The Water Vase

A fictional novel from 1986.

———

A Checkerboard of Nights and Days

By Gabriel Fenteany

Part One

I

The ferry eased up along the quay to dock as Albert purchased a ticket. The unloading of old passengers would be brief, he thought. The ferrymen with whistles and brusk voices would steer onboard another shipload. Albert slipped the ferry ticket into his coat pocket and clutched a large canvas sack. He squinted against a cold gust swept in from the bay. The sky was dull for May, dull even for where he was, the northern half of the continent.

Several minutes later, he held tightly the chill rail of the boat, his bag by his feet. Whistles blew and shipmen sounded back and forth in an abbreviated dialect. With a lurch, the boat pulled off. 

Albert noticed a grey figure racing toward the pier's end. He focused his eyes. The figure was a frantic man, shouting and waving his arms. 

T he man halted, short of the concrete's edge. He cast an angry finger at the ship. Taking a cigarette from his chest pocket and staring at the ferry deck receding, the man resigned to the cold facts. He had missed the ferryboat.

On the ship again, a voice said in English: "Excuse me." 

A slight and pudgy man tapped Albert on the shoulder. "Do you know when we'll be on the other side?" He had a British accent.

"No," answered Albert, surprised to hear English again, though indifferent. "I've never made this trip before." With his elbows leaning on the ship's rail, he looked down at the plated sea. It was placid and, barely rolling in the distance; only the ship's wake knotted the sea white. 

"Ah, I thought that you were a native English-speaker when I heard your voice over there at the ticket booth." 

Albert nodded. He was tired. He felt lazy. 

The man timidly added: "I don't think this trip could be more than forty minutes. Or do you suspect more? I know that it's not far."

"No, it's not far."

The little man fell silent. Young Albert thought of a few vague things, looking at the shore growing smaller. The skin around his eyes pruning as he squinted. A weak rain began to fall.

II

About a week later Albert was, as he planned, in another place entirely. He had last been in London years ago as a schoolboy for a year. It was an important city to him. Its whole presence, even in its most opposite moods, was somehow undersown with a uniformity. Nothing changed much in London.

As a child, he had been fascinated with the size; he was very young and not accustomed to large cities. With his friends he regularly visited the Museum of Natural History. They strolled through the halls, feeling like minute philosophers. They scanned the red and white models of molecules fixed to the walls and suspended from the ceiling. They once tried to climb up a pole which supported a re-constructed sauropod and were caught and thrown out of the Museum. They came back. 

In the schoolyard, between classes, they may have been small and overlooked creatures, but at the Museum they were immense. These others were Albert's great friends.

Among these comrades was a particular one, greater as a friend than the rest. His name was Stephen Lochran. Albert's own words, written in a letter to his great-uncle Emory, are the best source from which to obtain a profile of the old friendship with his greatest friend:

"When I was extremely young, the two of us were inseparable. We both devoted our time to searching out new things to know and new activities in which to take part. We understood things we couldn't describe and both of us knew that the other understood. We felt better than our peers, the bullies and sots of the schoolyard; we were older with our little group. All the city, with its endless variety of occurences, was food to our appetites for adventure and stuff for our minds to devour. We invented things, games and stories, songs and ideas. We created a lofty myth around our school's headmistress. Her name was Agnes something or other, but we called her Aggie.

"Stephen Lochran was then my best friend. I suppose we both had rather strong and unique personalities for our age; though I often tried to appear the stronger, just as I always seem to do. We often argued. We could disagree and debate over many issues. We quarreled, obstinately holding to a view, on each one's part, for days or weeks. He was often more moderate on a point than I. 

"Yet, though we didn't complement one another in an obvious way, we were really very alike. If there was something in which to really put our hearts, something more significant than just a small point, some project with which to engage our minds, both of us would do it unreservedly. We'd work in unity, without a thought about the world around us. If there were some tyranny-breaking revolution in which to fight, you can wager we would both be in it soulfully. 

"I'm becoming a bit speculative, Emory, but it's undeniable that there was a great resonance between us as friends. A better friend, I don't think I could have had. 

"Maybe it was just the time, a calmer one for me, and now, looking back, I idealize inordinately those who are memorable from that time. I don't really know.

"The two of us had a little group of — what should I call them? — thoughtful bandits. We were stubborn; we were warrior-like in a subtle and subversive way and started an imaginary jihad against the headmistress, Aggie. We got into trouble many times and still managed to get good grades. We were 'Anti-Aggie-Agents.'

"Aggie used to make the whole upper division primary school get together and square dance once a week. Or, in more graceful moments, she inspired us — forced us, actually — to sing the lyrics she'd have projected on a yellow wall: 'Of all the world's great heroes, there's none that can compare to the rum-tum, tum-tum, tum-tum of the British Grenadier...' and 'The ink is black, the page is white, together we learn to read and write...,' songs such as that, including a nice one called 'Botany Bay.' Then she made us say prayers.

"We all suspected her of farting.

"Stephen was a real friend; I suppose, a British Grenadier."

So when Albert arrived at the Charing Cross Station, mid-morning, still in May, he decided to start looking for Stephen immediately.

In the shuffle of years, after the child Albert left London, he had somehow lost Stephen's address. As he, and presumably Stephen also, became wrapped up in the superficial affairs of life, like formal schooling, the initially frequent letters dwindled in frequency to nothing. The important things were lost sight of with time.

It was early. He could worry about lodgings later. After all, as he hoped, perhaps by some great good-luck he'd find Stephen the same day. That would probably change all the arrangements he could make. There would be time later in the day.

He mumbled something to himself abstractedly as he noticed a red telephone booth near some lockers. "Waiting is languishing."

Once inside the booth, he noticed that the telephone directory was missing. Damn. He was hungry. His stomach suddenly felt so empty he couldn't decide what to do. Waiting, when an appetite calls, is inevitable. 

III

At Beckford School, the primary school Albert attended in London, the official ethos was that of a military training camp: discipline and sports were emphasized. On every Tuesday morning a chartered coach bus, which was a pleasure to ride in, with soft velvet seats and giant foot rests, took the school children to Hampstead Heath. There, they had to play football. They took a chartered bus because the metropolitan school had no schoolbuses of its own. It had no parking lot in which to park buses. 

Albert liked soccer. Unfortunately, he wasn't incredibly good at playing it. It was for this reason that the better players often picked on him. He began to detest soccer at Hampstead Heath. When he declared that he didn't want to play, the instructor told him that he must. Every schoolboy had to.

There was one exception, however. A thin boy from Australia, a year older than Albert, was exempt from the activity because of asthma. He had to take the bus to the Heath with the rest of the children but instead of having to play soccer he was allowed to walk around the park all morning.

Tuesday morning was always soccer-time. Those mornings, on the way back to the bus, some of the bigger football-heads would tease Albert about his ineptitude on the field. He wasn't actually all that bad of a player under usual circumstances. It was a feeling of being under the hostile glare of a team of foreign antagonists which made him play worse than he otherwise would have. 

One tall, sports-minded mulatto boy invariably stuck up for Albert. When Albert first enrolled in the school, the boy was interested in Albert, the new American boy, the kid from the land of sports. However, when Albert talked to him about what he perceived to be the fine phonetic differences between English-English and American-English and about things like dinosaurs, airplanes, aquarium fish and astronomy, the boy became quite bored. The boy wanted to hear about American basketball teams instead. Albert could not help him much. The boy nevertheless retained a friendliness toward Albert, though with time he came to no longer seek Albert's company actively. 

One Tuesday morning at Hampstead Heath, Albert refused to play soccer. He sat down on a bench by the field and did not get up to play. The instructor started yelling at him. Albert, numb to the voice, stood up, turned around, and began walking away. The instructor yelled even louder. The mulatto boy tugged at the instructor's shirt sleeve and said that Albert was very ill that day. Albert kept walking away from the field.

The grass was dewy and Albert walked all over the park on the greens rather than on the paths, looking back at his footsteps where the leaves of grass were pressed of water. He found the big park very interesting. He looked at the ponds of the Heath, walked up and down hills, between thickets of trees, and finally sat down on a bench and closed his eyes. He lost track of the time. He wasn't sure how long it was since he left the sports field and the screaming instructor. He didn't really care, he decided, and fell asleep.

"Come on, it's time to go," were the words to which he awoke. 

He opened his eyes. 

"It's time to go," repeated the Australian boy with asthma looking at his watch. The boy had just been walking around as usual when he saw a familiar schoolyard face.

"I can't go back now. I'll be in some trouble that I'd rather put off."

"What trouble?"

Albert explained what had happened and the boy laughed.

"The guy'll murder me."

"He'll be bloody mad, but he won't kill you, not outright. He'll squawk a bit and take you to the headmistress when we get back. But who gives a damn? They can't do anything to you. You can weasel out of punishment. It's not hard. Don't worry. Say you were delirious with a fever or something. And besides, you're a foreigner. They'll want to impress you with a British absolution." 

The boy looked at his watch again and turned his arm so Albert could see the watch face. "See, it's time. Come on."

The instructor bawled Albert out on the bus and, when they got back to school, took him to the headmistress' office. Terrifying rumors of torture and paddlings occurring within the office abounded, but once inside and seated across from the headmistress, Albert didn't find the room so threatening. Aggie had curly gold hair, artificially set. She had a stout little and a fat distracting nose. She scolded Albert clumsily like a Novacained dog barking at a mail carrier and ended by asking him to say something for himself. He was silent. 

"Well, what have you to say?"

He said how terrible it was being bullied by kids who just happened to be a bit taller and fatter than he. He recounted his sufferings and sealed the effect of pathos by crying and saying that he was fast getting to the point of wishing he were gone from Beckford School and even England. 

After a long speech about courage and morals, the headmistress gave him a permanent excuse from soccer, emphasizing that she probably would not have done this were he English and insinuating that he was a cowardly sort. Albert didn't mind. He had gotten what he wanted. 

He spent Tuesday mornings after that walking around the Heath and talking with the Australian boy. He learned something important from the boy. After weeks of saying "Thames" as it looks like it should be pronounced and receiving inexplicable tee-hee-hees from other school-kids, the Australian explained to Albert that the "h" in "Thames" was silent. 

The rulers of Beckford School liked its pupils to play many sports, not just football. So the students had to play cricket regularly in the schoolyard circumscribed by brick and wire. They also took the nice coach to a Y.M.C.A. every other week where they had swimming lessons. This was a sport Albert loved and excelled in! During his beginners' swimming classes in the States, he was the first to swim all the way across a deep Olympic-sized pool without stopping, grabbing the edge or a bouy line and crying. He did this with a missing toenail too, a toenail he lost when his friend Lee slammed a door into his feet. In a pool, Albert was in his element.

There were several pools of different sizes in the large Y.M.C.A. building. One large pool and a smaller one were reserved for the school children of Beckford. The beginning swimmers used the smaller one and the more advanced used the larger. A few school teachers and two lifeguards supervised the lessons.

Always presuming ignorance, the teachers put Albert into the beginning group. Halfway through the lesson, however, he had already shown himself to be a good swimmer; so he was told to spend the remainder of the period with the advanced group. 

 Mr. Pritchard introduced Albert to the advanced class during a break. For once, he was not introduced as "the new person from America," but those students who were not in his homeroom back at school were duly notified in whispers that this was "the new guy from America" by the others. 

Toward the end of the lesson, there was a small race organized. Albert was told to swim up and down a lane beside Stephen Lochran's. Albert just barely finished before Stephen. The latter said to him as they got out of the pool: "Tallyho, American!" 

Albert said "thanks." 

As they walked back to the lockers, Albert explained to Stephen that he never really thought of himself as being American; thankfully, he never considered himself to have the qualities which Europeans impute to Americans. 

The two rode back on the bus together and got along well. Stephen was a clever guy. He talked on the way about a trip he'd taken to Malta, about science and about a girl he liked. Albert was surprised by this last item because in America he remembered the kids to be still carrying the residue of many years' fear of "cooties," a social type of disease. 

Albert soon found out that Stephen loved dinosaurs and space as much as he did. Stephen had a large set of plastic dinosaurs and every schoolday afternoon the two re-enacted the sequence of dinosaur-related events with slow extinctions and appearances at critical points. Triassic. Jurassic. Cretaceous. Then, sadly, the last of the big lizards had to go. Time is inexorable. 

Stephen's house had a piano — as had Albert's in the States — and they poked around on it. Sometimes they went into the city by bus or 

underground and walk around, talking, joking and stirring up minor trouble in places by doing things like walking into doors marked with no admittance signs. Once, they took a rubber mattress into one of the dirty "lakes" of a downtown park. They were hounded out and questioned, but they wouldn't talk, and were let go. 

They chatted between themselves about science and life. They talked seriously at the young age when the world is still very new. The city was replete with things to think about. They argued. They swapped ideas. 

They often wrote joke poems together. They showed a joke poem to a girl at school once. She screamed. 

Through his new friend, Albert met other school children with similar interests. The two friends soon became the focal points of a small group. Albert got to be good friends with Tony Brosse, excitable and hyperactive, Roftiel Constantine who liked to play Monopoly and Gavin Baddeley who loved math and apricots and had a guitar. Stephen remained his closest friend and the two of them, with or without the others, went frequently to the Natural History Museum.

IV

The bustling roads, the uneven skyline, the pale sky, all contemptuous of change, conformed flawlessly to the scattered images that swept through Albert's mind in the past years. He had been an exile. He was reconciled. In returning with an anxious heart, he feared that familiar sights may have been altered in his absence. With rapture, he saw them all unchanged. 

His eyes were more weighted than they were years ago, but the attachments that slept in his mind for so long were unsubdued as he looked around him. He saw about him what he remembered loving, a city from which he had been a great distance. What he saw was the city of years ago. 

"Could you tell me where the nearest tube station is?" Albert asked a tall old man standing outside the train station. It felt nice to have an occasion to say "tube station" again.

The man wore a bowler hat. He was just finishing a cigarette. He stared at Albert quizzically, eyebrows arched, perhaps thinking Albert a hippie, and said in a disdainful tone: "Right in front of your nose." He pointed down the street. "See that red doughnut dissected by a rectangle? Down the steps under that neon emblem, you'll find the underground." The old man threw his cigarette onto the ground and stamped it out.

"Thank you. And do you have the time?"

"Quarter after ten," the old man said with a roguish smile on his worn face.

The ex-exile, Albert, irreverently gave a tentative salute. He walked off beside the traffic of mid-morning. Pacing down some steps, he disappeared into the tube station.

V

The Bakerloo subway line is a direct connection between Charing Cross Station and Swiss Cottage, where Albert planned to get off. He remembered his friend used to live in the area. Unfortunately, Albert absent-mindedly went down the wrong tube tunnel and mistakenly got on a Northern line train. He didn't perceive this and, being very tired, pressed against his canvas bag and fell asleep.

When he awoke, he was at Edgeware Station, the termination point of the Northern line. He never rode all the way to the end of the Bakerloo line in younger days; so, at first, he thought he'd merely slept to the end of Bakerloo. When he noticed what he hadn't been aware of before, the black markings of the Northern line painted on big plaques each held on two posts, he realized his true error.

Albert took from his pocket a crumpled postcard diagrammed with subway routes. He saw that he should take a train back to Tottenham Court Road, there transfer to a Central line train and at one stop westward, Oxford Circus, catch Bakerloo northbound.

He still hadn't eaten and was getting remarkably hungry.

VI

After eating a very bad hamburger near Swiss Cottage around noon, Albert found a red phone booth with a directory inside. He cautiously checked the front cover to see if it was for the right district. It was.

He remembered that his friend once lived on Agamemnon Road. If Stephen's parents lived there still, he could track down his friend easily. When Albert skimmed over the small list of Lochrans, he found none inhabiting Agamemnon Road. He did find one "Lochran, S." listed. He called the number.

Sherwood Lochran was an ancient-sounding man with a trembling voice, a tobacco-tainted one. It didn't seem to Albert that this man had much biological existence left in him. Demurely, Albert apologized for any possible disturbance.

Suddenly, however, the man burst out: "Wait, wait young man, I seem to remember something. A few days ago, another young man called me and asked for this Stephen Lochran. Yes, I believe I remember it clearly now." The man wheezed. "I told him that I wasn't his man. Then, half-muttering to himself, the inquiring lad said, I think it was: 'Oh, then he must have gone up to Oxford.' Maybe he was looking for the same person you're looking for."

"Yes, it might be."

"How old is the person you're looking for? Young?"

 "Yes."

"Well, I'll wager it's the same person and that you can find him up north."

"Yes, it could be. Thank you very much."

"My pleasure." He laughed and started coughing. He soon recovered. "And, you know, you could call me when you've found him so if others call, I'll know where to send 'em."

"Of course. Thank you."

Albert called all four of the other Lochrans listed, just to be sure, but there wasn't a Stephen at any of the three that answered. Then, he walked a distance, asked directions and came to Agamemnon Road. He knocked on every door of every house that brought back a memory. Finally, at 320 Agamemnon Road, he asked a housewife if a Stephen Lochran resided there and the reply was: "Lochran? The Lochran's were the last owners. They no longer live here; haven't for 'bout a year. Devil knows where they are now."

Albert thanked her and walked away.

 VII

To hell with everything! By that evening, on a northbound train, Albert had a headache. He was very tired and pressed against the cold window, but he could not sleep. Apart from a few reading lamps burning intermittently, the third class cabin was unilluminated.

The grey landscape outside caused Albert to tremble and prevented him from dozing off. It was mysterious. It made him think back. 

Wide-eyed, he had gazed absently out of train windows as a boy. He'd traveled through the passing forests of Austria, damp and beautiful, where if you stuck your head out the window, it became soaked in moisture. The continental trains plowed through the translucent mist.

At that age he liked to think about things. Dancing in the light shade, what were the feelings of a dying moth? What were the affections of an old relative? Why were they so smothering? A rock skips upon the water's crust and sinks, hidden on the floor. Then, when a little older, when an acquaintance died, loss persisted. The numberless green trees of the deep forest, the moss, the wet leaves decaying, the mud, the curious orange slugs of southern Germany, these go on without an end. Strange.

Then there in a decent class car was Albert.

VIII

Oxford is a nice town and much less expensive to live in than London. It is full of majestic architecture and since the colleges of the University are rooted into the soil and being of the City, like crabgrass in an arid field, one feels pervasively the mettle of academic tradition. There's a lot to the wonderful city in which, on occasion, one sees the smatterings of clucking multitudes of pigeons. What a wonderful place!

The town had a definite effect on Albert. He spent the time after his arrival thinking of precise words and their strings of synonyms: this while running about trying to find out whether Stephen was a student or not.

Since the University is spread all about in colleges, it was difficult to find the right place to go to for information about Stephen. Each college has its own registrar; above that there exists a master-registrar. On his first morning in town, after spending most of the dark hours on a bench in the train station, he asked some students where the Main Registrar's Office was. They gave him vivid directions, but their directions led him to the wrong registrar's office. Finally, he asked a town local, a grocer, and the aproned man astonishingly managed to give Albert proper directions to the proper place.

Albert made it safely to the Main Registrar's Office. The place had a stale vapid smell.

"Good day," said Albert to a corpulent woman in her late twenties. She was busy working on the farther side of a great chestnut counter. Her head was turned to some paperwork, very business-like. 

She looked up.

"May I help you?" she asked raspily. In appearance and in the generic harshness of her voice, she seemed like one of those rare and raunchy comediennes who sometimes work dives in low rent areas.

"Yes, I'd like to find out if a certain person is enrolled here." 

Her coldness and her curt, mechanical answer made it clear that, alas, she would never be a comic.

"Go ask the woman over there about that."

The lost comedienne, with a grave air, pointed to a young woman far across the room behind another chestnut counter. This woman had her head half-bent to some files. As Albert walked toward the counter, the first thing he noticed was her contrast to the dreary and formal scene around her. She was somewhat pretty, with a small nose and dark hair. Her eyes seemed naturally squinty and looked... greyish.

"Hello," Albert said coming to the counter. He used to be quite shy; it rarely surfaced anymore. "I'd like to find out whether a friend of mine is enrolled here and if so I'd like to get his address."

Vain young Albert wondered if she liked his wayward American accent. It was hybridized from the day of birth by the influence of non-American parents and whittled from years of living in a non-English speaking nation alone, without attachments the Anglo-world. Did this English-woman find it too harsh, uncouth or, on the other hand, too mellifluous, too weak? He couldn't tell himself which one it was. It was at least unusual, so far as he surmised. For this he felt a sudden flush of pride. But did she like it? Or why the hell should he care?

"I've just gotten into town and I'm looking for an old friend," Albert added to his last words.

"Of course. What's his name?"

"Stephen. S-T-E-P-H-E-N."

"And his surname?" She smiled.

"Yes: Lochran. L-O-C-H-R-A-N."

"I'll be just a minute." 

She got up and retreated behind an open doorway. Albert noticed that she was of medium stature and slender, almost skinny though not in an unnatural-looking way.

The sound of a computer keyboard being pecked emerged from the room. Then a printer began its sole task in falsetto.

After a too lengthy minute, she came out of the room with a sympathetic smile. She glanced down at the print-out she carried and said: "Stephen Lochran was a student at the University, but he isn't here any longer."

Albert felt instantly lost. A plain calendar stood fastened to the wall behind the woman. His eyes moved to it . Then, feeling a question coming up his windpipe, he turned his eyes back, looking straight at her.

"How long ago did he leave?"

"A year ago. He was studying Anthropology and lived in a student dormitory for the whole time he was here."

“Oh, does it say what his home address was while he was here?"

"Let me see." She looked down at the print-out. "Yes: in London on an Agamemnon Road, 320 Agamemnon Road, N.W. 2."

"I was just at that address. He doesn't live there anymore."

"Oh, really. You've just come from London to find him?"

"No." Albert laughed. "A bit farther than that. I've come from the continent to find him."

She seemed surprised.

"Is there no other address given?"

"Sadly not," she said, rubbing her chin.

Albert looked at the calendar and wondered.

"He must have had some advisors. Is an advisor with a phone number or an address listed?"

"Uh, yes, of course."

She glanced floorward at the print-out sheet, then taking a compact faculty directory, looked up a name. She reached for a pen and scribbled down some information on the sheet. 

As she was doing this, Albert said: "The advisor should know something about his whereabouts. Maybe he transferred to another university or took a leave or something like that."

She handed him the sheet of information.

"Are you from America?"

Albert nodded.

"And you've just arrived in town?"

"Yes."

"Do you plan to stay?"

"I suppose I'll stay until I know something about where to go next. I don't know yet where I'll stay, though. I don't know anyone here. Do you know of any cheap place, a youth hostel or something, where I could crash?"

"Yes, there are many places in town. And, at this time of year there are a few rooms that the University has available inexpensively. In deeper summer, there'll be more....I could help you find one."

Albert said that would be nice.

The two ended up meeting later that day. They ate at a restaurant called "The Plain Stables." The name turned out to be misleading. It was no stable and the food was not at all plain. Albert talked about his recent past and the woman talked little. His story seemed to interest her. He talked on despite an incumbent indigestion. Damned unplain food.

IX

Albert ended up spending the rest of the summer with Beatrice. After two days of hostel life and a week of third-rate hotel existence — there were no free rooms at the University after all — he moved into her rented flat. Things there were not so flat and life went on well. To replenish his dwindling financial reserves, Albert found a job in a photo-developing lab. The work wasn't bad; the pay wasn't bad. He needed just a tiny sum to live on, so he was able to save up a tidy lot of pounds. He ate well at the same time. Apart from partial rent, food was his only overhead expense. He opened a bank account with Barclay's.

The two often ate out and Albert often got drunk. Drinking was something he rarely did before. He was happy drunk in the beginning of the summer and later remembered blurry nights of adventure in Oxford, but soon the grape began to make him irritable and depressed at night. So he stopped drinking entirely, midway through summer.

They didn't always eat out. Beatrice could cook quite well. Albert knew how to cook a few things his grandmother had taught him. Together, Albert and Beatrice were cooks of genius.

That Stephen's advisor was on leave until August, digging near Delhi, was only a half-coincidence to Albert's staying the summer in the town. Actually, he remained well aware of his initial motives for coming north and waited, in the midst of an unexpectedly comfortable season, for the professor's return. News about Stephen's wanderings could, with luck, be procured. He was still on a search for his old friend; nothing had changed. The new developments in his life did, however, add a pleasant personal element to his questing existence. Hell, things were marvelous. 

X

Professor Gridskin was a squat, semi-bald man who wore Joycean pince-nez glasses about his fleshy nose and hairy nostrils. He was a quintessential scholarly type. He was an anthropologist with a good reputation. 

Several plaques celebrating high achievements were tacked onto the wall behind his desk. 

Despite the laurels, he was far from being a snob and seemed amiable, kindly, almost ingenuous. Had he a long silver beard, he might elicit questions from small children in winter about yuletide presents. 

He had just returned from an Indian dig.

He recalled Stephen clearly, especially on account of Stephen's academic record. His first terms were good, but, by his second year, he was almost failing half of his classes. The professor remembered calling in Stephen, who appeared clean-shaven and untroubled, and asking him what the matter was. 

Stephen replied: "Nothing at all. Is something wrong with you?" Gridskin explained to Stephen the school's suspension policies and asked if he wanted to be "booted out." 

Stephen retorted: "It's all the same to me."

"Nevertheless," Gridskin said to Albert with a chuckle, "Stephen's record shaped up quickly and, by the next term, he was doing well again." 

Then, about a week after mid-term exams, Stephen came to see him and said that he wanted to leave. He wanted to go to Scotland and study there. He brandished an application to the University of Edinburgh and asked the advisor for a letter of recommendation. Gridskin wrote a letter. 

"Toward the end of the term," the professor said to Albert, "Stephen came to see me again." 

That early summer day, Stephen entered Gridskin's office with the question: "Has the letter been sent out, professor?" 

It had, quite some time before.

Stephen thanked him warmly and was about to leave when Gridskin queried: "Then is everything else in order for you?" 

Stephen nodded. 

"Why do you have the desire to leave so abruptly?" Stephen answered: "I don't know," thanked the professor again, and bade him farewell.

"I wouldn't doubt," said Professor Gridskin to Albert, "that he's now in Edinburgh. I don't think he went up there and dropped out, though it may seem in character for him to do so — judging from his apparent lack of a clear sense of direction. I think he's basically a tenacious fellow, you know, just a trifle unsure of where he stands."

The professor's phone rang. "Pardon me," he said to Albert. He picked up the phone and, over a minute, thrice said "yes" and hung up.

He smiled and went on: "Your friend had a pension for practical jokes. Once, I remember — how could I ever forget this? — once, he replaced an Australopithicus' hipbone with the hipbone of a long-dead Orangutan with rickets. God knows how he got it — from the Biology people or somehow or other. It took the poor lab staff hours to figure out that they weren't gazing at an ancient hominid and by that time they'd quite extensively measured and catalogued the features of the Orangutan bone!" Gridskin laughed. So did Albert.

"Needless to say, despite the ultimate harmlessness, he was almost expelled for that. There were others too." He laughed again.

"That sounds like my friend."

"You have a good eye for friends then. In the lab, he was known as 'Lucy.'" Gridskin laughed thunderously.

It was several minutes before he was recovered.

Then he said: "Edinburgh University, my boy; that's where you should go."

Three evenings later, Albert was sadly saying good-bye to Beatrice, talking philosophically about the inevitable recurrence of events — making promises. Then he boarded a northbound train.

XI 

On the train, a crinkled old woman with lively blue eyes sat beside Albert. As the train began to accelerate, he noticed through a fuzzy reflection in the window glass that she was staring at him. He didn't care. He soon closed his eyes and tried to sleep, resting against the frosted window. 

After an hour of traveling in perfect silence, he woke from a partial sleep to the sound of loud chatter. The mucus in Albert's eyes almost glued them shut. He wiped them clear. He looked around. Three seats in front of him, some young girls were talking and giggling. He closed his eyes again. 

Suddenly, he heard a shrill voice. "My son was once like you."

He opened his eyes. He looked around and saw the old woman staring at him.

"Did you say something?"

"Yes, I said my son was once like you," she said more slowly and with a less powerful voice. She looked like a mad and merry potato. Her lively eyes were criss-crossed with little blood vessels.

"Oh." Albert shut his eyes.

"He was very much like you."

After a minute, Albert opened his eyes and asked: "Where is he now?"

"He's dead," she answered matter-of-factly.

Albert began to feel a little uncomfortable. He closed his eyes once more, but soon opened them. 

He felt a bit interested in the story that could come of this, fact or fancy, and asked coolly, trying not to exhibit a sensationalist's curiousity: "How did he die?"

"In a train wreck near Bristol. Only a few people died. He was one of them."

Albert teetered in thought and silence on a fine-edge between feeling even more uncomfortable and feeling comforted in the knowledge that an insane woman was spinning a yarn before his ears. 

The train plowed smoothly through the gloom of dark rural England-north. A train wreck, a person like him, surely. Was she trying in this way to unnerve him for some reason? or for no reason at all? Well, then she was defeated, for he understood. Crazy old lady.

He wondered for a second.

"Where was this train bound for?"

"Edinburgh."

"Come on now." Albert straightened himself. "Why are you telling me, a stranger, all this? It's absurd."

"You just reminded me."

Albert turned his head to the window. He stared into the darkness. The woman must be a psychopath fond of senseless tricks. She was old and harmless though, and Albert smiled to himself. His smile was mirrored in the second-class car window pane.

Grinning, he looked back at the old woman. The expression in her eyes seemed of veracity as she again spoke.

"That's why I make this trip often. I go north and spend a few weeks in Edinburgh, visit old churches and remember back. I stay with my cousin. I don't work anymore and since my husband died, two years after my son, I've had quite enough money. After a few weeks in Scotland, I go back south where I usually live....But I may be moving soon." 

The blue eyes couched in her deeply-lined face seemed even more vivacious than Albert had noticed before. He was beginning to believe her story.

"When did you first start going north a week, then south?" Albert asked, feeling obligated to say something and thinking of nothing better to say.

"When Immanuel, my husband, died. We went north a few times on this line after the accident but never nearly as frequently as I do now. I've nothing better to do." 

Then she said mysteriously: "All I have really to look forward to now is a project." 

There was a pause in the conversation and Albert glimpsed out the window. There was nothing to see. It was very dark.

"What kind of a project?"

"Oh, a big one," she said curtly.

Strange was it all. Albert didn't know what to say.

After another pause, he asked: "What was your son's name?"

"Andrew."

"Really? Mine is Albert."

"That's not far off alphabetically. I told you that you're like he was. That's why I sat down here."

XII

It was raining heavily when Albert arrived in the capital of Scotland late at night. He'd never been to Edinburgh before. He slept until dawn on a platform bench. 

From the train station, in the morning, Albert decided to take a cab to an inexpensive hotel of the driver's choosing. The day was the first Thursday of September. Albert was tired and felt a bit sad.

The cab weaved in and out of the traffic on Princes Street, then turned and moved down another street. It turned again and drove down a narrower avenue. 

He would probably soon find his friend. And then what? They were not kids and there was no schoolyard liberty for which to fight. There was no Greek revolution in which to battle.

Not long ago, going from a metropolitan university in Europe at an early age, Albert relocated himself after a long wandering. He became a hermit and devoted himself to an old clarinet, some scratch pads and a book of notes — Albert the artist. He lived on a verdant mountainside in central Europe; the view was tremendous; the life was uncomplicated. He paid reasonable rent for a cabin across a field from the landlord's house. He had some friends and a comfortable job with an oculist in a nearby village.

One day, his great-uncle Emory came to visit him unexpectedly. His great-uncle was old. He looked like an aged mountain climber when he walked, stick in hand, with Albert in the mountains. Emory had a first wife long ago. She deserted him. He sometimes spoke jokingly of her, but he spoke indefinitely, relinquishing few details. Long since, he'd remarried. His second wife was a quiet, faithful woman whom Albert hardly knew even though he saw her often. 

When Emory left Albert's cabin on the green mountainside, Albert 

decided to leave also. He just got on a train and left.

"'Ere we are: 'The Royal Crest Hotel,'" said the cab driver as the taxicab pulled to a stop at the curb. "I'll get yer soft baggage."

XIII

Installed in a small hotel room, bathed, finances evaluated, good considering, Albert decided: Tomorrow, I'll go to the University of Edinburgh. He would relax presently; maybe explore the town — do all that was upon his bill of relaxation. 

He called Beatrice at her work-place from a phone booth with a load of coins. She said that she wanted to take a week or two off from work, but she would have to see if this was possible. He gave her his hotel's address. Albert also called his brother Peter, staying with Emory in Austria. Then he explored the town. 

Later in the day:

Albert had just gotten off the bus. The street was almost empty. The sky was pallid though darkening. Here, a young couple walked, detached from their surroundings, absorbed in themselves; there, an old man wobbled on a cane. A church spire rose above the low buildings and closing shops. It was evening.

On a street parallel, Albert found the spired church. The doors appeared open. He ascended a worn dozen steps and entered the holy building.

The anteroom was empty. Saint Bernadette of Lourdes stood in alabaster to the right side. Albert approached the statuette. A few candles flamed below her. She was elevated above him. He looked into her face. 

The sanctuary door opened and a cassocked man stepped out in measured pace, peering from side to side like a reptile. He set two heavy lazy eyes on Albert.

"Good evening. Lord bless you....Anything I can do for you?" he asked.

Albert's reflexes were somewhat numb this evening. He had gotten little sleep the night previous and he felt removed from it all. So he thought seriously about the question.

"No... No... Nothing... Thanks."

The man left the church by the main doors. He was the rector. 

Albert entered the sanctuary. The church was large and beautiful — footsteps echoed as in a vault — the stone floors were worn.

In front of the altar sat a man, rapt in meditation — not out of the ordinary for a church. Albert sat down in one of the rearmost pews, on the far right side.

He started with his eyes along the wall's lowest edge, below a pictorial of Christ bent with a cross on back, looking for some sign of rodent inhabitants. His only restrictions in viewing were the serrated columns and the far right wing of the temple's X. He was near the right-hand row of columns and could see into the left wing of the X. A thorough eye search of the lower regions of the church turned up no mice, no rats.

The sanctuary doors abruptly swung open and a middle-aged couple entered without kneeling. The woman was dressed in a gaudy red outfit and the man in a brown suit jacket and white shirt, without a tie. They whispered, walking toward crucified Christ and the altar and the choir seats. There were two rows of benches to each side of the dark mahogany seats of priest and deacons below Christ. The couple turned to the right before the altar and disappeared into the right wing of the architectural X.

After a few minutes, more people began entering. There seemed to be some sort of service scheduled for the evening, though it was Thursday. It wasn't the Thursday of any special feast day or any holy day. 

The people didn't appear too pious. They chatted irreverently. Albert, having been a little bored prior to the entrance of all the people, sat still and looked forward to whatever was to come.

The spacious church was about a quarter full when people stopped coming. The room was large and the assembly amounted to no mean mass. The sounds of rustling and of muted voices crescendoed, quieted into a general hush and rose again in a fairly regular cycle. At about the fifth period of relative silence since Albert began counting, as he sat anticipating another waxing of noise, the rector entered slowly from the main entrance, informally garbed. He proceeded toward the altar, his eye sockets deeply set in his head. His eyes were positioned forward at a slight upward grade. The rector was staring mounted Christ right in the eyes. 

He climbed the few steps to the altar floor and turned around, making the sign of the cross. His movements, mechanical in a delicate way, like a pantomime, his joints as if moved by strings, were underlined with the smoothness of familiar ritual. He mumbled some presumably standard church phrases that were barely audible. 

Then he spoke up in a tired and oily bass voice: "May your search be blessed." 

These were really winged words. They floated inside the sanctuary like soap bubbles in a draftless room. In a way, the effect was pleasant.

The rector seemed done with his activities but remained motionless for a minute. Raising his arms, he said: "I suppose that I've refined the air." He laughed and looked at a man in the front pew, the one Albert had seen sitting alone before anyone else entered. "Now, Ben Darby, on with your pagan ceremony." 

The priest laughed again. He descended the steps of the altar and Ben Darby, a tall man with a smile on his bristled face, stood up from a seat in the first pew. The rector left the room through the doors by which he had entered.

Ben Darby was thin and had a long face and a sharp well-cut nose. He looked about thirty-five years old. He peered out at all the faces and raised both hands. He appeared anxious, not nervous from any sense of stage fear but eager to speak, to persuade. His cheeks were tensed from firmly pressed teeth.

"Everyone," he shouted and lowered his arms. "Thank you for coming. We're all involved with the project and we've all heard what need be said on the technical sides of it. So I shall dispense with preliminaries by saying simply: the project is crucially in need of active participation. We initiated the project and we must fuel it, maintain it, or all our hard-fought work will be undone. Its demise through neglect would rot out our consciences. Half-completed the project is, the property half paid for, and now we must push for its consummation!

"I find it hard to believe what I've been hearing. I've spoken with those who talk of giving it up. How can we do this? How this late? The ideal is just within our grasp! We'll be able to settle it not in an indefinite future; no, we will be able to settle very soon, if we work assiduously now!" 

A hand shot up in a middle row followed by an assertive voice. Albert was more than amazed at what was unfolding around him and sat back with intense curiosity, exceedingly entertained.

The voice that followed the hand cried: "But how much longer? How much more work? How much more money? What about all the promises before? We all share a common dream, yes, but most of us are common of means, some of us poor; we cannot chase after an expensive dream forever. If we can't do it now, we should have the courage to admit it to ourselves and to behave accordingly. I'm not dissenting to the end for which our project was created. I am questioning whether it is possible to attain it at all, given our limits. Maybe it just isn't intended for us."

"No," yelled Ben Darby lifting a hand, "no: we are so very close now. You don't realize how close. All were so enthusiastic once; where, where has that enthusiasm gone? We should be doubly burning now with the goal in sight. Our project was once a germinal thought in a few minds and it grew forth, spread, and then contemplation evolved into action. It began to take on a form, a tangible outline of existence. It became real.

"It's surely a necessity that hard work be invested — and money — but it has been so from the start. Do you all want to simply give up something so...elevated because of misleading fears? You fear losing your security? What security do you have? You will soon recieve incomparable security if we proceed now with one mind!

"We were all discontent. That's why we first became involved. Now, do you want to give it up? Do you want to live the remainder of your lives with this discontentment re-doubled because now you can convince yourselves that any attempt to alleviate the misery is doomed? Do you want to let the project fall? A better existence is not impossible as we live. We can succeed!" He stopped and scratched his head. The congregated audience was silent.

He continued in a softer tone than before. "Our project started out as an idea. After a time, we'd collected enough money to purchase the area. And, at first, there were great numbers of volunteers for the work and it went quickly and steadily. But the zeal waned." His voice was becoming stronger. He waved his arms imposingly. "The fervor of pursuit after our ideal slackened. 

"Now, of course, it is hard, but when in your lives have you had it easy and not had to struggle? You dread a forfeiture of security: what is this illusory stability you fear losing? It is nothing, emptiness, the dressed up pretexts that have lulled us to sleep when we couldn't sleep without a lie. They are hollow promises made by a distant regime, made by a society that hinders us daily. These promises should have nothing to do with us! They were made by people who have nothing to do with us! What do they want with us? Their security is paper thin. Let yourself grow old here, swallowing the implicit promises of security all about you, swallow them and numb yourselves; but on your deathbed you'll see the truth finally. You'll only be able to cry about your mistake of inaction!" He paused, then shouted: "But too late!" He breathed in and the room was utterly silent. 

He exhaled and said: "When the project is completed we'll have for ourselves a true and lasting security." 

For a minute there wasn't a sound, and Ben Darby stood there looking at all the people seated. 

A dark-haired woman stood up and spoke with equanimity and without Ben Darby's goading passion. She addressed everyone. "I've listened and evaluated. I see that all Ben has said is right. We should have no doubts. We should strive a little more and we'll soon be there."

A voice bellowed from the right wing of the church. "Yes! Yes!"

An old woman in the opposite wing, just before a column and within Albert's view, got up and began shouting in a high pitch: "Yes! Yes!"

Albert focused his eyes on her. It struck him that she was familiar. He had spoken with her recently — a night before — in the stupor of fatigue. She was the blue-eyed old woman on the train who had said: My son was once like you!

Another voice exhorted: "Yes! It's true! We cannot give up now. The project is within our reach. It's what we should really look forward to. It is real security!"

In virtual unanimous accord the voices in the church began chanting: "Yes! Yes!" 

Ben Darby smiled and waved his hands as though he were conducting a chorus. The shouting gained momentum and became a roaring din under Maestro Darby until the whole church seemed to rock like Pompeii under a bubbling Vesuvius.

"Hear! Hear! to the project! Hear! Hear!"

In front was Ben Darby, red-blazing like a battle-thirsty Hector. Come not Achilles.

"Yes! Yes!" He shouted. "The project!"

It took a long time for the immense noise to subside, but when it did, Ben Darby seized vocal sovereignty once more.

"I believe that now we have reached some conclusion." Everyone laughed. "The project lives. It will prosper. Soon its completion will be a reality. If there are any who wish to drop out, please think it over well. Consider, it may be a very grave mistake for you.

"Now I'd like to address those who are earnest about becoming active volunteers. We are all, of course, volunteers and parents of the project, but those who volunteer to work operatively and to complete the project I now speak to..."

Ben Darby went on awhile, discussing technical matters. Albert was grossly entertained. He couldn't remember a more divertingly spent evening. 

XIV

A hard lump in the over-soft mattress of his hotel room woke Albert as he turned on a side. He opened his eyes and looked around the room. He noticed for the first time an extensive network of cracks running along the ceiling. In points where the blue paint was chipped there were revealed various other hues of blue. Albert's eyes slithered to the window. The panes bore patches of dried mildew. A crack cut across the topmost left pane. This was the dreaded room 215.

All of those physical details, though, did not faze Albert. His mind was not attached to trifles. His style of subsistence was not that of the neurotic householder or handy person. The paranoia of dust flakes was never a mighty obsession of his. When he was sad, it was not because a washing machine was out of order. The biggest sadness of Albert's was that except in rare moments of what could only be called, yes, dissolution of self, the past seemed more beautiful than the present and when the present became the past, it also became prettier. Even tremendous suffering that had once been present seemed to bear an attractive poignancy, like the contemplation of a crucifixion.

Albert had an expedition to attend to. He didn't get up, however. The events of last night entered his head and steadily grew to monopolize his thoughts as he stared at the ceiling.

The speaker, Ben Darby, had gone on to explain the manner in which the volunteers were to be inured into the work of the project. They would be transported by ship to the site of the project: a half-built village. Ben Darby didn't mention the location of the site. It seemed that this was something already known well by the bizarre group. He went on to speak of "a long trip there." He may have been speaking metaphorically. But if physically a long trip, how far was it? Where was it? Albert had slipped out of the church when the meeting was over. He wasn't sure if they would have appreciated his presence had he made it known. So he was unable to ask any questions about their project. They were a mysterious lot, and he still didn't really know what they were about.

Ben Darby also said that the project site was in a place of "constant nice weather." It must be far to the south. Then again, maybe by "a long trip" to a place of "constant nice weather," he was referring to some trying spiritual catharsis that would lead to their happiness. It was all vague.

The night before, Albert wasn't able to listen too analytically. He was tired and wholly absorbed by the weird happenings. They were a cultish bunch, yet they were not actively clandestine. Secrecy didn't seem important to them, although Albert still didn't feel up to making his presence known. They certainly didn't check for strangers before the meeting and bar them out. No one noticed Albert.

They were probably some kind of potential colonists discontented with life in the modern world. Special colonies organized by those who find the modes of living demanded by their culture-at-large insufferable haven't been uncommon in history. It seems, however, that those colonies that aberrated from general society on religious grounds were the only ones to last; the Amish people, for example. Small communities whose points of difference were secular seemed all to be covered over by the years. It takes something strong like religion with its tendrils lodged in the mind on various levels — superstitious, intellectual, emotional — to glue people together in purpose for any length of time.

The people of last night's meeting didn't seem to be against an established religious group. There was no mention of a theological clash with any set. They met in a church and a priest "consecrated" the meeting. They were, perhaps, religious purists who wanted to start a new order within the accepted church. Yet religion didn't seem to be the central theme in their dissatisfaction. They seemed discontent in a more general way. They repined the lifestyles that were forced upon them by society. They wanted out of the contract.

Albert's last thought on the issue before snoring back off to sleep was: Ben Darby announced another meeting in a week — at the same time and at the same place.

XV 

Breakfast turned out to be two plainly cooked eggs, much bread and tart coffee. All was perfect, so Albert bought and smoked one cigarette at a tobaconnist's shop as he read the paper. He then asked directions to the place to which he had to go. A clear sky overlooked a lurching bus ride.

The bus passed a big hobby shop with a great display of miniature trains, rails, houses, stations, forests and signs. Once, in Germany, as a very young boy, he had gazed longingly into such a window with his father. How many dreams he made, and how happy he was in making them, in waiting. Only later did he realize the stuff as so many dreams are made of: parasites that swell within the body, and quietly sap its last warmth. Some dreams lead to the slaughterhouse.

It was sad not to peer headlong at a comfortable universe. Even the light breeze of summer, felt in short pants and sandals by young hairless legs, faintly intones the sadness to come. 

There emerges a balance of happiness and sadness, though. It seems as if dreams are the things which untemper this balance. One dream, at times latent, at times perceived in an oblique distance, never seen squarely, remains a dream. It is Albert's dream of paradise.

It was sad to see the hobby shop window disappear as the bus rolled on.

When Albert got off the bus, he walked through a park. It was forested, shady under thick tree canopies, and smelled of soil and leaves. The fence that surrounded the park was entwined with flowering vine. The air was flooded with the sounds of sparrows, the triplets of a woodpecker and the scent of honeysuckle.

Leaving the park, Albert crossed a street which smelled of spent oil. He walked several more blocks, turned a few corners and found himself standing by a fountain at a street intersection. On the other side of the street was a lawn and the University of Edinburgh.

Albert crossed the street, walked along the margin of the campus awhile and then walked up a stone path leading to the doorway of an old building. He entered into a big hall, asked someone for directions, went down a short hall and around a corner. He found the correct room. It was a large airy office.

"Excuse me," he asked a short mustachioed man, "I'd like to find out if a friend of mine is a student here."

"The name, please."

Albert was quick to reply. "Stephen Lochran. L-O-C-H-R-A-N."

"Just a moment." 

The man began typing on a computer before him. Then he said: "L-O-C-H-R-A-N, correct?"

"Yes."

"He was enrolled in the spring term according to this machine."

Albert felt a stone lifted off his back. He felt like yelling: "Holy shit, am I pleased. The stooge is here." However, such an effusion didn't seem appropriate within the cold brick walls. Stephen was definitely in town just months ago. He or his family must still be here. Albert preserved an official air, keeping to the business on hand, and remained fittingly composed.

"What is his address and his telephone number, please?"

The man looked up and said: "Moment." He looked at the computer screen. "One ninety-three Brigham Road..." 

The secretary relayed the rest of the requested information with ease and swiftness. There was not one sniffle, not one snort. This was a day of luck!

Leaving the University, Albert, not long walking, found a tobacconist. He went into the shop and purchased a small pack of twelve expensive cigarettes. He smoked one. Good luck would make him a smoker yet! He found a bus going in the direction of his hotel. He wanted to get a jacket from his room. 

He planned to eat lunch and then call up Stephen. Or, maybe, he would go directly to his friend's house and surprise him; hopefully, he'd be there.

About half an hour later, as he was sorting through the jumbled contents of his bag in order to find a handkerchief, a knock sounded on the door. 

Albert asked, "Who is it?" 

The response, "Bellboy!," came back. 

Albert opened the door. The bellboy was dressed as shabbily as imaginable for a hotel employee. He wore a blue jacket with white paint stains and baggy brown trousers. He handed Albert a piece of paper that resembled the glossy sheath just under an onion's outer skin. 

"It just came, sir."

 "Thank you." Albert looked at the telegram and looked up again, seeing the bellboy standing at the door patiently with a hand outstretched.

"Oh." Albert reached into his pocket and pulled out the largest coin he felt. "Thank you very much," he said and pushed the coin into the bellboy's hand.

"Thank you."

He closed the door and looked at the piece of paper.

I have time off.

Will be there September 5 at 3pm.

Traveling by rail.

Meet me if you can at Waverly Station.

Beatrice

Adaptive Albert re-adjusted his afternoon plans since that day was the fifth of September. He expected to show up at Stephen's around dinner time, barring any other unforeseeables.

It was only two days since he saw Beatrice last. Funny that she was able to get time off so suddenly. Had she quit? It would be kind of funny if she had. Funny and impetuous. He didn't expect to see her for a time yet. He planned, in a few weeks or a few months, to one day unexpectedly pop up at her place unannounced by a telephone call. He liked popping up in places like that. Such a plan, however, was presently a dead possibility. Oh, well.

He thought of her dark hair, reserved smile and the grace of her movements which, like her entire self, were laced with natural discretion. A longing welled up in his lungs. 

Three o'clock reared its synodic head, as time is wont to do, and Albert was on a railway platform waiting. A telephone-operator-girl voice announced on the loud speaker: "British Railways, 179, from Oxford, Coventry, Sheffield, Leeds, Newcastle-on-Tyne, is fifteen minutes behind schedule. Thank you for waiting."

Albert was preparing to smoke the day's third cigarette in the interim, but he decided to toss the odious cylinder of rubbish back into its pack instead to be smoked later. Stray molecules from a stinking tin of sardines in a nearby trash bin danced in his nostrils. He walked down the platform.

At three twenty-four, by the Station clocks, a train pulled in. The customary intolerable shrieks of metal against metal with friction accompanied the incoming train. The doors opened one at a time, front to rear, and the passenger-purging began. Tall, short, middling, corpulent, fair and fierce, all types poured out of the train.

One woman caught Albert's attention from afar with excited waving and hollering. She yelled: "Wendell! Wendell!" Albert looked around. Yes, she was yelling at him. 

As she neared, however, her enthusiasm langoured and left her. She realized that she was, at least for the moment, Wendell-less.

"Oh, terribly sorry. You're not him. Sorry."

Several minutes passed before Albert sighted the right face and figure.

"Beatrice! Over here!"

Beatrice saw him. She smiled and waved. She pushed her way down the platform.

XVI

Beatrice was born and grew up in a small town in northern England. It was a tiny place. Her father was a rural doctor and her mother his wife. In the earliest days of Beatrice's life, friends of the family prophesied that the infant would grow up to win a beauty pageant. The predication proved to be correct when, at the age of nine, she won the beauty contest that ended her school's second year talent show. She had the judges on her side. It was all in good fun. 

Her childhood was relaxed and untraumatic. It was virtually nondescript. Her growth rate was normal. She did well in school and seemed content. Yet dissatisfaction has the miserable tendency of crawling like an earwig into even the most secure corners. She yearned for some undefinable change.

In secondary school her class met a foreigner whose parents, staying in the area a year for some indefinite reason, enrolled their only child in the school. 

On the fourth day of school, the class saw a thin tawny boy with a goatee of peach-fuzz shyly enter the classroom with a note to the teacher. The class tittered and examined the new kid. He had a pale and pretty face. The males of the class thought that he looked like a sissy but were impressed by his height. The girls of the classroom whispered among themselves.

As the new boy approached the teacher's desk nervously, he tripped on a desk's protracted leg. A shot of laughter arose. The kid rose up, a bit flushed, and delivered the note to the teacher's hand.

"Class," shouted Mr. Campbell, "please dry up."

All titter died away in an instant.

The teacher scanned the piece of paper and announced: "This is Stanley McBade and he is our new student from New Zealand." 

He turned to the new student and pointed to an empty desk in the second row. "Stanley, sit over there, please, in front of Lucy. I welcome you to the class. It is usually a good one."

Mr. Campbell looked at the class.

"Now we were talking about polynomials..."

From that day's lunch intermission, Stanley ate alone. He also started doting on Beatrice. He began staring at her a lot and she noticed this. She liked the attention and, since the time she perceived its presence, she began looking at herself in the mirror more and more. A new vanity emerged. She was determined not to show any amicability, not even toleration, toward him.

One day at lunch, as Stanley was sipping from a Thermos, Beatrice attempted to disparage him in the presence of several other girls. She derisively questioned him on the short length of his pant legs.

"Are you waiting for a flood?" she asked smugly.

Stanley was a bit angry with the levity of the girl he liked to look at. He had noticed her coldness toward him, how she turned up her eyes and nose in mere sight of him. She usually never said a word to him no matter what the situation. Though he wished she wouldn't be so, he thought her behavior laughable.

To the other students, Stanley was indiscernable. A clever guy he was, the others gathered — clever and strange. He would act meekly and then suddenly do something bold and unexpected. He was ominously unpredictable and, lately, he was becoming quite annoyed with Beatrice.

"Yes, I'm waiting for a flood," he answered and smiled like a scamp, "and it'll be here in a flash."

He emptied his Thermos onto Beatrice's shoes, turned his back to her and her friends and bit into his sandwich. 

She let out a squeal and stomped away, outraged and humbled. 

He retired to his lunch.

Stanley was somewhat confused as he walked home that day. Why had she been so caustic? She was being foolish, little-girlish, and he had gotten annoyed. Why do people always take others for something which is actually so distant from what they are? Why can't they shed all the social follies which are really so very wasteful of time? Her behavior seemed so childish and unnecessary. 

He maturely concluded, though, that she must have felt something for him and yet didn't want to admit it to herself. She was hostile toward what caused her self-conflict. He laughed to himself, certain that he must be right. 

How she must be mad after this lunch time incident! Maybe now I'm hated. 

As he thought about all this further, he reached a point where he didn't care anymore. His concern melted. So he spent the night with a clear mind building a model plane. 

After the Thermos incident, to Beatrice's contrived and childish disgust, she began thinking about this Stanley more frequently. Within three weeks, he and Beatrice were together almost every afternoon and she insisted that they make some childish vows.

Stanley stayed two years in the town. He and his family then went

back to New Zealand.

Beatrice sometimes talked of this Stanley to Albert. Albert never seemed very interested until she finally told him of Stanley's fate. 

For years, Stanley and Beatrice wrote to each other and planned trips for which neither had money. Then one day, when Beatrice was in college, she received a letter from Stanley's parents abroad saying that their son had died of intestinal cancer. 

Stanley didn't write to Beatrice about his decay while alive. She had no way of knowing. She received a letter from him three weeks before he died. The letter was cheerful.

Albert was sad for a few days after he learned what had happened to Stanley in the end: the end. Albert once saw a friend of his, Ivan, waste away so painfully slowly that it was a relief when he finally died, emaciated of cancer. The end was a sunny noon on a clear-skied day in April. On the day of the funeral, on his way home fromr the burial, some teenagers picked a fight with him on the subway. He got a bloody nose. That was a sunny day too.

When Beatrice finished college, she went to Canada for a short time and then flew back to the United Kingdom and found employment.

She thought her life an aimless one. She was not wholly dissatisfied with it and yet not truly content. It was lacking in her estimation She couldn't put this feeling of hers into words. 

Albert thought it funny and sad that the pretty and self-assured woman he met in a large office could think herself inadequate. However, he knew just what she meant when she said it wasn't possible for her to express in phrases what she somehow sensed herself to be missing.

XVII

At the hotel's front desk, Albert requested a larger room. Infamous room 215 was terribly small. He was duly notified that there remained one vacant double room, chamber 240; however, only one of the rooms in 240 had a bed. This posed no problem to Albert and he took it.

The duo of little rooms that comprised 240 were both somewhat better than the tiny single of room 215. This fact was manifested in new curtains and a far higher price. Despite a few added ornaments, like the curtains, a latticed bed frame and three towel racks in the bathroom, it was nevertheless quite plain. The walls were painted off-white. The carpet was a faded red; yet, the new room's worn red carpet merited a place above the old's. The shade of the ground cover in 215 happened to be a lifelessly sallow hue of water-closet yellow. Best of all, however, was the fact that the windows in 240 were a scant-fraction larger.

Beatrice dropped her suitcase by an armchair in the larger bedroom and announced that she wanted to take a shower. While she was in the bathroom, Albert transferred his things from nasty, ratty 215 to new, improved 240. When she was clean and dry and clothed again, he told her about his plans to go look for Stephen that evening. He could call but would rather drop by. Even if Stephen wasn't there, he wouldn't mind the trip. He had nothing better to do. Would she come? Yes, she said she wanted to come. 

They talked awhile. Albert told her about his experience in the church the night before. He disclosed to her all the bizarre details of the affair. She agreed with his idea that it had to be some sort of new religious group or possibly a weird utopian community. 

"It's peculiar that they met in a church," she said.

"But had you been there, had you seen the priest 'consecrate' the whole thing, not seeming all serious, and seen it all grow into something like a noisy marketplace and then subside again, well, you'd also have gotten the feeling that it all went like clockwork. What would've struck you was the smoothness of it. Events were all connected in what seemed, at the time, to be an inevitable flow. Even the questions of the one person who dissented weren't discordant but fit into the whole pattern. The meeting seemed very...ah...natural."

"What do you mean natural?"

“Well, the course of episodes had an eerie reasonableness to it. I've never seen anything like it before. It made a kind of sense while I was there, but now it seems hopelessly odd. The whole thing was sort of dream-like. Maybe it was partly that I was very tired when I walked into the church.

"They were all zealots. They were fanatics, but they seemed really sincere. They believed in the importance of their...project. It was all very entertaining. The next meeting's set for six days from now."

"Hmm. Take me to the next one."

"I suppose."

The two ate that night at a Japanese restaurant called "Kimi Wa Baka." After eating, Albert asked Beatrice if she was ready to leave. She nodded. Her eyes sparkled. Brigham Road, then, awaited them.

Albert spotted a bus stop near the end of the block beside an old building and the descending sun. He had a small map of the city bus routes in his pocket. He pulled it out. It would take two buses for them to arrive at the right place. 

After an interminable period — what was really only ten minutes or so — the bus came. They got on, and the bus drove off in the direction of the sun for half a mile, then turned northward. 

 Night in dusky mantle came, as Byron would have it

and the western horizon was flooded in a bath of blood. 

The two changed buses, enduring a wait in the process. The second bus let the pair off on a large street which was supposedly perpendicular to Brigham Road. They found that it was.

At one nighty-three Brigham Road, there was an auburn brick house with a walkway leading straight through a cramped garden to four steps and a maroon double door. At the door, Albert detached his right hand from Beatrice's left and raised it to an iron knocker. The metal produced a hollow thump against the wood. 

A gaunt man, squinty-eyed, came to answer. He opened the door slowly. He stuck an old head out, black pupils jutting out from between tensed membranes.

"Yes, may I help you?"

"Hello. I'm looking for Stephen Lochran. I understand that he lives here."

"Yes, he lives here. He has a room upstairs, but he's now in Dundee visiting his cousin, I believe."

"Is he expected back soon?"

"Monday, I believe. Maybe Tuesday. You can telephone on Monday."

"Thank you very much."

With a nod the tall man closed the door.

The two took a taxi cab back to the hotel.

XVIII

Albert in the bathtub:

The morning sun heated his arm. The window was open and he could hear the sounds of birds and of motors on the street. There was a transformation within him as he listened to the noises. His senses conjured up memories. In the bathtub, Albert remembered back.

A morning in a large city in Europe: early, the city's noises, pigeons' clucking and a breeze awakened him. He got up from a thin mattress spread over a Persian rug. The room was musty and dim although a small shaft of light entered through a single east-facing window. Opposite this window were some west-facing windows and a glass door to a narrow balcony. He sensed that he was alone in the apartment as he got up and walked to the glass door. The balcony door was scarcely open. He opened it further, inviting in a rush of air. He stepped out onto the balcony.

Grasping the black metal rail, he looked down from the fourth floor. There was a sidewalk full of pigeons below and the street was margined with tiny parked cars. On the other side of the road was a rectangular park solidly overtowered on all sides by grey century-old buildings. 

What a beautiful summer day it was: a few clouds, warmth and a light breeze. He had slept in his day clothes and, in no need of dressing, went to the bathroom and washed his face. What a wonderful day it seemed! He went to the kitchen and ate moon-shaped bread rolls which he spread with butter and peach jam. He took his food to the balcony where he threw pieces of breakfast to the pigeons. Returning to the kitchen, he prepared for himself and the pigeons some more bread with jam.

The apartment was interesting. There was a dark writing table with many things on it. There were pictures on the walls, framed reproductions of famous works of art, artworks proper, haphazardly pasted on the walls. He saw cedar cabinets, a soft couch, dark chairs, and books and records in shelves all about the room. It was a cultured environment: the borrowed apartment of a friend of the family in a large city and not far from the river. 

The apartment was something to take in, with a breath, and hold in; then, the senses sated, the feeling stored, it seemed time to move on. It was a tremendous day and the large city was waiting! The pigeons outside were wooing him into the sun and fresh morning air. The city waited. The day rolls on, he thought, and he knew that it was time to go out and visit the city. Live the day, walk by the river's embankment across from the rising hills and castles of the other bank; go to the island, to the pool on the island. Live the day, man; the city awaits!

He arrived at the front door, the single door by which to exit the apartment. He reached for the knob and felt that it was locked. This reminded him that he didn't have a key. He could open it, but he wouldn't be able to lock it again without a key. It could only be locked with a key. The lock was just made that way. He'd been ordered by his father to leave the door always locked and hadn't received a key: ordered on pain of manifold torture, memory.

The dictator wouldn't return till sunset. Albert shouldn't have slept longer than the dictator. One had to either leave with the dictator when the dictator left in the early, early morning or stay locked until the despot returned. He hadn't risen and left that early. So he was incased like a frightened rabbit in a furrow. 

This was just a superficial tomb, but to a child a living day not lived is a thousand years lost, Albert thought in the bathtub. Being deprived of an activity is almost unendurable. There is more soon: a caged-in agony. The present wheels by, leaving more in retrospect, less to come. And in time the prison expands. The jail may join horizons. An adult who has been caged as a child may live a perpetual death. The jailor is on a throne in heaven parcelling out memories.

There was no way to climb down from the balcony.

The foam bubbles in the tub resudded as Albert willfully sank. The water level rose. Hot water splashed over the tub's edge, accumulating in cracks between tiles, forming little canals. Albert looked at the floor. The thought of little canals made all seem slowly lighter for him. He thought of riding boats on canals.

There was an unexpected knock on the bathroom door and Beatrice immediately entered.

"How long will you be?"

"Not long. I'm soaped and cleaned, so the hardest work is behind me."

"But," she pointed to his hair sticking out in foamy points like shards of dried rubber gum, "there's still shampoo in your hair."

"It's soap, and cleaning hair isn't work, it's ecstasy. I don't clean it dutifully, spurred by a long-remembered maternal oracle. I do it because it's so fun. I'm fond of my hair."

"You talk too much."

"How much, Beatrice?"

"Too much..."

"Nay, too humorously."

"...too, too much..."

"Much too funnily."

"...too..."

"Much too funnily for you."

"No, just a lot. Too much."

"No mas, seniorita!"

"Hurry please, or I'll raise mucho mas."

"Yes, Beatrice fair."

Almost cross, Beatrice walked out of the room. Albert sat in the tub and began singing about little canals.

Then, Bernard Coliff, one of the bellboys, a pale stringy boy who had a face crowded with freckles, knocked on the front door. He was dressed in short sleeves and carpet slippers. 

Beatrice walked to the door. She focused her eyes through the peephole. Albert was still singing in the bathroom.

"Yes?" She opened the door.

"I have a telegram for someone named Albert..."

"Yes, he's here. I'll take it."

The boy handed the paper to her.

"Thank you," she said and, with a tip given to the boy, closed the door. She went into the bathroom.

"A telegram for you."

"What does it say?"

"I don't know. My mother told me never to read other people's mail: a maternal oracle."

Albert dried his hands on a hotel towel resting on the closed toilet seat cover. Beatrice asked him: "How does anyone know where you are?"

"I don't know. The only person who knows I'm here is my brother and my great-uncle Emory. I called them the morning I got here."

She handed him the sheet of paper. He read it quickly.

"He's coming here."

"Your brother?"

"Peter, my brother."

"You've not told me very much about him."

"Sorry."

"Well, tell me something."

"He's two years younger than I am. He acheived inner harmony, or something like that, early, I suppose, and went on to pursue an active life like a blessed bodhisatva. Witness me, on the other hand. I'm a counter-example. Though, perhaps it's just that he was less spoiled by my mother when very young. I was the first toy, so he was old hat.

"Anyway, a good student he was. He started college a little early also, and when he had served half of his time, just a summer ago, he began working. This work, his first and only real job, consisted of slaving for a newspaper. 

"He started the summer as a paster and paper-lay-out person, but, ambitious as he was then — and though he was still a kid — he somehow impressed the right people. He was given a small promotion. He liked working there so much that when the fall came, he decided not to go back to school full-time, but to take night-courses and work simultaneously. 

"Everyone thought he had a good future before him; I thought

so too — well, in a professional sense at least. Then — was it six months ago?...Yeah, about that — my brother quit his job..."

"I remember you told me something like that."

"Yes." Albert sank in the tub more. The water's surface was covered with bubbles. Foam ringed his chin. "It seemed strange to everyone that he quit; it seemed sinful to some. And he not only quit, but he also became a vagabond-like fellow. He wandered around America awhile. Then he came to Europe to stay with Emory in this small village in eastern Austria. Emory has lived there for years. 

"He was already at Emory's when Emory came alone to visit me before summer. Peter didn't come because he was sick. So I didn't have a chance to speak to him in person then, but I've talked to him three times on the phone since he left the States. All three times, I asked him why he left, and each time he said something like: 'I was bored and restless,' and nothing more really. That's a very good reason to quit a good job and quit a continent as well, I guess. 

"That's all I know of what's happened to my bored and restless brother recently. When I called him the morning I got here, he said that he might come up to see me and so I should ring him up if I decided to move again. He said he'd saved up enough money to travel freely for a time. I didn't suspect that he'd come this soon, though. I wasn't even sure if he'd come at all in his indecisive state.

"He also said something funny on the phone; he said that he wanted to investigate a rumor. What he meant, I knew not...and fain know not still, damn it. Maybe he's a'working for the newspaper again. Me don't know. The telegram says he'll be here the day after demain."

Albert pulled his head below the waterline and Beatrice left the room. Raising his head back out of the water, he yelled: "He's being very secretive about something and when he comes I intend to find out what the Egg Foo Yong it is."

Beatrice re-entered the room.

"Does he say what time he'll be here?"

"No, he'll just pop up anytime. Just as I like doing."

"Well, then let's go and look around the city together today."

"All right."

“And hurry up with your bath."

Beatrice left the room.

XIX

Albert tore his shirt on the day he and Beatrice saw the city. There was an oval-shaped rend near the right breast. Shortly after noon in a park, a twig snagged his striped shirt and wouldn't let go until it had a piece of fabric in its possession. Albert was intrepid and the pair went on with the day.

It was about nine when they arrived back at the hotel after a modest dinner at a cheap restaurant. The drab room was in a slight disorder. Albert's canvas bag was on a side, spilling over essentials. Beatrice's suitcase was messily divulged of contents. There was some clothing in the closet, but most was hung on chairs all over the room.

Albert went to the bathroom to shave. Beatrice was in a jaunty mood and followed Albert into the bathroom. She seemed unusually energetic. She talked sprightly. Albert was silent. An inclination for a solitary walk sprang up in him. He wasn't sleepy and felt like being alone. When he was finished with the razor, he announced his intention to go for a walk to Beatrice.

"Why? We just got back."

"I really want to go for a short walk."

"Why don't we just play some cards and warm to the brandy we bought."

"I won't be away long."

"You should stay."

"I'm going."

"Then I won't be up when you get back."

"I won't be long."

"I won't be up."

He left quietly, closing the door softly behind him. He walked down the hall and down some steps. 

The hotel was old and had no pretensions of glamor. The latter fact was one of its best points. It was also inexpensive. 

The stairs were embracingly narrow. They turned a half-circle at each level and emptied into a big entrance hall on the ground floor. The hall had walls of stone but was made undungeon-like by its spaciousness and numerous windows. The room was airy and the only thing really oppressive about it was a trio of burnt-brown rafters overhead. They loomed above like hungry vultures. The entrance hall had the rugged appearance of the main room of a country lodge.

Behind a counter, by the stairs, dozed a seated man.

Several blocks from the hotel, Albert entered a tavern. It was partially below the street level. He decided to go in because from the outside it reminded him of a semi-subterranean eatery he had once been in long ago. In a big circle at a table with his parents and other adults whom he barely remembered, he was seated years ago. Most details of the situation were a blur, but he still vividly recalled the physical properties of the cafe's interior. There were hundreds of multi-colored bottles and glasses lined in two stepped rows around the whole room. The glass shimmered in the light.

In the Scottish tavern, however, Albert saw that there were no bottles displayed and shining. He sat down at the counter anyway and ordered a beer. The drink was served immediately and he tasted it — warm.

He put both hands on the counter and washed his cheeks red with his hands. He rubbed his eyes.

"Eh,eh," said a long-nosed man, sitting on the counter next to Albert. "Is somethin' a'matter?"

Albert focused his eyes and looked at him squarely.

"No."

The man didn't listen. He scratched his head and said: "Girl troubles, eh?"

"No. I'm set up fine."

"Aye, then ye really got troubles."

Albert took a sip of beer.

"Mind if I speak at leisure? Ye know, as one honest workin' feller t'another." 

Albert didn't care. 

The honest working man had straight spindly hair. He was as thin as Ichabod Crane. He possessed a sly sort of face. The borders of his hands were covered with black grease; it appeared that he wasn't lying in saying that he was a working fellow.

"I can talk 'cause I've plenty o'experience. I'll tell ye: when yer set in, real troubles begin. Ye become...ye become jus' like a possession. It happens slowly. 'S nae noticeable hoo they sae slowly snatch away yer...what's t'word?...liberty, ah, autonomy. You, ah, become jus'another figure in an account book. Women're pawky creatures, ye know. They'll extract nae felt professions o'love frae ye. Worse yet, they'll make ye think ye love them when ye daen. First ye start sayin' 'dear this' and 'dear thot' and next yer obliged t'let 'er know jus'where yer goin' when ye wan' t'gae oot fer a smoke er a walk. 'S nae jus'a bother, 'tis a crime! I'd get oot if I were ye. Throw obligation to the dogs!

"Listen: conscience an'a'tha'type o'stuff is a load o'rubbish which society 'as made fer 'er members. Conscience, it makes ye less a single person an' more a robot operatin' jus fer others. Life is short. Daen let yerself become more o'a slave than ye have t'be. Society only wants a'things t'run smoothly, like in a bleedin' factory, and puts into ye a'sorts o'feelins o'obligation. Then's the women who cultivate those feelins gaily. 'T's a'sae they can own ye one day, put ye i'their purse beside the checks. They've made a pact wi'society; bedamned, they are society." 

The man's voice had become a bit loud and frazzled by then. Albert could smell the ale in his breath. 

The man coughed, cleared his throat and said less frenetically than before: "Throw obligation to the dogs."

"It's not necessary for me to do that now." Albert smiled.

"Ye'll see that't is. But let's we drink t'health."

The man raised his cup. 

Albert sighed, raised his mug and said: "And to women."

The man burst out laughing.

When Albert left the tavern he had in him only half a mug of beer. The street smelled of the petrol which coated the uneven pavement. 

The night wasn't without other smells. Albert inhaled the scent of coffee. On a side-street, he saw a lighted window open to the road. The din of a noisy cafe filtered into the streets. From there came the smell of coffee. He walked down the side-street, past the cafe.

All about were vague city-sounds as if in each direction in the invisible distance there had to be rings of crowded thoroughfares, clubs, restaurants. Yet he saw nothing but dark buildings and lighted windows, street lamps and an occasional pair or party of pedestrians. From somewhere, he heard a familiar piece of music — a violin concerto of Beethoven's, the long one.

There was a slight breeze astir.

As he walked on, gradual changes in the physical scenery became apparent and this wrought changes in his mood. The buildings seemed less tidy, more uncared-for, more used. They were more wretched and yet less cold. Fewer lights were around him, but he noticed a growing frequency of people out, lively, chatty and many smoking. Every once in a while, he heard some remote music, some rock or jazz. This was clearly an area of poverty.

Albert slowly felt more impassive and withdrawn although an undefinable inner nudging gave him the impression of being on the edge of some adventure. This inkling didn't make him anxious or excited; rather, it seemed to him just a reaction to the changing conditions of his environment. In his mind, the unexpected came to seem more probable. He accepted this idea consciously, though it didn't really engage his emotions. A spell of relaxed absence captured him. He walked on with an open and receptive mind.

The street ahead was a bit lighter since there was a tight row of working street lamps. Albert wished to remain in the dark and took a hard right into a swart side-road. A few tippling men passed by him, singing a tune with raucous voices, leaning against one another. One drunk spat to one side, the saliva just missing Albert's left shoe. They hadn't noticed him in their state. Albert walked on, undaunted.

There were a couple of shadows against a wall, whispering. From different places, Albert heard the sounds of giggling. He heard music, cheap and jumpy rhythms. He walked on and faintly heard his own footsteps. 

He was moving quite close to the wall, on the right side of the street. This street was deeply shadowed and the sidewalk was narrow. The dark buildings were less than a meter from the curb. No moving motor vehicles, not even parked cars, were within sight. There was the vague electric titter of a few dying street lamps.

In an utterly dark space, after Albert had passed the protrusion of a building wider than the rest, with his shoulder barely scraping the wall, a hand grabbed his arm. It was not a strong grip. Albert shook himself free but didn't change his footing. A figure moved two steps toward the road where the weak lighting caught a visage.

"Come up with me," said a resinous voice.

In the dimness, Albert barely made out a small female face. The speaker was a long-haired brunette. The woman had large eyes peculiarly set in taut eyelids. She looked almost oriental, but as he squinted to see her face more distinctly, he saw that she was not. Her eyelashes were long and their shadows visible in the faintness of light. Her nose was sharp and sloped, and her lips were fleshy. Albert discerned lines on both sides of her mouth: deep dimples. He couldn't determine any more detail and couldn't see whether she was attractive or not, but he saw that there was nothing blatantly ugly about her appearance.

"Come up with me," she enticed. The corners of her mouth curled up.

"No," he replied.

"Come on up with me." She touched his cheek and he shirked away scarcely.

A street lamp fluttered and died and there was the distant growl of an engine starting.

XX

It was pushing on twelve when Albert returned to the hotel room. Beatrice was asleep. 

Albert took off his clothes and shoes, washed his hands and face in the bathroom sink, put on a pair of pajama pants, got into bed and went to sleep.

Albert woke before Beatrice in the morning. He dressed and then crept out of the room en route to a nearby grocery. It was a warm and virtually cloudless morning. 

He returned fifteen minutes later with some bread, butter, milk and apples. Beatrice awoke and they both ate breakfast. Neither spoke much.

They agreed that they should remain at the hotel and wait for Peter's arrival, though that time was uncertain. Albert relaxed into an uncomfortable armchair and read a book he purchased the day before. Beatrice bathed.

When she was through, she dressed and climbed on top of the unset bed. She yawned and picked up a magazine. Albert put his book down on the chair's arm. He got up and went over to the bed. He laid down on it, turned on his side and began kissing Beatrice. He unbuttoned her blouse. She slipped her hand around the nape of his neck. He unclipped her bra. Her breasts were pale and neither large nor small; just female, pale and scented. The aereola were small and pink. 

At about two-thirty, the front door bore a double knock. Albert was snoozing but woke immediately. He went to the door and opened it. A second later, he embraced the visitor. Peter stood there and returned the embrace lifelessly.

Peter looked like Albert but was a little shorter and his hair was a bit lighter, his eyes a bit darker. Peter's teeth were more uneven. Albert possessed a tiny birthmark on the left side of the small of his back. Peter did not. 

Albert thought appearances were deceptive. He seldom went by them, unless, of course, he was purchasing strawberries or radishes or something like that in a market.

He was surprised, nonetheless, to see Peter's hair growing dense and knotty. His clothes were old and bedraggled. He was dressed in the happest of fashions. The skin around Peter's eyes was soft blue and sagging. Albert had never seen his brother looking so worn and bohemian.

Grabbing Peter's upper arm, Albert led him into the room. Peter was introduced to Beatrice, and both were assured that they would get along smashingly. Albert made Peter sit down. Peter spoke a little of things which should interest a close relative. He felt obligated to declare his knowledge of the whereabouts of various relatives. Though a complete account couldn't take long, since their family wasn't large, Peter began to trail off at the end of sentences and jumble words. Albert suggested that he take a rest. 

Peter said: "No, no, no, no, no, no, no."

Albert insisted. 

Peter said: "All right."

Albert helped pull off Peter's shoes. Peter took off his jacket. The scantly older brother helped the younger onto the top of the bed. Peter breathed out listlessly and thanked Albert. He fell asleep instantly. 

Albert asked Beatrice in a whisper whether she would like to go out somewhere as Peter slept. She said that she would as soon as she changed her clothes. Springing like a marmoset, she whisked into the bathroom, not closing the door, although out of Albert's direct sight. She changed with the assured confidence of privacy, but Albert saw the process reflected in the bathroom mirror, half-opened. Oblivious to Albert's reflection on the mirror, she changed in minutes. It was funny that after knowing someone intimately for months such propriety still had its psychological importance. She would have dressed in another room even if Peter hadn't been there. She always did. 

XXI

On the eve of that day, Peter and Albert went out to get something to eat. Beatrice stayed at the hotel. She was tired. 

As the two passed a gothic church whose ribbed ornamentation made the structure look like a granite skeleton, Albert said: "You know that tomorrow Stephen should be back."

"You've told me that."

Albert glanced at the marmoreal figure poised above some chiseled letters — Saint Something or Other — and then looked at a window sign on the road's opposite side: Sewing machines bought and sold.

"Why did you leave your job?"

"I don't know."

Albert reached into a pocket and pulled out a pack of gum.

"Chewing gum?"

"No."

Albert slipped a piece of gum out of the pack, unwrapped it, and put it into his mouth. Before he could ask another question of Peter, the latter asked: "Why is it so important for you to find your friend?"

Albert chewed his gum and didn't answer. 

He suddenly heard the familiar sound of one of Dvorák's slavonic dances and, tracing the music to its source, saw a little restaurant ahead of them.

"Let's go there," he said.

On inspection of the menu posted on the window, the brothers saw that its fare was outrageously diverse. In the same establishment could be eaten Moussaka and Chicken Chow Mein. The two went in without hesitation and were seated. A waiter came with a wine list, but Albert ordered a Coca-Cola, and Peter was content with iced water. 

"On the road, I asked you why it was so important for you to find your friend," Peter said.

"Friends are important."

"Yeah, but it seems capricious of you to suddenly go searching all about for a single one."

"It seems pretty capricious of you to quit your job and go overseas on a whim."

"You're right. I'm not content with what I have...or had. But I'm not searching for something human."

A half-smile came over Albert's still pale cold-flushed face.

"I see. What is it then?"

"It's not quite human."

Albert scratched his nose and glanced about the room. He looked at the extravagant posters on the walls, most of them blown-up photographs of various lands, meant as propaganda for might-be tourists. Then he returned his gaze to the table and to his brother.

"Truthfully Peter, my search is not for something human either. That a human's involved is just a symptom."

The waiter brought out a Coke and a glass of cold water. He asked what they would have for dinner. Peter ordered a fish soup and a hamburger. Albert asked for the Chicken Cacciatore. It was a strange restaurant.

“What do you mean a symptom?"

"You know, of those events..." 

"What events?"

"Years ago."

"Oh. Tell me about them." Peter's tone changed with the last sentence. It became a bit apprehensive.

"They shear my life in half. No, they mark the demise and death of one person and the...unfortunate start of another, having to sling over a shoulder the burden of the former."

"How dismal," Peter said with a straight face. Albert saw mockery.

"Stay quiet or I won't continue."

"I promise." Peter feigned shame. "I'm sorry, I just wasn't in a serious enough mood. Now I am, I promise. Seriousness is all."

"It's easy to joke, but you were young and not there to note its significance."

"I was young."

"I'll go on....After the loss of the first person, the next one still carried around left-over images from the life of the first and happier person. These images were scattered and obscure and it was easy to sanctify them. 

"When I was young I made many plans. All of them promised to come to fruition. Everything was alive. One summer, everyday, I bought peach ice cream from a stand on a walking-street, after swimming in the morning at the Strand, and the flavor told me that the universe waited. So I dreamed. 

"At the end of a long park with red benches and walkways of yellow pebbles there was a little amusement park. I went there and the bumper cars promised me the realization of my dreams. I bumped my car into our grandfather's. He laughed. That was me! not the person you see here, the one you hear talking to you. What you see now is without substance. It's not what I am: it's a tawdry relic. What I am is what I was then. But that's gone, and so also am I. Things alter irreparably. Stephen's a great friend from before and so he's a symbol."

Their food came. Its promptness was not a great omen. It smelled nicely though. How would it taste? 

The waiter smiled. He lowered the final plate, which held a small hamburger, to the table. Peter thanked the waiter. 

Albert picked up a fork and knife.

"What about your search?" he asked his brother. "I'll tell you tomorrow." 

XXII

When they got back to the hotel room, Beatrice was asleep. The blanket was pulled up to her chest. She was sleeping on her back, her head resting on one side. She looked very pretty. Lying as she was, she looked like a child. Albert told Peter how marvelous he thought she looked. Peter agreed.

Albert went downstairs and fetched a cot with the grudging assistance of the night porter. Peter slept on the cot in the second room. Albert scooted onto bed next to Beatrice. 

Peter left the hotel early the following day to explore the city alone. Albert and Beatrice went to the train station a little later to buy her a ticket. She was to leave in a week and four days. Her work was waiting for her. Albert said that he didn't know where he would be in two weeks and was glad of that.

After getting the ticket, they hungrily entered a dreary coffeeshop, the first eatery they came across, and ordered and ate a dreary meal. Then, walking toward a bus stop, they saw a hat shop and entered. They tried on various hats, at first not intending to buy; however, Beatrice insisted that Albert get the coonskin hat that made him look like Daniel Boone. It wasn't costly and so he bought it. He wore it all the way back to the hotel.

They stayed together in the hotel room awhile and wiled away the clock's strokes reading. Around mid-day, Albert went downstairs to make a phone call. 

A deep lethargic voice on the other end of the line answered: "Yes?"

"Hello, is Stephen back yet?"

"No."

“Do you know when he'll be back?"

"Yes."

"When is that, sir?"

"Tomorrow very late. Call again on the day after tomorrow. I value my rest. Good day."

The connection ended. Albert hung up and mumbled something about the gruffness of some mongrels.

XXIII

When Albert was young he had a hard time of it. 

One night then, Albert had the flu. He felt the agony of an insurgent stomach and the gnawing rhythm of a pulsating, congested brain in its case. It was very late. He knelt by the toilet for half an hour, waiting for something to come up. He moaned. His father, a university professor who slept badly and often drank, angrily shouted "shut up" from his bedroom. Albert clutched his stomach and twisted about trying to relieve the pain. He threw up just as the sound of a violently turned doorknob reached his ears. His father rushed in and started yelling. He picked Albert up and threw him against a cabinet. Then, screaming "you shit!," he went back to bed.

His father had a beard. Once, when the family was in London, Albert's parents got into a wicked argument. It ended with his father storming out of the house, furiously slamming the door. He didn't come back that night; only the next morning did he return. He had a hang-over. He was tired-looking and dirty. His beard was shaved off. His naked face frightened Albert. His skin was yellow. There was a bloody spot below his chin, half-covered by an elastic bandage. Albert had never seen him without a beard.

As time went on, things only became worse. Albert became sobered and sad. His parents fought more and more. 

One morning, Albert woke up and went into the kitchen. He fixed himself something to eat. He went to his aquarium and stared at his fish. His mother appeared. She asked whether he had seen his father. He hadn't. Last he heard, they were shouting at each other and breaking things the night before. 

His father was gone.

A week later, Albert and Peter received a postcard without a return address. 

His father had left for Europe. Months later, he still wasn't back. This was sufficient grounds for the divorce his mother then pursued. It was put through by a lawyer who later was involved in some questionable dealings which got him in the paper and hampered his career for a few years. His name was salvaged, though, and he went on to become a superior court judge. 

Two years later, his father showed up again. Albert wasn't home at the time, but he got a postcard from his mother telling him the news. He later received a postcard from his father which started off as a near-apology, then fell into accusations and finally expressed wishes that Albert would get better. Albert wasn't well then. Another year passed before they were speaking or, more exactly, before they even had an opportunity to speak at all. Since that time, they communicated irregularly but not infrequently. It was never pleasant, though.

Hard memories faded in the day. In the deep night they surfaced. Albert was an insomniac.

Albert spent the summer after his father's mutiny and disappearance in Europe with Emory. He received letters from his mother alluding to a new friend, a man. When he returned to the States, his mother introduced the new man to Albert enthusiastically. Albert hated him from the start. His mother tried in vain to foster good relations by trying to sell the new man, or intruder, as the big brother Albert missed.

The new man liked to drink. The demon of his tongue was soon unloosed with familiarity, and he began to talk cruelly to the household when he was over. Finally, Albert's mother told him that she wanted nothing more to do with him. The night of her announcement, he later came to the house, intoxicated to the last degree, beyond any faint glimmer of reason. He began breaking windows with bricks and was finally silenced by the hand of a policeman with cuffs.

Albert wanted to go back to Emory's. Emory was old and kind and liked having Albert at his home. He had a generous amount of money. He agreed to hire a tutor for Albert for half a year while Albert lived with him and his wife. This was a respite for Albert. He played his clarinet and Emory's old piano. He went swimming on warm weekends with the neighbor girl at the outdoor pools in town. 

He liked his tutor. She was middle-aged, tall, thin and a bit hard-nosed, but she knew when to loosen the tether of discipline in order to keep the pupil lively. She tactfully slackened up when Albert needed a little liberty on the weekdays. Albert perceived this and found it astonishing when viewed side by side with his first impression of her: a mean and cold hag. He learned to appreciate her. As far as teachers went, she wasn't bad. Finally, he liked her.

Again, he got letters from his mother intimating to the acquisition of another new friend. Albert burned the letters with a Bunsen burner from an old chemistry set in Emory's garage. He pushed the thought of his mother out of his mind.

The time eventually came, however, for him to go back. He relunctantly did. He had no choice at his age. 

From the first there was friction between Albert and the second new man. The tension grew with time, and Albert became consciously and flippantly insolent. The most grotesque part of the new man's relationship with Albert's mother was its seriousness.

His mother soon made wedding plans. 

As his mother tried to push some pacification between Albert and the man, Albert came to loathe the man even more. The feeling of oppression intensified within him. His mother became progressively more attached to the wretch and taunted Albert with his supposed familial obligation to behave, to treat the man with the respect and courtesy a mealy worm deserved. In quarrels between Albert and the man, she invariably sided with the second new man. She began to take a closed view of Albert as being ornery and always bad. 

The second new man perceived his position of growing dominion in the household. The warthog saw that he was implicitly given masculine jurisdiction over the home and he exercised his new power as man of the house in a most primitive way. He began to beat Albert.

Albert's mother was seldom around when the man repeatedly cuffed or punched Albert. When Albert confessed to his mother what was occuring, she either denied that it was happening, despite bruises and marks, or she said that he was exaggerating events. He had been out of line and the second new man was showing him proper discipline, something which, she said, he lacked in the past. What a new woman she had become.

Albert was very young at this time. He had a friend, two year older than he, who lived very near and who occasionally came over to his house. This friend, at that time, enjoyed chewing tobacco and making eccentric jokes that were great in their insightfulness. He also enjoyed speaking his mind. He said that the second new man certainly was "a bastard and a boor." On both counts, Albert agreed.

Albert wasn't at war every minute with the man, at least in the beginning. At first, heeding his mother's instructions for a few hours at a time, he pretended that the new man was a clean-sport father figure, but the second new man's savage and rough manner were too much to grapple into a father's suit. So, repulsed by wrestling, Albert rebelled against the idea.

Albert's hatred thrived. One weekend morning in September, he walked into his mother's bedroom to ask her a question. Almost invariably on weekend mornings, the man was out babooning with his friends. However, when Albert walked in, he saw both his mother and the man asleep. The man was stretched on the bed, half out of the covers, naked. Albert quietly slid out the door. After that, Albert felt it even easier to despise the man.

The scourging of Albert became more severe. Still, his mother supported the second man. Albert dreamed of revenge. He wished to be a true rebel. Yet, for practical reasons, he tried behaving to some extent.

At that time, the portentous words of his friend who lived nearby landed on responsive ground. Albert's friend exhorted Albert into some activity. He thought that Albert should take a stand, not allow himself to be pushed all about. 

When Albert interrupted with the sensible observation that the antagonist in this drama was a step taller, a bulk bigger than was Albert, his friend reacted: "That's immaterial. James Bond would never let anyone jog him around. Remember when..."

"I'm not a mythical secret-agent."

"That's immaterial. It was a damn good analogy, and that's a compliment. You just have to think of yourself in that way. You're a saboteur, a mighty one — think of yourself as that."

With days unremittingly stripping away the possibilities of action, why be passive? Why be languid and weak? Even if self-assertion leads to some unforeseen destruction, it's better to have lived with dignity than to have bowed the head and shuffled in the shadows like a stray dog. Turning the other cheek, even, is a proud action. It's not shirking. In its way, it isn't listlessness but smug victory. Albert shrugged.

A person must in the end live with oneself alone. Albert must live with Albert. Keeping up the self-dignity of this one is the most important goal. The being of a stone is no life at all. Battered pebbles fall, but a person should act. A person should have gall. These ideas Albert's friend expressed as he assayed Albert's position. 

Albert's mother sent her son to a psychiatrist because he was peaking less and scowling more. He gnashed his teeth at seen and unseen enemies. The psychiatrist was an obtuse and ineffectual man. He had a black beard, looming stature, bent back and a large belly. He was a perfect fool. He was called Strueber.

Resolving to take some possible defensive action in the future, as his friend suggested, Albert hid a long and sturdy stick, one which had a particularly bulky and splintery end, under his bed. He told Strueber of the stashed wood. 

Strueber never said anything about what went on in their sessions to his mother. He assured Albert on the very first day of counseling that he practiced in strict confidentiality. Albert made certain of this through experiment. He occasionally said something shocking to Strueber, something or other calculated to be especially startling to maternal ears. Then later, he carefully marked his mother's behavior toward him. He never noticed any change in his mother's conduct the evening after a session. Strueber told the truth.

Strueber inquired whether the hidden presence of the stick gave Albert a feeling of security. Albert frowned at the doctor and said that of course it did. It made him feel a king. It was his royal scepter. A crown had yet to be scalped. 

The doctor, full of premonition, concluded that "as long as it makes you feel secure — mind you, just as a symbol — then it is, if not integrally psychotherapeutic, harmless." 

As an afterthought, however, he cautioned Albert that violence was never curative. As the patient left after forty-five solid minutes of psychic progress, Strueber said: "And, don't worry, all our little meetings are a hundred and fifty percent confidential. Only by building trust do I think I can help. Oh, and remember to tell your mother to have her insurance agency contact me."

On a Stygian dark night, after a weekend Albert spent camping in a pup-tent in the backyard of his nearby friend, Albert's mother and the second new man went out. It was Albert's turn to take care of the dirty dishes by washing them and putting them into the dishwashing machine. It was a simple and mundane chore. That night, after he'd started the machine, he decided to have a bowl of cereal. The used bowl and spoon he set in the sink and poured water over; and then he went to bed. His throat was sore.

About two hours later, Albert woke when he heard a car drive up and park and two doors slam. It was his mother and the man. He dozed off again, being very tired from the sleeplessness of camping. This was the kind of awakening that isn't usually recalled in the morning.

Minutes after, waking from a reverie in which he supposed his foot to be caught in a bear trap, it registered in his brain that his foot was actually being pulled by aggressive hands. The second new man was wrenching his leg, hauling Albert from the bed. Albert, carried by instinct, jerked his leg free and pulled his body to the farther side of the bed, curling up his legs.

The man grabbed Albert's thigh and started pulling him. He harped: "Get up! You haven't done the dishes. Get out of bed!"

He smelled of extreme drunkenness.

The man kept tugging viciously. Albert yanked his leg free again and kicked the man in the stomach so hard that the wind was knocked out of him. Albert re-curled himself on the far end of the bed. The man soon recovered and, with a yelp, clawed into Albert's calves with both hands, jerking him so strongly that Albert fell to the floor with a crash, hitting his head. 

The man knelt with a knee on Albert's chest and began hitting Albert's face wildly, yelling: "Son of a bitch! Son of a bitch!" Who was the bitch? Albert clenched his fists and tried to hit back or push the man off him, but the man was too big.

The man picked Albert up by the shirt and then threw him down, kicking him all over the body. The man got down, grabbed Albert and began hitting him again. Albert's foot knocked against a stick. Albert sprung for the stick with a start, shaking, tearing away from the man's hold. He pulled the stick out from under the bed. He brandished it like a saber, still spread on his back, clutching it with both hands. He accelerated it with all his strength toward the man's head. It struck the side of the man's neck and he fell to one side. Albert jumped to his feet and began to frenziedly beat the man. Albert closed his eyes. He could feel the man struggling. He beat with the stick more ferociously.

Suddenly, a hand caught his leg and he fell backward, but the stick was still tight in his hands. As the man, bleeding heavily, lunged, Albert was able to club the man hard on the face, across the mouth. The man's hands flew in reflex to cage his wounded cheeks. Albert got to his feet. He again began to beat him. The man fell to the ground, struggling and squirming. Albert kept on hitting him. The man went limp. Albert stopped. He stared at the body and dropped the stick. Only then did he hear his screaming mother who raced into the room followed by two policemen. She pointed at Albert and at the man's body. She slumped over the body and began to whimper.

"I smote him," said Albert shaking, laughing and sobbing. The policemen grabbed him.

The man had only been unconscious.

XXIV

Since Albert was still a kid and had fought back after being attacked, the law raised a more severe eyebrow on the second new man, not permanently injured and a child beater. Albert spent the night on a hospital bed with what seemed a throng of people around him. Policemen asked him questions and took pictures, medics attended his cuts and bruises and sprained ankle. One policeman, especially hostile to the idea of an adult beating a minor, patted Albert's knee and said not to worry; Albert had only given the man his due.

Albert spent the next day in the hospital also. At all times, there was an armed policeman beside him. The second new man was in the general hospital as well, bandaged somewhere on the other side of the giant building. Albert's mother spent the day in dire consultation with Strueber, the psychiatrist.

Surrounded by runaways, delinquents and a few young rapists a week later, with a temporarily messy and disfigured face, Albert was on the adolescent ward of a mental hospital.

"What are you thinking about?" Beatrice asked. Albert's hands were laced as in prayer and his chin brushed his fingertips. He was staring into the blurry void.

"Nothing important..."

Albert remained at the psychiatric hospital for a long time. A few of the other inmates sometimes took him aside and pushed him around. He was very small. 

He stopped eating and slowly became very skinny. He tried to escape from this prison several times. In each case, he was caught and tied down in a dank room, always lighted, for a day and a night, periodically turned to keep the blood circulating evenly. It was maddening. 

Albert was helpless. Only his mother, since his father was still off somewhere, could liberate Albert, a minor. She would not. The reports she received from the hospital confirmed what she wished to believe: Albert was sick and in need of treatment. The reports were canned by the brains and pens of rehabilitators indignant with Albert's refusal to comply with their rules and with his numerous attempts to go A.W.O.L..

The hospital was like a cruel prisoner-of-war camp: cold, stone-walled, built ten times ten years before. As an infernal design for hell, it couldn't be improved upon. The windows were barred. The floors were hard stone, dirty and never mopped. 

Some of the kids on the ward were intelligent. The malady of most all within was simply the condition of being troubled. The troubled state was usually the result of being victim to hostile circumstances and machinations in the life before. For being born into unfavorable situations, they were cast into a hole and dubbed unsound for common living. They were touched in the head by indelicate fingers not their own. They were forgotten for years. The world is busy and bustles and the horizon treads eastward. The sun has no patience.

In a large prison-like building there was a huge room in which fifty males slept. At the building's other end was another dorm where the females slept. The building was always well-staffed. 

On weekday mornings, the inmates were woken at five-thirty. They dressed and reported to the day hall, its stone window ledges crossed with iron bars. There they had twenty minutes to smoke or sit. Some lined up, as automatons, to be given their medication. 

Then there was a call and the prisoners had to line up in queues by fore-assigned groups. There was a total of six groups.

After lining up in six columns, it would be announced which three groups could breakfast first. For those three groups, the building's rear door was unlocked. The patients were commanded to trudge down a vast covered passage, while well-guarded, and shuffle into another building where they ate by ordered rows. 

Green ivy grew in patches on the outside walls of the dining hall.

In the meantime, the other three groups listened to tiresome lectures on current discipline problems. Individuals who offended the house rules were publicly humiliated, and it was made clear that those individuals should be avoided. The effect was that the law-breakers were shunned by their peers only because the visible expression of admiration was punishable. 

Any minor effrontery led to a partial or complete loss of the few meager privileges available. If the crime occasioned it, the staff used active punishment such as confinement in a dark room or immobility in a lighted one. With Albert's numerous attempts to escape, he had lost all of the few privileges allowed. This was only part of his punishment.

After the two variable breakfast super-groups were both convened in the oppressive day hall once again, there was a call for school. Six single-file lines formed. The front door was opened and, falling into one very long line as each group was commanded forward syncopatedly, the head-cases marched off. Under all types of weather, they endured a quarter mile walk to the school. It was impossible to successfully dash then, on the way to school. The line was well-attended and the whole greater compound encompassed by a high stone wall crested with barbed-wire. Within the walls, there were various localized networks of obstacles and impediments. A mindless dash would only lead to trouble. Cleverness was required for any realistic plan of flight. The best time to try was always at school. Albert meticulously planned out all of his escape attempts.

Once, Albert cautiously stole an eating knife from the dining room. Every day for the next four weeks, he asked to use the bathroom while at school. He was accompanied to the door. Inside the bathroom, he was left alone. Someone stood outside the door. He sawed, by tiny degrees, the thick metal clamps that held a rusted grill outside the window. The grill was attached in four points to the exterior wall. In discreet places, he planned to saw whenever he went to the school lavatory until the clamps were sawed through. 

He couldn't stay very long in the bathroom and could only work a little at a time. 

The bathroom was on the second floor of the school building. Below the window, in a walled courtyard, was a place were there was no stone wall, just a barbed wire fence. It appeared to Albert from the bathroom window that he could climb under a tiny gap in the fence and suffer only a few scratches. He had to get into the closed courtyard window first. The only apparent way was by climbing out the bathroom window.

The day came on which Albert projected that he could finally saw through the grill holdings. 

In the early morning, just before the wake-up call, the night guard always stepped out of the dorm room to be replaced by a day person. Albert used this time to tie together a string of shirts and slip them around his belly, sucking in his stomach. He tied the cord of shirts as tightly as he could, slipping the excess evenly down his pants. He put on over this a shirt and jacket. He was very skinny from not eating. he looked something like a walking cadaver, ribs all protruding, skin pale. His clothes had become so loose-fitting that the padding underneath them didn't look at all conspicuous. 

In the bathroom that day, he did manage to saw the grill smoothly off. He held one of the bars with his free hand. The grill seemed very heavy. 

He cautiously turned the grill on a side, pulled it in and set it down quietly, leaning it against the toilet. He tied one end of his shirt rope around a pipe below the sink and threw the other end out the window. He scrambled down as silently as he could. The shirt rope didn't quite make the ground, so he jumped, landing on hands and knees. He bolted for the barbed wire fence. He tore off his jacket, stretched himself out as flatly as possible and shimmied under the fence, snagging his clothes, tearing his pants. He scarred his arms and legs.

He got up to run and saw three attendants running toward him outside the greater complex. He bolted across a field and down a street. The attendants were large men and not near-starvation as Albert was. They gained on him. Finally, in front of a playground, they caught up with him; they jumped on him, flinging him to the ground. His face hit the pavement. The attendants gave him a few great wallops as he struggled. Albert felt the blows but couldn't see which of the three, if any single one, was delivering them. 

He spent the night and next day in chains. 

After this incident, when he went to the bathroom at school, he received no privacy.

When school was over, the rest of each weekday was a rigid series of lining and de-lining. The inmates had one hour of free time confined to the day hall at night after dinner. 

On the weekends, one could sleep until nine. The rest of the day was much the same as a weekday. There was a substitute for school called group therapy. This therapy was more like a session of whipping by a circus ringleader. The group leader heavily berated the inmates and typically said little that was helpful.

Even after Albert's great school-time failure in breaking free, he worked on more escape plans. Despite the growing shrewdness and intricacy of his approach in the two subsequent efforts, he didn't succeed. On his very last attempt, however, he made it out of the greater compound again. He was spotted by an alerted policeman minutes later. The policeman made a call in a flash and got out of his car. Albert saw him and darted into a small forest. The cop pursued. Albert left the woody area on its other side and ran down another street. He saw a police car stop in front of him and two more policemen get out, running toward him. He turned and ran past the cop who had chased him through the forest, feeling a hand on his shirt tail momentarily. He ran back toward the woods. Just at their perimeter, he jumped over a wide ditch and tripped. The cops were all over him. He didn't try to shake himself free, he was self-subdued; the grips of the policemen were too strong. They handcuffed him, his hands tied behind his buttocks. 

He spent all night tied to a bed. Both of his wrists and both of his ankles were strapped down. His scalp became numb. The door was locked and the light was on. He began yelling for someone. Nobody came. Clamping the small pillow below his head with his teeth, he gnashed and squirmed and managed to push the pillow off the bed. He lowered his head to the mattress. The blood came back to his scalp. That night he didn't sleep. 

The next morning, a Sunday, sunlight streamed in from a tiny window set high in the wall. Albert heard the door being unlocked. Two attendants walked in. He strained his neck to look up. Following them was a priest, the Protestant pastor of the hospital. Albert's cheek stuck to the mattress. His skin was clammy from crying all night. There was a spot of saliva on the bed where his mouth had rested. He tried to blink the mucus out of the corner of his eyes. He opened his eyes as wide as he could and turned his head to the priest. 

"When will it get better, father?"

The priest shook his head.

"I don't know."

In the end, Albert's mother received a notice in the mail urgently pressing her for legal permission to administer shock therapy.

Albert tapped bubbles out of a glass of Coca Cola. His interest in this pastime allayed, he slid the drink away and watched Beatrice drawing a mosaic on a small piece of hotel note paper. He had called Stephen's house about an hour ago and gotten the answer that Stephen would be back late the next day. While downstairs, he'd gone to the grocery store and bought a bottle of soda and a newspaper. 

The big news on the front of the newspaper was that a huge company had just fallen asunder; it declared its folding. The crash was so sudden that many economists were baffled. Albert didn't read beyond the first paragraph. He turned the page to find a long article about some gory slayings. He read a few paragraphs and turned the page again. 

An advertisement stated that, at a premium interest rate, pennies could be put to rest at Barclay's. Albert's purse was not a’brim, but he still had enough. With his liquid reserves, however, he would not consider it prudent to pour expensive libations on any whim.

His motions were fluid.

He picked up his glass and finished off the drink within. With one hand, he stroked Beatrice's swarthy hair.

"Would you like to go for a walk?"

Part Two

I

Stephen was there all right. 

Clad in a brown hide jacket that dropped below the knees, with worn blue jeans and dusky hair growing liberally over his ears, he looked the picture of ruggedness. He wore small elliptical specs that were nothing like the huge round glasses he used to wear, the ones which made him look like a study-worm. 

The apparition before Albert's eyes looked like a durable mountie: a man of the wilderness; but in his ruddy cheeks and smooth hairless face, the marks of extreme youth still burned. His sanguine complexion was still dotted with a few freckles, as it was years ago, and his eyes were as green and alive as ever. He was a trifle taller than Albert, although they had once been the same height. 

He wasn't wearing shoes and his thin feet were tipped with long-uncut toenails. 

Albert was soaking wet from the rain. The wind had picked up prodigiously since he was on the bus. It blew cold raindrops slant-ways, wetting him, unsheltered half-under the roof's periphery. 

Stephen stood frozen at the door in a sort of shock for some time. Through his eyes could be seen the quick workings of a mind remembering: swiftly his head was filled with images. His eyes became watery as memory, through the force of years, struck him. 

Stephen saw the boy who seemed so large once, who had been

fearless, been the spokesman, when the park-keeper questioned them after calling them out of the lake. He saw the other brain of the schoolyard rebels. It was so long since he'd clearly seen all of it, he thought, the school, the school mum, Aggie: but he'd had fitful glimpses of those times. He regretted the passing of years, though not as sadly as Albert. He'd felt remorse over losing touch with his friend; felt sorrow because he thought the separation was final. Before him stood a great memorable spirit from middle childhood, his old friend, the aggressive, rebellious, brilliant, musical, lousy-cricket playing grown boy Albert.

A smile covered Stephen's face. Shaking his head in a stupor, he shouted out Albert's name with a shrill voice. He hugged his friend. 

His jacket wet from Albert's coat, Stephen stepped back and said that he had trouble believing that here was Albert, his old friend, whom he couldn't have expected to ever see again. How in a world so large, communications having somehow rusted away, addresses having been lost, having been changed, how could such be hoped? He asked how Albert had found his address. Albert said only that it was difficult. Then he asked how Albert had been over the years. Albert couldn't answer. 

Stephen put his hand and repeated how surprised he was; how unlikely that Albert should show up in his life like an unexpected ghost. 

Albert asked whether the old landlord told Stephen about his visit and call. Stephen said that he hadn't, never did the "old man" take messages, and he added with a laugh: "The old man is actually my aunties' husband, my uncle." 

Stephen commented once more on how unbelievable it was to see Albert. He said that Albert looked just as he would have guessed him to appear: with an air of gravity, a narrow face and frazzled dark hair that made him look like a mad professor. Albert explained that part of the effect was just the product of wind and rain.

"How many years has it been, Albert? Hmm? Ten years? Hmm?? Well, it's great to see you; it's really wonderful."

Then, descending suddenly to physical observations, Stephen said: "Oh, sorry, come out of the rain. Sorry, I've made you stand out there so long. I'm so surprised you're here, really I am."

Albert stepped into the house and out of the rain. 

Stephen closed the door and asked whether Albert was hungry. Honest Albert replied that he could do with some food. Stephen suggested that they go out and get something to eat. He'd first put on some shoes. 

He clamored up the wooden stairs of the house and Albert followed him, stepping more slowly. 

Albert noticed that the house's interior was as barely decorated as a Norwegian winter-home. With the stained-wood floors, clean white walls and dark beams on the ceiling, the sight, though stark, was pleasant enough to the eyes. 

The house was completely silent. Albert asked where Stephen's relatives were. Stephen said that they were probably in the kitchen playing cards or reading. "They're very quiet people." 

Stephen's room was a great mess. There was a big desk by the door covered with a bulk of papers, pens and books. Against it was propped a 

cello of good make with a string missing. An open closet revealed a disarray of clothes, some on hangers though most in piles on the closet's baseboards. Books, magazines, more clothing, musical scores, spoons, forks, dishes and a couple of glasses lay scattered like sediment all about the floor. A funny-looking triangular instrument, a balalaika, rested on the bed. More clothing, more books sat perched on the bed's corner. Covering the walls were posters and pictures of every imaginable variety. Behind the door, limiting the angle to which the door opened, were yet more books, more papers and a pair of boots. 

"What a haven," Albert said, not ironically. 

Stephen said that the room wasn't always so messy. He hadn't been in the mood lately to clean up as it seemed so illogical to even try. His most recent view toward tidying was that it was an utter waste of time. All the order that could be created, even in an overhaul, was almost immediately lost unless a person invested constant effort into putting things back in their deigned places after each use. 

"And," he added, "I'm not this type of prim. I'm unfastidious to the point of dissipation. I'm just a slovenly scurvey-dawg."

So he gave up trying to be orderly. His auntie didn't mind that much so long as he "didn't leave things like bread crusts or apple cores in the room to decay in their odious way." 

They soon left the house, talking as openly as would seem to fit two who once suffered pain to poke a thumb, draw a droplet of blood and make a pact, becoming lifelong blood-brothers. They caught up on old times. Each recounted personal events of the years intervening their last meeting and the present: a rainy day with a chilly wind astir. 

It was late in the night when Albert returned to the hotel. Beatrice was in bed and apparently asleep. Albert went to the bathroom, turned on the light, quietly closed the door and washed his face. His face cleaned, he looked around the sink. Where was his toothbrush? He went into the bedroom, sweeping the door to the bathroom only minutely open so that no glare was cast on Beatrice's face.

As he felt around for his toothbrush under the bed, he heard Beatrice's voice. She said something he couldn't quite hear, so he raised his head to the mattress' level. She again mumbled some words that were in sum rather incoherent. Albert realized that she was talking in her sleep, something he never noticed her doing before. 

Looking down at the floor, he just barely perceived the outline of his toothbrush by a leg of the nightstand. 

II

At nine o'clock, the next morning, Albert awoke. He got out of bed and dressed. Beatrice was still sleeping. Albert didn't want to wake her. He quickly and quietly washed up, wrote a note to her, placed it on the nightstand by her head, and left in minutes.

The morning wasn't as cold as he'd come to expect each early day in Edinburgh to be; there were few clouds aloft and an unfettered sun gave some promise of a clear day.

Albert caught the bus, transferred and by a quarter of ten was at Stephen's house. He knocked on the door. No relief came. He knocked again. He heard a rustling within, footsteps on the stairs, and soon the sound of a lock unbolting.

Stephen opened the door wearing a bathrobe and plastic slippers. His wet hair adhered tightly to his head and neck.

"Albert! Good morning! Come in."

As Albert entered, Stephen's hand came down on his shoulder.

"You're quite punctual. I just got out of the shower when I heard your knock."

"I think I'm actually a few minutes early."

"Doesn't matter."

They walked up the stairs. At the top of the staircase, Stephen pointed to his room.

"Step in, pick up a book, try my balalaika: I'll be ready to go in a few minutes." He left for the bathroom.

When Stephen returned, clothed in a green muslin shirt and black shorts, he said: "Today, my friend, we're going to see a woman who lives near the Meadows. She's having a gathering."

"If that's what's fixed on the agenda, it's all right with me."

"Good. Would you like to bike there?"

"Sure, do you have two bicycles?"

"Yeah, I have one, and you can use my uncle's. I don't know if he'd mind, but since he's not here, what does it matter?"

Stephen had an old ten-speed. His uncle's bike was a more polished three speed. 

The air seemed very chilly as they biked away. Albert asked whether Stephen was cold; Stephen said: "Of course not."

They talked as they pedaled down the small streets of residential areas, heading for deeper town, passing rows of grey Craigleith stone houses.

"I met the girl to whose house we're going in school. She's from Poland. She's majoring in Russian and, in fact, this little lunch party-thing is mainly for her Russian-major friends, so you'll hear a lot of bumbling Russian and a lot of schtos. There will also be good food, a lot of it, wine and, posseeblee, 'eef I may say, des belles femmes."

"What's the Polish woman's name?"

"Her name's Magda Kotowski. She's not very pretty and is usually unpleasant to be around." He smiled. "So I like her a lot."

A traffic light suddenly turned red in front of them and they had to brake sharply to a stop alongside a row of cars. The scent of automobile exhaust crept into Albert's nose.

"Stephen, what are you going to do now that you don't go to school?"

"I don't know? What are you doing?"

"Nothing really. I'm quite lazy."

"'S'not bad to be that. It only seems bad in relation to a thousand presumptions."

"But what I'd like to know is just what you're going to do."

"What do you mean, what am I going to do? What bullshit am I supposed to do? I'm not going to do anything."

The light ahead turned green. As they accelerated, Stephen continued with a newly-sprung graveness: "You know, all these obligations and responsibilities we're supposed to face are just part of an immense game. I've played it, using all the expedient ploys. I've used all the methods to bring me some gain. I've stepped into prefabricated suits and gone round in circles the obligatory number of times under someone's watch until I got a crumb of something I wanted or just somehow felt I needed." They veered to the left. "I've seen people several times my age still trudging about in some circle, maybe out of habit, goin' around. Logic tells me they should have already gotten what they wanted, if it could be found by their wanderings in the cycle. Scraping away their existences in their jobs, with their families, through their Saturday morning football games, in the rigamarole, half duty, half drug, they don't seem to ever get it....Seems pointless to me. Where's the reason in this when the premises are poor from the start? Why should I follow this and that pointless rule or custom? And why should I pay all this brainless deference to some person or other? Rules and traditions, that's all an obligation can stem from. 

"There's not very much I owe to society. I do my own, I do the minimum to live: the rest is all phoniness." 

Stephen applied the brakes. 

"You know what I mean."

He raised his arm to signal a coming turn to motorists. 

"Left here."

They rode cautiously across George street and Princes street and

through Princes Street Gardens. They passed the National Gallery precariously in heavy traffic and pedaled by the base of a natural stage, Castle rock, upon which rose the Castle. They cycled across the Royal Mile. They veered harder south, coasting into a deep valley. Then, at the bottom, by a scaffolded church, an incline rose up under their bikes. The ground climbed steeply for several blocks. 

Stephen was riding ahead of Albert. He kept looking back to see if his friend was tiring. Albert tried hard and for a time successfully maintained just a few meter's worth of separation. Eventually, however, Stephen began to pull away. He had an unflagging stamina. He also had a ten speed bicycle.

When the road finally leveled, Albert sighed heavily and coasted awhile with his momentum. Stephen continued steadily pedaling and the distance between the bikers gradually increased. Albert started to pedal anew. The road soon declined toward the Meadows. Albert was relieved that momentarily he could relax with gravity working decidedly in his favor.

Since he could free his concentration from the task of struggling on the pedals, Albert looked around him and noticed that the sky was much more clouded than it was when the two set off. The air was fresh and breezy, though a bit chilly. 

The casting of light that strained through the pale clouds had a sort of re-assuring incandescence, an effect that reminded Albert of early winter schooldays in youth with little rain or coldness. Those kind of days were great. Enjoying them outside, you might think yourself in the center of an eternal present if not for the eventual dropping of darkness.

Albert had just come proudly up from astern to ride alongside Stephen when the latter motioned and said: "A right at the next intersection."

Albert braked and fell behind his friend.

Soon they turned again, to the left, raced down a long and narrow lane and then turned right. 

Stephen lazily applied the brakes after the turn. Albert did the same.

They came to a stop in front of a large sandstone house. To each side of the building, a red wooden fence extended a few meters and turned at ninety degrees to enclose a backyard full of weeds. 

There wasn't a sound coming from the house. The sleek black-stained front door was shut. Albert was about to ask why the place was so quiet when Stephen said: "Magda rents this place with a number of other students, mostly Russian majors, not surprisingly."

"Russian must sound pretty funny with Scottish accents."

"Yeah, most of her housemates are indigenous gnomes and despite that my ear's not trained for Russian, whenever I've come over here and heard them trying to spew in the language, I've noticed how they sound like bullfrogs trying to growl like bears... We can put our bikes over there."

Stephen pointed to the fence's door at the left side of the house. They wheeled their bikes over to the door; Stephen unlatched it, swung it open, and they tugged the bicyles in. They set the bikes against the house. Then they went back to the front of the house and over to the main door.

"Are you sure they're here?" Albert asked. "I can't hear a sound."

"I think so. These walls are thick stone, and besides, the kitchen and living room are deep in the other side of the place."

Stephen knocked firmly on the door.

The door almost immediately opened. 

"Hallo," a small and very pale woman of about twenty answered with a drink in hand. "Oh, hallo Stephen."

The sound of pop music breezed out with a rush of air carrying a strong cooked vegetable scent.

"Hi. Cecilia, this is Albert and vice versa, I'm sure."

"How do you do?" Albert said politely.

"Pleased to meet you. Wait, you're voice sounds faintly...American. I could tell an American accent even if I weren't a wee-bit tipsy." She laughed.

"Albert's an expatriot," Stephen said. "He's now a citizen of the world. Isn't that right, Albert?"

"Oh, yes....Right."

Cecilia laughed again and grinned at Albert who grinned back.

"Well, come in. The food won't be long. Magda's in the kitchen."

"Thank you," said Stephen.

Cecilia held the door as they entered, Stephen first. Albert smiled to Cecilia as he passed. They stepped into a large wood-floored room with a door on each wall. In one corner was a staircase.

Stephen walked on through an open door from which the music was coming. The two others followed.

"Do you speak Russian?" The woman asked Albert as they walked into a hall which had rooms branching off on both sides. 

"No."

"Are you going to school here?"

"No."

The passageway cornered sharply. Rounding the turn, Albert saw an enormous room, kitchen and dining place in one, in which was about half a dozen people. Joined to the eating room was a partially visible room in which were more people. Food trays abounded.

"How long have you known Stephen?" Cecilia asked Albert.

"Oh, a long time. Ages."

"Really, I've..."

"Albert," interrupted Stephen, "this is Magda and the other way around, of course."

Magda had been stirring a huge pot of borsch and, drying her hands on an apron, she extended a hand with three rings on it.

"Nice to meet you. I have heard so much about you," Albert said smiling and gently shook her hand.

Magda was of average height. Her face was large and strongly-built. Apart from having a small flattened nose, she didn't appear ugly to Albert. Her eyes were dark and cold. They momentarily revealed the wish to vivisect a new prey.

She said not a word. Her face expressed a brief smile which seemed oddly forced. She turned back to her cooking. 

Cecilia was no longer by Albert's side and had disappeared into another room.

Stephen ushered Albert into the adjoining room. There, about twenty people were lounging around and making noise. As the two ambled, Stephen said in a hushed voice: "She's funny isn't she, that Magda? Her eyes seem to needle you; she gives off the air of being some kind of machine. Well, later you'll inevitably see that she's very human."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't mean that." Stephen laughed. "I mean everyone knows she 

has this amazing singing voice and, you watch, after we eat someone's going to ask her to sing and she will, show person that she actually is; mark my word, that Pole can sing."

Though Stephen himself was only acquainted with about half of the people present, he introduced Albert to those he knew as the two idled about the room. Many people were conversing, most haltingly, in Russian.

The two finally settled in a corner with a group of committed speakers of English. The conversation ranged widely in subject matter. Albert noticed how much Stephen liked to talk; he always had something to add and was very often the focal speaker. He joked a lot and utilized his whole body when communicating. Stephen was a real thespian.

It was pleasant to see him getting so much pleasure out of talking and it was enjoyable to hear him. He spoke well, with clarity and terseness. He spoke with an elegance, never using those really big words — the ones heard so often on university campuses in the mouths of ancient professors and neophyte scholars alike — except in a mocking way. 

It was interesting to note how he did mock. He forced an unnatural inflection and feigned stuffy discourse with such passion and frequency, that it seemed he was resentful of the world. 

He loved miming people, through words, tone, facial expression and gesture, those with authority and stripes, although he never mimicked an individual but a type. He had the talent of a natural actor: the gifts of a myna bird. He could cop a bureaucratic oration hand-of-sleight and, in a second breath and pose, evoke a garbageman cursing about the hardships of life. Stephen's shows were amusing to see and hear, though they would certainly seem shocking to the comfortable souls of some. They cast light on the whys of his recent "dropping out of events." He was a talker and, it was clear, still a rebel.

What was spite for small injustices — those palpable to a ten year old — had become deep soil of growth for general polemics against the backwardness of the world. Still, it wasn't cumbersome or tiring to hear Stephen carry on in satire. With his feeling for theater and his sense of comedy, he could make all that he said amusing. What's more, everything he said was true.

Lunch was called. It was administered in smorgasbord style. The dining table wasn't nearly large enough to accommodate all the hungry, so most ate in the adjoining room, sitting on a couch, on the floor, or standing with a balanced plate in hand. There was a lot of food.

After eating to a backdrop of Russian clatter, Albert said to Stephen: "I need to be back at the hotel by four. I left a note for Beatrice."

"That's not a problem... Will I meet her tonight, then?"

"Of course, we'll be at your house about six. "

"Swell and okay with me."

"And we'll go to that meeting I told you about yesterday, at that church."

"Yeah, okay. What kind of a church is it?"

"Catholic, I think."

"Catholic? Are most of them Irish?"

"I don't know."

The stereo had been off since lunch, and the house was becoming

quieter as everyone sat back, tired after all the food and beverage. Cecilia came over to Albert and Stephen with a glass of wine in hand. She began talking.

A short guy with glasses asked Magda to sing. 

Stephen heard this and immediately darted for the upright piano, pulled up the keyboard's dust cover, sat down on the small bench and beamed at Magda approaching.

"Do you know 'Auld Lang Syne?'"

Laughter arose.

Mid-day was passed with song. There were many musical accompaniments, variously pleasing, on piano and guitars and other instruments that emerged from bedrooms at the right moment. 

At about two-thirty, Stephen and Albert left the party and rode back to Stephen's. Albert parted with his friend, promising to return along with Beatrice in a couple of hours.

III

"Why did he quit the university?"

"The first or the second one?"

"I'm sure the quitting of one's related to the quitting of the other."

"Certainly...."

"The second."

"He told me that it was because he didn't think finishing his sentence would bring him anything he wanted. He only has to complete another term or two to be finished. He also has a subtler disillusionment with things in general, one that just thinking a lot on his own has brought him."

"Maybe it's just a passing phase."

"I really can't say. To call it a phase is kind of just to implicitly compare him with all sorts of external measures and say that he's under-developed or irresponsible now. It's saying he's come short in his obligations to himself and others. Basically, it'd be to demean him and reduce his thoughts to the level of childish triviality. But behavior that corresponds to an awareness of the hollowness of so many things isn't immature. It's self-honest. It doesn't have to be seen as just a phase, but maybe a valid resting point."

"Maybe."

"You haven't met him yet. But I can tell you that he's got the acumen to make sound decisions."

"Does he have a job?"

"He plays his cello."

"That can't pay."

"He's good. He also plays a flute, a balalaika and a banjo."

"What else does he do?"

"He reads and writes."

"And?"

"He talks and breathes and eats. He drinks some."

"Does he have many friends?"

"A lot of acquaintances from what I've seen. I don't think he really cares how many he has though. He had a rich girlfriend, but she went away."

"Where did she go?"

"I don't know. We'll see him soon and we'll go to that meeting; you do want to come?"

"Yes."

Wind outside blew and its sound against the panes droned.

"Do you feel very badly about your great-aunt?"

"I didn't know her that well. She was Emory's second wife. I feel bad for Emory."

IV

The three of them met up at Stephen's in the early evening. There was no sign of Stephen's relatives in the house. They talked for a long time and then left to go to the meeting. The evening air was chilly, though there was no rain or gust. They took two buses to get to the church.

When they arrived at the church, they found the sanctuary empty. Albert suggested that they go get something to drink at a cafe, one they passed nearby, and then come back. It would be better for them to walk in with a mass of people, Albert suspected, than to wait conspicuously, the three of them, for the entrance of the herd and the commmencement of the meeting. 

The nearby cafe turned out to be, in interior appearance, the vilest hole in the ground conceivable, but at least it had warm drinks of decent flavor. 

Beatrice and Stephen seemed to be getting along swimmingly, as they say, and the three talked about a multitude of things. Stephen spoke a lot; he spoke as though he had been speech-starving and, presently gorging himself, talked voraciously.

On the way back to the holy meeting-place, Stephen remarked, yet again: "It's wonderful to see you, Albert....I'm still so surprised over your turning up." 

Albert put his hand on Stephen's shoulder and patted him.

"Do you know where any of the others...well, the other," Albert lowered his voice, "A-A-A's are?"

Stephen chuckled. "The Anti-Aggie-Agents. I know where Tony Brosse is: he's in Germany, in Munich, studying. He writes me every so often. I visited him a little over a year ago. He's doing fine; he's become a test-tube and beaker man. He's going to be chemist: I really couldn't talk him out of it. Funny guy, he is; still has a great sense of humor."

Albert laughed. "What about the others?"

"Let's see. Roftiel, he also left the country a few years ago, I 

think — that's what I've heard — although I don't know where he went; as his parents sent him to some fancy secondary school in the country, and I stayed in London, I didn't see him all that much starting from a year after your departure. 

"Gavin, now Gavin is doing strange things," he touched upon another character-sketch, "see, he is an actah. He was in a wee-little role on a typically terrible B.B.C.-made show. He also does some stage-stuff in London — rarely big parts, but he's young. He's becoming a little well-known, I guess: it's probably only a matter of time for that fame-courting aspirant and malcontent fool....Actually, he's really not bad. I saw him when I was last in London."

Back at the frontsteps of the church, Albert, Stephen and Beatrice shuffled in with a small band of entering people. Beatrice furtively marked the faces of the people, trying to see if they expressed any disapprobation at the presence of foreigners, non-members, but they didn't even seem to notice the party of three that just dilated their number. 

When the three sat down in the last pew, Albert between the other two, Beatrice whispered to Albert that it seemed quite strange that nobody perceived, or at least appeared to care about, their being there. Albert nodded. He then looked around the room at all the people sitting in little groups, many talking, some more passionately than others. 

One group in the front caught and held Albert's gaze. In that group Albert counted seven men and four women. One man was frenetically motioning with his arms. He talked in a sharp whisper. Albert couldn't quite discern enough to make out the crux of what was being said; he did hear the word "outrage" repeated several times. The one speaking seemed to be directing his words mainly toward another, a bearded man separated from the first by a seated woman; yet, periodically, everyone in the group nodded in ensemble. 

Albert looked at Stephen and saw that his attention was fixed on this particular group as well. Stephen turned his head, smiled and said: "This is very bizarre."

A few tense minutes passed before one of the main doors shot open. Albert glanced toward the aisle in time to see a man, whom he immediately recognized as Ben Darby, march by, aggressively digging heels into the stone floor. 

Albert whispered to Beatrice and then to Stephen: "That's the Darby fellow."

When the main speaker reached the front of the great room, he turned and faced the gathered people. Many voices rose up louder than before. A noisy hum reverberated throughout the church. 

Ben Darby lifted his arms.

"You have most all certainly heard about the crisis by now. It's no secret."

An angry voice shouted from the group Albert had been eyeing: "And how!"

"Please!" Ben Darby lowered his arms, breathed in greedily and went on. "One of our investments, one of the investments whose interest would have sustained us in the beginning, has crashed." 

There was a great uproar of voices. Darby stood motionless for a time. He was half-slouched in a pose so weak and resigned that it surprised Albert. 

Finally, some of the speaker's old strength returned and he lifted his hands again. "Please! Listen! It was an utterly unforeseeable freak of economics: there was every indication that the investment was a strong one. In fact, we believed, as did all of Britain, that it was one of the most solid available. So it's not an astonishing fact that, I'm afraid to say, most of our money went into that investment."

"And now, Ben, it's gone," someone yelled.

"It is." Ben Darby shrugged lugubriously.

There was an incredible noise, a gross mayhem. Ben Darby stepped to his rear and seemed to momentarily lose his balance; he almost fell onto the floor. He caught himself on a rail before the altar and sat down on the steps below Christ. He stared straight forward with a frozen glare.

The noise continued. People stood up, yelling to their neighbors, to Ben Darby; hands were flying; everyone was involved except the three who sat in the rear, still unnoticed.

What seemed a very long time passed. The din faded a little.

Most people, having sat back down, turned their eyes, out of habit, onto the main speaker. Many were still yelling. Ben Darby raised his body off the altar steps and lifted his hands. He hesitated.

"We've been damaged, yes, but not permanently, it's only a set-back. Like a great bird with strained wing, gathering itself up again to attain what are its natural rights: freedoom, flight, we can go on. The project still lives! We can regain what we've lost in a short time. We will make our lives better. The project has not fallen. It lives! It'll proceed with renewed strength!"

The man toward the front of the church, the one who had been speaking so passionately before Ben Darby arrived, stood up and, raising a hand with index finger towering, pointed up to heaven.

"No, it won't!"

V

After hours of argument, some papers were disseminated by a tall man, apparently the manager of business affairs, to those who had responded with a vehement "aye" to the simple question: "Who then wants out?" Some people were crying, some were still arguing. Darby was sitting on the altar steps, surrounded by people.

Those who received papers slowly shuffled out of the church, most looking fatigued and haggard, heads bowing. It seemed as if almost half of the people who had come sauntered out with papers in hand. Soon all who remained were the faithful and Stephen, Beatrice and Albert in the back row. Nobody was concerned with them.

The argumentation, the long hours of rhetoric, pleading, the applauses and the noisy reprobations, were draining on everyone, even the three observers. Everyone had been charged with fervor. People said with force what they thought, behaved as they felt. Intense emotions were engaged; all acted as though their very lives were staked on the issue of holding together the project or letting it fall.

Few revealing details about the project, except that it was an endeavor to create a utopia of some type, surfaced in the fray. The strong, harshly-varied feelings of the people generated loaded and fractured dispute. Arguments weren't bolstered with specific references to the project, but with generalities, metaphors, morals. Anecdote upon anecdote, quote after lengthy quote, abstractions, testimonies, pleas, tears, with such instruments of communication raging in the background of Albert's consciousness, the evening had turned to night. 

When only a fraction of the original number of people remained, 

clustered around Ben Darby in the front of the church, still talking, Albert asked the other two strangers whether they were ready to leave. 

The three left.

As they walked in silence, a light shower began to fall. Albert felt a headache.

They rounded a corner. A bus stop came into view. Stephen asked the two others whether they would like to go to his house for something to eat and drink. Albert glanced at Beatrice and she looked at him and nodded, so Albert nodded. Stephen explained that the most direct bus-link wasn't through the stop in front of them, but a short distance away; by walking a bit, they could save the trouble of transfer. 

They walked down a narrow street that was cast in a medieval darkness. 

Stephen leading the way, they soon turned onto another road, less dim. An occasional neon sign provided the glow by which the three saw their steps. Strong haze of light grew in the distance.

Ahead of them, pulsed the lighted city. A chorus of man-made noises crescendoed. 

They reached an intersection with a main street and turned right, walking in measured pace. Automobiles moved slowly up and down the street.

At the bus stop, Stephen spoke. "It's sad how that thing, that project, fell apart. But their ambitions are impossible to realize. They want to return to some Garden of Eden. It's not possible. You can't go back to some former state of happiness. Memories and knowledge of the history which joins the times will persist; they won't permit a return. How can memories of the events in the years' span be forgotten, unless you anaesthetize yourself with lies? 

"It's just as well that their aspirations weren't put to the test of practice. I think they would've surely fallen in failure. It's better that their goals were denied them because of economic reasons, comparatively mundane; nicer that than arriving at the painful truth: paradise is not attainable once lost....Paradise is only for the very young. Eden and earliest childhood, they're the same expression."

A bus rumbled by in the far lane. 

"You can't return to an old happiness, the bliss of infancy, once it's shattered by awareness and experiences, once these become memories. You can just lift your head to the world, and walk on."

Albert itched his chin. "You're right, you can't return."

Shortly, they all laughed. 

The damn drizzle fell.

VI

Albert was sleeping between a sock and a hard place. He had gotten so drunk at Stephen's that, with a mumble: "I'm expired," he flung his weary body down onto the floor of his friend's room against a wall, beside some clothes, and fell asleep. 

When it was approaching noon, he awoke to the sound of conversation. He opened his eyes and focused on one of the legs of the bed. He pulled a hand up to his eyes and rubbed them one by one. He looked about the room, bewildered. His back was cramped.

He wasn't sure of where he was nor of whose voices were chatting nearby. His senses were dull. 

He listened to the voices with a returning acuteness and, as things came together, he realized that it was Stephen and Beatrice talking in the hallway. He also realized that he was in Stephen's room.

He yawned and prepared himself for his first words of the day. 

Then, not giving a thought to the discourtesy of interrupting a conversation, without moral reflection, without thinking much, he yelled out in a scratchy way: "What's doing today, friends?"

After the sound of shuffling, Beatrice walked into the room, trailed by Stephen. Beatrice wore a smile. She went over to the bed and sat down above Albert. 

Stephen came to a standing stop with his arms akimbo and asked: "How are you?"

"I don't know. What time is it?"

"Three o'clock in the afternoon."

"What! Really? I missed morning." Albert yawned. "Are you sure it's three already?" he asked, emphasizing "already." He scratched his head and stretched supine, contorting his body and in the process looking something like an upside-down cat with paws in the air.

His question went unanswered, its fate of being ignored sealed by Beatrice's: "Stephen says that there's a traveling carnival opening in town today. We should go later: don't you think?"

"Let's go make merry," said Stephen. He lowered a hand to help Albert up. Albert took the hand with a gasp and was raised to his feet. Standing barely, he swayed like an ocean buoy. He bent over and grabbed the bed. For a moment, he stayed motionless with an arched back, propped against the bed, but soon he was in physical equilibrium. He stood up and stretched; he groaned as the other two stared at him. 

"So there's a carnival," he said. "Let's go."

"We will," said Stephen. "Oh, and we can get some food first . I'm not hungry, but maybe you'd like something."

"Yes, I would like."

"Well, we'll go and eat somewhere then."

At the instant the last of these words bolted from Stephen's mouth, a screetching voice shot up from the house's lower parts, obviously carrying the intention of being heard upstairs: "Stephen!"

Stephen looked embarassed.

"Just a second, auntie," he yelled back.

"'Scuse me," he said to Albert and Beatrice. He left the room with a false bow.

"And excuse me too," Albert said to Beatrice and headed for the bathroom off the hallway. Beatrice sat down on Stephen's bed.

A few minutes later, Stephen returned to the room and told Beatrice that his aunt wanted them to stay for dinner. They would eat early. Beatrice said: "Fine with me."

"Where's Albert?"

"Cleansing himself of spirits."

"Oh."

After a quarter of an hour, Albert came back into the room to be greeted with a bombardment of banal questions. His answers were: "Yes, I feel fine." — "No, I didn't." — "No, I don't really remember."

There was a brief silence. Albert stood at the doorway and gazed for some seconds at the two Britons. 

"You both look nice today." He breathed in. He breathed out. He looked at Beatrice. "But, I must say, you look better than he does."

"Oh, come off it, Albert," Stephen taunted in caricature. 

Beatrice laughed, stepped forward and hugged Albert.

Then she looked at Stephen.

"My aunt wants us all to stay for dinner. Come down and meet her. She's very nice and doesn't drool." Albert and Beatrice hadn't yet met Stephen's aunt.

At about four-thirty, after having known an old woman for roughly an hour, Albert and Beatrice sat down to eat with the two hosts. 

Stephen's uncle wasn't around, and, indeed, Albert hadn't seen him since Stephen returned from Dundee. Feeling familiar enough with all to ask questions about the unknown, Albert asked where Stephen's uncle was. Stephen's aunt answered, saying that Theodore had left town

on business. Albert wasn't interested enough to ask what kind of business the old man was into, so he asked no more.

At six, the three younger people left for the carnival. One bus would suffice to take them to the site of the occasion-less festivities.

The bus had only standing room open when they got on and as it rolled down the streets of Edinburgh it became even fuller. By the time the carnival was visible, the bus was filled well-beyond normal capacity with sweaty bodies pressed together tightly in the aisle.

A small park, over-run with tents and stands, mechanized attractions and popcorn, was engorged with human beings and noise. The sidewalks around the park were swollen with people racing every which way like frantic insects. All over, lights were strung up.

When the bus slowed to a stop in front of the carnival-sunk park, most of the passengers got off. 

The bus accelerated away after a few minutes, engine pattering with renewed vigor.

The park was a swampland of unevenly distributed people. Great human accretions buzzed around small huts in which were games, girls and prizes. Long lines stayed long about the entrances to spotty little attractions: rides like a miniature roller coaster and a rickety ferris wheel. Food stands dotted the park.

The three walked along the approximate perimeter of the park once before joining the central throng. Beatrice wanted to ride the ferris wheel.

After circling vertically about a dozen times — they had all fit into one car — they headed for an attractive row of game tents. They settled below a huge carapace which boasted the game of Ring-the-Bottle under wing. They played a game, Albert half-heartedly. None of them won a prize. Stephen and Beatrice wanted to play another game. It paid off. Stephen managed to ring a bottle. He won a plastic automobile. This victory fueled a minor obsession, and he played yet a third game, then a fourth. Beatrice no longer seemed to fancy the game as a participant; she chose to cheer Stephen on. She seemed to be enjoying this.

Albert felt like moving along. Ring-the-Bottle had no appeal for him.

When Stephen finished his fifth game, winning nothing, Albert asked: "Want to go now?"

"No," Stephen replied, "I haven't had this much fun in a long time. This game is a wonderful diversion. You should play some more."

"No, I'll find another distraction: maybe shooting metal geese."

"I'm going to stay here and watch," said Beatrice.

Albert shrugged and told them that he'd meet them back at the game tent shortly. He left, hands in pocket.

Albert felt hungry. Walking along, he stopped to sample some of the local eats, the culinary placeboes to be found at the various stands. He wasn't satisfied with what he tasted, from an aesthetic point of view, and neither was his stomach saved of its Wagnerian swells.

He leisurely walked all around the park, stopping to play a game periodically. He played one game whose object was to be the first of five players to fill up an inverted balloon with water from a high-powered squirt gun. He didn't win.

After a bag of popcorn, he resolved to amble back to the tent at which he had left Stephen ringing bottles and Beatrice.

In the excess of fluorescent light flooding the park, Albert saw that the crowds were not thinning. He pushed his way down a row of tents and, having a good sense of direction, soon found himself in the proper area. He spotted the Ring-the-Bottle tent raised before him.

The night was moist. An illuminated haze precipitated from the strong lights shining on water vapor.

Nearing the tent, he saw that Stephen and Beatrice weren't there. He circled the tent, but caught no sight of them. 

He waited at the tent. 

 He waited still.

After a time, he decided to look around the park. 

A half an hour's search wasn't enough to find them. He went back to the tent again. They still weren't there. He was gone so long earlier, perhaps Stephen and Beatrice had left. 

He decided to quit the park and walked to a bus stop.

A crowd waited there with him.

The bus came. A hungry human clot formed around the entrance door. Albert was one of the first to get on. He paid his fare in small coins and shuffled to the middle of the vehicle. With a lurch, the bus pulled off.

The main-streets were brightly lit and full of cars. 

The bus turned off George Street and moved down a dimly lit road. Albert stared out the window, seeing little. He missed his friends.

VII

Albert was feeling sleepy and decided to go back to the hotel. He transferred buses and was soon there. The familiar square-jawed, blunt-nosed night clerk was sitting behind the counter desk with a book in his hands. Albert went up the worn steps, passing a giggling young couple.

He got to the door and pulled out his keys, but they were unnecessary. The door was unlocked. He stepped in and saw Beatrice lying on the bed.

"Hello," she said.

Albert sat down on the bed's edge.

"Where did you and Stephen go?"

"We waited for you for a long time. Then we went looking around the park."

"I didn't see you."

"I didn't see you either."

"Where's Stephen?"

"Well, we walked around the park and ran into someone he knew, a girl from Poland. She was with a group of friends but left them to go with us. We looked around for you; we found no trace of you. Stephen and the girl were talking in a familiar sort of exclusive way, and I felt outside of the arrangement. I decided to come back here. Stephen asked whether he should accompany me. I said no, but he insisted that he accompany me at least to where I had to change buses. So he and the girl came with me and saw me off on the second bus. I don't know where they went after that."

"Did you like the girl?"

"Yes, I did. She didn't talk to me much and seemed a bit icy in general, but I suppose that's just her nature. She was nice enough and unaffected. She got along well with Stephen."

"That's good."

"She did have an awful deep voice, though."

"You thought so?"

"Yes, she sounded like a dockworker."

Albert smiled. 

"You'll change your mind."

Beatrice soon left the town. Albert lingered on and winter came. Beatrice went up during the vacation to stay with Albert in his new studio room. She found that he hadn't changed. Neither had Stephen. Nothing really had. She decided to stay longer and wrote of it to her employer. 

That winter was cold and dark, but they were young, and when he sometimes walked alone in the city with his wet hair in the rain, Albert thought how he still had hours to grow into life.

– Gabriel Fenteany, 1986