Hot Night in the City

"But how can it be that Jews, famed the world over for their intelligence, are taken in by these rabble-rousing charlatans?" Claudia Procula asked. "In the long catalogues of opprobrium heaped on the heads of the Jews, one never hears the word 'gullible'!"

"Ah, but they are a uniquely gullible people, my lady! Both devious and gullible."

"Is there not a logical contradiction there?" my master wondered.

"Of course there is, my lord. Contradiction is the distinguishing essence of all Levantine peoples but Jewish gullibility has a particular character of its own. The Jew is too quick-witted to be duped by others; but he often dupes himself. And how can this be? Because the Jew is a constant and willing victim of Hope."

"The Jew as a victim of Hope? Well, there's an interesting concept... if somewhat fanciful," my master's wife said.

"Fanciful if you will, my lady, but..." I began, but she had turned away to bestow her attention on other guests, so I continued to my master, "...but, sire, this addiction to hope explains why the most grasping, materialistic merchant will sacrifice everything for a chimera, a gesture, a phantom, a promise writ in sand... in short, a hope. The hope implied in his calling this arid heap of sand his 'Promised Land'. The hope enshrined in his famous deal with his god: the Covenant. Threaten his treasured hopes, and overnight the plodding, prudent Jew becomes a fanatic. An enthusiast! A rhapsodist! A zealot!"

"I'm perfectly aware of the contradictions in the Jewish character, Greek. And know what traps and snares those contradictions pose. But I am curious, and curiosity is a powerful lure for a bored man. Above all, these 'oiled ones' fascinate me, both as individuals and as a general phenomenon."

"I hope my lord recalls how the asp fascinates its victim before stinging him to death. Above all, never for a minute forget that the Jew is always willing—nay, eager!—to become a martyr, for the Jew has a marrow-deep appetite for martyrdom, and for martyring others with his martyrdom. Therein lies a great danger to you."

"To me?"

"Well, to Rome, if you'd rather. But in this place and at this time, you are Rome."

"May Rome admit to being confused?"

"I should be distressed if you were not, my lord. After all, it is my role to amuse by dazzling with the complexity of my insights."

"It is also your role to share your insights and unravel those complexities. I perceive a certain archness of tone that ill becomes a slave... even the most complex and insightful one."

"I am warned, my lord. And most thoroughly chastened." I lowered my eyes and retreated into a respectful silence.

"Well?"

"I beg your pardon, my lord? Did you speak to me?" I asked, all innocent wonder.

"Damn it, Greek! First you wound with your superiority, then you punish with your humility! Are you sure there's no Jewish blood in you?"

Although my smile did not desert my lips, my heart stopped for an instant. Had he inadvertently stumbled upon the truth of my origins? (If you think, dear Reader, that only Gentiles harbor anti-Semitism, then you don't appreciate the complex and involute reactions a person can have to years of scorn, ridicule, and humiliation.) When I realized that he had only meant to be amusing, I recovered smoothly with, "Ah, but I was merely warning my master that in dealing with these messiahs one must be wary of the Jewish tendency to martyrdom... a martyrdom the Jew's adversary might get to share with him, if he is not careful, for when the Jew throws himself off a cliff, he is usually holding the tunic of his enemy in his iron grip."

Pilatus chuckled. "I'll keep my tunic close wrapped. Now, then! I believe we have made the priests of the Sanhedrin wait long enough to give them a sense of their relative insignificance. Let us have a look at the captive messiah." The Procurator rose from his couch and lifted his hand to arrest the rising of his guests. "No, no. Continue your festivities, gentlemen. I'll return in a few moments. Claudia, I know I can rely on you to entertain our guests." She communicated her annoyance with an almost imperceptible compression of her lips, but old diplomatic hand that she was, she dutifully began to tease an oft-heard story out of the senior officer present as Pilatus and I stepped out onto the landing at the top of the wide staircase that led from the Praetorium down to the Judgment Hall.

Below us stood a knot of chief priests and scribes surrounded by a gawking crowd eager to witness pain and punishment. And there before the religious leaders, his head down, was a young man in a dirty, travel-stained gown of cheap cloth. They had brought him from Caiaphas after accusing him of blasphemy in that he claimed to be the Son of God. They had bound his arms and blindfolded him; then they had struck him on the face and asked, "If thou art indeed the omniscient son of the omniscient God, then say which of us it was that smote thee." And when he would not, or could not, they had mocked him, saying, "And yet you claim to be the Messiah! The anointed one that our people have so long awaited!" The prisoner had answered only, "No matter what I told you, you would not believe me, nor would you let me go," so they brought him to be judged before the Procurator.

Upon the appearance of Pontius Pilatus at the head of the stairs, the priests and scribes brought their prisoner halfway up the stairs leading to the Praetorium—well, to be exact, they brought him one step less than halfway up, so they could avoid any accusation of having entered a place wherein Gentiles were desecrating the Passover by eating leavened bread.

Pilatus looked down upon them and spoke, and I can remember his words exactly, because I was obliged to repeat them in translation. For the smoothness of my account, I shall henceforth assume you understand that everything that was said passed through me. Pilatus said, "What accusation bring ye against this man?"

"He has blasphemed, calling himself the son of God!"

The Procurator shrugged. "Is that so serious? Are not all of us the children of our gods, in a way of speaking? But if you feel that he has offended your cult, then take him and punish him according to your customs."

Seeing that Pilatus had no intention of accepting the responsibility of punishing this poor fellow over some trivial matter of local cult sensitivities, the chief priest took another tack. "This man has been perverting the nation, claiming to be King of the Jews and forbidding the people to give tribute to Caesar. We would punish this treason against your worship and against Rome, but you have made it unlawful for us to put any man to death."

Now, it was true that the Romans had found it necessary to deny the Jews the right to put one another to death over their endless internecine religious spats, so Pilatus said, "Oh, come now! Surely preaching some political nonsense to a pack of illiterate malcontents is not a matter deserving of death." His dismissive, cajoling tone might have been used for speaking to quarrelsome children, but when he saw from their determined, thin-lipped expressions that they had no intention of letting their prey off lightly, he drew a long weary sigh and said, "Oh, very well, bring him up for me to question."

I cleared my throat to remind him of their terror of proximity to bread-eaters. "Send him up alone, then! The rest of you can wait there below!"

When the accused was standing before him, Pilatus said, "Now then, young man, what have you been getting up to? You have certainly managed to draw the wrath of the religious establishment down upon you. Mind you, perhaps it does them good to have their noses tweaked occasionally, if only as an exercise in humility." He smiled, but the prisoner made no indication that he had heard.

The Procurator's smile faded and he spoke in a graver, more urgent tone. "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."

The prisoner lifted his head and settled his calm, deep-set eyes upon my master without answering.

"Did you, in fact, claim to be King of the Jews?" the Procurator pursued. "Before you answer, I should warn you that Caesar is the only ruler here, so it would be possible to interpret any claim to being king as treason. Do you understand that? Now then. Are you King of the Jews?"

The prisoner responded, "Those are your words, not mine."

Pilatus looked at me, and I lifted my shoulders. We had met this phenomenon with all the 'messiahs' we had been obliged to interrogate: this peculiar reluctance to admit to their specific offenses, although they seemed perfectly willing—indeed determined—to achieve martyrdom by suffering for them. It was as though their impulses towards life and towards the diseased ecstasies of martyrdom were tugging them in two directions.

"So you're denying that you claimed to be King of the Jews? Is that it?" Pilatus said, trying to prompt him into the right answer.

The young man responded, but, typically, not to the question posed. He said, "To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice."

My master and I exchanged a glance. This business about coming into the world to bear witness to the truth had been said by every messiah we had questioned over the past year or so. Indeed, even the phrasing was almost identical. Shifting to Latin so that we could not be understood, my master said, "Another one who has learned his part perfectly. Are they just rogues and charlatans, after all?"

"Many of them, to be sure. Probably most. But not all. Some are deranged enthusiasts who really do hear voices and who clearly remember things that never happened. But the most interesting of them are honest, rustic teachers who assume the guise of the Messiah to give weight and impact to their teachings among the uneducated masses. Alas, sometimes these teachers find themselves entangled in the net of their little subterfuge when they are questioned by priests and religious functionaries and are obliged either to renounce their claims to deity, and thus lose their followers and the fruits of a life's work, or face punishment for blasphemy, which, of course, can mean death."

Pilatus nodded. "Difficult choice. Glory and death, or life and ignominy. But I'll tell you what confounds me, Greek. I cannot understand the appeal of these 'cristos' to the ignorant masses. What do they offer them?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Well, something more profound and more attractive than nothing, Nothingness! They prophesy that the world will come to its end in a very short time. Total destruction! Final judgment! Apocalypse! And that's a very tasty prospect for the lost, the crippled, the lonely, the impoverished, the frustrated, the incompetent, the ignorant, and the powerless who constitute their followings. And even more tasty is the prospect that this total and final annihilation will sweep up the rich as well, together with the clever, the strong, the pleased, the life-embracing, the informed, the liberated, the powerful—all those whom the underclasses envy and hate."

"An end of misery for themselves, and harsh punishment for the rest of us, eh?" my master mused. "A heady and attractive mixture. Both surcease and revenge. Hmm."

"Yes, and each of these 'cristos' dangles this promise before all those who will listen. They promise that the poor and the meek and the downtrodden will reign in heaven, while the rest of us will suffer all the torments of Dis. I view these messages as so many embers thrown onto dry grasslands. While most of them will smoulder, then die out, there is a danger that the promises of one of these messiahs—it hardly matters which one—might catch and flair into a great conflagration that will sweep across the world. And that will be a dark day for all men of culture and refinement, for we shall become the despised minority in a tyranny of the ignorant underclass."

Pilatus half closed his eyes and nodded to himself, then he turned and spoke down to the awaiting priests and the eager rabble. "I have interrogated this man that you brought before me, accused of perverting the people. I have examined him before your eyes, and I have found no fault in him."

The chief priest stepped forth and said, "We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he claims to be the Son of God."

"Die because he's an uneducated, superstitious fanatic?" Pilatus said with scornful disbelief. "Die because he suffers from a terrible longing to be noticed, to be 'someone'? Come, come, my friends. What harm can he do? He's but one among the many who wander the desert with their little bands of followers, working sleight-of-hand miracles and preaching comfortable, rustic home truths. Why not just take him out and give him a good flogging. Surely that will serve to dissuade the others."

But one of the scribes stepped forward and said, "If you let this man go free, you are not Cæsar's friend, for whosoever claims himself to be a king speaks against Caesar."

I threw my master a warning frown. Was he aware that by shifting their accusation from religious grounds to political ones, they were transferring the responsibility for his punishment from their shoulders to his? If the man were guilty of blasphemy, he would be punished by the Sanhedrin and the Procurator's only role would be granting or denying them recourse to the penalty of death; but if he were guilty of treason, then Rome's representative in Judæa would be obliged to punish him, so all the responsibility would devolve upon Pilatus. It was obvious to me that they meant to skewer my master on the horns of a dilemma, giving him a choice between permitting the execution of this simple man or seeming to condone his treasonable claims.

But the Procurator had experience of the duplicitous Levantine mind; he sidestepped the trap without seeming to notice it had been laid in his path.

He spoke to the priests, saying, "And if he now recants his claim to be King of the Jews? Surely then you must let him go." Pilatus turned to the prisoner and said in an undertone, "Consider your answers very carefully, son." Then he asked in full voice, "Are you the King of the Jews?"

The accused one made no answer, but only looked upon Pilatus with that gentle, but utter and intractable stubbornness I remember so well in my own mother's eyes. It was obvious to me that this one intended to find his martyrdom, but my master would not let him destroy himself so easily. "Aren't you going to answer? Don't you hear the crimes they accuse you of? They say you call yourself King of the Jews, and that you preach against paying tribute to Caesar! These are very serious matters, son. It's your life that's at stake."

But still the prisoner refused to speak.

"Are you King of the Jews?" Pilatus asked, clipping off the words in a dry tone that clearly proclaimed this to be his last chance to recant.

Seeming to realize this, the young rabbi lifted his head and said, "My kingdom is not of this world."

"There!" my master said triumphantly. "Did you hear that? His kingdom is not of this world. He denies being king of anything real and substantial. He no longer claims to be King of the Jews!"

But the tenacious scribe had no intention of losing his prey. "But he has stirred up the people throughout all Jewry, all the way from Galilee to here!"

"From Galilee?" Pilatus said, suddenly seeing a way to slip between the horns of his dilemma. "You say this man is a Galilaean? Well then, he falls under the jurisdiction of Herod Antipas, who happens to be here in Jerusalem to celebrate your Passover. Bring your prisoner before Herod, for I find no fault in him."

With a gesture, he commanded the guards to escort the accused man down to the awaiting throng, then he turned and strode back into the Praetorium followed by his guards. After watching the priests and scribes take their prisoner and, with angry growls, push him roughly before them out of the Judgment Hall, I followed my master into the feasting place.

When I approached, Pilatus was receiving a cup of wine from the hands of Claudia Procula, whose countenance revealed deep concern. I stood near, my eyes lowered and my face turned aside in a way I have of becoming nearly invisible while not missing a word.

"...but you mustn't worry," Pilatus told his wife. "It's nothing serious. Just another of those cristos."

"You say don't worry, Pontius, but I can't help it. If they're so unimportant as you claim, I cannot understand why you take the risks involved in dealing with them yourself."

"It's my job, my dear. And, to tell the truth, they intrigue me, with their eagerness to sacrifice everything for notoriety, even their lives. It's the professional actor's disease writ large."

"Pontius, I beg you. Please have nothing more to do with this affair. All last night I was tormented by a recurring dream about these wild-eyed fanatics, a dream that you were being destroyed by them, your reputation annihilated."

Pilatus chuckled. "My reputation in Rome is already in tatters, as you know."

"Don't joke, Pontius. I have a very strong, very dark premonition about this evening."

"Now, now, go back to our guests, Claudia. I'll join you soon."

"You are such a fool sometimes, Pontius."

"Mm? Yes, yes, I suppose so."

She turned angrily and went to the guests, and for a moment my master sipped his wine meditatively. "There's something that's been tickling my curiosity," he said, almost to himself, but knowing that I was nearby and listening.

"And what is that, master?"

"You suggested that one of these messiahs might someday gain a great following from among the world's unwashed and unwanted, and you used some sort of muddy metaphor about embers and grassfires to describe the spread of the messiah's cult."

"...Muddy?"

"But how can that be? Surely when posterity looks back upon this plague of messiahs it will harbor grave doubts that one among them could have been the true son of god, while all the rest were rogues or fools."

"Oh no, sire. Future generations will not wonder about the scores of unsuccessful cristos, because they will not know about them. History is always written by the winners, and if my doleful prediction comes true, the tale will be written by the followers of the successful messiah—whichever one that turns out to be. And you can bet that these disciples will make no mention of the other messiahs, because to do so would diminish their own importance as the followers of the one true voice out of the wilderness. The scores of forgotten messiahs of my 'muddy metaphor' will fall from the memory of man, and the successful messiah will shine forth without blemish or defect. His doubts will be glorified into philosophical questions while his weaknesses—if any are admitted—will be lauded as proofs of his humanity. He will be presented as perfect, pure of spirit and body. A virgin, like his mother. If he had a wife in life, his disciples will debase her or deny her existence. No, master, the successful cristo will have neither flaw nor competitor."

Pilatus had listened to me with an air of thinking of something else, something dark and deep, and this made me uneasy, for I was sure he needed his wits about him now more than ever.

"Sire, may I speak?" I asked.

"You do little else," he muttered.

"I fear there may be something to your noble wife's premonitions of danger. When dealing with these messiahs, you might quickly find your neck in a forked stick. If you decide in favor of the rustic preachers, the priests and scribes are sure to protest loudly enough to be heard in Rome. If you decide in favor of the priests and scribes, then you can expect scores of fanatical disciples to bare their chests to Roman spears and clamber up onto crosses to inflict their public suffering on you."

"You're saying there is no way I can win?"

"Once they start hurling the corpses of their 'oiled ones' at your head, it will no longer be a matter of winning, just a matter of not losing too much, and not losing it too publicly. Your salvation lies in doing nothing, while seeming to understand and sympathize with the rights and fears of both sides."

The Procurator nodded thoughtfully. Then he said, "I wonder how our lad is doing with Herod Antipas?"

"What do you plan to do, should he be dragged before you again?"

He closed his eyes and pressed his fingers deep into the sockets in weariness. "I shall do what I can to save the poor fellow's life, and if that fails, I shall try to give him a dignified death. Perhaps I can satisfy the priests by merely chastising and mocking him publicly, hoping they'll let it go at that."

"And if they won't let it go at that?"

"Then I'll offer to exchange the life of this harmless preacher for that of one of the condemned murderers we have in custody. Surely that will satisfy them."

"Surely? Have you forgotten that you are in Judæa?"

"What do you suggest I do?"

"If your efforts to placate them by chastizing and mocking this poor fanatic fail, and if the blood lust of the mob will not be satisfied by throwing them a murderer, then there is only one thing you can do. Publicly wash your hands of the matter and let the priests punish the man for blasphemy."

"But the penalty for blasphemy is stoning."

"It's their penalty. Their tradition. Your hands will be clean. Rome will not be responsible."

"Have you ever seen a stoning? I have. The first year I was here, I forced myself to witness one of their ritual lapidations. The spectacle of the vicious mob was more revolting, more frightening, than the gruesome fate of the victim, a poor woman taken in adultery. If you had seen the way they all joined in to deliver the punishment—tentatively at first... one small stone taken up and thrown listlessly, more a gesture of disapproval of the sin than a punishment for the sinner. But then a second stone was thrown, and a third, and suddenly the madness was upon them. Their eyes shone... little yapping cries escaped them as each encouraged the others... flecks of foam at the corners of their mouths. And the victim. The poor woman! Pleading... weeping... trying to reason with them as the stones struck her, knocking dust puffs from her robes. She tried at first not to show pain, because she sensed that pain would stimulate their frenzy... then she panicked when she tasted the blood running down her face. She fell, and the stones rained down upon her. She staggered to her feet, but the storm of stones continued. The stones they use are small ones, too small for any one blow to kill. This has the double advantage of freeing individual members of the mob from the guilt of murder and prolonging the victim's torment. She fell again and lay unmoving, and the mob waited, silent and panting. She quivered, then moved, then slowly rose and stood there, weak and swaying, blinded by her own blood, muttering words of gratitude as best she could through broken teeth, thinking that they had decided to show her mercy after all. The crowd listened and watched in tense, tingling silence. Then, as though stirred by a single urge, they began pelting her again. Finally... more than two hours after the thing began... a pulpy mess lay in the middle of the panting, sweating circle. The occasional stone made a thick plopping sound as it hit the amorphous bog they had created out of a woman. Then the crowd moved away in silence, chastened, satisfied, and no doubt many of them expressed to their families their disgust at the animal nature of their fellowman." My master's eyes focused again upon the here and now. "And the worst part was that no one was responsible. No individual citizen had killed her. It was the anonymous, snarling mob that had done this terrible thing." He looked at me, his eyes haggard from having reseen the horrors of the stoning in his memory. "Have you ever noticed, Greek, that when I am obliged to punish some rogue everyone says: 'Pilatus had the poor devil whipped', or "The Procurator crucified three murderers'. But when they speak of a stoning, they always use the passive voice, saying: 'The criminal was stoned to death', as though the stones themselves had done the deed, not those who cast them? No, I will not let them stone this poor fanatic whose only crime is a terrible lust for fame and significance. If there is no option but to execute him, I'll oblige them to use a more humane way."

"Crucifixion?" I asked.

"It's the quickest and least painful of the public methods available to me."

"But stoning is the established punishment for blasphemy. You cannot change that."

"No. But I can change the charge. I can order him executed for treason to Rome, rather than for blasphemy."

"But, sire! That will shift the responsibility for this fellow's death from the shoulders of the priests to your own!"

"I'm aware of that. But my mind is made up. If he must be killed, it will be for treason, and he'll be crucified. I'll see to it that they use nails to shorten the suffering. Those who are only tied onto the cross with rope can linger, suffering, for days. And I'll order a guard to give him a coup de grâce with a spear. But... but let's hope it doesn't come to that. Let's hope that Herod Antipas finds a way to subvert the will of the Sanhedrin. He's a crafty old devil."

"Crafty enough to dodge his responsibilities and send the decision back to you, master. And you will ultimately harvest most of the blame in this matter."

He nodded, resigned.

At this juncture, the officer-of-the-guard came stamping in again, announcing a delegation of priests awaiting the Procurator down in the Hall of Judgment. They had a prisoner with them.

"So soon?" Pilatus said, setting his wine cup down. "Has Herod already managed to slither out of the trap?"

I offered to go first and speak to the scribes, then advise Pilatus of their intentions and mood. I had decided to reason, to bargain, to plead with the priests... anything to extricate my master from their snare. When, having made the priests wait for a quarter of an hour, Pilatus appeared at the top of the stairs I met him with a smile, relieved to be able to inform him that the prisoner they had with them was not, thank the Gods, the poor devil we had questioned earlier.

"Yet another suicidal messiah?" Pilatus asked, looking down upon the bound prisoner standing surrounded by priests and scribes. "Two in one day. Is there no end to them?"

"Apparently not, my lord."

"And I suppose this one also claims to have been born of a virgin, and to have descended from the family of David, and fled to Egypt to avoid persecution, and taught in the wilderness, and performed miracles and—all the rest of it."

"No doubt, my master."

Pilatus sighed. "Ah, well." He gestured for the prisoner to be brought to him. "Who knows? Perhaps this one will allow himself to be saved."

"Let us hope so, sire. This messiah's name is Joshua. Joshua of Nazareth. But he affects the Greek version of his name: Jesus."

POSTSCRIPTUM FOR THE CURIOUS

The historical spore left behind by Pontius Pilatus is surprisingly faint, considering that he is the most famous Roman of them all—more widely known than even Julius Cæsar. We only have two passing mentions of his name in official records, and one rather dodgy inscription on a long-ago-vandalized tomb. He must be regarded, therefore, as a figure in church history, rather than Roman history. And even within church history, the sources are few and unreliable.

Among the spurious, quasiapocryphal writings of the Pseudoepigraphia we find accounts of Pontius Pilate by Josephus and Philo, and in the thoroughly apocryphal "Letters to the Emperor" and "The Acts of Pilate," Eusebius tells us that Pilate was eventually ordered back to Rome to explain his inability to calm and quell the Jews; but by the time he arrived, Tiberius had died (that would be in March of A.D. 37) and Pilate was not reappointed as Procurator of Judæa. Eusebius goes on to recount the tradition that Pilate became a Christian in result of his encounter with Joshua of Nazareth and subsequently committed suicide—presumably in a paroxysm of guilt and grief. Those with a taste for irony can reflect on the fact that Pilate's wife was eventually elevated to the rank of a minor saint of the Orthodox Church (because of her prophetic dream?), and Pilate himself is a saint of the Coptic Church.

THE ENGINE OF FATE

It was an outrage! Earlier that afternoon he had interrupted his hectic preparations for returning to his native village, and he had rushed all the way down to Telephone Central, where he had been obliged to stand for half an hour with his ear pressed to the listening tube, groaning with impatience while the woman sitting before her infernal tangle of wires and plugs struggled to keep him in contact with the Lafitte-Caillard travel office. He had subjected himself to the mysterious complexities of the 'phone because he knew that the usual New Year rush for places on the night train for Hendaye would be intensified by holiday makers wanting to mark the arrival of the new century in a special way, so to avoid any delay he wanted to make sure his tickets would be ready and waiting for him when he showed up later that evening. But after arriving at the Lafitte-Caillard's at the last minute, jumping out of his fiacre, shouting orders to the driver to wait there for him, dashing through the snow and, spurning the slow elevator, running three stairs at a time up to the third-floor office, intending to slap his money down on the counter and snatch up his tickets, what did he find? He found himself at the end of a queue of last-minute travelers, that's what he found! It was an outrage!

He chewed the ends of his new moustache in frustration while the incompetent fools in front of him bumbled their way through their trivial (but interminable) business, collected their tickets, examined each leaf of them to be absolutely sure there were no mistakes, then waddled off to take the elevator down to the line of black fiacres waiting in front of the building, their horses fidgeting and snorting jets of steam into the night air while the drivers huddled on their high seats, collars turned up against the first snowfall of the year.

He had timed his arrival at the ticket office so as to allow himself enough time (none to spare, it's true, but enough, enough!) to get him and his sister to Austerlitz station and settled into their sleeping car before the train pulled out. Who could possibly have anticipated this clogging wad of last-minute travelers? Oh. He had, come to think of it. That's why he had ordered his tickets in advance. Well then... who could possibly have known that the company wouldn't have a separate line for those prescient enough to order their tickets in advance?

Rocking from his toes to his heels to burn off some of his anxiety, he suddenly realized that the minute hand of the clock above the desk had not moved for at least—then it made a click-thunk as the hand lurched forward to the next minute. Oh, that kind of mechanism, was it? He might have known! And he might have known that the booking company would have only one clerk on duty. Typical!

After several aeons, he advanced to become third in line, but when the elderly couple at the desk turned back to ask the clerk to clarify some muddled, complicated matter, our hero sighed so loudly that the old man, embarrassed and flustered by making someone behind him so impatient, lost track of his question and began at the beginning again. A glance at the clock told the suffering Basque that there remained only a quarter of an hour for the fiacre that awaited him below to make it across the river to Austerlitz station—barely enough time, assuming they were not delayed by some fool in an automobile tooting his klaxon and frightening the horses.

The worst of it was that he could see his name on an envelope on the clerk's desk. There were his tickets, only a meter away! And his money was in his hand! His bones fairly twisted within his body from impatience.

The clock lurched to the next minute, and the young man cleared his throat to speak to the large man ahead of him, a professional person, judging from his expensive black broadcloth coat and the stiff dignity of his manner. "Excuse me, monsieur. I am traveling on a mission of the utmost importance, so I'm sure you wouldn't mind if I just handed over my money and snatched up my tickets. It wouldn't take a second, and I would be eternally—"

"My business, monsieur, is also of great importance," the blond-bearded giant said, turning to him. "So I'm afraid you will just have to wait your turn."

"But, monsieur, my business is a matter of life and death!"

"And mine, monsieur, is a matter of honor."

"Next?" the clerk said in a small voice, not wanting to get involved in what was beginning to sound nasty.

"If your business was so damned pressing," the young Basque said, his black eyes darting dangerous fire up into the pale blue eyes of this recalcitrant stranger, "then you should have made your reservations in advance by the telephone. If you'd had an ounce of foresight, monsieur, we'd both be out of here by now!"

The clock click-thunk'd one of their precious minutes into eternity, and the clerk risked another timid, "Next?"

"I don't believe in the 'phone," Blond-beard informed his tormentor. "It is my professional opinion as a doctor that excessive use of this invention might lead to deafness."

"And it is my opinion, as a man of common sense, that your view is mindless quackery."

"Quackery, monsieur?"

"Mindless quackery."

"If I were not in a great hurry, I would treat you to the thrashing you deserve!"

"You thrash me? You, a fat northern slug, thrash me, a pure-blooded Basque of the race that kicked Roland's behind for him? Ridiculous."

"I will remind you that I am considerably bigger than you, monsieur."

"Larger, yes. Bigger, never!"

"Next?"

"Monsieur, I don't mind telling you that— But no. I can't waste more time listening to your infantile Gascon rodomontade." And the doctor turned to the desk and began arranging for tickets to Biarritz.

"Gascon?" the young man muttered, stunned that anyone could mistake a Basque for a Gascon. "Gascon? I'll teach you to call me—" But he smothered his outrage (albeit with Herculean effort) because he owed it to his family's honor to get home to Cambo-les-Bains as quickly as possible. And arguing with this uncivil, stubborn, mound-of-meat of an opinionated, thick-headed northern quack would only delay him and— Ah, at last!

The blond doctor brushed past him on his way out to the elevator, and the young man stepped up to the flinching clerk, slapped his money on the counter, snatched up the envelope containing his tickets, and ran out of the office.

"Wait!" he shouted.

But the doctor pushed the button for the ground floor, and the elevator slid down through its ornate wrought-iron cage into the darkness below, its occupant smiling in nasty victory.

"Bastard!" the young man muttered. He threw his overcoat over his shoulder and rushed down the marble staircase that spiraled around the cage within which the elevator descended so slowly that he beat it to the floor below, where he pushed the call button, then continued his flying descent.

There! Now Dr. Blondbeard de la Sassymouth would have to open the inner accordion door and the outer wrought-iron door, then close them again and push his 'ground floor' button again to continue his descent. Our Basque knew this routine well because there was a newly installed Otis 'safety' elevator in the newspaper office where he occasionally sold scraps of drama criticism, and the journalists could never resist playing childish elevator tricks on one another.

As he continued his spiral dream, two old gentlemen flattened themselves against the wall to make room. On the next floor, he again pushed the elevator button in passing—ha!—and he plunged on down, his feet a blur, his overcoat flying behind him. Halfway down the last flight, a scrubwoman heard his clattering approach and fled downward, and he nearly came to grief over the bucket and brush she left behind, as he heel-slipped down half a dozen wet stairs, barely managing to keep his balance. As he charged into the entrance foyer, his brains a-reel, he heard the scrubwoman say something most unladylike, but he slammed the front doors open and broke out onto the pavement, where footsteps of passersby were revealed in an inch of fresh snow.

Oh, no! The cab wasn't where he had left it. Damn the perfidious cabby who had promised to wait until he—

Oh... there it is.

It had moved down towards the head of the rank, which had shortened to just two cabs with the departure of the infuriating slowpokes who had been ahead of him in the queue. He ran through the whirling snowflakes towards the glow of the cab's side lamp. "Cabby!" Then he reduced his voice to a hoarse croak, so as not to disturb his sister, who had finally fallen asleep in the cab after a terrible night of worry about the foolhardy actions of their irresponsible brother back home in Cambo-les-Bains. "I'll double the fare if you get me to the station in time for the seven-twenty."

He jumped in as the driver took a long swig from his flask, applied the whip to the dozing horse, and they lurched off. The young man carefully spread his overcoat over the curled-up form of his sister on the far side of the cab; then he twisted around to catch a last glimpse of the Lafitte-Caillard travel office through the isinglass rear window, and he was gratified to see the doctor burst out through the double doors, stumbling and skidding, and rush towards the last remaining cab in the rank.

Serves him right!

The cabby threaded through the snarled and snarling traffic at breakneck speed, exchanging with offended drivers those dire threats that satisfy the Frenchman's yearning to be manfully aggressive without actually risking physical confrontation. Fearful that the jolting and pitching of the cab might rob his sister of her much-needed rest, the young man reached into the darkness, put his arm around her, and drew her firmly against his side. She murmured a vague, drowsy, nestling sound, then her eyes fluttered open and she looked up—

They both screamed.... Although he managed to lower the end of his scream into a more manly baritone.

"Get out of this cab!" she commanded, recoiling into the farthest corner.

"But, mademoiselle—"

"Get out immediately! Out. Out! Out!"

"But we're in the middle of traffic."

"Get out or I'll scream."

"You are screaming."

"If you think that was screaming, wait until you hear this!" She opened her mouth, threw back her head, and drew a deep breath.

But she didn't scream, so baffled was she by his question: "What happened to my sister?"

"...Your what?"

"My sister! I thought you were my sister, but you're not."

"Thank God."

The cab lurched around a corner made treacherous by slush, and the two passengers were thrown against one another.

"Oh no you don't," she warned. "None of that."

"I assure you, mademoiselle, that I had no intention of—"

"Stop this cab."

"I can't."

"You can't?"

"Won't, then."

"Oh, you won't, won't you? We'll see about that!" She reached up to rap against the roof and attract the driver's attention, but he forced her back into her seat and firmly held her there by her wrists.

"Release me, you... brigand! You... you... white slaver!"

"I assure you, mademoiselle, that I—"

"Stop assuring me of things and let me out of this cab!"

"I will not! This cab will continue at full speed to the Gare d'Austerlitz. It's a matter of life and death!"

She suddenly stopped struggling and stared at him in deepest suspicion. "The Gare d'Austerlitz? But... but I'm going to the Gare d'Austerlitz."

"Yes, and there's nothing you can do about it, so you might as well accept it. But as soon as we arrive I'll jump out, and the cabby can bring you wherever you want to go."

"Let go of me."

"What?"

"You're holding my hands."

"Wha—? Oh yes, of course. Sorry."

"How did you know I was going to the Gare d'Austerlitz?"

"I didn't know." He pressed his palm to his head. "This is turning into the worse night of my life."

Giving him an oblique glance that searched for signs of insanity, she was silent for a moment before asking, "What made you choose me as your kidnap victim?"

"Kidnap vic—? Oh, for the love of— Listen. I thought you were my sister. What I mean is, I thought this was my cab. They all look alike, after all. And if it had been my cab, then you'd have been my sister. It isn't and you aren't, but that's not my fault. If it's anyone's fault, it's the fault of that ill-mannered oaf."

"...I see. Ah... what ill-mannered oaf was that?" she asked, keeping her tone light and conversational, because she thought it would be best to humor him until she could find an opportunity to get away.

"The ill-mannered, stubborn, pompous oaf in front of me in the queue! If he'd had the common decency to let me pick up my tickets, I wouldn't have been late, and I wouldn't have had to rush, and I wouldn't have jumped into the wrong cab, and I wouldn't be explaining all this to you now."

"I... see..."

"If only he'd ordered his tickets in advance, like I did. But no. No, no, no. The superstitious boob doesn't realize that we're on the eve of the Twentieth Century. Do you know what he told me?"

"Ah... no. No, I don't. What did he tell you?"

"He said that using the 'phone would make you deaf. And he calls himself a doctor."

"My brother!"

"What?"

"That was my brother! He's a doctor."

"He's also an ill-mannered, stubborn, pompous—"

"I was waiting for him while he went to get our tickets."

"My sister was waiting for me."

"I must have dropped off. I've been so worried that I haven't slept properly for two nights."

"Neither has my—"

"Now I see what happened. You've made a terrible mistake."

"I told you it was a mistake, but you wouldn't listen."

"Why should I listen to a self-avowed brute and brigand?"

He blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

"Oh, no, it's too late to beg my pardon. We have to decide calmly and intelligently what to—"

"Oh, my god! My sister is in the clutches of that pompous, stubborn, imbecile of a—"

"My brother may be stubborn—even pompous upon occasion—but at least your sister won't be obliged to defend herself against unwanted advances."

"Advances?"

"When I woke up, you were holding me in your arms. Do you deny it?"

"I was merely protecting you."

"From what? Brutish brigands?"

"The cab was lurching through the traffic. I didn't want your sleep to be disturbed."

"So you protected me by making sure that when I woke, I'd find myself in the arms of a strange man? A very strange man."

"Look, I am sorry if I upset you, but I haven't got time to chant my apologies all evening long. Listen, mademoiselle. Your brother is following us. I saw him jump into what I now realize was my cab, and no doubt he— Ohmygod, he's got my sister! And they're sure to arrive at the station too late to catch the train! I'm going to make it only by the closest of shaves, if at all. My sister's going to be furious. But at least your brother will be able to take care of you. All you have to do is wait at the cab rank for him."

"Where will you be?"

"On the train, of course. I absolutely must get to Cambo-les-Bains by noon tomorrow to stop my poor dunderhead of a brother from falling into the clutches of a calculating temptress. A dreadful error that would destroy his future, leave him heartbroken and— But there's no time to explain. When you see my sister, tell her what happened, and tell her to return to my flat and await news from me. She'll be all alone there, I'm afraid. She knows no one in Paris. But that can't be helped. Will you do me that favor?"

"In return for all the favors you've lavished on me? Like kidnapping me, for instance? And stealing my brother's cab? And crushing my hands in your brutish grasp?"

"I'm sorry if I hurt you."

"You didn't hurt me. I'm much too strong for that."

"Then what's all this about crushing you in my brutish grasp?"

"Just a—a sort of metaphor."

"Metaphor? That wasn't a metaphor; it was a barefaced lie."

"Well, maybe it— So what? Who are you to decide what is a metaphor and what is not? Do you think you're the only one who has to save someone from making a dreadful mistake that will ruin her future?"

"Wh—? Surely that's a non sequitur."

"And I suppose that's even worse than a metaphor? Don't you realize that my brother and I were going to Cambo-les-Bains, too?"

He squeezed his eyes shut. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm telling you that the 'calculating temptress' you're intending to save your brother from is my poor love-sick sister! And the heartless cad who's trying to trick my sister into a foolish marriage is your guileful, brutish brigand of a brother. It would appear that brutish brigandry runs in your family!"

"My brother is no brigand."

"And my sister is certainly no temptress."

"Well, I intend to make sure she doesn't get her 'poor love-sick' hooks into my brother!"

"And I mean to save her from the clutches of your 'poor dunderhead' of a brother!"

"Good!"

"Very good indeed!"

They withdrew into their separate comers and stared furiously out their respective windows. She absentmindedly drew his coat over her knees against the cold draughts that flowed in through the rattling window; then, suddenly realizing what she was wrapping around herself, she pushed the despised rag from her and let it slide onto the floor.

Snow melting from the top of the cab rippled over the panes, causing soft slabs of buttery gaslight from shop windows to alternate with harsh rectangles of cold, white, electric light from the newly installed street lamps. The young man took mental note of this lighting effect. He might use it in his directions to a set designer some day. He pulled out his watch, fumbled in his waistcoat pocket for a matchbox, struck a light, and groaned. "I'll never make it!" he muttered miserably.

"Serves you right," she said.

He despised the mean-minded sort of people who say, 'Serves you right'. By the light of the match, he saw her face for the first time, and her intelligent, somewhat haughty eyes returned his frank examination, but their color was a fascinating— Ouch! He dropped the match onto his coat, which he then snatched up and slapped until he was sure it was not burning.

"I see you take your frustration out on inanimate things as well," she said.

He lit another match, and now he could see the terrible danger facing his brother. If the sister also had that creamy complexion and those violet-blue eyes... his poor brother!

The match went out, and they experienced a moment of blindness until their eyes dilated again to the darkness of the cab, which swayed and jolted around a corner onto the Pont Sully that crossed the river at the upstream tip of the Ile St. Louis. The harsh glare of the bridge's new electric street lamps played over them in rhythmic succession, then, with a lurching turn to the left, they were following the Left Bank quay towards the Gare d'Austerlitz.

As the driver was making a daring pass, the fiacre's wheel got caught in the track of the horse-drawn omnibus line, jouncing the passengers into one another's arms. They immediately recoiled into their corners, whence they regarded one another with ruffled indignation and no small amount of suspicion.

After a brooding silence, she spoke, her voice flat with icy determination. "I've decided to go with you."

"What?"

"I don't trust you to prevent this preposterous marriage. My sister is a child. Barely eighteen."

"My brother's only two years older."

"That's evidently old enough to lure an innocent girl into marriage in the hope of getting at her dowry."

"If anyone's guilty of setting traps, it certainly isn't my brother. He doesn't need your sister's paltry dowry. He owns a flourishing establishment in Cambo."

"I daren't think what kind of establishment."

"A hotel, if you must know. One of Cambo's best. It was my father's and my grandfather's before him. But my father died, and it was obvious that my talents ran more to the literary than the commercial, so we agreed that the hotel should be my brother's. He runs it with my mother."

"Your mother's in on this too, is she?"

"Now just a minute!"

"I'm going to Cambo, and that's final! I don't trust any of your wild clan of Basque brigands."

"I take offence at your— How did you know we're Basque?"

"Everyone in Cambo is Basque—except for the poor patients who go to take the waters and end up being tricked into marriage. Then too, there's the matter of your eyes."

"My eyes?"

"Yes, your eyes. Those notorious 'melting brown' Basque eyes that feature in so many cheap romantic novels."

"I know nothing of romantic novels."

"But my sister does. She devours them. And that's why I'm going to Cambo-les-Bains with you."

"Oh, you are, are you?"

"Yes, I am."

"How?"

"How?"

"Do you have a ticket?"

"Of course I have a— Well... no, actually. My brother has our tickets."

"Ah! Then how do you propose to get on the train?"

"Well, I'll just have to— Wait a minute. You have a ticket! For your sister."

"O-o-oh, no, you don't!"

"Oh, yes, I shall! And if you don't let me use her ticket, I'll follow you onto the platform, and I'll cry and sob and accuse you of... of running off with some tart and deserting me and our children! Our seven children."

"You wouldn't dare."

She lifted her chin and regarded him coolly.

And he had the sinking realization that his adversary was not inhibited by the slightest sense of fair play.

"I'd do anything to save my sister from the fate worse than death: a bad marriage."

As though to punctuate this declaration, the carriage lurched to a stop, bringing them once again into a contact that had a brief physical—but only physical—resemblance to an embrace. The cab door was snatched open, and light from an ox-eye lantern flashed in their faces. "Train for Hendaye?" the porter asked. "You'd better hurry, m'sieur-'dame. They're closing the gates to the platform now."

The young man sprang out onto the pavement beside the impressive mass of the Gare d'Austerlitz. She descended, pointedly ignoring his proffered hand, as the porter seized two valises (the young woman's and her brother's) from the box of the cab and hastened into the station. They followed him to the turnstile, where the young man fumbled for the tickets for an eternal ten seconds before he found them in the first pocket he had checked. They slipped through the gates as they were closing, and they ran for all they were worth. She soon fell behind with a little cry of dismay, and he swore under his breath but he grasped her hand and drew her along behind him at a speed that not only cost her the last semblance of grace but even endangered her balance as they sped down the platform to where their porter stood beside the portable steps at the door of their car, making frantic signs for them to hasten. As they passed the dining car, the young woman glimpsed faces looking out upon their hectic race with expressions of unfeigned amusement blended with... something else, something that she would not identify until later, when recognition would make a tingle of embarrassment and outrage rush up the back of her neck into her hair.

With all the flair of gesture and oiliness of manner that mark the veteran tip-seeker, the steward showed them to their chambrette, deposited their valises in the racks, and turned up the gaslamp that displayed the 'new art' Guimard impulse to create foliage out of glass and metal. After the coin had been pressed into his hand and he had glanced down upon it with a thoroughly Gallic blend of resignation and disdain, the steward said that service in the dining car would begin in fifteen minutes, and he would make up their beds while they were dining. As he put his hand on the door handle to leave, he winked at the young man and tipped his head towards the young woman with a lift of the eyebrows.

She caught this yeasty, man-to-man communication in the mirror as she was taking off her Trilby fedora, and she spun around. Raising one hand to stay the steward's departure, she asked the young man, "Did you tip him?"

"Well... ah... yes, of course."

"Give me that tip," she ordered the steward.

The steward recoiled and stammered, "But, mam'selle, but... but..."

"Give it to me!" She held out her hand, and with a grimace of genuinely heartfelt pain, the steward turned his hand over and let the coin drop into her palm.

"Now get out of here! And if we push one of those buttons for a steward, you'd better not be the one who comes tapping at the door. Do you understand me?"

"But, mam'selle, I..."

"And what makes you so sure I'm a mademoiselle?"

"I'm terribly sorry, madame. I thought—"

"That's a lie. You've never had a thought in your life—other than filthy ones! Out. Out!"

The steward vanished, closing the door behind him with a thoroughly miffed click, followed by a defiant snap of his fingers, a dental mutter of outrage, an incensed extension of his neck, a petulant out thrust of his lower lip, and a disdainful flare of his nostrils, which catalogue of manly outrage he displayed only after he was sure he was safe from her.

"You were pretty hard on him," the young man said, not without a certain astonished respect.

"And you were pretty compliant. What did you think his little wink meant?"

"Oh, he didn't mean anything. Not really. That's just how men are."

"Exactly!"

"Well... after all..."

"What?"

"Well, what should he think? You're young and attractive... in your way... and you're not wearing a wedding ring. And then there's the matter of your—"

"What makes you think I'm not wearing a wedding ring? I haven't taken my gloves off yet."

"No, but naturally I assumed... Are you? Married, I mean?"

"As it happens I am not. And then there's the matter of my... what?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"After that twaddle about my wedding ring, you said, 'And then there's the matter of your...' My what?"

"Well, your dress, to be frank."

"And what about my dress?"

"I will not be cross-questioned in that imperious tone."

"You shall! What about my dress?"

"Well, it's very... ah... modern."

"Modern?"

"Short, then. It's short. Short!"

"My dress comes to exactly three inches from the ground. I refuse to obey the dictates of fashion that oblige a woman to drag her dresses in the mud—and much worse than mud—just to assure men that her reputation is sufficiently unassailable to make her worthy of their attentions... attentions that are, of course, designed to urge her to do something that will damage her reputation."

"I wouldn't dream of denying any woman her right to wear what she wants to wear. But if a woman shows three inches of ankle to every passerby, then she must accept—"

"I accept nothing! And it's not three inches of ankle. It's three inches of tightly buttoned shoe."

"Ah, so you say. But when you stepped down from the cab, there was a bit of leg visible above the shoe."

"An inch or two of stocking. Of thick, black stocking."

"Are you sure it's not a blue stocking? And are you sure it's a stocking, and not a bloomer?"

"Oh, so you have something against bluestockings and against the courageous Miss Bloomer?"

"I am a thoroughly modern man, and if I had my way, every woman would be as liberated as the bluest of the bluestockings, and God bless them all. But you can't blame the majority of men for—"

"I certainly can blame them. And I do! And as for you... Ha!"

"Ha?"

"You claim to be a modern man. And yet, even while rushing to save your brother from the clutches of the sweetest, gentlest little romantic fool in the world, you took time to notice exactly how many inches of ankle I revealed while alighting from the cab. How like a man! Men like you are the reason I became an actress."

He blinked and pressed his hand to his chest. "I am the reason you became—?"

"I'd rather not discuss it further." She turned away from him and looked fixedly out at the horizontal blur of snow streaking across the patch of gaslight. She focused back to the surface of the window and saw his reflected face, his eyes looking at her with intensity.

"Well? What is it?" she asked the window.

"Are you really an actress?"

"Does that seem so impossible?"

"No, but... I'm in theater myself. I'm a playwright. And also," he added with a dismissive shrug, "an occasional critic for newspapers."

"Critic, eh? I might have known."

"Meaning?"

"That I might have known."

"Where have you worked? Perhaps I have seen you. I may even have reviewed you."

"I am with André Antoine's Théâtre Libre," she said with pride.

"Oh," he said with a falling note. "Strindberg, Zola, Ibsen, all that lot. Plays of 'social significance.' " There was a shudder in his voice.

"You disapprove of social drama? Or is it significance that frightens you?"

"I disapprove of the phony realism. Of the way the actors mutter and scratch themselves and turn their backs on the audience. That's every bit as affected in its way as the most smoke-cured of the hams rolling their 'r's' and tearing a scene to tatters with their bare teeth. What have you appeared in?"

"Oh... lots of things."

"Such as?"

"Well, I was in Hedda Gabler, for one. And A Doll's House. And Thérèse Raquin."

"I saw the Théâtre Libre production of Hedda Gabler. In fact, I wrote a review of it. But I don't remember you."

"I didn't say I played a major role in Hedda."

"Even in a supporting role, I'd remember that splendid mane of cupric hair, and that sassy uptilted nose."

"Well, my part was... well, actually, the director wanted me to concentrate on the internal aspects of my character. On what was seething beneath the surface so powerfully that to express it in words would be redundant."

"I see. You're saying you didn't have any lines."

"I'm saying that I played an intensely sensitive young serving girl who was aware of the family's innermost suffering. I reflected my sensitivity and awareness to the audience, and I believe they felt my.... ah... my..."

"I see. Have you had any speaking parts?"

"Well... no. Not as such. I'm still learning my craft. It's my first season with André."

"Great heavens! Your brilliant career with 'André' is barely off the ground, and yet you're willing to let it slump while you run off to the Pyrenees to save your poor consumptive sister from the fate you claim is worse than the fate worse than death."

"I find your snide comments neither amusing nor illuminating. I can see why you chose to become a critic."

"I write reviews only to broaden my knowledge of theater... and to earn a bit of money. As I told you, I am a playwright."

"Oh? And what have you written?"

"Oh... dozens of things."

"Such as?"

"Well... for instance, I permitted the Gaieté Theatre to perform one of my pieces just last month."

"The Gaieté? But they do nothing but low farces."

"I'm not ashamed to admit that my play was a farce. A tightly written, uproariously funny farce, as a matter of fact."

"And you have the cheek to turn your nose up at social realism. You who offer nothing but asinine romps, improbable coincidences, mistaken identity, and trite screen-scenes featuring wayward husbands caught hiding from avenging wives, all this crammed into three frantic acts of babble and confusion!"

"That shows how much you know! My play was only one act!"

"Ah, so you write one-act curtain warmers to get idiot audiences in the mood for the real farces that will follow. And you dare to sneer at plays that deal with human suffering and social issues and the criminal oppression of women! Humph!"

"Actually, nobody really says humph. It's just a literary convention."

"Well, I say humph. Especially when I'm talking to writers of trivial..." She frowned. "My sister is not consumptive. What on earth gave you that idea?"

"Er-r-r-r," he struggled to catch up with this lurch of subject. "Oh, I see where you are. Well, I deduced that your sister had weak lungs because the waters of Cambo-les-Bains are famous for improving two conditions: consumption and what are euphemistically called 'Woman's Problems'. Since this latter tends to befall mostly women of 'a certain age' with little to occupy their overactive imaginations, I naturally assumed that—"

"That would be Aunt Adelaide."

"...Aunt Adelaide?"

"My father's sister. She came to look after him after our mother died. But lately she's become a little... none of your business. Sophie accompanied Aunt Adelaide to the spa for a course of the waters to treat her... ailments."

"Sophie being your sister?"

"Aren't you listening? My father could hardly let his silly sister go down there all alone. She's an even greater romantic than our Sophie. You know, I'll bet anything that Aunt Adelaide is in on this plot of your brother's to snatch poor Sophie from her family. I'm starving."

"Er-r-r-r." That lurch again. "Ah! Well, the steward said that they—"

"Don't mention that insinuating, low-minded worm to me."

"All right, but the Unmentionable Invertebrate said that they would begin serving in fifteen minutes, and that was..." he fished out his watch and snapped it open "...twenty minutes ago. I assume you'd rather not dine with a crass purveyor of trivial farces, so I'll await your return before—"

"Nonsense. We'll dine together."

He was surprised... but oddly pleased. "So, I guess I'm not all that bad after all."

"Your badness has nothing to do with it. I have no money."

"Oh."

"Shall we go?"

"Ah... by all means."

They were conducted to a table at the far end of the 'American' dining car, which obliged them to walk a gauntlet of frank curiosity mixed with—something else. She called up a mental snapshot of these very faces peering out at them as they dashed frantically for the train, and suddenly she recognized what this something else was: complicity. Benevolent complicity! As we foretold it would, a tingle of embarrassment rushed up the back of her neck into her hair at the realization that these romantic busybodies took it for granted that they were eloping lovers rushing off to their honeymoon. Probably leaving irate parents and jilted fiancés in their madcap wake. Oh, the humiliation of it! Actress that she was, it was not having an audience that she minded, it was the absurdity of her role in this vulgar farce.

Man that he was, he had noticed nothing.

She sat in rigid dignity, her lips compressed, her attention riveted on the menu, but painfully conscious of smiles, whispers, and nudges out on the defocused edges of her peripheral vision. She looked up to see him nod politely at two smiling women sitting at the table opposite, beaming at them. Sisters, obviously; unmarried, probably; and nosy without a doubt. His social smile dissolved under her disapproving frown. "What's wrong?"

She leaned forward towards him and smiled an actress's smile: all in the lips and cheeks, nothing in the eyes. "Don't you realize that everyone is looking at us?" she asked in a honeyed whisper, though there was asperity in her tone.

He looked around. "Why, yes, now you mention it. They seem a friendly enough lot. The old gentleman down there just waved and winked at me."

"If you wink back," she whispered sweetly, "I'll kick your shin so hard that you'll limp the rest of your life." She smiled and patted his hand.

"I don't understand."

"I believe that. They think..." she beckoned him with her finger, and he leaned over the table towards her. "They think we're newlyweds."

"But that's ridiculous!"

"Keep your voice down."

"But why should they think—? I mean, what right do they have to imagine that I'd—"

"Keep your voice down!" she rasped. "The last thing I want is for them to think we're having a lovers' quarrel. That would be meat and drink to them."

He looked again over at the two maiden sisters. The plumper one pursed her lips and shook her head in a gesture that said: naughty, naughty (but adorable) children.

"Ohmygod," he muttered.

"Exactly," she said.

"Well, you need have no fear for your reputation, mademoiselle. I'll see to it that it suffers no harm."

"My reputation is no concern of yours. I'm perfectly capable of defending it myself."

"Perhaps so, but you will have our chambrette to yourself. I'll spend the night sitting up in the smoking car. Staring out the window... alone... cold."

"You'll do nothing of the kind! You—" She controlled the intensity of her voice and forced herself to smile on him as she whispered, "You will not feed their gossip with the choice morsel that we've had a spat and I've made you spend our wedding night sitting up in the smoking car. You will spend the night sitting up in our chambrette, staring out the window, if you wish, cold perhaps, alone certainly, while I shall be sleeping not a meter away, totally undisturbed by and totally indifferent to your presence. And now, dearest husband, I believe I am ready to order."

"I've lost my appetite," he said petulantly.

"You will, nevertheless, order a full meal. And you will eat every crumb of it. I'll not have these people thinking that we are rushing through dinner so that we can— That we're rushing through dinner."

The waiter's smarmy solicitude extended to placing a bud vase on their table: a single white rose of chastity, soon, presumably, to be dutifully surrendered. She acknowledged the vase with a dry, "How very kind," uttered without unclenching her teeth.

They were halfway through their soup (large bowls only half full, in consideration of the swaying car) when, after a brooding silence, he spoke out in midthought. "It's not as though I were unaware of—or indifferent to—the social injustices that women face every day. Quite the contrary. It's just that... Oh, forget it." He shrugged.

"It's just that... what?" she wondered.

"Well, if you must know, I don't believe that heavy-handed 'social drama' does any good. It may rub the audience's nose in their flaws and failings but it doesn't solve anything. For one thing, social drama preaches only to the ladies of the altar society, and—"

"The ladies of the altar society?"

"That was a figure of speech."

"I hate figures of speech."

He stared at her. "How can anyone harbor a general antipathy against figures of speech?"

"Nothing easier. I've done it all my life. What's all this about the ladies of the altar society?"

"The only people willing to sit in the gloomy Théâtre Libre and let themselves be bludgeoned by great chunks of 'message' are those who already agree with those messages. If you want to persuade the indifferent masses, you've got to put your message into a form that most people enjoy."

"Like your farces, I suppose?"

"Exactly. Now in my last farce—"

"...A mere one-act curtain opener..."

"...In my last farce, I ridiculed the men who consider lonely, unappreciated wives in search of love and understanding to be 'fallen women', while husbands out on the town are thought of as gay blades and sly old rogues."

"Well... maybe." Hm-m, perhaps there was more to this fellow than a handsome face, and that thick curly hair, and those liquid Basque eyes, and that mouth with its upward—"But I'll bet anything that your women are transparent stereotypes, as in all farces: the Domineering Wife; the Pert, Desirable Soubrette; the Volcanic, Seething Femme Fatale; the Innocent, Empry-Headed Ingenue; the Flapping, Fluttering—"

"It's true that playwrights use stock characters to—"

"Don't you try to wriggle out of it by claiming they're just figures of speech!"

"Figures of speech?"

"All right, all right! So I've never grasped just what figures of speech are. Is that a crime? Is it a disgrace not to know the difference between a metaphor and a hyperbole and an anagram and a litotes and a—?"

"An anagram is not a figure of speech."

"Thank God something isn't."

"Sh-h-h. They'll think were having our first quarrel." He smiled.

"You think this is all very funny, don't you."

"I think it's good material for a farce. A social farce, of course. A farce of Impelling Social Significance. I could have a character like you: charming, determined, fiery, spouting all your suffragette stuff. While the dignified, understanding, oddly attractive playwright looks calmly into her flashing eyes and—"

"...My suffragette stuff?"

"Well, you know what I mean."

She was prevented from telling him that she did not know what he meant, and didn't care to learn, when the waiter came to replace the soup tureen with a large platter of steamed oysters, for it was almost New Years, the traditional season for oysters.

He applied himself with dexterity to liberating the delicious molluscs from their shells, but after the first three, he suddenly realized she was not eating.

"What's wrong? I thought you were hungry."

"I'm famished. I haven't had a decent meal since we received that telegram from Sophie, announcing her intention to marry the brother of an ink slinger who churns out low farces."

"Well, if you're so hungry, why aren't you eating?" He leaned forward and smiled into her eyes as he whispered in his most 'new-husbandly' voice, "You wouldn't want people to think you can't eat because you're all fluttery with anticipation, would you?" He pumped his eyebrows.

Her eyes hardened and she whispered, "I am not eating because one cannot eat oysters with one's gloves on."

"In that case," he said in a caressing tone, but separating his words carefully as though speaking to the village idiot, "why don't you take your gloves off?"

She laid her hand over his and smiled up into his eyes. "I don't take them off because..." she pinched that particularly excruciating spot on the back of the hand known only to girls who have had to learn to avenge the teasing of older brothers "...because, stupid, I'm not wearing a wedding ring. And if there's anything I'd find more repellent than these people thinking I'm your wife, it would be their thinking I'm your mistress." She hissed this last word as she twisted the pinch, hard.

"Ai-i-i!" He snatched his hand from beneath hers and rubbed the back of it, mute accusation in his wounded eyes. "So it's the old she-can't-take-off-her-glove-because-she-isn't-wearing-a-ring problem, is it? All right, I'll show you what a clever farce writer can do. Hm-m-m." His focus seemed to turn inward as he ransacked his imagination for a ploy that would—ah!

"Take off your gloves," he said.

"But, I—"

"Please just do as I say. Take off your gloves."

Reluctantly, she drew off first her right glove, then the revealing left.

"Now just follow my lead," he whispered; then aloud, he said, "Goodness gracious me! Where is your ring, darling?"

Her eyes narrowed. "If this is some vicious stunt meant to embarrass me..." She lifted her forefinger and pointed at his heart.

All around them, ears that had been straining in their direction since they sat down (and particularly since his heartfelt 'ai-i-i!') now fairly vibrated, as bodies leaned towards them, although no one was so obvious as to actually turn and look.

"I told you, darling heart," he continued aloud, "that Grandma's ring was too large for your dainty finger. But, impatient little imp that you are, you couldn't wait until I had the jeweller... ah... smallen it, could you?" He wrinkled his nose at her as he picked her gloves up from the table.

"Smallen it?" she echoed, promising herself she would pay him back for that 'impatient little imp' business. And as for his nose wrinkling...

"Now what am I going to tell Mother? She'll be heartbroken to learn that Granny's ring has been— Well, I'll be hornswaggled!" He was pinching the ring finger of her left glove. "Here it is! It slipped off with your glove. You silly billy, you."

"Silly billy?"

He 'milked' the nonexistent ring down the finger of the glove, then he reached inside and pinched the air between his thumb and forefinger and stuffed the bit of captured nothing into his watch pocket, which he patted protectively. "And there it stays, snookums, until I have a chance to... uh... smallify it. Hubby knows best," he said, wagging his finger at her, and he could almost feel the silent applause of the entire dining car. She, with her actress's instinct, was even more aware of the silent applause than he... and she hated it. And as for that wagging finger...!

He slipped back into their now-habitual undertone. "Be honest and admit that I have the gift of invention necessary to be a successful playwright."

"If all it takes are the instincts and tactics of a confidence trickster, then maybe so."

"I've given myself three years to make it in Parisian theater."

"It might take longer than that with lines like 'I'll be hornswaggled!' And if you don't 'make it' in three years? What then?"

"Well, in that case, I'll... I don't know. It's risky to consider failure. It puts dangerous ideas into the mind of the goddess of Fortune. What about you? How long have you given yourself to make it as an interpreter of terribly, terribly significant social dramas?"

"As long as it takes."

"There's the girl! Now, to build up your strength for the long climb towards fame, riches, and social impact, perhaps you'd better start on those oysters."

No longer burdened with gloves, she dug in with undisguised gusto; but now it was he who seemed suddenly to lose his appetite.

"What's wrong?" she asked, manipulating her oyster fork with address.

"These oysters make me think about my sister."

"A pearl of a girl, is she? Or sort of slimy? Or all steamed up over your leaving her behind?"

"She adores oysters. And she hasn't eaten a thing since we received my brother's telegram telling us that he had succumbed to the wiles of... well, that he had fallen totally and eternally in love with your Sophie, and intended to marry her immediately, whether or not the family approved. Here it is, after eight, and my sister can't even go to a restaurant. I am carrying our traveling money, naturally."

"Naturally? Why is it 'natural' for men to carry the money? But I wouldn't worry about your sister." She finished her fourth oyster and fell upon the fifth. "I'll bet that at this very minute she's sitting across from my brother, demolishing a platter of oysters. Dieudonné would surely—"

"Dieudonné?"

"Don't bother, I've heard them all. Dieudonné would surely have insisted that your poor abandoned sister join him for dinner. My brother always does the correct thing. He is the perfect embodiment of all things conventional—even down to conventional standards of kindness and compassion... so long as it's towards 'the right people'."

"You sound as though you don't like your bother."

"Oh, I love him, of course. But, no, I don't like him very much."

"That's exactly how I feel about my sister!"

"Who's probably right now sitting across from him at a fashionable restaurant (he patronizes only fashionable restaurants and dumps them as soon as their popularity begins to pale). I can see him sitting there, looking around to see who's looking at him as he regales your sister with details of the punishments he intends to wreck on you tomorrow, when the next train brings him to Cambo-les-Bains. And your sister is probably demurely dabbing her oyster-stained fingertips with her napkin and trying to defend you."

"That shows what you know. She'd be the last person in the world to defend me. Ever since she came to 'visit' me in Paris, totally uninvited, she's been making my life a hell."

"Good girl."

"She spends all day squandering her share of the family inheritance on clothes, then all night complaining to me about my failure to introduce her to any 'nice' people. ...What do you mean, 'good girl'?"

"Then why don't you?"

"Why don't I what?"

"Introduce her to 'nice' people."

"I don't know any 'nice' people!"

"I believe that."

The waiter replaced the depleted platter of oysters with poulet Marengo for her and a wine-rich daube for him. As she began eating with artless zest, she asked, "So your sister's a snob, is she? Well, she and my brother should hit it off famously. He would like nothing better than to limit his patients to the fashionable gratin of Paris. The two of them could rise through the ranks of polite society, advancing side by side from dull dinner parties with 'correct' people, to even duller dinners with 'important' people—great lavish feeds in which each course costs enough to keep an Armenian village from starvation for a week, and there's at least one liveried servant for every guest with his snout in the golden trough, and— What are you doing?"

"I'm just scratching down a note or two. I have a pretty good memory for dialogue, but you rattle on at a terrifying rate. Still, if I can capture your basic energy and melody, I can flesh you out later."

"I'm not sure I want you fleshing me out. I have all the flesh I—stop writing and eat your stew. It'll get cold." But he continued scribbling.

People at neighboring tables would have given anything for a peek at what the bridegroom was writing in that little notebook of his. A love message, I'll wager. Something he'd be embarrassed to have us overhear. Oh, the young, the young! Well, at least he's eating his stew now. It would have been a shame to let it get cold, just as she told him. She's the sensible one. She'll wear the trousers in that house, you mark my words.

She looked off into space, her eyes defocused, a temporarily forgotten piece of chicken balanced on her fork. Then she said half to herself, "I don't really blame her."

"Er-r-r-r... No, no, don't tell me. Let me work it out. Let's see... ah-h... you don't blame my sister for not defending me against your brother's assaults on my character? Right?"

"Wrong. It's my sister I don't blame. The poor little fluff-head is in love... however unworthy the object of her affections may be."

"Well, I don't blame my brother, either. He's a victim of the romantic traditions of our family. My greatgrandfather, my grandfather, my father—each of them fell in love at first sight, and each of them snatched up the woman who had captured his heart and carried her away—in two cases, to the shock and scandal of the village, as they had been promised elsewhere."

"And do you intend to shock and scandalize your village one of these days?"

"If my ideal, irresistible, heaven-wrought woman were to come along, family tradition would oblige me to sweep her off her feet and carry her off to be my cherished companion forever."

"And what if she didn't want to be swept off her feet? What if she'd rather retain her balance? And her dignity? And her free will. And her sense of independent worth."

"Well, it's obvious that your sister has none of those petty inhibitions against being swept off her feet."

"No, I'm afraid you're right. She's just let herself be carried along on waves of joy and rapture and..." She noticed the bit of chicken cooling at the end of her fork and ate it meditatively, watching the snow streak past the window. Then she said in a voice soft with awe, "...the Century of Woman."

He blinked, trying to close the à-propos-de-quoi? gap. But he couldn't. "All right, I give up."

"In three days we shall enter the Twentieth Century, which will be the Century of Woman."

"Ah, yes, of course. Except that the Twentieth Century doesn't begin in three days. It begins in a year and three days, on the first of January 1901."

"I've heard that, but I refuse to believe it. It may make some sort of petty mathematical sense, but poetic logic is all against it."

"There's no such thing as 'poetic logic'."

"Not for you, maybe. Just think... my daughters and granddaughters and great-granddaughters will be born in the Century of Woman. Maybe one of them will become president of France."

"Only president of France? Empress of all Europe, surely."

She nodded, accepting the additional responsibility philosophically.

"Funny, isn't it?" he said, after a short silence, during which she separated the last of her chicken from the bone with surgical finesse.

"The thought of my great-granddaughter becoming empress of Europe?"

"No, that thought is more sinister than funny. What's funny is that now that we've had time to recover from the shock of those letters announcing that my brother and your sister intended to elope, he with a scheming vixen, she with a Basque brigand, all we really want is for them to hold off for a few weeks—a sort of cooling off period. After that, if they are still determined to launch themselves into the stormy seas of matrimony, they can have a proper wedding, with your family and mine gathered to see them off on the long voyage down the stony road of life."

"I think you just launched their vessel down a stony road. Isn't that what's called a jumbled metaphor?"

"Mixed. I thought you didn't know anything about metaphors."

"It would appear that neither of us does. But, all right, I'd be willing to let them marry, if, that is, I find your brother to be worthy of my sister"

"Oh, you will, you will. He's so very... well, frankly, he's just like me."

She made a low, growling sound. Then she asked, "Aren't you going to finish your daube?"

"Hm-m? Oh, no. No, I don't think so."

She exchanged her empty plate for his half-full one. "Do you really imagine that when the snobs arrive on the next train, they'll be as solicitous and understanding as you and I are?"

"Certainly not. They'll pout and stamp and huff. But I can deal with my sister. And I have no doubt that you can manage your brother."

"That's true. So the upshot of all our panic and desperate rushing off to Cambo will be to provide you with material for a cheap farce?"

"Cheap? Not at all cheap! I envision a lavish production. A practical, lurching train interior is no cheap thing, you know. And I'll have the smell of cooking food coming into the theater through the heating vents—real Dion Boucicaut stuff—and an endless diorama canvas of countryside rolling past the windows."

"Even though it's night?"

"Uh... all right, we'll save the production costs of the diorama and just sprinkle a little water on the darkened windows and cast the occasional light over them to indicate a passing village. And the last scene? Ah, the last scene! A lavish multiple wedding. It will be spectacular. And very funny, of course."

"A multiple wedding?"

"Of course! The situation cries out for it! First to come down the aisle will be the headstrong, romantic young scapegraces who caused all the trouble in the first place. Then come the snobbish doctor brother and the social-climbing sister, who will pledge themselves to struggle upward and dullward until they achieve the highest and dullest ranks of society. (We can have some great slapstick stuff when the old eccentric they ridicule because they think he's the village idiot turns out to be the eccentric trillionaire Viscomte de Fric von Gottlot.) Then comes the touching moment (dim the lights; handkerchiefs at the ready, Ladies!) that touching moment when, inspired by the happiness of young lovers all around them, the lonely older couple (my mother and your father) decide to fill one another's autumnal years out of respect for their departed spouses. And there it is! A triple wedding with a grand— Oh-oh, wait a minute! I forgot someone."

"I was wondering when—"

"I've got to find someone for your Aunt Adelaide. Hm-m. Ah! I have a crusty old bachelor uncle, Hippolyte. The meeting and mating of your Aunt Adelaide will provide us with a comic subplot: the love-sick spinster and the quaint-but-loveable codger who by sheerest coincidence happens to—"

"That's exactly what's wrong with farce! It's all based on cheap, trumped-up coincidences."

"But coincidence is the means by which Fate influences the lives of mortals."

"No, I don't accept all that nonsense about coincidence being 'the Engine of Fate'. That's just an excuse for story weavers to use hackneyed conventions. Like the convention of the happy ending, and the old ploy of mistaken identity, and the toad that turns out to be a prince, when in life—in grim, hard, real life—the prince more often turns out to be a toad, and probably a toady as well."

"Yes, but life—even grim, hard, 'real' life—teems with coincidences. Take our meeting tonight in the cab. If that wasn't a coinci— Say, that's not bad." He took out his notebook and scribbled 'toad—toady' as the waiter took their dinner plates and waited until he had their full attention before chanting the dessert menu.

They chose crème brûlée, the waiter left, and she said, "What about our meeting?"

"You'll have to admit that our meeting involved a veritable medley of coincidences."

"I admit nothing of the sort. Given the fact that my sister and your brother sent telegrams announcing their intention to hurl themselves into an ill-considered marriage, there was nothing more natural than that you and my brother would rush to Cambo-les-Bains to make them listen to reason. No coincidence there, just the natural way of things. And, of course, you both went to the Lafitte-Caillard agency because that's where everyone makes their travel arrangements. Again, no coincidence. While you were dawdling up in the travel office, the cabs moved to the head of the line, as they always do, and all Paris fiacres are the same design and color, so it's hardly a coincidence that you, childishly miffed over an encounter with my brother and desperate to catch your train, should jump into the wrong cab. The fact that I was asleep in the corner of the cab was no coincidence, either. It was the natural result of my not getting a wink of sleep last night, worrying about poor Sophie."

"That wasn't a twist on the old farce dodge of mistaken identity, eh?"

"Not in the least. And it's no coincidence that you and my brother had the train tickets, while your sister and I didn't even have money for dinner. It's a result of stupid, unjust, oppressive attitudes about what men can and ought to do and what women can't and shouldn't. No, no, there was no 'Engine of Fate' operating in our encounter. It was just the logical working out of a set of givens."

"And what about the fact that you and I are both in theater? That's no coincidence, I suppose?" He knew he had her there.

"Well-l-l, in a way it's a coincidence."

"Ah!"

"But in another way, it isn't."

"Oh."

"Consider this: Take any two people meeting anywhere in the world. Many things about their meeting will be incidentally identical—and that's not the same thing as being coincidental."

"It isn't?"

"No. For instance, they would have been walking on the same street, or else they would not have met. So that is a condition of their meeting and not a coincidence. You see what I mean?"

"Hm-m."

"Also, it's likely that both had coffee that morning, that they both glanced at the newspapers, that they were born in the same century, in the same country, and that they have similar reservations about eating live worms, or the practice of hurling oneself out of second-story windows to get the exercise of walking back up the stairs. But none of these things could properly be called coincidences."

"They couldn't, eh?"

"No. They are merely the normal, random, incidental identities that one finds in any encounter. Indeed, if there weren't even one single identity in the circumstances of their meeting, that would be a coincidence. You understand?"

"Ah-h... almost."

"I hold that the fact that we both are in theater is one of those normal, mathematically probable identities without which our meeting would have been truly coincidental, and therefore not, in itself, a coincidence at all, but indeed quite the opposite. And there you are."

He looked at her levelly for a long moment. "Did you go to a Jesuit school, by any chance?"

"Girls are not admitted into Jesuit schools. Yet another instance of mindless prejudice."

"So, if I understand correctly, you're saying that if I were to write a play based on the circumstances of our meeting, I couldn't be accused of relying on cheap, unlikely coincidences, am I right?"

She frowned. Wait a minute, hadn't she been arguing the opposite way? And somehow twisting everything until... Hm-m.

He smiled. "I considered ending the play with a quintuple wedding including the playwright character and the actress character."

"Oh?"

"But, of course, that would be ridiculous."

"Yes, of course.... Why?"

"Five marriages at once might seem a bit much. Then too, the playwright and the actress are what we dramaturges call 'the agents'—and they couldn't possibly get married."

"No, of course not.... Why not?"

"Well, for one thing, it would be too predictable. The audience would see it coming the minute he jumps into her cab. Then too, there are the medical and religious implications."

"Medical—?"

"—and religious. When their brothers and sisters marry, they'll be brother-in-law and sister-in-law twice over. And when their parents marry, they'll also be stepbrother and stepsister. The Bible frowns on unions of that sort. And the biologists warn us against them pretty sternly. But whether or not I decide to marry them off isn't my greatest problem."

"It isn't?"

"No, no. My greatest problem will be finding a cast. The role of the young playwright doesn't present insurmountable problems. It could be played by any clever, charming, intelligent, reasonably good-looking actor—provided he has a quick wit and a winning personality. But a young woman who goes around wearing short dresses and agitating for social change and chucking stewards out of compartments and jumping onto trains with strange men and threatening that her granddaughter will one day rule Europe—it won't be easy to find an actress who can pull all that off, and still be charming and lovely and desirable and winning and bright and entertaining and—well, all the qualities that I admire in—in this character I've invented. No, I'll have to search long and hard for an actress who can do the role justice. This is no job for a beginner. I'll need an actress with a long list of successes to her cred— Ai-i-i!"

She nearly twisted the skin off the back of his hand. After which totally unjustified but infinitely gratifying assault, she left her hand on the table, the tips of her fingers accidentally brushing the backs of his. They were not holding hands. No one could say they were in any way holding hands. No. It was just that her hand was resting on the table near his because... well, it had to rest somewhere, didn't it? He was intensely aware of her soft touch, and he didn't dare move his hand even a fraction of an inch lest she suddenly realize that their hands were in contact and withdraw hers. In fact, he needn't have worried.

The waiter brought their desserts, and she began to eat hers slowly, her thoughts turned softly inward. He could not eat his, because it was his right hand she had accidentally rendered immobile, and he would rather have died than move it.

"Aren't you going to eat your dessert?" she asked.

"I don't seem to have any appetite." This was a lie; he was seething with appetite, but not for food.

"Well... if you're sure." She took his crème brûlée, and his heart was lifted by the symbolic significance of it all, as he watched her finish his last spoonful. Then they both spoke at once.

"By the way, what's—?"

"May I ask—?"

"I'm sorry, what were you—?"

"No, you first."

"Well, I was just wondered what your name was."

"I was going to ask you the same thing," she said.

"Now, surely that's a coincidence."

"Not at all."

This tale borrows a narrative device from a story by Robert W. Chambers that appeared in the bound European version of New Harper's Monthly Magazine, August, 1903 (Volume CVII, no. DCXXXIX). I gratefully acknowledge my debt to Mr Chambers, and I should be delighted to hear from his descendants.

THE APPLE TREE

The Widow Etcheverrigaray took great comfort and pride from the splendid apple tree that grew on the boundary of her property, just beyond the plot of leeks that every year were the best in all the village; and her neighbor and lifelong rival, Madame Utuburu, drew no less gratification from the magnificent apple tree near the patch of piments that made her the envy of all growers of that sharp little green pepper. Unfortunately for the tranquillity of our village, we are not speaking of two trees here, but of one: a tree that grew exactly on the boundary between the two women's land and was, by both law and tradition, their shared property. It was inevitable that the apples from this tree should lead to dispute, for such has been the melancholy role of that disruptive fruit since the Garden of Eden.

As all the world knows, neither pettiness nor greed have any place in the Basque character, so one must look elsewhere for the cause of the Battle of the Apple Tree that became part of our village's folklore. The explanation lies in the bitter rivalry the two woman cultivated and nourished for most of their lives. When young, one of them had been accounted the most beautiful girl in our village, while the other was considered the most graceful and charming—although in later years no one could remember which had been which, and, sadly, no evidence of these qualities remained to prompt the memory. As mischievous Fate would have it, both the young women fancied that handsome rogue, Zabala, who was not yet called Zabala-One-Leg, for he was still to commit the unknown (but doubtless carnal) offence for which the righteous God the Father punished him by taking one of his legs in the Great War, while His benevolent Son, Jesus, revealed His mercy by leaving him the other to hobble along on. All the village knew that the young women admired Zabala because neither of them would deign to dance with him at fêtes, and both would turn their faces away and sniff when the cheeky rascal addressed a word to them, or a wink. If further proof of their attraction were needed, both village belles were heard to vow upon their chastity that they would not marry that flirting, two-faced scamp of a Zabala if he were the last man in Xiberoa. They would become nuns first. They would become prostitutes first! They would become Protestants first! (Of course, nobody believed they would go so far as that.)

Now, being every bit as crafty as He is good, God knows how to punish us, not only by withholding our wishes, but by granting them. In this case, He chose to cut with the back of His blade. He willed that neither of the young women would have Zabala, for he went from the village to punish Kaiser William, who was at that time raping nuns and spitting Belgian babies on his bayonet, the enlistment posters informed us. Zabala returned three years later, without one leg, but with such worldly sophistication that he could no longer remember the Basque word for many things and used the French instead. He bragged about the wonderful places he had seen and the many sinful and delicious things he had done, but he was astonished to learn that in his absence both the women had married simple shepherds far beneath their expectations, that both their weddings had occurred within two months of the exciting and heady fête that marks the harvest of the hillside fern, and that both women had born babies after only seven months of gestation. Short first pregnancies do not occasion criticism in our valley, for it is widely known that the good Lord often makes first pregnancies mercifully brief as His reward to the girl for having preserved her chastity until marriage. Subsequent pregnancies, however, usually run their full terms, which only makes sense, as the very fact that they are not first pregnancies means that the mother was not chaste at the moment of conception. Is it not marvelous how one finds justice and balance in everything? Yet further proof of God's hand in our daily lives.

Over the years, the shepherd Etcheverrigaray slowly increased his flock until he was able to buy a small house on the edge of the village with an overgrown garden that his wife tamed and tended until it was the pride of the village and, it goes without saying, also the envy. But the husband fell into the habit of spending time he ought to have given to the care of his sheep in the café/bar of our mayor, squandering his money on so many small glasses of wine that, after he died suddenly of no disease other than God's will, his widow would have had a hard time making ends meet but for the productive garden she had enriched over the years with her sweat and her loving care.

As for Madame Utuburu's husband, he was plagued by something worse than drink: he was unlucky. And there is an old Basque saying that teaches us: Unlucky indeed is he who is burdened with bad luck. If there was a thunderstorm in the mountains, you could bet that some of Utuburu's sheep would be struck by lightening. If, upon rare occasions, his ewes had a fruitful season, the price of wool was sure to drop. Nor was the village very sympathetic with his misfortunes, for it is well known that bad luck is the lash with which the Lord chastises those who have sinned, however cleverly and clandestinely. And there was another thing: when the price of wool fell for Utuburu, it fell for everybody—even for us, the lucky and the innocent.

You can imagine how surprised we all were when we learned that Utuburu-the-Unlucky was to receive an unexpected inheritance from a distant uncle. But the Lord's subtle ways were revealed when, staggering home after celebrating the only bit of good fortune in his life, Utuburu fell into the river and drowned.

With what was left of the inheritance after grasping lawyers had gorged on it, Madame Utuburu bought the small house next to the Widow Etcheverrigaray's, and there she eked out a modest annuity by toiling morning and evening in her garden, which became either the best or the second-best garden in the village, depending on whether one measured a garden by the quality of its leeks or that of its piments.

Thus it was that ironic Fate brought the two rivals to live and grow old side by side on the edge of the village, each with no husband, and each with only one son to absorb her love and color her expectations.

The Widow Etcheverrigaray's son soon revealed himself to be a clever and hard-working scholar, first at the village infant school, then in middle school at Mauléon, later at the lycée at Bayonne, and finally at university in Paris. With every advance in his education, he moved farther and farther from his village, so in proportion as his mother had ever greater reason to be proud of him, she had ever fewer opportunities to show him off to her less fortunate neighbor. At first he wrote short letters that the village priest read to Widow Etcheverrigaray over and over until she had them by heart, then she would share them with the women beating their laundry clean at the village lavoir, her eyes scanning the paper back and forth as she recited from memory. And once her son sent a thick book full of tiny print with his name on the cover, which the priest told us was proof that he had written it: every word, from one end to the other. The book said such clever things about tropical agriculture that not even our priest could read it for long without nodding off. Eventually, the son gained a very important position in some Brazil or other, and the village never saw him again.

As for Madame Utuburu's boy, the best that can be said of his educational performance is that the damage he did to school property during his brief stay was not nearly so great as some have claimed. His native gifts lay in another direction: he developed into the most powerful and crafty jai-alai player our village ever produced—and this is saying something, for it was our village that gave the world the fabled Andoni Elissalde, he who crushed all comers from 1873 to 1881, when a blow of the ball to his head made him an Innocent: one so beloved of God that he was no longer tormented by doubts or led astray by curiosity. After young Utuburu made his reputation with our communal team, he went on to play for Bayonne, where he was selected for the team that toured Spain and South America, humbling all before them and making every cheek in Xiberoa glow with pride. Thus, as the lad became more and more famous in that noblest of sports, he played ever farther and farther away from our village and from his proud mother, who nevertheless saved newspapers with pictures of him and words of praise. She saved the whole page, lest she cut out the wrong part because, like her neighbor, she was not exposed to the threats to simple faith that an ability to read entails. While touring South America the son was offered vast fortunes to play in some Argentina or other. Twice he sent photographs of himself in action, and once he sent a magnificent cushion of multicolored silk with a beautiful (if rather immodest) woman painted on it and the words 'Greetings from Buenos Aires'. On the back, in a rainbow of embroidery, was the word 'Madre', which the priest said referred either to Madame Utuburu or to the Virgin Mary, in either case a good thought. After this gesture of prodigal generosity, the son was heard of no more.

In the normal course of things, the two widows would have lived out their years lavishing on their gardens the care and affection their husbands no longer needed and their children no longer wanted, going frequently to early morning mass in their black shawls, certain that their piety would not go unrewarded, and little by little slipping from the notice of the village, as old women should. But such was not the destiny of Widow Etcheverrigaray and Madame Utuburu, for the ever-increasing rivalry between them kept them much in the eye and on the tongues of the women of our village. At first this rivalry was manifested in looking over the stone wall at the other woman's garden and murmuring little words of condolence and of encouragement for next year. Over the years, these drops of sweetened acid matured into fragments of praise or sympathy that each woman would express in the course of her morning marketing rounds. Madame Utuburu constantly lauded her neighbor as a saint for having put up with that slovenly drunk of a husband. But of course, if the old sot hadn't been drunk when first they met he would never have— Ah, but why bring that up now, after all these years?

And Widow Etcheverrigaray often let escape heartfelt sighs over her neighbor's misfortune in having a husband cursed with bad luck. The poor man had been unlucky in everything, most of all in having to live with a woman who... but enough! He was dead now, and suffering yet greater punishment!... if that is possible.

If there was anything that made Madame Utuburu's mouth pucker with contempt, it was the way some people brought a stupid old book along with them to the lavoir every Tuesday, and looked at it and fondled it and sighed over it until others were forced to ask about it out of politeness, only to be drowned in a flood of nonsense about the brains and brilliance of some four-eyed weakling who couldn't catch a pelote in a chistera to save his life, and who never even had the decency to send his poor mother a little something for New Year's! She who had stayed awake nights trying to save the scrawny runt's life when he was sick... which was pretty often!

And if there was one thing in this world that made Widow Etcheverrigaray's eyes roll with exasperation, it was the way some people forever lugged about a dusty old cushion, shoving it under your nose until you were forced to ask what on earth it was. Then they would dump a cartload of drivel on you about the strength and speed of some ignorant brute of a wood-for-brains who lacked even the common politeness to send his mother a little gift on her saint's day. She who had carried the oversized beast under her heart for nine months!.... Well, seven.

Seasons flowed into years. A paved road penetrated our valley, and soon the wireless was inflicting Paris voices on our ears, and planting Paris values and desires in the hearts of our young people. There is a sage old Basque saying that goes: As youth fades away, one grows older. And thus it was with the two women. Stealthily at first, then with a frightening rush, what had seemed to be an inexhaustible pile of tomorrows became a vague little tangle of yesterdays. But still they toiled in their gardens to produce the finest, or second-finest, vegetables in our village, and still they honed and refined their rivalry, urged on in no small part by their neighbors, who were amused by the endless sniping until our peace was shattered by the Battle of the Apple Tree. The tree in question was very old and gnarled, but it never failed to produce an abundant crop of that crisp, succulent fruit with specks of red in the meat that used to be called Blood-of-Christ apples. One never sees a Blood-of-Christ apple anymore, but they are still remembered with pleasure by old men who never tire of telling the young that everything modern is inferior to how things were back in their day: the village fêtes, the weather, the behavior of children.... Even the apples, for the love of God!

Because the tree stood exactly on the boundary between their gardens (indeed, the wall separating them touched the tree on both sides and was buckled by its growth), they had always shared the apples, each picking only from branches that overhung her property. To avoid appearing so petty as pointedly to ignore the presence of the other, they picked on different days, although it could be a tooth-grinding nuisance to have planned for weeks to harvest on a certain morning, only to look out one's window and see that hog of a neighbor picking on that very day! Not to mention the fact that young Zabala would surely have asked one to marry him if someone else had not always been throwing herself at him in the most scandalous way!

The fate of the apples on the disputable branches running along the boundary wall was a source of tension each year. Neither woman would run the risk of picking apples that did not indisputably overhang her own property lest she give the other a chance to brand her a thief at the lavoir so they were obliged to wait until God, disguised as the Force of Gravity, settled the matter at the end of the season, causing the apples to drop on one side or the other of the dividing wall. There were years when the Devil, disguised as a Strong Wind, stirred up strife by causing most of the debatable apples to fall into one garden. And every year a heart-rending number of apples fell onto the wall itself, only to rot away slowly on that rocky no-man's-land under the mournful gaze of the women, both of whom muttered bitterly over the shameful waste caused by that back-biting, gossiping old— May God forgive her.

Even if mankind cannot.

Now, the baker from Licq who drove his van from village to village, sounding his horn to bring out the customers, had a sharp eye for profit, like all those coin-biting Licquois. He knew that everyone liked the rare Blood-of-Christ apples and would be willing to buy some... at a just price, of course. Aware of the competition between the two widows, the baker was careful to offer each of them a chance to make a little extra money. After much hard and narrow negotiating, he arranged to buy five baskets of apples from each.

Early the next morning, Widow Etcheverrigaray went out to her tree carrying five baskets that she intended to fill before—what's this?! Madame Utuburu was on the other side of the stone wall, filling her baskets with the fine, plump fruit. Under normal circumstances, the widow would never pick at the same time as her greedy neighbor, but as the baker was coming that afternoon to collect his apples, without a word she set grimly to her task. It was not long before she realized that she was unlikely to fill all five baskets, for this year the apples, while especially large and beautiful, were less abundant than usual (thus does God, in His eternal justice, give with one hand while taking with the other). Indeed, when she had picked all the apples from the branches indisputably overhanging her garden, Widow Etcheverrigaray found that she had filled only four baskets. And even this had required a most liberal definition of the term 'full' as applied to baskets of apples. A covert glance over the wall revealed that Madame Utuburu was in precisely the same state: her branches stripped and still an empty basket left. And her idea of a 'full' basket was obviously one that was not totally empty! At this moment, Widow Etcheverrigaray was shocked to see her neighbor lean over the wall and squint down it, estimating whether some of the branches along the no-man's-land between them might, upon reconsideration, be judged to be on her side of the wall. The widow's eyes grew round with indignant disbelief! This covetous old greedy-gut of an Utuburu was actually contemplating breaking the unspoken truce that had permitted them to share the apple tree! She stepped forward to forestall her neighbor's iniquity by picking the apples that might just as well be judged to be on her side of the disputable branch. "So!" hissed Madame Utuburu to herself. "This grasping hussy of an Etcheverrigaray wants to play that way, does she? We'll see about that!" And she vigorously set herself to harvesting the apples that were erstwhile dubious but had now become clearly her own by right of self-defense—to say nothing of revenge.

They were furiously picking on opposite sides of the same branch, when Madame Utuburu happened to tug it towards her just as her rival was reaching for an apple! "What?" muttered Widow Etcheverrigaray between her teeth. "Well, two can play at that game! And one even better than the other!" And she boldly grasped the branch and steadied it while she picked frantically with her free hand. "God-be-my-witness!" snarled Madame Utuburu. "Is this shameless strumpet prepared to rip the branches off the tree to satisfy her greed?" And she jerked the branch back to her side, dragging the unprepared widow halfway over the stone wall. "Ai-i-i!" screamed the widow. "So the brazen harlot wants to play rough, does she?" And she was reaching out to wrench the branch back to her side when Madame Utuburu, having picked the last apple, released it, and it sprang back, striking the ample bosom of the astonished widow, who staggered and ended up sitting with a squish in the middle of her prized leeks. There was no time to allow her fury to seethe and ripen, or to communicate her indignation to the villagers who had begun to gather along the road to watch the fun, for her neighbor was already picking at a moot branch on the far side of the tree. Grunting to her feet and slapping the mud from the back of her skirt, Widow Etcheverrigaray returned to the fray determined to punish this outrage. Crying out every vilification that years of rivalry had stored up in their fertile imaginations, they clawed at apples and ripped them from the branch, all the while decorating one another's reputations with those biologically explicit calumnies for which the Basque language might have been specifically designed, were it not universally known that it was invented in heaven for use by the angels. There was a moment when, as each of them reached for the same apple, their hands touched, and each cried out and recoiled as though defiled by the contact. Still fuming over the way Madame Utuburu had underhandedly released the branch, Widow Etcheverrigaray decided to repay the insult in kind. She set all her weight against the branch, bending it back to her side so that when Madame Utuburu reached out for the fruit, she could let it go, and it would snap back and give—

—the branch broke, and the widow found herself sitting once again in her leek bed, the hoots and jeers of the spectators flushing her cheeks with rage and embarrassment. She sat there snarling descriptions of Madame Utuburu's character, ancestry, practices, and aspirations, while that thoroughly slandered woman, finding her last basket still not filled and the branch bearing the remaining apples broken off and lying out of reach in her neighbor's garden, lifted her palms to heaven and called upon God to witness this plunder! This larceny! This piracy! And she hastily crossed herself and begged Mother Mary to put her hands over the ears of the baby Jesus, that He might not be offended by the obscenities gushing from the foul mouth of this scurrilous, vulgar, low-born Etcheverrigaray!

Which description impelled the widow to make a gesture.

Which gesture obliged Madame Utuburu to throw a lump of mud.

Which assault forced half a dozen villagers to rush up from the road to prevent bodily damage from spoiling the innocent pleasure of their entertainment.

In the final accounting of the Battle of the Apple Tree, it was the Widow Etcheverrigaray who was able—just—to fill her baskets from the last of the apples, while Madame Utuburu had to bargain long and hard before the tight-fisted Licquois baker accepted her scantier baskets with much sighing and many martyred groans and predictions that his children would die in the poorhouse. But many villagers judged Madame Utuburu the victor for, after all, it wasn't she who had twice had her broad bottom dumped into her leeks.

For the next few weeks, every time the women in the marketplace asked about the battle (which they did with wide-eyed innocence and cooing tones of compassion), Madame Utuburu threatened to bring legal action against the vicious vandal who had damaged her tree! And Widow Etcheverrigaray made public her suspicions concerning what her neighbor had offered the baker to make up for her missing apples; although, in the widow's opinion, that commodity had been worth little enough when it was young and fresh and would now be accepted by the baker only if he were attempting to shorten his time in purgatory by mortifying his flesh.

During the next year, they fought out their rivalry on the battlefield of their gardens, each working from dawn to dark to produce vegetables that were the pride of the village and the despair of other gardeners. The work in the open air kept their bodies strong and flexible, and the praise of passersby kept their spirits alive, particularly if this praise could be interpreted as a slighting comparison to the other woman's crop.

Then, one cold, wet, autumn day, Zabala-One-Leg died. Not of anything in particular; he simply ran out of life, as all of us eventually must. Zabala had no family, but he was of the village, so we all went to his burial and stood in the rain while the priest took the opportunity to promise us that death was the inevitable portion of each and every one of us, so we had better start preparing for it, and particularly certain people he could name, but he wouldn't mar this solemn occasion with accusations... however just! Everybody left the cemetery, the women to home and work, the men to the café/bar of our mayor to have a little glass in memory of Zabala. ...Perhaps two.

Only Madame Utuburu and Widow Etcheverrigaray remained in the churchyard, standing in the rain on opposite sides of the scar of fresh earth, their eyes lowered to the rosaries they held between work-gnarled fingers. For an hour they stood there. Two hours. Although their shawls became sodden with rain, and they had to clench their teeth to keep them from chattering, neither was willing to be the first to leave, for to do so would be to relinquish the role of chief mourner and admit that the other had the most reason for grief.

Their thick, black skirts became too heavy with damp to stir in the wind that began to drive the rain diagonally across the grave, but still neither would leave the field in the possession of one for whom that handsome rogue of a Zabala had never cared a snap of his fingers. To do so would be an insult to his memory. ...To say nothing of his taste!

In the end, the priest came trotting out from his house beside the church, sleepy-eyed and grumbling about being torn from his meditation by a couple of stubborn old women. He stood at the head of the grave, the wind tugging at his big black umbrella, and angrily ordered them to come away with him. At once! As it is rash to disobey the messenger of God, especially when one is standing so conveniently in a graveyard, they allowed him to shepherd them home, but only after each had made a brief attempt to lag slightly behind. They walked home, one on each side of the priest, each with one shoulder protected by the umbrella while the other shoulder was drenched by rain running from its rim. Without a word, they left the priest at the bottom of their gardens and trudged up their paths, each to her own house.

The next morning dawned with that cold, brittle sunlight that signals the end of autumn, and Madame Utuburu knew it would soon be time to harvest the apples, which had been plentiful this year, but small and not as sweet as usual. (Is not God's even-handed justice everywhere revealed?) As she worked putting up jars of piperade, she glanced from time to time out her kitchen window to see if that greedy Etcheverrigaray was already stripping the tree. But the widow did not leave her house all day, and Madame Utuburu wondered what sort of game the old hag was playing. Oh-h, wait a minute! Was she pretending to be too stricken with grief to attend to garden chores? Was this her sly way of implying that she had the greatest reason to mourn young Zabala, who had never cared a fig for her? What an underhanded trick!

After mass the next morning, the priest asked Madame Utuburu why her neighbor had not attended service, and she replied that she was sure she didn't know. Perhaps she had given up going to mass, realizing that although God's mercy is infinite, it might not be infinite enough to save certain people who are forever parading their pretended grief! The same kind of people who always go about carrying thick books written by spindly legged sons who are so feeble they couldn't throw a pelote against a fronton! No, not if the child Jesus Himself begged him for a game! The priest shook his head and sighed, sorry he had asked.

That afternoon Madame Utuburu looked up from mulching her garden against the coming winter to see the priest plodding dutifully up the widow's path. He was inside no more than two minutes before he came out, a leaden frown on his brow. When Madame Utuburu called over the wall, asking what old Etcheverrigaray was playing at, the priest picked his way across to her, holding his skirts up so as not to muddy them. "Your neighbor has been summoned to judgment," he said in that ripe tremolo one associates with calls for funds to reroof the church.

Madame Utuburu could not believe it! That healthy old horse of an Etcheverrigaray? She who was strong enough to rip a branch off another person's apple tree? It couldn't be!

"No doubt her bone marrow caught a fever from standing in the rain at poor Zabala's burial," the priest said. "I found her sitting in her kitchen, her feet in a bucket of water that had gone cold."

The priest went off to make the usual arrangements, and soon four women of the village came down the road wearing hastily-put-on black dresses; their heads bowed, their palms pressed together before them, their tread slow, but each radiating a tremor of restrained excitement at being part of the great events of Life and Death. They turned into the Widow Etcheverrigaray's to wash, dress, and lay out the body, first opening the bedroom window to let her soul fly up to heaven. Then the First Mourner—who merited this privileged title because, as the oldest of the watchers, she was probably 'next in line', though this was never mentioned aloud—went out back to announce the death to the chickens, so they wouldn't stop laying. In other parts of the Basque country, the custom is to go to the Departed One's beehives and whisper that their keeper has died, so that sudden grief will not cause the bees to swarm and abandon their hives. No one in our village keeps bees, so we tell the chickens instead, and it must work, because none of them have every swarmed and abandoned their roosts.

Back in Widow's Etcheverrigaray's kitchen the mourners sat gossiping in felted voices, thrilling one another with pious reminders that any one of them might be called unexpectedly to God, so they had better be ready with clean souls. ...And clean underwear.

The First Mourner suggested that they invite Madame Utuburu to watch with them. After all, the two women had been neighbors for more years than boys have naughty thoughts. But the Second Mourner wondered if it might not offend the Departed One to allow her lifelong rival to nose about in a kitchen she hadn't had time to clean. After some deliberation, it was decided that they would tidy up carefully, then invite Madame Utuburu to join the wake.

Stiff and very, very proper, Madame Utuburu sat in her neighbor's kitchen for the first time in her life. Awkward silences were followed by spurts of forced conversation that collapsed into broken phrases, then faded into feeble nods and hums of accord. None of the mourners wanted to praise the widow in the presence of her rival, and no one dared to gossip about her in the presence of her spirit, so what was there to talk about? Finally, to everyone's relief, Madame Utuburu rose to go, but the First Mourner urged her to follow the ancient tradition and take some little trifle from the house as a memento of the Departed One. At first she declined, but finally—more to get away without further embarrassment than anything else—she allowed herself to be prevailed upon. After she left there was a long moment of silence, then a gush of repressed talk burst from all the Watchers' lips at once. Why on earth had she chosen that as a memento?

The whole village came to see the widow off to her reward. Only after standing beside the grave for a respectable amount of time, shivering in a wind that carried the smell of mountain snow on it, did we begin to drift away, the women to their kitchens, the men to the mayor's café/bar to take a little glass as they discussed the priest's warning that every hour of life wounds, and the last kills. ...All right, maybe two glasses.

Madame Utuburu had not intended to linger beside the grave; it was simply that she didn't notice the departure of the others. Fully an hour passed before she lifted her eyes and, with a slight gasp of surprise, realized that she was alone. Alone. With nothing to mark the passage of her days. No one to prompt her to greater efforts at gardening and greater praise from the village. No little victories to warm her throat with flushes of pride, no little defeats to sting her ears with flushes of shame. Nothing left to talk about but her expensive, beautiful, hand-embroidered silk cushion from Buenos Aires.

Winter descended from the mountains, and when its task of purifying the earth with cold was accomplished, retreated slowly back up the slopes, allowing spring to soften the ground and melt-water to fill the rushing Uhaitz-handia with waves that danced beneath the earth-colored foam. This was the season when Madame Utuburu usually set out her piments under cloches to get a month's headstart on the rest of the village, but somehow she did not feel up to it. What was the point? She had no husband to feed, no son to praise her spicy piperade, and now no neighbor to vex with her superior crop. Maybe she wouldn't bother with the piments this year. Indeed, the task of planting a garden at all seemed terribly heavy and unrewarding.

She began to—I must not say 'to understand', for she never submitted the matter to the processes of reasoning. She began to sense that her rival had been... not something to live for, but maybe something to live against: a daily grievance, an object of envy, a reason to get up each morning, if only to see what villainy she had been up to.

Down at the lavoir, a woman brushed a lock of hair from her forehead with the back of her soapy hand and commented that three wash days had passed without Madame Utuburu showing up. Her neighbor at the next scrubbing stone set aside the paddle with which she had beaten her laundry clean and said that perhaps a couple of them should go down to the edge of the village and see if anything untowards had befallen. After all, she's no longer young and— But look! Here she comes!

And indeed, she was approaching the lavoir with a stately tread, her few scraps of dirty laundry tied into a bundle in one hand, while in the other she carried her famous cushion from Buenos Aires, and there was something balanced on top of it.

Oh no, it can't be!

But it was. The Book. And the women were obliged to listen while Madame Utuburu divided her praises between her own son's remarkable strength and the Etcheverrigaray boy's phenomenal brilliance.

And in this way Madame Utuburu kept the Widow Etcheverrigaray alive for several years longer. And herself, too.

HOT NIGHT IN THE CITY II

There were only three passengers on the last bus from downtown: a woman, a man, and a bum. The young woman sat close up behind the driver because she instinctively trusted men in uniform, even bus drivers. She clutched her handbag to her lap, pressed her knees together, and fixed her gaze on the nippled rubber floormat to avoid making eye contact with the old drunk who sat across from her, smelling of pee and BO and waking up with a moist snort each time the bus hit a pot hole or lurched to miss one. The slim young man sitting alone at the back of the bus had been unable to sleep because of the heat and a relentless gnawing in the pit of his stomach. After squirming for hours, he had left the flophouse and deposited his bindle in a bus station locker so he could wander the streets unencumbered.

An oppressive heat wave had been sapping the city for over a week. Not until after midnight was it cool enough for people to go out and stroll the streets for a breath of air. In the stifling tenements that separated air-conditioned downtown from the breezy suburbs, kids were allowed to sleep out on fire escapes, sprawled on sofa cushions. On the brownstone stoops down below, women in loose cotton house dresses gossiped drowsily while men in damp undershirts sucked beers. At the beginning of the heat wave, people had complained about the weather to total strangers with a grumpy comradeship of shared distress, like during wars or floods or hurricanes. But once the city's brick and steel had absorbed all the heat it could hold and began to exhale its stored-up warmth into the night, the public mood turned sullen and resentful.

The bus crawled through tenement streets that were strangely dark because people left the lights off to keep their apartments cooler, and many streetlights had been broken by bands of kids made miserable and mutinous by the heat. But the interior of the bus was brightly lit, and it made the young woman feel odd to be moving through dark streets with everyone looking at her from out there in the dark. All the bus windows were open to combat the heat, but the breeze was so laden with soot that it was gritty between her teeth, so she reached up to close her window, but it was stuck and she couldn't, so she turned her head away. She saw a familiar advertising placard in the arch of the roof that assured her that she could improve her chances of success by 25%, 50%, 75%... Even More!... by learning shorthand. Money Back If Not Totally Delighted! Don't Wait! Start on the Road to Success Today! The placard showed a handsome boss smiling on an efficient, pretty woman with an open notebook. That would be her, one of these days.

She reached up and tugged the slack cord, and a deformed ding brought the bus to a lurching stop. As she thanked the driver and stepped down from the front of the bus, the young man slipped out through the back accordion doors. With a swirl of dust and litter, the bus drove off, carrying the snorting drunk into the night.

She walked towards the only unbroken streetlight on the block, tottering a little because she was unaccustomed to high heels. When her ankle buckled, she looked back at the sidewalk with an irritated, accusing frown, as though she had tripped over something. That was when she noticed him.

It occurred to the young man that she might think he was following her, and the last thing he wanted was to frighten her, so he put his hands in his pockets and began to whistle to show that he wasn't trying to sneak up on anybody or anything. It was the theme from The Third Man, a film she had seen one afternoon when she'd gone into a second-run movie house to get out of the rain. She hadn't liked it all that much, particularly the sad ending where this Italian actress just walked right on past Joseph Cotton, who loved her. She knew that people thought films with sad endings were more 'artistic' than those with happy endings, but she went to the movies to shake off the blues, and she wanted them to make her feel good.

The young man stopped whistling when it occurred to him that she probably listened to the eerie tales of The Whistler on the radio, so the last thing that would put her at ease would be some man whistling in a dark street. She gave him a real surprise when she reached the streetlight and turned on him. "You better not try anything!" Her voice was reedy with tension. "This is an Italian neighborhood!"

He held up his palms in surrender. "Whoa there, ma'am," he said in a moist, toothless voice, like that western sidekick, Gabby Hayes. "You ain't got no just cause to go chucking a whole passel of I-talians at me." But she didn't find that funny. The streetlight directly overhead turned his eyes into gashes of shadow beneath vivid brows; only the tips of his lashes shone, mascara'd with light, as he smiled and said in his stammering Jimmy Stewart voice, "Look, I'm... I'm just terribly sorry if I frightened you, Miss. But I want you to know that I wasn't following you. Well, yes, yes, I was following you, I suppose. But not on purpose! I was just, sort of, well... walking along. Lost in daydreams. Just... just lost in daydreams, that's what I was. Look, why don't I just... just... turn around and go the other way? It's all the same to me, 'cause I'm not going anywhere special. I'm just... you know... sort of drifting along through life."

She still didn't smile, although it was a pretty good Jimmy Stewart, she had to admit. She continued to stare at him, tense and angry, so he made a comic little salute and walked up the street, away from her. Then he turned back. "Excuse me, my little chickadee, but you said something that tickled my cur-i-osity." He dragged out the syllables in the nasal, whining style of W. C. Fields. They were talking across a space of perhaps ten yards, but it was well after midnight and the background growl of downtown traffic was so distant that they could speak in normal tones. "Pray tell me, m'dear. Why did you warn me that this is an I-talian neighborhood. Just what has that—as the ancient philosophers are wont to wonder—got to do with anything?" W. C. Fields tapped the ashes from his imaginary cigar and waited politely for her answer.

She cleared her throat. "Italians aren't like most city people. They have family feelings. If a woman screams, they come running and beat up whoever's bothering her."

"I see," W. C. drawled. "A most laudable custom, I'm sure. But one that would be pretty hard on a fellow unjustly accused of being a mugger, like yours truly." She smiled at the W. C. Fields, so he kept it up. "You are, I take it, a woman of I-talian lineage?"

"No. I live here because it's safer. And cheap."

He chuckled. "You've told me more than you meant to," he said in his own natural voice.

She frowned, and the steep-angled light filled her forehead wrinkles with shadow. "What do you mean?"

"You've told me that you live alone, and that you don't have much money. Now, I wonder if you'd be kind enough to tell me one other thing?"

"What's that?" she asked, still cautious, although the first spurt of adrenaline was draining away.

"Is there someplace around here where I could get a cup of coffee?"

"Well... there's a White Tower. Four blocks down and one over."

"Thanks." His eyes crinkled into a smile. "You know, this is a strange scene. I mean... really strange. Just picture it. Our heroine descends from a bus, right? She is followed by a young man, lost in vague daydreams. She suddenly turns on him and threatens to Italian him to death. Surprised, bewildered, dumbfounded, nonplussed, and just plain scared, he decides to flee. But curiosity (that notorious cat killer) obliges him to stop, and they chat, separated by yards of sidewalk that he hopes will make her feel safe. While they're talking, he notices how the overhead street lamp glows in her hair and drapes over her shoulders like a shawl of light. ...A shawl of light. But her eyes... her eyes are lost in shadow, so he can't tell what she's thinking, what she feels. The young man asks directions to a coffee shop, which she obligingly gives him. Now comes the tricky bit of the scene. Does he dare to invite her to have a cup of coffee with him? They could sit in the Whitest of all possible Towers and while away a few hours of this stifling hot night, talking about... well, whatever they want to talk about. Life, for instance, or love, or maybe—I don't know—baseball? Finally the drifter summons the courage to ask her. She hesitates. (Well, come on! What young heroine wouldn't hesitate?) He smiles his most boyish smile. (I'm afraid this is my most boyish smile.) Then the girl— Well, I'm not sure what our heroine would do. What do you think she would do?"

She looked at him, mentally hefting his intent. Then she asked, "Are you an Englishman?"

He smiled at her abrupt non sequitur. "Why do you ask?"

"You sound like Englishmen in the movies."

"No, I'm not English. But then, you're not Italian. So we're even. Well... I'm even. Even-tempered, even-handed, and even given to playing with words. But you? You, you're not even. You're most definitely odd."

"What do you mean, odd?"

"Oh, come on! Accepting an invitation for coffee with a total stranger is pretty goshdarned odd, if you ask me."

"I didn't say I'd go for coffee with you."

"Not in words maybe, but... say, which way is this White Tower of yours, anyway?"

"Back the way we came."

"Four blocks down and one over, I believe you said."

They walked down the street side by side, but with plenty of space between them, and he kept up a light trickle of small talk, mostly questions about her. She liked that, because nobody was ever interested in her, in who she was, and what she thought or felt. She told him that she had been in the city only six months, that she had come from a small town upstate, and that she had a job she didn't like all that much. No, she didn't wish she'd stayed in her hometown. Oh sure, she got the blues sometimes, but not bad enough to want to go back there. At the next corner, she turned unexpectedly in the direction of the all-night coffee joint, and their shoulders touched. They both said "Sorry", and they walked on, closer now, but she was careful not to let their shoulders touch again as they approached the White Tower, a block of icy white light in the hot night.

It was pretty full, considering the late hour. The air-conditioning had attracted people driven off the street by the heat. In the booth next to theirs, a young couple fussed over three kids wearing pajamas and unlaced tennis shoes. The baby slept in the woman's arms, its mouth wetly pressed against her shoulder. The other two made slurping noises with straws stuck into glasses of pale tan crushed ice from which the last bit of cola taste had long ago been sucked. Among the refugees from the heat wave, the boy recognized several night people by the way they hunched defensively over the cups of coffee that represented their right to stay there. They were his sort of people: the flotsam that collects in all-night joints; the losers and the lost; those on the drift, and those who'd been beached; nature's predators, nature's prey.

Mugs of coffee between them, the boy and the girl talked; and when their talk waned or their thoughts wandered inward, as sometimes they did, they gazed out onto the empty street lit only by the bright splash from their window. Once she saw him examining her reflection in the glass, but when his eyes caught her looking back at him, they flinched away. She felt sure he hadn't had a real chance to see what she looked like out in the darkness and was making a quick appraisal of her reflection. She was young and slim, but she knew she was not pretty. Still, people sometimes said she had nice eyes, and when she examined them in her mirror, she found them, if not exotic or sexy, at least kind and expressive, and they were set off by long, soft lashes... her best feature. She was afraid he was going to compliment her on her eyes, and she was glad when he didn't because saying a girl has nice eyes is an admission she isn't good-looking, something like describing a person with no sense of humor as 'sincere', or saying a really dull girl is a 'good listener'. Her shoulder-length hair was curled in at the ends, forming, with her short bangs, a frame for her face. She had gone out that night in a stiff cotton frock with little bows at the shoulders, a full skirt held out by a rustling crinoline, and a matching bolero jacket... her 'June Allyson dress'.

Every major film actress had her characteristic makeup, hairdo, and wardrobe that girls imitated, each following the style of her 'favorite movie star': meaning the actress she thought she most closely resembled. For girls with too much face, there was the 'Loretta Young look'; for hard-faced girls, the 'Joan Crawford look'; for skinny-faced girls, there was Ida Lupino; for chubby-faced girls, Mitzi Gaynor or Doris Day; for very plain girls there was always Judy Garland, with her moist-eyed, hitch-in-the-voice earnestness. And for girls who weren't pretty in a showy way, there was June Allyson, who was always nice and kind and understanding, and almost always got the man, even though she wasn't all that sexy.

"That's a lovely dress," he said with gravity.

She smiled down at it. "I got all dressed up and went to the movies tonight. I don't know why. I just..." She shrugged.

"A June Allyson movie?" he asked.

"Yes. I'd been waiting to see—" Her eyes widened. "How did you know?"

He slipped into a Bela Lugosi voice. "I know many things, my dear. I have powers beyond those of your ordinary, everyday, run-of-the-mill, ready-to-wear, off-the-shelf human being."

"No, come on, really. How did you know I went to a June Allyson movie?"

He smiled. "Just a lucky guess." Then he popped back into the Lugosi voice, "Or maybe not! Maybe I was lurking outside the movie house, and I followed you onto the bus, stalking my prey!" He shifted to Lionel Barrymore, all wheezy and avuncular, "Now you just listen to me, young lady! You've got to be careful about letting bad boys pick you up and carry you off to well-lit dens, where they ply you with stimulants... like caffeine."

She laughed. "Well, you're right, anyway. I did go to a June Allyson movie. She's my favorite."

"No kidding?"

"It was Woman's World. Have you seen it?"

"Afraid not."

"Well, there's these three men who are after this swell job, but only one of them can have it. And their wives are trying to help them get it, and..."

"...and June Allyson is the nicest of the wives? A small-town girl?"

"That's right, and she— Wait a minute! You said you haven't seen it."

"Another lucky guess." Then back into the Lugosi voice. "Or was it? You must never trust bad boys, my dear. They may smile and seem harmless, but underneath...? Churning cauldrons of passion!"

She waved his nonsense away with a flapping motion of her hand: an old-fashioned, small-town, June Allyson gesture. "Why do you call yourself a bad boy?"

"I never said that," he said, suddenly severe.

"Sure, you did. You said it twice."

He stared at her for a moment... then smiled. "Did I really? Well, I guess that makes us a team. I'm the bad one, and you're the odd one. Riffraff, that's what we are. Tell you what: you be riff, and I'll be raff, okay?" Then Amos of Amos 'n' Andy said, "So elucidate me, Missus Riff. What am yo' daily occupational work like?"

She described her work at a JC Penney's where Weaver Overhead Cash Carriers zinged on wires, bringing money and sales slips up to a central nest suspended from the ceiling, and the change came zinging back down to clerks whom the company didn't trust to handle money. She worked up in the cashier's cage, making change and zinging it back down. "...but most of the stores have modernized and gotten rid of their cash carriers."

"And what if your store modernizes and gives up Mr Weaver's thingamajig—"

"Overhead Cash Carrier."

"...Overhead Cash Carrier. What happens to your job then?"

"Oh, by then I'll be a qualified secretary. I'm taking shorthand two nights a week. The Gregg Method? And I'm going to take a typing course as soon as I save up enough money. You know what they say: If you can type and take shorthand, you'll never be out of a job."

"Yeah, they just keep on saying that and saying that. Sometimes I get tired of hearing it. So, I suppose that what with your job and your shorthand classes and all, you don't get out much."

"No, not much. I don't know all that many people. ...No one, really."

"You must miss your folks."

"No."

"Not at all?"

"They're religious and awful strict. With them, everything is sin, sin, sin."

He smiled, "they do a lot of sinning, do they?"

"No, they never sin. Never. But they... I don't know how to describe it. They're always thinking about sin. Always cleansing themselves of it, or strengthening themselves to resist it. I guess you could say they spend all their time not sinning. Sort of like... well, you remember when we were walking here and I bumped into you and we touched shoulders, then we walked on, making sure not to touch again but thinking about it every step of the way? Well, with them it's sort of like that with sinning, if you know what I mean."

"I know exactly what you mean."

She suddenly had the feeling that he hadn't even noticed the moment when their shoulders touched, but he didn't want to admit it.

They fell silent for a time; then she emerged from her reverie with a quick breath and said, "What about you?"

"How do I feel about sin?"

"No, I mean, tell me about yourself and your job and all."

"Well... let's see. First off, I have to confess that I don't work in a JC Penney's, and I've never taken a shorthand course in my life. I haven't the time. I'm too busy lurking around movie houses and following girls on buses."

"No, come on! How come you talk with an English accent if you're not English?"

"It's not an English accent. It's what they call 'mid-Atlantic'. And it's totally phony. When I was a drama major in college, I—"

"You've been to college?"

"Only a couple of years. Then the Korean Police Action came along and I—" He shrugged all that away. "No, I'm not English. I just decided to change my voice because I hated it. It was so... New York. Flat, metallic, adenoidal, too little resonance, too much urgency. I wanted to sound like the actors I admired. Welles, Olivier, Maurice Evans. So I took courses in theater speech and I practiced hours and hours in my room, listening to records and imitating them. But it turned out to be a waste of time."

"No it wasn't! I like the way you talk. It's so... cultured. Sort of like Claude Rains or James Mason."

"Oh yes, my dear," he said as Claude Rains, "the phony speech eventually became habitual." He shifted to James Mason, a slightly lower note with a touch of huskiness. It was wonderful how he could sound like any actor he wanted to! "But even with a new voice, I was still the person I was trying not to be. Damned nuisance!" Then he returned to his everyday voice. "For all my correctly placed vowels and sounded terminal consonants, I was still a bad boy running away from... whatever it is we're all supposed to be running away from."

"So you left college to join the army?"

"That's right. But later they... well, they decided to let me out early."

"Why?"

He shrugged. "I guess I'm just not the soldier type. Not aggressive enough. Are you cold?" She had been sitting with her arms crossed over her breasts, holding her upper arms in her hands... the way she sometimes did when she was thinking about how small her breasts were. He reached across the table and touched her arm above the elbow. "You are cold."

"It's this air-conditioning. I don't know why they turn it up so high."

The refugees had been steadily thinning out, and now the family in the booth behind them left, the mother with the wet-mouthed baby in her arms, the father carrying one child and pulling a sleep-dazed little girl along by the hand, her untied shoes clopping on the floor. Soon the place would be empty, except for the night people.

She looked up at the clock above the counter. "Gee, it's after two. I've got work tomorrow." But she didn't rise to leave. He drew a deep sigh and stretched, and his foot touched hers beneath the table. He said, "Excuse me," and she said, "That's all right," and they both looked out the window at the empty street. She watched his eyes refocus to her reflection on the surface of the glass, and he smiled at her.

"What about you?" she asked. "Don't you have to be at work early?"

"No. I don't have what you'd call a steady job. I just drift from city to city. When I need money, I go to the public market before dawn and stand around with the rest of the drifters and winos. Job brokers come in trucks and pick out the youngest and strongest for a day's stoop labor. I almost always get picked, even though I'm not all that hefty. I give the foremen one of my boyish smiles, and they always pick me."

"It's true, you do have a boyish smile."

"And when the boyish smile doesn't work, I fall back on my 'look of intense sincerity'. That's a sure winner. Stoop labor only pays a buck or a buck ten an hour. But still, one thirteen- or fourteen-hour day gives me enough for a couple of days of freedom."

"But there's no future in that."

"What? No future? I've been tricked! They assured me that stoop labor was a sure path to riches, fame, success with the women, and a closer relationship with my personal savior. Gosh, maybe I'd better give it up and take a course in shorthand. The Gregg Method."

He meant to be amusing, but he evoked only a faint, fugitive smile. She didn't like being teased. She'd had a lot of teasing in her life.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I wasn't poking fun at you. If I was poking fun at anybody, it was myself. You are absolutely right! There's no future in stoop labor. I've got to start taking life seriously!" His eyes crinkled into a smile. "Maybe I'll start next Thursday. How would that be?"

She didn't answer for a time, then she said she really had to be getting home.

He nodded. "You want me to walk you? Or do you feel pretty safe in your Italian neighborhood?"

"What about you? Don't you have to get some sleep?"

"They won't let me in. It's too late. So I'll just roam the streets. Cities are interesting just before dawn when everything is quiet, except for the occasional distant siren announcing a fire, or a crime, or a birth—which is a sort of crime, considering the state of the world. There's something haunting about a distant siren. Like when you hear the whistle of a freight train at night, far off down in the valley, and you'd give anything in the world not to be the kind of..." He stopped speaking and his attention turned inward. He seemed to be listening to a distant freight train in his memory.

She cleared her throat softly. "Gee, it must be interesting to travel around on freight trains and see things. Lonely, I suppose. But interesting."

"Yup!" he said in Gary Cooper's lockjaw way. "Real interesting, ma'am. But real lonely, too."

She pushed her coffee mug aside. "I've really got to get some sleep." But she still didn't rise to go. "You said something about not being able to go to bed because they wouldn't let you in. Who won't let you in? Why not?"

"Obviously, you're not au fait with the protocol of your friendly neighborhood flophouse. They're all pretty much the same. You sleep in wire cages that you can lock from the inside to protect your bindle from thieves and your body from men who— They're not exactly homosexuals. Most of them would rather have a woman. Most of them fantasize about women. But..." He shrugged and glanced at her to see if this was embarrassing her. But no. She was listening with a frown of concern, trying to understand with a total absence of coyness that he admired. "The flophouse routine is simple and rigid. You aren't allowed in until ten at night, and by eleven the lights are turned off. Early in the morning, usually five-thirty or six, the alarms go off and you've got half an hour to get out before they clean the place with a fire hose, shooting it through the wire cages. The mattresses are covered with waterproof plastic so they don't get soaked, but they always feel clammy, and the place always smells of urine and Lysol. But the price is right! Four bits a night. A dime more if you want a shower. Tonight I took a long cold shower, then I lay on my cot, reading a paperback until the lights went out. But it was so hot! The plastic mattress stuck to my back and made a sort of ripping sound every time I rolled over. And the sweat was stinging my eyes. So finally I decided to get out and wander the streets. But then..." He shifted to a Peter Lorre voice, nasal and lateral with dentalized consonants. "...what should I see but June Allyson coming out of a June Allyson movie, so naturally I followed her. You think that was evil of me, don't you, Rick. You don't like me much, do you, Rick." He smiled and returned to his street voice. "And now here I am, talking to a very, very sleepy girl in an almost empty White Tower. Ain't life a gas?"

She shook her head sadly. "Gosh, what a terrible way to live. And for a person who went to college, too."

He let W. C. Fields respond, "That's the way it is out there, my little chickadee. It's not a fit life for man nor beast!"

"You must be lonely."

"Yup," he said. "Sometimes a fella gets lonelier than one of those lonely things you see out there being lonely." Then he suddenly stopped clowning around. "I guess I'm nearly as lonely as a girl who gets all dressed up on the hottest night of the year and goes out to see a movie... all alone."

"Well I... I don't know many people here. And what with my night classes and all..." She shrugged. "Gee, I've really got to get home."

"Right. Let's go."

She glanced again at the clock. "And you're going to walk around until dawn?"

"Yup."

She frowned down into her lap, and her throat mottled with a blush. "You could..." She cleared her throat. "You could stay with me if you want. Just until it gets light, I mean."

He nodded, more to himself than to her.

They stepped out of the cool White Tower into the humid heat of the street. At first, the warmth felt good on their cold skin, but it soon became heavy and sapping. They walked without speaking. By inviting him to her room, she had made a daring and desperate leap into the unknown, and now she was tense and breathless with the danger of it... and the thrill of it. 'Is this it?' she said to herself. 'Is he the one?'

He felt a thrill akin to hers, and when he smiled at her she returned an uncertain, fluttering smile that was both vulnerable and hopeful. There was something coltish in her awkward gait on those high heels, something little-girlish in the sibilant whisper of her stiff crinoline. He drew a long slow breath.

She led the way up three flights of dark, narrow stairs, both of them trying to make their bodies as light as possible because the stairs creaked and they didn't want to wake her landlady. She turned her key in the slack lock, opened the door, and made a gesture for him to go in first. After the dark of the stairwell, the room dazzled and deluded him. The streetlight under which they had first met was just beneath her window, and it cast trapezoidal distortions of the window panes up onto the ceiling, filling the room with slabs of bright light separated by patches of impenetrable shadow. His eyes had difficulty adapting to this disorienting play of dazzle and darkness because the brightness kept his irises too dilated to see into the shadows. The oilcloth cover of a small table was slathered with light, while the iron bed in the corner was bisected diagonally by the shadow of an oversized old wardrobe that consumed too much of the meager space. The only door was the one they had entered through, so he assumed the toilet must be down the hall. Actually, it was on the floor below. The room was an attic that had been converted at minimal cost, and the metal roof above the low ceiling pumped the sun's heat into the small space all day long.

"It's awful hot, I know," she whispered apologetically. Standing there with her back to the window, she was faceless within a dazzling halo of hair, while the light was so strong on his face that it burned out any expression; she wore a mask of shadow, he wore a mask of light.

"I'll open the window so we can get a little breeze," he whispered.

"You can't. It's stuck."

"Jesus."

"Sorry. Would you like a glass of water? If I run it a long time, it gets cold. Well... cool, anyway."

"Do we have to whisper?"

"No, but I..."

"But you don't want your neighbors to know you have someone up here?"

She nodded. "You see, I've never..." She swallowed noisily, and the noise of it embarrassed her.

"Yes, I would like a glass of water, thank you," he said, not whispering, but speaking very softly. He sat on the edge of the bed, sunk up to his chest in shadow.

She turned the single tap above a chipped sink and let the water overflow the glass onto her wrist until it got cool, glad to have something to do—or, more exactly, to have something to delay what they were going to do.

The harsh streetlight picked out a two-ring hot plate on the table. Its cord ran up to a dangling overhead light. The bulb had been taken out and replaced by a screw-in socket. Cooking in the room was forbidden, but she did it anyway to save money. She unplugged the hot plate and hid it when she left for work. There was an open workbook and a pad of paper beside the hot plate: the Gregg Method. These everyday objects were abstracted, caricatured, by the brittle streetlight that set their edges aglow but coated them with thick shadow. The room had a shrill, unreal quality of a bright but deserted carnival lot.

She brought him the glass of water; he thanked her and drank it down; she asked if he would like another; he said he wouldn't, thank you; she told him it wouldn't be any trouble; he said no thanks, and she stood there awkwardly.

"Hey, what's this?" he asked, holding up a glass sphere that his fingers had discovered beneath her pillow where they had been unconsciously searching for that coolness that children seek by turning pillows over and putting their cheek on them.

"That's my snowstorm."

He shook the heavy glass paperweight and held it out into the band of light across the bed to watch the snow swirl around a carrot-nosed snowman. "Your own private snowstorm. A handy thing on a hot night like this!"

"I won it at the county fair when I was a kid. I used my ride money to buy a raffle ticket, and I won third prize. I told my folks I found it at the fairground, because they're dead against raffles and bingo games and all kinds of gambling. My snowstorm's the only thing I took with me when I left home. Except my clothes, of course."

"So your snowstorm's your friend, eh? A trusted companion through the trials and tribulations of life."

"I keep it under my pillow, and sometimes at night when I'm feeling real blue I shake it and watch the snow whirl, and it makes me feel safer and more... oh, I don't know." She shrugged.

"Back to your sentry post, loyal snowstorm." He returned the paperweight to beneath her pillow and patted it into place; then he reached up, took her hands, and drew her down to sit beside him.

"Please..." she said in a thin voice. "I'm scared. I really shouldn't of... I mean, I've never..." She knew her hands were clammy with fear, and she wished they weren't.

He spoke softly. "Listen. If you want me to go, I'll just tiptoe down the stairs and slip out. Is that what you want?"

"...No, but... Couldn't we just..."

"You know what I think? I think I'd better go. You're scared, and I wouldn't want to talk you into anything you don't want to do." He rose from the bed.

"No, don't go!" Her voice was tight with the effort to speak softly.

He sat down again, but left a distance between their hips.

For a moment she didn't say anything, just sat there kneading the fingers of her left hand with her right. Then she squeezed them hard. She had come to a decision. She began speaking in a flat tone. "I was sitting at the table, like I do every night. Practicing my shorthand by the light of the street lamp because it's too hot to put on the light. And suddenly I was crying. I just felt so empty and lonely and blue! I wasn't sobbing or anything. The tears just poured out and poured out. I didn't think I had so many tears in me. I was so lonely." Her voice squeaked on the word. "I don't know a soul here in the city. Don't have any friends. Even back home, I never went on a date. My folks wouldn't let me. They said that one thing leads to another. They said boys only want one thing. And I suppose they're right."

"Yes, they are," he said sincerely.

"After a while I stopped crying." She smiled wanly. "I guess I just ran out of tears. I splashed cool water on my face and tried to work at my shorthand some more, but then I just closed the book and said no! No, I won't just sit here and mope! I'll dress up in my best and go out and find someone. Someone to talk to. Someone to care about me and hold me when I'm feeling blue."

"You decided to go out and just... let yourself be picked up?"

"I didn't think about it that way, but... Yes, I guess so."

"You wanted to make love with a total stranger?"

"No, no. Well... not exactly. You see, I've never..." She shook her head.

"Shall I tell you something? I knew you were a virgin when I first saw you. Yes, I did. You had that Good Girl look. Like June Allyson. But somehow—don't ask me how—I could tell that the good girl was looking for a bad boy to make love to her. Funny, how I could tell that, eh?"

"But you're wrong. I was just looking for someone to talk to. Someone who might care about me."

"Oh. So you didn't want to make love, is that it?"

"I don't know. Maybe I did. Sort of, anyway. I didn't think it out or anything, I just took my towel and went down to the bathroom and had a long cool bath, then I put on my good dress, and out I went. Just like that."

"...Just like that."

"I took the bus downtown, and I walked around. Boys on street corners looked at me. You know, the way they look at any woman. But none of them... I guess I'm not... I know I'm not pretty or anything..." She paused, half hoping for a contradiction. Then she went on. "They looked at me, but nobody said hello or anything, so..." She shrugged.

"So you decided to go to the movies. Woman's World."

"Yes." Her voice had a minor key fade of failure.

"But hey, wait a minute! You did meet someone! Not much of a someone, maybe. Just your common garden variety drifter. But you talked to him for hours over coffee. And now... here we are."

"Yes, here we are," she echoed. "And I'm afraid."

"Of course you're afraid. That's only natural. It isn't every day that a virgin sits in the dark with a bad boy she hardly knows." She didn't respond, so he pursued. "Even though you're a virgin. I suppose you know about how two people... love, and all?"

"Yes. Well, sort of. Girls used to giggle about it in the school locker room. They talked about how people... did it. I didn't believe them at first."

"I know just what you mean. To a kid, it seems such a silly thing to do. Putting your peeing equipment together. How could that be fun? And when you think of your own folks doing it...! It's enough to gag a maggot, as a folksy old tramp might say."

"The girls at school used to make up terrible stories about... it. Just to see me blush. I was easy to tease because I was shy, and I didn't know anything. My mother never told me anything. Once the girls played this joke on me? They gave me a folded piece of paper and asked me to write down my favorite number, then on the next line my favorite color, then my second favorite color, then—oh, I don't remember all the things; but the last question was whether I bit ice cream cones or licked them. Then they unfolded the paper and read it out loud. And there in my own handwriting I had written how many times a day my boyfriend and I did it, and what the color of his... thing... was when we started, and what color it was when we ended, and stuff like that."

"And finally, your confession that you licked it."

She nodded miserably. "I didn't go back to school for the rest of that week, I was so embarrassed. I pretended I was sick. And then I really did get sick. I mean... that's when my periods started."

"But, of course, that couldn't have had anything to do with the girls' teasing."

"Oh, I know that, but still... coming right after and all..."

"Yeah, I understand. Kids can be rotten to one another."

"That was years ago, but I still get tears in my eyes when I think about it."

"Yeah... tears of rage. I have that sometimes. The rage just wells up in me and I blub like a kid."

"You do? Really?"

"Sure. So you saw all those embarrassing things written in your own handwriting, and now you're learning to write in a different way. In shorthand."

She frowned. "That's not why I'm taking shorthand."

"Could be part of it. Psychology is a screwy business. Like me playing all sorts of roles because I don't want to be—" He shrugged. "So, you've never made love. Gee. Still, I suppose you've necked with boys. Been caressed and... you know... touched."

"No, never. I've never had a... boyfriend." She said the word in a tone of gentle awe. "Boys never found me attractive in that way." She made a dismissive half-chuckle. "Or in any other way, really. My mom used to say it was a blessing, me being plain. At least my looks wouldn't get me into trouble."

"But you've had dreams about lovemaking. That's only normal."

She didn't answer.

"And I suppose you've made love to yourself."

She didn't speak.

"I mean, you've... you know... played with yourself and caressed yourself. There's nothing more natural."

"My folks wouldn't think it's natural. They'd say it was a sin."

"Well, of course they would. But do you think it's a sin?"

After a moment she said, softly, "...yes."

"But you do it anyway?"

"...yes..."

"Hm-m. Well, that's mostly what our making love would be like. Only I'd be doing... you know... what you do for yourself. I'd be touching you and caressing you and bringing you pleasure. Unless, of course, you don't want me to."

She concentrated on the fingers she was twisting in her lap.

He took her hands and kissed them. She wished they weren't so cold and rough. He lifted her face by her chin and gently kissed her closed lips. When he drew back he saw that her eyes were closed, and there was a teardrop in the corner of one, so he shifted to his W. C. Fields voice. "The hardest part, my chickadee, is getting started. If we were already in bed and I was holding your dee-lightful chassis in my vee-rile arms, everything would just happen naturally." Then he changed to a gentle, understanding voice with a smile in it. "I know exactly how you feel. Even with us worldly bad boys it's always awkward. In the beginning."

"It is?"

"Yup. Look, I'll tell you what. Why don't I go stand out in the hall for a few minutes while you slip into bed. Then I'll come back and look around." He donned his Lionel Barrymore voice. "Great land o' Goshen; who's that under those blankets, Dr Kildare? Why, I do believe it's June Allyson. I'd better just slip in and keep her warm. It's my medical duty."

She sniffed the tear back and waved away his nonsense with that flapping gesture of hers.

"I'll be back in a couple of minutes." He made a broad burlesque of shushing her with his finger to his lips as he tiptoed across the room, eased the door open, then closed it behind him.

For a moment she sat on the bed, knowing he was waiting out in the hall, maybe listening. With a sigh she rose, took off her jacket and dress and carefully hung them in the wardrobe. At the sink she washed under her arms with cold water and dried herself, then she stepped out of her rustling crinoline underskirt, hung it over the chair and tiptoed back to the bed. She winced when the bedsprings twanged as she lay down, her heart pounding. Her nervous fingers found the cool snowman under the pillow and she stroked it for reassurance. Then the door opened slowly. He pressed it closed behind him with a soft click.

"This is so..." She sought just the right word to describe the beautiful moment, "...so nice. Lying here like this... talking... being close." He had guided her hand to his soft penis, and she was holding it tentatively, dutifully ('politely' might be more exact) while her mind fondled the words: 'boyfriend... my first boyfriend'. Her hand on his penis was the only place their bodies were in contact because it was so hot. After bringing her to climax first with his hand, then with his tongue, he had lifted his head to find her belly wet with sweat, so he had blown across it gently to cool her. And now they lay side by side, looking up at the splayed shadow of windowpanes cast onto the ceiling by the streetlight.

"That was just wonderful," she said dreamily.

"Hm-m, I could tell it was from the way you moved. And the sounds you made."

"Gosh, I hope the neighbors didn't hear." She pulled her shoulders in and laughed silently into her hand.

"How many times have you...?" She didn't know how to put it.

"Have I what?"

"How many women have you... you know."

"You really want to know?"

"No, don't tell me!" Then, after a moment, "Yes, tell me. How many?"

"You're my fifth."

"The fifth time you've made love? Or your fifth woman?"

"Both."

"Both? You mean you've made love only five times, and each time with a different girl?"

"Exactly, Watson," he said in Basil Rathbone's arch drawl. "Five girls... five times. Curious business, what?"

"Were they like me, your other girlfri— These women?"

He squeezed his temples between his thumb and middle finger to ease the pressure. "No, nothing like you. The first one was when I was in college. She was old. About as old as my mother. I met her in a bar that was off limits for college kids. She was always there, sitting at the end of the bar, drinking gin. Her thick makeup and fake ritzy voice were sort of a joke. People called her 'the Countess'. We drank and she talked about when she was a young woman in high society, and how all the men used to be crazy about her, but they were not of her social standing—crap like that. The bar closed, and we went walking down along the railroad tracks. I was pretty drunk. I suppose I thought we were going to her place. She had trouble keeping her balance because the ground was rough and broken. She fell against me, and I caught her, and she kissed me, a big wet kiss, and I laid her back on a muddy bank. And that, ladies and gentlemen, was my introduction to the splendors of romance! That night, I quit college and joined the army to defend American democracy and apple pie against the menace of international communism and borscht. After basic training, I was given leave before being shipped over to Korea. It was Christmas, and I took a bus to Flagstaff, Arizona. Why Flagstaff? I had to go somewhere, and Flagstaff counts as somewhere... well, nearly. Not far from the bus station, I saw a girl in this all-night coffee joint, and from all the way across the street I could tell she was lonely. I have an instinct for loneliness."

"Like you could tell I was lonely?" she said softly into the dark.

He was silent for a moment. "Yeah, like I could tell you were lonely. Well, I joked with this girl, talking in one actor's voice after another, and the next thing you know we were walking towards her place. She was an Indian, and an orphan, and lonely, and just about as far as you can get from pretty, and... Well, anyway." He pressed his thumb into his temple, hard. "I decided not to return to the army. That meant I had to go on the drift. Casual pick-up jobs here and there, following the fruit crops north, flophouses, stoop labor, freight trains. Then there was this woman in Waco, a born-again fanatic who wanted to save me. And later a black hooker in Cleveland who'd been beaten up by her pimp. I couldn't kiss her while we made love because she had a split lip. And that's it. My total love life. Not much of a Romeo. But then, people don't like to get mixed up with someone like me. Damaged boys end up damaging other people. You understand what I'm saying?"

"Sort of. Well... no, not really."

They were silent for a time, then she said, "I thought it was going to hurt, but it didn't."

He tugged himself from his tangled thoughts.

"What?"

"When we... you know. The girls at school said it hurts the first time, and you bleed."

"Well, we didn't do the part that hurts."

"Yes, I know. Didn't you... don't you want to?"

"Do you want me to hurt you?"

"No. No, of course not, but I want you to have... you know... pleasure. I wish I knew how to..." She shrugged. "I'll do whatever you want." She snuggled her hot body to his and whispered into his ear. "How can I make you feel good? Tell me. Please."

He was silent.

"I'll do anything."

He chuckled. "Lick me like an ice cream cone?"

He felt her tense up, so he quickly said, "I'm sorry, I was just joking. No, there's nothing I want you to do. There's nothing you can do."

"What do you mean?"

"I suppose you've seen drawings on bathroom walls in school. Do you remember what the men's penises looked like?"

She shook her head.

"Oh, come on now. Of course you remember. Describe them to me."

"Well... in the drawings they're always huge. As big as arms. And sometimes there are drops of sap squirting out of them."

"Sap?" He laughed. "Sap?"

"Well, whatever it is. The stuff that makes— Oh, I see! You were afraid I'd have a baby. That was why you didn't...." She hugged him.

"No, that wasn't why. I didn't do the part that might hurt you because I... can't."

"You can't?"

"My penis can't get erect."

"Oh." Then, after a longish silence: "Were you hurt? Wounded or something?"

"No, I wasn't wounded." Then, after a moment: "but yes, I was hurt."

"I don't understand."

He drew a sigh. "Well, when I was a kid (actually, it started when I was a baby) my mother used to... she used to play with me. Mostly with her mouth. That's the earliest thing in my memory, her playing with me. Of course, I didn't know there was anything wrong with it. I thought it was just the way things are with mothers and their little boys... kissing and cuddling and all that. Then one night she told me that I must never, never tell anyone what she did, because if I told, then mean people would come and spank me hard and put me into a deep, dark hole forever and ever. That's when I realized that we were doing something wrong. And being a kid, I naturally thought that it was my fault somehow. I used to have nightmares about being thrown into that deep, dark hole, and I..." He stopped short and shook his head.

"You don't have to tell me about it if you don't want to," she whispered.

"No, I want to. In fact, I have to, because that's the only way..." He shrugged, then he took several calming breaths before telling the shared darkness above them the things he needed her to know. "While my mother licked and sucked me, she would play with herself, and after a while she'd moan and squirm, and she'd suck faster and harder, and sometimes it would hurt, and I'd whine and tell her that it hurt, but she'd keep on until she was gasping and crying out! Then she'd lie back on the bed panting, and I'd be cold down there where I was all spitty with her licking and sucking. And sometimes it hurt real bad. Inside."

"Your mother...! She was crazy."

"Yup. She was always drunk when she did it. To this day, the smell of gin reminds me of being a little kid, and I can feel the pain inside, behind my penis."

"I'm sorry. I'm really sorry." She slipped her hand away from his soft penis, as though to avoid hurting him more.

"Then, when I was about five or six—I don't know exactly how old, but I hadn't started school yet—she was playing with me this night, tickling and sucking, and suddenly she lifted her head and smirked—I can still see the smirk—and she said, 'Well, well! Aren't you the naughty little boy! You want it, don't you, you bad, bad boy?' You see, my penis had got stiff. That can happen, even when a boy is too young to... well, too young to know what's happening. And from that night on, for the next couple of years, she'd make me stiff, and that would drive her wild, and she'd suck me hard while she played with herself, and she'd say I was a bad boy because I wanted it. I wouldn't get stiff if I didn't want it, she'd say, and she'd suck me until it hurt down in my testicles. Then this one night... this one night the hurt didn't go away after she stopped. It got worse and worse. And the next morning I couldn't go to school because it hurt so bad. She told me it was nothing. The pain would go away pretty soon. But I could tell she was scared. She said that if anyone found out what we did, they'd put me in that deep black hole and leave me there forever and ever. And everyone would know it was all my fault, because I got stiff, and that meant I wanted it, and they'd know I was a naughty, bad boy. By the time night came, my side was swollen and I had a fever. All night long I tossed in my bed with pain. The next morning, I found myself all alone in the house. My mother had gone. I had to pee real bad, but I couldn't because it hurt too much. I was afraid I was going to die. So I called the emergency number I found on the back of the phone book. It was the first time I ever used a phone. An ambulance came and took me to the hospital. I had ruptures. Two ruptures. There was an operation, and they kept me in the hospital for a long time. When I was feeling better, a social worker visited me in the children's ward. They couldn't find my mother anywhere. She'd run away. Abandoned me."

She turned onto her side and looked at his profile. He could feel her eyes on him, could feel the weight of her pity, and it felt good. "What about your father?" she asked. "Why didn't he stop your mother from... Why didn't he do something?"

"There was no father."

"Oh." After a silence, she asked, "Did you tell the doctors what your mother had done to you?"

He shook his head.

"Why not?"

"Because I didn't want to get her into trouble. After all... she was my mom." His jaw muscles worked, and she could hear the grinding of his teeth.

"It isn't fair!" she said.

"No, ma'am, it's not," his Gary Cooper voice agreed. "Not even a little bit fair." Then his own voice continued, "The doctor told the social worker that I had damaged myself by masturbating, and she told me I'd done a terrible thing and I would hurt myself badly if I didn't stop."

"So... what happened then?"

"They put me into an orphanage run by Catholic brothers. I got long lectures about how sinful masturbation was, and my earlobes would burn with embarrassment... and rage... at the injustice of it. Kids have a painfully keen sense of injustice. The brothers made me take cold showers, even in winter. They said it would keep me from abusing myself. The cold showers gave me an ear infection that put me back in the hospital. And that was the end of the cold showers. But not of the lectures." He fell silent, and he lightly rubbed his stomach to quell the gnawing. Then he used his Bela Lugosi voice. "And there you have it, my dear. The blood-curdling tale of... The Limp, Penis!"

"I'm awful sorry."

She could tell from the depth of the silence outside that they had reached that last dead hour before dawn. She felt that they ought to talk about their future. Well... at least about meeting for coffee tomorrow night after work. They could meet at the White Tower... their place.

"You must have been a real smart kid. I mean, you got into college and all." She was determined to find a silver lining in all his troubles: a Hollywood happy ending.

"Yes, I was smart. A bad boy, but a smart one. But I quit college and joined the army. Then I quit the army to become a full-time drifter."

"But a person can't just quit the army, can they?"

"Oh, the army wasn't all that happy about my taking off. They're out there looking for me even as we lie here, sharing secrets."

"Aren't you afraid they'll catch you?"

"I'm afraid of all sorts of things."

She drew a long sympathetic sigh and said, "Gosh."

"Gosh, indeed. While I was in the army, I sort of went wild this one night. I ended up sobbing and screaming and beating up this Coke machine. I might have gotten away with it if it had been a Pepsi machine, but Cola-Cola is America, and beating one up is a matter for the UnAmerican Activities Committee, so they put me in the hospital. The loony bin. This doctor told me..." He slipped into his Groucho Marx voice. "...Your problem isn't physical, son. It's psychological. That'll be ten million dollars. Cash. We don't take checks. For that matter, we don't take Poles or Yugoslavs either."

"And now you can't feel any pleasure? Like the kind you made me feel?"

"Yes, I can feel pleasure. And, sometimes I need it very badly. But it's not easy for me to get pleasure. It's difficult and... sort of complicated."

"Is there anything I can do? To help you, I mean?" Her voice was thin, and so sincere.

"Do you really want to help me?"

"I do. Honest and truly, I do."

"Cross your heart and hope to die?" He sighed and closed his eyes. "All right." He sat up on the edge of the bed. "You scoot over here and turn your back to me. And I'll bring myself pleasure. Is that all right?"

She slid over to the edge of the bed, awkward and uncertain. "Will it hurt me?"

"Yes," he told her softly. "But not for long."

She was silent.

"Is that all right? The hurt and all?" he asked. "I won't do it, if you don't want me to."

She swallowed and answered in a small voice. "No, it's all right."

He reached down and trickled his fingers up her spine to the nape of her neck and up into her hair. She hummed, and he felt her skin get goose-bumpy with thrill. His hands slipped under her hair and he stroked the sides of her neck up to the ears, then he reached around and gently cradled her throat between his hands. She swallowed, and he felt the cartilage of her windpipe ripple beneath his fingers. He bared his teeth and he closed his eyes and squeezed and let the up-welling of pleasure sweep him towards...

She gagged and struggled. Her arms flayed about wildly, but his hands were too strong. Her desperately clutching fingers clawed at the rungs of her iron bedstead, then grasped the edge of her pillow, then her snow—

She crouches in the far corner of her bed, trapped. One of her shoulders is pressed against the cool iron bedstead, the other against the gritty wall. She hugs a snatched-up pillow to her naked chest, unable to move because she's afraid of touching the thing that sprawls diagonally across the bed, split down the spine by a shadow that leaves one shoulder, one buttock, and one dangling leg in the bright light.

When she swallows, her bruised throat hurts. After hitting him... and again... and again... she scuttled into the dark corner and stared at the paperweight lying next to him until the swirling snowstorm ebbed and settled to one side of the sphere. There was stuff from his head on it.

She stares at it still, her insides fluttery and cold. Her hip feels slimy. He squirted while they were struggling. She wipes it off with the hem of the sheet, shuddering.

The faucet drip-drip-drips into the sink.

Suddenly the streetlight goes off, and the ceiling is dark. A thin metallic dawn seeps into the room and she whispers to herself that she has to find help... has to tell somebody what happened.

But first she has to get past him.

Down in the street beneath her window, the air is almost cool. Milky tints began to stretch the morning sky, and already the air is stale and dusty in the nostrils.

It's going to be another scorcher.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Trevanian has previously published several of these tales under various pseudonyms. He gratefully acknowledges: The Yale Literary Magazine; B. B. Uitgerversmastschappij, Amsterdam; The Antioch Review; Harper's magazine; Playboy magazine; Clarkson N. Potter, Inc.; Redbook; and The Editors' Choice (The Best Short Fiction for 1985), published by Bantam Books.

Copyright © 2000 by Trevanian.

ISBN: 0-312-97882-0