12

Mr. Ramsey said, “Mr. Tagomi, this is Mr. Yatabe.” He retired to a corner of the office, and the slender elderly gentleman came forward.

Holding out his hand, Mr. Tagomi said, “I am glad to meet you in person, sir.” The light, fragile old hand slipped into his own; he shook without pressing and released at once. Nothing broken I hope, he thought. He examined the old gentleman’s features, finding himself pleased. Such a stern, coherent spirit there. No fogging of wits. Certainly lucid transmission of all the stable ancient traditions. Best quality which the old could represent. . . and then he discovered that he was facing General Tedeki, the former Imperial Chief of Staff.

Mr. Tagomi bowed low.

“General,” he said.

“Where is the third party?” General Tedeki said.

“On the double, he nears,” Mr. Tagomi said. “Informed by self at hotel room.” His mind utterly rattled, he retreated several steps in the bowing position, scarcely able to regain an erect posture.

The general seated himself. Mr. Ramsey, no doubt still ignorant of the old man’s identity, assisted with the chair but showed no particular deference. Mr. Tagomi hesitantly took a chair facing.

“We loiter,” the general said. “Regrettably but unavoidably.”

“True,” Mr. Tagomi said.

Ten minutes passed. Neither man spoke.

“Excuse me, sir,” Mr. Ramsey said at last, fidgeting. “I will depart unless needed.”

Mr. Tagomi nodded, and Mr. Ramsey departed.

“Tea, General?” Mr. Tagomi said.

“No, sir.”

“Sir,” Mr. Tagomi said, “I admit to fear. I sense in this encounter something terrible.”

The general inclined his head.

“Mr. Baynes, whom I have met,” Mr. Tagomisaid, “and entertained in my home, declares himself a Swede. Yet perusal persuades one that he is in fact a highly placed German of some sort. I say this because—“

“Please continue.”

“Thank you. General, his agitation regarding this meeting causes me to infer a connection with the political upheavals in the Reich.” Mr. Tagomi did not mention another fact: his awareness of the general’s failure to appear at the time anticipated.

The general said, “Sir, now you are fishing. Not informing.” His gray eyes twinkled in fatherly manner. No malice, there.

Mr. Tagomi accepted the rebuke. “Sir, is my presence in this meeting merely a formality to baffle the Nazi snoops?”

“Naturally,” the general said, “we are interested in maintaining a certain fiction. Mr. Baynes is representative for Tor-Am industries of Stockholm, purely businessman. And I am Shinjiro Yatabe.”

Mr. Tagomi thought, And I am Tagomi. That part is so.

“No doubt the Nazis have scrutinized Mr. Baynes’ comings and goings,” the general said. He ksted his hands on his knees, sitting bolt upright . . . as if, Mr. Tagomi thought, he were sniffing far-off beef tea odor. “But to demolish the fiction they must resort to legalities. That is the genuine purpose; not to deceive, but to require the formalities in case of exposure. You see for instance that to apprehend Mr. Baynes they must do more than merely shoot him down . . . which they could do, were he to travel as—well, travel without this verbal umbrella.”

“I see,” Mr. Tagomi said. Sounds like a game, he decided. But they know the Nazi mentality. So I suppose it is of use.

The desk intercom buzzed. Mr. Ramsey’s voice. “Sir, Mr. Baynes is here. Shall I send him on in?”

“Yes!” Mr. Tagomi cried.

The door opened and Mr. Baynes, sleekly dressed, his clothes all quite pressed and masterfully tailored, his features composed, appeared.

General Tedeki rose to face him. Mr. Tagomi also rose. All three men bowed.

“Sir,” Mr. Baynes said to the general, “I am Captain R. Wegener of the Reichs Naval Counter-Intelligence. As understood, I represent no one but myself and certain private unnamed individuals, no departments or bureaus of the Reich Government of any sort.”

The general said, “Herr Wegener, I understand that you in no way officially allege representation of any branch of the Reich Government. I am here as an unofficial private party who by virtue of former position with the Imperial Army can be said to have access to circles in Tokyo who desire to hear whatever you have to say.”

Weird discourse, Mr. Tagomi thought. But not unpleasant. Certain near-musical quality to it. Refreshing relief, in fact.

They sat down.

“Without preamble,” Mr. Baynes said, “I would like to inform you and those you have access to that there is in advance stage in the Reich a program called Lowenzahn. Dandelion.”

“Yes,” the general said, nodding as if he had heard this before; but, Mr. Tagomi thought, he seemed quite eager for Mr. Baynes to go on.

“Dandelion,” Mr. Baynes said, “consists of an incident on the border between the Rocky Mountain States and the United States.”

The general nodded, smiling slightly.

“U.S. troops will be attacked and will retaliate by crossing the border and engaging the regular RMS troops stationed nearby. The U.S. troops have detailed maps showing Midwest army installations. This is step one. Step two consists of a declaration by Germany regarding the conflict. A volunteer detachment of Wehrmacht paratroopers will be sent to aid the U.S. However, this is further camouflage.”

“Yes,” the general said, listening.

“The basic purpose of Operation Dandelion,” Mr. Baynes said, “is an enormous nuclear attack on the Home Islands, without advance warning of any kind.” He was silent then.

“With purpose of wiping out Royal Family, Home Defense Army, most of Imperial Navy, civil population, industries, resources,” General Tedeki said. “Leaving overseas possessions for absorption by the Reich.”

Mr. Baynes said nothing.

The general said, “What else?”

Mr. Baynes seemed at a loss.

“The date, sir,” the general said.

“All changed,” Mr. Baynes said. “Due to the death of MBormann. At least, I presume. I am not in contact with the Abwehr now.”

Presently the general said, “Go on, Herr Wegener.”

“What we recommend is that the Japanese Government enter into the Reich’s domestic situation. Or at least, that was what I came here to recommend. Certain groups in the Reich favor Operation Dandelion; certain others do not. It was hoped that those opposing it could come to power upon the death of Chancellor Bormann.”

“But while you were here,” the general said, “Herr Bormann died and the political situation took its own solution. Doctor Goebbels is now Reichs Chancellor. The upheavel is over.” He paused. “How does that faction view Operation Dandelion?”

Mr. Baynes said, “Doctor Goebbels is an advocate of Dandelion.”

Unnoticed by them, Mr. Tagomi closed his eyes.

“Who stands opposed?” General Tedeki asked.

Mr. Baynes’ voice came to Mr. Tagomi. “SS General Heydrich.”

“I am taken by surprise,” General Tedeki said. “I am dubious. Is this legitimate information or only a viewpoint which you and your colleagues hold?”

Mr. Baynes said, “Administration of the East—that is, the area now held by Japan—would be by the Foreign Office. Rosenberg’s people, working directly with the Chancery. This was a bitterly disputed issue in many sessions between the principals last year. I have photostats of notes made. The police demanded authority but were turned down. They are to manage the space colonization, Mars, Luna, Venus. That’s to be their domain. Once this division of authority was settled, the police put all their weight behind the space program and against Dandelion.”

“Rivalry,” General Tedeki said. “One group played against another. By the Leader. So he is never challenged.”

“True,” Mr. Baynes said. “That is why I was sent here, to plead for your intervention . It would still be possible to intervene; the situation is still fluid. It will be months before Doctor Goebbels can consolidate his position. He will have to break the police, possibly have Heydrich and other top SS and SD leaders executed. Once that is done—“

“We are to give support to the Sicherheitsdienst?” General Tedeki interrupted. “The most malignant portion of German society?”

Mr. Baynes said, “That is right.”

“The Emperor,” General Tedeki said, “would never tolerate that policy. He regards the Reichs elite corps, wherever the black uniform is worn, the death’s head, the Castle System—all, to him, is evil.”

Evil, Mr. Tagomi thought. Yes, it is. Are we to assist it in gaining power, in order to save our lives? Is that the paradox of our earthly situation?

I cannot face this dilemma, Mr. Tagomi said to himself. That man should have to act in such moral anibiguity. There is no Way in this; all is muddled. All chaos of light and dark, shadow and substance.

“The Wehrmacht,” Mr. Baynes said, “the military, is sole possessor in the Reich of the hydrogen bomb. Where the blackshirts have used it, they have done so only under Army supervision. The Chancery under Bormann never allowed any nuclear armament to go to the police. In Operation Dandelion, all will be carried out by 0KW. The Army High Command.”

“I am aware of that,” General Tedeki said .

“The moral practices of the black shirts exceed in ferocity that of the Wehrmacht. But their power is less. We should reflect solely on reality, on actual power. Not on ethical intentions.”

“Yes, we must be realists,” Mr. Tagomi said aloud.

Both Mr. Baynes and General Tedeki glanced at him.

To Mr. Baynes the general said, “What specifically do you suggest? That we establish contact with the SD here in the Pacific States? Directly negotiate with—I do not know who is SD chief here. Some repellent character, I imagine.”

“The local SD knows nothing,” Mr. Baynes said. “Their chief here, Bruno Kruez vom Meere, is an old-time Partei hack. Em Altparteigenosse. An imbecile. No one in Berlin would think of telling him anything; he merely carries out routine assignments.”

“What, then?” The general sounded angry. “The consul, here, or the Reichs Ambassador in Tokyo?” -

This talk will fail, Mr. Tagomi thought. No matter what is at stake. We cannot enter the monstrous schizophrenic morass of Nazi internecine intrigue; our minds cannot adapt.

“It must be handled delicately,” Mr. Baynes said. “Through a series of intermediaries. Someone close to Heydrich who is stationed outside of the Reich, in a neutral country. Or someone who travels back and forth between Tokyo and Berlin.”

“Do you have someone in mind?”

“The Italian Foreign Minister, Count Ciano. An intelligent, reliable, very brave man, completely devoted to international understanding. However—his contact with the SD apparatus is nonexistent.- But he might work through someone else in Germany, economic interests such as the Krupps or through General Speidel or possibly even through WaffenSS personages. The Waffen-SS is less fanatic, more in the mainstream of German society.”

“Your establishment, the Abwehr---it would be futile to attempt to reach Heydrich through you.”

“The blackshirts utterly revile us. They’ve been trying for twenty years to get Partei approval for liquidating us in toto.”

“Aren’t you in excessive personal danger from them?” General Tedeki said. “They are active here on the Pacific Coast, I understand.”

“Active but inept,” Mr. Baynes said. “The Foreign Office man, Reiss, is skillful, but opposed to the SD.” He shrugged.

General Tedeki said, “I would like your photostats. To turn over to my government. Any material you have pertaining to these discussions in Germany. And—“ He pondered. “Proof. Of objective nature.”

“Certainly,” Mr. Baynes said. He reached into his coat and took out a flat silver cigarette case. “You will find each cigarette to be a hollow container for microfilm.” He passed the case to General Tedeki.

“What about the case itself?” the general said; examining it. “It seems too valuable an object to give away.” He started to remove the cigarettes from it.

Smiling, Mr. Baynes said, “The case, too.”

“Thank you.” Also smiling, the general put the case away in his topcoat pocket.

The desk intercom buzzed. Mr. Tagomi pressed the button.

Mr. Ramsey’s voice came: “Sir, there is a group of SD men in the downstairs lobby; they are attempting to take over the building . The Times guards are scuffling with them.” In the distance, noise of a siren; outside the building from the street below Mr. Tagomi’s window. “Army MPs are on the way, plus San Francisco Kempeitai.”

“Thank you, Mr. Ramsey,” Mr. Tagomi said. “You have done an honorable thing, to report placidly.” Mr. Baynes and General Tedeki were listening, both rigid. “Sirs,” Mr. Tagomi said to them, “we will no doubt kill the SD thugs before they reach this floor.” To Mr. Ramsey he said, “Turn off the power to the elevators.”

“Yes, Mr. Tagomi.” Mr. Ramsey broke the connection.

Mr. Tagomi said, “We will wait.” He opened his desk drawer and lifted out a teakwood box; unlocking it, he brought forth a perfectly preserved U.S. 1860 Civil War Colt .44, a treasured collector’s item. Taking out a box of loose powder, ball and cap ammunition, he began loading the revolver. Mr. Baynes and General Tedeki watched wide-eyed.

“Part of personal collection,” Mr. Tagomi said. “Much fooled around in vainglorious swift-draw practicing and firing, in spare hours. Admit to compare favorably with other enthusiasts in contest-timing. But mature use heretofore delayed.” Holding the gun in correct fashion he pointed it at the office door. And sat waiting.

At the bench in their basement workshop, Frank Frink sat at the arbor. He held a half-finished silver earring against the noisily turning cotton buff; bits of rouge spattered his glasses and blackened his nails and hands. The earring, shaped in a snail-shell spiral, became hot from friction, but Frink grimly bore down even more.

“Don’t get it too shiny,” Ed McCarthy said. “Just hit the high spots; you can even leave the lows completely.”

Frank Frink grunted.

“There’s a better market for silver if it’s not polished up too much,” Ed said. “Silverwork should have that old look.”

Market, Frink thought.

They had sold nothing. Except for the consignment at American Artistic Handcrafts, no one had taken anything, and they had visited five retail shops in all.

We’re not making any money, Frink said to himself. We’re making more and more jewelry and it’s just piling up around us.

The screw-back of the earring caught in the wheel; the piece whipped out of Frink’s hands and flew to the polish shield, then fell to the floor. He shut off the motor.

“Don’t let those pieces go,” McCarthy said, at the welding torch.

“Christ, it’s the size of a pea. No way to get a grip.”

“Well, pick it up anyhow.”

The hell with the whole thing, Frink thought.

“What’s the matter?” McCarthy said, seeing him make no move to fish up the earring.

Frink said, “We’re pouring money in for nothing.”

“We can’t sell what we haven’t made.”

“We can’t sell anything,” Frink said. “Made or unmade.”

“Five stores. Drop in the bucket.”

“But the trend,” Frink said. “It’s enough to know.”

“Don’t kid yourself.”

Frink said, “I’m not kidding myself.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning it’s time to start looking for a market for scrap.”

“All right,” McCarthy said, “quit, then.”

“I have.”

“I’ll go on by myself.” McCarthy lit the torch again.

“How are we going to split the stuff?”

“I don’t know. But we’ll find a way.”

“Buy me out,” Frink said.

“Hell no.”

Frink computed. “Pay me six hundred dollars.”

“No, you take half of everything.”

“Half the motor?”

They were both silent then.

“Three more stores,” McCarthy said. “Then we’ll talk about it.” Lowering his mask he began brazing a section of brass rod into a cuff bracelet.

Frank Frink stepped down from the bench. He located the snail-shell earring and replaced it in the carton of incomplete pieces. “I’m going outside for a smoke,” he said, and walked across the basement to the stairs.

A moment later he stood outdoors on the sidewalk, a T’ien-lai between his fingers.

It’s all over, he said to himself. I don’t need the oracle to tell me; I recognize what the Moment is. The smell is there. Defeat.

And it is hard really to say why. Maybe, theoretically, we could go on. Store to store, other cities. But—something is wrong. And all the effort and ingenuity won’t change it.

I want to know why, he thought.

But I never will.

What should we have done? Made what instead?

We bucked the moment. Bucked the Tao. Upstream, in the wrong direction. And now—dissolution. Decay.

Yin has us. The light showed us its ass, went elsewhere.

We can only knuckle under.

While he stood there under the eaves of the building, taking quick drags on his marijuana cigarette and dully watching traffic go by, an ‘ordinary-looking, middle-aged white man sauntered up to him.

“Mr. Frink? Frank Frink?”

“You got it,” Frink said.

The man produced a folded document and identification. “I’m with the San Francisco Police Department. I’ve a warrant for your arrest.” He held Frink’s arm already; it had already been done.

“What for?” Frink demanded.

“Bunco. Mr. Childan, American Artistic Handcrafts.” The cop forcibly led Frink along the sidewalk; another plainclothes cop joined them, one now on each side of Frink. They hustled him toward a parked unmarked Toyopet.

This is what the time requires of us, Frink thought as he was dumped onto the car seat between the two cops. The door slammed shut; the car, driven by a third cop, this one in uniform, shot out into traffic. These are the sons-of-bitches we must submit to.

“You got an attorney?” one of the cops asked him.

“No,” he said.

“They’ll give you a list of names at the station.”

“Thanks,” Frink said.

“What’d you do with the money?” one of the cops asked later on, as they were parking in the Kearny Street Police station garage.

Frink said, “Spent it.”

“All?”

He did not answer.

One of the cops shook his head and laughed.

As they got out of the car, one of them said to Frink, “Is your real name Fink?”

Frink felt terror.

“Fink,” the cop repeated. “You’re a kike.” He exhibited a large gray folder. “Refugee from Europe.”

“I was born in New York,” Frank Frink said.

“You’re an escapee from the Nazis,” the cop said. “You know what that means?”

Frank Frink broke away and ran across the garage. The three cops shouted, and at the doorway he found himself facing a police car with uniformed armed police blocking his path. The police smiled at him, and one of them, holding a gun, stepped out and smacked a handcuff into place over his wrist.

Jerking him by the wrist—the thin metal cut into his flesh, to the bone—the cop led him back the way he had come.

“Back toGermany,” one of the cops said, surveying him.

“I’m an American,” Frank Frink said.

“You’re a Jew,” the cop said.

As he was taken upstairs, one of the cops said, “Will he be booked here?”

“No,” another said. “We’ll hold him for the German consul. They want to try him under German law.”

There was no list of attorneys, after all.

For twenty minutes Mr. Tagomi had remained motionless at his desk, holding the revolver pointed at the door, while Mr. Baynes paced about the office. The old general had, after some thought, lifted the phone and put through a call to the Japanese embassy in San Francisco. However, he had not been able to get through to Baron Kaelemakule; the ambassador, a bureaucrat had told him, was out of the city.

Now General Tedeki was in the process of placing a transpacific call to Tokyo.

“I will consult with the War College,” he explained to Mr. Baynes. “They will contact Imperial military forces stationed nearby us.” He did not seem perturbed .

So we will be relieved in a number of hours, Mr. Tagomi said to himself. Possibly by Japanese Marines from a carrier, armed with machines guns and mortars.

Operating through official channels is highly efficient in terms of final result . . . but there is regrettable time lag. Down below us, blackshirt hooligans are busy clubbing secretaries and clerks. -

However, there was little more that he personally could do.

“I wonder if it would be worth trying to reach the German consul,” Mr. Baynes said.

Mr. Tagomi had a vision of himself summoning Miss Ephreikian in with her tape recorder, to take dictation of urgent protest to Herr H. Reiss.

“I can call Herr Reiss,” Mr. Tagomi said. “On another line.”

“Please,” Mr. Baynes said.

Still holding his Colt .44 collector’s item, Mr. Tagomi pressed a button on his desk. Out came a nonlisted phone line, especially installed for esoteric communication.

He dialed the number of the German consulate.

“Good day, Who is calling?” Accented brisk male functionary voice. Undoubtedly underling.

Mr. Tagomi said, “His Excellency Herr Reiss, please. Urgent. This is Mr. Tagomi, here. Ranking Imperial Trade Mission, Top Place.” He used his hard, no-nonsense voice.

“Yes sir. A moment, if you will.” A long moment, then. No sound at all on the phone, not even clicks. He is merely standing there with it, Mr. Tagomi decided. Stalling through typical Nordic wile.

To General Tedeki, waiting on the other phone, and Mr. Baynes, pacing, he said, “I am naturally being put off.”

At last the functionary’s voice once again. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Tagomi.”

“Not at all.”

“The consul is in conference. However—“

Mr. Tagomi hung up.

“Waste of effort, to say the least,” he said, feeling discomfited. Whom else to call? Tokkoka already informed, also MP units down on waterfront; no use to phone them. Direct call to Berlin? To Reichs Chancellor Goebbels? To Imperial Military airfield at Napa, asking for air-rescue assistance?

“I will call SD chief Herr B. Kruez vom Meere,” he decided aloud. “And bitterly complain. Rant and scream invective.” He began to dial the number formally—euphemistically—listed in the San Francisco phone book as the “Lufthansa Airport Terminal Precious-Shipment Guard Detail.” As the phone buzzed he said, “Vituperate in highpitched hysteria.”

“Put on a good performance,” General Tedeki said, smiling.

In Mr. Tagomi’s ear a Germanic voice said, “Who is it?” More no-nonsense-than-myself voice, Mr. Tagomi thought. But he intended to go on. “Hurry up,” the voice demanded.

Mr. Tagomi shouted, “I am ordering the arrest and trial of your band of cutthroats and degenerates who run amok like blond berserk beasts, unfit even to describe! DO you know me, Kerl? This is Tagomi, Imperial Government Consultant. Five seconds or waive legality and have Marines’ shock troop unit begin massacre with flame-throwing phosphorus bombs. Disgrace to civilization.”

On the other end the SD flunky was sputtering anxiously.

Mr. Tagomi winked at Mr. Baynes.

“. . . we know nothing about it,” the flunky was saying.

“Liar!” Mr. Tagomi shouted. “Then we have no choice.” He slammed the receiver down. “It is no doubt mere gesture,” he said to Mr. Baynes and General Tedeki.

“But it can do no harm, anyhow. Always faint possibility certain nervous element even in SD.”

General Tedeki started to speak. But then a tremendous clatter at the office door; he ceased. The door swung open.

Two burly white men appeared, both armed with pistols equipped with silencers. They made out Mr. Baynes.

“Da ist en,” one said. They started for Mr. Baynes.

At his desk, Mr. Tagomi pointed his Colt .44 ancient collector’s item and compressed the trigger. One of the SD men fell to the floor. The other whipped his silencerequipped gun toward Mr. Tagomi and returned fire. Mr. Tagomi heard no report, saw only a tiny wisp of smoke from the gun, heard the whistle of a slug passing near. With record-eclipsing speed he fanned the hammer of the singleaction Colt, firing it again and again.

The SD man’s jaw burst. Bits of bone, flesh, shreds of tooth, flew in the air. Hit in the mouth, Mr. Tagomi realized. Dreadful spot, especially if ball ascending. The jawless SD man’s eyes still contained life, of a kind. He still perceives me, Mr. Tagomi thought. Then the eyes lost their luster and the SD man collapsed, dropping his gun and making unhuman gargling noises.

“Sickening,” Mr. Tagomi said.

No more SD men appeared in the open doorway.

“Possibly it is over,” General Tedeki said after a pause. Mr. Tagomi, engaged in tedious three-minute task of reloading, paused to press the button of the desk intercom. “Bring medical emergency aid,” he instructed. “Hideously injured thug, here.”

No answer, only a hum.

Stooping, Mr. Baynes had picked up both the Germans’ guns; he passed one to the general, keeping the other himself.

“Now we will mow them down,” Mr. Tagomi said, reseating himself with his Colt .44, as before. “Formidable triumvirate, in this office.”

From the hall a voice called, “German hoodlums surrender!”

“Already taken care of,” Mr. Tagomi called back. “Lying either dead or dying. Ad-vance and verify empirically.”

A party of Nippon Times employees gingerly appeared, several of them carrying building riot equipment such as axes and rifles and tear-gas grenades.

“Cause célèbre,” Mr. Tagomi said. “PSA Government in Sacramento could declare war on Reich without hesitation.” He broke open his gun. “Anyhow, over with.”

“They will deny complicity,” Mr. Baynes said. “Standard technique. Used countless times.” He laid the silencerequipped pistol on Mr. Tagomi’s desk. “Made in Japan.”

He was not joking. It was true. Excellent quality Japanese target pistol. Mr. Tagomi examined it.

“And not German nationals,” Mr. Baynes said. He had taken the wallet of one of the whites, the dead one. “PSA citizen. Lives in San Jose. Nothing to connect him with the SD. Name is Jack Sanders.” He tossed the wallet down.

“A holdup,” Mr. Tagomi said. “Motive: our locked vault. No political aspects.” He arose shakily to his feet.

In any case, the assassination or kidnapping attempt by the SD had failed. At least, this first one had. But clearly they knew who Mr. Baynes was, and no doubt what he had come for.

“The prognosis,” Mr. Tagomi said, “is gloomy.”

He wondered if in this instance the oracle would be of any use. Perhaps it could protect them. Warn them, shield them, with its advice.

Still quite shaky, he began taking out the forty-nine yarrow  stalks. Whole situation confusing and anomalous, he decided. No human intelligence could decipher it; only fivethousand-year-old joint mind applicable. German totalitarian society resembles some faulty form of life, worse than natural thing. Worse in all its admixtures, its potpourri of pointlessness.

Here, he thought, local SD acts as instrument of policy totally at odds with head in Berlin. Where in this composite being is the sense? Who really is Germany? Who ever was? Almost like decomposing nightmare parody of problems customarily faced in course of existence.

The oracle will cut through it. Even weird breed of cat like Nazi Germany comprehensible to I Ching.

Mr. Baynes, seeing Mr. Tagomi distractedly manipulating the handful of vegetable stalks, recognized how deep the man’s distress was. For him, Mr. Baynes thought, this event, his having had to kill and mutilate these two men, is not only dreadful; it is inexplicable.

What can I say that might console him? He fired on my behalf; the moral responsibility for these two lives is therefore mine, and I accept it. I view it that way.

Coming over beside Mr. Baynes, General Tedeki said in a soft voice, “You witness the man’s despair. He, you see, was no doubt raised as a Buddhist. Even if not formally, the influence was there. A culture in which no life is to be taken; all lives holy.”

Mr. Baynes nodded.

“He will recover his equilibrium,” General Tedeki continued. “In time. Right now he has no standpoint by which he can view and comprehend his act. That book will help him, for it provides an external frame of reference.”

“I see,” Mr. Baynes said. He thought, Another frame of reference which might help him would be the Doctrine of Original Sin. I wonder if he has ever heard of it. We are all doomed to cormnit acts of cruelty or violence or evil; that is our destiny, due to ancient factors. Our karma.

To save one life, Mr. Tagomi had to take two. The logical, balanced mind cannot make sense of that. A kindly man like Mr. Tagomi could be driven insane by the implications of such reality.

Nevertheless, Mr. Baynes thought, the crucial point lies not in the present, not in either my death or the death of the two SD men; it lies—hypothetically—in the future. What has happened here is justified, or not justified, by what happens later. Can we perhaps save the lives of millions, all Japan in fact?

But the man manipulating the vegetable stalks could not think of that; the present, the actuality, was too tangible, the dead and dying Germans on the floor of his office.

General Tedeki was right; time would give Mr. Tagomi perspective. Either that, or he would perhaps retreat into the shadows of mental illness, avert his gaze forever, due to a hopeless perplexity.

And we are not really different from him, Mr. Baynes thought. We are faced with the same confusions. Therefore unfortunately we can give Mr. Tagomi no help. We can only wait, hoping that finally he will recover and not succumb.

13

In Denver they found chic, modern stores. The clothes, Juliana thought, were numbingly expensive, but Joe did not seem to care or even to notice; he simply paid for what she picked out, and then they hurried on to the next store.

Her major acquisition—after much trying on of dresses and much prolonged deliberating and rejecting—occurred late in the day: a light blue Italian original with short, fluffy sleeves and a wildly low neckline. In a European fashion magazine she had seen a model wearing such a dress; it was  considered the finest style of the year, and it cost Joe almost two hundred dollars.

To go with it, she needed three pairs of shoes, more nylon stockings, several hats, and a new handmade black leather purse. And, she discovered, the neckline of the Italian dress demanded the new brassieres which covered only the lower part of each breast. Viewing herself in the full-length mirror of the dress shop, she felt overexposed and a little insecure about bending over. But the salesgirl assured her that the new half-bras remained firmly in place, despite their lack of straps.

Just up to the nipple, Juliana thought as she peered at herself in the privacy of the dressing room, and not one millimeter more. The bras, too, cost quite a bit; also imported, the salesgirl explained, and handmade. The salesgirl showed her sportswear, too, shorts and bathing suits and a terrycloth beach robe; but all at once Joe became restless. So they went on. -

As Joe loaded the parcels and bags into the car she said, “Don’t you think I’m going to look terrific?”

“Yes,” he said in a preoccupied voice. “Especially that blue dress. You wear that when we go there, to Abendsen’ s; understand?” He spoke the last word sharply as if it was an order; the tone surprised her.

“I’m a size twelve or fourteen,” she said as they entered the next dress shop. The salesgirl smiled graciously and accompanied them to the racks of dresses. What else did she need? Juliana wondered. Better to get as much as possible while she could; her eyes took in everything at once, the blouses, skirts, sweaters, slacks, coats. Yes, a coat. “Joe,” she said, “I have to have a long coat. But not a cloth coat.”

They compromised with one of the synthetic fiber coats from Germany; it was more durable than natural fur, and less expensive. But she felt disappointed. To cheer herself up she began examining jewelry. But it was dreary costume junk, without imagination or originality.

“I have to get some jewelry,” she explained to Joe. “Earrings, at least. Or a pin—to go with the blue dress.” She led him along the sidewalk to a jewelry store. “And your clothes,” she remembered, with guilt. “We have to shop for you, too.”

While she looked for jewelry, Joe stopped at a barbershop for his haircut. When he appeared a half hour later, she was amazed; he had not only gotten his hair cut as short as possible, but he had had it dyed. She would hardly have recognized him; he was now blond. Good God, she thought, staring at him. Why?

Shrugging, Joe said, “I’m tired of being a wop.” That was all he would say; he refused to discuss it as they entered a men’s clothing store and began shopping for him.

They bought him a nicely tailored suit of one of Du Pont’s new synthetic fibers, Dacron. And new socks, underwear, and a pair of stylish sharp-toed shoes. What now? Juliana thought. Shirts. And ties. She and the clerk picked out two white shirts with French cuffs, several ties made in France, and a pair of silver cuff links. It took only forty minutes to do all the shopping for him; she was astonished to find it so easy, compared to her own.

His suit, she thought, should be altered. But again Joe had become restless; he paid the bill with the Reichsbank notes which he carried. I know something else, Juliana realized. A new billfold. So she and the clerk picked out a black affigator billfold for him, and that was that. They left the store and returned to the car; it was four-thirty and the shopping—at least as far as Joe was concerned—was over.

“You don’t want the waistline taken in a little?” she asked Joe as he drove out into downtown Denver traffic. “On yoursuit—“

“No.” His voice, brusque and impersonal, startled her.

“What’s wrong? Did I buy too much?” I know that’s it, she said to herself; I spent much too much. “I could take some of the skirts back.”

“Let’s eat dinner,” he said.

“Oh God,” she exclaimed. “I know what I didn’t get. Nightgowns.”

He glared at her ferociously.

“Don’t you want me to get some nice new pajamas?” she said. “So I’ll be all fresh and—“

“No.” He shook his head. “Forget it. Look for a place to eat.”

Juliana said in a steady voice, “We’ll go and register at the hotel first. So we can change. Then we’ll eat.” And it better be a really fine hotel, she thought, or it’s all off. Even this late. And we’ll ask them at the hotel what’s the best place in Denver to eat. And the name of a good nightclub where we can see a once-in-a-lifetime act, not some local talent but some big names from Europe, like Eleanor Perez or Willie Beck. I know great UFA stars like that come out to Denver, because I’ve seen the ads. And I won’t settle for anything less.

As they searched for a good hotel, Juliana kept glancing at the man beside her. With his hair short and blond, and in his new clothes, he doesn’t look like the same person, she thought. Do I like him better this way? It was hard to tell. And me—when I’ve been able to arrange for my hair being done, we’ll be two different persons, almost. Created out of nothing or, rather, out of money. But I just must get my hair done, she told herself.

They found a large stately hotel in downtown Denver with a uniformed doorman who arranged for the car to be parked. That was what she wanted. And a bellboy—actually a grown man, but wearing the maroon uniform—came quickly and carried all their parcels and luggage, leaving them with nothing to do but climb the wide carpeted steps, under the awning, pass through the glass and mahogany doors and into the lobby. -

Small shops on each side of the lobby, flower shop, gifts, candy, place to telegraph, desk to reserve plane flights, the bustle of guests at the desk and the elevators, the huge potted plants, and under their feet the carpeting, thick and soft. . - she could smell the hotel, the many people, the activity. Neon signs indicated in which direction the hotel restaurant, cocktail lounge, snack bar, lay. She could barely take it all in as they crossed the lobby and at last reached the reservation desk.

There was even a bookstore.

While Joe signed the register, she excused herself and hurried over to the bookstore to see if they had The Grasshopper. Yes, there it was, a bright stack of copies in fact, with a display sign saying how popular and important it was, and of course that it was verboten in German-run regions. A smiling middle-aged woman, very grandmotherly, waited on her; the book cost almost four dollars, which seemed to Juliana a great deal, but she paid for it with a Reichsbank note from her new purse and then skipped back to join Joe.

Leading the way with their luggage, the bellboy conducted them to the elevator and then up to the second floor, along the corridor—silent and warm and carpeted—to their superb, breathtaking room. The bellboy unlocked the door for them, carried everything inside, adjusted the window and lights; Joe tipped him and he departed, shutting the door after him.

All was unfolding exactly as she wanted.

“How long will we stay in Denver?” she-asked Joe, who had begun opening packages on the bed. “Before we go on up to Cheyenne?”

He did not answer; he had become involved in the contents of his suitcase.

“One day or two?” she asked as she took off her new coat.

“Do you think we could stay three?”         

Lifting his head Joe answered, “We’re going on tonight.”

At first she did not understand; and when she did, she could not believe him. She stared at him and he stared back with a grim, almost taunting expression, his face constricted with enormous tension, more than she had seen in any human in her life before. He did not move; he seemed paralyzed there, with his hands full of his own clothing from the suitcase, his body bent.

“After we eat,” he added.

She could not think of anything to say.

“So wear that blue dress that cost so much,” he said. “The one you like; the really good one—you understand?” Now he began unbuttoning his shirt. “I’m going to shave and take a good hot shower.” His voice had a mechanical quality as if he were speaking from miles away through some sort of instrument; turning, he walked toward the bathroom with stiff, jerky steps.

With difficulty she managed to say, “It’s too late tonight.”

“No. We’ll be through dinner around five-thirty, six at the latest. We can get up to Cheyenne in two, two and a half hours. That’s only eight-thirty. Say nine at the latest. We can phone from here, tell Abendsen we’re coming; explain the situation. That’ll make- an impression, a long-distance call. Say this—we’re flying to the West Coast; we’re in Denver only tonight. But we’re so enthusiastic about his book we’re going to drive up to Cheyenne and drive back again tonight, just for a chance to—“

She broke in, “Why?”

Tears began to surge up into her eyes, and she found herself doubling up her fists, with the thumbs inside, as she had done as a child; she felt her jaw wobble, and when she spoke her voice could hardly be heard. “I don’t want to go and see him tonight; I’m not going. I don’t want to at all, even tomorrow. I just want to see the sights here. Like you promised me.” And as she spoke, the dread once more reappeared and settled on her chest, the peculiar blind panic that had scarcely gone away, even in the brightest of moments with him. It rose to the top and commanded her; she felt it quivering in her face, shining out so that he could easily take note of it.

Joe said, “We’ll buzz up there and then afterward when we come back—we’ll take in the sights here.” He spoke reasonably, and yet still with the stark deadness as if he were reciting.

“No,” she said.

“Put on that blue dress.” He rummaged around among the parcels until he found it in the largest box. He carefully removed the cord, got out the dress, laid it on the bed with precision; he did not hurry. “Okay? You’ll be a knockout. Listen, we’ll buy a bottle of high-price Scotch and take it along. That Vat 69.”

Frank, she thought. Help me. I’m in something I don’t understand.

“It’s much farther,” she answered, “than you realize. I looked on the map. It’ll be real late when we get there, more like eleven or past midnight.”

He said, “Put on the dress or I’ll kill you.”

Closing her eyes, she began to giggle. My training, she thought. It was true, after all; now we’ll see. Can he kill me or can’t I pinch a nerve in his back and cripple him for life? But he fought those British commandoes; he’s gone through this already, many years ago.

“I know you maybe can throw me,” Joe said. “Ormaybe not.”

“Not throw you,” she said. “Maim you permanently. I actually can. I lived out on the West Coast. The Japs taught me, up in Seattle. You go on to Cheyenne if you want to and leave me here. Don’t try to force me. I’m scared of you and I’ll try.” Her voice broke. “I’ll try to get you so bad, if you come at me.”

“Oh come on—put on the goddam dress! What’s this all about? You must be nuts, talking like that about killing and maiming, just because I want you to hop in the car after dinner and drive up the autobahn with me and see this fellow whose book you—“

A knock at the door.

Joe stalked to it and opened it. A uniformed boy in the corridor said, “Valet service. You inquired at the desk, sir.”

“Oh yes,” Joe said, striding to the bed; he gathered up the new white shirts which he had bought and carried them to the bellboy. “Can you get them back in half an hour?”

“Just ironing out the folds,” the boy said, examining them. “Not cleaning. Yes, I’m sure they can, sir.”

As Joe shut the door, Juliana said, “How did you know a new white shirt can’t be worn until it’s pressed?”

He said nothing; he shrugged.

“I had forgotten,” Juliana said. “And a woman ought to know . . . when you take them out of the cellophane they’re all wrinkled.”

“When I was younger I used to dress up and go out a lot.”

“How did you know the hotel had valet service? I didn’t know it. Did you really have your hair cut and dyed? I think your hair always was blond, and you were wearing a hairpiece. Isn’t that so?”

Again he shrugged.

“You must be an SD man,” she said. “Posing as a wop truck driver. You never fought in North Africa, did you? You’re supposed to come up here to kill Abendsen; isn’t that so? I know it is. I guess I’m pretty dumb.” She felt dried-up, withered.

After an interval, Joe said, “Sure! fought in North Africa. Maybe not with Pardi’s artillery battery. With the Brandenburgers.” He added, “Wehrmacht kommando. Infiltrated British HQs. I don’t see what difference it makes; we saw plenty of action. And I was at Cairo; I earned the medal and a battlefield citation. Corporal.”

“Is that fountain pen a weapon?”

He did not answer.

“A bomb,” she realized suddenly, saying it aloud. “A boobytrap kind of bomb, that’s wired so it’ll explode when someone touches it.”

“No,” he said. “What you saw is a two-watt transmitter and receiver. So I can keep in radio contact. In case there’s a change of plan, what with the day-by-day political situation in Berlin.”

“You check in with them just before you do it. To be sure.”

He nodded.

“You’re not Italian; you’re a German.”

“Swiss.”

She said, “My husband is a Jew.”

“I don’t care what your husband is. All I want is for you to put on that dress and fix yourself up so we can go to dinner. Fix your hair somehow; I wish you could have gotten to the hairdresser’s. Possibly the hotel beauty salon is still open. You could do that while I wait for my shirts and take my shower.”

“How are you going to kill him?”

Joe said, “Please put on the new dress, Juliana. I’ll phone down and ask about the hairdresser.” He walked over to the room phone.

“Why do you need me along?”

Dialing, Joe said, “We have a folder on Abendsen and it seems he is attracted to a certain type of dark, libidinous girl. A specific Middle-Eastern or Mediterranean type.”

As he talked to the hotel people, Juliana went over to the bed and lay down. She shut her eyes and put her arm across her face.

“They do have a hairdresser,” Joe said when he had hung up the phone. “And she can take care of you right away. You go down to the salon; it’s on the mezzanine.” He handed her something; opening her eyes she saw that it was more Reichsbank notes. “To pay her.”

She said, “Let me lie here. Will you please?”

He regarded her with a look of acute curiosity and concern.

“Seattle is like San Francisco would have been,” she said, “if there had been no Great Fire. Real old wooden buildings and some brick ones, and hilly like S.F. The Japs there go back to a long time before the war. They have a whole business section and houses, stores and everything, very old. It’s a port. This little old Jap who taught me—I had gone up there with a Merchant Marine guy, and while I was there I started taking these lessons. Minoru Ichoyasu; he wore a vest and tie. He was as round as a yo-yo. He taught upstairs in a Jap office building; he had that old-fashioned gold lettering on his door, and a waiting room like a dentist’s office. With National Geographies.”

Bending over her, Joe took hold of her arm and lifted her to a sitting position; he supported her, propped her up. “What’s the- matter? You act like you’re sick.” He peered into her face, searching her features.

“I’m dying,” she said.

“It’s just an anxiety attack. Don’t you have them all the time? I can get you a sedative from the hotel pharmacy. What about phenobarbital? And we haven’t eaten since ten this morning. You’ll be all right. When we get to Abendsen’s, you don’t have to do a thing, only stand there with me; I’ll do the talking. Just smile and be companionable with me and him; stay with him and make conversation with him, so that he stays with us and doesn’t go off somewhere. When he sees you I’m certain he’ll let us in, especially with that Italian dress cut as it is. I’d let you in, myself, if I were he.”

“Let me go into the bathroom,” she said. “I’m sick. Please.” She struggled loose from him. “I’m being sick—let me go.”

He let her go, and she made her way across the room and into the bathroom; she shut the door behind her.

I can do it, she thought. She snapped the light on; it dazzled her. She squinted. I can find it. In the medicine cabinet, a courtesy pack of razor blades, soap, toothpaste. She opened the fresh little pack of blades. Single edge, yes. Unwrapped the new greasy blueblack blade.

Water ran in the shower. She stepped in—good God; she had on her clothes. Ruined. Her dress clung. Hair streaming. Horrified, she stumbled, half fell, groping her way out. Water drizzling from her stockings . . . she began to cry.

Joe found her standing by the bowl. She had taken her wet ruined suit off; she stood naked, supporting herself on one arm, leaning and resting. “Jesus Christ,” she said to him when she realized he was there. “I don’t know what to do. My jersey suit is ruined. It’s wool.” She pointed: he turned to see the heap of sodden clothes.

Very calmly—but his face was stricken—he said, “Well, you weren’t going to wear that anyhow.” With a fluffy white hotel towel he dried her off, led her from the bathroom back to the warm carpeted main room. “Put on your underwear—get something on. I’ll have the hairdresser come up here; she has to, that’s all there is.” Again he picked up the phone and dialed.

“What did you get me in the way of pills?” she asked, when he had finished phoning.

“I forgot. I’ll call down to the pharmacy. No, wait;! have something. Nembutal or some damn thing.” Hurrying to his suitcase, he began rummaging.

When he held out two yellow capsules to her she said, “Will they destroy me?” She accepted them clumsily.

“What?” he said, his face twitching.

Rot my lower body, she thought. Groin to dry. “I mean,” she said cautiously, “weaken my concentration?”

“No-it’s some A.G. Chemie product they give back home. I use them when I can’t sleep. I’ll get you a glass of water.” He ran off.

Blade, she thought. I swallowed it; now cuts my loins forever. Punishment. Married to a Jew and shacking up with a Gestapo assassin. She felt tears again in her eyes, boiling. For all I have committed. Wrecked. “Let’s go, “- she said, rising to her feet. “The hairdresser.”

“You’re not dressed!” He led her, sat her down, tried to get her underpants onto her without success. “I have to get your hair fixed,” he said in a despairing voice. “Where is that Hur, that woman?”

She said, speaking slowly and painstakingly, “Hair creates bear who removes spots in nakedness. Hiding, no hide to be hung with a hook. The hook from God. Hair, hear,  Hur.” Pills eating. Probably turpentine acid. They all met, decided dangerous most corrosive solvent to eat me forever.

Staring down at her, Joe blanched. Must read into me, she thought. Reads my mind with his machine, although I can’t find it.

“Those pills,” she said. “Confuse and bewilder.” He said, “You didn’t take them.” He pointed to her clenched fist; she discovered that she still had them there. “You’re mentally ill,” he said. He had become heavy, slow, like some inert mass. “You’re very sick. We can’t go.”

“No doctor,” she said. “I’ll be okay.” She tried to smile; she watched his face to see if she had. Reflection from his brain, caught my thoughts in rots.

“I can’t take you to the Abendsens’,” he said. “Not now, anyway. Tomorrow. Maybe you’ll be better. We’ll try tomorrow. We have to.,’

“May I go to the bathroom again?”           

He nodded, his face working, barely hearing her. So she returned to the bathroom; again she shut the door. In the cabinet another blade, which she took in her right hand. She came out once more.

“Bye-bye,” she said.

As she opened the corridor door he exclaimed, grabbed wildly at her.

Whisk. “It is awful,” she said. “They violate. I ought to know.” Ready for purse snatcher; the various night prowlers, I can certainly handle. Where had this one gone? Slapping his neck, doing a dance. “Let me by,” she said. “Don’t bar my way unless you want a lesson. However, only women.” Holding the blade up she went on opening the door. Joe sat on the floor, hands pressed to the side of his throat. Sunburn posture. “Good-bye,” she said, and shut the door behind her. The warm carpeted corridor.

A woman in a white smock, humming or singing, wheeled a cart along, head down. Gawked at door numbers, arrived in front of Juliana; the woman lifted her head, and her eyes popped and her mouth fell.

“Oh sweetie,” she said, “you really are tight; you need a lot more than a hairdresser—you go right back inside your room and get your clothes on before they throw you out of this hotel. My good lord.” She opened the door behind Juliana. “Have your man sober you up; I’ll have room service send up hot coffee. Please now, get into your room.” Pushing Juliana back into the room, the woman slammed the door after her and the sound of her cart diminished.

Hairdresser lady, Juliana realized. Looking down, she saw that she did have nothing on; the woman had been correct.

“Joe,” she said. “They won’t let me.” She found the bed, found her suitcase, opened it, spilled out clothes. Underwear, then blouse and skirt . . . pair of low-heeled shoes. “Made me come back,” she said. Finding a comb, she rapidly combed her hair, then brushed it. “What an experience. That woman was right outside, about to knock.” Rising, she went to find the mirror. “Is this better?” Mirror in the closet door; turning, she surveyed herself, twisting, standing on tiptoe.

“I’m so embarrassed,” she said, glancing around for him. “I hardly know what I’m doing. You must have given me something; whatever it was it just made me sick, instead of helping me.”

Still sitting on the floor, clasping the side of his neck, Joe said, “Listen. You’re very good. You cut my aorta. Artery in my neck.”

Giggling, she clapped her hand to her mouth. “Oh God—you’re such a freak. I mean, you get words all wrong. The aorta’s in your chest; you mean the carotid.”

“If I let go,” he said, “I’ll bleed out in two minutes. You know that. So get me some kind of help, get a doctor or an ambulance. You understand me? Did you mean to? Evidently. Okay—you’ll call or go get someone?”

After pondering, she said, “I meant to.”

“Well,” he said, “anyhow, get them for me. For my sake.”

“Go yourself.”

“I don’t have it completely closed.” Blood had seeped through his fingers, she saw, down his wrist. Pool on the floor. “I don’t dare move. I have to stay here.”

She put on her new coat, closed her new handmade leather purse, picked up her suitcase and as many of the parcels which were hers as she could manage; in particular she made sure she took the big box and the blue Italian dress tucked carefully in it. As she opened the corridor door she looked back at him. “Maybe I can tell them at the desk,” she said. “Downstairs.”

“Yes,” he said.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll tell them. Don’t look for me back at the apartment in Canon City because I’m not going back there. And I have most of those Reichsbank notes, so I’m in good shape, in spite of everything. Good-bye. I’m sorry.” She shut the door and hurried along the hall as fast as she could manage, lugging the suitcase and parcels.

At the elevator, an elderly well-dressed businessman and his wife helped her; they took the parcels for her, and downstairs in the lobby they gave them to a bellboy for her.

“Thank you,” Juliana said to them.

After the bellboy had carried her suitcase and parcels across the lobby and out onto the front sidewalk, she found a hotel employee who could explain to her how to get back her car. Soon she was standing in the cold concrete garage beneath the hotel, waiting while the attendant brought the Studebaker around. In her purse she found all kinds of change; she tipped the attendant and the next she knew she was driving up a yellow-lit ramp and onto the dark street with its headlights, cars, advertising neon signs.

The uniformed doorman of the hotel personally loaded her luggage and parcels into the trunk for her, smiling with such hearty encouragement that she gave him an enormous tip before she drove away. No one tried to stop her, and that amazed her; they did not even raise an eyebrow. I guess they know he’ll pay, she decided. Or maybe he already did when he registered for us.

While she waited with other cars for a streetlight to change, she remembered that she had not told them at the desk about Joe sitting on the floor of the room needing the doctor. Still waiting up there, waiting from now on until the end of the world, or until the cleaning women showed up tomorrow sometime. I better go back, she decided, or telephone. Stop at a pay phone booth.

It’s so silly, she thought as she drove along searching for a place to park and telephone. Who would have thought an hour ago? When we signed in, when we shopped . . . we almost went on, got dressed up and Went out to dinner; we might even have gotten out to the nightclub. Again she had begun to cry, she discovered; tears dripped from her nose, onto her blouse, as she drove. Too bad I didn’t consult the oracle; it would have known and warned me. Why didn’t I? Any time I could have asked, any place along the trip or even before we left. She began to moan involuntarily; the noise, a howling she had never heard issue out of her before, horrified her, but she could not suppress it even though she clamped her teeth together. A ghastly chanting, singing, wailing, rising up through her nose.

When she had parked she sat with the motor running, shivering, hands in her coat pockets. Christ, she said to herself miserably. Well, I guess that’s the sort of thing that happens. She got out of the car and dragged her suitcase from the trunk; in the back seat she opened it and dug around among the clothes and shoes until she had hold of the two black volumes of the oracle. There, in the back seat of the car, with the motor running, she began tossing three RMS dimes, using the glare of a department store window to see by. What’ll I do? she asked it. Tell me what to do; please.

Hexagram Forty-two, Increase, with moving lines in the second, third, fourth and top places; therefore changing to Hexagram Forty-three, Breakthrough. She scanned the text ravenously, catching up the successive stages of meaning in her mind, gathering it and comprehending; Jesus, it depicted the situation exactly—a miracle once more. All that had happened, there before her eyes, blueprint, schematic:

It furthers one

To undertake something.

It furthers one to cross the great water.

Trip, to go and do something important, not stay here. Now the lines. Her lips moved, seeking. .

Ten pairs of tortoises cannot oppose him.

Constant perseverance brings good fortune.

The king presents him before God.

Now six in the third. Reading, she became dizzy;

One is enriched through unfortunate events.

No blame, if you are sincere

And walk in the middle,

And report with a seal to the prince.

The prince. . . it meant Abendsen. The seal, the new copy of his book. Unfortunate events—the oracle knew what had happened to her, the dreadfulness with Joe or whatever he was. She read six in the fourth place:

If you walk in the middle

And report to the prince,

He will follow.

I must go there, she realized, even if Joe comes after me. She devoured the last moving line, nine at the top:

He brings increase to no one.

Indeed, someone even strikes him.

He does not keep his heart constantly steady.

Misfortune.

Oh God, she thought; It means the killer, the Gestapo people—it’s telling me that Joe or someone like him, someone else, will get there and kill Abendsen. Quickly, she turned to Hexagram Forty-three. The judgment:

One must resolutely make the matter known At the court of the king.

It must be announced truthfully. Danger.

It is necessary to notify one’s own city.

It does not further to resort to arms.

It furthers one to undertake something.

So it’s no use to go back to the hotel and make sure about him; it’s hopeless, because there will be others sent out. Again the oracle says, even more emphatically: Get up to Cheyenne and warn Abendsen, however dangerous it is to me. I must bring him the truth.

She shut the volume.

Getting back behind the wheel of the car, she backed out into traffic. In a short time she had found her way out of downtown Denver and onto the main autobahn going north; she drove as fast as the car would go, the engine making a strange throbbing noise that shook the wheel and the seat and made everything in the glove compartment rattle.

Thank God for Doctor Todt and his autobahns, she said to herself as she hurtled along through the darkness, seeing only her own headlights and the lines marking the lanes.

At ten o’clock that night because of tire trouble she had still not reached Cheyenne, so there was nothing to do but pull off the road and search for a place to spend the night.

An autobahn exit sign ahead of her read Greeley Five Miles. I’ll start out again tomorrow morning, she told herself as she drove slowly along the main street of Greeley a few minutes later. She saw several motels with vacancy signs lit, so there was no problem. What I must do, she decided, is call Abendsen tonight and say I’m coming.

When she had parked she got wearily from the car, relieved to be able to stretch her legs. All day on the road,from eight in the morning on. An all-night drugstore could be made out not far down the sidewalk; hands in the pockets of her coat, she walked that way, and soon she was shut up in the privacy of the phone booth, asking the operator for Cheyenne information. -

Their phone—thank God—was listed. She put in the quarters and the operator rang.

“Hello,” a woman’s voice sounded presently, a vigorous, rather pleasant younger-woman’s voice; a woman no doubt about her own age.

“Mrs. Abendsen?” Juliana said. “May I talk to Mr. Abendsen?”

“Who is this, please?”

Juliana said, “I read his book and I drove all day up from Canon City, Colorado. I’m in Greeley now. I thought I could make it to your place tonight, but I can’t, so I want to know if I can see him sometime tomorrow.”

After a pause, Mrs. Abendsen said in a still-pleasant voice, “Yes, it’s too late, now; we go to bed quite early. Was there any—special reason why you wanted to see my husband? He’s working very hard right now.”

“I wanted to speak to him,” she said. Her own voice in her ears sounded drab and wooden; she stared at the wall of the booth, unable to find anything further to say—her body ached and her mouth felt dry and full of foul tastes. Beyond the phone booth she could see the druggist at the soda counter serving milk shakes to four teen-agers. She longed to be there; she scarcely paid attention as Mrs. Abendsen answered. She longed for some fresh, cold drink, and something like a chicken salad sandwich to go with it.

“Hawthorneworks erratically,” Mrs. Abendsen was saying in her merry,brisk voice. “If you drive up here tomorrow I can’t promise you anything, because he might be involved all day long. But if you understand that before you make the trip—“

“Yes,” she broke in.

“I know he’ll be glad to chat with you for a few minutes if he can,” Mrs. Abendsen continued. “But please don’t be disappointed if by chance he can’t break off long enough to talk to you or even see you.”

“We read his book and liked it,” Juliana said. “I have it with me.”

“I see,” Mrs. Abendsen said good-naturedly.

“We stopped off at Denver and shopped, so we lost a lot of time.” No, she thought; it’s all changed, all different. “Listen,” she said, “the oracle told me to come to Cheyenne.”

“Oh my,” Mrs. Abendsen said, sounding as if she knew about the oracle, and yet not taking the situation seriously.

“I’ll give you the lines.” She had brought the oracle with her into the phone booth; propping the volumes up on the shelf beneath the phone, she laboriously turned the pages. “Just a second.” She located the page and read first the judgment and then the lines to Mrs. Abendsen. When she got to the nine at the top—the line about someone striking him and misfortune—she heard Mrs. Abendsen exclaim. “Pardon?” Juliana said, pausing.

“Go ahead,” Mrs. Abendsen said. Her tone, Juliana thought, had a more alert, sharpened quality now.

After Juliana had read the judgment of the Forty-third hexagram, with the word danger in it, there was silence. Mrs. Abendsen said nothing and Juliana said nothing.

“Well, we’ll look forward to seeing you tomorrow, then,” Mrs. Abendsen said finally. “And would you give me your name, please?”

“Juliana Frink,” she said. “Thank you very much, Mrs. Abendsen.” The operator, now, had broken in to clamor about the time being up, so Juliana hung up the phone, collected her purse and the volumes of the oracle, left the phone booth and walked over to the drugstore fountain.

After she had ordered a sandwich and a Coke, and was sitting smoking a cigarette and resting, she realized with a rush of unbelieving horror that she had said nothing to Mrs. Abendsen about the Gestapo man or the SD man or whatever he was, that Joe Cinnadella she had left in the hotel room in Denver. She simply could not believe it. I forgot! she said to herself. It dropped completely out of my mind. How could that be? I must be nuts; I must be terribly sick and stupid and nuts.

For a moment she fumbled with her purse, trying to find  change for another call. No, she decided as she started up from the stool. I can’t call them again tonight; I’ll let it go—it’s just too goddam late. I’m tired and they’re probably asleep by now.

She ate her chicken salad sandwich, drank her Coke, and then she drove to the nearest- motel, rented a room and crept tremblingly into bed.

14

Mr. Nobusuke Tagomi thought, There is no answer. No understanding. Even in the oracle. Yet I must go on living day to day anyhow.

I will go and find the small. Live unseen, at any rate. Until some later time when—

In any case he said good-bye to his wife and left his house. But today he did not go to the Nippon Times Building as usual. What about relaxation? Drive to Golden Gate Park with its zoo and fish? Visit where things who cannot think nonetheless enjoy.

Time. It is a long trip for the pedecab, and it gives me more time to perceive. If that can be said. -

But trees and zoo are not personal. I must clutch at human life. This had made me into a child, although that could be good. I could make it good.

The pedecab driver pumped along Kearny Street, toward downtown San Francisco. Ride cable car, Mr. Tagomi thought suddenly. Happiness in clearest, almost tear-jerking voyage, object that should have vanished in 1900 but is oddly yet extant.

He dismissed the pedecab, walked along the sidewalk toward the nearest cable tracks.

Perhaps, he thought, I can never go back to the Nippon Times Building, with its stink of death. My career over, but just as well. A replacement can be found by the Board of Trade Mission Activities. But Tagomi still walks, exists, recalling every detail. So nothing is accomplished.

In any case the war, Operation Dandelion, will sweep us all away. No matter what we are doing at the time. Our enemy, alongside whom we fought in the last war. What good did it do us? We should have fought them, possibly. Or permitted them to lose, assisted their enemies, the United States, Britain, Russia.

Hopeless wherever one looks.

The oracle enigmatic. Perhaps it has withdrawn from the world of man in sorrow. The sages leaving.

We have entered a Moment when we are alone. We cannot get assistance, as before. Well, Mr. Tagomi thought, perhaps that too is good. Or can be made good. One must still try to find the Way.

He boarded the California Street cable car, rode all the way to the end of the line. He even hopped out and assisted in turning the cable car around on its wooden turntable. That, of all experiences in the city, had the most meaning for him, customarily. Now the effect languished; he felt the void even more acutely, due to vitiation here of all places.

Naturally he rode back. But. . . a formality, he realized as he watched the streets, buildings, traffic pass in reverse of before.

Near Stockton he rose to get off. But at the stop, when he started to descend, the conductor hailed him. “Your briefcase, sir.”

“Thank you.” He had left it on the cable car. Reaching up he accepted it, then bowed as the cable car clanged into motion. Very valuable briefcase contents, he thought. Priceless Colt .44 collector’s item carried within. Now kept within easy reach constantly, in case vengeful hooligans of SD should try to repay me as individual. One never knows. And yet—Mr. Tagomi felt that this new procedure, despite all that had occurred, was neurotic. I should not yield to it, he told himself once again as he walked along carrying the briefcase. Compulsion-obsession-phobia. But he could not free himself.

It in my grip, I in its, he thought.

Have I then lost my delighted attitude? he asked himself. Is all instinct perverted from the memory of what I did? All collecting damaged, not merely attitude toward this one item? Mainstay of my life . . . area, alas, where I dwelt with such relish.

Hailing a pedecab, he directed the driver to Montgomery Street and Robert Childan’s shop. Let us find out. One thread left, connecting me with the voluntary. I possibly could manage m-y anxious proclivities by a ruse: trade the gun in on more historicity sanctioned item. This gun, for me, has too much subjective history . . . all of the wrong kind. But that ends with me; no one else can experience it from the gun. Within my psyche only.

Free myself, he decided with excitement. When the gun goes, it all leaves, the cloud of the past. For it is not merely in my psyche; it is—as has always been said in the theory of historicity—within the gun as well. An equation between us!

He reached the store. Where I have dealt so much, he observed as he paid the driver. Both business and private. Carrying the briefcase he quickly entered.

There, at the cash register, Mr. Childan. Polishing with cloth some artifact.

“Mr. Tagomi,” Childan said, with a bow.

“Mr. Childan.” He, too, bowed.

“What a surprise. I am overcome.” Childan put down the object and cloth. Around the corner of the counter he came. Usual ritual, the greeting, et cetera. Yet, Mr. Tagomi felt the man today somehow different. Rather—muted. An improvement, he decided. Always a trifle loud, shrill. Skipping about with agitation. But this might well be a bad omen.

“Mr. Childan,” Mr. Tagomi said, placing his briefcase on the counter and unzipping it, “I wish to trade in an item bought several years ago. You do that, I recollect.”

“Yes,” Mr. Childan said. “Depending on condition, for instance.” He watched alertly. -

“Colt .44 revolver,” Mr. Tagomi said.

They were both silent, regarding the gun as it lay in its open teakwood box -with its carton of partly consumed ammunition.

Shade colder by Mr. Childan. Ah, Mr. Tagomi realized. Well, so be it. “You are not interested,” Mr. Tagomi said.

“No sir,” Mr. Childan said in a stiff voice.

“I will not press it.” He did not feel any strength. I yield. Yin, the adaptive, receptive, holds sway in me, I fear.

“Forgive me, Mr. Tagomi.”

Mr. Tagomi bowed, replaced the gun, ammunition, box, in his briefcase. Destiny. I must keep this thing.

“You seem—quite disappointed,” Mr. Childan said.

“You notice.” He was perturbed; had he let his inner world out for all to view? He shrugged. Certainly it was so.

“Was there a special reason why you wanted to trade that item in?” Mr. Childan said.

“No,” he said, once more concealing his personal world-as should be. -

Mr. Childan hesitated, then said, “I—wonder if that did emanate from my store. I do not carry that item.”

“I am sure,” Mr. Tagomi said. “But it does not matter. I accept your decision; I am not offended.”

“Sir,” Childan said, “allow me to show you what has come in. Are you free for a moment?”

Mr. Tagomi felt within him the old stirring. “Something of unusual interest?”

“Come, sir.” Childan led the way across the store; Mr. Tagomi followed.

Within a locked glass case, on trays of black velvet, lay small metal swirls, shapes that merely hinted rather than were. They gave Mr. Tagomi a queer feeling as he stooped to study.

“I show these ruthlessly to each of my customers,” Robert Childan said. “Sir, do you know what these are?”

“Jewelry, it appears,” Mr. Tagomi said, noticing a pin.

“These are American-made. Yes of course. But, sir. These are not the old.”

Mr. Tagomi glanced up.

“Sir, these are the new.” Robert Childan’s white, somewhat drab features were disturbed by passion. “This is the new life of my country, sir. The beginning in the form of tiny imperishable seeds. Of beauty.”

With due interest, Mr. Tagomi took time to examine in his own hands several of the pieces. Yes, there is something new which animates these, he decided. The Law of Tao is borne out, here; when yin lies everywhere, the first stirring of light is suddenly alive in the darkest depths.. . we are all familiar; we have seen it happen before, as I see it here now. And yet for me they are just scraps. I cannot become rapt, as Mr. R. Childan, here. Unfortunately, for both of us. But that is the case. -

“Quite lovely,” he murmured, laying down the pieces. Mr. Childan said in a forceful voice, “Sir, it does not occur at once.” -

“Pardon?”

“The new view in your heart.”

“You are converted,” Mr. Tagomi said. “I wish I could be. I am not.” He bowed.

“Another time,” Mr. Childan said, accompanying him to the entrance of the store; he made no move to display any alternative items, Mr. Tagomi noticed.

“Your certitude is in questionable taste,” Mr. Tagomi said. “It seems to press untowardly.”

Mr. Childan did not cringe. “Forgive me,” he said. “But I am correct. I sense accurately in these the contracted germ of the future.”

“So be it,” Mr. Tagomi said. “But your Anglo-Saxon fanaticism does not appeal to me.” Nonetheless, he felt a certain renewal of hope. His own hope, in himself, “Good day.” He bowed. “I will see you again one of these days. We can perhaps examine your prophecy.”

Mr. Childan bowed, saying nothing.

Carrying his briefcase, with the Colt .44 within, Mr. Tagomi departed. I go out as I came in, he reflected. Still seeking. Still without what I need if I - am to return to the world.

What if I had bought one of those odd, indistinct items? Kept it, reexamined, contemplated. . . would I have subsequently, through it, found my way back? I doubt it.

Those are for him, not me.

And yet, even if one person finds his-way . . . that means there is a Way. Even if I personally fail to reach it.

I envy him.

Turning, Mr. Tagomi started back toward the store. There in the doorway, stood Mr. Childan regarding him. He had not gone back in.

“Sir,” Mr. Tagomi said, “I will buy one of those, whichever you select. I have no faith, but I am currently grasping at straws.” He followed Mr. Childan through the store once more, to the glass case. “I do not believe. I will carry it about with me, looking at it at regular intervals. Once every other day, for instance. After two months if I do not see—“

“You may return it for full credit,” Mr. Childan said.

“Thank you,” Mr. Tagomi said. He felt better. Sometimes one must try anything, he decided. It is no disgrace. On the contrary, it is a sign of wisdom, of recognizing the situation.

“This will calm you,” Mr. Childan said. He laid out a single small silver triangle ornamented with hollow drops. Black beneath, bright and light-filled above.

“Thank you,” Mr. Tagomi said.

By pedecab Mr. Tagomi journeyed to Portsmouth Square, a little open park on the slope above Kearny Street overlooking the police station. He seated himself on a bench in the sun. Pigeons walked along the paved paths in search of food. On other benches shabby men read the newspaper or dozed. Here and there others lay on the grass, nearly asleep.

Bringing from his pocket the paper bag marked with the name of Mr. R. Childan’s store, Mr. Tagomi sat holding the paper bag with both hands, warming himself. Then he opened the bag and lifted out his new possession for inspection in solitude, here in this little grass and path park of old men.-

He held the squiggle of silver. Reflection of the midday sun, like boxtop cereal trinket, sent-away acquired Jack Armstrong magnifying mirror. Or—he gazed down into it. Om as the Brahmins say. Shrunk spot in which all is captured. Both, at least in hint. The size, the shape. He continued to inspect dutifully.

Will it come, as Mr. R. Childan prophesied? Five minutes. Ten minutes. I sit as long as I can. Time, alas, will make us sell it short. What is it I hold, while there is still time?

Forgive me, Mr. Tagomi thought in the direction of the squiggle. Pressure on us always to rise and act. Regretfully, he began to put the thing away back in its bag. One final hopeful glance—he again scrutinized with all that he had. Like child, he told himself. Imitate the innocence and faith. On seashore, pressing randomly found shell to head. Hearing in its blabber the wisdom of the sea.

This, with eye replacing ear. Enter me and inform what has been done, what it means, why. Compression of understanding into one finite squiggle. -

Asking too much, and so get nothing.

“Listen,” he said sotto voce to the squiggle. “Sales warranty promised much.”

If I shake it violently, like old recalcitrant watch. He did so, up and down. Or like dice in critical game. Awaken the diety inside. Peradventure he sleepeth. Or he is on a journey. Titillating heavy irony by Prophet Elijah. Or he is pursuing. Mr. Tagomi violently shook the silver squiggle up and down in his clenched fist once more. Call him louder. Again he scrutinized.

You little thing, you are empty, he thought.

Curse at it, he told himself. Frighten it.

“My patience is running out,” he said sotto voce.

And what then? Fling you in the gutter? Breathe on it, shake it, breathe on it. Win me the game.

He laughed. Addlepated involvement, here in warm sunlight. Spectacle to whoever comes along. Peeking about guiltily, now. But no one saw. Old men snoozing. Measure of relief, there.

Tried everything, he realized. Pleaded, contemplated, threatened, philosophized at length. What else can be done?

Could I but stay here. It is denied me. Opportunity will perhaps occur again. And yet, as W. S. Gilbert says, such an opportunity will not occur again. Is that so? I feel it to be so.

When I was a child I thought as a child. But now I have put away childish things. Now I must seek in other realms. I must keep after this object in new ways.

I must be scientific. Exhaust by logical analysis every entree. Systematically, in classic Aristotelian laboratory manner. -

He put his finger in his right ear, to shut off traffic and all other distracting noises. Then he tightly held the silver triangle, sheliwise, to his left ear.

No sound. No roar of simulated ocean, in actuality interior blood-motion noises—not even that.

Then what other sense might apprehend mystery? Hearing of no use, evidently. Mr. Tagomi shut his eyes and began fingering every bit of surface on the item. Not touch; his fingers told him nothing. Smell. He put the silver close to his nose and inhaled. Metallic faint odor, but it conveyed no meaning. Taste. Opening his mouth he sneaked the silver triangle within, popped it in like a cracker, but of course refrained from chewing. No meaning, only bitter hard cold thing.

He again held it in his palm.

Back at last to seeing. Highest ranking of the senses: Greek scale of priority. He turned the silver triangle each and every way; he viewed it from every extra rem standpoint.

What do I see? he asked himself. Due to long patient painstaking study. What is clue of truth that confronts me in this object?

Yield, he told the silver triangle. Cough up arcane secret.

Like frog pulled from depths, he thought. Clutched in fist, given command to declare what lies below in the watery abyss. But here the frog does not even mock; it strangles silently, becomes stone or clay or mineral. Inert. Passes back to the rigid substance familiar in its tomb world.

Metal is from the earth, he thought as he scrutinized. From below: from that realm which is the lowest, the most dense. Land of trolls and caves, dank, always dark. Yin world, in its most melancholy aspect. World of corpses, decay and collapse. Of feces. All that has died, slipping and disintegrating back down layer by layer. The daemonic world of the immutable; the time-that-was.

And yet, in the sunlight, the silver triangle glittered. It reflected light. Fire, Mr. Tagomi thought. Not dank or dark object at all. Not heavy, weary, but pulsing with life. The high realm, aspect of yang: empyrean, ethereal. As befits work of art. Yes, that is artist’s job: takes mineral rock from dark silent earth transforms it into shining light-reflecting form from sky.

Has brought the dead to life. Corpse turned to fiery display; the past had yielded to the future.

Which are you? he asked the silver squiggle. Dark dead yin or brilliant living yang? In his palm, the silver squiggle danced and blinded him; he squinted, seeing now only the play of fire.

Body of yin, soul of yang. Metal and fire unified. The outer and inner; microcosmos in my palm. -

What is the space which this speaks of? Vertical ascent. To heaven. Of time? Into the light-world of the mutable. Yes, this thing has disgorged its spirit: light. And my attention is fixed; I can’t look away. Spellbound by mesmerizing shimmering surface which I can no longer control. No longer free to dismiss.

Now talk to me, he told it. Now that you have snared me. I want to hear your voice issuing from the blinding clear white light, such as we expect to see only in the Bardo Thodol afterlife existence. But I do not have to wait for death, for the decomposition of my animus as it wanders in search of a new womb. All the terrifying and beneficent deities; we will bypass them, and the smoky lights as well. And the couples in coitus. Everything except this light. I am ready to face without terror. Notice I do not blench.

I feel the hot winds of karma driving me. Nevertheless I remain here. My training was correct: I must not shrink from the clear white light, for if I do, I will once more reenter the cycle of birth and death, never knowing freedom, never obtaining release. The veil of maya will fall once more if I—

The light disappeared.

He held the dull silver triangle only. Shadow had cut off the sun; Mr. Tagomi glanced up.

Tall, blue-suited policeman standing by his bench, smiling.

“Eh?” Mr. Tagomi said, startled.

“I was just watching you work that puzzle.” The policeman started on along the path.

“Puzzle,” Mr. Tagomi echoed. “Not a puzzle.”

“Isn’t that one of those little puzzles you have to take apart? My kid has a whole lot of them. Some are hard.” The policeman passed on.

Mr. Tagomi thought, Spoiled. My chance at nirvana. Gone. Interrupted by that white barbarian Neanderthal yank. That subhuman supposing I worked a child’s puerile toy.

Rising from thebench he took a few steps unsteadily. Must calm down. Dreadful low-class jingoistic racist invectives, unworthy of me.

Incredible unredemptive passions clashing in my breast. He made his way through the park. Keep moving, he told himself. Catharsis in motion.

He reached periphery of park. Sidewalk, Kearny Street. Heavy noisy traffic. Mr. Tagomi halted at the curb.

No pedecabs. He walked along the sidewalk instead; he joined the crowd. Never can get one when you need it.

God, what is that? He stopped, gaped at hideous misshapen thing on skyline. Like nightmare of roller coaster suspended, blotting out view. Enormous construction of metal and cement in air.

Mr. Tagomi turned to a passer-by, a thin man in rumpled suit. “What is that?” he demanded, pointing.

The man grinned. “Awful, ain’t it? That’s the Embarcadero Freeway. A lot of people think it stinks up the view.”

“I never saw it before,” Mr. Tagomi said.

“You’re lucky,” the man said, and went on.

Mad dream, Mr. Tagomi thought. Must wake up. Where are the pedecabs today? He began to walk faster. Whole vista has dull, smoky, tomb-world cast. Smell of burning. Dim gray buildings, sidewalk, peculiar harsh tempo in people. And still no pedecabs.

“Cab!” he shouted as he hurried along.

Hopeless. Only cars and buses. Cars like brutal big crushers, all unfamiliar in shape. He avoided seeing them; kept his eyes straight ahead. Distortion of my optic perception of particularly sinister nature. A disturbance affecting my sense of space. Horizon twisted out of line. Like lethal astigmatism striking without warning.

Must obtain respite. Ahead, a dingy lunch counter. Only whites within, all supping. Mr. Tagomi pushed open the wooden swinging doors. Smell of coffee. Grotesque jukebox in corner blaring out he winced and made his way to the counter. All stools taken by whites. Mr. Tagomi exclaimed. Several whites looked up. But none departed their places. None yielded their stools to him. They merely resumed supping.

“I insist!” Mr. Tagomi said loudly to the first white; he shouted in the man’s ear.

The man put down his coffee mug and said, “Watch it, Tojo.”

Mr. Tagomi looked to the other whites; all watched with hostile expressions. And none stirred.

Bardo Thodol existence, Mr. Tagomi thought. Hot winds blowing me who knows where. This is vision—of what? Can the animus endure this? Yes, the Book of the Dead prepares us: after death we seem to glimpse others, but all appear hostile to us. One stands isolated. Unsuccored wherever one turns. The terrible journey—and always the realms of suffering, rebirth, ready to receive the fleeing, demoralized spirit. The delusions.

He hurried from the lunch counter. The doors swung together behind him; - he stood once more on the sidewalk.

Where am I? Out of my world, my space and time.

The silver triangle disoriented me. I broke from my moorings and hence stand on nothing. So much for my endeavor. Lesson to me forever. One seeks to contravene one’s perceptions-why? So that one can wander utterly lost, without signposts or guide?

This hypnagogic condition. Attention-faculty diminished so that twilight state obtains; world seen merely in symbolic, archetypal aspect, totally confused with unconscious material. Typical of hypnosis-induced somnambulism. Must stop this dreadful gliding among shadows; refocus concentration and thereby restore ego center.

He felt in his pockets for the silver triangle. Gone. Left the thing on the bench in the park, with briefcase. Catastrophe.

Crouching, he ran back up the sidewalk, to the park.

Dozing bums eyed him in surprise as he hurried up the path. There, the bench. And leaning against it still, his briefcase. No sign of the silver triangle. He hunted. Yes. Fallen through to grass; it lay partly hidden. Where he had hurled it in rage.

He reseated himself, panting for breath.

Focus on silver triangle once more, he told himself when he could breath. Scrutinize it forcefully and count. At ten, utter startling noise. Erwache, for instance.

Idiotic daydreaming of fugal type, he thought. Emulation of more noxious aspects of adolescence, rather than the clearheaded pristine innocence of authentic childhood. Just what I deserve anyhow.

All my own fault. No intention by Mr. R. Childan or artisans; my own greed to blame. One cannot compel understanding to come.

He counted slowly, aloud, and then jumped to his feet. “Goddam stupidity,” he said sharply.

Mists cleared?       *

He peeped about. Diffusion subsided, in all probability. Now one appreciates Saint Paul’s incisive word choice

seen through glass darkly not a metaphor, but astute reference to optical distortion. We really do see astigmatically, in fundamental sense: our space and our time creations of our own psyche, and when these momentarily falter—like acute disturbance of middle ear.

Occasionally we list eccentrically, all sense of balance gone.

He reseated himself, put the silver squiggle away in his coat pocket, sat holding his briefcase on his lap. What I must do now, he told himself, is go and see if that malignant construction—what did the man call it? Embarcadero Freeway. If it is still palpable.

But he felt afraid to.

And yet, he thought, I can’t merely sit here. I have loads to lift, as old U.S. folk expression has it. Jobs to be done.

Dilemma.

Two small Chinese boys came scampering noisily along the path. A flock of pigeons fluttered up; the boys paused.

Mr. Tagomi called, “You, young fellows.” He dug into his pocket. “Come here.”

The two boys guardedly approached.

“Here’s a dime.” Mr. Tagomi tossed them a dime; the boys scrambled for it. “Go down to Kearny Street and see if there are any pedecabs. Come back and tell me.”

“Will you give us another dime?” one of the boys said. “When we get back?”

“Yes,” Mr. Tagomi said. “But tell me the truth.”

The boys raced off along the path.

If there are not, Mr. Tagomi thought, I would be well advised to retire to secluded place and kill myself. He clutched his briefcase. Still have the weapon; no difficulty, there.

The boys came tearing back. “Six!” one of them yelled. “I counted six.”

“I counted five,” the other boy gasped.

Mr. Tagomi said, “You’re sure they were pedecabs? You distinctly saw the drivers peddling?”

“Yes sir,” the boys said together.

He gave each boy a dime. They thanked him and ran off.

Back to office and job, Mr. Tagomi thought. He rose to his feet, gripping the handle of his briefcase. Duty calls. Customary day once again.

Once more he walked down the path, to the sidewalk.

“Cab!” he called.

From the traffic a pedecab appeared; the driver came to a halt at the curb, his dark face glistening,chest heaving. “Yes sir.”

“Take me to the Nippon Times Building,” Mr. Tagomi ordered. He ascended to the seat and made himself comfortable.

Peddling furiously, the pedecab driver moved out among the other cabs and cars.

It was slightly before noon when Mr. Tagomi reached the Nippon Times Building. From the main lobby he instructed a switchboard operator to connect him with Mr. Ramsey upstairs.

“Tagomi, here,” he said, when the connection was complete. -

“Good morning, sir. I am relieved. Not seeing you, I apprehensively telephoned your home at ten o’clock, but your wife said you had left for unknown parts.”

Mr. Tagomi said, “Has the mess been cleared?”

“No sign remains.”

“Beyond dispute?”

“My word, sir.”

Satisfied, Mr. Tagomi hung up and went to take the elevator.

Upstairs, as he entered his office, he permitted himself a momentary search. Rim of his vision. No sign, as was promised. He felt relief. No one would know who hadn’t seen. Historicity bonded into nylon tile of floor. .

Mr. Ramsey met him inside. “Your courage is topic for panegyric down below at the Times, “he began. “An article depicting—“ Making out Mr. Tagomi’s expression he broke off.

“Answer-regarding pressing matters,” Mr. Tagomi said. “General Tedeki? That is, quondam Mr. Yatabe?”

“On carefully obscure flight back to Tokyo. Red herrings strewn hither and yon.” Mr. Ramsey crossed his fingers, symbolizing their hope.

“Please recount regarding Mr. Baynes.”

“I don’t know. During your absence he appeared briefly, even furtively, -but did not talk.” Mr. Ramsey hesitated. “Possibly he returned to Germany.”

“Far better for him to go to the Home Islands,” Mr. Tagomi said, mostly to himself. In any case, it was with the old general that their concern, of important nature, lay. And it is beyond my scope, Mr. Tagomi thought. My self, my office; they made use of me here, which naturally was proper and good. I was their—what is it deemed? Their cover.

I am a mask, concealing the real. Behind me, hidden, actuality goes on, safe from prying eyes.

Odd, he thought. Vital sometimes to be merely cardboard front, like carton. Bit of satori there, if I could lay hold of it. Purpose in overall scheme of illusion, could we but fathom. Law of economy: nothing is waste. Even the unreal. What a sublimity in the process.

Miss Ephreikian appeared, her manner agitated. “Mr. Tagomi. The switchboard sent me.”

“Be cool, miss,” Mr. Tagomi said. The current of time urges us along, he thought.

“Sir, the German consul is here. He wants to speak to you.” She glanced from him to Mr. Ramsey and back, her face unnaturally pale. “They say he was here in the building earlier, too, but they knew you—“

Mr. Tagomi waved her silent. “Mr. Ramsey. Please recollect for me the consul’s name.”

“Freiherr Hugo Reiss, sir.”

“Now I recall.” Well, he thought, evidently Mr. Childan did me a favor after all. By declining to reaccept the gun.

Carrying his briefcase, he left his office and walked out into the corridor.

There stood a slightly built, well-dressed white. Close-cut orange hair, shiny black European leather Oxfords, erect posture. And effeminate ivory cigarette holder. No doubt he.

“Herr H. Reiss?” Mr. Tagomi said.

The German bowed.

“Has been fact,” Mr. Tagomi said, “that you and I have in times past conducted business by mail, phone, et cetera. But never until now saw face to face.”

“An honor,” Herr Reiss said, advancing toward him. “Even considering the irritatingly distressing circumstances.”

“I wonder,” Mr. Tagomi said.

The German raised an eyebrow.

“Excuse me,” Tagomi said. “My cognition hazed over due to those indicated circumstances. Frailty of clay-made substance, one might conclude.”

“Awful,” Herr Reiss said. He shook his head. “When I first—“

Mr. Tagomi said, “Before you begin litany, let me speak.”

“Certainly.”

“I personally shot your two SD men,” Mr. Tagomi said.

“The San Francisco Police Department summoned me,” Herr Reiss said, blowing offensive-smelling cigarette smoke around them both. “For hours I’ve been down at the Kearny Street Station and at the morgue, and then I’ve been reading over the account your people gave to the investigating police inspectors. Absolutely dreadful, this, from start to finish.” Mr. Tagomi said nothing.

“However,” Herr Reiss continued, “the contention that the hoodlums are connected with the Reich hasn’t been established. As far as I’m concerned the whole matter is insane. I’m sure you acted absolutely properly, Mr. Tagori.”

“Tagomi.”

“My hand,” the consul said, extending his hand. “Let’s shake a gentlemen’s agreement to drop this. It’s unworthy, especially in these critical times when any stupid publicity might inflame the mob mind, to the detriment of both our nations’ interests.”

“Guilt nonetheless is on my soul,” Mr. Tagomi said. “Blood, Herr Reiss, can never be eradicated like ink.”

The consul seemed nonplused.

“I crave forgiveness,” Mr. Tagomi said. “You cannot give it to me, though. Possibly no one can. I intend to read famous diary by Massachusetts’ ancient divine, Goodman C. Mather. Deals, I am told, with guilt and hell-fire, et al.”

The consul smoked his cigarette rapidly, intently studying Mr. Tagomi.

“Allow me to notify you,” Mr. Tagomi said, “that your nation is about to descend in-to greater vileness than ever. You know the hexagram The Abyss? Speaking as a private person, not as representative of Japan officialdom, I declare: heart sick with horror. Bloodbath coming beyond all compare. Yet even now you strive for some slight egotistic gain or goal. Put one over on rival faction, the SD, eh? While you get Herr B. Kreuz vom Meere in hot water—“ He could not go on. His chest had become constricted. Like childhood, he thought. Asthma when angry at the old lady. “I am suffering,” he told Herr Reiss, who had put out his cigarette now. “Of malady growing these long years but which entered virulent form the day I heard, helplessly, your leaders’ escapades recited. Anyhow, therapeutic possibility nil. For you, too, sir. In language of Goodman C. Mather, if properly recalled: Repent!”

The German consul said huskily, “Properlyrecalled.” He nodded, lit a new cigarette with trembling fingers.-

From the office, Mr. Ramsey appeared. Hecarriedasheaf of forms and papers. To Mr. Tagomi, who stood silently trying to get an unconstricted breath, he said, “While he’s here. Routine matter having to do with his functionality.”

Reflexively, Mr. Tagomi took the fonns held out. He glanced at them. Form 20-50. Request by Reich through representative in PSA, Consul Freiherr Hugo Reiss, for remand of felon now in custody of San Francisco Police Department. Jew named Frank Fink, citizen—according to Reichs law—of Germany, retroactive June, 1960. For protective custody under Reichs law, etc. He scanned it over once.

“Pen, sir,” Mr. Ramsey said. “That concludes business with German Government this date.” He eyed the consul with distaste as he held the pen to Mr. Tagomi.

“No,” Mr. Tagomi said. He returned the 20-50 form to Mr. Ramsey. Then he grabbed it back, scribbled on the bottom, Release. Ranking Trade Mission, S.F. authority. Vide Military Protocol 1947. Tagomi. He handed one carbon to the German consul, the others to Mr. Ramsey along with the original. “Good day, Herr Reiss.” He bowed.

The German consul bowed, too. He scarcely bothered to look at the paper.

“Please conduct future business through immediate machinery such as mail, telephone, cable,” Mr. Tagomi said. “Not personally.”

The consul said, “You’re holding me responsible for general conditions beyond my jurisdiction.”

“Chicken shit,” Mr. Tagomi said. “I say that to that.”

“This is not the way civilized individuals conduct business,” the consul said. “You’re making this all bitter and vindictive. Where it ought to be mere formality with no personality embroiled.” He threw his cigarette onto the corridor floor, then turned and strode off.

“Take foul stinking cigarette along,” Mr. Tagomi said weakly, but the consul had turned the corner. “Childish conduct by self,” Mr. Tagomi said to Mr. Ramsey. “You witnessed repellent childish conduct.” He made his way unsteadily back into his office. No breath at all, now. A pain flowed down his left arm, and at the same time a great open palm of hand flattened and squashed his ribs. Oof, he said. Before him, no carpet, but merely shower of sparks, rising, red.

Help, Mr. Ramsey, he said. But no sound. Please. He reached out, stumbled. Nothing to catch, even.

As he fell he clutched within his coat the silver triangle thing Mr. Childan had urged on him. Did not save me, he thought. Did not help. All that endeavor.

His body struck the floor. Hands and knees, gasping, the carpet at his nose. Mr. Ramsey now rushing about bleating. Keep equipoise, Mr. Tagomi thought.

“I’m having a small heart attack,” Mr. Tagomi managed to say.

Several persons were involved, now, transporting him to couch. “Be calm, sir,” one was telling him.

“Notify wife, please,” Mr. Tagomi said.

Presently he heard ambulance noises. Wailing from street. Plus much bustle. People coming and going. A blanket was put over him, up to his armpits. Tie removed. Collar loosened.

“Better now,” Mr. Tagomi said. He lay comfortably, not trying to stir. Career over anyhow, he decided. German consul no doubt raise row higher up. Complain about incivility. Right to so complain, perhaps. Anyhow, work done. As far as I can, my part. Rest up to Tokyo and factions in Germany. Struggle beyond me in any case.

I thought it was merely plastics, he thought. Important mold salesman. Oracle guessed and gave clue, but-- -

“Remove his shirt,” a voice stated. No doubt building’s physician. Highly authoritative tone; Mr. Tagomi smiled. Tone is everything.

Could this, Mr. Tagomi wondered, be the answer? Mystery of body organism, its own knowledge. Time to quit. Or time partially to quit. A purpose, which I must acquiesce to.

What had the oracle last said? To his query in the office as those two lay dying or dead. Sixty-one. Inner Truth. Pigsand fishes are least intelligent of all; hard to convince. It is I. The book means me. I will never fully understand; that is the nature of such creatures. Or is this Inner Truth now, this that is happening to me?

I will wait. I will see. Which it is.

Perhaps it is both.

That evening, just after the dinner meal, a police officer came to Frank Frink’s cell, unlocked the door, and told him to go pick up his possessions at the desk.

Shortly, he found himself out on the sidewalk before the Keamy Street Station, among the many passers-by hurrying along, the buses and honking cars and yelling pedecab drivers. The air was cold. Long shadows lay before each building. Frank Frink stood a moment and then he fell automatically in with a group of people crossing the street at the crosswalk zone.

Arrested for no real reason, he thought. No purpose. And then they let me go the same way.

They had not told him anything, had simply given him back his sack of clothes, wallet, watch, glasses, personal articles, and turned to their next business, an elderly drunk brought in off the street.

Miracle, he thought. That they let me go. Fluke of some kind. By rights I should be on a plane heading for Germany, for extermination.

He could still not believe it. Either part, the arrest and now this. Unreal. He wandered along past the closed-up shops, stepping over debris blown by the wind.

New life, he thought. Like being reborn. Like, hell. Is.

Who do I thank? Pray, maybe?

Pray to what?

I wish I understood, he said to himself as he moved along the busy evening sidewalk, by the neon signs, the blaring bar doorways of Grant Avenue. I want to comprehend. I have to.

But he knew he never would.

Just be glad, he thought. And keep moving.

A bit of his mind declared, And then back to Ed. I have to find my way back to the workshop, down there in that basement. Pick up where I left off, making the jewelry, using my hands. Working and not thinking, not looking up or trying to understand. I must keep busy. I must turn the pieces out.

Block by block he hurried through the darkening city. Struggling to get back as soon as possible to the fixed, comprehensible place he had been.

When he got there he found Ed McCarthy seated at the bench, eating his dinner. Two sandwiches, a thermos of tea, a banana, several cookies. Frank Frink stood in the doorway, gasping.

At last Ed heard him and turned around. “I had the impression you were dead,” he said. He chewed, swallowed rhythmically, took another bite.

By the bench, Ed had their little electric heater going; Frank went over to it and crouched down, warming his hands.

“Good to see you back,” Ed said. He banged Frank twice on the back, then returned to his sandwich. He said nothing more; the only sounds ‘were the whirr of the heater fan and Ed’s chewing.

Laying his coat over a chair, Frank collected a handful of half-completed silver segments and carried them to the arbor. He screwed a wool buffing wheel onto the spindle, started up the motor; he dressed the wheel with bobbing compound, put on the mask to protect his eyes, and then seated on a stool began removing the fire scale from the segments, one by one.

15

Captain Rudolf Wegener, at the moment traveling under the cover name Conrad Goltz, a dealer in medical supplies on a wholesale basis, peered through the window of the Lufthansa ME9-E rocket ship. Europe ahead. How quickly,he thought. We will be landing -at Tempeihofer Feld in approximately seven minutes.

I wonder what I accomplished, he thought as he watched the land mass grow. It is up to General Tedeki, now. Whatever he can do in the Home Islands. But at least we got the information to them. We did what we could.

He thought, But there is no reason to be optimistic. Probably the Japanese can do nothing to change the course of German internal politics. The Goebbels Government is in power, and probably will stand. After it is consolidated, it will turn once more to the notion of Dandelion. And another major section of the planet will be destroyed, with its population, for a deranged, fanatic ideal.

Suppose eventually they, the Nazis, destroy it all? Leave it a sterile ash? They could; they have the hydrogen bomb. And no doubt they would; their thinking tends toward that Götterdämmerung. They may well crave it, be activcly seeking it, a final holocaust for everyone.

And what will that leave, that Third World Insanity? Will that put an end to all life, of every kind, everywhere? When our planet becomes a dead planet, by our own hands?

He could not believe that. Even if all life on our planet is destroyed, there must be other life somewhere which we know nothing of. It is impossible that ours is the only world; there must be world after world unseen by us, in some region or dimension that we simply do not perceive.

Even though I can’t prove that, even though it isn’t logical—I believe it, he said to himself.

A loudspeaker said, “Meine Damen undHerren. Achiung, bitte.”

We are approaching the moment of landing, Captain Wegener said to himself. I will almost surely be met by the Sicherheitsdienst. The question is: Which faction of policy will be represented? The Goebbels? Or the Heydrich? Assuming that SS General Heydrich is still alive. While I have been aboard this ship, he could have been rounded up and shot. Things happen fast, during the time of transition in a totalitarian society. There have been, in Nazi Germany, tattered lists of names over which men have pored before.

Several minutes later, when the rocket ship had landed, he found himself on his feet, moving toward the exit with his overcoat over his arm. Behind him and ahead of him, anxious passengers. No young Nazi artist this time, he reflected. No Lotze to badger me at the last with his moronic viewpoint.

An airlines uniformed official—dressed, Wegener observed, like the Reichs Marshal himself—assisted them all down the ramp, one by one, to the field. There, by the concourse, stood a small knot of blackshirts. For me? Wegener began to walk slowly from the parked rocket ship. Over at another spot men and women waiting, waving, calling . . . even some children.

One of the blackshirts, a flat-faced unwinking blond fellow wearing the Waffen-SS insignia, stepped smartly up to Wegener, clicked the heels of his jackboots together and saluted. “Ich bitte mich zu entschuldigen. Sind Sie nicht Kapitan Rudolf Wegener, von der Abwehr?”

“Sorry,” Wegener answered. “I am Conrad Goltz. Representing A. G. Chemikalien medical supplies.” He started on past.

Two other blackshirts, also Waffen-SS,came toward him. The three of them fell beside him, so that although he continued on at his own pace, in his own direction, he was quite abruptly and effectively under custody. Two of the Waffen SS men had sub-machine guns under their greatcoats.

“You are Wegener,” one of them said as they entered the building.

He said nothing.

“We have a car,” the Waffen-SS man continued. “We are instructed to meet your rocket ship, contact you, and take you immediately to SS General Heydrich, who is with Sepp Dietrich at the 0KW of the Leibstandarte Division. In particular we are not to permit you to be approached by Wehrmacht or Partei persons.”

Then I will not be shot, Wegener said to himself. Heydrich is alive, and in a safe location, and trying to strengthen his position against the Goebbels Government.

Maybe the Goebbels Government will fall after all, he thought as he was ushered into the waiting SS Daimler staff sedan. A detachment of Waffen-SS suddenly shifted at night; guards at the Reichskanzlei relieved, replaced. The Berlin police stations suddenly spewing forth armed SD men in every direction—radio stations and power cut off, Tempeihofer closed. Rumble of hea-vy guns in the darkness, along main streets.

But what does it matter? Even if Doctor Goebbels is deposed and Operation Dandelion is canceled? They will still exist, the blackshirts, the Partei, the schemes if not in the Orient then somewhere else. On Mars and Venus.

No wonder Mr. Tagomi could not go on, he thought. The terrible dilemma of our lives. Whatever happens, it is evil beyond compare. Why struggle, then? Why choose? If all alternatives are the same .

Evidently we go on, as we always have. From day to day. At this moment we work against Operation Dandelion. Later on, at another moment, we work to defeat the police. But we cannot do it all at once; it is a sequence. An unfolding process. We can only control the end by making a choice at each step.

He thought, We can only hope. And try.

On some other world, possibly it is different. Better. There are clear good and evil alternatives. Not these obscure admixtures, these blends, with no proper tool by which to untangle the components.

We do not have the ideal world, such as we would like, where morality is easy because cognition is easy. Where one can do right with no effort because he can detect the obvious.

The Daimler started with Captain Wegener in the back, a blackshirt on each side, machine gun on lap. Blackshirt behind the wheel.

Suppose it is a deception even now, Wegener thought as the sedan moved at high speed through Berlin traffic. They are not taking me to SS General Heydrich at the Leibstandarte Division 0KW; they are taking me to a Partei jail, there to maim me and finally kill me. But I have chosen; I chose to return to Germany; I chose to risk capture before I could reach Abwehr people and protection.

Death at each moment, one avenue which is open to us at any point. And eventually we choose it, in spite of ourselves. Or we give up and take it deliberately. He watched the Berlin houses pass. My own Volk, he thought; you and I, again together.

To the three SS men he said, “How are things? Any recent developments in the political situation? I’ve been away for several weeks, before Bormann’ s death, in fact.”

The man to his right answered, “There’s naturally plenty of hysterical mob support for the Little Doctor. It was the mob that swept him into office. However, it’s unlikely that when more sober elements prevail they’ll want to support a cripple and demagogue who depends on inflaming the mass with his lies and spellbinding.”

“I see,” Wegener said.

It goes on, he thought. The internecine hate. Perhaps the seeds are there, in that. They will eat one another at last, and leave the rest of us here and there in the world, still alive. Still enough of us once more to build and hope and make a few simple plans.

                    *     *     *

At one o’clock in the afternoon, Juliana Frink reached Cheyenne, Wyoming. In the downtown business section, across from the enormous old train depot, she stopped at a cigar store and bought two afternoon newspapers. Parked at the curb she searched until she at last found the item.

VACATION ENDS IN FATAL SLASHING

Sought for questioning concerning the fatal slashing of her husband in their swank rooms at the President Garner Hotel in Denver, Mr. Joe Cinnadella of Canon City, according to hotel employees, left immediately after what must have been the tragic climax of a marital quarrel. Razor blades found in the room, ironically supplied as a convenience by the hotel to its guests, apparently were used by Mrs. Cinnadella, described as dark, attractive, well-dressed and slender, about thirty, to slash the throat of her husband, whose body was found by Theodore Ferris, hotel employee who had picked up shirts from Cinnadella just half an hour earlier and was returning them as instructed, only to come onto the grisly scene. The hotel suite, police said, showed signs of struggle, suggesting that a violent argument had .

So he’s dead, Juliana thought as she folded up the newspaper. And not only that, they don’t have my name right; they don’t know who I am or anything about me.

Much less anxious now, she drove on until she found a suitable motel; there she made arrangements for a room and carried her possessions in from the car. From now on I don’t have to hurry, she said to herself. I can even wait until evening to go to the Abendsens’; that way I’ll be able to wear my new dress. It wouldn’t do to show up during the day with it on—you just don’t wear a formal dress like that before dinner.

And I can finish reading the book.

She made herself comfortable in the motel room, turning on the radio, getting coffee from the motel lunch counter; she propped herself up on the neatly made bed with the new unread clean copy of The Grasshopper which she had bought at the hotel bookshop in Denver.

At six-fifteen in the evening she finished the book. I wonder if Joe got to the end of it? she wondered. There’s so much more in it than he understood. What is it Abendsen wanted to say? Nothing about his make-believe world. Am I the only one who knows? I’ll bet I am; nobody else really understands Grasshopper but me—they just imagine they do.

Still a little shaky, she put it away in her suitcase and then put on her coat and left the motel room to search for a place to eat dinner. The air smelled good and the signs and lights of Cheyenne seemed particularly exciting. In front of a bar two pretty, black-eyed Indian prostitutes quarreling—she slowed to watch. Many cars, shiny ones, coasted up and down the streets; the entire spectacle had an aura of brightness and expectancy, of looking ahead to some happy and important event, rather than back . . . back, she thought, to the stale and the dreary, the used-up and thrown-away.

At an expensive French restaurant—where a man in a white coat parked customers’ cars, and each table had a candle burning in a huge wine goblet, and the butter was served not in squares but whipped into round pale marbles—she ate a dinner which she enjoyed, and then, with plenty of time to spare, strolled back toward her motel. The Reichsbank notes were almost gone, but she did not care; it had no importance. He told us about our own world, she thought as she unlocked the door to her motel room. This, what’s around us now. In the room, she again switched on the radio. He wants us to see it for what it is. And I do, and more so each moment.

Taking the blue Italian dress from its carton, she laid it out scrupulously on the bed. It had undergone no damage; all it needed, at most, was a thorough brushing to remove the lint. But when she opened the other parcels she discovered that she had not brought any of the new half-bras from Danver.

“God damn it,” she said, sinking down in a chair. She lit a cigarette and sat smoking for a time.

Maybe she could wear it with a regular bra. She slipped off her blouse and skirt and tried the dress on. But the straps of the bra showed and so did the upper part of each cup, so that would not do. Or maybe, she thought, I can go with no bra at all . . . it had been years since she had tried that . . . it recalled to her the old days in high school when she had had a very small bust; she had even worried about it, then. But now further maturity and her judo had made her a size thirty-eight. However, she tried it without the bra, standing on a chair in the bathroom to view herself in the medicine cabinet mirror.

The dress displayed itself stunningly, but good lord, it was too risky. All she had to do was bend over to put out a cigarette or pick up a drink—and disaster.

A pin! She could wear the dress with no bra and collect the front. Dumping the contents of her jewelry box onto the bed, she spread out the pins, relics which she had owned for years, given her by Frank or by other men before their marriage, and the new one which Joe had gotten her in Denver. Yes, a small horse-shaped silver pin from Mexico would do; she found the exact spot. So she could wear the dress after all.

I’m glad to get anything now, she thought to herself. So much had gone wrong; so little remained anyhow of the wonderful plans.

She did an extensive brushing job on her hair so that it crackled and shone, and that left only the need of a choice of shoes and earrings. And then she put on her new coat, got her new handmade leather purse, and set out.

Instead of driving the old Studebaker, she had the motel owner phone for a taxi. While she waited in the motel office she suddenly had the notion to call Frank. Why it had come to her she could not fathom, but there the idea was. Why not? she asked herself. She could reverse the charges; he would be overwhelmed to hear from her and glad to pay.

Standing behind the desk in the office, she held the phone receiver to her ear, listening delightedly to the long-distance operators talk back and forth trying to make the connection for her. She could hear the San Francisco operator, far off, getting San Francisco information for the number, then many pops and crackles in her ear, and at last the ringing noise itself. As she waited she watched for the taxi; it should be along any time, she thought. But it won’t mind waiting; they expect it.

“Your party does not answer,” the Cheyenne operator told her at last. “We will put the call through again later and—“

“No,” Juliana said, shaking her head. It had been just a whim anyhow. “I won’t be here. Thank you.” She hung up—the motel owner had been standing nearby to see that nothing would be mistakenly charged to him—and walked quickly out of the office, onto the cool, dark sidewalk, to * stand and wait there.

From the traffic a gleaming new cab coasted up to the curb and halted; the door opened and the driver hopped out to hurry around.

A moment later, Juliana was on her way, riding in luxury in the rear of the cab, across Cheyenne to the Abendsens’.

The Abendsen house was lit up and she could hear music and voices. It was a single-story stucco house with many shrubs and a good deal of garden made up mostly of climbing roses. As she started up the flagstone path she thought, Can I actually be there? Is this the High Castle? What about the rumors and stories? The house was ordinary, well maintained and the grounds tended. There was even a child’s tricycle parked in the long cement driveway.

Could it be the wrong Abendsen? She had gotten the address from the Cheyenne phone book, but it matched the number she had called the night before from Greeley.

She stepped up onto the porch with its wrought-iron railings and pressed the buzzer. Through the half-open door she could make out the living room, a number of persons standing about, Venetian blinds on the windows, a piano, fireplace, bookcases. . . nicely furnished, she thought. A party going on? But they were not formally dressed.

A boy, tousled, about thirteen, wearing a T-shirt and jeans, flung the door wide. “Yes?”

She said, “Is—Mr. Abendsen home? Is he busy?”

Speaking to someone behind him in the house, the boy called, “Mom, she wants to see Dad.”

Beside the boy appeared a woman with reddish-brown hair, possibly thirty-five, with strong, unwinking gray eyes and a smile so thoroughly competent and remorseless that Juliana knew she was facing Caroline Abendsen.

“I called last night,” Juliana said.

“Oh yes of course.” Her smile increased. She had perfect white regular teeth; Irish, Juliana decided. Only Irish blood could give that jawline such femininity. “Let me take your purse and coat. This is a very good time for you; these are a few friends. What a lovely dress . . . it’s House of Cherubini, isn’t it?” She led Juliana across the living room, to a bedroom where she laid Juliana’s things with the others on the bed. “My husband is around somewhere. Look for-a tall man with glasses, drinking an old-fashioned.” The intelligent light in her eyes poured out to Juliana; her lips quivered—there is so much understood between us, Juliana realized. Isn’t that amazing?

“I drove a long way,” Juliana said.

“Yes, you did. Now I see him.” Caroline Abendsen guided her back into the living room, toward a group of men. “Dear,” she called, “come over here. This is one of your readers who is very anxious to say a few words to you.”

One man of the group moved, detached and approached carrying his drink. Juliana saw an immensely tall man with black curly hair; his skin, too, was dark, and his eyes seemed purple or brown, very softly colored behind his glasses. He wore a hand-tailored, expensive, natural fiber suit, perhaps English wool; the suit augmented his wide robust shoulders with no lines of its own. In all her life she had never seen a suit quite like it; she found herself staring in fascination.

Caroline said, “Mrs. Frink drove all the way up from Canon City, Colorado, just to talk to you about Grasshopper.”

“I thought you lived in a fortress,” Juliana said. Bending to regard her, Hawthorne Abendsen smiled a meditative smile. “Yes, we did. But we had to get up to it in an elevator and I developed a phobia. I was pretty drunk when I got the phobia but as I recall it, and they tell it, I refused to stand up in it because I said that the elevator cable was being hauled up by Jesus Christ, and we were going all the way. And I was determined not to stand.”

She did not understand.

Caroline explained, “Hawth has said as long as I’ve knOwn him that when he finally sees Christ he is going to sit down; he’s not going to stand.”

The hymn, Juliana remembered. “So you gave up the High Castle and moved back into town,” she said.

“I’d like to pour you a drink,” Hawthorne said.

“All right,” she said. “But not an old-fashioned.” She had already got a glimpse of the sideboard with several bottles of whiskey on it, hors d’oeuvres, glasses, ice, mixer, cherries and orange slices. She walked toward it, Abendsen accompanying her. “Just I. W. Harper over ice,” she said. “I always enjoy that. Do you know the oracle?”

“No,” Hawthorne said, as he fixed her drink for her.

Astounded, she said, “The Book of Changes?”

“I don’t, no,” he repeated. He handed her her drink.

Caroline Abendsen said, “Don’t tease her.”

“I read your book,” Juliana said. “In fact I finished it this evening. How did you know all that, about the other world you wrote about?”

Hawthorne said nothing; he rubbed his knuckle against his upper lip, staring past her and frowning.

“Did you use the oracle?” Juliana said.      

Hawthorne glanced at her.

“I don’t want you to kid or joke,” Juliana said. “Tell me without making something witty out of it.”

Chewing his lip, Hawthorne gazed down at the floor; he wrapped his arms about himself, rocked back and forth on his heels. The others in the room nearby had become silent, and Juliana noticed that their manner had changed. They were not happy, now, because of what she had said. But she did not try to take it back or disguise it; she did not pretend. It was too important. And she had come too far and done too much to accept anything less than the truth from him. -

“That’s—a hard question to answer,” Abendsen said finally.

“No it isn’t,” Juliana said.

Now everyone in the room had become silent; they all watched Juliana standing with Caroline and Hawthorne Abendsen. -

“I’m sorry,” Abendsen said, “I can’t answer right away. You’ll have to accept that.”

“Then why did you write the book?” Juliana said.

Indicating with his drink glass, Abendsen said, “What’s that pin on your dress do? Ward off dangerous anima-spirits of the immutable world? Or does it just hold everything together?”

“Why do you change the subject?” Juliana said. “Evading what I asked you, and making a pointless remark like that? It’s childish.”

Hawthorne Abendsen said, “Everyone has—technical secrets. You have yours; I have mine. You should read my book and accept it on face value, just as I accept what I see—“ Again he pointed at her with his glass. “Without inquiring if it’s genuine underneath, there, or done with wires and staves and foam-rubber padding. Isn’t that part of trusting in the nature of people and what you see in general?” He seemed, she thought, irritable and flustered now, no longer polite, no longer a host. And Caroline, she noticed out of the corner of her eye, had an expression of tense exasperation; her lips were pressed together and she had stopped smiling entirely.

“In your book,” Juliana said, “you showed that there’s a way out. Isn’t that what you meant?”

‘Out,’ “he echoed ironically.

Juliana said, “You’ve done a lot for me; now I can see there’s nothing to be afraid of, nothing to want or hate or avoid, here, or run from. Or pursue.”

He faced her, jiggling his glass, studying her. “There’s a great deal in this world worth the candle, in my opinion.”

“I understand what’s going on in your mind,” Juliana said. To her it was the old and familiar expression on a man’s face, but it did not upset her to see it here. She no longer felt as she once had. “The Gestapo file said you’re attracted to women like me.”

Abendsen, with only the slightest change of expression, said, “There hasn’t been a Gestapo since 1947.”

“The SD, then, or whatever it is.”

“Would you explain?” Caroline said in a brisk voice.

“I want to,” Juliana said. “I drove up to Denver with one of them. They’re going to show up here eventually. You should go some place they can’t find you, instead of holding open house here like this, letting anyone walk in, the way I did. The next one who rides up here—there won’t be anyone like me to put a stop to him.”

“You say ‘the next one,’ “Abendsen said, after a pause. “What became of the one you rode up to Denver with? Why won’t he show up here?”

She said, “I cut his throat.”

“That’s quite something.” Hawthorne said. “To have a girl tell you that, a girl you never saw before in your life.”

“Don’t you believe me?”

He nodded. “Sure.” He smiled at her in a shy, gentle, forlorn way. Apparently it did not even occur to him not to believe her. “Thanks,” he said.

“Please hide from them,” she said.

“Well,” he said, “we did try that, as you know. As you read on the cover of the book . . . about all the weapons and charged wire. And we had it written so it would seem we’re still taking great precautions.” His voice had a weary, dry tone.

“You could at least carry a weapon,” his wife said. “I know someday someone you invite in and converse with will shoot you down, some Nazi expert paying you back; and you’ll be philosophizing just this way. I forsee it.”

“They can get you,” Hawthorne said, “if they want to. Charged wire and High Castle or not.”

You’re so fatalistic, Juliana thought. Resigned to your own destruction. Do you know that, too, the way you knew the world in your book?

Juliana said, “The oracle wrote your book. Didn’t it?”

Hawthorne said, “Do you want the truth?”

“I want it and I’m entitled to it,” she answered, “for what I’ve done. Isn’t that so? You know it’s so.”

“The oracle,” Abendsen said, “was sound asleep all through the writing of the book. Sound asleep in the corner of the office.” His eyes showed no merriment; instead, his face seemed longer, more somber than ever.

“Tell her,” Caroline said. “She’s right; she’s entitled to know, for what she did on your behalf.” To Juliana she said, “I’ll tell you, then, Mrs. Frink. One by one Hawth made the choices. Thousands of them. By means of the lines. Historic period. Subject. Characters. Plot. It took years. Hawth even  asked the oracle what sort of success it would be. It told him that it would be a very great success, the first real one of his career. So you were right. You must use the oracle quite a lot yourself, to have known.” -

Juliana said, “I wonder why the oracle would write a novel. Did you ever think of asking it that? And why one about the Germans and the Japanese losing the war? Why that particular story and no other one? What is there it can’t tell us directly, like it always has before? This must be different, don’t you think?”

Neither Hawthorne nor Caroline said anything.

“It and I,” Hawthorne said at last, “long ago arrived at an agreement regarding royalties. If I ask it why it wrote

Grasshopper, I’ll wind up turning my share over to it. The question implies I did nothing’ but the typing, and that’s  neither true nor decent.”

“I’ll ask it,” Caroline said. “If you won’t.”

“It’s not your question to ask,” Hawthorne said. “Let her ask.” To Juliana he said, “You have an—unnatural mind. Are you aware of that?”

Juliana said, “Where’s your copy? Mine’s in my car, back at the motel. I’ll get it, if you won’t let me use yours.”

Turning, Hawthorne started off. She and Caroline followed, through the room of people, toward a closed door. At the door he left them. When he re-emerged, they all saw the black-backed twin volumes.

“I don’t use the yarrow stalks,” he said to Juliana. “I can’t get the hang of them; I keep dropping them.”

Juliana seated herself at a coffee table in the corner. “I have to have paper to write on and a pencil.”

One of the guests brought her paper and pencil. The people in the room moved in to form a ring around her and the Abendsens, listening and watching.

“You may say the question aloud,” Hawthorne said. “We have no secrets here.” -

Juliana said, “Oracle, why did you write The Grasshopper Lies Heavy? What are we supposed to learn?”

“You have a disconcertingly superstitious way of phrasing your question,” Hawthorne said. But he had squatted down to witness the coin throwing. “Go ahead,” he said; he handed her three Chinese brass coins with holes in the center. “I generally use these.”

She began throwing the coins; she felt calm and very much herself. Hawthorne wrote down her lines for her. When she had thrown the coins six times, he gazed down and said:

“Sun at the top. Tui at the bottom. Empty in the center.”

“Do you know what hexagram that is?” she said. “Without using the chart?”

“Yes,” Hawthorne said.

“It’s Chung Fu,” Juliana said. “Inner Truth. I know without using the chart, too. And I know what it means.”

Raising his head, Hawthorne scrutinized her. He had now an almost savage expression. “It means, does it, that my book is true?”

“Yes,” she said.

With anger he said, “Germany and Japan lost the war?”

“Yes.”

Hawthorne, then, closed the two volumes and rose to his feet; he said nothing.

“Even you don’t face it,” Juliana said.

For a time he considered. His gaze had become empty, Juliana saw. Turned inward, she realized. Preoccupied, by himself . . . and then his eyes became clear again; he grunted, started.

“I’m not sure of anything,” he said. -

“Believe,” Juliana said.

He shook his head no.

“Can’t you?” she said. “Are you sure?”

Hawthorne Abendsen said, “Do you want me to autograph a copy of The Grasshopper for you?” -

She, too, rose to her feet. “I think I’ll go,” she said. “Thank you very much. I’m sorry if I disrupted your evening. It was kind of you to let me in.” Going past him and CarolIne, she made her way through the ring of people, from the living room and into the bedroom where her coat and purse were.

As she was putting her coat on, Hawthorne appeared behind her. “Do you know what you are?” He turned to Caroline, who stood beside him. “This girl is a dathnon. A little chthonic spirit that—“ He lifted his hand and rubbed his eyebrow, partially dislodginghis glasses in doing so. “That roams tirelessly over the face of the earth.” He restored his glasses in place. “She’s doing what’s instinctive to her, simply. expressing her being. She didn’t mean to show up here and do harm; it simply happened to her, just as the weather happens to us. I’m glad she came. I’m not sorry to find this out, this revelation she’s had through the book. She didn’t know what she was going to do here or find out. I think we’re all of us lucky. So let’s not be angry about it; okay?”

Caroline said, “She’s terribly, terribly disruptive.”

“So is reality,” Hawthorne said. He held out his hand to Juliana. “Thank you for what you did in Denver,” he said.

She shook hands with him. “Good night,” she said. “Do as your wife says. Carry a hand weapon, at least.”

“No,” he said. “I decided that a long time ago. I’m not going to let it bother me. I can lean on the oracle now and then, if I do get edgy, late at night in particular. It’s not bad in such a situation.” He smiled a little. “Actually, the only thing that bothers me any more is knowing that all these bums standing around here listening and taking in everything are drinking up all the liquor in the house, while we’re talking.” Turning, he strode away, back to the sideboard to find fresh ice for his drink.

“Where are you going now that you’ve finished here?” Caroline said.

“I don’t know.” The problem did not bother her. I must be a little like him, she thought; I won’t let certain things worry me no matter how important they are. “Maybe I’ll go back to my husband, Frank. I tried to phone him tonight; I might try again. I’ll see how I feel later on.”

“Despite what you did for us, or what you say you did—“

“You wish I had never come into this house,” Juliana said.

“If you saved Hawthorne’s life it’s dreadful of me, but I’m so upset; I can’t take it all in, what you’ve said and Hawthorne has said.”

“How strange,” Juliana said. “I never would have thought the truth would make you angry.” Truth, she thought. As terrible as death. But harder to find. I’m lucky. “I thought you’d be as pleased and excited as I am. It’s a misunderstanding, isn’t it?” She smiled, and after a pause Mrs. Abendsen managed to smile back. “Well, good night anyhow.”

A moment later, Juliana was retracing her steps back down the flagstone path, into the patches of light from the living room and then into the shadows beyond the lawn of the house, onto the black sidewalk.

She walked on without looking again at the Abendsen house and, as she walked, searching up and down the streets for a cab or a car, moving and bright and living, to take her back to her motel.