal, so he passed most of his days sunning himself on the bench in front of the café/bar, or sitting in the shade of the plane trees, and he was grateful to the benevolent God who had brought him to such ease and comfort in his last months on this earth. The mayor told him it was right and just to be grateful to God—even a little dangerous not to be—but he should not be too grateful, and not only to God. From time to time, Beñat would disappear from the village, off on one of his mysterious walks, and during such times his new family would worry and fret over his safety, as he had not visited the lawyer since their first meeting, so his affairs were still unsettled.

In every way, the old idiot's life was gentle and pleasant, save that he sometimes missed his raw onions, for the mayor's plump and pretty daughters had insisted that the raw onions must go if he were to sit between them at table. To mitigate his disappointment, they sometimes brought him one of his favorite blood-of-Christ apples, those crisp juicy ones with little flecks of red in the white meat.

While it is true that a village innocent is given to understand things that are hidden from those whose vision is confused by intelligence, and may therefore feel the approaching shadow of death, it is also true that Beñat was an idiot, so it is not surprising that he misread the signs of his end by a little.

In fact, he misread them by a bit over eight years.

After Beñat's burial in the mayor's family plot (his headstone boldly carrying the name Hastoy, to the great chagrin of those haughty merchants), a decent respect for the dead required the mayor to let some time pass before he looked into the matter of Beñat's will. It was not, in fact, until later that afternoon that he found himself sitting in the once-a-month office of the lawyer from Licq, discussing the subject.

"But of what money do you speak?" Maître Etchecopar asked.

The mayor eyed him narrowly. There is no trusting these Licquois in matters of honor. "What money? Beñat's fortune, of course."

"I don't know what you're talking about, Monsieur Aramburu."

"But the old idi—the Departed One—visited you to arrange his will. Don't you remember?"

"Ah, yes! I recall now. But that was years ago. He came to see me because he felt he was dying, and a friend had told him he must make a will."

"Exactly. I was that friend. And...?"

"And?" The maître laughed. "Well, I had to explain to him that there is no point in making a will if one has no money."

"No money?"

"Not a sou."

"But... but all those years! He lived to be a hundred at least! And had a vigorous appetite to the very end, I can assure you! Surely he saved something."

"The little money he earned repairing stone walls around the countryside was spent in buying his bread and onions. He died with nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing."

That evening found the mayor in close conversation with our village priest.

"And you say he visited you only to make his confession?"

"Just so. He wanted to cleanse his soul because, he said, he could see his death coming. It appears he was a bit farsighted. Ha-ha."

"Some things are funny, Father. Others are not."

"Ah, to be sure, to be sure." The priest dried his eyes on the sleeve of his cassock. "The kindness of your family to our departed brother has been a lesson to all the village."

"Hm!"

"Without breaking the confidence of the confessional, I can tell you that he had fewer sins on his soul than a little girl at her first Holy Communion. I am sure that at this moment he is sitting joyfully in the blessed presence of God, if that makes your grief easier to bear."

"Oh, yes. Much, much easier. But... but what of his long walks to Paris and beyond!? If he was not attending to his riches, what was he doing?"

"I too was curious, so I asked him about that."

"And...?"

"He told me he took long walks because he liked to see things."

"Liked to see things? See things! What kind of a reason is that, I ask you?"

The priest lifted his shoulders. "An idiot's reason, I suppose. After all, dear Beñat was... well, innocent."

"Innocent? Innocent! Like a fox he was innocent!"

Our mayor never completely lived down the little chuckles and casual comments made by his customers on the subjects of Christian charity and how some people's sly and subtle tactics sometimes misfired. And it was widely shared throughout the village that one of the great dangers of having a telephone was that electricity harms a man's brain and makes him so dense that even the village idiot can trick him out of eight years' bed and board. But although he winced beneath the jibes, even Mayor Aramburu felt a grudging pride that our village had produced this Fox-of-a-Beñat who, idiot though he might be, was still slyer than the most intelligent of those dolts from Licq.

MRS McGIVNEY'S NICKEL

I passed the greater part of each day incognito. It used to make me laugh inside to realize that bypassers seeing me on my way home, dressed in worn-out sneakers with many-knotted laces, last year's school knickers patched at knee and butt, no socks to cover skinny, bruised shins, my cap skewed around to the side, mistook me for an ordinary kid, little suspecting that in fact I was a daring and resourceful leader of a team of hardened mercenaries.

It was our assignment to defend North Pearl Street from the Germans who, having gobbled up Czechoslovakia that March, now set their sights on Albany, which they planned to infiltrate by way of North Pearl. The U.S. high commander in chief of everything had called me into his lavish secret office to explain that if North Pearl fell, Albany was doomed, and if Albany was lost, what hope was there for America? So the fate of the country was in my hands and those of my band of loyal followers. Ranged against us were several thousand heartless, highly trained Nazi Strong Troopers.

Like many children, I lived an intense and secret play-life, and thought I was unique in this. So complex, so theatrical, so absorbing were my story games that I remember each summer between the ages of six and ten in terms of the game that dominated it. With Europe's slide into war a constant theme on radio news broadcasts, it was inevitable that the story game of the summer of 1939 would have to do with Nazis.

My scalded lungs rasping for air, I pressed back against the weathered siding of a boarded-up stable that dated from the era of horse-drawn wagons. Slowly... slowly... I eased my eye around the corner of the stable to locate the snipers concealed in the—they spotted me, and a bullet splintered the wood near my cheek! I drew back and hissed at my followers, "We'll make a dash for the shed. It's our only chance!" Uncle Jim exchanged a worried glance with Gabby Hayes, who raged, "Gosh-darn those dang-nabbed, lop-eared, low-down, pigeon-toed, no-account..." He sputtered off into mutters of indignation. I used to let my followers blow off steam now and then, knowing that when the chips were down they would obey my instructions because I knew best how to avoid being picked off by those dirty Nazi Strong Troopers with their itchy fingers curled around the triggers of high-powered automatic shooting devices. Gail looked at me, her eyes glowing with admiration, while Reggie nodded crisply in his stiff-upper-lip British way. I kept up a spitty covering fire with my Thompson submachine stick as my band dashed across the alley one by one and dove for the shelter of the shed. Both Reggie and Doc got hit on their way across, and Kato, my faithful Japanese valet, had to drag them the rest of the way. Then it was my turn. After emptying my last five-hundred-round magazine into the German trench-bunker-wall-fortification, I scrabbled across the alley on all fours, getting a slug in one shoulder and another in my leg and another in my other shoulder and scratching my knee on a broken bottle as I skidded into the shelter of the doorway and gathered my team around me. Gritting my teeth to conceal the pain, I drew a situation map on the ground with the map-making stick that also served as a pistol with an inexhaustible clip, a telescope that could read the enemy's plans at half a block, a radio that translated German into American, and a stick of dynamite that you lit with your snapped-up-thumb cigarette lighter and threw at the enemy, or rather, at the base of a huge rock outcropping that overhung the enemy's position and came crashing down on them, crushing them to a pulpy mass that your eyes flinched away from, but you told your followers that sometimes war wasn't a pretty sight, but you had to do what had to be done and that was that. Throwing your dynamite was a desperate last resort, considering the huge expenditure of war material the loss of this versatile stick constituted... or would have constituted, if you didn't always have the remarkable good luck to find another such stick lying close to the body of a fallen (or crushed) Strong Trooper. (All right, so I mis-heard 'Storm Troopers' on the radio. Is that a crime? Jeez!)

My band of intrepid followers included Uncle Jim from the week-day radio adventure Jack Armstrong, All-American Boy!, which also provided my admiring tomboy of a cousin, Gail, who mostly said, 'Wow!' or 'Whatever you say, Chief.' In addition, there was Gabby Hayes, toothless, bearded sidekick in innumerable grade-Z cowboy movies; then there were Jack, Doc, and Reggie from I Love a Mystery. Since Reggie was British, I had to use my 'English accent' so he could understand my instructions. Finally there was Kato, my faithful valet. This last character I borrowed from The Green Hornet, without being exactly sure what a valet was, but if Kato was Britt Reid's 'faithful Japanese valet', he'd do for me. (A couple of years later, right after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Kato became overnight a 'faithful Filipino valet', but by then I was no longer playing story games.) Each of my seven followers, Gail, Gabby, Jack, Doc, Reggie, Kato, and Uncle Jim, had a distinct personality and role that I remember clearly to this day: Gail was always astonished and admiring, Gabby was full of folksy wisdom and given to long strings of curses, Reggie always knew the polite thing to do, Jack and Doc were brave but headstrong and rash, Kato was faithful, and Uncle Jim was always worried that I was taking on tasks harder than any one man could hope to accomplish. This mixed bag of followers might fret and squabble and occasionally let their hot heads carry them too far, but when the chips were down they were all courageous and, what was more important, obedient. Oh, it's true they often got into trouble that called for quick reactions on my part, but I was fond of them, even if they sometimes tried my patience.

I always muttered aloud as I played all the characters in my story games; and there in the alley that late summer afternoon I was muttering harder than usual as I questioned a snide, sneering German officer I'd captured. Because my story games were always tense and emotional, the volume of my muttering and the vigor of my gestures tended to increase unless, as sometimes happened, I glanced up and blanched to find someone looking at me. I would quickly convert the dramatic monologue into a song (with gestures), because although talking to yourself is a sure sign of being nutty, there is no shame attached to singing to yourself. But I never felt the ploy had really worked, so I would wander away, furious with the eavesdropper for spoiling the game.

Well, I was muttering hard, explaining our desperate situation to my followers, having ordered Doc to blindfold the German officer so he couldn't see the map I was scratching on the ground, when my concentration was snagged by a sharp tapping sound. Annoyed by the interruption, I looked around, but I couldn't see anybody, so I started explaining that we had to stop those Germans from advancing another inch, even if it meant laying down our—again I was interrupted by the tap-tap-tap of metal against glass. I looked up and down the alley. Nothing. I was all alone. Then a movement at the edge of my peripheral vision caused me to lift my eyes, and there looking down at me was Mrs McGivney, our block's crazylady, smiling in that soft, sweet way of hers. Immediately my followers vanished, as did the four or five thousand Nazi Strong Troopers dug in at the far end of the alley, and I was left all alone, the leader of men suddenly shriveled into a skinny little kid caught talking to himself.

The block's belief that Mrs McGivney was crazy was based on her peculiar shopping habits, her excessive shyness, and the long, old-fashioned dresses she always wore. She was never seen on the street except for quick trips over to Kane's Grocery, always at closing time. Even if other people were ahead of her, Mr Kane would serve her as soon as she came in, because she was very timid and would slip away and not come back until the next evening rather than risk being noticed or, yet more upsetting, spoken to. Respecting her sensitivity, Mr Kane never spoke to her. He would just smile and raise his eyebrows above his thick glasses, and she would quickly mutter off her shopping list, which he would fill, toppling cans from their high stacks with his can-grabber gizmo and catching them in his apron with that theatrical brio of his, or scooping macaroni or rice from one of his tip-out bins and hissing it into a little sack on his scales, always bringing the weight up to just a bit more than you asked for, or slicing cheese off the block in the hand-cranked slicing machine.

After filling her order, Mr Kane would tell Mrs McGivney the total cost as he marked it down in the dog-eared book he kept under the counter, a book that was called his 'slate', although it was made of cardboard and paper. Mrs McGivney would take her sack and scurry back across the street to her apartment, never looking up for fear of catching someone's eye. Once a month, she came in with a check, which he cashed for her, subtracting the cost of her groceries. Everyone knew that Mrs McGivney received a small monthly government check for 'disability', which the street understood to mean because she was a nut, but Mr Kane once told me that in his opinion she was just painfully shy. But her reputation for insanity was an element of received street tradition and therefore impervious to evidence or reasoning. Even the modest check she got from the government was taken as proof, if any were needed, that she was insane. How else could a crazylady stay alive? She could hardly get a job... except maybe at a nut factory! And there was the suspicious way she would appear from time to time at her window giving onto the back alley and look down at the kids playing there, not bawling them out for making noise like any sane person would, or shouting at them for throwing stones that might put somebody's eye out. No, Mrs McGivney just smiled down on us sweetly... exactly like a crazylady would do.

And now there she was, standing at her window, smiling down at me after having scattered both my followers and my enemies to the recesses of my imagination.

She beckoned to me. She'd never done that to any of the kids before! I made a broad mime of looking around to see who she could possibly want before pointing at my chest, my eyebrows arched in operatic disbelief. She smiled and nodded. I lifted my palms and tucked my head into my shoulders to say, but what did I do? She tapped the window again with a nickel—so that's how she'd made that sharp noise—then she pointed to the coin, then to me, clearly meaning that she intended to give the nickel to me. She beckoned again and made a big round gesture, which told me to go to the end of the alley, around to the street, and to her apartment building. I really didn't want to; my worst nightmares were about being pursued by crazy people. But I was a polite kid, so I went. Even the wildest and toughest of us kids, several of whom ended up in prison and one on death row, would be accounted polite by today's standards. Then too, if there was a chance to earn a little money, I could hardly let it pass me by, considering how my mother regularly risked her health for just a few extra bucks. Resentful of losing my game and dreading my encounter with a crazylady, I left the alley—but not before rubbing out the map with my heel, so the enemy couldn't find out my plans.

The staircase of 232 was dark because the hall windows meant to illuminate the stairs had been blocked up when the slum landlord divided the buildings up into small apartments and put a narrow bathroom into the front of each hall. Although it was dark, I ascended the staircase with a sure step because 232 was identical to 238, where I lived.

I tiptoed up to the top floor landing and stood there in the dark, uncertain. Maybe it would be best to sneak back down and out into the light and bustle of the street, but as I turned, the door to the back apartment opened and Mrs McGivney stood there, smiling.

"Would you mind going over to Mr Kane's for me?" she asked in a little-girl voice. "I'll give you a nickel." Her voice went up on the first syllable of 'nickel' in a kind of sing-song temptation.

"Well, I don't... All right, sure, I'll go." I was relieved that she only wanted me to do a chore for her and not something... crazy.

She had a list written out, and she said Mr Kane would put it on his slate.

When I returned with the small bag of groceries she was waiting at the head of the stairs and she gave me the nickel she had tapped the window with.

"Thanks." I put the nickel in my pocket and patted it to make sure it was there. The year before, I had lost a quarter. It must have just fallen out of my pocket on my way to the Bond Bread bakery to buy a week's worth of what was euphemistically called 'day old' bread. Until it got too dark, I walked back and forth along my path, hoping to find the quarter. No luck.

"Just bring the bag in, would you please?"

I followed her into her parlor, where she took the bag and brought it into the kitchen, leaving me standing there. On a round table by the window that gave onto the back alley there were two glasses of milk already poured out and a little decorated plate with four homemade sugar cookies on it. The room was filled with frilly old-fashioned furniture and it smelled of furniture wax and recent baking... the sugar cookies; and in the corner an old man sat facing the other window. His eyes were pointed towards the buildings across the alley, but I could tell he wasn't seeing anything. I said he was old, but the only old thing about him was a soft halo of fine white hair that held the sunlight like the lace curtains did. His face was unlined, his skin was tight, and he sat there in a straight-backed chair, staring through the curtains out across the alley with an infinite calm in his unblinking, pale blue eyes. Spooky.

Mrs McGivney returned from the kitchen and stood beside the little table, holding the back of her chair, waiting for me to sit down.

"Gee, thanks a lot, but I think maybe I'd better..." But she smiled sadly at me, so I sat down. What else could I do?

There was a heavy linen napkin on each plate. Mrs McGivney took hers and put it on her lap, so I did the same, only mine slipped onto the floor. She smiled again and pointed her nose towards the plate of cookies, indicating that I should take one. I did. She took a tiny bite out of hers, and I tried to do the same, but two bits broke off, one falling onto the floor and the other getting stuck in the corner of my mouth so that I had to push it in with my finger, and I wished I were somewhere else... anywhere.

She smiled a little pursed smile that didn't show her teeth. "You live three houses up, don't you."

I nodded.

"And you're Mrs LaPointe's boy."

I nodded again, wondering how she knew, considering that she never talked to anyone.

"What's your name?"

"Luke. Well, it's really Jean-Luc, but only my mother calls me that. I like to be called just Luke."

"John-Luke. That's foreign, isn't it?"

"French. My mother's family is French Canadian. And part Indian."

"John-Luke's a nice name."

"Only my mother calls me that."

"I've noticed that you always play alone."

"Not always. But mostly, yeah."

"Why is that?"

"Why do I play alone?" I glanced past her towards the old man, wondering if we were supposed to pretend he wasn't there. "Well, mostly because I make up my own games, and other kids don't know the rules or the names of the people or, well... how to play."

"And you read an awful lot, don't you."

How did she know that I read a lot... then it hit me. I always cut through the alley on my way home from the library, not because it was the shortest way, but to avoid the little kids who, whenever they saw me with an armful of books, would chant 'professor, pro-fes-sor, pro-fes-sor', which was one of my street names. My other street name was 'Frenchy' because of my name, which was even more French-sounding when my mother reverted to her maiden name, LaPointe, but with a Mrs so as to justify us kids I suppose. On my first day at P.S. 5 my teacher said how interesting it must be to have a French name. I hated teachers who tried to be palsy and modern. So far as I was concerned, they could forget the social worker crap. All I wanted from a teacher was information. No sincerity, no affection, no concern, thank you; just information. She wrote Jean-Luc on the board, and for the first couple of weeks I had to deal with being called Jean, a girl's name. There was teasing and a couple of fights after school—the usual trial by ordeal that every new kid on the block had to face. I was prickly and quick to go to Fistcity, always getting my first couple of shots in while the other kid thought we were still in the Oh yeah?... Yeah! preliminaries. Most of the kids at P.S. 5 were bigger than I was, but I had an edge over them: I never gave up. Bigger kids could throw me down or knock me down, but as soon as they let me up, I always plowed into them again; and although I'd come home pretty messed up, they never got away without at least a few marks and some blood, so after a while they gave up the teasing and bullying because there wasn't much glory in being able to beat up a smaller kid, and I made sure there was always a ration of pain in it for them. I never became a leader or even anybody's best pal, but my existence on the block came to be accepted and 'the professor' was left alone. In return, I concealed my bookishness, pretending not to know the answers to teachers' questions, and occasionally making wisecracks in class, or pulling funny faces behind some admiring teacher's back after she had complimented me.

"That's right, ma'am. I do read a lot. I get some of my games from books."

"Games?"

"Like Foreign Legion. Or Three Musketeers. But mostly I get them from radio programs."

"We don't have a radio," she said with neither complaint nor apology.

I had noticed this on my first glance around the room, and I wondered how anyone could do without a radio. So totally was my understanding of life linked to our second-hand Emerson that I couldn't imagine not having The Lone Ranger or The Whistler or I Love a Mystery for excitement, or Jack Benny and Fred Allen and Amos 'n' Andy for laughter, or advice from Mr Anthony for getting an insight into everyday problems. My favorite moment of the day was the delicious anticipation of those ten or so seconds of hum while the tubes warmed up; then there was the deep satisfaction of a rich, familiar voice announcing one of the kids' adventure programs that my mother let me listen to for one hour every evening before homework. I would stand on one leg in front of the radio, my head down, my eyes defocused, totally mesmerized by what I was hearing and seeing. Seeing, for old-time radio was profoundly visual; the scenes were painted by and upon your imagination. For me, radio was real. Splendid and enthralling, but less real, were the worlds I glimpsed in books and movies. The life I lived on North Pearl Street was certainly not splendid, but neither was it real to me; just a grim limbo I would escape from as soon as 'our ship came in'. Until then, I could find solace in my story games.

"I'm afraid of them," Mrs McGivney said, offering me a second cookie, which I politely refused, then reluctantly took.

"You're afraid of radios?"

"Of everything electric," she admitted with a little smile of self-disparagement.

Only then did I notice that she didn't have electric lights. All the houses on our row still had their gas installations in place, but the gas had been cut off except for kitchen stoves. In some rooms the gas pipes had been used as conduits for the electricity, so naked bulbs dangled from stiff, fabric-wrapped wires that sprouted from the ceiling rosettes of former gas chandeliers. In our bathroom and kitchen the disused gas pipes had fancy wrought-iron keys, but you couldn't turn them because they'd been painted over so many times. But Mrs McGivney still had fancy cut-glass gas lamps on her walls, with bright brass keys to turn them on.

"Mr McGivney just loves the gaslight," she said. "He's always glad when it gets dark enough for me to turn it up." She smiled at the unmoving old man, her eyes aglow with affection.

I looked over at him, sitting there with his pale eyes directed, unseeing, out the window, his face expressionless, and I wondered how she could tell he liked the gas light. Could he speak? Did he smile? And what was wrong with him anyway? Was he crazy or something?

I felt her eyes on me, so I quickly looked away.

"Mr McGivney is a hero," she said, as though she were explaining something.

I nodded.

"My goodness! Do you know how long it's been since we've had a little boy come visit us?" she asked.

"No, ma'am." I didn't really care. All I wanted was an opening to tell her that I'd better be getting home.

"It's been a long, long time. Michael—that's my nephew?—he used to visit us sometimes. I don't think he much liked coming up here, but Ellen—my sister?—she used to make him come. And every time he came, I'd give him some of my sugar cookies. He used to like my sugar cookies, unlike some little boys I could mention."

"I like your sugar cookies, too, Mrs McGivney. I think they're... nice. Real nice. Well, I guess I'd better be going. My mother's been sick and—"

"Mr McGivney is a hero," she said again, sticking to her own line of thought and ignoring mine. I could tell she wanted to talk about him, but I was uncomfortable with the waxy-clean smell of the place, and with that smooth-faced old man staring out at nothing, so I told her that my mother would be wondering where I was, and I thanked her for the milk and cookies. She sighed and shrugged, then she opened the door for me, and I escaped down the dark staircase.

I sat for a while on my stoop before going into our apartment where I knew my mother would be in bed, bored with her most recent siege of lung trouble and smelling of mustard plaster and Baume Bengué. Kids were playing stickball in the street, blocking traffic and exchanging insults with an impatient truck driver who wanted to get through. The game broke up when second base drove off, and the kids clustered around Mr Kane's corner store for a while, then drifted down Livingston Avenue towards the docks. I knew they'd end up wandering through the deserted warehouses down by the river, snooping around in the rubble-littered, piss-smelling, water-dripping vastnesses. They'd probably use their slingshots to shatter the few windowpanes that remained tauntingly intact, then, bored, they'd wander back and cluster again in front of Mr Kane's until someone thought of some other trouble to get into.

Kids had been playing stickball that day back in June 1936, when my mother, sister, and I first found ourselves sitting on the front stoop of 238 North Pearl Street, our clothes and bedding in cardboard boxes on the sidewalk, and our few pieces of furniture looking shamefully worn and shoddy in the unforgiving glare of sunlight. I was six years old, and my sister four. She was hungry and sleepy and close to tears after the long trip down to Albany from Lake George Village in our uncle's rattletrap of a truck. My mother looked anxiously up and down the street for my father. She hadn't seen him in five years, not since the morning he went out to look for work and didn't come back, leaving her pregnant with my sister and only two dollars and some change in her purse. Then a letter arrived saying he was sorry he had run away from the family he loved, but he just couldn't stand not being able to support us, and he knew that her family would give us a hand if he was out of the way. Mother's family hadn't approved of him because he was a gambler and a con man—fair enough reasons. Then, after five years without a word from him, a letter came out of the blue, saying he had found a job and an apartment in Albany, where we could make a new start. My uncle had had us on his hands since my father abandoned us, and he made no bones about resenting the time and money it cost him to bring us down to Albany, so when my father wasn't there in the street to welcome us, my uncle just unloaded our stuff in grumpy haste and left us there, hoping to make it back to Lake George before nightfall because his old truck had no headlights. Leaving my sister to watch over our things, Mother and I went into the red brick building to look for our apartment. That was my first experience of that medley of smells—boiled cabbage, mildew, Lysol, other people—that I would come to recognize as the smell of the slums, the smell of poverty and hopelessness, cold and eternal in the nostrils. There was an envelope stuck into the crack of the door of apartment #2, and in it there was the key and a note from my father saying that he had gone to buy something special for a party, and he would be back in a jiffy. We went back outside and sat on the stoop, waiting for him. We never saw him again.

For the next seven years we lived on North Pearl Street, a typical slum block of the Thirties. Shoals of dirty brats with runny noses, nits, and impetigo playing noisy games of kick-the-can or stickball in the street while unshaven out-of-work men in stretched, sweaty undershirts talked in loud voices from stoop to stoop on hot summer nights as they sucked at quart bottles of ale. They scoffed at those who had managed to get jobs. "You won't catch me kissing up to some boss just to get a job pushing a broom or digging a ditch!" Clearly, they were above that sort of thing. Only a handful of men on our block had regular jobs, a couple with the Bond Bread bakery on the corner, and a few doing part-time work on the loading platform of the Burgermeister brewery. North Pearl was predominantly Irish, ghetto Irish, who were content to live on handouts in the slums generation after generation, bullying their cringing wives and beating their rebellious kids, while the more ambitious Irish worked their way into the mainstream of America, finding jobs in the first generation and professions in the second. The men of North Pearl lived off of transient WPA jobs and Child Benefit checks. Of Albany's poor, only the Irish ever got those cushy WPA jobs that consisted of leaning on a shovel and looking with judicial interest into a hole that someone else had dug weeks before. This was because the political machine that ran Albany was the O'Conner Gang.

The Irish families on our block had received welfare for so long they had come to consider it a basic civil right, but my mother writhed in shame that circumstances had reduced her to living on public charity. Her! Ruth Lillian LaPointe who, like all the LaPointes, had always worked for everything she got! But she had been buffeted by repeated blows. First her charming, handsome, glib husband deserted her, leaving her to provide for two babies just when the Depression was at its deepest and darkest. Then her father, who had stepped in to help to the best of his limited resources, died in a car crash. Then her always fragile lungs gave out, so that she got ill every time she tried to work, as she stubbornly insisted on doing every Christmas.

Although North Pearl Street was a sump for society's lost, damaged, and incapable, I never felt inferior to anyone else, not even to those lucky kids in the Mickey Rooney movies who lived in small towns with big lawns and Sunday dinners, and had wryly benevolent fathers who remembered that they, too, had been rascals when they were young. I didn't feel inferior because my mother wouldn't let me. Okay, so the chips were down for us at that particular moment; she admitted that. We were going through a rough patch, no denying it. But she made it clear that, unlike our neighbors, my sister and I didn't belong in the slums. And not only did we not belong there, but we weren't going to stay. No, sir! One of these days our ship would come in, and when it did... we'd be out of there in a flash. Boy-o-boy just you watch our smoke!

Between bouts of lung trouble, my mother was energetic, doggedly optimistic, and full of laughter and games; and unlike the haggard, drained mothers of other kids on the block, ours was young and slim and pretty. My sister and I were proud of her, but always a little apprehensive too. Our pride flowed from the fact that this resilient, courageous woman was unfailingly supportive of us, encouraging the slightest glimmer of talent or gift, and assuring us that only a dirty trick of Fate had dumped us into the poverty of Pearl Street, where we didn't belong. (But we'll be out of here just as soon as our ship comes in, you mind my words!) Our apprehension had to do with Mother's hairtrigger temper which flashed out at the least, often imagined, slight to her dignity—an oversensitivity common among those who know their ethnic background is viewed with derision or disfavor and who, in aggressive compensation, feistily boast of those despised roots. Mother boasted about being French-'n'-Indian, the first ethnic strain accounting, in her view, for her refined taste, and the second making her a dangerous person to cross.

One manifestation of my mother's bristly pride was her refusal to accept that, poor though she was, her kids couldn't have what she called a 'decent Christmas', which involved her finding part-time work as a waitress in some cheap restaurant that needed help over the holiday season. She would get back from work late at night, having walked all the way through the cold and slush to save money for our presents, and inevitably her lungs would give out by Christmas morning, which she would spend lying on the living room couch, fevered and coughing, watching my sister and me open presents that were too expensive for our condition of life. Several times she ended up in the hospital with pneumonia, and once she was put into a sanatorium for two months, during which my sister and I were sent to a Catholic orphanage, a grim prisonlike institution set in wintry fields of corn stubble that seemed infinitely bleak to city kids. The first day, a brother took me aside and told me that I should pray every night for my mother's recovery. That night I alternately prayed and cried into my pillow, because it had never occurred to me that she might die, leaving Anne-Marie and me there forever.

The boys wore gray canvas uniforms, and we marched in silence to meals, classes, and prayer, our lives punctuated and dictated by clamorous electric bells. We showered in cold water and slept in an unheated cavernous dormitory that was supposed to 'harden us up' against the rigors of life, but it only kept us in a permanent state of drippy noses, sore throats, and ear aches. Discipline was rigid and hierarchical, the older boys being in charge of the younger. This led to bullying and illegal late night beatings with wet towels carried out in the shower room within a ring of older boys.

Anne-Marie and I were separated upon arrival at the orphanage, and she was sent to the girls' wing where, only five years old and having no idea where I was, she cried herself to sleep every night and reverted to bed-wetting, for which she was both ridiculed and punished. She was picked on because she was pretty and vulnerable, and bigger girls yanked her around by her long, blond hair. One afternoon a couple of weeks after we arrived, I was in the tangled mass of boys that ran and hooted and screamed wildly during the pandemonium of our unmonitored recess periods, when I thought I heard Anne-Marie's voice within the chaos. I searched for her among the tight-packed shoal of blue-uniformed girls who used to watch the rampaging boys from their side of the high chain-link fence that separated us, but before I found her the bells rang and we had to run back inside and leave the exercise yard for the girls. I later learned that I had walked right past her while she vainly called my name. I couldn't hear her through the din, and I failed to recognize her because a nun had cropped her hair in an effort to save her from being tormented by envious girls. She cried all that night. But the next day I walked up and down my side of the fence until I found her, and we held fingers through a chain link while she sobbed with a mixture of relief and misery. And that's how we spent the rest of our recess periods until the day we were called into the director's office and told that we were being sent home. Our mother was well again.

It wasn't until we were home that Mother told us how the social workers had decided that she was not in good enough health to be a 'fit mother', and that we kids would remain in custody at the orphanage until we were sixteen, old enough to get jobs. Mother had used the formidable weapon of her furious French-'n'-Indian temper to browbeat the astonished social workers into letting us live together again. But next time...

To avoid there being a next time, whenever Mother had to go to the hospital, Anne-Marie and I did everything we could to conceal the fact that we were at home alone, so the social workers wouldn't send us back to the orphanage. I would wash our clothes in the bathtub, and Anne-Marie would try to keep the house clean, awkwardly wielding a broom twice her height. When I did the shopping at Mr Kane's, I would mention that my mother had told me to get this or that, or that she was feeling just fine, thank you... anything to deceive any welfare spies that might be lurking around.

My sister and I came to dread the approach of Christmas. Mother never seemed to realize how frightened we were that our fragile family would be broken up again, and permanently this time, all because of her hard-headed determination to give us 'Christmas presents every bit as nice as those rich kids get, come Helen Highwater!'

For years I thought of Helen Highwater as some sort of avenging she-devil who descended upon people who were trying to get things done. You see, my mother had a flawed ear for idioms and adages, which she often twisted around, like accusing someone or something of being 'dull as dishwater', or her life-long assumption that the 'hoi polloi' were the snobbish upper crust of society. When she said the word she always used to push the tip of her nose up with her finger to illustrate the snootiness of the hoi polloi. I suspect that she was sustained in this error by the similarity between 'hoi polloi' and 'hoity-toity'.

The welfare agency gave us $7.27 a week, and through careful buying, extreme self-denial, and great imagination in the planning of meals, my mother managed to feed and clothe us on what worked out to a little less than thirty-five cents per person per day. The welfare paid our rent directly to our faceless slum landlord instead of giving us the money and letting us find our own accommodations. They paid much more for our three-room apartment than people with money in hand would have been asked, but then as now the Lords of Poverty didn't trust the poor not to squander or drink up their money.

So the welfare system gave us basic shelter and food, but we were on our own when it came to those little extras that made life more than a daily grind of survival: birthday and Christmas presents, or going to the movies once a month, or buying my sister a nice dress 'once in a blue noon' to give a little variety to her wardrobe of ill-fitting hand-me-downs provided by the nuns at Saint Joseph's Convent, or buying a pound of the coffee that was my mother's only hedonistic vice (just two cups a day), or for the special holiday celebrations she used to make for us, like our long-awaited and much-appreciated Easter treat of 'Virginia Baked Ham' that she confected from two cans of Spam, a can of pineapple and a small bottle of maple syrup. Mother used to shape and score the Spam and arrange the rings of pineapple, then bake it so that it looked exactly like a miniature glazed ham, and we used to have yams with margarine and maple syrup, which was cheaper than sugar in those days because Vermont sugarbush owners were suffering badly from the Depression. It was my job to color the margarine, putting the white block of grease into a bowl, then sprinkling the orange coloring powder over it and mixing it in with a fork until it looked like butter... though it still smelled like grease. It would not be until the war came along and absorbed all the produce of America's Dairyland that the powerful butter lobby allowed precolored margarine onto the market.

These little life-enhancing pleasures could not be had on thirty-five cents a day per person, so extra money had to be made either by my mother or by me, shining shoes or running errands. And sometimes we just had to do without. But even when things seemed their grimmest, Mother used to assure my sister and me that one of these days our ship would come in and carry us far, far away from the slums to some Easy Street out West where we'd never again know the helplessness and hopelessness that is the worst part of poverty. When I was little, I envisioned Mother's metaphorical ship pulling in at one of the Hudson River piers, and my mother and sister and I would walk up the gangplank, and never look back. But one night we were sitting at the kitchen table and Mother was dreamily describing the splendid house we would live in one of these days, when I became rich and famous... and with a shock of ice at the pit of my stomach I suddenly realized that I was the ship my mother was waiting for, and it was my task in life to rescue us from Pearl Street. The weight of responsibility was staggering, and it was soon after this recognition that I began to lose myself in my story games.

Evening came as I sat on our stoop, thinking about the day we arrived in Albany with our boxes of stuff and our bits of battered furniture standing on the pavement for everyone to see. I got up from the dirty step that left a gritty mottle on the backs of my bare legs and went in. As I passed through our kitchen I dropped the nickel Mrs McGivney had given me into our Dream Bank, which was an empty box of Diamond kitchen matches we hid on the shelf under the real box of matches to baffle any thief who might come snooping around. The Dream Bank was money saved up from Mother's occasional part-time jobs and from my rounds of the bars and taverns downtown on Friday nights, carrying my hand-made shoeshine box on my shoulder and asking men if they wanted a shine (black and brown polish only, no two-tone shoes), which only the occasional drunk or some guy trying to impress a woman ever wanted, although sometimes they'd give me a nickel or even a dime to get rid of me. Like selling apples on the street corner, shining shoes during the Depression was a way of begging without total loss of dignity. The Dream Bank was supposed to be for special things that would bring color into our lives... we bought our second-hand Emerson radio with the cracked Bakelite case from it, paying twenty-five cents a week for over a year... but more often than not, it got emptied out for dull, soon-forgotten things, like food or clothes.

That evening after the last of my radio programs, I tugged myself back to reality and went to sit on the edge of my mother's bed to play two-handed 'honeymoon' pinochle with her, while my sister cut out and colored dresses for her paper dolls. To save the cost of new paper doll books, my mother would buy one then trace the clothes, tabs and all, onto paper she gleaned by cutting open brown paper bags and ironing them flat. In this way, one paper doll book did the service of half a dozen, lasting until the cardboard dolls got too limp from handling to stand up. My sister would spend hours drawing her own designs and coloring them in, then hanging them onto the cardboard dolls in a series of 'fittings', all the while twittering animatedly as she played both the dressmaker and the customer, usually a rich, spoiled, very demanding actress. Anne-Marie loved to create styles from what she saw in the movies or in magazines, but her games were burdened, and to some degree spoiled, by my mother's need to see everything we did in terms of its potential as the ship that was sure to come in and rescue us from Pearl Street. That summer, Mother was sure that Anne-Marie would become a famous costume designer for the movies and bring us all to Hollywood, just as she viewed my bookishness as a sign that I would become a university professor and take us all to live in some nice college town upstate.

...Or maybe a doctor. As my mother was often in and out of charity hospitals, I guess it's natural that her romantic ideal was The Doctor, just as her implacable enemies were The Nurses, particularly the impolite or dismissive ones who were, my mother was sure, jealous of the interest the doctors took in her unique 'lung condition', which never did receive a specific name like bronchitis or emphysema or pleurisy. So one of the ways she proposed for me to lure our Ship of Hope close enough to shore for us to slip on unnoticed, was by becoming a doctor. For one whole winter, I wove and unraveled games in which I was a famous doctor who somehow managed to save the lives of rich patients without having to come into physical contact with them. Even in my games I was too squeamish to deal with people on the level of blood and pus and... other liquids.

I always felt relieved when the honor, and responsibility, of bringing our ship in was bestowed upon Anne-Marie, if not as a famous fashion designer, then as a dancer. Even as a little kid, Anne-Marie loved music and used to sing and dance around to our Emerson. Some neighbor told my mother that she had talent, 'a born professional, believe you me!' and overnight it was decided that she would be the girl chosen to replace Shirley Temple, who, after all, couldn't remain young and cute forever, could she? The next day Mother put Anne-Marie's hair up in bouncy sausage curls like Shirley's (we called her by her first name now that we were all in show business). The sausage curls would help talent scouts from Hollywood to spot her, and the next thing you knew, we'd all be in sunny California, living, as my mother with her tin ear for idiom put it, 'on the flat of the land.'

...As differs from the slippery hillside?

But for this dream to come true, Anne-Marie would need to have tap-dancing lessons, and that was out of the question, because group classes cost $1.50 per session and she would need at least two a week, which would have been more than a third of the $7.27 we received from the welfare people. So the Shirley Temple dream was put on the shelf for a while, and we went back to daydreaming about the things we would own and do when I became a rich diagnostician, famous for my unique 'hands-off' technique.

Mother's bouts of illness always followed the same pattern. She would come down with a fever and she'd hack and cough, gasping for breath as she hung over the edge of her bed to help the phlegm 'come up', a process that tested the limits of my squeamishness. I would sit on the edge of her bed late into the night, trying to relieve her wracking cough by making and applying mustard plasters and by rubbing her back with Baume Bengué. (As a little kid I had marveled at how Dr Bengué managed to sign all those tubes. Each and every one! And later I was embarrassed at having been so gullible.) As she dozed, worn out by her ordeal, I would read library books she got for me because I was too young to have a card for the adult section. When I woke at dawn, having dropped off over my book, I would be sweaty and my clothes would be all twisted. The apartment would smell of mustard and eucalyptus, but usually her coughing would have abated and her temperature would have dropped enough that we could go to school. But the next evening the fever and coughing would begin again until the attack had run its course, leaving her wan and thin.

While I was shuffling the pinochle cards, I mentioned that I had made a nickel doing Mrs McGivney's shopping for her.

"Mrs McGivney?" Anne-Marie asked, shuddering at the thought of getting close to a crazy lady.

"How did you happen to run into Mrs McGivney?" my mother asked, and I told her how I was playing in the back alley, and she got my attention by tapping on her window with the nickel.

"And you went up to her apartment?" Anne-Marie asked.

"Sure."

"You weren't afraid?"

"Nah."

"You didn't go in, did you?"

"Sure. She gave me a cookie."

"And you ate it?"

I asked Mother about Mrs McGivney, but she didn't know much: just that she had lived in that same house for as long as anybody could remember. "It's nice of you to run errands for her," she said. "The poor old thing." She patted my hand. "You're a good boy, Jean-Luc." I had the feeling I was being pressured into visiting Mrs McGivney again. My mother had a good-hearted desire to do things for people, and when she couldn't manage it herself, she would volunteer me. I didn't like that, but I never complained because, as she said, I was a good boy. A resentful good boy.

The possibility of a game began to take shape in my mind. "Ah-h, do you know anything about Mrs McGivney's husband?" I asked casually, dealing out the cards.

Mother said she'd never heard anyone mention a Mr McGivney. She was pretty sure Mrs McGivney was a widow, or maybe an old maid that people just called 'Mrs' out of courtesy.

Glimpsing the intriguing possibility that I just might be the only person on the whole block who knew about Mr McGivney, I shifted the subject away from them and, with the part of my mind I didn't need to play cards, I began a story game of detective in which my followers and I helped radio's Mr Keene: Tracer of Lost Persons track down the mysterious Mr McGivney, famous hero. Meanwhile Anne-Marie sat on the floor, muttering complaints on behalf of her actress paper doll about how dull, dull, dull all the clothes in the shops were, then she gasped with astonished delight when Anne-Marie's newest 'creation' was revealed.

The next day after school I climbed over our back fence into the alley to play my new game. I sat in the doorway of a shed with my back to 232 and a book up in front of my face as though I were reading it, but in reality I was keeping watch on Mrs McGivney's windows, looking over my shoulder through a small mirror I had borrowed from my mother's handbag. I could see nothing through the lace curtains. My followers complained about being bored with this no-action game, but I reminded them that the stakeout was an important part of detective work. All right, so maybe it wasn't all that much fun! But it had to be done, and we were the ones chosen by Mr Keene to do it. They could quit, if they wanted to, but me, I'd stay at my post until hell froze over, if that's what it took! I turned my face away and refused to listen to their apologies, until Uncle Jim and my faithful Japanese valet, Kato, pleaded with me to forgive them for complaining. But my admiring young niece, Gail, continued to whine about this being a dull game, so finally Tonto and I (sometimes I borrowed Tonto from The Lone Ranger) began a careful examination of the ground, using a magnifying stick to look for clues. We found what might be part of a footprint, and there was a very interesting piece of broken glass, and a half-covered cat turd that Tonto said had been dropped since the last full moon, but that was all. Searching for Lost Heroes was beginning to lose its zest as a game, and I was considering changing back to driving the Nazi Strong Troopers out of their bunkers with my blasting stick, when I heard three crisp clicks of metal on glass above me and I looked up to see Mrs McGivney smiling down from her window, holding a nickel up for me to see and motioning for me to come up. At first I felt bad: it's pretty shoddy detective work when the suspect spots the stakeout; but then I realized that maybe I could get into the apartment in the guise of a kid willing to run an errand, and do some undercover snooping around. I told my followers to wait for me there. I'd report back after I'd grilled the old dame. If they got bored, they could blast Nazis.

Mrs McGivney met me at the top of the dark stairs and I followed her into the apartment, where her husband still sat straight backed at the window, looking out over the alley, his pale eyes empty She told me that she had forgotten to write 'pickle' on her list, and she knew that Mr McGivney would just love to have one of Mr Kane's big plump dill pickles.

I couldn't be sure to get a big plump pickle, because Mr Kane's practice was to roll up his sleeve and reach down into his barrel and give you the first one he touched. If it was little, he wouldn't drop it back into the brine and try for a bigger one because, as he explained, he'd pretty soon be left with nothing but little pickles, so people would go somewhere else to buy pickles where they had a chance of getting a big one. When I returned with an average-sized pickle wrapped in white butcher paper I found the little round table by the window set up with napkins and little plates and sugar cookies and milk for two. I told Mrs McGivney that I really couldn't accept the nickel she was trying to press into my hand, not for buying something that had only cost a nickel; but she said I had walked the same distance as if I'd been sent for a whole bagful of groceries, and therefore I had earned the nickel; but I said no, I hadn't really earned it so I couldn't take it; but she continued to hold it out, standing there with her head cocked and giving me one of those ain't-I-the-cutest-thing glances out of the corners of her eyes, the kind of look Shirley Temple used when she wanted to get her way. Adults thought Shirley was just too adorable for words, with her dimples and her pouting sideward glances, shaking her pudgy finger at people she thought were being naughty, but every red-blooded American boy yearned to kick her in the butt. Hard. In the end, I took the damned nickel. Jeez!

Those sugar cookies had something against me. They didn't get caught in the corner of my mouth this time, but I had just bitten one when Mrs McGivney asked me how my mother was, and when I tried to answer through the cookie, I coughed and sprayed crumbs and ended up feeling stupid and clumsy. Not much of a start for a slick detective.

I was curious to know what was wrong with Mr McGivney, but I didn't think I should ask. Instead, I told her I'd have to be getting home before long because my mother was sick.

"Still? Oh-h, I'm sorry to hear that."

"She's almost over it."

"Is she often ill, John-Luke?"

"Only my mother calls me John-Luke. Yes, I guess you'd say she's sick pretty often. She's got weak lungs."

"And you take care of her?"

"My sister helps."

"What about your father?"

My sister and I knew our father only from a photograph taken during their two-day honeymoon in New York City in 1929: a handsome man in a linen summer suit, his jacket held open by a fist on one hip to reveal his waistcoat, a straw hat tipped rakishly over one eye, his disarmingly boyish smile both knowing and mischievous. "I don't know anything about him."

"Oh... I see. Well... the important thing is to always be a good boy and take care of your mother."

I couldn't think of anything to say and Mrs McGivney seemed content just to sit there, smiling at me vaguely, her head tipped to one side. I glanced over at Mr McGivney, but he was still staring out the window. And I remembered a scary episode of Lights Out about zombies and the living dead.

I felt Mrs McGivney's eyes on me, so I turned to her quickly and asked her the first question that came to mind, so she wouldn't guess that I had been thinking her husband might be a zombie. "Ah... ah... what was your nephew's name again?" I'd just ease into this interrogation. You know, like smart detectives do.

"My nephew?"

"The one who used to visit you, but doesn't anymore? You told me his name, but I forgot it." Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Mr McGivney. I'd never seen anyone sit so still before. Even his eyelashes didn't move. I watched to see if he'd blink.

"Do you mean Michael?"

"Michael? Who's Mi... Oh, yes. That's right. Michael." No, he didn't blink. Was it possible not to blink? I looked at his neck, then his wrist, but I couldn't see any throbbing of a pulse. It was almost as if...

"He's dead," she said with a sigh.

"What?" An icy wave rippled down my spine.

"Michael was killed in France. Poor, dear boy."

Oh... the nephew. I took a deep breath, and tried to get back to my interrogation. If the nephew died in France during the Great War, then he hadn't visited them for about twenty years. "Uh... Don't you have any other relations?"

She smiled a faint, sad smile. "No, no. My people are all gone, and Mr McGivney was an orphan, so no, we don't have any relations." She shrugged, and sudden tears filled her eyes but didn't fall. "No one at all."

"I'm... I'm sorry."

"Are you, John-Luke?"

"Only my mother calls me... Look, Mrs McGivney, I'd better be getting home." I rose from the chair and went to the door. "Thanks a lot for the cookie." Then I did something risky. I turned to Mr McGivney and said, "Good-bye, Mr McGivney."

"He can't hear you."

"Is he deaf?"

"No, no, he's not deaf." She opened the door for me. "Mr McGivney is a hero."

"Oh." I looked back at him. "...I see, well..." I left.

Uncle Jim, Gabby, Tonto, Jack, Doc, and the rest were in the alley, anxiously awaiting my return. "Michael!" I whispered hoarsely out of the side of my mouth. "Killed in the Great War. Write it down, and don't forget it!"

A week or so later, I was cutting through the back alley with an armful of books about birds that I was returning to the library. I no longer remember why I suddenly decided to make our ship come in by becoming a rich and world-famous ornithologist, but I wouldn't be surprised if I had just stumbled across the word 'ornithologist' and taken a fancy to it. It was a period when I lurched from one eventual profession to another, often on the basis of small clues to my destiny I found while reading the encyclopedia in the library. This idea of becoming an ornithologist lasted longer than most... a week or two, maybe. I had even begun my first book, Meet the Warbler, which I wrote as a book, with sheets of paper folded in half and stapled together so you could turn the pages and read my careful printing, which I justified right and left by spreading or cramming the final words. The cardboard cover had a crayon picture of a yellow warbler on it, and at the bottom: Written by Jean-Luc LaPointe, author. It was dedicated to 'my best friend, My Mother'. Working on the worn, fingernail-picked oilcloth of the kitchen table, carefully wiping the tip of my nib on the edge of the ink bottle after each dip to avoid blots, I painstakingly produced half a dozen pages of this seminal study, scrupulously altering a word here and there from my research sources to avoid being a copycat. Then something went wrong; I don't remember what. Maybe I misspelled a word, or miscalculated the room necessary to fit a word in, or made a blot. At all events, my effort to erase the error made a huge smear, and my attempt to erase the smear converted it into a hole, so I abandoned the profession of ornithologist and began to look for yet another career that might bring our ship into port. I found the aborted scholarly effort many years later, when I was going through my mother's things after her death. She had underlined the dedication: To my best friend, My Mother.

I had stopped in the alley to shift the heavy bird books from one arm to the other when three sharp clicks on a window above made me look up. Mrs McGivney was gesturing for me to come up. I indicated the books I was carrying and tried to mime the complicated message that I had to bring them to the library before it closed. But she just smiled, tilted her head in that little-girl way of hers, and beckoned me up, so I reluctantly returned the books to my apartment and went down the street, up her stoop, and up the staircase to the top floor.

Again the cookies and milk, again her wistful smiles, again Mr McGivney sitting perfectly still in the evening sunlight. But this time I was determined to uncover the facts about his heroism. I decided on a deceptively direct approach. "Mrs McGivney, how did Mr McGivney become a hero?"

She seemed pleased that I was interested enough to ask. "Mr McGivney was a soldier. He fought the Spanish in Cuba."

Now we were getting somewhere! A war hero! I had read something about the Spanish-American War, but I couldn't place it in history. It wasn't a war that inspired novels and movies, like the Civil War and the Great War, which we didn't think of as World War I because the trouble brewing in Europe wasn't yet called World War II. "When was that, Mrs McGivney?"

"He left to join his regiment the day after we were married. He looked so grand and handsome in his uniform!"

"Yes, but when was that?"

"I'll bet half the people on the block came to our wedding. It was up at Saint Joseph's. Do you know Saint Joseph's?"

Of course I knew Saint Joseph's. It was our parish church. Within two years, I would become an altar boy there, but at that time my only religious distinction was my ability to get through the Stations of the Cross faster than any other kid on the block. None of us would have dared to skip a single word of the five Hail Mary's we said at each stage of the Passion, nor would we have failed to bow our heads at the word 'Jesus', but we saw nothing wrong in saying the prayers as fast as we could, rising from one Station while still muttering nowandatthehourofourdeathamen, then sliding to the next on our knees and beginning its string of Aves before we'd come to a complete stop. And we would never have dreamed of failing to genuflect as we crossed the central aisle to get to the second half of the Stations, but we did it so quickly that sometimes a kid would get a bruised knee.

"Sure, I know Saint Joseph's." I made a mental note of where they got married. It didn't seem important just then, but in an investigation of this kind the smallest bit of information might turn out to be the key that unlocks...

"We stood there at the altar, him in his uniform and me in my mother's wedding dress. It was all so... beautiful. I was just seventeen, and Mr McGivney was twenty-one."

"And this was... when?"

"September. September weddings are good luck, you know."

"Yes, but what year! I mean... what year were you married, Mrs McGivney?"

"1898. That's when our boys went to Cuba."

1898. Another century! But then... let's see... if she was seventeen in 1898, and this was 1939, that would make her about sixty. That was pretty old, sure, but not impossible. Still, it seemed strange to me that this old man had been in the war before the Great War. The Great War had started when my mother was about my age, for crying out loud.

"So he was wounded while doing something brave in Cuba?" I asked.

"No, he wasn't wounded. I don't know exactly what happened. And, of course, he wasn't able to tell me after he came..." She shrugged. Then she continued in a distant voice, tenderly fingering the old memories. "I moved into this apartment right after I came back from seeing him off at Union Station. All the boys in uniform... bands playing... people waving and cheering. I made this little nest for Lawrence to come home to." She rose and started to walk around the room. "I ran up the curtains myself, and found furniture in second-hand stores, and my father helped me paint—he was a house painter, you know—and I chose this paper for the parlor—like the color?... Ashes of Roses, they called it." She took her husband's hairbrush from the sideboard and stood behind him, lightly brushing his white hair, while he sat, bathed in the westering sun that filtered through the lace curtain, looking gently out at nothing. "I wrote to Lawrence every day, telling him how our apartment was coming along. He wrote every day too, but his letters used to come in clumps—nine or ten at a time. That's how they do mail in the army. By clumps. Then... then his letters stopped coming, and there was no word for a long time—more than a month." She stopped brushing and looked down upon his fine hair. "I was so worried, so frightened. I asked Mr O'Brien if he could find out why the letters weren't coming through. Mr O'Brien the mailman? Then this letter came from the government, and I was afraid to open it. Everybody on the block knew I had this government letter because Mr O'Brien told them. My mother and father and sister came and asked what the news was. I told them I hadn't dared to open the letter. My father said I was acting silly; there was no point in putting it off. I might as well know one way or the other. But I didn't want to, so my father said he'd open it for me, but I said no! No, Lawrence was my husband, and it was my duty to open the letter.... when I was ready."

Tears stood in her pale blue eyes, and her voice had gone tense and thin as she relived standing up to her old-country father, probably for the first time ever, telling him that Lawrence was her husband and she would open the letter when she was ready.

Then she blinked and looked across at me. "You know what? I believe that was the first time I said the word 'husband' aloud. I always called him Lawrence, of course. And we'd only been married four months, and I'd been busy fixing up our home, so I didn't see many people or get much chance to talk about him. My husband... husband." As she savored the word, she began brushing his hair again.

As I sat watching her brush his hair while he gazed, empty-eyed, at the roofscape beyond his window, his pale cheeks suddenly trembled! Then his lips drew back in an unconscious rictus that revealed long, yellow teeth, but the eyes remained dead.

A sharp breath caught in my throat. "Mrs McGivney... he just... he...!"

She nodded. "I know. He sometimes smiles when I brush his hair. Lawrence just loves having his hair brushed."

Well, it didn't look like a smile to me. It looked like a man in terrible pain hissing out a silent scream through his teeth. Then, with a slight quiver, his cheeks relaxed, the grin collapsed, and the teeth disappeared.

It was a moment before my heart stopped thudding in my chest. I wanted to get out of there, but a private investigator working for Mr Keene, Tracer of Lost Persons doesn't turn tail. I drew a deep breath and asked, "What about the letter? It said he was a hero?"

"Yes, a hero."

"What had he done?"

"It was from his commanding officer. Captain Frances Murphy? He regretted having to tell me that Private Lawrence McGivney had contracted an illness in the performance of duty. He was in a military hospital and would soon be shipped home so he could get every care and comfort—I remember the exact words. Every care and comfort. That's what I've tried to give him. Captain Murphy went on to say that Private McGivney was a cheerful and willing soldier and that he was well liked by everybody in the regiment. Think of that! Everybody in the whole regiment."

Wait a minute. Being liked by everybody then getting sick didn't seem to me to be the stuff of heroism. But I didn't say anything.

And for a while Mrs McGivney didn't say anything either. She stood there brushing her husband's hair, a fond smile in her eyes as she seemed to reread the letter from his captain in her mind. Then she blinked and focused on me. "You know what I'd bet? I'd bet dollars to doughnuts you'd like another cookie. Am I right?" She looked at me out of the sides of her eyes in that coy Shirley Temple way.

"No, thanks, I—"

But she shook her finger at me. "Now don't you tell me you can't eat another cookie. A boy can always make space for another cookie."

As she went for the cookie jar on the counter I asked, "What was Mr McGivney sick with?"

"Brain fever," she said from the kitchen. "He ran this terribly high fever for days and days, lying in his bunk, sweating and shivering, sweating and shivering. The doctor at the veteran's hospital over in Troy—Dr French?—he told us that most men would have died." She brought back one of her little decorated plates with a cookie on it and set it before me. She still had the hairbrush in her hand. The long white hairs entangled in its bristles made me shudder. "Dr French said that Lawrence had fought a long, heroic battle against the fever, and survived!"

Oh. So that was the kind of hero he was.

"But..." She sighed. "It was the fever that left him... well, like he is."

"And you've taken care of him ever since?"

She smiled. "I wash him and feed him and... everything. He likes it when I brush his hair. He doesn't say anything, but I can tell by the way he sometimes smiles."

So she had lived alone with him up here for more than forty years, cleaning him and feeding him and brushing his hair. Forty years. So long that the existence of Mr McGivney had dropped out of the collective memory of the block, which now thought of Mrs McGivney, when it thought of her at all, as just a shy old crazylady. But she thought of herself as the bride who had made a cozy nest for her soldier bridegroom.

I started to ask if she didn't get lonely, up here all day without anyone to talk—but a child's instinct for social danger stopped me short. Of course she got lonely! That's why I was sitting there, eating cookies. That's why she gave me a whole nickel for buying a pickle that only cost a nickel. I could feel the jaws of the trap closing. I should never have asked her about her husband. Now that I knew how lonely she was, I'd feel obliged to come whenever she tapped at her window with that nickel and sit with her and listen to her talk about how her husband liked it when she turned the gaslight on. Another responsibility in my life. And sometimes when I dared to glance over, he'd be grinning his silent scream of a smile. Right then and there I decided I'd have to be careful about going into the back alley too often. I'd stay out of the alley altogether for at least a week to get her used to not seeing me and depending on me.

It was during that week of emotional weaning that my life toppled out of balance because of an incident that might seem trivial: a tube burnt out in our radio. There wasn't enough money in the Dream Bank to buy a new one, so I had to do without the daily hour-long dose of reality-masking adventure programs essential to my well-being, just when all the stories were at their most exciting and dangerous moments—or so it seemed to me, and all because we didn't have the dollar and a quarter for a new tube.

Mother was furious because we'd only had the radio for three years. I reminded her that the radio was secondhand when we bought it, but she said we'd been robbed and she'd be goddamned if she was going to let them get away with it! She was sick and tired of everybody doing her in! Sick of it! Sick of it! Her famous French-'n'-Indian temper carried her out of her sickbed and down to the pawn shop on South Pearl where we had bought the radio. I went with her, trying to calm her down all the way, but she stormed into the shop and slammed the radio down on the counter. I winced at the possibility of additional damage. The old Jewish man who owned the pawnshop came out from the back room and I smiled a feeble greeting, embarrassed by the scene I knew would follow. He had been good enough to let us have the radio for nothing down and only a quarter a week because we looked like 'good people'. Mother said the tube had burned out and what was he going to do about it? He shrugged. "Tubes burn out, Missus. It happens." Well, she wanted him to put in a new one and right now, because her boy was missing his programs! The pawnbroker said he'd end up in the poorhouse if he gave everybody tubes every time they burnt out, but here's what he could do. He could give us a new tube for a quarter down and a quarter a week until it was paid for. How was that? Mother snatched up the radio and said, "To hell with you, mister! This is the last time we do business with your sort!" And she stormed out. I smiled weakly at the man. He thrust out his lower lip and shrugged, and I had to run to catch up with my mother, who was steaming up the street towards home, muttering in a rage that she'd be damned if her boy would go without his radio programs because of a lousy buck and a quarter. She'd get a job in some goddamned hash house to pay for the goddamned thing! I reminded her that she was still weak from her last lung attack, but she said she knew how much that radio meant to me, and that her kids had just as much right to listen to the radio as the kids of those snooty hoi polloi bastards! She'd get that tube, and she didn't care if it killed her! Then I got angry. So it would be my fault if she got sick and died and Anne-Marie and I ended up in the orphanage! I told her to forget the radio. I didn't want the radio! I was sick of the radio! I didn't care if I never heard a radio again! And we continued home, walking fast in the hot silence of a double rage.

When we slammed into our apartment, Anne-Marie knew things had gone badly. She shot me a scared look and begged Mother to get back into bed and rest so she wouldn't get sick again. Mother started on the "I'll be goddamned if my kids..." routine, but I interrupted her, saying that she didn't have to worry about the damned tube anymore. I had a plan for getting the money. She wondered what I had in mind, but I told her it was a secret. With one of her sudden mood lurches, she took Anne-Marie onto her lap and started rebraiding her hair. I went into the bathroom and sat on the edge of the tub, the only place in our little apartment that I could be alone to think. Now that I had succeeded in shutting Mother up, all I had to do was figure out some way to get the money.

When I came back into our kitchen I had a plan... well, sort of. Pretty soon Mother and I were playing pinochle while on the floor beside the bed Anne-Marie, dressmaker-to-the-stars, murmured soothing assurances to a flustered movie star who needed something really spectacular to wear that night. Mother's rages were brief, and I think she knew how stomach-wrenching they were for us because afterward she always tried to be light-hearted and fun. That night she told us about the wild stunts she'd got up to when she was a kid, and Anne-Marie and I laughed harder than the stories deserved, because we were so relieved.

A red-and-gold sign above the new store read: The Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, which called up images from books I had read about the South Seas and planters and dangerous natives and tall-masted sailing ships. The new A & P was what they called a 'neighborhood store', not much bigger than an ordinary corner store, but its prices were a little lower and you were allowed to walk around and pick out your own cans and fruit and everything, which was novel and interesting at that time. Also, there were intriguing new foods, like maple syrup that came in a can shaped like a log cabin. You poured it out of the chimney and when it was empty you could use the cabin as a toy or a bank. And there were three kinds of coffee that they let you grind for yourself in machines where you could choose between drip grind and 'regular' and that coffee gave off so delicious an aroma that you closed your eyes and just breathed it in. The most expensive coffee was called Bokar, a name redolent of Africa so it was right that the bag should be black; the middle-priced one, Red Dot, came in a yellow bag with a red dot; we always bought the cheapest coffee, Eight O'Clock, which came in a red bag. I used to wonder if the Bokar tasted as good as it smelled. But then, no coffee tastes as good as it smells, an apt metaphor for the gap between anticipation and realization. The cheaper prices and wider selection attracted everyone for blocks around, but you couldn't charge things there so, in the end, Mr Kane's slate won out over the A & P's novelty and economy, and it closed within the year.

The morning after our Emerson blew its tube, I was standing outside the A & P with my sister's battered old cart and a cardboard sign with red crayon letters that informed shoppers of my willingness to bring their groceries home for a nickel. That first day and the next, half a dozen old ladies used my services. I walked home beside them, pulling their bags of groceries in Anne-Marie's cart, chatting in the polite, cheerful way I thought might inspire them to tip me a couple of cents in addition to my nickel, but none of them did. And every one of those women lived blocks and blocks away from the A & P, and I had to lug their bags up to apartments on the upper floors, leaving the cart in the first-floor hallway so nobody would steal it. I pondered the rotten luck of every single one of my customers being an old woman who lived far away and on the top floor. And each of them too cheap to give a friendly, smiling guy a tip. What were the odds? It took me awhile to work out that this wasn't a matter of singularly bad luck. Only women who were so poor they couldn't afford to give a tip would go blocks from their homes to save a few pennies at one of the new supermarkets; and only those who lived on the upper floors would be willing to part with a nickel to have their stuff carted home and carried up to their door. Still, after two days I had earned thirty cents towards the tube, even if my sister did complain bitterly that I'd worn her red crayon down to a nub making my sign, so she couldn't make any red clothes for her paper dolls, just when red was all the rage, and her movie star customers were complaining that...

Oh, shut up, why don't you?

You shut up!

You shut up?

Copy cat, eat my hat!

Oh, shut up!

No, you shut up!

(From the bedroom) Both of you shut up!

The next morning I arrived at the A & P to find another boy standing there with a wagon and sign—a bigger boy with a bigger wagon and a bigger sign. And he wasn't even from our block! Well... we had words. He said he had as much right as I did to be there because I didn't own the sidewalk, so who the hell did I think I was to...

I hit him while he was still blabbing and got two more shots in while he was wondering if this was a fight or not, and then we really went to Fistcity, rolling around on the pavement, him mostly on top because he was bigger, but me getting some pretty good face shots in from below, but the manager of the A & P came out and snatched us around by our collars for a while, then he told us that if we didn't behave ourselves he'd send for the cops. When I tried to explain that I had been there first, he told me that he'd seen me start the fight. Of course I started the fight! A smaller kid has to get his shots in first or he doesn't stand a chance. Jeez! But I promised not to fight anymore, so this copy-cat interloper and I ended up standing on opposite sides of the store's door, glowering at one another until some old lady came out carrying groceries, then we'd try to out-smile and out-nice one another. I was at a disadvantage because my smile was sort of one-sided because I had a split lip. It was a scorcher of a day, and time passed slowly standing there in the sun, especially since I got only one customer that day, and that only because this other kid was away on a delivery. I could see what was going on in the women's heads. They didn't like having to pick one kid and leave the other behind, so most of them carried their own bags home, and the others chose this bigger kid because they didn't want to make a skinny little kid lug those bags all that way. Yeah, sure! Give money to the big healthy kid, and let the skinny little one go without! That makes lots of sense, you stupid old...

That night as I walked home, hot and sticky, dragging the wagon behind me, I was too tired and disheartened to remember to avoid the shortcut through the back alley. I knew I should go straight home, but I wanted desperately to play some kind of story game for a little while because without my nightly dose of radio, there was nothing to carry me away me from my life and refresh my soul. Then too, I wasn't all that eager to arrive at home with a split lip and only a nickel to show for a day's work. I was always a lot better at playing the modest hero than the brave failure.

There was only one old-fashioned streetlight in the back alley that hadn't been slingshot out. Its dim, dirty light fell at a sharp angle over the façades of the abandoned stables, texturing them and leaving pockets of deep shadow in the entranceways... a perfect setting for scary games. I slipped into a space between a shed and a stable, one side of my face lit and the other in shadow, knowing how scary I must look as I whispered to my followers that there just had to be a rational explanation for the Murders in the Back Alley. "I shouldn't be a bit surprised to learn that Professor Moriarty had a hand in this, Watson." (A blend of clipped speech and Peter Lorre nasality did for my English accent.) I told them that the only way to discover the insane killer was to expose ourselves to the same dangers that those poor, bloody, axe-chopped, heads-ripped-off, faces-bashed-in women...

...I just about pissed myself when that sharp tap-tap-tap on the window made my voice squeak and sent my followers vanishing into the darkness, leaving me to face the danger alone. I looked up to see Mrs McGivney beckoning to me, and her husband silhouetted in the other window by the soft gaslight of their parlor. I knew I should have gone straight home! Drawing a peeved sigh, I inserted a mental bookmark into my game so I could remember where I was next time, and I trudged to the end of the alley, around past my own stoop, where I stashed Anne-Marie's wagon in the basement, then down to 232, and up the stairs, the air getting thicker and hotter with every floor I climbed. It was really hot in the McGivney top-floor apartment directly under the lead roof, and their gaslighting made it hotter yet. That was the only time in my life I experienced the effect of gaslight, which was softer and more golden than electric light and didn't seem to descend from the ornate gas fixtures on the wall, but rather to come from within the things and people lit, making them sort of glow with an inward radiance... like I imagined life must be for people in the movies, or rich people.

With an edge of grievance in her voice, Mrs McGivney asked me where I'd been the last few days, and I explained that our radio had blown a tube and I had been trying to earn money to replace it. She made a tight little nasal sound, like that was no excuse, so I curtly asked what she wanted. It was late and Mr Kane's was closed. But it turned out that she just wanted to give me a glass of milk and some of those cookies that 'little boys love so much'. I didn't tell her that this particular boy would rather be allowed to pursue his game than be dragged up there to spend time with a boring old lady and a scarecrow. Instead, I sat across from her and nibbled grumpily. But she just smiled at me, then looked over at her husband and sighed with satisfaction, as though everything was all right, now that we were all back together again.

I noticed that when she drank her milk she looked into the glass, like little kids do. And that's when it struck me that, like her husband, she was strangely young. She had white hair, sure, but her skin was smooth and her eyes bright. It was as if, living as they did, without hopes or fears or work or play, time had flowed lightly over them, without eroding their features, and they had remained eternally young and oddly—ghostlike.

As I left, she pressed a nickel into my hand. I protested that I hadn't done anything to earn it, but she just squeezed my hand around it, so I left thinking how nice people can be worse than mean ones, because you can't fight back against nice people.

I found my mother and sister sitting on our front stoop to get a breath of cooler air, and I joined them. I told them about the McGivneys, and Mother was surprised to learn that there was a Mr McGivney. Anne-Marie rubbed the goose bumps that had risen on her arms at the thought of sitting in the same room with a crazy man who just stared out the window all the time. I told her he wasn't crazy, just sort of... well, damaged, but she said damaged men were just as scary as crazy ones, and she didn't care how many nickels they gave me. Mother said I shouldn't accept money unless I did some chore to earn it. Otherwise it was like accepting charity, and LaPointes didn't do that; they worked for everything they got. But she was glad I'd made some new friends, and she was sure I'd be a big help to them... poor lonely old people. I almost told her that I resented being made to feel responsible for them, but I didn't because I was afraid she'd realize how often I felt the same resentment about having to get us off Pearl Street some day.

The next morning, there was a third boy outside the A & P, and he had a brand-new cart and a sign with professional-looking lettering that offered to carry groceries for 4¢. You could tell from his clothes that he wasn't poor, just a regular kid lucky enough to have a new cart and somebody—probably a father—to help him paint his sign and to advise him about undercutting the competition. I could see right off that offering to carry the groceries for four cents was a smart scam, because most of the women would give him a nickel, and they wouldn't ask for their penny change back because that would make them seem too petty; so he'd get the job by underbidding us, then he'd end up getting as much as we did. I'll bet his father was a salesman with a slick line. Well, I drew this new kid aside and had a little talk with him, explaining that there wasn't enough business for three kids, and this had been my idea in the first place. Then I put on a concerned look and told him that I was worried about how sad his mother would feel if he came home with no front teeth and his fancy wagon all kicked in and— Out of the corner of my eye I could see the manager watching me from inside the store, so I just pointed at the middle of the rich kid's chest and skewered him with squinted-up eyes, which on my block meant 'You're standing real close to the edge, kid!' then I swaggered back to my battered old cart.

But he stayed, and I didn't get a single customer that day, bracketed as I was by a bigger competitor and a more attractive one. I stuck it out until the A & P closed that night. But I didn't bother to come back again. What was the use?

That Friday our weekly $7.27 welfare check came, so we were able to buy the tube, although it meant having potato soup every night that week, rather than the usual two. But I liked potato soup and still do, despite the gallons of it I consumed as a boy. That evening I stood in front of the Emerson on one leg in a narcotic state of deep soul-comfort, my head bowed, my eyes half-closed, totally absorbed in the exciting worlds of Jack Armstrong, The Green Hornet, and The Lone Ranger, Masked Rider of the Plains. The world was right again.

After my sister and I did the supper dishes, the three of us sat in the front room, listening to Friday night's run of suspense programs. We always turned off the lights and listened in the dark, with only the faint yellow glow of the radio's dial because it made the stories deliciously spooky on such programs as Suspense and The Inner Sanctum, and The Whistler, a man who walked by night and knew many things. He knew strange tales hidden in the hearts of men and women who had stepped into the shadows. Yes, he knew the nameless terrors of which they dared not speak!

I awoke one morning to the chilling realization that summer vacation was almost over and, what with trying to earn extra money and spending time up at the McGivneys', I hadn't gotten enough good out of it... sort of like a Popsicle that melts while you're obliged to talk politely to a nun, and you don't get to suck it white before it falls off the stick. Next year I would be ten, and I felt that advancing to a double-digit age was significant... the end of childhood, because once you get into two digits, you're there for the rest of your life. And another thing: all my life it had been nineteen-thirty something, and nineteen-thirty had a solid, comfortable sound, but next year would be nineteen-forty. And that 'forty' looked funny when you wrote it down and felt awkward in your mouth when you said it. Everything was changing. I was growing up before I was finished with being a kid! This would be my last summer before I had to give up my story games and start in earnest doing what I could to get us off Pearl Street.

All right, I accepted that bringing my mother's damned ship into port was my responsibility. But I couldn't take care of Mrs McGivney, too. I intended to play as hard as I could for the next two weeks until school and my burdensome adulthood started, and that meant I needed all my time for myself, for my games, for listening to the radio, for wandering the streets in search of mysteries and adventures, and there just wouldn't be any time to waste sitting around with the McGivneys.

I avoided the back alley for a week, during which I revisited one by one all the story games I had ever played so I would never forget the exhilarating fun of them. That week I fought off Richelieu's swordsmen, ran cattle rustlers off the streets of Albany once and for all, and led an expedition to the Elephant Graveyard, where we almost lost Reggie and Kato. On Sunday, I changed into play clothes right after six o'clock mass and went off to spend the morning playing one of the best games of all: Foreign Legion, which involved not drinking anything after supper the day before so I'd be good and thirsty by the time I had crossed Broadway towards the river, passed through the tangle of still-sleeping all-Negro streets that was called Blacktown, and scrambled over the high wooden wall of an abandoned brickyard that had huge piles of sand and gravel. I staggered through the endless sand, stumbling and slipping as I climbed the pile, blinded by the glaring sun, suffering terribly from thirst made worse by the fact that I was weakened by half a dozen spear wounds inflicted by perfidious Arabs whom I had always treated well, unlike some of my brother Legionnaires. My throat was parched, and I muttered to myself that the pools of icy water I saw all around me were only mirages. Must... keep... going. I wanted nothing more than to give up the struggle and just lie down and let death overwhelm me, but I couldn't. No, I must go on! There was a standpipe with a spigot by a watchman's hut, and it was part of the game to hold the vision of that cool, clear water in my mind as I crawled on my hands and knees over the piles of sand and gravel, dragging my wounded leg behind me (sometimes both legs) but determined to carry the message from what was left of my decimated company besieged in the fly-blown outpost of Sidi-bel-Abbès to the colonel of the regiment stationed at our headquarters in the noisy, bustling city of Sidi-bel-Abbès. (All right, so I knew the name of only one desert city! Is that a crime?) By taking the least direct path possible and weaving my painful, half-conscious way over the great central sandpile again and again, I could drag the game out to past noon, by which time my lips were crusty and my tongue thick with thirst. When at last I arrived at the standpipe, I put my head under it, ready for the blissful shock of its cool dousing, my fingers almost too weak to turn the rusty spigot. In a hoarse voice I cried out to Allah to give me strength. Give me strength! And I gave the spigot a desperate twist with the last of my fading strength...

...but no water came out. They'd cut off the water since last summer! Anything to spoil a game! Jeez!

By the time I got back to my block, I was really thirsty, so I cut through the back alley to get to my apartment as quickly as I could.

Three sharp clicks of a coin against the window above me... Oh no! And there she was, gesturing for me to come up. Nuts! Nuts! Double nuts!

But this time it would be different. As I trudged glumly up the dark stairs of 232, I confected a plan to free myself of this lonely old lady and her loony husband: I would mope and be rude, so she wouldn't want my company any longer. But first...

"Could I have a glass of water, Mrs McGivney?"

"Why, of course, John-Luke!"

I gulped it down, rather than sipping it slowly, savoring the life-saving sweetness of it, as I would have done in the dramatic last scene of the Foreign Legion game, if those idiots hadn't shut off the water!

"My goodness, you were thirsty. Want some more?"

"No, thank you." It was hard to remember to be rude.

"You're sure?"

She sat across from me at the little table set for two. "Here, before I forget it." She placed a nickel beside my napkin.

"No, I don't want it," I said, pushing it back to her.

She cocked her head. "Don't try to tell me that a little boy can't find something to do with a nickel."

"No, my mother said I wasn't to take money from you unless I did an errand or something in return."

"Oh, I see. Well... you just put the nickel in your pocket."

"No, I don't want it."

"Now, you just keep it until I think of something you can do later." She pushed the nickel back to me.

I didn't touch it.

She held out the plate of cookies to me, and I lowered my head and stared at the tabletop. Finally she put one on my plate. I didn't look at it.

"Would you like to wash up, John-Luke?" she asked.

"Only my mother calls me that."

"What?"

"Only my mother calls me that."

"Oh... I'm sorry. I... Well, would you like to wash up? You look a little... dusty." She smiled sweetly.

I touched my forehead and felt the grit of the sand through which I had crawled all the way back to Sidi-bel-Abbès. Having someone who wasn't my mother tell me that my face was dirty embarrassed me intensely—something left over from the time two young, syrup-voiced social workers swooped down on our apartment to see if my mother was taking proper care of us. They asked Anne-Marie and me if any men had been sleeping at our house, and one of them made me stand in front of her while she checked my hair for nits. I was so outraged that I snatched my head away from her and told her to go to hell, and the two do-gooders made little popping sounds of surprise and indignation and said they'd never seen such a badly brought up child. After they left, Mother told me that I had to be polite to social workers, or they'd write up a bad report, and the three of us would have to run away to avoid their taking us kids away from her. So it was all right for her to lose her temper and give social workers hell, but I couldn't do it. Was that it?

I got up and went over to the McGivney's kitchen sink. In the little mirror over it, I could see that my face was dirty and streaked with rivulets of sweat. I was embarrassed, so I snatched the faucet on angrily, and the water came squirting out of a little flexible thing at the end of the spigot and splashed onto my pants, making it look as though I had pissed myself, and then I was really embarrassed. To cover my discomfiture I quickly soaped up my hands and scrubbed my face hard, then I splashed water into my face, but I couldn't find anything to wipe it on, so I just stood there at the sink, dripping, the soap stinging my eyes, like some sort of helpless thing. Like her husband. Jeez!

Then I felt her press a towel into my hand. I scrubbed my face dry and sat back at the table, hard, very angry.

"You're not going to eat your cookie, John-Luke?"

"I don't want it."

"Suit yourself. But they're sugar cookies. Your favorites."

"Oatmeal cookies are my favorites. The kind my mother makes."

"...Oh." There was hurt in her voice. "I just thought you might be hungry."

"My mother feeds us real well."

"I didn't mean to suggest... I'm sure she does."

Actually, I was still thirsty enough to down that milk in two glugs, but I sat there in silence, frowning down at the little embroidered tablecloth I supposed she had put on just for me.

She made a little sound in the back of her throat, then she said, "Poor boy: You're unhappy, aren't you."

"No, I'm just... awful busy." I meant, of course, with my games, trying to get my fill of games before school started and I became two digits old and had to start looking for work, but she took it a different way.

"Yes, I was talking to Mr Kane, and he told me how you're always doing odd jobs to help your mother out. She must be very proud to have a good boy like you."

I said nothing.

"I hope you don't mind if I ask, but... your father, John-Luke. Is he dead?"

I don't know what made me say what I said then. A desire to shock her, I guess. "No, he's not dead. He's in prison." It would be more than twenty years before I discovered that I had unknowingly told her a truth that my mother had kept from us.

She drew a quick breath. "Oh! Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pry. I was just... oh, that's too bad. You poor boy." She reached towards me, but I twisted away.

"No, we're proud of him! They put him in prison because he was a spy against the Redcoats! They're going to hang him next month, but he doesn't care. He's only sorry that he has but one life to give for his country!"

"...Wh... what?"

"Look, I'm going home." I started to rise.

"No, please don't go." She stood up and hugged me to her. I turned my head aside, so as not to have my nose buried in her soft stomach. "You poor, poor boy. You've had lots of troubles and worries in your young life, haven't you? No wonder you're all nervous and worked up. But I know what will calm you and make you feel better." She opened a drawer and took out the brush that had white hairs trailing from the bristles, her crazy husband's hair, and she started towards me. I jumped up, snatched the door open, and plunged clattering down the stairs, the stair rail squeaking through my gripping hand.

By the Labor Day weekend that marked the beginning of school, I had squeezed the last drops of adventure and danger out of that summer's game of single-handedly defending Pearl Street and, by extension, the world from Nazi invasion. As a sort of farewell tour, I was mopping up the last of the Strong Troopers at the end of our back alley, where I had not been since the day I had fled down Mrs McGivney's stairs to avoid the touch of that repulsive hairbrush, the squeaking handrail rubbing the skin off the web between my thumb and forefinger and leaving a scab that took forever to heal because I kept popping it open by spreading my hand too widely: a child's curious fascination with pain.

Wounded though I was in both legs, one shoulder, and the web between my thumb and first finger, I managed to crawl from the shelter of one stable doorway to the next, making the sound of ricocheting bullets by following a guttural krookh with a dying cheeooo through my teeth, as Nazi bullets splintered the wood close beside my head with a tap-tap-tap sound of a coin against glass—what? I almost looked up, but I converted the glance into a frowning examination of the space around me, searching for snipers, as I didn't want her to know I had heard her summons. Satisfied that there were no Nazi snipers on the rooftops, I made an intense mime of drawing a map on the ground. Again she tapped her three urgent taps, and I could imagine her looking down on me. I hunched more tightly over my map. She tapped again, but this time there were only two clicks, then she stopped short. That missing click told me that she suddenly knew I could hear her, and I was ignoring her on purpose. I kept my head down, knowing that if I looked up I would see her there, her eyes full of sadness and recrimination.

Miserable, and angry for being made to feel miserable, I pretended to see an enemy soldier down the alley. I shot at him with my finger then ran off in pursuit until I was out of Mrs McGivney's sight.

For the rest of the time we lived on Pearl Street, I kept out of the back alley that had been the principal arena for my story games. A couple of times I caught a glimpse of Mrs McGivney scuttling across to Mr Kane's late in the evening, but I always avoided her. I never saw her hero husband again.

That next week I went back to school: a new grade, a new teacher, a tough old overdressed orange-haired bird of the no-charm, no-nonsense school who saw through the indifferent, wise-guy posturing I had assumed for self-defense. She arranged for me to take a series of IQ and aptitude tests that led to special tutoring and, in time, to a pattern of scholarships and an academic career that eventually carried us out of Pearl Street. My mother's ship came in at last.

I am now considerably older than Mrs McGivney was when I first responded to the rap of her nickel against the window. For many years I have lived and worked in Europe, as far away in space, time, and culture from Pearl Street as one can be this side of death. And yet, on those nights when the black butterflies of doubt and remorse flutter through a sleepless nuit blanche, I still sometimes hear that broken-off summons, those two clicks, and the recriminating silence that followed them; and my throat tightens with shame as I remember the lonely old woman that I didn't have time for because I was too busy trying to save myself.

SIR GERVAIS IN THE ENCHANTED FOREST

Know you that in those distant days the good King Arthur did entreat his knights of the Table Round to sally forth in quest of the Holy Grail for the benefit of their souls, the glory of his reign, and the serenity of the court, which would be much enhanced by the absence of those feisty brawlers. But although each of Arthur's doughty warriors was eager to earn Man's acclaim for lofty deeds and God's forgiveness for base ones by devoting himself to the search for this holiest of relics, there was no general haste to fulfill the king's behest because, the shameful truth be known, not one of those noble warriors was certain in his heart of hearts exactly what a grail was... save, of course, that it was a holy thing and the right and proper object of quests. But none durst confess his ignorance for fear of ridicule, and because no other knight ever admitted doubt in this matter, each assumed himself to be alone in his shameful want of learning. Therefore, each would nod and suck his teeth knowingly upon any mention of the Grail, and when he glanced about and saw all his fellows nodding and sucking, his suspicion was confirmed that the nature of a grail was known by all save himself.

Now of all that high-born company, none was prouder of his ancestry than Sir Gervais, and for this reason he felt the shame of ignorance most sorely of all. Twice had he gone forth in search of fame and recognition, but never had he come across a grail... not to his knowledge, anyway. What most galled him was the thought that he might have seen the Holy Grail, but passed it by unknowingly, and thus lost the credit for finding it. So he confected a cunning stratagem to ferret out the exact nature, function, and shape of a grail so that he might recognize it should he come across one in the course of some future quest. One evening, as all that noble host sat around the Table, Sir Gervais said, in the most offhand tone imaginable, "Ah... tell me, fellow knights, have you ever considered what you might do with a grail, were there one sitting upon this table at this very moment? I speak not, of course, of the Holy Grail, but rather of your common, everyday sort of grail."

"Huh? What? A grail? Here? On the table?" asked Sir Bohort, whose father's loin-strength had gone so totally into making his well-muscled body that nothing was left over for his brain.

Immediately did the proud Sir Gervais grow pale with the fear that a grail might be too vasty a thing to be placed upon a table, and that his ignorance was in danger of being revealed. "Nay, did I say a table?" he asked, laughing at his slip. "I meant to say a courtyard. Oft and again do men—even men of impeccable lineage—confuse tables with courtyards, for are they not both... ah... things?"

"Yea, but tell me, Sir Gervais," asked Sir Gawain, hoping himself guilefully to discover just what a grail was, "why wouldst thou put this grail of thine in a courtyard? And just what wouldst thou do with it, once thou hadst it there?"

Now did Sir Gervais hotly rue that he had introduced the matter and opened himself to accusations of stupidity—if not impiety. "And why should I not put a grail in a courtyard, brother knight, so long as it be a proper courtyard for the receiving of a grail? Prithee, why art thou so quick to challenge my understanding of the nature of things?"

"Nay, brother of the Table Round, wax not huffy. I seek only to understand how thou intendest to use... or wear... or admire... or perhaps punish?... this grail, once thou hast it in thy courtyard."

"Use? Wear? Admire? Punish?" asked Sir Gervais, now confused and ashamed, and therefore sore wroth. "Thinkest thou I be the low-born sort of fellow who must use and wear and punish his grail just because he has it in his courtyard? May not a man of highest parentage and pedigree put a grail into his courtyard without having any such base designs upon it? Challenge me one word further in this matter, sirrah, and thou shalt feel my boot far up thy fud, thou base, French-loving, dung-munching, host-spitting, sheep-foining bastard!"

"...French-loving? French-loving! O-o-oh, now has thou brought thine o'er-bred, chinless face into jeopardy from my steel-gaunted fist, thou scrofulous, leprous, lecherous, stenchy, title-licking, back-stabbing, hag-swiving..."

...Allow me to draw a curtain over this scene before it descends into incivility. No doubt the perceptive reader wonders at Sir Gawain's last epithet and asks why a knight so proud of rank and breeding as Sir Gervais would go about swiving hags, for scant is the joy and meagre the reclaim to be gained from applying one's love-tool to ancient crones.

The explanation of this slight flaw in Sir Gervais's otherwise irreproachable gentility is to be found in the true and instructive tale of Sir Gervais in the Enchanted Forest, wherein the attentive reader will learn how that noble knight earned the title by which history remembers him: Gervais! Swiver of Crones!

Know ye that it was upon a soft and fog-laden morning in autumn that bold Sir Gervais, bedecked in his richest armour, rode forth from Camelot in quest of the Grail, and of such encounters as might add to his reputation and his purse. Nor was it long before he found himself deep within a dark and dire forest where his stallion's hoof made no sound upon a thick mat of leaves as man and mount glid past ghosts of trees that emerged from the mists before, then were swallowed up by the mists behind. Overhanging boughs brushed and hissed upon his helmet, the plumes of which drooped limp with the damp.

Now, Sir Gervais was a brave warrior of lofty blood, so we are obliged to assume that if his eyes darted from side to side, it was only to seek out the adversary, and if he whistled thinly and dryly, it was only to announce his presence to any foe who might dare to face him, and if his palms sweated, it was only because they itched to grasp his sword in combat, and when he suddenly decided to turn his horse and quit that dark, dank, ominous forest, it was only to go in search of yet greater and more dangerous adventure; and surely the yelp that escaped from his throat was a sort of war cry, when he suddenly espied an ancient crone of surpassing laidliness standing beside the path, beckoning with a gnarled finger.

His voice tight in his throat, Sir Gervais addressed the hag, saying, "How now, beckoning crone of surpassing laidliness, canst direct me out of this forest? I wit thee rare gifted in the craft of telling directions, for one of thine eyes doth scan to the left whilst t'other scans to the right in such wise that their paths do intersect some few inches before thy hooked nose."

And the crone did cackle with pleasure and turn her face aside modestly. "Nay, good knight, think not to weaken the barriers of my chastity with cozening praise, for I do perceive that thou hast penetrated the mystery of this enchanted forest."

"Sayest what?"

"Nay, feign not, shrewd seducer. Well dost thou know that in this enchanted forest all things appear the very opposite of what they are."

"How's that?"

"Nay, nay, noble knight. Do not pretend ignorance."

Sir Gervais stood stiff in the saddle, his dignity bristling. "Thou dost accuse me false, rank hag! Ignorance is no pretence with me! And woe betide the base defamer who claims it so!"

"Be not wroth, good knight. For know ye that even my senses are sometimes bemused, though I have long lived here. Forgetting for a moment the other-seeming enchantment of this place, I thought at first that I was addressing a scrawny beggar astride a pig, his knees scrubbing the muddy track, and his feet dangling behind."

The proud knight looked about for the person thus limned.

" 'Tis of thee I speak, fair—if ugly-seeming—knight."

"Art thou plotting to get thy scabby head bashed in, ugly—and ugly-seeming—hag, in the hope that a bashing might work improvement on thine appearance?"

"Nay, stay thy wrath and be informed! What I have described is only thine image as it appears to be, here in a forest where all things do seem the very opposite of what they truly are. Seeing thee ugly, trembling, deformed, puny, and graceless, I know that thou must, in fact, be a brave knight, puissant and fair of visage."

"Crush-m'-cullions if thou hast not limned me to the last jot!"

"And I have no doubt, brave warrior, that my own grace, my delicacy, and my blushing beauty have, in thine enchanted eyes, taken on some other appearance."

"They have, Madam. Oh, indeed they have!"

Upon hearing this, the crone (or seeming crone) drew a great whimpering sigh, and a tear slowly toiled its way down the ravines of her wrinkled face to drip, at last, from the tip of her warty nose. This long and tortuous passage gave Sir Gervais season to ponder what mysterious thing had befallen him in this Forest of Enchantment. He did conclude that there stood before him a deserving target for amorous dalliance, provided, of course, that her seemingly low rank was, in fact, as high as her seemingly ugly aspect was, in fact, beauteous. For know you that Sir Gervais would not—indeed, could not—bring himself to foin a woman, however lush and frick, if she were not of noble birth, for he possessed the overweening pride of his class in such full measure that his member shrank from the debasing task of swiving low wenches, however toothsome, but it ever stood to pert attention in the presence of any woman of high title, however loathly, sere, or harsh-featured.

"But I forget form and duty," the seeming hag said, her tear having completed its lengthy course. "Surely thou art weary from thine adventures and wouldst share the comforts of my castle."

"Thou art most gracious, fair maiden."

"Princess, actually."

"Princess? Princess? Oh, forgive me, desirable Princess! May I offer thee to ride behind me?"

"Gladly would I, though I have never sat astride a pig"

"A pig?"

"Oh, la, what am I saying? Even I do sometimes err and accept the evidence of mine eyes, though I know better."

And with this, the seeming crone scrambled up behind Sir Gervais, hitching her skirts high and wrapping her seemingly scrawny and scabby legs about his.

As they rode along, Sir Gervais did exercise his courtly speech, saying, "Knowing, as now I do, that in this forest all things are the reverse of what they seem, fair Princess, I trow that the enticing bouquet rising from thee—this seeming stench—must, in fact, be the very essence of all spices rare and flowers fragrant."

The maiden blushed and wrapped herself closer to him, and his eyes did smart with the beauty of the moment.

Not far along, they came upon a fetid bog on the verge of which a crude hovel sagged upon rotting beams.

The maiden laughed a seeming cackle and said, "See how my castle's drawbridge is down, as though in anticipation of thine entrance? Oh my, I hope thou dost not take this to be a metaphor for my highly prized and well-defended chastity, you naughty, naughty, naughty man!" And with her bony knuckle she delivered him several coy knocks on the helmet that made his ears to ring.

"Drawbridge?" he said in confusion. "Castle? Ah! Of course! Know ye, Princess, that upon first glance I mistook your drawbridge for a slippery log laid across a sluggish swamp!" And Sir Gervais did laugh heartily at his error.

It became evident that thoroughbred horses, no less than high-born men, were victims of the forest's enchantment, for in attempting to cross the drawbridge, Sir Gervais's noble steed slipped as it might have slipped from a narrow log, and precipitated both riders into the moat, out of which they clawed their sputtering way, and beside which Sir Gervais stood at last, stenchy bog-water draining from his armour.

"I fear thou wilt attrap thy death of cold," the lovely princess said. "Quickly into the castle, and out of that damp armour. A good roasting before my vast hearth will regain thy temper."

Soon the knight stood beneath the soaring vaults of the castle's great hall that the uninitiated might have mistaken for a low, filthy chamber with rush-strewn dirt floor below and rotting thatch above. He shivered, all nude, before the roaring hearth that had the superficial aspect of a feeble twig fire the smoke of which coiled and recoiled beneath the roof in search of chinks and gaps.

Know you that the maiden had, for the good of her health, doff'd her sodden garments and now stood before him clothed as Eve had been when she harkened to the snake's twisted counsel.

"My God!" the knight cried. "How comely thou must, in reality, be! For if each perfection doth appear a blemish, then thou art Beauty itself, from thy balding pate to thy gnarled toes! I can no longer contain my ardour! Have at, then!"

At great length and with much invention did they tangle and roil among the seeming sodden rushes of the great hall's floor in every use and pose of amour. When finally exhausted and empty of essence, Sir Gervais rolled off, panting and clutching at a rag to cover his shivering nudity withal, while the seemingly foul crone crooned and sighed her affection as she strove in many coy and clever ways to reaffirm his lance for the lists of love.

For a year and a day, Sir Gervais languished in this enchanted castle, his body nourished by luscious joints of stag and boar that had the delusive appearance and taste of nettle soup, and his ardour nourished by an inner vision too strong to be extinguished by the evidence of his senses. And in this, he was not unlike the rest of us, each in our own personal enchanted forests—or so the sages would have us believe.

On the morning after the year-and-a-day, the seeming crone challenged Sir Gervais to offer proof of his undying love by going forth against her enemy, a neighbour baron in whose oak patch her swine did envy to snout about. At first Sir Gervais was loath to wreak hurt upon a knight with whom he had not exchanged those introductory insults that usage and breeding require, but when the seeming hag described the evil baron as a frail old man full of years and feeble of body, then did the knight recall her many kindnesses and his chivalrous duty. And thus it was that, after another dampening mishap upon the drawbridge, Sir Gervais rode forth to avenge the insults borne by the princess who clung to his back.

They soon encountered a woodcutter of great girth and so tall that he looked at the knight eye to eye, though he stood upon the ground and Sir Gervais sat astride his charger. The peasant's beard was gray, but he was sturdy as an oak and so broad of chest that he, in rough cloth, was wider than the knight in his armour.

"Tell me, hefty varlet," Sir Gervais said, "knowest thou the hiding place of the evil, if puny, baron who has given insult to this dainty, high-born maiden behind me?"

"Dainty maiden?" cried the woodcutter, and he laughed until tears ran down his cheeks and he was obliged to hold his sides in ecstatic pain.

The princess whispered into the ear hole of Sir Gervais's helm that the scoffer who stood before them was the very baron they sought.

Then spake the knight behind his hand, asking, "But lacks not this stout fellow the qualities of frailty and decrepitude thou hast ascribed to the baron?"

"Ah, my love, hast thou forgot that all things here are other-seeming?"

"Uh-h-h-h-h... Ah! Of course! Aye, but art thou certain sure that yonder laughing giant is, in fact, a puny and feeble thing?"

"Seems he not otherwise?"

"Most otherwise," the knight confessed with an uneasy glance at this huge ox of a man.

"Well then! There's your proof!"

Sir Gervais struggled to digest this, saying, "Uh-h-h-h-h... Ah! Of course!" Whereupon he addressed the seeming giant, saying, "Leave off thy laughter, uncivil cur, and hear my demands! Grant the swine of this princess of passing beauty the use of thine oak patch, or risk a passage of arms with Gervais, knight of the Table Round!"

The woodcutter dried his eyes upon his sleeve and said, "Hast taken leave of thy senses, lad? Were we to grapple, thee and me, I would crumple thine iron suit in my hands in such wise that thou wouldst be unable to get out when the need to shit came upon thee."

Sir Gervais whispered over his shoulder, "How is it, Princess, that this varlet does not tremble at my high rank and martial prowess?"

"Why 'tis clear as my maiden conscience, lover. Just as he appears to thine enchanted eyes to be vast and well-proportioned, so dost thou appear to him to be a scrawny thing of slight danger. Such is the way of other-seemingness."

Sir Gervais blinked and bent his mind to this complex matter. After a longish time, he cried out, "Ah-h-h! Of course!" Then he chuckled to himself. "What a dolorous surprise will be his, should we meet in harsh combat." Then to the peasant he shouted, "Enough of this petty parley! Do as I bade thee, churl, lest thy brittle old bones be brast by this hand!"

"Nay, nay," the seeming giant said, waving away the glowering knight's threat. "Do not require that I bash thee, lad, for I am as gentle of humour as I am stout of limb. Know ye that yon stenchy hag has oft and again sent befuddled fools to wrest my oak patch from me, and each of those simple fellows has earned damage most woeful. But I had rather deal with thee than dent thee. Let us bargain. Forsake that crone clinging behind thee and let me welcome thee as my son. For know ye that my daughter is a frick, lusty-tempered lass of rutting age and the need to swive and be swiven is hot and hasty upon her. But there are no men in this damned forest but we two." And with this the peasant gestured to the side of the path, where stood a maiden ripe and moist, with breasts that strained the fabric of her bodice, with hair fresh-spun of gold, fair of face, clear of eye, slim of waist, comfortable of haunch, and whose pink tongue did flicker between teeth of purest white.

Seeing her, Sir Gervais's pulse did quop in his temple, and elsewhere the restraints of his armour did irk him.

But before he could spit on his palm and cry, "Agreed, done, and double-done!" the seeming hag rasped into his ear hole, "I perceive, brave hero, that thou dost pant and drool and quop and bulge, but remember that all things here are other-seeming. To unenchanted eyes this maiden is revealed to be the very lees and slag of womanhood, ugly beneath description, diseased to the marrow, so repulsive that passing toads do retch and gag." And she went on to confide that the source of her discord with the scrawny baron was that he could not marry off his flawed and blemished daughter because his neighbour's beauty diminished the wretched little thing by comparison.

After a very long silence devoted to trying to unsnarl this, Sir Gervais said, "Uh-h-h... You mean... Wait a minute— She's not... While you're... Hm-m-m. Ah-h-h, of course!" Nevertheless, his manhood continued to pulse and quop of its own will until the crone mentioned that the seeming frick and juicy girl was not of their class. Her vowels! Her aitches! No, no, not at all one of us. The knight almost swooned with relief at his narrow escape from the disgrace of foining beneath his station. "Without thy guidance, Princess, I might have fallen victim to this knave's low plot! Prepare to suffer, varlet!" And with this, he drew his sword with the intention of cleaving the woodcutter's pate down to his saucy grin.

But the seeming giant grasped the hilt in midair, brast the blade over his knee, and tossed the pieces into the brook.

"Oh-ho!" cried the knight. 'Wow hast thou precipitated my wrath upon thine aged and brittle back!" He leapt from the saddle and clutched at his adversary's throat.

But the woodcutter lifted the grasping hands from his throat as easily as if they had been placed there in caress, and he slapped those steel gauntlets together until the knight's palms stung with his vigorous applause. Then he turned the knight upside down and swung him so that his head played the clapper to the bell of his helm.

"There now," he said, setting Sir Gervais again upon his feet. "Let that be an end to it. If thou wilt not have my daughter to wed, so be it. Go and pester me no further."

Dazed, his ears ringing, his palms throbbing, the knight staggered to his horse and clung to the pommel, his knees buckling.

But the seeming hag leaned down from the saddle and whispered, "Prithee, be more gentle with this frail old baron, my champion! Though I would see him punished for his insults, I do not want the sin of his murder upon thy soul!"

"Sayest what?" Sir Gervais muttered, half senseless.

"Thou hast done him great and telling hurt. Sure, he must yield after another such chastisement."

"I have wrought hurt upon him?"

"Joy-o'-my-nights, hast thou forgot that here all things are other-seeming?"

"What?" The battered knight frowned in deepest thought. "Uh-h-h-h." He squinted at the sky in intense concentration. "Er-r-r-r-r." He squeezed his eyes shut and marshalled all his powers of reasoning to the problem. "Uhn-n-n-n-n." And finally, "Ah, of course!" And with that, he flung himself again at the seeming giant's throat.

Annoyed by this fool's persistence, the woodcutter grasped him by his shoulders and shook him until his limbs dangled and flopped loose, then he forced the knight's helmet into the fork of an oak and left him hanging by his chin, his body swaying gently in the breeze. And with this, he strode away, taking his daughter with him.

Tossing the fig after the departing woodcutter, the seeming hag growled bitterly that Sir Gervais was useless to a poor girl seeking to affirm her swine's snouting rights, and she departed to her castle to await the arrival of a stouter champion.

Night fell; the forest darkened; nocturnal creatures scuttled and scurried; and still Sir Gervais hung in deepest melancholy, wondering what magic had transported him to this high tree and lodged his neck in the crook of this branch after he had so sorely punished the feeble old baron that enchantment had disguised as a stout woodcutter.

He was lost in these philosophical speculations when a soft voice called from the forest floor. Bending his eyes downward—for nothing else could he move—the knight espied the seeming lush and juicy daughter of the seeming giant, the moonlight shining upon her golden-seeming hair and her bulging, ripe-seeming breasts.

"I'll have thee down in a trice, handsome knight," she called up.

"Thank... you," he muttered between clenched teeth.

"But first, thou must promise me a boon."

"What... boon?"

"Before I dislodge thee from yon forked bough, thou must promise—" And here the maiden blushed and turned her fair face aside. "Oh, how can I say it with modesty?"

"Get... on... with... it!" muttered the distressed knight.

"Well, then. As my father told thee, I am of swiving age and humour, but there is no swiveworthy man in this forest. Hence, ere I dislodge thee, thou must promise to teach me the ways of swiving. There, I have said it!" And she hid her face with her hands and blushed modestly.

"Agreed," Sir Gervais rasped between his locked teeth.

Whereupon the seeming sumptuous maid armed herself with a stout stick, then hitched her up skirts so high that both fud and ecu were cooled by the night breezes, and scaled the tree. Jamming the stick in behind the knight's helmet, she heaved with such good will that Sir Gervais was pried free and fell with a stunning clatter to the earth, where he sat all a-daze.

Before his swirling senses settled, the maiden was upon him, clawing at the lacings of his armour that he might serve her as he had pledged to do. So willing was his brawn to redeem his promise that often he did mount her to this end, but upon each instance, his imagination warned him that this moist and panting maid was, in truth, a low-born person the swiving of whom was beneath his dignity, and this realization instantly made him all limp and unable.

For many and many an hour was he, by turns, stiffened and shriveled until, near the dawning, he was sorely cramped with dog's cullions caused by the flowing and ebbing of ardent blood.

Then did the maiden draw aside and pout and sniff and stamp her little foot. "All this fumbling and prodding, then fading and shriveling, surely this cannot be the swiving that I have heard so widely praised!"

In his shame he attested that, yes, they had done the most and the best of swiving.

"Nay, then," cried the maiden. "This swiving is a sport most treacherously o'er-famed! If it be for this that maidens dream and sigh, and in consequence of which they grow great and make babes to dangle from their teats, then no more of swiving shall I have! If God protect me from increase upon this occasion, I vow me to a nunnery, there to do His will and work 'til my flesh ages beyond yearning."

And Sir Gervais did gravely affirm her in this choice, saying that if she drew not pleasure from his swiving—which was the best and highest of that delectable art—then surely no man could ever please her. And he did feel some pride in the knowledge that he was serving God by assisting a maiden to a nunnery where she would pass her life to the leeward of temptation.

So it was that, in the fullness of time, the Maid of the Enchanted Forest rose from nun to abbess, and at last was hoisted to the high rank of saint in reward for abjuring the joy of men for all the six-and-eighty years she passed on this earth. For celibacy is rightly accounted a miracle in one so beauteous, lush, moist, and frick as she; while in the generality of nuns it is but a petty accomplishment, as it is no great feat to defend a fruit rendered forbidding and unpluckworthy by Nature.

As for Sir Gervais, he did return to the Table Round, there to regale his comrades, recounting how he had passed a year and a day in the arms of a most desirable—if other-seeming—princess; and how, out of due consideration for the aged, he had let himself be bested by a pitiable and scrawny old knight, who had tried to disguise himself as a puissant woodcutter; and how he had come perilously close to being seduced by an ugly, all-rotted hag who had pretended to be a moist and frick maiden eager to swive and be swiven. And his amazed listeners were filled with wonder and envy.

For the rest of his days Sir Gervais was so affected by his term in the Forest of Other-Seemingness that he would take to belly none but crones and hags full of years and distort of feature. And although some envious knights belittled his choice of lust-targets, they were obliged to admit that he was much more successful plying his lance in the romantic lists than he had been before his enchantment.

Thus came it to pass that the knight's fame was sung down the corridors of time by bards and minstrels, in whose lays he was ever after clept: Sir Gervais! Swiver of Crones!

EASTER STORY

"Now then, young man, what have you been getting up to?" my master asked, smiling. "You have certainly managed to draw the wrath of the religious establishment down upon your head. Mind you, perhaps it does them good to have their noses tweaked occasionally, if only as an exercise in humility." I translated this into the Koine dialect of Greek, the marketplace lingua franca understood throughout the Levant. During his years of diplomatic administration on the barbarian frontier my master had developed a method for communicating on a comfortable, personal level to those whose language he did not speak: while I translated in a rapid undertone, he would hold his interlocutor's eyes with his own. This had the effect of removing me from the scene and allowing my master to make closer contact than one would imagine possible between a highly civilized aristocrat from Rome and a rustic Jew from this dusty, fly-blown outpost of Judæa. As I translated the Procurator's words I tried to imitate his amicable, even jocular tone, but the bound prisoner kept his eyes lowered, making no indication that he had heard. I looked up at my master and lifted my shoulders.

Hiatus's smile faded; he spoke in a graver, sharper timbre. "You'd be well-advised to cooperate, young man. You're accused of blasphemy towards their god—your god too, I suppose. I cannot help you if you won't speak to me."

After I translated this, the accused lifted his head and settled his calm, deep-set eyes upon my master, and it was then that the Procurator saw his bruised cheek and cut eyebrow, evidence that the man's interrogators had tried to beat a confession out of him. His eyes winced away, and he glared down the long flight of stone steps to the waiting knot of priests and scribes. Their nervous shuffle revealed that they read angry displeasure in my master's stern features. As the embodiment of Roman rule in Judæa, the Procurator was often obliged to order, or at least condone, such punishments as were necessary to keep the passions of this quarrelsome, litigious people under some semblance of control, but he had an innate horror of physical cruelty. It was not that he held strong moral views against physical punishment in principle; it was more a matter of his refined sensibilities. As he once explained to me, the fact that he dined on meat did not mean he chose to witness the slaughter of animals.

As it happens, he had been dining when the request came for him to adjudicate in yet another of these local religious squabbles. The truth be known, I doubt that he minded being interrupted, as he was bored with the company of the rough soldiers of his personal guard. A young centurion officer had just ruined the climax of his story by being unable to stifle his own anticipatory laughter, but weak though the joke was, his fellow officers barked out their guffaws and pounded the table in applause. Even the highborn Claudia Procula lifted her chin and showed her small, white teeth in a polite, if minimal, mime of mirth. The corners of her eyes were still crinkled in what her husband called her 'I'm-having-such-a-good-time' expression when she glanced across to see if, for once, he was playing his role as the congenial host, or at least feigning a little interest in his guests. Her smile hardened when she saw that he was engrossed in conversation with me, a humble slave who shouldn't have been sitting at the same table with officers of equestrian rank, much less at Pilatus's side, leaving her to entertain these course border soldiers whose idea of witty chat seldom rose above the scatological. Daughter of a patrician family, she accepted that one must make do in this least desirable of all colonial posts, one that Rome bestowed only on men who lacked important patrons or who, like her husband, had earned the displeasure of Tiberius. Even before marriage had united their ancient families, she had feared that young Pilatus's caustic tongue and cool intellect might prove lethal flaws in Rome, where advancement depended more upon a facile smile and flexible ethics than upon ability. But he had been young then and handsome, and the danger lurking behind the acid irreverence of his wit had thrilled her. Who could have predicted that his cynical observations and wounding slights would ultimately maroon them on this twilight rim of the civilized world? Judæa, of all places! Land of superstitious goatherds and wild-eyed mystics, of jealous priests and suicidal zealots. What was it that Valerius Gratus had said when they arrived to replace him as Procurator? "I don't envy you, my dears. They say that if the Gods ever decide that the world needs a purging, they'll inject the warm oil at Judæa."

Claudia resented not even being allowed to entertain the officers in the relative comfort of their official residence at Cæsarea. No, they had been obliged to accompany reinforcements to this crowded, smelly, provincial backwater of Jerusalem to show the long, muscular arm of Roman authority in the hope of forestalling the civil disorder that invariably accompanied their primitive religion's principal annual festival, this... this.... "What do they call this celebration?" she asked the table in general.

A grizzled, battle-worn officer sitting two places down (a risen ranker from the vulgar slackness of his vowels) offered the information that the locals called this period 'Passover'.

"Passover? And what is that supposed to mean?"

"Damned if I know, ma'am. But it's obvious that these poor bastards were passed over when the Gods were handing out homelands worth having."

"Quite," Claudia Procula's clipped diction was meant to remind the ranker of the social distance between them. "But why would they celebrate having been passed over?"

The old soldier shook his head. "Who knows? They're a queer people, ma'am, and that's the truth of it!"

At that very moment, at the far end of the table, I was expressing the same view, albeit with somewhat greater elegance. "As my master knows better than anyone, it is pointless to attempt to understand the Jew in rational terms. For all his cleverness and intelligence, in his deepest essence the Jew is a creature of passion who draws energy from his enthusiasms and his delusions. An example of this is the fact that, although they have been conquered and enslaved by every people who have blundered into this dreary land, they confidently believe they are the chosen people of their god. Despite all evidence, they maintain this ludicrous belief. And they are maintained by it." I smiled to myself, pleased with that turn of phrase.

"Hm-m." Pilatus lifted his chalice, only to find it empty. But when the serving girl stepped forward to refill it, he waved her away with an annoyed gesture. He had been drinking too much of late. Out of boredom, he told himself. "When first I arrived, I sought to understand their beliefs and superstitions. I discovered that in common with other Levantine cults, their god was originally a battle god. In fact, they still call him a 'God of Hosts', despite their many defeats. This war god consumed and replaced the rest of the pantheon to become their sole deity, but although there is no competition, he remains a jealous god, so uncertain of his power that he requires constant reassurance, praise, and glorification. Proof—if additional evidence were needed—that we make our gods in our image!" He chuckled.

I chuckled along, as befits the servant of a master of prickly temperament. "Indeed, sire, their mythology contains a tale that illustrates your point. Once upon a time, their god, being in a particularly grumpy mood, decided to destroy a licentious city and all its inhabitants unless this prophet could find a certain number of good men among the inhabitants. There follows a passage in which the prophet and the god haggle about exactly how many good men would be required to save the city, the old prophet slowly whittling the god down! How delightfully Semitic a god! A god you can negotiate with! God as market stall merchant! But for all his touches of Levantine humanity, the Jewish god is a bloodless confection, compared to the colorful heroes (and rogues!) of our own pantheon."

"Maybe, but he's not bloodless enough for me," Pilatus said. "He's a passionate god. A jealous god. A god of vengeance." He half closed his eyes. "Perhaps that's why I find these people so difficult to deal with. So opaque. So oblique. And so intriguing, too... in an irritating sort of way. Roman to my marrow, more Roman than our beloved emperor, I am a creature of reason and logic."

I diplomatically ignored this reference to the emperor. Descended from the Sabine clan of the Pontii (hence his name), Pontius Pilatus's ancestors had been aristocrats when the forebears of Tiberius were still brawny sharecroppers, a historical fact my master seldom had the tact to conceal.

"I'm a creature of reason, and rational thought is Rome's greatest strength," he insisted.

"And perhaps it's her greatest limitation, as well?" I suggested, with a tentative smile that would let me pretend I was merely playing the fool, should he take offence.

"Yes, a need for the rational can be a limitation as well. I admit to being uncomfortable when faced with illogical passion. I can cope with the aggressive man, the cunning man, the subtle man, the duplicitous man, the stubborn man, the stupid man... but the insane man? No. The madman and the zealot confuse and confound me." And, after a pause: "...and frighten me, as well."

"Certainly Judæa is a difficult post for one who is unable to deal with the zealot," I ventured.

"Perhaps that's why the honor of governing Judæa is always bestowed upon those who are out of favor. We, the expendable ones." His soft chuckle was not without bitterness.

I smiled noncommittally and lowered my eyes. I was familiar with the events that had brought my master to this wretched post. Although his high birth and native capacities should have destined him for power and privilege, he was constitutionally incapable of concealing his scorn for fools and hypocrites, a serious flaw for a politician in any form of government, a disaster in a tyranny. Some wondered why a man who so obviously lacked the thick skin and the accommodating conscience of the successful politician had entered government service in the first place. The answer was deceptively simple: Pontius Pilatus had been brought up to believe that it was a gentleman's duty to serve his country. Oh, he recognized that his view of duty was romantic and old-fashioned in this era of the professional politician with the ethics of a merchant and the tactics of a whore, yet he cleaved to the values of his class.

But being highborn and gifted did not protect him, for when the ambitious mediocrities who had felt the lash of Pilatus's scorn and ridicule managed to sniff and snivel their way into power, they took their revenge by dissuading Tiberius from assigning the haughty Sabine to any posts of importance. Finding all paths to fruitful service closed to him, Pilatus considered retirement to his country villa, a prospect that chilled the heart of Claudia Procula, for her husband's political connections afforded those social and romantic amusements that absorbed her time and energy, and kept her from brooding over the passage of her youth. She persuaded Vitellius, Legatus of Syria, to nominate her husband for the Judæan post. It was rumored that her 'persuasion' involved bargaining from a position of strength: the horizontal. I, of course, dismiss such rumors. It is my duty to do so.

As you might imagine, Tiberius's sycophants did not oppose Pilatus's appointment to Judæa, that garbage pit of lost careers. Serves him right for poking fun at those who are doing their best to serve their beloved emperor! Let the haughty Pilatus sneer at camels for a while! See how he likes that!

My master soon discovered that Judæa was not only the least honored of posts, it could also be difficult and nasty, for these people deeply resented Roman occupation, and they had long ago forged their natural gift for shrill complaint into a formidable weapon for wearing the opposition down with incessant whining and whinging.

Aware of Judæa's reputation as the dullest outpost of the empire, soon after his arrival Pilatus sought out a Greek slave-scholar trained in sophistic sleight-of-mind, hoping that intellectual exercise might serve as an anodyne for boredom. This was my humble entry into the noble household, and I trust that I have been of some small value to my lord Pontius, for I have lived many years among these people and I know not only the Koine dialect but also both Hebrew and Aramaic, the language of the Aramaeans that is widely used throughout the Levant and even appears here and there in Jewish sacred writings, part of their Book of Daniel being written in it, for instance, as is their prayer for the dead, the Qaddish, and also— But there I go, parading my erudition! Shame on me! Please forgive a poor old scholar the sin of intellectual pride, remembering that pride is the only sin the poor can afford, and the only one the old can still manage.

From the first, Pontius Pilatus revealed a fascination (a morbid fascination, in his wife's view and, I confess, my own) with the plague of wild-eyed, self-proclaimed 'messiahs' that infest this stressful moment in Jewish history. Almost every day another rabble-rousing preacher staggers in from the desert, followed by a ragged retinue of zealots drawn from the unwashed, the unwanted, the lost, the desperate, the gullible, the vulnerable, and the discontent—all seeking to magnify their miserable existences by association with things eternal and miraculous. This epidemic of rustic rabbis, with their simplistic philosophy and folksy adages, gives the Jewish religious establishment and the Roman occupiers a rare opportunity for cooperation, for the priests resent the devotion and enthusiasm that the uneducated Wad lavishes on these fanatics, and the Romans see them as foci for social unrest in a population already dangerously unstable. Have you not noticed how shared dislikes and fears bind men much more tightly than do shared interests and affections? Something to do with Human Nature, that catchall term for our baseness of appetite and paucity of spirit.

But for all that Pontius recognized the danger in these fanatics, he was fascinated by them. He once likened this blend of fascination and repulsion to a time when, as a child, he had seen a dog crushed under a wagon wheel. The sight had disgusted him, yet he could not tug his eyes away. These zealots risked being crushed by those in power, both Roman and Jewish, yet they faced the prospect eagerly, with a ghastly appetite for martyrdom. I pointed out to my lord the logical inconsistency of a man who took pride in the cool rationality of the Roman nobleman, yet who was attracted to the passionate, the insane, the seething cauldrons of the emotions. He laughed this off, but I wondered if there were not, at some depth within him, an envy of these 'messiahs'... a desire to feel something so deeply, to want something so much that he would suffer and even die for it.

He had ample opportunity to indulge his morbid interest in these fanatic preachers soon after our arrival in Jerusalem, for zeal and sedition seethed in every corner of the city. He had come to stiffen the small garrison with his personal presence, making a more telling show of his entry into the city by thickening his handful of reinforcements with his wife and her handmaidens and slaves, and his own retinue which included concubines, servants, scribes, and your humble servant, an aged rogue-philosopher who served, depending on his master's mood, as his adversary in rhetorical exercises, his confidant, his entertainer, his adviser, and his clown. Keeping the peace in Judæa (or rather, keeping disorder within acceptable limits, for my master well understood the need for a periodic controlled release of steam, lest the cauldron explode) required no small portion of bluff and nerve, for he had only three thousand Roman soldiers to control more than three and a half million Jews. Adroit political navigation would be required if his minute show of force were to restrain the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who visited Jerusalem during Passover each year, all smouldering with religious fervor and tinder-dry for insurrection.

It is little wonder that my master was depressed and thorny-tempered this evening and little able to endure the company of gruff, shallow-minded soldiers. Shifting from my role as counselor to that of entertainer, I sought to lift his spirits. "My lord is weary with the burdens of state. Working with these Israelites is particularly sapping, for nothing is more draining than pushing against an immovable boulder. Perhaps I could arrange something refreshing? Something young and... ah... rejuvenating?"

"No, no, I'm not in the mood."

"They can be amusing, these local women. Eager, flexible, inventive, and above all grateful, for their men are often too occupied with quarreling over minor points of scriptural interpretation to gratify their not inconsiderable appetites. Perhaps this explains why so many of them seek sapphist consolation. Or perhaps it is merely—"

But the Procurator was not to benefit from my insight into the causes of this tribadistic proclivity, for there was a disturbance at the great doors connecting the Prætorium of the Castle of Antonia to the temple of Jerusalem, and the officer-of-the-guard strode across the stone floor with a hard-heeled gait, his body armor rattling with self-importance. He came to attention before the Procurator. "Sir!"

Pilatus looked up wearily. "Can you not see that we are dining?"

"Yes, sir! I see that, sir!"

"Then, if this is something that can wait..."

"They're demanding to see you, sir!"

Pilatus's eyes widened slightly. "Demanding?"

"Well... that is... they are requesting to see you, sir. It's a delegation from the San-hed-rin." These last syllables had just been memorized.

The Procurator raised his eyebrows at me.

"A religious high court of sorts, my lord," I explained. "Rome has allowed them a certain amount of self-government in matters of slight importance: religious rituals, local festivals, dietary peculiarities, marketplace customs—that sort of thing."

"Hmm. And what does it want of me, this Sanhedrin?"

"They've brought a prisoner for you to judge, sir," the officer-of-the-guard said. "It has to do with one of the 'oiled ones'."

"The 'oiled ones?" Pilatus said. "How long have you been out here, young man?"

"Too long, sir."

"Like all of us. But evidently not long enough to be familiar with one of the most common phenomena of the streets. They are called the 'anointed ones', not the 'oiled ones', although it's true that they're anointed with oil. That's what gives us the Greek word for them: the 'cristos'. I believe there's also a word in Hebrew." He glanced towards me.

" 'Messiah', sire. It means the same thing: an anointed one."

"Ah yes, 'messiah'." He turned to the officer-of-the-guard. "Very well, you may tell them I shall consider their petition after I have dined. They may come back in two or three hours."

But the guard officer hovered. "It... ah... it seems to be a most pressing matter, sir. They deman—request to speak to you right now."

Pilatus released a martyred sigh. "Oh, very well. How many are there?"

"A whole gaggle of them, sir."

"A gaggle, eh? Well, that is impressive. Inform your... gaggle... that I will receive a deputation of three of the cleanest of them."

The guard officer shifted uneasily.

"What now?" Pilatus asked, his patience thinning.

"I'm afraid you will have to go to them, sir. They await you on the steps leading down to the temple."

"I must go to them?"

"Yes, sir. It has to do with... well, with bread, sir."

"Bread?!"

The guard officer stared straight ahead, only a shift of his eyes betraying his nervousness.

I cleared my throat. "I believe I understand the problem, my lord. They hold us—and indeed even this room in which we dine—to be 'unclean'."

"We are unclean? Now there's the pot slandering the kettle! These Jews never had two baths in the same year before we arrived to set them an example."

"Unclean in the ritualistic sense, my lord." Pulling a comically grave face and dropping my voice to a theatrical tremor, I said, "You see, sir, we are guilty of harbouring—dare I speak the horrid words?—leavened bread in this place."

"Leavened bre—! The Gods grant me patience!" Then he chuckled. "Oh, very well, tell them this unclean eater of leavened bread will join them shortly."

"Sir!" And the officer-of-the-guard departed with martial clatter and stamp.

"Oiled ones!" Claudia Procula said with a shudder of distaste. "Filthy, hollow-eyed fanatics holding the mindless masses in their hypnotic sway. I am told that the desert fairly teems with them. To what do we owe this sudden infestation of... what is it the locals call them?"

" 'Messiahs', my lady," I informed her. "But, alas, there is nothing new or sudden about this plague of messiahs. They appear spontaneously out of the body politic, like maggots on diseased meat, whenever political unrest, economic deprivation, or religious reformation stalks this unhappy land. But over the last ten years or so there's been a spate of them. Hardly a day passes without some new 'cristo' entering the city with his handful of fanatic followers, curing hypochondriacs, slipping red powder into water and calling it wine, hypnotizing away the pangs of hunger, and claiming the hungry host has been fed, raising the dead—the dead drunk, usually—in short, all the usual ruses and shams."

"But why do all of them truck out the same tired old stunts? Sheer lack of imagination?"

"Not quite, my lady. They have no option but to perform the same 'miracles' because all Jews are familiar with the writings of their prophets who, down through the ages, have described the long-awaited Messiah. Each would-be messiah knows what utterances and acts and 'miracles' he must perform to fulfill the prophesies. I should be very surprised if there were not half a dozen of them out there in the streets at this very moment, all performing their miracles, all preaching, all thumbing their noses at the religious establishment, each one claiming to be the fruit of a virgin birth and descended from the obligatory family of Jesse, each followed by his coterie of bemused disciples."