CRUEL IMMORTALITY

Edmund

Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen

It is two months now since the incredible happened. If it has indeed happened. It will
take longer for me to be sure of that; five years perhaps. But I have decided to believe it.
Indeed I do believe it. But I know there will be doubts, know therefore that I must place
no great hopes or fears in this thing, if only that is possible. It won't be, of course.

I feel urged, compelled to place it all on record. I have told two people, one of whom
thinks, fears, that it might be true. If it is, then an impossible future stretches ahead of me,
a future of fifty-five years, barring accidents. If it is not going to turn out true then I might
have thought it is logically impossible. But after long consideration I am fairly convinced
that it is only physically impossible, and what begins as physically impossible can later,
or in extraordinary circumstances, become possible. I almost relish seeing how reality is
going to refute one fancied logical impossibility after another. Can a man go back into his
mother's womb when he is old, I seem to remember as a rhetorical question from the
gospel. I believe that, for better or worse, I am all set for something pretty close to that.
All set indeed, because it can't be changed, even if I'm sorry or ought to be sorry for letting
myself into it, like a woman who gets herself sterilized and then enjoys responsibility-free
sex with her uxorious husband for the rest of her life, even though she has piously
repented.

How on earth shall I tell this story? Because I want to tell everything, everything relevant
and of personal interest. This, in fact, will be only the beginning. Afterwards I intend to
record, perhaps in diary form or at least occasional entries, how the future develops, that
future which will be like the past, as we used to read of Hume denying or doubting; yes,
like the past, but so terribly, oh let it not be nightmarishly, unlike it.
I will introduce myself. My name is Edmund Joubert. Well, you can be sure it isn't; it's a
different name. I was born in England in 1924. Both my parents are dead and I live with
my wife Leticia in another country, which I will probably name in due course. She is the
same age as I am, fifty-five, and the importance of this fact will soon become clear. She
doesn't look it, of course, and of how old I look I have and will probably continue to have
only the vaguest idea. That indeed will constitute the enormous uncertainty of my
immediate future. How strange, that I could die tomorrow, while what has happened to
me would remain true while entirely without its effect.

In fact I am a writer by profession, so I have a chance of capitalizing on this monstrosity.

However it is new for me to be writing for the general public, if that is what I am doing.
Is there a general public really? No I normally write philosophical texts, having taught in
various universities. My present position is due to end quite soon, and I hardly expect to
get another. But I cannot pretend that I might not have done what I have done whatever
the situation had been.

I am employed at a university, the sole university, a Catholic one, in a small African

country. If I were, or later become, involved in the novel-writing business I could really
send that place up, in a satire which might fittingly be called Black Mischief II. But before
anyone accuses me of racism or whatever let me add that I really am a victim, or a
beneficiary, of black mischief, though I mean more the cultural complex than the colour.
Anyhow it's more Lucas Linton's fault than anyone else's, apart from my own, and he's
English.

Lucas lives permanently on campus with his Polish wife, a weird creature if ever there
was one. Many years in Nigeria alone before the marriage, teaching some form of
chemistry (alchemy more likely) had turned her into a pot-bellied, untidy female, never
without a cigarette. There were no longer children in the house. Amusement, and
amusing experiments, were all she had to live for, I wouldn't mind betting.

Lucas himself had come to the place as a physics lecturer. After a tiff with his department
(he knew too much physics) he had somehow managed to turn himself into the country's
official historian, settling down in their comfortable stone house to write book after book
on such matters as the history of the capital city, of the colonial wars or of odd particular
incidents such as the scandalous murder of a local woman by a missionary in the last
century or the resurgence of systematic cannibalism up among the mountain people. That
manuscript, he told me, he was keeping until he finally felt it was time to leave the place.

Yes, Lucas had a librarian's mind, his house so full of books, papers, old colonial records
and so on that the book-dust was slowly killing him, whatever it was doing to Agnieszka.
He had a fund of stories, information rather, about the locals and their ways. In fact he
combined a kind of liberal leftish pretence of according equal weight to African ways of
seeing things with what was in reality a total scepticism or scientific contempt, as one
might call it, for these ways. No doubt if one had pointed out that pretence was involved
he would have been offended. So I didn't. One could after all talk about anything else
with the man, provided, that is, that one didn't mind the fact that he never listened to one.
Anything one mentioned would equally set him off upon some long monologue which,
as amounting always to a giving of information, could in general be acceptable. I had
after all no wish or need to impress him. If it happened

that he had no information to give then one's conversational gambit would be met with a
total blankness, prefaced perhaps with a "What?" and immediately concluded, upon
repetition, with a dismissive "Oh I see". A silence would then follow, I myself being
unfailingly nonplussed, which would be broken either by his saying "Would you like a
drink?" or by my getting up to go. At these moments Agnieszka would sometimes wink
at me in her mannish way, though we never got round to discussing her husband's
peculiarities, her own being far too pronounced for that. My own wife, on the other hand,
tended to be rather depressed by this lack of social grace on the part of just about the only
cultured Westerner on campus and accompanied me less and less often to the house.

On the evening in question, in any case, and there was indeed such an evening, she was
away on her annual trip to Europe. She went away each winter; otherwise it would have
been too much for her to live with me there at all, the environment being hostile and
barbarous in the main, besides which it became extremely cold in winter at the high
altitude, the houses having been designed by a European architect for a more tropical
climate. So I went over to the Lintons as much for human comfort as anything else.

After the meal, a heavy Polish affair guaranteed to keep one awake all night, we settled
down to talk and I happened to refer to my experiences trying to teach the local students
the significance of Descartes as the father of modern philosophy, a title I was inclined to
deny him in view of my Aristotelian bias. I tended to see the Enlightenment period as an
extension of Scholastic decadence rather than as the dawn of a new epoch.

"Oh well, I don't know about that," said Lucas. He never did. "But wasn't Descartes the
one who brought up that business about the pineal gland?"

This unwonted request for information amazed me. "He was," I replied, "but why do you
ask?"

"I'll tell you later. You just tell me more about the gland." He stared at me intently.

"Well, there's not much to tell, or not much that I know. What was it now? Oh yes,
Descartes proposed the pineal gland as the place where the soul interacts with the body.
I'm sure you know he defended an extreme dualism, soul as mind, body as machine,
quite different from the Aristotelian theory of..."

"Yes, yes. But why the pineal gland?"

"Ah! Yes, well that's interesting. I think it was at least partly because nobody quite knew
what the pineal gland was otherwise for."

"Didn't he have any positive reason for giving it such importance?"

"Well, it was only a suggestion, I think, but he might have had."

"I'm sure he did."

"You intrigue me," I said, a touch of the professional's superior irony creeping into my
voice. "And what gives you such a conviction?" I felt pretty sure he would never have
read Descartes with any kind of serious attention.

"I'll tell you later. First tell me anything else you know about the business."

I drew in my breath, offering him a grimace of not unfriendly exasperation, while I

fielded one of Agnieszka's winks. "Do you know what's behind this?" I felt impelled to
ask her.

"I do," she replied. "But tell us what you know first." Her gaze had assumed an alertness
with which I was totally unfamiliar.

"This is getting exciting. I think I'd like some more sherry."

"All right," said Lucas, as if I were demanding just payment in advance for information
given. He crossed to the drinks cabinet with his head down, poured my drink and sat
down and stared at me, his hands folded on his stomach. I sipped the sherry in silence.

"There is one other thing I know a bit about," I began again. "But it has nothing to do with
Descartes."

"That doesn't matter, as long as it's about the gland."

"Well, it came up while I was working on my doctorate in the field of teleological ethics,
if you know what they are."

"Yes, yes. Do go on."

Always touchy, I was irritated by his impatience, his unconcealed will merely to use me,
not even pretending any respect or deference.

"Well I wonder why I should. Why don't you look it all up somewhere? It would be far
less tiring for me."

Agnieszka emitted an explosive noise while stubbing out her cigarette. "Oh come on,
Edmund. Everyone knows you're the cleverest fellow on campus, including Lucas. Why
are you tormenting us?"

"Well why do you want to know it all so much?" I asked again. "I just can't understand it."

"I told you," said Lucas, still irritated. "We'll tell you later. It's better that way, after I've
got the confirmation from you."

"Confirmation of what? I don't think I can give you much more confirmation of anything,
as far as this subject is concerned."

"Just tell us what you were going to say about teleology and so on," said Agnieszka.
"Please Edmund, dear."

"Well, that's a new one; calling me dear. I shall insist on knowing what you two are
getting up to, after this."

"You will, you will," said Lucas.

"Well, it's only this. We were talking about teleological as opposed to mechanistic
explanation in, for example, biology and my supervisor mentioned a biologist who had
used a teleological method of enquiry in order to solve the question of what the pineal
gland might be for."

"Why just the pineal gland?" asked Lucas.

"Well, as I understand the matter it seems to be the case that people knew about just this
gland without having any idea what it might be for. That, by the way, might be why
Descartes fixed on it for the special function he had in mind, of coordinating mind and
body."

"Don't you think he might have had, certainly ought to have had after all, a more specific
reason?"

"Not unless he somehow knew what this biologist later discovered."

"What was that, then?"

"Well I don't actually know how far it was a discovery, or just a hypothesis. It seems he
reasoned, teleologically, that everything must have some function. In addition he
observed that the gland, or at least the human form of it, I don't know which, was not
found in non-human animals. He correlated this with the undoubted fact that human
children mature much more slowly than do the young of other animals. And this again," I
went on, getting really into my stride at long last, "is teleological. I mean he reasoned that
children need a longer time than animals before they mature physically because they
have to be educated, intellectually, morally, learn any amount of things for which they
themselves, unlike animals, have to take responsibility. Otherwise they are not ready to
get children and found a family, as they would do if they had matured physically. So
they need the delay naturally, to reach their human fulfilment. That's teleology."

"Sounds pretty far-fetched to me," said Lucas.

"I thought it was what you were so interested in."

"I am. But what I'm interested in is the conclusion, which I have other, perhaps better
reasons for believing to be right."

"You have better reasons? For believing what?"

"Why, that the pineal gland inhibits biological growth. Isn't that what you were coming
to?"

"Well, yes it was actually. The only thing is I don't recall how the correlation was justified,
I mean how the one phenomenon, the gland, was seen as cause of the other, the
retardation of maturation or whatever we are to call it."

"Never mind. But you can certainly see, can't you, that a gland which stops bodily growth
might be an especially likely candidate for housing a non-bodily soul."

"Sure. Have you been reading about Descartes, then?"

"Well, one is educated, you know. But this is not about Descartes."

"What the hell is it about? I think it's time for you both to tell me, isn't it? I mean I sense
that the interest is more than academic, what with Agnieszka calling me dear and everyt-
hing."

"You're unusually susceptible, aren't you, Edmund," said that lady, "quite boyish really.
How old did you say you were?"

"I didn't, but I'm fifty-five."

"And how old is your wife, when she's at home?"

"The same age she is when she's not at home, whatever you may mean by that."

"Well, everyone can see that she leaves you alone too much, and I know what any other
man in this place would have done about it by this time. Listen, how would you like to..."

"Agnieszka," interjected Lucas. "Not now."

"What do you mean not now?" I said. "Not ever. I think you're very unkind about Leticia.
I am very grateful that she endures being here at all. There's nothing in it for her, you
know. Besides which, she has responsibilities at home."

"Yes," Agnieszka persisted. "I'm sorry if I was unkind. But you would like a bit of a break,
wouldn't you?" She blew a smoke-ring into my face.

"Look," said Lucas, "this is leading nowhere. The fact is, Edmund, as you've probably
guessed, I'm really on to something in connection with this pineal gland business, and
even if you hadn't mentioned Descartes tonight I would have taken it up with you. What
you've told me about the biologist confirms my confidence in my own source, a source, I
may say, of information of a kind one holds back as long as one can from whole-
heartedly accepting."

"What is it?"

Lucas put his hand to his cheek. His wife seemed to be trying to catch his eye, with, I felt,
a more serious intent than winking this time. But he avoided her. "I think," he said, "it
would be best for you to meet the source in person. Shall we say the day after tomorrow,
if he is free?"

"He?"

"Yes, he. He's a doctor. I'll tell you that much."

"But you were going to tell me everything tonight."

"I was. But this seems the better way. You see, as Agnieszka was hinting, we do have a
project in mind in which we want to ask you to cooperate."

"I'm not sure I like the sound of that. What's in it for me?"

"Enormous interest, and an almost guaranteed new lease of life. Yes, I think that's the
appropriate phrase." Agnieszka let out a mad giggle, bending down as it turned into a
smoker's wheeze. Lucas responded by standing up and saying he had to get up early
tomorrow. "I'm sorry to be so abrupt, but if you come on Wednesday everything will
come clear to you and you will be able to decide."

"Decide what?"

"About what we are going to offer you."

"Why do you want to offer me something?"

"It's not without benevolence. I mean you're ideally suited to benefit. But I must admit it's
mainly curiosity with me, which I hope you are going to share, to the full."

I wondered how his wife felt. She might have other motives. "What about Leticia?" I
asked. "Could this affect her?"

"Oh very much so. But only favourably, you know. She would be happy for your sake,
and hence for her own."

Eventually I left, pondering over possible connections between a doctor, happiness and
pineal glands.

**********************************

Two nights later I was on the Lintons' doorstep at the appointed time. The stars shone
brightly in the African winter sky and the air held already the scent of the heavy morning
frost to come. We were at two thousand metres height. It had not rained for three months.
Inside they had a deep red coal fire burning in the Jetmaster grate of the type which the
University had recently installed in all our houses. The Lintons had already eaten and
rose with their guest to greet me. I was invited for coffee, and so had already eaten the tea
and bread which I served myself in the evenings when I was alone at home. With the
meal I had been reading a little book on human physiology which I had found in the
campus library, but there was nothing of interest in it about the pineal gland. Otherwise I
had more or less successfully kept myself from speculating on what role the Lintons
might be envisaging for me in their crazy and self-centred fantasies. I had suddenly
found myself missing my wife very much.

The visitor, a doctor from the main hospital in the capital and himself a local man, was or
seemed to be a perfect Westerner, speaking an extremely well cultivated English. The
only thing that jarred was his being dressed in a grey suit and tie. No one on campus, at
least among the expatriates, ever wore anything but an open-necked shirt and pullover,
even if some of us still shaved regularly.

I think," said Lucas, after I had sat down and Agnieszka had gone off to make the coffee,
"that I had best ask Dr. Dzimba to tell you what lies behind what must seem to you our
strange behaviour the other night."

"I am all ears."

"Good! Dr. Dzimba."

"Thank you. Professor Joubert, Lucas has told me all about your conversation on Monday.
It seems that he had not been trusting me before he heard you telling him the same
things."
"About what?"

"About the pineal gland inhibiting physical development. I'm sorry. I thought I had given
him an impression of truthfulness and intelligence, black as I may be."

"Oh come on,Patrick," protested Lucas. "Surely we've progressed beyond that."

"We have not, and we never will. But no matter. Professor Joubert, I am not going to ask
you what you are expecting me to say. Instead I am simply, African style maybe, going to
tell you a story, about some events I witnessed and what they led me to do."

"Wait a minute," I said. "I admit I'm interested, very interested. But I want to know why
you, you in particular, are so interested to let me in on what seems some kind of secret. I
mean have you told anyone else, and if not, why not?"

Dzimba looked at Lucas, who did not react. He answered, after a pause: "I haven't told
anyone else, no, and I can't explain in advance why I want to tell just you, on the basis of
what my friends here have told me."

"What have you told him?" I asked Lucas, getting angry again.

"Professor Joubert," broke in Dzimba again, "Please hear me out first. You will not be
compromised in any way, even though I want just to ask you to assure me you won't
repeat it, if for example you choose to regard it as a lot of rubbish."

"You have my word," I said, imprudently as some might think. I was very curious.

"Good. Now I want to tell you that, outwardly at least, I wasn't always the type of person
you see before you here tonight. The village where I grew up is not far from here, up in
the mountains. Neither of my parents could read or write, and before the mission fathers
discovered my talents I spent most of my time looking after sheep and trying not to freeze
to death in winter." As he said this he flashed his large teeth in a sudden African laugh
and thrust out his belly as he sank further back into his armchair. Agnieszka came in with
the coffee, the eternal cigarette drooping from her mouth.

"There was no electricity in the village, and certainly no doctors. A priest, the one who
discovered me, came to our village chapel once a fortnight, on a donkey. There are no
roads up there. What we had are what are now called traditional healers, witch-doctors
you know."

"Sangoma," I said.

"Ah. You know the word. Now there was a very curious case in our village, medical case
I mean, as I afterwards learned to see it as. It concerned a four year old child, whose
mother had taken him to our resident witch-doctor. This man, by the way, was strange
even among that strange bunch. We feared to cross him. He lived entirely alone, never
spoke, and only went out to collect herbs, stones and things. But if one looked into his hut
one could see that he had quite a collection of tools and mechanical-looking things,
mostly rusty, which must have come to him a long time before. His old black man's hair
was all white and no one knew where he had come from."

"What was wrong with the child?"

"I was coming to that. It was a boy, and it seems he had already begun to develop the
male organs of a much older boy, as well as the beginnings of a beard and moustache. So
much so that one of his sisters actually observed him masturbating and, according to her,
real seed came out of him."

"At four years? Come on."

"Well, that's what they said and that's why they took him to the old man."

"O.K. And what happened then?"

"Well, that was when it all started, for me at least. I was fourteen at the time, and I knew
the family. We all knew each other. What happened was that the sangoma said that they
had to leave the boy with him overnight. When they fetched him in the morning he had a
kind of clumsy cotton wool and plaster affair on the back of his neck. I saw it myself. I
learned later that the old man told them just to have confidence and carry on, and that the
boy would gradually, he couldn't say when, reach the condition normal for his age. He
refused to say what he had done, although the wound on the boy's neck was obvious
enough. It was more of a hole though than a cut, in the end leaving just a hard little lump
there."

"So what happened next?" I asked, gripped as though my own destiny were at stake.

"Nothing happened, not for some time." Dzimba's eyes had become vacant. It was
obvious he was reliving some intense impressions. "The boy continued overdeveloped.
He couldn't have developed any more, anyway. The sangoma's prestige dropped
somewhat in our village. After about nine months, however, the parents gave out as
definite information that the boy's penis was reduced in size, the pubic hair becoming
thinner. The sangoma came to have a look at him, and although the parents showered
him with praise and presents it seemed to many as he came away from the hut that he
was very ill at ease, something no one had observed in him before. He was muttering and
grimacing, it was very strange.

"Anyhow, the next thing to happen, or to be observed rather, about three months later,
was the following. The father pronounced that the boy was not growing. What he
actually said, in fact, was that he was smaller."
"Smaller than what?"

"He didn't say. Our way of speaking, you know, is not always so very precise. But we
took what he said in the obvious and common-sense way. Yet it was only a few days after
that that we heard his mother scream inside their hut, in the morning. She rushed out on
to the village green, as you call it, and shouted over and over, "His teeth are going back."
We all went to have a look and even if the little teeth didn't tell us so much we could
observe that the lad was very unsteady on his legs for one approaching six years. The
parents, however, looked absolutely grief-stricken and, our people being what they are,
one began to fear that the child's life might be in danger. It was decided to go to the
sangoma. But when we arrived, in a body, at his hut it was found to be deserted, and in
fact he was never seen again in our village."

"So what had happened?"

"What indeed? It was what was going to happen for which we were all totally
unprepared. You see he went on getting smaller, in the father's words."

"Wait a minute," I interrupted. "Lucas, do you believe this?"

"Yes, I'm afraid I do. I have received a lot of corroboration, you see."

"It sounds like The Fantastic Journey. Did his clothes shrink as well?"

"Of course not," said Dzimba. "But I can stop, if you prefer."

"No, no, please. I want to hear the end of this. Though I don't think you can blame me for
being sceptical."

"The life in our villages, Professor Joubert, is perhaps far richer, sometimes nastier, than
you can imagine. For instance, we had in our village a man who lived with his three sons
and a handful of wives and the whole family were known cannibals and had been for
generations. No one denounced them, no one did anything, and the British never got to
hear of it. They used to raid neighbouring villages at night, like foxes hunting chickens,
and one would hear the tread of heavily laden donkeys coming home, of soft heavy
objects being dragged over the earth. Next morning there would be a fire, the smell of
cooking, and the following night a feast with drinking, carousing and mad laughter,
strictly within the family, which was otherwise unheard of with us. We were not invited
and we knew why. No one wanted to be. And if you believe me or not, what I am telling
you now is something nobody ever told that priest I mentioned, devout Frenchman that
he was."

"They could have mentioned it in confession."

Dzimba laughed rather nastily. "Professor, let me tell you something. You're a Catholic,
aren't you? It shows somehow... Never mind. The point is this. African conversion to the
white man's religion, that's what we call it, is in my experience scarcely ever total. Our
people have been converted into a race of actors, play- actors. Don't ask me to explain it. I
state the fact merely. That's how they manage, if they do, to stay themselves, in this white
man's world of ours."

"But the cardinals, the bishops?"

"Well, I don't know. Maybe they are like me. I have a white wife you know; and they
have a white Pope. But for most people, well they would no more dream of baring their
souls to a French priest than they would sit down and read Jane Austen. They probably
couldn't even grasp that that might be what he was expecting of them."

"Oh all right. Let's get back to the main story."

"As you wish. It was soon obvious to all that the boy was getting smaller and more
helpless, until his mother started carrying him around on her back again. But his eyes
were different from a baby's. He had after all lived nearly eight years of abnormal and
exposed life, had even experienced sexual pleasure at its earliest and freshest, something
now impossible to him. Most likely all that was in his memory. At first he spoke like an
older child, with a richer command of words than suited his appearance. But now his
mouth and speech organs no longer seemed adequate to the task and we would see him
frothing at the mouth with rage. It was during one of these fits, he used to make an awful
lot of noise, when he was looking almost like a newborn baby, that his father, in an
agony, took a blanket and held it over him until he suffocated. Otherwise I don't know
what would have happened in the end."

"The end? Couldn't the process have been reversed yet again?"

Dzimba's mouth dropped open as he stared at me a while before speaking. "You know,
Professor Joubert, I really have to admit that you whites have something that we lack. Do
you know that neither I myself nor anyone in our village has ever thought of that, over all
this time?"

"Well you surprise me," I said after a pause, "but it's natural enough perhaps, with all the
shock and so on. For me, after all, it's little more than a fantastic story, even if I feel
inclined to believe you. It's not part of my life. Anyhow, don't you know the story of
Newton's cat?"

"No, I can't say I do."

"Well, the great man had a cat, of which he was very fond. We don't eat them, like you
people do. Anyhow, the cat always cried to be let into his study, so Newton cut a hole for
her in the door, so that he wouldn't have to keep getting up and opening it when he was
busy thinking of falling apples and suchlike. Unfortunately the cat produced kittens one
day, three of them; and do you know what our great physicist did? He cut three little
holes next to the big one in the door."

I waited for the laugh. It came from Lucas, but Dzimba was still staring at me expectantly.

"Well, don't you see? The kittens could have gone through the big hole as well and he
needn't have spoilt the door so much. Those sixteenth century doors were pretty massive
affairs."

"Ah yes, of course." Still no smile. "But why are you telling me this story?"

Lucas, the conscientious host, interjected here. "I think Professor Joubert means to
indicated that even the most gifted people at times overlook the obvious."

"Oh, I see. But it doesn't really apply. I mean I was just humouring you. You didn't really
mean to suggest, did you, that the process could be reversed, backwards and forwards
for ever, so to say?"

"No, I suppose not." I admired the man's resilience. "But anyhow," I added, "this is
obviously not the end of the story." I had volunteered the Newton anecdote to relieve the
oppressive tensions I was feeling. What were they all after, and how could I possibly
decide to believe such a fantastic narrative?

Dzimba seemed to read my thoughts. "You know, I wish my wife had come with me. She
is English, like you, and she knows all about what I am telling you. She knows that it is
my real experience; perhaps, as you will see, my central experience."

"How so?" I was interested again. In fact I may as well admit that it was the first time I
had been genuinely interested by a black man's conversation since coming to the
University, the first time I felt free to speak man to man, so to say, without fear of the
other's touchiness or an irritation at his pretentiousness wiping out all ease or pleasure.
This in itself made of the evening a release, and I felt grateful to Lucas and Agnieszka for
that.

Dzimba continued. "As I told you, I was fourteen at the time. You can imagine what a stir
the thing created. But once it was over there was nothing much left to say. The family set
about getting other children instead, who started to grow up normally. What the little
boy's original disorder was caused by, we never knew, although I think I know now.
Anyhow, we just tended to forget about the whole thing. You see, even though I know it
must sound uniquely marvellous to you, it was not so to us. We didn't have this notion of
a rational order deviations from which stand out like sore thumbs. It was just that some
things happened more often than others. Everything was possible. We didn't only, for
example, have the cannibal family. Once a naked woman dropped down out of the sky..."

"Did you see it?"

"It doesn't matter."

"But did you?"

"Enough people saw it. I came up when they were all crowding round her. Anyhow, the
point is we just forgot about what had happened, even I did, although I was later
reminded of it again." A serious, even troubled look seemed to come into his face as he
said this.

"It was the priest," he said, "who took me away and put me in school. I learned very fast,
despite my age, and after some time I got a scholarship to go to medical school in
London. Boy, what an experience that was for me. As I say, I met my wife there, and
brought her back here; a mistake, I fear. Still, we can always move again.

"Now, listen to this. While I was in London I came across just that stuff on the pineal
gland that you were talking to Lucas about the other night. I instantly remembered the
little boy and the fact that he had been punctured in the neck. I felt certain that this gland
had been involved, whether the sangoma had had proper knowledge of its role or not.
Just consider. We had a case

of reversed growth. The theory is that the pineal gland inhibits or at least slows down
growth. Slowing down and reversing are in the same direction so to say. So what did the
sangoma intend, what had he hoped for? Something different, evidently, or he wouldn't
have acted upset. Maybe he thought the pineal gland wasn't functioning and, if so, then I
would say now that he was right. So he thought he could get it in order so the boy's
organs would stop developing so fast. But they were already fully developed, ahead of
the rest of him. So maybe, I started to speculate, maybe he knew of a form of stimulation,
or whatever it would be, which did more than repair the pineal gland, which, in other
words, would augment its inhibiting activity beyond the normal, as some drugs over-
stimulate our senses. And then, he may have reasoned, the sex organs might actually go
back. What he hoped, basing himself on the unique speed of development of just the sex
organs alone, was that the rest of the boy would not go back as well. So! I was convinced
of my theory. What I did not know was how it had been done."

"So what did you do next?"

"Why should I do anything? But you are right of course. I became obsessed with it.
Maybe my black man's soul sensed a hint of power, power over life and fate, lying
behind the strange story. I resolved to seek out the old man as soon as my first holiday
home came round. Unfortunately, I found, on first coming home after two years, that no
one knew where he had gone. I walked to all the neighbouring villages to enquire. At last
I found someone who recalled seeing him on the road to Mozambique, and it was then
that I remembered that the sangoma had been reputed by the old people in our village to
know Portuguese. But my informant also told me that he had had no bundle, no luggage
with him. This is not so surprising with our people, especially eccentric witch-doctors, but
it gave me an idea." He drained his coffee and suddenly stood up, asking to visit the
bathroom.

"It's getting rather late," I said, left alone with Lucas and Agnieszka. It was in fact
midnight.

"Never mind," said the latter. "Stay and hear the end of the story."

"Have you heard it before?"

"From all angles," said Lucas. "But it remains fascinating. He tells it in a new way each
time."

"But the facts remain the same?"

"Completely."

Dzimba came back into the room and we fell silent. He looked pointedly at me. "Well," I
said. "What was the idea you had?"

"Idea?"

"When you heard he had no luggage."

"Oh yes. You want me to go on at this late hour?"

"Come on, Patrick," said Lucas. "You know we brought you here to tell us, and Joubert
here, the whole thing. Just as you wanted yourself."

"Yes," he said, staring at me again. "Well then, I remembered seeing tools and other stuff
in his window once, and as no one had dared to take over his hut I began to think I might
find something there. After two years in London I had overcome a lot of the fear we
villagers had of such people and their possible ill-will, to say nothing of spells and
magical influences. So the next day after hearing of this I got up and went over to his hut,
leaving the door open for light. Apart from a heap of old straw on the floor and the usual
collection of buckets there was a dresser with jars of herbs, much of them visibly rotted.
Beside this was a strange heap of both instruments and tools. I mean there were garden
tool, from spades to trowels, all pretty rusty, and interspersed among these a large
number of pairs of scissors of most varied sizes, including garden shears, but also other
smaller instruments of all kinds, school geometry sets, manicure sets, things I remember
seeing at the dentist's, plus a number of small, sharp-looking knives and things, long
tweezers and so on. I remembered the wound on the child's neck.

"On a table, where some old water still stood in a glass and breadcrumbs lay around,
there were several books. I saw an old English Bible and several religious books. There
were also some photographs of African people in Edwardian-type clothes, all creased and
dog-eared, as well as a large, unmarked book, cloth-covered. This book was what I had
been looking for, without knowing what I would find." He paused, as if oppressed by
memories.

"I don't have the book any more. I destroyed it after the..., after something tragic
happened. It was a very old book, printed in Lisbon in 1784, and of course in Portuguese.
I couldn't read a word of it, but I was able to make out that its author was a missionary
priest and that it was in some way about Africa. Mozambique was frequently mentioned,
and I was sure the sangoma had brought it with him from there. As I leafed through it I
came upon pictures which I had all along expected to find, pictures in just the part which
the book's condition showed had been most frequently referred to."

"What were the pictures of?"

"They were pictures of heads, African heads, drawn by a careful hand, the missionary's I
supposed."

"Just heads?"

"It was actually the same head. First it was shown facing the reader. Then under that the
back of it was drawn, with a diamond-shaped spot, clearly meant as an incision (there
was even a drawing of some sort of scalpel), on the neck, the base of the skull being
indicated just above it by a dotted line. But the third and final picture showed a profile in
a kind of anticipation of an X-ray photograph. And there I saw both the pineal gland
drawn in, in heavy black, and something that looked like a knitting-needle reaching right
into it but no further, from that place in the neck. So all my suspicions were confirmed.
Only I still did not know what he had done to the gland. I shut the book and took it to our
hut. I left as soon as I could for London, taking the book with me. There, I knew, I could
find a translator."

"Who did you find?"

"A Portuguese priest, glad to do it for nothing. He did it orally for me and I made notes.
The missionary wrote that he had no scruples about revealing what was supposed to be
some kind of secret doctrine because it obviously couldn't be true. Having seen what had
happened to the baby after being treated by the book's previous owner I myself had of
course a different opinion, and so I made sure I didn't miss anything."

"Have you the notes here?" I asked.

"No, they are at home. But here's their gist. It's a report of the missionary's conversation
with a witch doctor in old Mozambique, where the latter tells him he can make people
young again. He describes the process in terms of purely mechanical stimulation of a part
inside the base of the skull, under the bone, with, apparently, any kind of long needle."

"Surely that's too simple."

"Well, you might think so. I'm leaving out a few of the medical details; I don't want
anyone else learning how to do it, after all. Still, and in general, if the gland when active
inhibits growth and such stimulation is activating, then it shouldn't seem illogical to you."

"Did you try it?"

Dzimba's face seemed to darken. He looked at the floor. "Yes," he replied. "With his
consent I tried it on my father. He died."

"I'm sorry," I said, after an uncomfortable pause. "So that must be that, then."

"It needn't be. You see, I now believe in the genuineness of the claim even more than I did
then."

"Yes, but you can't go around asking people to risk their lives. I'd be amazed if you still
wanted to."

"There would be no risk. You see, when I got back home again I was in a noticeably
excited state, and my poor father had little difficulty in getting out of me what it was all
about. As soon as he had grasped the point he insisted that I do it for him that very
evening. He seemed possessed by the idea and thus terrified that I would be prevented
from doing it, by an accident or strong-minded scruple, perhaps after talking to my
mother later on. Of course I knew that there should be an anaesthetic, disinfectants,
bandages, none of which were to hand in the village that evening. He just insisted that he
would bear any pain for so great a benefit. Incidentally, I don't think I told you, the book
claims that you get younger and younger instead of older. My father was seventy- seven.
Anyhow, he was a simple man. He fetched a knife and my mother's knitting needle, and
threatened me with his heavy stick at the same time. He wouldn't even allow me to boil
water to sterilize the needle; mother would have seen the fire. Well, being, unlike my
father, a Christian, I prayed to Christ for success and made the incision."

"Good Lord!" I breathed.

"Damn you, professor," said Dzimba, a note of sobbing in his voice. "How can I expect
you people to understand us? Do you know what the commonest cause of death is with
us? I'll tell you. It's burst appendix, happening to people who never complained of feeling
ill. Showing feelings, be it pain or grief, is despised. So he hissed and bit on his stick
while I tried to hold back the blood with a cloth. At the same time I got the needle and
moved it deeper and deeper in to where I guessed the gland might be. There I moved it
around as well as I could in the way described in the book. My father went on panting
and suddenly gave a short sharp shout and threw himself away from me and to the
ground. In short, he had a heart attack and died on the spot. When the others came in to
us I told them that he had had the attack and that the neck wound was part of a last
desperate operation to revive him after the attack, as if this were what we were taught at
the hospital in London. Being ignorant and simple they had to believe me. It was then, of
course, that my problems of conscience began, to say nothing of my personal grief. You
know how absolute a father's authority is with us. But here, if ever, everything I had
learned from you people should have told me there was reason to set it aside. The truth is
I had been as excited as he was."

"Yes, but it was he who insisted," I said. "You mustn't blame yourself too much. A heart
attack, after all, is just that. It has its own causes."

"You're very kind. The fact remains that my life has not been the same since then."

"So I suppose you've finished with these experiments, after these two deaths?" I knew, of
course, that he hadn't, knew what they all had in mind.

"No, I can't say that. It's just that in future I would insist on proper surgical procedure,
sterilization and local anaesthetic, that is."

"I see." They were all waiting for me to speak. "And you're saying that this manipulation
stops ageing, or even makes the body clock go backwards?"

"The latter, emphatically the latter. One saw that with the child."

"So what would have happened if his father hadn't have killed him?"

"Good question. I suppose he would have reached a state where he was no longer viable
outside the womb."

"But that's just fantastic, absurd even."

"I agree; and we don't really know."

"So you're saying that if I let you do this to me, I know that's what you all want, then in
forty years time I would be physically like a fifteen-year-old, instead of being ninety-
five?"

"Everything points to that, yes."

"I will never be ninety-five, of course. Neither of my parents reached seventy."

"This way you will. One hundred and ten, to be precise, without ever being physically
older than you are at this moment."

"Do you feel very old, Edmund?" interjected Agniezska suddenly from her smoky corner.
I didn't answer. I knew that she and her husband had selected me as guinea-pig because
of what they had observed of my behaviour on campus the previous few years. A
promised recovery of youth was something they expected me eagerly to reach for.
Everyone had observed my disgraceful transformation from the serious, even pious
scholar I had been when I arrived to the ageing frequenter of student discos, the ignoble
ogler of young female students who, it was becoming generally known, might obtain
high marks from me in examinations if they were ready to satisfy me in matters other
than academic.

Most of my life had been a ding-dong battle between sex and religion. A convert in my
twenties, I had even tried my hand at the monastic life, a permanently bruising
experience. Now, after initial disillusionment with the African Church, and with African
clergy in particular, I seemed to have permanently given up, surrender taking the form of
a yielding to the perpetual pull of those aromatic black flowers in which my environment
abounded. The pain of witnessing this was the main cause of my wife's long absence. In
fact we were not likely to be reunited unless I were to take the trouble to go to her, and I
had opted rather to plunge deeper into the local botany, relieving a sense of deprivation
stretching back into adolescence. It was, besides, a peculiarity of the local administration
to be favourably impressed by white lecturers who demonstrated that they had no
aversion to close physical contact with locally produced flesh. I had little fear of not being
able to renew my contract as often as I wished.

And yet I was being forced to admit that I was no longer young. My hair had thinned
considerably; occasionally I heard the local young men mocking me, while at times the
girls really tired me out or else didn't even manage to start me off in the first place. But
this only made me more desperate. I was one of those old-fashioned people, in this age of
drugs, who were obsessed by sex, plain and simple. The ultimate ecstasy of the flesh, of
intimacy, seemed always to be beckoning just round the next corner. I could not bear, in
short, to move into a stage of life, of undefined length, in which these sources of primal
life would only fail and diminish.

All this, I was sure, had been discerned by Agniezska and Lucas. I felt their desire for my
consent. What need in them would it satisfy, I wondered. Curiosity? A test before they
themselves took the same step? Did they care about my safety? It was quite obvious in
this lawless place that one expatriate might murder another, as Lucas's researches
abundantly demonstrated, and get away with it.

"Why aren't you both doing this?" I asked. "Why have I been called in?"

They looked at one another. "Well," answered Lucas. "We are perhaps not very
adventurous people. And then we have our son, you know. I would lose my relationship
with Harry if I suddenly started becoming younger than he is."

"Let him try it as well, then."

"You're not thinking. He's not old. So there's no motive to take the risk."

"So it is a risk, then."

"Well, of course it is, but it's no greater than with any operation. Agniezska and I both
have medical knowledge, as does Dr. Dzimba in comparison with what he had earlier.
We will see to the anaesthetic, which only needs to be local, by the way, and to all the
hygienic and sterilization procedures. It can be done in the house here, in total secrecy."

"And what are you going to do then? Just watch me?"

"That's about it. You're signed on for at least another two years here, and we could keep
in touch after that. Anyhow, our impression is that all you want in life is to be found right
here."

He grinned, and a slight flush of shame warmed my face. Agniezska laughed

delightedly. "Oh, he's blushing. I knew he was more than half an innocent."

"Well, I have to blush for you as well," I somewhat senselessly replied. "Anyhow, it's true
that the library here supplies most of my relatively simple needs, all the old classical texts
and so on, thanks to the founders of this place."

"Well let's not go into that," said Lucas. "What about your wife?"

I thought for a moment. "If it goes well she might try it herself. Would that be possible,
Dr. Dzimba? As a condition, I mean, assuming that you too have an interest in my
submitting to this."

"Of course I can't deny that. Yes, your wife could try it, too."

"What about you yourself? Aren't you interested, as your father was?"

"Look. I'll be quite honest with you. As possessor of the secret, so to say, my great interest
is in pioneering the whole thing. As for the option of trying my own medicine, I find the
prospect attractive, but feel I have time to wait. I don't need to interrupt the project, don't
need to focus back on myself. Anyhow, I'm a bit younger than you, and I have sons too,
like Lucas." In his eye too I thought I caught a gleam of contempt. "Anyhow, Professor,"
he went on, "I would be glad to try this thing out on you, as an articulate person who
would be able to tell us how it feels, so to say, and what is happening inside you."

"And if things start to go wrong?"

"What things are you thinking of?"

"You know as well as I do that there can always be eventualities which no one has
thought to consider."

"Yes, Edmund," interrupted Lucas, "just as you say, always. That's why there is no special
need to worry about them now. The only question is, do you want it enough to take
whatever risk you feel there might be?"
"Well, I think I'd like some time to consider that on my own."

And so we left it. We were to meet a week later, when I would undergo the operation if I
so wished.

********************************

The next day a Senate meeting was called at short notice, as happened at least once a
week and always took up at least half a day. If it was scheduled for the morning then
lunch was inevitably delayed and the afternoon ruined for serious work. This time it was
a very long morning. It had to do, not for the first time, with an invasion of the women's
quarters by male students. What was new was that this time someone had called in the
national police. It appeared that several police officers had simply joined with the male
students in what, we were told, could not in an African context be simply construed as
rape. Much of the argument, in fact, centred around the question of how much of the
action could count as being against the women's wishes. It was asserted that they had
made preparations for a party beforehand and that the girl who had phoned the police
was the sister of the chief officer.

The Vice-Chancellor, a Ugandan, urged upon members of staff the wisdom of

cooperation with the police. He wished to raise instead the question of whether the
visiting rules between the sexes should be changed. At present they stated that men could
visit girls in their rooms up to 10 p.m. but must not sit on the beds. The head of
geography, a woman, asked if that meant that they could lie on them. General mirth
ensued and the coffee break was called. The head of the English department, one
Euphonia Mokotele, came up to me. "I heard you met Dr. Dzimba last night," she said.

I stiffened. "Yes, I did. How did you know?"

"Oh, he told me."

"I see."

"I wonder if you do. Anyway, I can tell you he's a very reliable person, if you trust me.
You can believe anything he says."

"Of course I trust you, Euphonia," I lied, wondering if last night's fantastic proposal were
already public property. "Was he here today?"

"No, he phoned me early this morning. Actually he seemed very interested to know
about you, or more especially what I thought about you."

"What did you tell him?" I asked, adopting a bantering tone. There was no point in asking
if he had told her why he was asking as I would not have known whether to believe her
answer.
"Oh I told him that you... No, that would be telling. No, I was nice about you. But he
wouldn't tell me, perhaps you can tell me, why is he so interested?"

I began to relax. He was honouring the secret, it seemed. "Well," I began, thinking
quickly. "It's perhaps a bit confidential."

"Oh, I'm sorry. You don't need..."

"No, it's all right, Euphonia. He, what he hopes, as far as I can make out, is that I might be
able to help him formulate some medical ethical problems specific to this part of the
world. It's for some medical journal or other, I believe."

"Hm. Doesn't sound like him to me. He always likes to do his own formulating. It must
have been Professor Linton recommended you to him."

"I believe it was."

"Well, one can't blame you whites for sticking together, I suppose."

"What do you mean, Euphonia? I'm together with you." I attempted to squeeze her
forearm.

"Getting fresh again, are we? When's your wife coming back?"

The bell rang for continuing with the Senate session, during the course of which the
Indian head of statistics called the Russian head of chemistry a racist, refused to apologize
and left the chamber. The vice-chancellor directed that this not appear in the minutes but
the head of education, a fellow Ugandan, jumped up insisting that it should appear in the
minutes as a true reflection of the proceedings. The vice-chancellor brought the meeting
to an abrupt close, but it was already well after two o'clock and the cafeteria was closed. I
went home and opened a can of pilchards, which I shared with our dog, who was a cross
between a pekingese and a Maltese poodle and entirely black. For the rest of the
afternoon I slept or at least dozed. It had been a long night yesterday.

The following day a letter arrived from Leticia. She was staying with her aged parents in
Milan. The letter announced that she was booked to return to me in two weeks time. She
said that she had been missing me and was longing for us to be together again. We
always spoke English together although regular visits to her family with her and a bit of
study had made me quite an accomplished Italian speaker.

I considered putting off the experiment until I had discussed it with her, but found I
could not imagine how this conversation might go. She would only see the risks. It would
be much better to present her with a fait accompli. If she saw that no harm was done, that
it had worked, she would doubtless want to follow me, whereas if it was a failure, didn't
take, then that would be that. I could even keep quiet about the whole thing and wait and
see if she noticed me looking younger. But that would take so long that she would never
be able to catch me up, might be always ten years older if it took her five years to notice.

I pulled up in my tracks, literally, since I was walking back to our house from my office.
My own thoughts shocked me. Was it real, after all? Had I not dreamed the other night. I
was passing the Lintons' house and went up to knock on the door. Agniezska opened,
cigarette in hand.

"Hello, Edmund, and come in. I was just thinking about you."

"Is Lucas at home?"

"No, but come in just the same. He's gone into town, won't be back till late."

She grinned, replacing the cigarette. I knew already what was in her mind. "What were
you thinking," I asked, "about me?"

"Oh, I was thinking how nice it's going to be getting young again together with you.
We're going to have so much in common."

I stared. "I thought you were concerned for your children..."

"Oh Lucas can do as he likes," she interrupted. "I'm not passing this one up."

"How old are you, then?"

"I'm forty-eight. Wasn't bad-looking once."

"What am I supposed to say to that?"

"Whatever you fucking well like." She flushed, then controlled herself. We were still
standing just inside her door. "Close the door, anyhow," I said. I still don't know why. She
was wearing a plain dress of some heavy material. A glimpse of her knees for some
reason made me think of Moussorgsky's picture of the Polish oxen, strong, sad, pushing,
pushing.

"Look," she said, "Let's be friends. This whole thing is exciting me so much, I know you
like me in some strange way, even in spite of yourself maybe. I watched you the other
night. I understood you better."

"You don't," I snapped, thinking suddenly of Leticia. But Agniezska seemed to be a mind-
reader. "I know you love your wife. But you're a man. She's been away a long time now.
And I'm discreet, never jealous. Besides, I know how you are, how you look, even at me
sometimes."

Her humility touched me. I began to feel the usual anticipations. "What about Lucas?"
"I told you he's away." I hadn't meant that, but it seemed unnecessary to exercise further
delicacy on Lucas's behalf.

"Let's sit down." She motioned towards the sofa. "I'll show you some photographs." These
were mainly of a younger Agniezska, in one case only half submerged in a foamy bath.

"Did Lucas take these?"

"No, he didn't, actually." She was not smoking now. Her voice was unsteady. I covered
her hand with mine and kissed her cheek. She went for my crotch. Progress was quick.
Drawing the curtains and leaving most of our clothes on the floor or sofa we passed to the
bedroom. I continued with the usual preliminaries. "Couldn't you," she said, "Edmund,
couldn't you... you know, with your mouth?"

I had the presence of mind not to stop what I was doing, not to freeze. She laughed then,
looking into my eyes and responding rhythmically to my fairly orthodox caresses. "What?
You don't mean Lucas..."

"No, stupid. Never. That's why I'm asking you." She saw my hesitation. "Well, I suppose
it would put you off after all those young students you go after."

"I would never want to do that with them, or anything without a condom."

"I was wondering. But anyhow, you don't need me really, do you?"

On these last words she started to cry and this, as I tightened my arm around her, had a
more potent effect on me than anything she had done yet. It became imperative to move
into the straight, and her suggestion was mercifully forgotten. "That was so good," she
said afterwards, once more puffing away at a cigarette. As I turned in answer to kiss her
Lucas walked in the door.

"Hello," said Agniezska, "Come and join us."

This, I think, was sheer bravado. Lucas, I could see, was totally shocked. Nothing like
this, it was clear, had happened for a long time, if ever. After a rather protracted moment
he closed his mouth and went into the kitchen. I gathered up my clothes and went into
the bathroom, leaving Agniezska smoking, roundly naked, on the crumpled bed.

Later I joined Lucas in the living room. He appeared to be reading the overseas Guardian.
I looked at the window.

"I appear to be paying a high price for our experiment," he said after a while.

"Look, it was Agniezska who wanted it."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

"Oh stop pretending," Agniezska called from the bedroom. "You know you don't care.
You haven't touched me for twenty years, and you've never said anything about the
others."

"Well I've never had to witness it before."

"I'm sorry. You said you'd be late back. Anyhow, what am I supposed to do? You know
what a dry old stick you are."

"Edmund appears to be a decidedly wet stick." He cackled a trifle madly at his own joke
and I smiled. "Look," I said. "I just took what was offered. I'm not involved with your
wife really. In fact I love my own, believe it or not."

He made a noise of contempt. "Anyhow," I added, "this may help you not to be bothered
by any scruples when Dzimba sticks the needle in next Tuesday."

He did not reply and I left the house a little later. Agniezska's smell was still about me,
one could hardly call it scent, and her words about us growing young together began to
throb in my brain. I thought of Leticia as if of someone in another world. A few days later
Dzimba and I met at the Lintons and the operation was performed neatly and quickly.
The incision healed quickly and I felt nothing but a little crick as I turned my neck, but
that soon disappeared as well. It was hard to believe that anything of importance had
occurred.

****************************

Not long after that I went to meet Leticia at the airport. We walked towards one another
as she came out of customs, the familiar brown eyes under her black, grey-flecked hair
looking dancingly, steadily at me until all the events of the past few days seemed shabby
and irrelevant. "Why are you always leaving me alone?" I whispered as I crushed her
against me. "But my darling, you know I have to. I'm sure you have done a lot of work
while I've been away." "Of course. It's the only way I can stand it."

We exchanged news, of her parents, her two children from her first marriage, Maria and
Giovanni, and their children, before recommencing all the loved and reassuring rituals of
nearly twenty years of life together. All went well until bed-time. The memory of
Agniezska began to oppress me, so that I felt excited and sad at the same time, as it stood
between us now. My feeling for Leticia seemed not able to be fitted into the same kind of
behaviour. There was a secret.

I had not felt anything like this after the sometimes delicious adventures with local
students. We never spoke of it, unless obliquely and in general terms, which gave
sufficient indication that she knew. I believed she accepted it as a necessity of my nature,
at the same time as she was confident of my total dependence on her, my inability to stop
loving her. A gentleman knows when to keep quiet, this was one of her favourite sayings,
no doubt Italian in origin.

With Agniezska, however, implied in her whole initiative, there had been some kind of
complicity, even of a thrilling kind, in a future from which Leticia would be absent, in
which she would be diminished. But why was I thinking this? She would surely follow
me. Did I not want that? A tremor of sheer fear racked me as I lay with my arm round her
on our bed. "What is it, my dearest?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Well, there's something I have still to tell you."

Now she looked fearful. "Something bad? You are in trouble?"

"No, no. Why should you think that? No it's positive, very positive indeed. But it's rather
fantastic. That's what you will think."

"Try me." She got out a packet of cigarettes from the bedside table.

"Oh God. You're not smoking again, are you?"

"Don't be so intolerant. You know I don't smoke much. You must also know you're
making me a bit nervous."

"I'm sorry." I bent to kiss her. "That's the last thing I want to do."

I started to tell her, about the meeting at the Lintons, Dr. Dzimba and his story. I stopped.
"Any questions?"

"No. Go on. I want to hear it all." She had become very still and now I started to feel
nervous. But I had never had any use for smoking. I began to describe how the evening
had continued but she interrupted me almost at once.

"Have you done it?"

"Done what?"

"You know exactly what I mean."

"Yes. Last week."

"Show me."
I bent my head over her belly. She felt me with her finger, the still itchy place. Suddenly
she pushed me away and went into the kitchen, coming back almost immediately. "Why
didn't you ask me?"

The verb annoyed me. I became defensive. "Ask you? Why should I ask you?"

"Oh. You don't think it concerns me?"

"Yes, of course. But I didn't want you to be troubled with the decision-making, my
decision-making as it would have to be after all. Besides, I assumed..."

"Yes. You assumed. You would. You always assume, always believe people. I know you."

"What? You don't believe it?"

"What can I say? I hope it's all just a sick game. It must be that. Tell me it's that." She
suddenly fell on her knees beside the bed, gazing wide-eyed at me.

"I can't understand you. As I said, I assumed, I still assume, that you would want, that
you would be as interested as me, that you would want to join me. You must want to." I
was suddenly desperate. "Otherwise.."

"Otherwise what? You will leave me?"

"How can you even imagine that? No. Otherwise I will..., I think, I mean it could be very
sad."

"Yes, sure. And that didn't stop you?"

"I told you I assumed, I made the decision for both of us."

"You what? You think you can decide such a unique, such a mad thing for God's sake, for
someone else?"

"I'll look after you, Leticia. Stay with me. Go with me."

"Stay with you. Go with you. How you talk. I know what you want. Why else would you
want to be young again. What do you want me for?"

"Why are you saying these things? You know we are like one person."

"Do I? Do you know what I feel like? No, you don't. You're too stupid to imagine such an
obvious thing. I feel as if you'd told me you'd made someone pregnant, not one of your
students, someone else, someone who won't let you go, who has got the power to take
you away from me, me who could never give you a child." She started weeping. "Yes, it's
just like that. This thing, this mad thing. Already you are not there. You are a fantasy
creature. Your world of books, your philosophy, it has totally absorbed you at last. I
always knew when you sat there, at your desk, or when I heard you speak at those
conferences, that you had gone somewhere for a while where I was not with you. But I
always knew you would come back. But this, this is different."

"Leticia, please." I tried to kiss her tears but she turned her face away. "You know I
couldn't have done those things if you hadn't been behind me, giving me the steadiness to
do all that work, the preparation, to keep my self-confidence. Remember how I was when
you first met me."

"I remember. I'm remembering right now."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that I shouldn't have forgotten what you were like. How you wasted your
youth, how you didn't care about anything, pushed off all responsibilities, until you
couldn't stand the loneliness any more. Well, now you're going back into it again."

"You're all wrong. Anyway, whose fault is it that I've been so lonely these past three
months?"

"That was your part of the burden, that's all. God, I've put up with enough, haven't I,
coming with you to this place and others like it so you can have a career, sacrificing my
own career prospects."

"Yes, yes. You're quite right. But now, tell me. You will follow me, won't you? Aren't you
attracted at all? We can wait a little while to see if anything happens, then if it's nothing..."

"It must be nothing, and that's why I don't need and won't have anything to do with it."

"Well, we can just leave it all for a while then."

"Listen, you stupid idiot. Do you really think I can let my daughter start seeing me
looking younger than her, can, my God, can start preparing to nurse her in her old age?"

"She can do it too."

"Why should she? She's young."

"No, then. I mean then."

"You don't care at all, do you? Family means nothing to you. Can't you see this turns
everything upside down? Yes, it could turn the whole world upside down, come to think
of it."

"What of it?"
"That's typical you. What of it? I like my life. I liked the life I had with you until ten
minutes ago. What did it matter if we were apart for a short while? Oh why, why have
you gone and destroyed it, just through these stupid, cheap people? Why, Edmund,
why?"

I stared at her, feeling that tears were running down my face. We made love, my whole
body telling her that she was my centre, the whole focus of my being. She held me close,
kissing my face, comforting me. "It's only now that I realise how I've been missing you all
this time," I said. "When you're away I'm wooden; I don't react. Life has no taste."

"It's the same for me. Now let's just not say any more about it. It's just too bizarre. We'll
just take life as it comes. That's all."

I was enormously relieved. We were together again. This was real, not threatened by the
other. And so it went on for these past few weeks, as if there had been no crisis, no
drama, no involvement with Agniezska. I could not risk spoiling it by any mention of the
experiment, or by taking my wife to meet the Lintons. I have mentioned that she herself
rather avoided them.

But still the silence reacted back upon me, made me feel that some marking of the whole
episode, which might well turn out to be more like a watershed, was necessary. That is
why now, two months later, I have typed out this memorandum of it all. I have some
literary talent, or so they tell me, and I have not scrupled to employ style and effect in a
way that might one day be put to use, if I were to disguise the whole thing as a work of
fiction, for example. For the moment I will hide these sheets away.

II

Leticia

Meine Ruh ist hin.

Mein Herz ist schwer.

"Sir, Sir. Over here, Sir."

The boy's voice echoed through the November mist hanging over the football
field. In response a decidedly powerful adult kick sent the now wet and heavy
ball stingingly through the clammy English air at a low height, coming down
near the boy who had called, who trapped it neatly beneath his heel before
dribbling it up the far edge of the field and then lobbing it high into the centre
of the pitch in front of the goal-mouth, where the centre forward had no
difficulty in slamming it past the notoriously sleepy goal-keeper.

"Well played, Smithson," shouted Sir. There was a note of conscientiousness

supplying for enthusiasm in his voice, too fine, he liked to think, for the boys
to be able to notice. He had been five years at the school now, having applied
for the post, of classics master and deputy Head, while still in Africa. The
home counties preparatory school had advertized for a couple, and the
position of house-keeper and food-buyer, combined with some music
teaching, seemed the perfect compensation for Leticia's years in the African
wilderness. It seemed so to them both, since Edmund had not been able to
find a suitable alternative position in philosophy and they were agreed that
neither of them wished to stay on at the University, whether or not it had
been possible to renew the contract. A strong desire to avoid the Lintons had
animated both of them, though they had refrained from comparing notes on
what might have been their several reasons for the recent intensification of
their original antipathy. It had been a simple matter leaving the false address,
especially as Edmund felt no obligation to Dzimba or Lucas of informing them
of the progress of "the experiment". It had not, after all, cost these two
gentlemen anything much and so, confronted with Leticia's apparently grief-
stricken reaction, he had not hesitated in deciding to break off all contact,
without any need of formally announcing this to the parties concerned.
Agniezska he felt he owed even less.

Edmund was not bored by the change to classics, Latin principally, finding
himself continuously stimulated by the philological questions that constantly
proposed themselves to him as he mulled through Latin dictionaries,
grammars and literary texts. He enjoyed imparting to the boys as much of his
findings as they were capable of receiving, though rather perturbed to learn
that he was commonly referred to as "Coggers", a reaction against his
constant emphasis upon which words in Latin and English or some other
language were cognate. In fact he realised regretfully that he had increased
his vulnerability before the little horrors by not taking steps to conceal
somewhat his gleeful and innocent delight in something to which a majority of
boys were, in the nature of things, not inclined to respond. It was otherwise
with his pleasure in football. Everyone except a few bespectacled wimps
appreciated this, and the wimps were in no position to make trouble for him.
They were grateful, anyhow, that he seemed not to look down on them as did
some of the other masters, seemed also to interest himself in their quieter
pursuits and not try too much to push them into rough games for which he
saw they had no interest or aptitude.

He was a striking figure on the football field in shorts and sweater, long white
socks and strong knees. With his wiry grey hair he looked all of his sixty years,
and yet there was a youthful spring in his stride which some of the older
members of staff seemed to notice more and more.

"You're even fitter now than when you arrived here, Edmund old man," said
Spud Murphy, the maths master, himself a bald, liver-spotted sexagenarian
with imposing belly, not at all unlikely to call up the image of a potato in a
boy's mind, quite apart from his Hibernian origins. He was in fact Edmund's
best friend on the staff, and Joubert liked to accompany him on his shooting
expeditions in the ample school grounds, his aged spaniel bitch, Bunty,
slouching behind them until, electrified by the sound of his gun, she would
rush towards the expected fallen prey as if her own non-existent pineal gland
had been deactivated years ago. "What's your secret?" he continued. "Is it
Leticia or the football?" Spud was a widower.

"Both, I expect," laughed Edmund, wondering how many more years he might
stay safely at the school. Leticia was happy and successful there and had no
appetite at all for yet another move. It seemed to Edmund that they had
never had so much joy together, and he often asked himself the reason for
this. He had to admit that the prospect of continuing or, rather, approaching
youth was having a steadying effect on him. The wish to roam had died down,
while he found an appetite and energy for making love to his wife which
seemed to bring the bloom out in her as well. But it worried her too, since she
felt forced to connect it with "the experiment".

"Aren't you glad I'm keeping my youth?" he asked her after one rather
prolonged session, tickling her ear as he smiled down at her.

"Yes, but look at us. What would the boys think?"

"The boys? You just stop thinking about those boys, you naughty girl,
especially those ones with hair round their cocks whom you saw in the shower
the other day."

"For goodness sake! You know I went through there by mistake. Anyway, I'm
allowed to as housemother, in case the little ones need drying."

"You'd like to dry the big ones, though, wouldn't you? And what worries me
more is that they'd like it too."

"Oh don't be ridiculous. It's you I like."

"I know you do, and I'll always be there."

"What makes you say that? That's not like you."

"Isn't it? I suppose I was thinking of how it's going. You know, the passage of
time and so on. I certainly feel very well."

"You're thinking of your Dzimba friend, aren't you?"

"Of course. Every day."

She sighed. "That's just what I don't do. I try to forget it. I told you. It's bizarre.
One can't deal with it. There are no categories. Anyway, you're not abnormal
at all. Just a healthy lusty sixty year old."
"Lusty? What else can I, should I be beside you?"

She laughed happily. "Thank you very much. But listen, my darling, you
mustn't even suspect that I am going to mind when, if ever you start finding
you can't do so much. I would never like, never be interested in anything
forced."

He realised it would be unprofitable to press things with her. Let events come
upon them slowly and naturally. That was what she wanted, hoping she would
be able to deal naturally with each new situation. It was also quite obvious
from her talk that she had no thought of ever going the same way herself. If
he even suggested it he would spoil her mood.

They dressed and went down to tea. It was the Wednesday half-holiday and
he was off duty. Another master was seeing to the football. A group of
prefects looked at them curiously as they came in together, before turning
inwards to one another and sniggering. Edmund strode up to them.

"Now then, fellows. What do you say when members of staff come into the
room?"

Most of them blushed. "Oh good afternoon, Sir. Good afternoon, Mrs. Joubert.
Sorry, Sir."

"That's better. Now what have you all been doing this afternoon? Playing
football?"

"No, Sir, not today. Haven't you seen the rain?"

"Yes, Sir, didn't you see the rain?" asked Wilson, the one boy who hadn't
blushed. "What were you doing yourself? Something nice with Mrs. Joubert,
perhaps."

Edmund looked hard at him. "That's not quite your business, is it, Wilson?"

"Sorry, Sir. Sorry. I just wondered if you liked to play snakes and ladders on a
wet afternoon or something like that?"

Giggling exploded on all sides, but half the boys moved hastily away as
Edmund's own face began to darken. The boy, a thirteen year old but already
full-sized, as well as precocious, was undoubtedly being impudent. He stared
at the boy until his eyes dropped.

"You're a wit, aren't you, Wilson? You'll be a more successful wit, however, if
you keep in mind that not every absurdity that occurs to you deserves
utterance. Then you'll be grown up, as you obviously want to be, instead of
half grown up. Do you understand me?"
"Yes Sir. You're right, Sir. Please excuse me, Sir."

The boy's eyes were shining with respect and Edmund realised he had found
the right words for once. It also struck him that had Wilson said "forgive"
instead of "excuse" he would have taken it as continued mockery instead of
sincere repentance. What the episode showed, though, was what a tricky
business it was being a married couple in an all male and largely immature
establishment. The Head was married, but he was going on seventy while his
wife had none of Leticia's softness and femininity, her ability to go into the
dormitory when some child awoke screaming from a nightmare and comfort
and lull him to sleep again. Mrs. Patterson's nickname, in fact, was Horse-face,
which spoke volumes. The staff had agreed among themselves that the name,
which was no secret any more, was unkind, and that any boy caught using it
would be both punished and sworn never to use the name again. In any event
it was Leticia who became the exclusive focus of the boys' leanings towards
the opposite sex, apart from the kitchen maids, who in those days were in
general kept out of sight.

*********************************

But Leticia's peace and happiness were fragile. Looking at her husband one
day not long afterwards she heard, and with such clarity, the hand of fate
knocking at the door of her heart.

"Come here. Come into the light."

"What is it?"

"The colour's coming back into your hair."

From that moment she abandoned her strategy of not thinking about, not
believing in "the experiment". "You might as well have syphilis," she said. "At
a certain moment one is forced to notice that your bold or beautiful thoughts
are turning into clinical monstrosities, products of microbes in your brain,
microbes all set to kill you." She broke off on a sob.

"Kill me?"

"Well why not? I told you at the time you did it that you were stupid, and now
I'm thinking of something else you've never thought of."

"Like what?"

"The way you make love to me. It's like when you were thirty, not fifty or so as
you are biologically clocking yourself as. Don't you see? That's what I could
never believe. This whole clock idea. That because of old Dzimba poking
around there time would just run backwards for you at the same rate. I don't
believe in that sort of time. It doesn't exist, as you should know, you being the
philosopher. All we know is that that stupid gland, possibly, is doing again
what it did when you were growing up, only as you're not growing any more
instead of slowing down the maturing process it reverses the aging process,
though why it can't just slow it down I don't understand either. Anyway, what
I'm saying is, it might just go quicker. It might gather speed as it goes along.
There's no clock, for God's sake."

Her husband gazed at her, admiration, fear and a certain unjust resentment,
as if her words might cause what they forbode, competing inside him. He did
not speak.

"What's going to happen, Edmund? What's going to happen? Am I to become

a widow or just a laughing stock?"

"A laughing stock? God, don't say that, Leticia, don't say such things."

"All right, I won't say anything. But just don't imagine I haven't noticed you
don't use your glasses anymore. You've jumped from bifocals to nothing in
less than five years."

He sat silent, immobile. Beginning to feel cold, he got up to fetch a pullover.

She continued staring at him. Abruptly she seemed to soften. "I've upset you.
I'm sorry." She reached her hand out as his head emerged from the pullover.

"No. You're right. It's strange, stupid as you say, that no one thought of that.
Of course one had no warrant to measure one's expectancy in that way. It was
a total leap into the unknown."

"Which makes it more irresponsible than ever. You must admit that now, don't
you?"

"Oh I admitted it the very night you came back from Italy. Do you remember?"

"Yes, yes, I do. Oh my darling, I am not bitter. I am only afraid. But I am more
afraid for you than myself. I have just a few more normal years, which of
course I want to have with you. But what is waiting for you? That is the
question. It is as if you are already passing into another dimension. Will there
be a window in that dimension for me?"

Edmund covered his face. a strange sound, like a groan that was out of his
control, rhythmical, tearing, came up from deep down in his lungs. "What
have I done? What have I done? Death I could stand, of me or you. But this. A
time warp. But time is not real, you say. Surely we will always share a present
moment. But oh, not if I make you a laughing stock."

"Oh what do I care about that, you silly ass?" Her mood had changed abruptly.
"This is a ridiculous conversation, don't you realise that? Let's just be glad
you're getting your nice brown hair again." She threw her arms round him and
kissed him all over both cheeks, laying her finger on his lips. He tried to go
along with her, to be gay, but could not forget all she had said, not in all the
days to come.
They sat in silence, holding hands. "We've got another four years to go till our
pensions," he said.

"Yes, I'm thinking of that. But the rate you're going we can't stay here that
long. We just can't. You can't. You could neither explain nor refuse to explain."

"I like that. Yes that's just it. I can neither explain nor refuse to explain.
Condemned to solitude in other words."

"Well, you know you'll always have me." She squeezed his hand and warm
contentment spread over him, making it difficult to be serious. "Anyway, you
rather like solitude, don't you?"

"Yes, but what about money?"

"I don't think we need to worry about that too much. It's only four years. I can
always do part-time adult education and so can you, besides our having quite
a bit of savings now, all those African gratuities and so on."

"Yes, of course. I had actually been thinking of a new research career, forty
years or more of getting younger. Enough time to knock the Fregean logicians
for six. It might still happen. The only thing is I seem almost totally absorbed
by this thing, by what's happening to me, to us, watching it all the time,
feeling it even."

"But where would I have been in those forty years? Living on to a hundred? It
wasn't so important, I suppose."

"Leticia, please, don't try to make us more miserable than we are. I know you
know my feelings about that. Anyhow, it's you who refused to go with me on
this. Not that I ever tried to demand it. But I did think..."

"I know what you thought. I suppose it just annoyed me to have to take it
seriously at first. Anyhow I could never do that. Think of my children, my
grandchildren. And I was right. Look what it's done to you. You're not normal
any more. You say it yourself. You're not part of us, even if you still have me.
The real question is, how far do I still have you now? Soon I won't be able to
appear with you in public. Unless as your mother perhaps. And what happens
in the end. Well, I won't be there then. Oh God, you poor man, you fool, you
stupid, dreaming, mixed up..." She threw herself against his chest.

"Your admiration has always touched me, as you know," he said, swallowing.
But then they both started to laugh.

"By the way," she went on after a while. "I didn't tell you. Last week I found
what you wrote at that time, when you had it done."

"Really? I'd forgotten all about that."

"Yes, it was pretty well hidden away, inside Huxley's After Many a Summer,
appropriately enough."

"Yes, that's what I thought:

And after many a summer dies the swan,

Me only cruel immortality consumes."

"Well you seem to have been wrong there, the summers don't look like being
so many in your case, I'm afraid. But it's certainly cruel, cruel to me anyhow."
She started to cry again. "That stupid Agniezska."

"I'm sorry. I never meant you to find that."

"I was looking for something to read in bed, to take my mind off things, and I
only got it forced on me all the more. But don't worry, about Agniezska, I
mean. She more or less forced herself on you." She laughed. "I wonder if she's
now having that exciting life somewhere, that she thought she'd be having
with you, after old Leticia was in her grave, I suppose."

"For God's sake, Leticia. You're a healthy, robust, beautiful woman of sixty,
and you're my wife. If you'll still have me, that is. That's what amazes me,
that you don't seem about to divorce me, shake all this off."

"Where would I go? Isn't that what St. Peter said. Yes, that's who you're like.
You've become like Christ. I mean he was a queer fish to the disciples, going
somewhere they couldn't follow, another dimension, just like you."

"Don't be ridiculous. Peter said he had the words of eternal life, if we're going
to use the Bible. And I don't have any words. Anyway, what about those other
things I wrote, about the students and so on?"

"I don't believe half of it, quite honestly. You could never resist showing off."

"Oh, that's what you think, is it?"

"Don't you want me to think that? I told you you like to show off. Anyhow, I
knew you were a sex maniac when I first met you, so it doesn't surprise me if,
if, you know, sometimes over the years..."

"Not now, my darling, not now. It's you that I love, so damn desperately now."

The school bell interrupted them and they went down to high tea, sitting as
usual at the top table. For the first time Edmund noticed an unusual
intentness in the way boys and staff stared at Leticia and himself as they took
their places behind their chairs before grace. Only Spud Murphy looked
resolutely down at his plate. But Joubert's impression intensified in the days
following. It was time to leave. Before that, however, something happened.
 ************************************

One afternoon a fortnight later, at their flat in the west wing, the doorbell
rang. Edmund was at home alone. In the doorway there stood a youngish
woman, apparently in her thirties, shapely and well dressed, Slavic-looking.
He recognized her immediately and stood aside, not reacting to the cheek she
offered him. "It's going even faster with you," was all he said.

"Yes, now you can see what I used to look like, before that withered and
withering twerp Lucas took a hand."

"You've left him, then?"

"He kicked me out. Terrified that Harry would see me. That I was having an
affair with Dzimba didn't bother him nearly as much."

"You were?"

"Am. He's in the village. You don't want a conspicuous black man coming to
visit you, do you?"

"Well, I never said I wanted you, either. Don't you care how Leticia might
feel?"

"I haven't really thought about it. I mean what are you talking about? I'm in
the same boat as you, aren't I? And nobody else is, nobody in the whole
world."

"What about Dzimba?"

"He won't do it. Says his father warned him in a dream or some daft
nonsense. And now he's seen what's happening to me he thinks he's right."

"What is happening to you?"

"As you see. About twelve years wiped out in less than half that time. Only I
didn't get my womb back of course. So there won't be any babies."

"Could there have been anyhow, I wonder? In a body going backwards."

"Well if an orgasm can move to term, why can't a foetus?"

"Hm. What about teeth?"

"No, teeth are just part of you. Stop being so damned scientific." She moved
close to him.

"Now just sit down or I'll throw you out."

"Why don't you touch me like before? It's only you I've been thinking of all this
time, couldn't find out where you'd gone."

Helpless desire for her gripped him, for this new, young, irresponsible
Agniezska, bearing a fate so close to his. "What about Dzimba?"

"Oh, he fell in love with me. And I needed a doctor, don't you think?"

"Why did he fall in love with you? No, I'm sorry. Why shouldn't he?"

"Well I seduced him at the time of the operation, actually. It was only the two
of us as Lucas had forbidden it. It seems he and his wife had been going
separate ways for some time."

At this moment Leticia came in. She stopped at the sight of Agniezska, open-
mouthed, then turned and walked out again. Edmund ran after her. "Stop, you
silly. I don't want to be alone with her."

"How did she know where we were? You must have written to her."

"Of course I didn't. It's not difficult to find out. Come back in, please."

She returned, and looked Agniezska up and down. "So you did it as well. How
awful. You look, I don't know, you people are just not real to me. You've opted
out. You'r like those giggling drug addicts we met in America."

"Leticia," said Edmund. "She may need help."

"Help? She's got you, hasn't she. Had you once, anyhow. But you tell me,
Agniezska, what do you want? What brings you here? Well, don't answer, I
know what it is. You want one thing and that's my husband."

"Please, Leticia. I don't want to break up anything. It's you that he loves. It's
just that I can't, I've nowhere else. Nobody else..." Her face contorted, she fell
like a bundle into the nearest chair, the whole scene in great contrast to her
elegant coiffure and brightly coloured clothes.

"What about Dzimba?" asked Edmund. "He's down in the village," he said to
Leticia.

"Good God."

"I told you already. He says I need him, but of course I don't really. He's lost
himself."

There was a ring at the door. It was Spud Murphy. "Sorry to intrude," he said.
"Is there a Mrs. Linton here today."
"Yes", called Agniezska, "What is it?"

"There's a phone call for you downstairs. I'll take you."

Spud had taken in enough of the situation to deserve an explanation later.

Left alone, Edmund and Leticia slowly sat down. "You must see," began
Leticia, "that this is hopeless for me. You won't admit it, but it's her you need
now. You are the only two in the world going backwards." A weird laugh,
almost a cackle, jumped out of her. "You must be together, in touch. And I
couldn't stand that. Even if you weren't, I still couldn't stand the thought of
nursing my husband as a baby. It would be a grotesque, a stupid ending to
our life together. Edmund, we married until death us do part, and this is just
as strong as death. We're grotesque already."

"This is your Mediterranean sobriety, I suppose. Well don't go yet. Not today.
What am I saying? Don't ever go. Don't even think of it. I can't bear it. To me
that's worse than death as well. I mean it and you know I mean it. Listen, why
don't we kill ourselves together? Even that is better than estrangement."

She sighed. "You will never do that, and nor would I. Anyhow you're forgetting
my children again. And I told you, it's not estrangement. I'll love you to the
end. I don't want anyone else."

"But you want to palm me off on Agniezska."

"It's not the same. You're already tied together. I know you don't love her, you
love me. But you like women, you like sex, and she's young, she's getting
younger all the time, and you share an enormous secret. Probably you went
into this thing so as to remain attractive and, and capable, if that's the word.
This is what you have to pay for it, our separation."

"Only because you won't do it as well. And look, now Dzimba's here. He could
do it."

"Edmund, you never really wanted that. In so far as you want me you want to
go on with our old life. In so far as you want this thing you want something
else. You don't want to go backwards with me again. What would be the point
of that? You want new experiences. Anyhow I think if we were to have those
experiences it would make us unbearably sad. To be like we were then, and
yet for everything to be different, for it to be a hundred years ago almost,
with everyone else dead."

Joubert was silent. "You see," she said. "You have no answer. Now Agniezska's
here, and she'll help us make the break. Please, my darling, it's the only way. I
don't think we need think of it as the death of our love; it's a situation outside
any for which our language was invented."

"Yes, you're right. If we only keep what we have."

"We will, and you don't have to pretend with me. Now when Agniezska comes
back we'll have a drink together and then we'll see."

*********************************

She came back. "He wants to come up here, but I said no, I'd go back. I'll
come again," she added brightly. "That is, if you'll let me, Leticia."

"Of course you'll come again. But how about if we both go with you now to
where you're staying? We have to talk about this, together with our medicine
man, no doubt, and we can't do it here. The school's already buzzing with
rumour and curiosity."

"Well I'm glad you're seeing it so positively." She looked uncertainly at

Edmund, who merely nodded. "Let's go, then. My car's downstairs."

Dzimba opened the door of their hotel room, his face passing from lovesick to
hunted to welcoming as he first took in the visitors and then realised they
were not to be put off. Leticia thrust a whisky bottle into his extended hand.
"There, that's what we're drinking. Neat, on the rocks, up your arse, you name
it." She seemed determined to set a tone immune to tragedy. Dzimba merely
gaped.

"It's you who's responsible for all this, I understand."

"No, Leticia," said Agniezska. "It was Lucas. He was the one who wanted to
experiment. Patrick here wanted to leave it alone after what happened to his
father."

"Yes. I've heard about that. Well, so we've all suffered in our different ways,
though I seem to be the only one who kept her head completely if I may say
so. Maybe we should all go after that old witch doctor."

"He's probably dead," said Dzimba. "But what's the point? Revenge? He can't
stop it now."

"No, of course not. Pay no attention to me. Just get some glasses and open
the bottle."

Leticia showed no sign of relaxing her domination of the meeting. After the
first drink, taken in awkward silence, she spoke again. "As for what's going to
happen now, I'm going, disappearing. Like that." She snapped her fingers.
"What about the rest of you? My impression, for what it's worth, is that you,
Doctor, should go back to Africa. Agniezska has told us she doesn't need you
and I understand you still have your wife back there. That counts for
something in my book."

"How can you say that?" broke in Edmund, "when you..."

"You're not thinking again, my darling. I told you just now that we're not
breaking up in that sense."

"It's true, Patrick," said Agniezska, "we've had our fun. They'll be waiting for
you back there."

"So that you can run around with this fellow," said Dzimba in bitter tone.

"Well you've given us such a lot in common, haven't you, with your nasty little
needle, even if Lucas and I put you up to it in our different ways. Be fair,
Patrick. You never told us the years would turn into months like this."

"Do you think I thought of it myself?" He sounded anguished. "First my father

and now this. How am I going to live?"

"Have some more whisky for a start," said Leticia. As she spoke she reached
across, kissed him on one cheek and stroked him on the other. She smiled at
Edmund and he found himself smiling back in admiration, understanding that
she was providing for them all.

"Now Patrick," she went on. "I can call you that now, can't I? You and I are
going to leave these two children alone. Because that's what they'll soon be:
children. Am I right?"

"I don't know. Anything could happen. Just don't let it be anything nasty,
please God."

"What do you mean?"

"Now don't get frightened. I only mean nothing is guaranteed. But that was
true in your old life, wasn't it? Illnesses could develop, degenerations."

"Is that what you're expecting?" asked Edmund.

"No, no. Don't get me wrong. I'm expecting you'll go on getting younger. But
that will obviously carry some problems, I mean besides the psychological,
social, personal ones we're all upset about. What about wisdom teeth, for
example? I mean there may be just nothing. If you're going backwards
nothing can start to grow, you might think."

"Well I still have to have haircuts."

"Yes, that's interesting. But you may find if you start getting to childsize that
your adult teeth will start falling out."

"Don't, please don't," said Agniezska. "I'm really frightened suddenly."

"I'm not surprised," said Leticia drily. "Pass me your glass. Patrick?"
All this time she had hardly been looking at her husband. Suddenly she said to
Dzimba, "Patrick, I feel I need some fresh air, see if the stars and the moon
still look the same. Will you take me outside? We can leave these two odd
bods to themselves for a little while, can't we Edmund dearest?" She gave
him a clumsy kiss on his lips, the three glasses of neat whisky had got to her
by now, and she and Dzimba rolled out of the door. They heard them laughing
on the stairs.

"Well," said Agniezska, "she loves you and no mistake."

"Yes, and I love her."

"I know, my dear. Can I call you that? That's even more obvious. But I think
she wants, she thinks..."

"Yes, she does. Look, Agniezska, I just don't know how much I like you. I mean,
you're sexy enough all right. You were even then, with your cigarettes and
your fat belly, your flabby cheeks. Yes, that's what's puzzling me. You were
crude, deliberately crude, then. Now you're not, you have poise, grace. But
you're the same person. So what is it? Were you acting then or now?"

"Neither, and you don't seem to know much about women. Well, I mean it's
common sense really. If your body starts running down, things decaying and
so on, then you don't feel beautiful, so you don't act beautiful. Isn't that true
generally about middle-aged people, most of them?"

"I don't know..."

"Well, think of Dostoyevsky's novel, for example, about the young man's
disgust for older people, when he says they have no dignity in their lives. It's
true. I mean at least it's very difficult."

"There could be something in it. I didn't know you liked Dostoyevsky,

remembered it too."

"Marilyn Monroe did."

He laughed. "Is she your model, then?"

"Of course not. I don't know why I said that." She reddened.

"I could never have imagined you blushing before, either."

"No, I feel my whole body chemistry is different. What about you?"

"Well, I must admit Leticia was amazed at my, you know, in bed I mean.
Where is she, anyhow?"

"Oh Edmund, they've only been gone about half an hour. Haven't you seen
she can't stand facing this thing? You do look different you know. About fifteen
years younger to be precise. And seeing me must have been even more of a
shock. I mean I do look good, don't I?"

"Yes, you've got all the right proportions, or rather voluptuously extra,
actually, a kind of Anita Ekberg touch, if that doesn't date me. And a smooth
face to go with it, and that glossy hair. It was flattish, even a bit thin before."

"Well I give it a lot more attention now, actually. But this is how it used to look,
before I came to Nigeria."

"We're ghosts. Do you realise that?"

"No we're not. I'll show you that we're not."

She showed him, and he pulled away. "Come on. She wants us to get
together. You know that."

"Yes, but what about what I want? Oh, I'm sorry. But I'm very sad. It's not long
since she first told me how impossible it was for us to carry on. These strong
pleasures, you know. They can wipe out the feelings we need to have. Do you
understand that, Agniezska? I want you to understand it."

"Look, I'm not just the crude female you once knew. Lucas made me that way,
his superciliousness, his total lack of appreciation of anything feminine. Of
course I understand."

"Why did you marry him?"

"I met him in Africa there. I had come there to teach mathematics in the
nearby school, I don't know if you knew. He was the only white man around,
so I deliberately seduced him. So perhaps I was always a bit crude. I only did
it because his manner annoyed me, even then. It was like getting back at
Churchill and Yalta, somehow."

"Come on. You can't mean that."

"But I do. That's my psychology. We Poles are never quite such individualists
as you. Our history still touches our hearts. Dostoyevsky would have
understood that, wouldn't he?"

"I suppose he would."

"And yet he touches you, I'm sure. So there's still hope for me."

"What are you hoping?"

"That we will get on, maybe love each other, right through this thing."
"But I'm married, happily married."

"You're not. You heard her. You're not even a widower, but she's a widow.
That's what she thinks. She wants you to accept your fate. But I don't want
you to stop loving her, don't think that. Only to let me love you."

"Have you ever been in love?"

"Not since schooldays. But these years since you left I've thought of you all
the time. In the end I had to find out where you were. Lucas was furious at
your disappearing, of course."

"And Dzimba?"

"Oh, he was almost relieved. He's like Leticia, I think. Can't bear the whole
thing."

"Where are they, for God's sake?"

"They'll come when they want to. Stop worrying."

"Worrying? I'm so sad, can't you see. So sad."

"Come and sit by me." She patted the sofa and they sat there, ostensibly two
thirty year olds, twiddling their whisky glasses.

"I'll tell you something," said Agniezska, breaking a long silence. "You may be
sad. I'm sure you are. But she's more than sad. She's betrayed and heart-
broken. That's what we did to her, me and Lucas and you, and we can't undo
it. But she, she wants you to survive that, to get over it, she wants you to
accept that she forgives you and to let her go, because she just can't, you
both can't, carry on. How much that's because I'm there I don't know. But I
don't think I make much difference, except in so far as she cares for me as
well and thinks you should look after me now. You see it will never be in
question between us that it was she whom you loved, not me, and that ought
to make you suffer a little less."

"Well, what about you? What do you suffer?"

"Not much. I'm afraid. But I enjoy being beautiful. I'm sorry to have helped do
this to you, but glad to be with you all the same. My sufferings are still to
come, probably. Yes, and you'll be causing them."

"Yes. Even though I don't want to."

"Does anyone? Anyhow, I'm tired of talking." She laid her head on his
shoulder. As he stared at the fireplace he became more conscious of her
scent, her soft weight against him, and began to squeeze and unsqueeze her
upper arm. She breathed deeply against him, as if asleep.

*************************************

He awoke with a start at a knocking from outside. It was Dzimba, alone,

looking leaden and somehow wary at the same time, not wanting to be there.

"Where's Leticia?"

"She went back to the school. Said she was tired."

"That's not surprising, after wandering around with you for three hours. If
that's all you did."

"Now wait a minute."

"O.K. I'm waiting."

"Yes, that's all we did. Wander." He was looking sideways at the floor.

"And what did you talk about? You did talk, didn't you?"

"About this whole thing, what else. Look, Professor, I'm your friend,
companion in misfortune anyhow."

"Call me Edmund please. My professorial days finished when I left Africa. So

how did you find my wife?"

"Very upset, but very calm and determined."

"Determined? What do you mean?" He caught a look of fear in Dzimba's eye

and suddenly understood. He grabbed his shirtfront and tie. "You're lying,
aren't you?"

Dzimba relaxed visibly for the first time. "Yes, I'm lying. But I can't keep it up,
especially as I don't know if I should. She wanted me to let you think she's just
got home now, but actually she went almost immediately after we were
outside."

"So where have you been? With her?"

"No, that was the last thing she wanted. I've been in the hotel bar downstairs.
She asked me to wait three hours."

"That means... She didn't tell you why?"

"No, but I'm afraid it's obvious."

Edmund clutched his forehead. "Leticia, Leticia. I must go." Without looking at
the others he rushed out of the room, leaving the door open. But Agniezska
ran after him. "Wait. It's three miles. I'll drive you back."

He stopped and let her lead him to the car. They were soon out of the village.
"Listen..."

"Don't say anything."

They continued in silence, until Agniezska pulled up outside the door to the
west wing of the school. "I'll be waiting here." He didn't answer, was already
fumbling with his keys in the porch.

He let himself into what he knew would be an empty flat and looked for the
note, disappointed before he read it at its shortness:

This is really good-bye, husband. We'll still have our bank accounts
together, unless you object. I've asked Spud to look in on you. Take
comfort still in my love, I beg you, and thanks truly for yours. Don't
look for me. I am not going to Milan.

She sounded almost Shakespearean. He shook off the irrelevant thought and
went to the wardrobe cupboard in the wall. The big suitcase had gone and
most of her clothes. The address book was lying open at page T for taxi. He
sat motionless in the big armchair, his hands loose like a baby's. He looked at
them, noticing that the skin no longer went into those dry creases and folds it
had had less than ten years ago. One of Leticia's grey hairs lay across the
note still lying on his lap. Yes, it was he who had left her. He contemplated the
thought with sorrow. Only to get back, to get back. Is there no way? An
unreasonable hope surged inside him; but then he compared himself to those
so recently bereaved they have not yet realised their loss. Heavy days lay
surely ahead. A ring at the door broke off his meditation. He knew it would not
be her but still allowed hope to invigorate him as he went to open. It was
Spud, with Bunty standing beside him.She jumped up to Edmund as always,
her paws above his knees, her smell comforting as he bent to ruffle her fur.

"You need a drink," said Spud, not troubling to explain his appearance at so
late an hour. "What'll it be?"

"A big glass of water, I think, please, Spud. But help yourself to something
stronger." He seemed to need to force out each word.

The old Ulsterman came back into the room, whisky and water in hand, and
sat down in the armchair opposite. "Well, Ed my boy, I'll not be wanting to
intrude on your feelings, sad ones I suppose, but she made me promise to
look in on you."

"What did she say?"

"Oh, she just said she had to go away quickly and that you might use a bit of
company, my company actually."

Edmund smiled. "That's right, Spud. I can't think of anyone else I could endure
just now."

"Well then, you just endure me for a while, until it'll be time to get some sleep.
One does sleep, you know, on these occasions."

"What occasions?"

"Well, I'm thinking... Oh, Lord, I was going to say I'm thinking of when me own
wife departed."

"Oh. Where did she go?"

"She died. But it's not the same, of course. Leticia's very much alive. Sad, you
know, but determined, on wherever she was going. She didn't tell me."

"Strange. You're the second person who's told me she was determined."

"Oh. Does someone else know about this? That Mrs. Linton perhaps? Is she
maybe the cause of it all? Best you tell me, perhaps. For comfort, you know.
I'm not nosey, just trying to come up to Leticia's expectations. I admire her
very much, you know."

"Yes, well, I love her. So I'm glad you admire her. But I don't love Mrs. Linton,
just to get the record straight."

"But she loves you, and your wife can't take it. Is that it?"

"Believe it or not, that's not even half the story." Murphy was looking at him
intently.

"But wait, what are we doing? Where is she. If you know you'd better tell me."

"Calm down now, calm down. She called the taxi over three hours ago now
and said not a word as to where she was going. You could maybe trace the
driver..."

"I don't know. She's asked me not to do that. She means it and the worst of it
is, I know she's right."

"Well, I suppose now that's just what I don't understand. You know the old
song,

Why do they always say no

When they know they mean yes all the time?"

Spud had the grace just to recite the words. It was no time for singing.
"There's none of that in Leticia, is there? So why has she gone like this, in the
middle of the night, a woman my age nearly, though one wouldn't think so,
looking at you these days." Again he stared intently at Edmund. "And I'm not
the only one round here noticing it. Am I on to something now?"

Edmund found himself laughing. "Now you are damn well curious, Spud. But
who wouldn't be? I've got something you'd better read right now. It'll take you
about twenty minutes. Just promise me to keep the secret."

"Mum's the word." He stroked his dog, who had jumped on his lap the
moment he had first sat down. Edmund fetched the folded sheets Leticia had
found the other day inside the Huxley novel, and sat down to let Spud read of
those decisive days in Africa six years or so ago.

After a while the old man looked up. "You're asking me to believe this? It's like
a fantasy novel."

"But it's the best explanation of what's going on now, isn't it?"

"Anyhow, why do you write your name's not Joubert, when it is?"

"I'd forgotten that. Must have been literary exuberance, self-dramatization or

something. Maybe I had been hoping still to make a story out of it."

Spud jerked his head in irritation and continued reading to the end. "My God,
the poor woman. She was carrying that around inside her from the first day
you two came here."

"I know, and I couldn't put it right, can't put it right."

"Well, don't feel too sorry for yourself. I'm not sure I'm in the mood. There's
some people will do anything other people put into their heads. Anyhow, I
suppose that's why you're looking like you do now. She was already looking
like your mother, quite honestly. Not that that's all that important. But it's
clear she was worried about what would come next."

"It's going so quickly, you see. We never thought of that. We just assumed the
reverse pace would be at the same rate."

"Pretty wishful thinking, wasn't it? Like you assumed she'd do such a daft
thing herself, when you only need to look at her to know she never would. No
more would I. Life has a shape, don't you know that, and death at the right
time is a gift, a blessing. It's our expecting it gives its quality to our behaviour,
a kind of artistic unity you might say. But you'll die anyway. Oh, by the way, I
suppose that young woman's done it as well."

"How would you know that?"

"Well you write about her, Linton's wife, as a forty-eight year old, and I don't
suppose there's two Mrs. Lintons and she's not forty-eight unless she's some
kind of Dorian Gray, same as you. It's strange, though. You write it like a
novel, but you use the real names."

"Just put it down to my frivolity, Spud, along with this whole miserable mess."

"Do you read Faust?" the old man asked suddenly.

"No. I can't say I do. Why?"

"I've been reading it all my life, learned a lot of it by heart, in fact. I studied in
Germany as a young man, as I think I've told you. Anyhow, my advice to you
tonight is going to be from that poem, even though I still don't know if I
believe this whole stupid story. You could still be all in this together, though
that would be unbelievably cruel to your wife."

"Of course we're not. Let's have your Faustian advice."

"Mephistophelian to be precise. He says to Faust, and I quote,

Nichts Abgeschmachters find ich auf der Welt

Als einen Teufel, der verzweifelt,

which means, in my understanding, that there's nothing more stupid, more

tasteless, in the world than a devil who despairs. Now he says that of course
because Faust had wanted to join the Devil's party, as Blake called it, and
whether that was your intention or not that's now where you're at, as the
Yanks say. You're as odd as ever Faust was, you're a superman with special
powers, and not just the power to pull the Pope's nose. You've got the elixir of
youth. It doesn't matter for how long. You're in your second youth already and
nobody, but nobody, unless that Polish woman, has had that. Now, and this is
my advice to you, as Leticia would have wanted, no, wants me to give you. If
you're a devil, then be a devil. You've wreaked havoc in your personal life, but
most of the great artists, life's great actors, and I'm not saying, mind you, that
you're great, oh no, Mr. Joubert. But the great and the weird are analogous in
that both are unusual. Now what was I saying? Yes, that a lot of people have
messed up their domestic lives, but that's no reason to stop, to despair. Carry
on with the project. That's what Leticia would most admire, for one thing.
Especially as you can't do anything else. And probably you'll have to take
along that indeed devilishly attractive young woman at your side, certainly an
improvement on Mephistopheles I'd say. You remember, Gretchen couldn't
stand the sight of him."

"There is no Gretchen."

"Well, we'll leave that to time and inspiration. Most men your age, and still
more the age you're going to be, take up with a few Gretchens along the way.
What are you going to do otherwise?"

"You surprise me, Spud. Can't you imagine I have any intellectual projects in
mind?"

"Sure you do, but you'll be wanting to tell people about them. Besides, you'll
be attracting admiration. And it would be rather a hothouse situation if you
just stuck with your partner in crime the whole time. She's going to want to
break out even quicker than you, anyhow, by the look of her. Not too much
moral horror in her make-up, I'll be bound."

"No, there isn't. Do you know, you've quite inspired me. Yes indeed we'll go on
as we've begun. 'It little profits that an idle king' and so on. Yes, all the great
music says the same, doesn't it, pulsing onward, into the abyss and then up
the other side, maybe, maybe not, but onward all the same."

"Now you're getting romantic. I only meant..."

"But this is what you meant. We're all romantic, Spud, because the so-called
romantics, let's call them the affirmers, are right. 'The great C Major of this
life.' Browning's as good as any, or let's just say, 'To them that have shall be
given,' to quote an older source."

"You worry me.Five minutes ago you were as miserable as sin, and now you're
in ecstasy."

"You're right, but it helps me, you know. I am miserable, though. And I shall try
to find her. I know how. But I needed you, needed you to remind me to face
my destiny in a positive spirit, lonely if not high, the destiny I mean."

The doorbell rang again. It was Agniezska. "Oh, I'm sorry," she said, seeing
Spud. "I was afraid. I mean I must know what's happened, and if you're all
right."

Edmund simply stared at her and so it was Spud who told her about Leticia's
departure before going on to retail much of the immediately preceding
conversation. "I flatter myself I've put some heart into this young devil as I
may call him," he wound up, "and I expect you can do the rest. What I'm
wondering is how you're going to do it, what your plans are. It's school
holidays now, a good time to disappear."

"I had been thinking of giving a term's notice."

"Not a good idea, believe me. You're looking odder and more unnatural by the
day, to those who remember your arrival, and then with your wife suddenly
gone. I doubt if the school could take it. But is it the money you're needing?"

"No. Not really. I'm quite well placed."

"What about you, Mrs. Linton?"

"Lucas and I have agreed to divorce actually. He doesn't want my son ever to
see me. So he settled with me quite generously, all the money from his books,
you know. So I've got a steady income, small of course, from the interest, but
enough. It's just, well I don't know where I'll go."

"Well, I'll leave you to discuss that with my young colleague. I think I've
served my purpose here tonight." Edmund rose to see him out.

"Just come and say good-bye when you're going," said the old man. "Lordy,
there's a lot for us to digest here, ain't there, Bunty. Maybe you'd like to have
one of them operations. I'm scared of losing her, you know." He jerked himself
straight. "Forgive me, that was thoughtless. Listen, she's not too bad, that
young woman or whatever she is. She needs you and she adores you, I can
see both. She'll care for you and you must care for her."

"Yes, even Leticia said that."

"Well, good night then." He shut the door and Edmund came back into the
room.

"Now," he said. "I want you to go straight back to Dzimba. There's no reason
to ignore him. Yes, I know you don't want him, etcetera etcetera. But there's
more to human relations than wanting people, as we both know. Besides, he's
our doctor, isn't he? We may need him."

She was glad he had bracketed them together and left happily enough. Not
long afterwards he fell deeply asleep.

III

Agniezska

von einem zu dem Andern,

fein Liebchen, gute Nacht.

A vigorous knocking at the door awoke him. Spud stood there in pyjamas and dressing-
gown.

"Sorry. You didn't answer the bell. It's her, on the phone. You sleep like a log and she
stays awake. Takes us different ways, doesn't it?"
Agniezska was apologetic too. "Spud told me you'd be asleep, said you'd need it. But you
can sleep again, I'm just so restless. Listen, the main thing is, Patrick has gone. There was
a note
last night. He said it was over. He's gone to some old friends in London. Left an address
which will always reach him if necessary, he says."

"Good. What now, then?"

"That's just it. Shall I come over?"

"Under no circumstances. I'll come to you later this morning."

"You've no car."

"Of course I've got a car. It's in the garage here. Just let me sleep a bit more, have a shower
and some breakfast and I'll be there by mid-day."

Back in the room grief returned upon him, an inner constrictedness, tears, followed by
blank sleep. He awoke, however, braced and resolute, trying to remember the Goethe
Spud had quoted. This led him to look up Satan's speech in Milton on his shelves. Not
much of it seemed to fit his case. Still, "I give not Heaven for lost," he breathed. "Yes, my
darling, I'll find you again somehow, after all this. You'll see. Go well now, go well."

In fact he walked into the village, which took about three quarters of an hour. It was a
fine August morning, not too hot, and after the drama of the past two days the fresh air
and country smells, the encounters with local people at the roadside, children in the
fields, seemed to fill him with new life. He talked to Leticia in his mind.

Agniezska received him with an uncertain humility which awoke his protective feelings,
together with his memory of their common predicament. He took her gently in his arms.
This, and the general feel of her restored youth, awoke other feelings beside the
protective ones. Placing his hands on her fairly broad shoulders - he thought of the Polish
oxen again, but surely there were Polish heifers as well - he pressed her down onto the
sofa, himself taking the armchair. They talked about Dzimba. She didn't think he was at
all heart-broken.

"Actually he was my first black man," she said, "contrary to what you may think. I'll
never understand them. I mean, I don't think they ever feel really lonely, like we do."

"Let's say, if they do then it's death to them, being cut off from the tribe and so on."

"Come on. What has Patrick got to do with tribes? He's a Westerner, Guys Hospital and
so on."
"Yes, of course. But he has a certain capital to live on. He is a person through persons, as
their proverb says, through what he was born into. But it's also negative, from our point
of view. It means he's not quite autonomous, not quite actualised as an individual. That's
why you feel he's not heart-broken. And he's sensible enough not to be madly wounded
in his pride, knowing you don't much want him either, if I don't presume, like some of
them often do. Some of us, for that matter."

"No you don't presume," she said, using a soft, quiet voice.

"I've been thinking," he went on hurriedly, emotion being the last thing he could use at
the moment, drained as he was. "There hasn't been time to tell you, but the fact is that
although I've been school-teaching here I've kept up with work, my work, some other
people's work, in philosophy. I wasn't going to let them freeze me out, you know."

"No, I don't know, not really."

"No, of course you don't. You see I've annoyed quite a lot of people with my ideas and
writings, and I'm not orthodox any more."

"I thought philosophy was free."

"It is. It's academic philosophy that isn't. Not in England anyhow. The point is though, I
have my allies here and there and a congress has been organized in what they're calling
alternative philosophy, and they've asked me to speak."

"Oh that's good. Where is it?"

"It's in Stockholm, next month."

Her face fell. "Oh, you'll be going far away, then."

It was only then that he made up his mind. "Well, I was thinking we might go together."

"You mean that?"

"Well, you've nowhere else to go, have you?"

"Yes, but I don't want to be a burden to you."

"You're not. Listen, I just need time to get over, no I don't want to get over, to accept
what's happened. It's terrible, you know, just terrible. But I mean, well, you're a
presentable young woman, to say the least. Why shouldn't I be glad to have you beside
me. As long as you behave yourself, of course," he couldn't resist adding, though it no
doubt reflected a serious concern for the future as well. He knew that a woman once
taken on is not easily dropped off again, which made it potentially disastrous when there
was no deep internal bond. Still in this case, in this unique case... "Anyway," he added,
"we'll want to be watching each other, won't we. Today, for example, I would guess you
look about fifteen years younger than me."

"Really? Then I think I'd have to look very young indeed, but come over here, please,
come and sit by me." He moved over somewhat sheepishly, letting her take the upper
hand, as well as his own hand, which she squeezed and playfully swung. "This is what
Leticia wants, you know."

"Yes, I know." He raised her hand and kissed it.

"How sweet. What are you going to talk to them about in Stockholm?"

"It's called 'The Completeness of Syllogistic'."

"How boring that sounds. What's alternative about it?"

"Well," he began, somewhat reluctantly, "it attacks the idea that Frege and Russell
discovered a whole lot more about logic that poor old Aristotle never had the sense to
think of as he was so fixated, they think, on this one form of two premisses with a
common term giving a conclusion. What I say, it's very daring actually, is that he
discovered the inner form of any thinking at all that leads to new knowledge. He wasn't
just fixated."

"Well I could see how that might be interesting, though I hardly understand a word
you're saying. Do you think they might buy that in Stockholm?"

"Some of them will, some of them have; well, those are from Finland actually, but it's
because of them that I've been invited."

"And you want to go?"

"Oh yes, very much. It's the only way I can keep going. Especially as I'm hoping there
might not be anyone there I've actually met."

"What if there is?"

"Oh I'll just brazen it out. Let them think I've had a face-lift or something."

"Well you'd better not get into bed with any of them, or the fat will really be in the fire, so
to speak." Her laughter showed nervousness.

"They're all men, the people I might know, and I'm sure you won't suspect that this
change has awoken some alternative proclivities."
"Well, alternative philosophy, you said."

"Yes, but I've always had that. Anyway Agniezska, dear," he squeezed her hand.

"Yes, Uncle Edmund?"

He laughed. "I was going to say, I'm glad you said that, about bed. There's not to be any
misunderstanding. We're friends, all right, we might become very erotic friends, with all
the feelings that involves, but there's no tie, no engagement beyond that general loyalty.
That was the attraction of first having this done," he patted his own neck and then hers,
"wasn't it?"

"Of course, Edmund. You mustn't ever think..."

"No. You are to enjoy yourself as well, after all that frustrating time with Lucas. You're
pretty irresistible at the moment, you know. And we can compare notes or not, as you
like. Help each other not to be lonely, though we'll always be lonely with the others. Oh,
and another thing."

"What?"

"I think we should agree not to tell, not anyone. This could turn the world upside down,
after all."

"No, you're right. I'm not irresponsible, you know. And I've seen what it's done to Leticia,
besides Patrick and Lucas. But there is one thing Patrick told me. He said the operation
wasn't as simple as you might have thought. It wouldn't have worked for his father, even
if he hadn't had a heart attack. You have to know something medical, something he had
to work out from that old book he told us about, you know, where the gland is, what to
do to it and so on."

"Anyway," she went on, twisting her fingers in his. "You say I'm irresistible. So why don't
we, this morning I mean, why don't you see if you could please me a little? Only if you
want, I mean. Then maybe I could think straight about what to do next. Don't you want
me at all?" She leaned her forehead against his cheek and waited, as he felt the warmth of
her thigh against his through her thin summer dress. It was as an opiate against grief. He
thought of people getting aroused at funerals. After a while he rose and led her to the
bed. Her own urgency, the tightness of her arms, excited him. "Oh my friend, my friend"
she cried rather than said, while he tried to relate her litheness of body to their previous
encounter, when he had thought of Moussorgsky's plodding rhythm. Now he thought of,
heard something out of Richard Strauss. That had been downward, this was upward
moving, into the unknown, a brilliant blue unknown. The only thing that bound the two
occasions to one person, apart from his remembering her pleasantly individual smell, was
that confident protective urge her unambiguous surrender aroused in him. Afterwards, at
any rate, in contentment beyond the reach of thought, things seemed simpler between
them. There was an aura of optimism in fact. "Can you really not get children?" he asked.
"No, really. I'm a genuine sports model. Go anywhere, anytime, any time you want, I
mean."

He leaned and kissed her. "You don't need to tell me. We're going to look after each
other."

"Oh God, this is nice. Do you think having sex makes you fall in love?"

"Not all the way, and you just remember that. But I think when it works it works in that
direction, for me anyhow. But there's nothing rigidly exclusive about it. That's the
important point for us."

"Yes. That's important for me too, whatever funny male ideas you may have about
women wanting to possess and so on. I like my freedom as much as you,though it's not
freedom from each other. It's just freedom."

"Yes. Now, though, to business. How long are you going to stay in this hotel?"

"How long are you going to stay at the school?"

"Spud thinks I should leave right away, or before the boys come back. He thinks I've
changed too much since they broke up, and then with Leticia's abrupt departure, the
whispering and so on. It could destabilize the whole school. I think I can settle by post
with the head, make it a case for compassionate departure without notice, maybe even
bring my pension forward a little."

"Oh, we're all right for money, I think."

"Yes, but one must always husband one's resources, you know. Anyway you didn't
answer my question."

"Yes, I've been thinking. There's something you don't know about me." She started to rub
her instep over the sole of his foot.

"Move away if you want me to listen. What don't I know about you?"

"Well, it's true I'm Polish, but I don't really come from Poland."

"Go on."

"I've lived much of my life in Berlin, West Berlin. We were refugees in the early time, not
long after the war, before they built the Wall. My father was from Gdansk, Danzig,and
although Polish was his first language he had a German type of name, Grass actually, like
the tin drum man, you know, though no relation that we know of. My father spoke
excellent German and, well, my mother was actually German, perhaps that was what
tipped the balance, even though they could see I and my sisters didn't speak German.
Anyhow we all got German papers and, well, I do speak it quite well now."

"How strange. Agniezska, this is very interesting and I'm glad to know more about you. I
want to know much more still." He leaned over and kissed the inside of her firm elbow.
"But you said you had been thinking."

"Yes. We have a garden house in Berlin; you know, say three hundred square metres and
a wooden cottage, no electricity, a wood stove."

"Sounds lovely."

"Yes, what's lovely is that no one uses it. My sisters are not in Berlin and we pay the
neighbour to keep the garden in order. You're obliged to, you know. People complain
about grass seed blowing over and so on. Anyway, I have a key. I carry it around with
me."

If he didn't think of Leticia Joubert could feel that life was brightening up, offering a way
to go forward. "So what's the suggestion, partner dear?"

"The suggestion? I call it an inspiration. There's a month before your conference. We can't
stay here. You have to leave the school. So we are both suddenly homeless, and this is a
home. We can even go back there after Stockholm if nothing better comes up, stay the
winter there. It'll be warm enough, and well, if it isn't I think we've just shown we know
how to keep warm when we're together. Or do I assume too much?" She rolled over on
top of him before sitting up on her knees and adopting a position Joubert was not sure he
had ever been treated to. "This is called falscher Reiter in Germany," she said. He felt
unable to answer at first, just gazed at her young and beautiful face, eyes dreamy as they
had never been in Africa.

"Don't tell me you used to do that with Lucas" he said, quite some time afterwards.

"No, never. The man who first seduced me got me to do it but it hurt at that time. Now it
feels just right. Promise me we'll do it again and again."

"I only hope so. And you can tell me about that gentleman some time. Are you sure it was
a one-way seduction?"

"No I'm not, quite honestly. One is rather wicked at thirteen. He was a friend of my
father's and I saw he was always looking at me. I felt he was silently telling me to lift my
skirt over my knees the whole time and that's what I kept doing, naturally when others
couldn't see. Yes, he was rather shy, actually, until afterwards. Then he had me in his
power of course. But I never hated him."

"I hope you have at least some conversation that doesn't get me all excited the whole time.
Where is this cottage in Berlin? I do know the city a bit."

"It's in Schmargendorf, by Wilmersdorf where we used to live. Shall we go there today?

We could have a nice month, almost like a..." She stopped herself in time. "Oh darling, I'm
sorry. Not thinking."

"Don't worry. And call me darling if you want. I should be grateful."

"What are you going to call me?"

"Oh, Pussy I expect."

She laughed. "Edmund Joubert, that's not nice."

"On the contrary, it's the nicest thing there is. Especially your one."

"Yes, well we won't go into that. Let's show some strength of mind and get dressed. You
can get a good lunch here quite cheaply."

After lunch Edmund wrote a letter of resignation to the headmaster, who was away at
Torquay. Agniezska drove him up to the school and waited while he packed his things
and got his car out of the garage. Spud was out shooting with Bunty so Joubert wrote a
note of thanks, leaving the Berlin address. They then drove in convoy to give the hired car
back in Hounslow, and put up for the night at a hotel in London. It was a Saturday and,
acting on a sudden whim, Edmund took Agniezska to the Hammersmith Palais, an
experience which reminded her of her youth in Berlin. In fact it showed her as nothing
else had that she was now young, her body and blood adapted to the rhythms and
atmosphere of the free for all dance hall, the electricity passing from eye to eye, the only
apparently accidental bumpings together on the dance floor. Edmund's feelings were
mixed. He was relieved to see she was not fixated on him. Perhaps, like himself, their
session together had left her with a generalized and triumphant eroticism. At the same
time he could not but think of her as his property, at least for the time being, so that he
could be sure to get enough of her. This rather self-interested line of speculation coexisted
in his mind with a strongly protective urge, for the girl, yes girl she was now, who had
made the same mistake as he had done.

**********************************

Next morning, after what he thought was some excellent forger's work on their passports,
bringing the birthdate forward twenty years, they drove up to Yarmouth to board a little
used ferry Edmund happened to have used with pleasure once before which deposited
them, in the evening, at Scheveningen on the Dutch coast. In fact Agniezska had turned
out to have two passports, British and German. "You're not supposed to," she said, "but it
may come in handy."

As they drove eastward he reflected that he had wanted to use this time to go to look for
Leticia. He now saw clearly that that would have been counter-productive, like Spud's
despairing devil.

"What are you so quiet about?"

He told her. Secrets and reserve seemed totally out of place now, and he admitted gladly
to himself that his fears about her insensitivity had been unfounded. Had it been a pose,
that persona she had had with Lucas in Africa? Perhaps vulgarity in general was often no
more than an act, though one often rather said the same about the more genteel. What
was sincerity anyhow? He remembered how Sartre had analysed it away. Sincerity was a
pose like any other. Was one to swallow that after all? He recalled how he had written
expressly against it, defending an Aristotelian view of life, of letting it be directed by "the
truth of things". But now he was in a situation where one could hardly do that, things had
been turned upside down, one had to be what one had made oneself.

They had no difficulty getting through the East German and later the Berlin checkpoints,
apart from the usual annoyances. Asked repeatedly if he had weapons he bit back the
impulse to say "Yes, there's a machine-gun in the boot." One never knew if one might find
oneself in Siberia. With relief they drove up the Avus into West Berlin.

************************************

That month in her cottage was the happiest Agniezska remembered ever having had. Her
past life, the life of an older, rather disappointed woman, seemed, with the reversal of
times and states, very faint to her memory indeed. Even her son she thought of without
regret. She just wasn't his mother any more. How could she be? He was going on thirty
while she looked and felt no older. A mother was something she had been, so she needn't
regret her hysterectomy but could not return to the emotions of motherhood either.
Rather, her state was analogous to that of a departed soul in paradise who treads the
grass at perpetually "the perfect age", as Edmund had told her the Scholastics described
it. If those souls were to remember the pangs of motherhood they could hardly be
perfectly happy. But it was frightening to think they had in a sense died. She preferred
Edmund's, or Leticia's, idea of another dimension.

Edmund's state was less serene, clouded over by his wife's leaving him, though then
again, was it him she had left, or her husband who had been he? If he would meet her
when he was grown down to a boy again and she was old and wrinkled, what
significance would that have? It might be even worse than Berlioz looking up Estelle in
his old age, though he had never succeeded in making her his childhood sweetheart in
the first place. No wonder the old bag had been astonished, he thought savagely to
himself. But no, he would never call Leticia, never see her as an old bag. But would he
reach her, was he not truly dead as she said, the marriage over? He should try to mourn
her as one dead, anyhow easier than thinking of her as having abandoned him. He
recalled that that was exactly as she had explained her own situation to them and this
made him feel they were united in mind, though the great gulf separated them.

The enjoyment of Agniezska's young body and personality, sharpened by his sense of her
delight in him, absorbed something like eighty per cent of his consciousness. He hardly
worked on the paper for Stockholm. They did things in the garden together, went into the
city, cooked. Often they visited the local swimming-pool over the road. They both had to
wear bathing caps, hair being apparently considered locally as a source of uncleanness or
worse. With her round head and figure Agniezska appeared younger than ever; he
thought the Ekberg effect was diminishing. The reality of the situation, that she would
one day soon no longer look mature, perhaps when he was looking in his early twenties,
came over him as if for the first time. He reminded himself of his freedom, not letting
himself dwell upon his own approaching infancy. One could not maintain a philosophic
attitude to life through an adventure like this. He had given so many previous years to
that, not only his older years but even much, too much, of his precious first youth. He had
often felt he had never been properly young. Well, here was the chance to make up for it.

"You have the most beautiful skin I have ever seen on a man," Agniezska said one night
in the cottage, a candle burning by the bedside. She was stroking his side. Her gesture
recalled to him Chaucer's Troilus, though that made him Criseyde, which seemed odd:

Her sydes longe, fleshly smooth and whyte,

He gan to stroke...

Some things didn't change that much. He started to think of a girl he had exchanged
glances with in the pool that day. The best thing seemed to be to tell Agniezska about her,
and what he had felt he would enjoy doing. She took it very quietly, then resumed her
stroking.

"Well, I wish I could tell you I've had my eye on some of the men there, but it just hasn't
been like that. But don't worry, I'll get started sometime and then we can compare notes.
Perhaps she'll be at the pool tomorrow."

"Oh, by the way," she resumed after a moment's silence. "I've decided I won't come to
Stockholm with you. It might cramp your style, with the other academics, you know, the
dinners and so on, and us having this secret, this non-past all the time. Besides, I really
want to stay on here in September. I've been loving it so much and, well, I can hope that
you'll come back, can't I?" She stopped stroking him again.

"Of course I'll want to come back. I feel sad to think we'll be separated, though I must
admit I had feared being together there might make us more apart from the others than I
might want to be. It used to be like that with Leticia. I hated her absence while at the same
time I was always striving to be free and on my own. God, what am I saying? The
difference is I could never say that to her, never say on some particular occasion that it
would be better if she didn't come. She could always judge that for herself, and I just
made the best of that."
"But that's just what I've done now." It occurred to him that she had done it on impulse,
when he had mentioned the girl at the pool.

"True, true, and I'm grateful to you. We both know we're always going to need one
another, and I think we can say too that we're extremely fond of one another, or do I
presume?"

"You don't, and you know that's what I want you to be certain of, as I'm certain of you.
I'm only afraid you might meet some woman who totally absorbs you, demands that you
drop me. Sex is so powerful; it sets up a transcendental bond, some say, even when you
pay a person to do it with you."

"Have you ever done that?"

"No. How could you imagine, me, a young woman?"

"Well, I thought maybe the gardener in Africa. You weren't young then, after all."

"No chance, and you're very ungallant. I told you, Dzimba was the first of those. But have
you ever paid for it?"

"Let's leave that for now. What you just said, about me getting captured. You're
forgetting. I only need to tell them I'm moving downwards, frighten the life out of them."

"They might settle for ten or fifteen years of your increasing youth. Anyway, you might
decide you don't want to tell them that."

"Well then it won't be anyone I have very deep feelings for, if I keep that out of it. That's
our bond, Agniezska. Be confident."

************************************

He drove to Stockholm via Rügen and Trelleborg, having rejected Agniezska's suggestion
that he leave her the car. After meeting him at the university as arranged his Swedish
hosts escorted him to his hotel and left him there. Although there were still four days
before the conference opened no courtesy visits or invitations materialised. This meant
that Joubert was able to get his paper ready, as he had neglected doing during those
intoxicated days in Berlin. He was conscious of a certain mental quickness he at once put
down to the rejuvenation of his brain cells, though he presumed that the destroyed cells,
like Agniezska's womb and his lost teeth, could not return. But perhaps new ones grew as
he got younger, though why not teeth in that case? Perhaps there were going to be some
teeth.

There was one man at the conference, Mackeson, whom he had met before, when
completing his doctoral studies. This man was visibly astonished at his appearance,
saying, with slight exaggeration, that it was "extraordinary for a man nearing seventy",
but Edmund simply begged him not to tell others his age. The man himself seemed too
taken up with his own presentation, of the ideas of Velikovsky, to return to the mystery of
Edmund's appearance. Unable to overcome his curiosity Edmund attended his lecture
but stayed well at the back, hoping not to be noticed too much. He was in fact fascinated
by what he heard of the other's presentation of Velikovsky's ideas as discoveries which
were rejected by the scientific establishment as not building upon intellectual capital
already invested, though the evidence, affirmed the speaker, shouted their truth. This
seemed to Edmund to parallel what he had to say about syllogistic in logic. He had given
his own paper the day before and could not forego pointing out the parallel forcibly
during the discussion of Mackeson's paper. He noticed that he was being looked at very
intently, and guessed it was because he spoke with an authority and experience which
could not but clash with how he looked. It occurred to him too late that it would have
been prudent to take along some theatrical props with him, at least a false beard.

The mixture, of youth and intellectual mastery compelling respect from others, seemed
especially attractive to the female participants, very many of whom came up to talk to
him afterwards, clustering around him all the time, indeed, so that he felt some
embarrassment, guessing the resentment this was causing. One lady journalist offered
him a large sum if he let himself be interviewed by her on Swedish television as a
spokesman for young conservatism. This terrified him, but his refusal of the generous
offer was beyond her comprehension and he saw her talking to others about it for the rest
of the conference. He began to feel that retirement of life was imperative.

One day near the end of the conference a woman came up to him who introduced herself
as Nava Richardson. She spoke perfect English with a barely perceptible Nordic lilt. "I
was most impressed with your talk and I would like to invite you to dinner at our home
one evening before you leave. I hope you can come as I have a proposition to make to
you." This was delivered like a speech learned by heart, but without any trace of
nervousness. Nava looked about twenty-eight though he later heard she was ten years
older. Her face had a most unique kind of beauty, as if one were seeing it under water,
while her voice had a soothing quality one longed to hear again. He accepted the
invitation.

Nava lived with her English husband Brian in a house, called in Sweden a villa, on the
Mälar, the inland sea that stretches west of the city. In fact they only used the top flat.
Downstairs they ran a kind of private gymnasium or sixth form college. She was the
rector but Brian helped administer it and taught music, giving frequent recitals of Brahms
and Brahms again, while Nava taught languages and literature, Swedish, German and
English. She had heard that Edmund had no position and told him she needed a
philosophy teacher, as planned for in the Swedish educational system. He could use the
cottage in the garden free, while payment would be on a half-time basis. She hoped he
would often consent to eat with them. Edmund decided to accept the proposal, as he told
Agniezska when she next telephoned, saying he would not be returning to Berlin
immediately and telling her what books to send him. She expressed pleasure at the
development, especially after he said she could visit him after a while, but also said she
needed to write to him immediately. He detected an unaccountable nervousness in her
voice, as is always so easy to notice on the telephone, while she told him this. Why did
she need to write?

********************************

He settled in in the cottage in the garden, actually a kind of superior shack. He had to go
into the house, to which Nava gave him a key, for bathroom and other purposes. The
cottage had electricity, however, and he was glad to be able to keep his pocket computer
plugged in there. The pay was generous and he was even allowed to pick the day on
which his course, a general introduction to philosophy, would begin. In the meantime he
found that getting to know Nava and Brian better absorbed his chief interest. Often in the
evenings he sat with Nava while Brian played Brahms, seemingly without end as he also
included piano versions, apparently out of his head, of symphonies, quartets and the rest.

"Don't you play any other composer?"

"No, I never do."

"Why not?"

"Well, for me there's music and there's Brahms, and I prefer Brahms. Music is just my
job."

"Oh, come on, if you respond to Brahms you respond to Schubert, for example."

"Well, life is short. I know my Schubert, but he's not me. Brahms is."

"Is that how you feel?" he asked Nava.

"Oh no. We can hear some Schubert, or Mozart if you like, later. He always goes quite
early to bed."

He felt a passing thrill at her saying this, it was his third evening sitting with them after
supper, but he somehow understood there was nothing ulterior about it. He felt an
extraordinary peace sitting beside her which continued when the Brahms ceased. He
noticed that they had separate bedrooms.

"Brian is very sick," she said. "He has leukemia."

"I'm sorry. What's the prognosis?"

"Four months now."

"I'm sorry. You must be very sad."

"Sad for him, yes. But I can't help him. He has been long time angry with me. He can't let
himself go, and he is full of secrets. It is perhaps better to avoid Englishmen."

"I'm English."

"True. But your name is not English."

"No. My grandfather was a French Canadian, also a musician actually. He led an

orchestra which used to play in the hotels. Palm Court type of thing."

"What is that?"

"Oh, light music, you know. It was before radio, so he had no problems."

"Before radio? Was your grandfather so old?"

"What? Oh well, you see, that was when he was young. Yes, they got my mother when he
was in his fifties already."

"Well, and she must have been in her forties when she got you. You say 'got' like that.?"

Edmund took the chance to turn the conversation towards linguistics, but felt sure that
Nava was not deceived, at least saw that he was concealing something. He was all the
more grateful that she asked nothing more, and said good night not long after.

Next day the letter came from Agniezska.

Dear friend,
I am so afraid what I have to tell you may turn you against me, though I
know we will always have every reason not to lose interest in each other. But
I feel I must tell you, both because of my fear and how it shows us to
ourselves, though you may want to say shows me.
Harry came, my son. He knew something about this place, perhaps he
tracked Dzimba down, I don't know. Who cares? Anyhow, no one had told
him anything about this let's call it metamorphosis. So when I let him in he
didn't recognize me and I found myself praying that he wouldn't. I said I
was the daughter of one of my sisters. "How thrilling, an unknown cousin,"
he said, and then he began to flirt with me. A tremendous longing for him
came over me, not as my son but like I feel for you, although perhaps it was
caused by the sense of our affinity, if that's the word. I think it is. Then I saw
his eyes and realised he had fallen totally for me. I just didn't have it in me to
repel him, and he was totally possessed. Well, so was I. You could say we
were like dogs but I never felt more human. We just went on and on. I am
still drunk with it, though I haven't forgotten you either. It was never like
this when I was young before. There were other things that seemed more
important somehow. Now they don't.
Anyway, then came what I thought would be the hard part. I remembered I
 was his mother, we were pretty exhausted by then, and I started to cry. Don't
be angry, Edmund dear, you called me Agniezska dear the other day, didn't
you, it just comes like that. Yes, don't be angry, but I had to tell him. I
thought, he has to know where his mother is, we've no right to let him think
she was dead. But oh God, I was so terrified he'd rush out and jump under a
lorry, like Oedipus or something. But he didn't. I tell you, the young today
are different and we'd better realise that. He just stared at me with his mouth
open and said, "Well that explains it, no wonder we felt like that." And
before asking me all he must have been bursting to know he just caught hold
of me and we did it again. I was just weeping and clinging to him and
remembering now he had been my son and he just kept saying over and over
my wonderful mother my wonderful mother. Anyway then I told him
everything, I mean everything, what was I supposed to conceal, and made
him swear to keep the secret, which he did. I told him how fast it was going
and how we felt and how you felt and that no one should envy us too much
and he just joked and said he might be interested in about forty years time.
Then he started to worry about what will happen to me later, which was nice
of him, but I tried to make him see that I wasn't his mother any more, that the
change was too big for that and he asked if that meant he should mourn for
me and build a memorial somewhere. That hurt me I can tell you, I mean are
we dead? We're the same and not the same. But look, if there are no words
anymore then let's just live shall we, like the Americans. To tell you the truth
I'm a bit drunk, otherwise I couldn't write this. I'm afraid to phone you.
Please send me a telegram and please, please let me come to you for a while,
I know you won't want to come back here so soon. Agniezska.

The letter destroyed any thoughts he had had of preparatory study that morning. He very
quickly rebuked himself for his first rage against Harry. The boy would surely be
carrying a burden, or was that just the thinking of a past epoch. He realised the letter
really excited him. Perhaps they could have a threesome, or foursome. She was not his
mother, she said, and yet she was too. He realised her writing him like that meant she
was completely his and a gladness over that and the recent past so filled him he could
have thought his grief over Leticia gone for good. He would telegraph, longing for you
more than ever, or something like that. No that might tie him down. Eventually he settled
for

Have no fears stop as welcome as ever stop admiringly Dorian,

which the Swedish post office clerk seemed to find a quite unsurprising communication.
He was longing to see her now but didn't want to have her around day by day for a
while. He thought he could make that clear when she rang up. He had told Nava about
his girl-friend, "one of them" he had added though he was disappointed to see she had
not taken that literally. He didn't want to have to feel shy about anything that might
happen in the near future. In fact Agniezska's example had really set him into his stride.
He recalled the French proverb about youth not knowing what age knows but age not
having the potency of youth. What was it that he knew? I'll tell you, he said to himself.
God exists and everything is permitted. No, I hardly know either of those, but it's a damn
good platform all the same, and worth a good long test, I should say. Bravo Agniezska.
He stopped suddenly in the street, smitten with a longing for her so strong he could
scarcely breathe. And it was not just youth, he realised, not just the blood. Had it ever
been? His whole spirit swooned in anticipation and in terror of being prevented.

In this state he felt in no need for casual adventures, apart at least from the general
urgency his accelerated backward metabolism, or at least his awareness of, it placed upon
him. He had lived about sixty two years and was no longer confident that he was going
to gain in terms of mere length of time. It was not difficult to think that he had
impoverished himself, and he had certainly not served Leticia well. Still, he had this
unique combination for a time. Wasn't that worth five times as many years without it?

He felt no need, but was not averse to needs and expected them to come. After two days
he began his course in the villa downstairs. There were seven young pupils, five of whom
were girls. All professed to have no trouble with English, though questioning revealed
unsuspected abysses of misunderstanding beneath the apparently posh pronunciation the
Swedish language seems to present to its children ready-made. The mood seemed to him
mock serious, and he decided to respect that. After the class they drank coffee and there
he was reminded from how they spoke to him that to them he was a young man, though
he didn't suppose he was young enough for them to invite him to a disco or anything of
that nature. The class met again after two days. He was pleased to find they had all done
the reading he had given them, from an English Plato text he had photocopied. After the
class one girl, auburn-haired and busty, came up to talk to him about the soul. She stayed
on after the others had gone but he realised that she would not respond to a quick pass. It
would have to be decorous. He seemed to be finding it quite natural to be only concerned
with this one thing, at least when in the presence of ravishing young womanhood in an
open blouse and trousers that couldn't be tighter over the midriff and below. But her
reply to a quite lengthy explanation of his about Socrates in the death cell warning against
a hatred of reason astonished him. It was not exactly to the point, or not to that point, as if
the matter in hand had all the time somehow been different.

"Please don't be angry, magister, but I have a strong impression you would like to sleep
with me." Being Swedish she might as well have said fuck me, he reflected. They did
sometimes, the word not sounding ugly to their ears.

What did one do? "You're very direct. Any man would like to sleep with you. You must
try not to provoke them, especially when they have to earn their living teaching you a
serious subject like this."

"Do you have to?"

"Well, Anne-Marie, do you think that's something you should be interested in?"

She blushed deeply. "I'm sorry, it was stupid of me. Please forget it. You're such a good
teacher for us."
She turned around to go out. Quicker than thought his hand grasped her shoulder. "Nej,"
she said, crossly now.

"Wait. I'm not assaulting you. It's more like the other way round, isn't it? But I don't want
you to go away feeling bad. It's just, you know, I have to be careful. I'm just beginning
here, I don't know your country yet, what's acceptable and so on."

She smiled again. "It was bad of me to confuse you."

"Is that all it was? You wanted to confuse me."

She hesitated. "No, it was more. I wanted to give something a chance."

"Something. Do you often give it a chance?"

She blushed again. "Are all you Englishmen so ironic?"

"I'm not ironic, my dear. Just witty."

"Why are you calling me your dear? You're not much older than I am."

"True, Anne-Marie. I must be more careful." He brushed her cheek with the back of his
fingers. It seemed the only thing to do, words having served their purpose. But he thrilled
as he felt her incline her head in answering pressure.

"Can't we go somewhere?"

"Now?"

"It's a good moment, I think."

"Right. I'll go to my cottage over there, see, and you come after when no one's there. But
wait, aren't the others waiting for you? This is a joke, right?"

She looked very cross. "Yes it's a joke," she said, looking at the floor. "If you say so."

He drew her violently to him, tilted her head and kissed her hard. The response was
unmistakeably whole-hearted, abandoned. "Follow me as I said." He left the room.

He unlocked the cottage door, drew the curtains of the one room, straightening up the
unmade bed and waited, having left the door ajar. Within seconds he heard running on
the path followed by a leap on to the door mat. Closing the door they resumed kissing.
After a while he gripped her shoulders and held her at arm's length. "Why?"

"You excite me, the situation."

"But promise you won't let it harm your studies. Don't fall in love with me."

"Come on. You're talking like an old fellow again. It's better you keep quiet."

"O.K. But we'll do this my way, or do you want to rape me?"

"No I don't want to rape you. You're my teacher."

"Yes, and now I'm starting the lesson." Her trousers were made of some soft material and
he had no difficulty exciting her with the back of his hand. She went limp, which pleased
him. Two active approaches at once always clashed, he knew. He stayed active
throughout, taking off her clothes. "Now I am going to suck your lovely flower like a
bee," he said. He didn't dare mention HIV or do anything to stop the magic. "Oh yes, do
it. Do it." He had to gently remove her own hand. "And don't worry," she added, as if
reading his thoughts. "There are condoms in my belt." "Not just one?" For answer she
sighed and thrust forward.

Once more he was overcome with the wonder of it, as if in love but not in love. He felt
hugely and tenderly grateful. "So you just come along and take possession of me as soon
as you see me," he said, mock reproachfully.

"No one is possessing anyone, silly. You're probably going to enjoy this with all the other
girls as well."

"You do have a plan between you, then?"

"No I don't mean that, and I'm not telling anyone. I know that's not good for you, and
anyway it was quite special for me."

"What do you mean?"

She considered. "I mean I wouldn't like it to be public. You've made me more glad than
the others I've had."

"How many others?"

"Five or six, I think. Does it matter?"

"It matters enough for you to ask if it matters. So look, we're not going to make anyone
unhappy. I like you and you seem to like me, and we'll be together when we want to and
when we can. No foolish risks or unconditional demands, right?"

"I promise, if you do. Are you married?"

"Yes and no. O.K.?"

"O.K. I have to go soon." She stroked him and he understood. "The second time is usually
better," he said.

"Usually?"

"Oh, that must have sounded bad. I'm sorry. I read it in a book somewhere."

"There's more to you than meets the eye. You say so?"

"Yes, we say so." He helped her hook up her spotlessly white bra. "I don't want to wash,"
she said. "But next time I leave the condoms at home. I love your smell." She fell on her
knees, he was still naked, and sucked and sucked. Even Agniezska had not prepared him
for this. His thrusting jerked her head, his hands rumpled her red ringlets. She let go but
still held him against her face, his release wetting her skin and hair. She rubbed it into
herself. "I love your smell," she repeated. "It must stay on me today. No, I love you, I love
you. Don't hurt me." She ran away, almost colliding with Nava on the path, come to call
him to lunch.

He threw on a dressing-gown to open the door. There was no point in dressing behind
the curtains so oddly drawn at midday. "Nava", he began, "I'm afraid I must have blotted
my copy-book with you."

"No. Don't think that. I know what they're like. Just don't get carried away. Be sensible at
all times." She gave him a searching look.

"Well that's exactly my own philosophy, actually. I can't explain to you something like
this coming up so quickly."

"You don't need to. I knew they'd be after you in one way or the other. Still it does take
two, doesn't it?" She gave him a sideways glance out of those large, heavy-lidded
underwater eyes.

"Yes, it does. I'm afraid this Swedish mixture of forwardness and naivete is proving too
much for me."

"Maybe you're a bit naive yourself."

"You know I'm not, I think. Unless you call being wonderfully delighted naive."

"That depends on the prospects, I think. But I must tell you, I myself have never liked
promiscuity."

"Yes, one can see that about you, I think. But I'm not sure I do. At least it's not the best
thing. I mean I feel every time as if I've fallen in love."
"Every time?" she laughed.

"All right, laugh at me then. I just meant this time and another time, if you must know."

"No. Why must I know? I never asked even."

"No, of course you didn't. The main question, though, is will you still keep me on?"

"Why ever not? I already heard your class went well. And I know Anne-Marie is a
sensible girl."

"Hm. Yes, that's true. She was in a way."

"Sorry. Was what?"

"Sensible. Yes, an artist of situation, I would say."

"You'll understand when you know Sweden better. It's a socialized prison, you know,
from school onwards. Especially for the girls. They feel a tremendous pressure to break
out, but then there's this awful xenophobia, the tribe, you know. Foreigners are
frightening, not to be trusted, except by the really desperate who marry the most exotic
men possible, and that almost always fails. And then along comes an Englishman, who
manages to be unfrightening and yet somehow free. They can't resist, if he shows he's
available, that is."

"Is that what happened to you?"

"I suppose so." Her face went into shadow.

"His illness must be very sad for you."

"Yes, but that's not, not the only thing. I failed with him before that. I don't know why I
tell you this. I suppose I feel I owe you, as I just found out something I shouldn't about
your life."

"Well, that's a weird idea. But of course it's good to talk if we respond to each other."

He felt again that strange peace she gave out whenever she met him. Part of it was that no
demand was made or, he believed, was ever likely to be made. They went in to lunch.
Brian did not join them, and he wondered what she had meant about failing him. He
suspected that he himself might understand Brian's type better than she, the English
aloofness and emotional deformity unbending for a bit in the first flush of love but then
returning as he angrily strove to protect himself from the current emanating from this
warm and honest spirit of the day, surely also a tremendous lover in her way. Brian had
probably failed before he began, stricken beforehand with a disease of the spirit often
passed to men in England through the mother in the first instance, he reflected. But how
had the mothers got it? Well, that was really a problem for the geneticists, wasn't it?

He retired to rest, physically very tired after the morning's astonishing coda, but with his
mind and feelings too alert for sleep. He recognized the state, that of being in love, just as
he had felt it on that morning in the hotel with Agniezska. That had passed, and so would
this, but it was wrong to think that that knowledge should belittle the state one was in. It
couldn't, anyway. It rather urged one to keep it while one could, before the weeping and
lamenting started. He thought of Nava. She would never be weeping and lamenting,
unless through what someone else might do to her. He felt an instantaneous rage against
such a hypothetical blackguard, the force of which surprised him. He must be
overwrought. Why had the girl affected him so much? It could have been any of them,
any vulnerable girl not too short on beauty. My foolish heart: he remembered the title of
the song from his youth, his first youth, and heard it being sung in his mind by the Luton
Girls Choir. God. But no, he wandered on, that had been my heart and I, not my foolish
heart. The point was, one was as helpless as a fool. The fool is one who cannot control his
life and destiny, as he had tried to do by offering his neck to Dr. Dzimba. He wondered
where Lucas Linton was. Wasn't he curious as to what had happened? Would his son tell
him, or even Agniezska?

It struck him that he didn't want her to come now, though he wanted her to phone and
keep in touch generally. She ought to understand that, as agreed between them, but he
knew it would hurt her if he told her he was absorbed by another, knew she had felt him
falling with her in that mutual August swoon of not more than a month ago. She did not
phone, however. Instead another letter came a few days later in which she excused
herself from coming at present. He understood that she was at least as absorbed by Harry
as he was by Anne-Marie, who by that time had spent two successive nights at the
cottage. Her family home was just down the street, a street full of the sweet scent of
apples, through which she moved softly in the dark and the first autumnal breezes.
Nothing, he realised, was serious. It was aesthetic; one was at the opera for a few days,
weeks or years, and why ever not?

He recalled the horror one used to feel at that kind of life. It was almost universal. Such
things would have to be paid for. One lost one's soul, they said. He recalled his horror at
the descriptions in a novel about some kind of purgatory he had once read, in which
soulless spirits, in the shape of sun-tanned young men, whizzed by forever along an
abnormally extended beachfront in fast cars, every so often flashing their white teeth.
Wasn't that what was wrong in using a Shostakovitch motif to advertize toothpaste. But
was it wrong? Wasn't it wrong, a pity, to spend one's time advertizing toothpaste, rather?
It seemed to him, anyhow, that he had committed himself to the aesthetic, that the ethical
would have to take care of itself. And that, he thought, is itself a reasonable ethical
standpoint. For those who lauded cruelty and associated behaviour were in the first place
aesthetically wrong. One must search for the beautiful action, Aristotle had said.
 IV

Lucas

What's done is done

And cannot be undone.

There were two hours to wait before the connection to Berlin. Lucas settled himself at the
end of a row of seats in one of the halls of Frankfurt Airport, tired after the all night flight.
Five years had passed since the events described above. It was indeed more than ten
years since "the experiment", and his term in Africa had come finally to an end. He had
once hoped to retire to his family home in Yorkshire, but three years ago he had married
Euphonia, and had quickly understood that there could be no question of transplanting
her to England. She had enlisted the local ministry of culture in persuading the university
to make his lease on the campus cottage permanent, the condition being that he continue
to publicize the little country. At present, however, he had been invited to lecture in
Berlin on recent African political history, "Democracy and the One Party State". This
suited him very well as he was deeply worried about his son Harry. Harry had written to
him once some years ago that he had traced his mother, but had then steadfastly ignored
the subject in his rare letters to his father. But since he was in Berlin, studying computer
science at some college or other, Lucas had little doubt that he saw his mother regularly,
since he also assumed that she would not have gone elsewhere, having both family and
property there. He knew she had had the operation too, but even Dzimba did not answer
his letters. But perhaps he was back in Africa. Being in Frankfurt Lucas remembered a
German saying, a dog lies buried here somewhere. And after all he knew what the dog
was likely to be, something unsavoury like his own ruthless scientific curiosity he told
himself, the accent of self-reproach having become blessedly more pronounced with him
of late. He had often tried to picture the fate of those three or four souls, if he counted his
son, whom he had so successfully manipulated, but drew back in fear from one horrific
fantasy after another. Things must have gone badly if they kept so rigorously away from
him. At best it would be merely a matter of keeping some impropriety secret, not unlikely
he felt once his poor silly wife had mixed herself up in the affair. He had always assumed
that her being the mother of the family would have kept her from following Joubert into
whatever "the experiment" had launched him into. He shuddered again. Life looked so
normal all around him, the couples, the travelling students, the foreign workers, the
general business, the buying and selling.

His hosts had booked him in at a hotel in Dahlem, not too far from Schmargendorf. He
would go to Agniezska's cottage, which Harry was still using. Perhaps his mother was
there looking after him, although in that case Harry would be seeing the results of "the
experiment". He hoped fervently that there were none to be seen. He was glad he and
Agniezska were divorced; there had been too much humiliation. Euphonia was suiting
him much better in every way. She saw him as old, made no demands, in fact seemed to
think that as a professor and serious intellectual of the white man's type it was natural for
him not to be particularly physical, as she expressed it. What she did when she went
among her own people was anybody's guess, but Lucas found that caused him no anxiety
and did not believe it could be a risk to whatever prestige he had among them. The two
races were just so different, so separate, even if intermarriage tended to be seen as a
compliment by both of them. It was not, he reflected, the proximity of South Africa and
its attitudes that had forged this mentality, since it existed all over Africa, at least where
the woman was black. Euphonia took care all the same to satisfy his intimate needs, to
heal his bruises. She understood that it was often she who had to tell him what he
needed, to tease and make affectionate fun of his stiffness, his fear of letting go. Strange
that he never felt any impulse to irony or sarcasm with her. She was after all a specialist
in English literature, knew the responses, the games, the fears and disasters. It was as if
knowing it she rejected it, did not take it to herself. It was the common African defence.
All the talk about what was not in their culture, the assumption that this was all-
determining, it was not so much a philosophical verdict in favour of cultural relativism
since the question of truth had not really arisen for them in that form, capable as they
could show themselves of understanding it. They just cared more about their ways and
what they called their identity than about truth. Who was to say they were wrong? Well,
he reflected, it would certainly be wrong for him. But that was to put them in a separate,
even lower category. No, they must be wrong not to care about truth. Perhaps they
thought that the Western way of caring about truth was not itself in accordance with the
truth, as they experienced it not in formulations but in their day to day social experience.
He could make a good paper out of that, and the thought gave him satisfaction, lasting
until the boarding call.

His hosts met him and installed him in his hotel and after dinner he set out for
Schmargendorf. As it was a warm summer evening he decided to walk, enjoying the
wide pavements and European atmosphere of the Mecklenburgischestrasse. He called at
the gate of the property and Harry, wearing a T-shirt and shorts, came out of the house.
Lucas had loosened his tie. With his jacket over his arm he felt hot and encased at the
sight of his son, and fought back a dart of resentment over his own lost and, he felt,
missed youth. His son needed him, youth was difficult when one was in it, nothing to
envy really. What was there for anyone to envy, come to think of it, perhaps even to pity,
if one thought of all that stuff about the tolling bell and so on? Harry had gone back into
the house to get the key, but now he was here, cutting short the paternal meditations.

"Dad. You never said you were coming."

"No. If I had you would probably have disappeared. Am I right?"

"Well, I'm sorry you think that."

"It's my interpretation of the evasiveness of your letters these past few years. The few that
there were, that is."
"People don't write letters much, these days."

"Well, you never gave me a phone number."

"There is no phone here."

"Where's your mother?"

"Who? My mo...? Oh yes, sorry, she's over at Köpenick, in the East. You know, since the
Wall fell it's quite cheap to stay over there."

"Why can't she stay here with you?"

"She could. It's her place, isn't it? But this chap, you know him, Edmund, let me see,
Professor Joubert, you know, he arrived here from Sweden, some time ago now, had to
get away from some girl..."

"But he's practically seventy."

"I know. What of it? Not everyone's like you, Dad? Incidentally, I heard on the grapevine
you got married again. Congratulations. Are you happy?"

"Yes, thank you, Harry. Euphonia and I..."

"She's a black, isn't she?"

"Among other things, yes."

"No, I mean that figures. That was the answer all the time, for you."

"What answer? What figures?"

"Well, you need some one you can drop your act with. Don't get angry now. I'd only like
to be a fly on the wall to see what you are without your act, your clothes so to say." He
giggled, not without nervousness.

"Harry I don't know what's making you talk to me like that. Is it some wrong I've done to
you?"

"No, not particularly, though things have turned out rather strange."

Lucas relaxed a rather tight chest. "Now that's just what I want to find out about. You see,
I don't know anything. Everyone just went away immediately after, after..."

"Yes, but you started the whole thing in a way, didn't you?"
"Yes, Harry, I'm afraid I did. I didn't think enough."

"Don't say that. Of course it's a bit worrying about Agni... about Mum and Edmund. But
the other could have been worse, you both just going on like it was, I mean. But I've no
regrets myself so far about it. Quite the opposite."

"Why is that, Harry? But wait. Why did you start to use your mother's Christian name
just now? That's very strange."

"Christian name? I haven't heard it called that in years?"

"Why, Harry?"

"You don't know anything at all?"

"No."

"How do you think you'll take it?"

"Well, I've got to know, haven't I? I can't stand not knowing. Surely you can see that.
Look, your mother's lost the power to hurt me now."

"She hurt you? Wasn't it the other way round?"

"What do you mean? How have I hurt her?"

"Well, it wasn't you really, was it? It was that Dzimba guy, and you were both interested.
I don't think she has any regrets. It was before that she was hurt. That's why she did it."

"All right, but what has happened since?"

"That's what I can hardly tell you."

"Well, I know she went off with Dzimba and, I may as well tell you, I know she at least
started an affair with Joubert."

"Well, they had a lot in common, didn't they? And a lot going for them too. When I came
here he had just gone to Sweden and she was, well, they were like in love. Only..."

"Only what?"

"Well for a start she wasn't my mother any more, Agniezska wasn't, and she certainly isn't
now. No, wait. I hadn't seen her for, what, seven, eight years. What I met here was a
young girl, well she wasn't quite so young then but getting to round about my
generation."

"Wasn't quite so young then? As she is now, you mean?"

"Yes. That shouldn't surprise you. But I'm going to tell you, I must tell you. We became
lovers on sight. There was just no other way to handle it. We... actually I assumed it was a
younger relation before it was too late. We both utterly fell for one another. I told you,
she's not my mother. And it went on and on, until..."

"Until what?" Lucas could hardly speak.

"Until he came back, Edmund, from Sweden. They were lovers all the time, of course, and
I understood that. It's no special credit to me if I couldn't myself take up with someone
else on the side as well, though that's changed now."

"Has it?"

"Well, she's not exactly on the side, Anne-Marie, she's more right in the middle, and that's
been pretty tough for her too."

"Anne-Marie. Is that her name?"

"It is. She's Swedish. She's the girl I mentioned. She came after him. Look, I don't have to
tell you all this."

Lucas had regained composure, along with some kind of first sympathetic grasp of the
newness of the situation in which his onetime family found itself. He found himself
thinking of those encountering weightlessness in space. "Harry, my dear son, I'm
listening to you with the greatest respect and, if you'll allow me, compassion, but above
all, I think, self-reproach. Still," and he smiled, "it does seem I've missed a lot in life."

"Don't say that, Dad. You're forgetting your work, your publications. That'll last. We're
just all caught up in this whirl of passionateness, like in Dante you know. He puts it in
Hell, and it's often been that. You're calm, and now you've found affection as well,
haven't you, this Euphonia I mean. God, what a name."

"Thank you for all that, Harry. You're a kind boy. I was thinking earlier that no one need
envy anyone else really. But now, this business, no, forgive me, this history with your
mother, as she was. I can't help being upset though please believe me when I say I feel no
disgust or contempt of the traditional kind."

"You'd better not. I'd say it was the most exalted thing in both our lives."

"Maybe so, and she couldn't have children, could she?"

"No, that didn't grow back."

"That, Harry, was what you came out of, strange thought."

"Yes, and it's gone, together with her motherhood. Though I think she still had motherly
feelings mixed up with the other for me. But then I think most women do, the loving
ones."

Lucas thought of Euphonia and silently agreed. They heard the lock on the garden gate
open and close. A rather haggard but beautiful girl came in, her reddish hair still glossy.
She went up to embrace Harry. It took quite a while before she was free to face the visitor.

"Dad, this is Anne-Marie. Anne-Marie, my father."

Lucas found himself being searchingly examined. "So you're the god who arranged it all."

"No, I..."

"You don't seem to have tried your own medicine. I wonder why."

"Oh dear. I can't answer you, not right now."

"Oh dear," she mimicked.

"Don't, Anne-Marie. I've just told Dad all the news. He didn't know a thing. We mustn't
upset him any more."

"No, no. I can take it. But anyhow, my dear girl, I'm very happy to meet you. And I'm
pleased that you don't seem altogether unhappy with at least one member of our family."

"Family? Oh, you mean Harry. But he has no family, really. He's been through more than
me, you know. I mean I just picked up this Englishman in Sweden who ran away from
me and I couldn't take it. But when I at last found him again here he turned out to be
growing into a baby. Well, that is upsetting of course but in Sweden we expect to be
astonished by foreigners, so I could have just withdrawn. But of course I was hurt, I mean
it's his right but I couldn't help it, I was hurt to see him so close with this younger girl,
younger than me I mean, who turned out to be Harry's lover too, and later I found out
she was his mother as well. Yes, of course all that does shake one up a bit. But Harry
understood because he'd been shaken up as well and so, well, we've just gravitated to
each other." She looked up at the young man with a trusting smile. Lucas felt too moved
to speak, as they embraced again.

"Well I wish you all the happiness in the world," he found himself saying after a while.

"How much is that?" she asked.

"None of us know, I think, but I have some strange belief, though this may annoy you
thinking of what I've done to these others, yes I think somehow that all our destinies are
equal."

"How do you mean, Dad?"

"I mean we don't need to envy each other, any of us. Of course if I hadn't had Euphonia I
might be envying you two now, I know that, but I just believe that would have been silly.
I know I can't prove it. Perhaps if I was religious."

"Well, Dad, this Euphonia must be quite a girl."

"She is, but tell me, I mean were you all four here together?"

"Well, for a short time. You see, Agniezska and I were here a long time together. I started
to study here and she kept at home at first, watched TV, did the shopping and so on.
Only she got more and more terrified one of her sisters would come round. You'll laugh, I
had to make a back door in the wall there so she could slip out if one of them appeared at
the front. One did come, actually, quite an old lady, but I told her Agniezska had rented
the place to me indefinitely and that I was keeping everything in order as she could see. I
told Agniezska to write to them as if from somewhere else telling them not to worry any
more. They've all moved quite far away it seems. Anyway, that's how the extra door
came about. But where were we?"

"You were telling about Edmund and me coming here," said Anne-Marie.

"Oh yes. Well, Agniezska started missing Ed more and more. I mean they are the only
two in the world, you know, that this has happened to. And they're lovers anyhow, I
know that, though they call themselves just erotic friends. Don't laugh, please. I'm
convinced that's a necessary category."

"It's a category which destroys itself quite quickly often," said Anne-Marie. "I should
know."

"Well, you were young, weren't you? Still are. I mean he wasn't one of your Swedish co-
ed peers, good for a one night stand, or one afternoon it was supposed to be, wasn't it?
You were bound to fall in love with him."

Anne-Marie was crying. "Steady on, Harry, old son," said Lucas.

"So you don't think he fell in love with me too. I wasn't good enough for that."

"Darling, I know he fell in love with you. He's told us himself. He's told you. Agniezska
knew it too."
"Wouldn't it ever occur to you to call her Mum?" Lucas suddenly asked.

"No Dad, it never would. She and her motherhood have been separate, like death parts
husbands and wives. Wait till you see her."

"I really wonder if I should."

"Getting chicken, are we?" Anne-Marie threw in.

"Stop distracting me, please. The fact was, I couldn't stand the idea of her going off to
Sweden, and to another lover. She understood, didn't complain I was jealous. So we both
of us started pressing him to come here, for a visit of course. But when he came it turned
out he had finished with Sweden. People had started to notice something funny about
him, someone told him he looked ten years younger than when he first came there, not
much more than two years before."

"My God, is it going as quick as that?"

"No, that's an exaggeration, of course. But he became terrified of the effect on his girl,
Anne-Marie, thought it could turn her mind. Apparently after years of the welfare state
the Swedes can't cope with anything outside life as programmed by the authorities. They
lose all their bearings. It's the essence of being bourgeois, I suppose."

"Just listen to you," said the girl. "Anyone would have found it difficult."

"Right. But he ran away to protect you. And of course when he came here he and
Agniezska started up again, after spending days being fascinated by how they had both
changed. I may as well warn you Agniezska looks about seventeen now."

"And Edmund?"

"Twenty-four, maybe."

"Younger," said Anne-Marie. "When I first saw him five years ago he seemed in his early
thirties."

"It's getting to look like a disease," said Lucas. "How will it end?"

"We don't know. Agniezska wrote to Dzimba, but he hasn't answered."

"No. He's back, you know. I meet him and his wife occasionally. She's forgiven him, well,
she blames Agniezska actually."

"Never mind that. What does he say? What are their chances?"
"He doesn't know. But he speculates that there may be a period of life before the gland
has formed at which a human being is still viable, and that the process might stop there."

"So they could be preserved for ever as foetuses or something?"

"How awful," said Anne-Marie. "But really, they are like ghosts, anyway. They should be
your age, Professor. They talk like you sometimes. It's spooky."

"How can you say that, Anne-Marie? They're flesh and blood people carrying a heavy
burden, and we are both supposed to have loved one or other of them deeply. I still do,
frankly. I can hardly think of it."

"Well I suppose I still love Edmund. But it was a big let-down, like finding your fiancé
has AIDS."

"You can't blame him. He never tried to make you fall in love with him. It was you who
ran after him, wasn't it?"

"Yes, it was. It's just the way you men go around upsetting everybody."

They all laughed. "So you were all here together," said Lucas patiently.

"No, Ed came. Anne-Marie came later as I said; she has only been here a few months. So
then I had to take a backseat for a while. It wasn't easy, but I understood. And I knew that
Agniezska loved us both completely. She said love was like music in a concert-hall. Each
person gets the whole of it. One had to cling to that idea. And well, I felt very sorry for
Ed. He told me about Anne-Marie, actually, and another woman in Stockholm who had
helped him a lot, though she never found out. That was also why he left, so she wouldn't
have to face that."

"That was Mrs. Richardson, our Rector."

"Richardson? Was she English?"

"No, her husband was. He died while I was there, of lukaemia."

"Ed told me about him, too. He's actually the only one outside of us who knew. Ed
confided in him when he visited him in hospital. Thought it might help him to die if he
told him what was happening to him, too."

"And did it?"

"Ed thought it did. Anyhow, I never met him. But to get back to the story, since you
obviously want to know everything. It was Anne-Marie here who broke us up." He gave
her a reassuring squeeze, as if in case she should feel accused. "Agniezska would never
have left me alone, not at that stage. She feels very responsible that I love her so much,
though, again, it was me who looked for her. Anyhow, we went on living together, the
three of us. I went to the university a lot, Ed wrote a bit at home though you could see his
heart wasn't in it. Not like I imagine it once was. The whole thing was absorbing him in a
kind of stillness. Anyhow, then Anne-Marie came. I'm not sure how you found out where
he was."

"Through Agniezska's letters to him, silly. I never read one, but the address was on the
envelopes which I saw more than once lying in the main hallway. Somehow I memorized
it."

"Yes, of course. Well, she just came in one morning. I was alone here. Said she was a
friend of Professor Joubert's. I could see she didn't know anything, and any moment the
two virtual teenagers were due to come in the door. She thought he'd left her for another
woman, yet she couldn't quite believe it, though she let two years go by before realising
she couldn't believe it."

"Yes, it's funny. I waited until I had in a way got over him before I came to look for him. It
was as if that would save me from doing something stupid, and yet at the same time I felt
all the more, even when more rational, that he had been right for me."

"Even though he kept such a secret from you," asked Lucas.

"Well, I didn't know that. Actually, the centre of our relationship was physical. We
weren't interested in talking much. We weren't even interested that much in each other's
work. But we had a wonderful toleration. I'm Swedish, you know, after all." She laughed.
"The thing is, I knew he loved me. That's why I couldn't understand his going off when it
was so good."

"He didn't say good-bye?"

"He left a note which explained nothing, except that he couldn't explain. Well, you can
guess how I got through that time."

"No. How did you?" asked Lucas.

"Drink and sex. What do you think?" She stared directly at him and for a few seconds he
forgot all about Euphonia.

"Then you came here."

"Yes, to Harry. For a moment I thought it was the wrong house. Then he told me it was
Agniezska Linton's house, the name I'd seen on the letters, and that Edmund was staying
here too. I found it strange the three of them in this little cottage, especially as he said
nothing about his being Agniezska's son. I started to ask a few questions, and he got so
worried and uncomfortable." She laughed. "Well, like I said to you, I'm Swedish. It made
me get a bit crude. 'Are you both fucking her,' I asked, 'or what?' Well, he was surprised, I
suppose, but he seemed to like it. He said 'Yes, my dear, as a matter of fact we are.' Just
imagine. Then, of course, I started to cry. Then he looked very sorry and came up to me
and put his arm round me, which was nice in a way, but then instead of saying what
you'd expect he said, 'Don't cry. I can fuck you too if you like.'" She laughed again. Well, I
hit him, and he got hold of me and, well, in the end he fucked me, and I suppose I liked it
because we've been doing it ever since."

She laughed again, and stared into Lucas's eyes in a way that quite disorientated him. His
throat was very dry. "The point is, that's how he prepared me for that weird pair walking
in the door. It was as if I had myself taken off into space or something, just having that
happen to me and liking it. I suppose though it's a bit like what I did to Edmund in the
beginning, when I thought I could shock him. Silly me. Well, their arrival was a shock all
right. Actually I think it was Edmund's kindness, as well as this young man's initiation,
that helped me not to lose my mind. He could see I had just done it with Harry. I was half
naked, actually... not much privacy in this house. Still, he came over and took me in his
arms, I don't normally like such young boys, and Agniezska stroked me as well, my face I
mean, and they said that I'd blundered into something very special, and please take it
slowly and stay with them while they explained and so, well, anyway, I had to believe it
all. Meanwhile Harry and I found we continued liking each other, well, I cured, no, I
didn't cure him of Agniezska, he doesn't want that, but I helped him not to suffer so
much, one change balancing the other, I suppose. And she's glad too. But we all needed
more room if nothing else, and so only a few weeks ago they found this place over in East
Berlin, and so they are sitting there waiting for, for what ever's going to happen."

"They come here mostly," said Harry, "or we go there. Look Dad, what I did with Anne-
Marie, it's not my normal way. It was a pure inspiration. I mean I had fallen for her at
first sight." They squeezed each other again. "Then her using that word. Well, it was
exciting, I can see it's set you off a bit actually. She doesn't realise. She tells me in Sweden
all the bad words are about the Devil, not sex. But all her defences were down and I knew
she was going to have to face a terrible meeting and, well, it seemed better than getting
her drunk."

"I'm sure it was, Harry. Goodness, you two make me feel young again. I'm not sure I was
right about envy being unnecessary. When I think of my own youth."

"It's never too late Dad. I mean either you want something now or you don't. And if you
do, you've all the wisdom of age to help you to get it."

"Yes, I have, haven't I." He looked very speculative for a moment. "Well, what about this?
You've had your mother, my wife, that is. What if I said I wanted Anne-Marie, for a few
hours, let's say." Next moment he regretted his words, realised he had not hit the right
note. Harry looked disappointed. "No, forget it. I'm sorry. I don't know what has made us
like this. As if sex is the be all and end all of everything. It must be our lack of religion."

"No, it isn't," said Harry, "Agniezska and Edmund are religious, deep down. You know
she always had that, but it doesn't stop them. I think it even made them more likely to be
the ones to try it."

Anne-Marie had meanwhile been staring at Lucas, in astonishment. Now she came over
and took his hand. "Lucas," she said, using his first name without awkwardness, "you are
the father of my true love. I just couldn't. But I don't believe you quite mean what you
said. You spoke about envy, and I know it's me who's exciting you, something to do with
that funny word, I suppose. Harry says you never used to hear it in films or see it in
books when you were young. But it's not me you especially want, is it?"

Lucas started to feel shame in front of his son, which he tried to conceal with bravado.
"No, anything similar would do. Although," and he took her hand with a kind of
assumed condescension, "I have very quickly become very fond of you."

"Yes, but that's different, isn't it?"

"It is indeed."

She kissed his receding hairline. "Harry's right, what he just says. Here in Berlin you can
find what you would like, while you're here. They'll come to your hotel. It's in all the
newspapers, the adverts. And you could afford it, I think."

"Yes, Dad, I could help, if you like. Be there to meet her, or them. Just in case they were
tempted to mischief by an old man on his own."

"Did you say them?"

Harry kept a straight face but Anne-Marie laughed. "You see, he does have some special
wishes. They often work in pairs, I know that. It makes them feel safer themselves." She
kissed him again but went back to her seat.

Lucas was in unfamiliar country indeed. It must be Euphonia who has made this
possible, he thought, or is it just the natural tendency of all Harry's told me, of all that's
happened? He stared at the floor. They respected his silence.

"Well," he began. "I'd always thought I'd have to wait till Judgment Day to be stripped in
public like this, before those who used to see me posing."

"Oh, come on, Dad. You weren't posing. Your interests made you forget these primal
urges for a while, and now this has made you remember them. Be glad. It's a
development. That's all."
"Yes, it is that. It has its history, too," he said, thinking of Euphonia. "But I think we
should keep that for another day if you're interested at all, as I'm here for quite some
days. It doesn't after all compare with what I've heard and seen here and which I want to
digest back at my hotel. No, I won't stay here, thanks. They're picking me up in the
morning. And as for the other idea, well, it's an exciting one. I don't even think Euphonia
would mind, it might even tickle her a bit."

"Dad, there's no need to tell her, risk her peace of mind."

"Oh that's not so easily risked, you know. I told you this has its history, how I became an
old goat. No, don't protest. Goats are nice animals really. But I'm not just an old goat, so I
don't need to go for what Anne-Marie suggests just tonight. I think I'll walk home to my
hotel while I think of all I've heard tonight, and seen." He looked roguishly at Anne-
Marie. "That's my best chance of sleeping. But still, you could set it up for me on one of
these coming days. Anyway, here's my number." He handed them the hotel card and
they walked him down to the main road, parting with fervent embraces all round. They
had arranged to pick him up next evening and drive over to Agniezska's and Edmund's.

"Now that is something I am really dreading," he had said. "But it's why I came."

**********************************

Lucas had undertaken to give one lecture a day for the next four days. He had written
them out before leaving home and so he was able to abandon any idea of filling out his
text and still do what was expected of him. But the audience noticed that he was
distracted, as if not fully in what he was doing, and with some disappointment put it
down to premature senile weakness brought on by years in a climate unsuitable for a
European. Several professors also regretted that Lucas did not deliver his text in German.
He had in fact intended to do that, translating as he went along, but realised he lacked the
presence of mind. Anne-Marie, Agniezska, Euphonia, they chased each other through his
mind like sheep jumping over a gate, and then the fear of the coming evening, and
somewhere a feeling that life's seriousness, to which he felt he had dedicated his scholarly
life, was lost. He found himself uttering spontaneous prayers, as if he had believed in
God all the time.

At last the evening came round, and Anne-Marie and his son entered the hotel lounge. A
rush of affection for his son swept over him. This was the relationship he had come here
to rebuild. Agniezska was as if in another world, but Harry and he had her in common,
and Harry had forgiven him his failures as a father. As for his affair with Agniezska, well
it was just too bizarre, too out of the common run for him to have any views upon it at all.
All he needed was to feel the pain and the purity of his son's passion, though perhaps of
Agniezska's too; what did he know?

They drove through the debris of where the Wall had been, the rows of cul de sacs, the
crowds still of sightseers. The dreary atmosphere of the old regime still hung over
Köpenick, and they could see what a state most of the properties were in, large unfilled
gaps between window-frames and masonry, cracked glass, untended public plots, one
could not yet call them gardens, though builders and beautifiers were starting to move in.
To Lucas it seemed totally without sufficient cause that his wife and Edmund should be
living here, where they had no roots at all, unless someone in Agniezska's family had
lived here perhaps. He felt the strength of their need to be unknown.

It was a ground floor flat in a three-storeyed terrace house, gray and not at all like Lucas's
picture of Berlin. The street was narrow, there were no giant tenement houses. It might
almost have been England in the nineteen forties. That was surely going to change like
lightning very shortly, he thought.

He made Anne-Marie and Edmund go to the door while he sat in darkness in the car.
They had not been expected, after all, and he made them promise to break the news of his
presence gradually. A slim-looking youth opened the door. It was only as he stood back
to let in the visitors that the set and movement of his shoulders in an instant recalled
Edmund Joubert to him, together with the whole campus life in Africa. The shock was
like a blow. It was as if he did not, could not believe what he was seeing. He recalled the
resurrection appearances in the Gospel, Beatrice's appearance to Dante at the summit of
purgatory, "Look well, look well." Well, he was going to have to look. Anyway it wasn't a
miracle, nor on the other hand just a freak catastrophe. The freak had been produced by
knowledge and will. Some local people went by, probably returning from a Kneipe. A
man knocked on the window and pulled a face. Lucas gestured him to go away, which he
did. Presently the door opened and Harry signalled to him to come in.

He recognized the bright eyed, high cheek-boned teenager immediately. "The

photograph," he said. "It's come to life." In the days of their love he had often looked at
the framed, sepia snapshot and idly wished he had known, could have possessed his wife
then as well. In fact though her eyes were not so bright, darkened with fear more than
care, he thought. Fear came to many young people. But it was not his wife, of course,
couldn't be, but some simulacrum of her rather, even if she possessed all her memories.
He went forward and embraced her. "Lucas," she said, "I'm sorry about everything." He
knew he should reply "So am I," but it seemed too ridiculous. What did he owe to this
young thing? He stood back and looked at her. Then he turned to the young man. So that
was what Joubert had looked like when young. Well, these days with plastic surgery
anyone could look in any way they wanted. The look was immaterial. These two were
like cartoon figures in an otherwise realistic film, he thought. But perhaps such a film was
possible, to make a success of. Wasn't Hamlet's father's ghost a cartoon figure, or the
Devil in Karamazov?

The young man extended his hand without speaking. Agniezska went out to make coffee
and they all sat down. Anne-Marie sat beside Lucas. "This must be very strange for you,"
she said.

"Yes. Too strange. I don't really believe it."

"Oh come on," said Joubert. "You were keen enough to set it going."

"Yes, yes. I know it's a fact, of course. It's my organism rejects it, I suppose."

"That's because you're not at home with the idea of other dimensions. You're bourgeois, in
a word. Agniezska and I are not quite in this world, though we can still love those who
are in it."

"Should one stress love so much?" asked Lucas. "I mean we all care about it, of course, but
it's not what this was about, is it?"

"Well, there's your mistake, I think. Love is at the centre of things, makes the world go
round as the song says. Confronted with this, Lucas, as you damn well are, you have to
forget your stuffy rationalism, you..."

"Stop. That is what has been happening to me, actually, even before I came here and met
my son and this delightful person beside me. Africa, you know, African friends, an
African love even, to use a phrase more natural to this group than it ever was to me,
before. I can see that that has been the main effect of the experiment, though. Problems of
love."

"Not problems, Lucas," said Agniezska coming in the door with a tray. "It's just how
we've lived, how life has come upon us once the old deadness was made impossible."

"It needn't be dead," said Harry. "But I think what we should talk about is what's going to
happen to you two."

"Oh Harry darling. Must we?"

"We can make it better that way. What have you thought yourselves? Anything?"

"Yes," said Agniezska in her clear, teenage voice, the same and different, thought Lucas.
"Edmund wants to go and find Leticia." Her voice ended on a sob, and Edmund crossed
to her at once.

"I must," he said. "But I won't lose touch. I'll come back to you,or send for you. There's the
phone."

"But she might insist that you.."

"She won't. She gave us to each other, remember. And Leticia doesn't change. You saw
that. Anyway, why are we repeating all this in front of everyone?"
"But this is good news in a way," said Harry. "Listen Agniezska. You're so afraid of
Leticia. I hope you're not afraid of Anne-Marie. Because we are the only people who you
fit in with and you and I, as Edmund knows, well he's never objected, has no reason to
object, are part of each other, always. So we thought we should all be together. Anne-
Marie thinks so too. But then we'll have to find a bigger place. But if Edmund is going
away for a time the three of us can still be in Schmargendorf. And with me there you're
not going to tell me you'll want to cry, will you?"

She looked up at her former son, gratitude shining in her eyes. "That's wonderful. It's
being alone I'm so afraid of. Not just alone like other people, alone on another planet.
That's maybe what the ghosts feel you know when they walk around on earth at night.
Have you noticed they are always portrayed as alone? They feel no one else is like them.
They are inconsolable, hungry."

"Are you hungry?" asked Lucas.

"I don't know what made me say that. Hunger. Isn't that what we have all the time?
Doesn't that explain this passion that overtakes us?"

"When are you coming, then?" Harry interrupted.

"Oh. Must I say?"

"No, of course not," said Anne-Marie. "We are there, any time."

"I'm very pleased," said Edmund. "I'm actually ready to go any time. So she could go back
with you."

"Oh no," she cried. "That's too abrupt. Tomorrow at least."

"Well I'm glad you feel that. Just testing." He smiled at her in sad mischief. No one dared
ask him why he wanted to find Leticia, what he expected from it. Nor did anyone raise
the subject of the eventual prognosis. "I'll bring her over tomorrow," he said.

V
 Confessions

Come unto me, all you who travail

And are heavy laden,
And I will refresh you.

Back in his hotel room Lucas tried to digest the experience. It was strange how neither
Agniezska nor he had felt that they should have much to say to one another, apart from
those expressions of regret, implicitly asking forgiveness. He had not come out with his
until they had parted at the end of the evening. "You don't have anything to be sorry
about," she had replied. "You gave me the chance, and about before, well that's just too far
away to mention. I was sorry because when I took the chance I really showed you how
fed up I was. You had assumed I'd stay with you."

"Yes. But what a dried up old stick I was, as you rightly said."

"Aren't you now?" The teenage creature nestled her head playfully against him, making
him feel that quite honestly he wasn't. Yet he felt no emotion for her in particular as his
lost wife of old. This was new, and simply reminded him of Anne-Marie's practical
suggestion, waiting to be put into practice once he could manage to put all this drama at
more of a distance.

That's what he was finding strange, that he should feel like that. The coarseness of age
perhaps? Or was it just more clear-eyed, and didn't they all think like that in a way? He
felt great admiration for his son, but also concern. He clearly cared for Agniezska at least
as much as for Anne-Marie, and Agniezska was headed for, what? Nothing that we were
not all headed for. But it was inevitably soon, demanding preparation. He recalled then
that Agniezska and Edmund had mentioned religion, rather like two inquisitive
teenagers. The two of them were both Catholics originally, and it seemed one didn't
easily break free of that. Agniezska had said she wanted to go to confession and tell the
whole story, recalling all her transgressions of Church rules even though she felt sure she
could never be sorry about most of these, could not think it wrong to have loved her son
or Edmund, her only companion, like a new Adam, in limbo. But now perhaps extinction
was coming, and she wanted at least to see what the Church might have to say to her.
Edmund had seemed glad she brought this up, to Lucas's surprise, and had declared that
while he was passing through London settling some bank affairs - maybe the last time he
would look old enough to be allowed to conclude a transaction over the counter, he had
said in all seriousness - he would go as well, so that they could compare notes when he
came back. This had quite cheered Agniezska, Lucas had noticed, and he felt a faint pang
of that envy again which he had tried to deny earlier on, envy at their always having this
last resort to fall back upon, when pride and self-sufficiency at last lay defeated.
Yet come to think of it, he supposed he wouldn't be sent away if he presented himself in
one of their dark churches and asked, if not for advice, at least to talk things over with
one whose profession was that, talking things over. Besides, it wasn't quite material for a
psychologist, even if it wasn't quite supernatural either. There was a large brick church
next to his hotel, built in what they called the Jugendstil here, and he had seen an old
white-haired cleric going in. He would find out the times. Of course he still wanted to get
hold of those two young ladies one day before he left, though certainly without Harry's
offer of mediation. Still, he could choose what to talk about, and it was somehow piquant
to combine the two activities, showing the clergy where to get off, so to say. He fell
asleep.

Two days later he presented himself at the grille. He was feeling very much at peace with
himself, having carried out his other project the night before. Heidi and Erika, names he
did not seem to get tired of rolling over his lips, had seemed to have no other wish but to
please him, once they lost their anxiety about being paid, and seemed to like to listen in
between to the tale of his life, his regrets and so on, all discussed in a humorous mixture
of English and German. The only problem was when he mentioned Euphonia and they
started getting worried about AIDS, but he had managed to convince them not to worry,
as he wasn't going to worry either. Their naive humour, free of English mockery, in fact
reminded him of his wife, while their being of his own race and culture seemed to give
more fully back to his own being, in so far as it was rooted in the collective national
experience, all that the centuries of puritanism and self-hatred had taken from it. He
would take it back to Euphonia. He supposed these girls had their English counterparts,
but he could not imagine them. If God spared him he promised himself future trips to
Germany, whether or not the others remained here. He started to imagine taking
Euphonia with him.

But now here he was, before one who claimed to be God's representative. What was God?
To believe in God must be to believe that fate was providence, he told himself. And yes,
he did believe that, now, after last night, after the reunion with Harry, the vanishing of
the old marital bitterness, and the earlier gift of Euphonia. Perhaps his approaching death
was a gift too. He became aware of the priest's irritated tone, repeating some customary
formulas. Lucas explained that he could speak German but would rather confess in
English if possible. Ach nein, nein. Das wirt zu schwer für mich sein. The priest evidently
thought it was simpler to use a second language in telling one's sins than to do so in
giving advice about them. So Lucas set off in German.

"I'm not a Catholic, but I..."

"Don't worry. We're here to help, if we can."

"Well, I just want to tell a strange story, and my responsibility in it." This was received in
silence, and Lucas continued to talk for the next ten minutes or so. At one point he
thought the priest must have gone away, but this didn't seem to matter much. He realised
that what he most wanted was to get it all out. He didn't much care, he believed, about
how it would be received. But he was wrong about that.
After he had finished the silence continued. Sind Sie noch da? he asked, which produced
an irritated ja ja. The priest then told him that he was obviously mentally disturbed, that
he should ask to be admitted to a clinic although if he wished he could put him in touch
with a psychologist friend of his, depending how long he was staying in the area. He
could not possibly judge how much of the story touched real people, and whether any
harm done to him or by him was real or imagined. Was his first wife still living, for
instance?

"But I told you, she's down the road, looking over fifty years too young."

"Yes, yes. You must see, one can't talk to you. I will pray for you and hope you will
manage to regain a normal condition. Welcome back."

"Look..."

"Please, there are others waiting."

Lucas repressed an impulse to swear at the priest. The old dullard was completely
defenceless after all, and probably got sworn at every day. It had been instructive. One
could wonder how one ever expected anything else. One could wonder if one were
indeed mad. Perhaps he and the others were collectively mad, or did he only imagine he
had met and talked with them about this? No, it all hung together, and that a stranger
didn't accept it proved nothing. Well, now he had experienced the confessional, as well as
the local night life. The conference was over; it was time to go home. The others had
already left.

*******************************

Agniezska was for the moment consoled to have been taken back by Harry again. She
realised that he still wanted her and that Anne-Marie found no difficulty with that. This
fact she found impressive. The girl had after all given up Edmund to her and had had to
learn to accept that that was inevitable. After she had found him again Edmund had not
shown any sign of wishing to renew their intimacy, no doubt mainly because of her
conquest by Harry in the meanwhile. It was quite a neat little puzzle, she thought idly,
more complex than, for example, Goethe's Die Wahlverwandtschaften, which they had read
at school here in Berlin. She hoped there would be no tragedies of that kind.

So anxious was Anne-Marie to show there was no difficulty that she insisted they all
three sleep in the big bed, dispensing with the sofa and truckle bed which had been used
before. "Unless," she added with humility, "you want me to sleep on the sofa." Agniezska
was not sure she was sincere about that, since it drew from Harry a declaration that he
couldn't bear either of them to feel they were second fiddle, an unintentionally comic
term. The truth was that a main cause of Anne-Marie's love for Harry was his relationship
with Agniezska, while Agniezska was glad she had not stopped him finding a mate
outside his blood circle, thus witnessing to the strength and validity of the old ideas.

That night then was a night of love. The kind of intimacy involved naturally led to
physical interchanges also between the two women, whose enormous tenderness for one
another moved Harry to the core. He reflected how totally unlike a pornographic video it
was, though it was usually assumed that was where such threesomes belonged. Or,
rather, it was not so much unlike such a video as going totally beyond it. Perhaps the
video world responded to a misunderstood longing for just what they had here, he
thought. Of course such a harmony could not usually be achieved, and the matrimonial
couple remained the truer type of universal union. At the same time three seemed a
clearer representation of humanity as a multitude, while it was also in a way less of a
contrast to one, to unity, than was duality. I've become a numerologist, he murmured to
the others as he fell asleep between them.

In the days to come they varied this routine by mutual agreement, and there could be
quite a lot of moving around during any given night as well. Harry was studying
regularly and needed his sleep. Anne-Marie had also begun to study again, Germanistik as
it was called, and she and Harry often went off together in the mornings. At times
Agniezska went with them and idled around in the university, but for the most part she
was taken up by that same stillness which had overcome Edmund. She felt she had no
call to be doing anything in particular, except to keep life going, which mainly meant
taking care of the household, though everybody helped. She found herself wishing she
could have had a baby, by Edmund preferably. Anne-Marie, by contrast, was absolutely
firm about contraception and pill-taking. We can't have a fourth, she would say, not now.
She was afraid of upsetting the balance between her and Agniezska, even though the
latter insisted she would love there to be a baby in the house while Anne-Marie claimed
they would equally be mother to it. She regaled them with stories about various Lesbian
and other odd couples in Sweden who got children and was surprised at the distaste the
other two showed about this.

"After all, Anne-Marie darling, we never set out to be odd," said Harry.

"Do you suppose they did?" she rejoined, almost angry.

"Well, we don't know, do we? Probably they are all different. Anyway it's only you here
who is refusing to have a child."

"That's because... oh well, you're right, I suppose. Anyway, who would want an
Englishman who wasn't conservative?" They all laughed happily at this resolution of the
matter.

Sitting alone when the others had gone Agniezska would contemplate her destiny. It
seemed to her that once she had taken the step of accepting "the experiment" there was
nothing left for her but to love in this way, and love just those involved with her in one
way or another and with what she had done, which seemed to leave her in a kind of
closed circle. This made her uncomfortable, as if she did not care enough about the world
and human destiny as a whole. But she had lost the world. That was what it amounted to.
She had passed from the world to a kind of preternatural community of known personali-
ties. If she could be born again, if the process might be reversed, why then she might
learn again to take her place in the world, bringing to it a very special contribution
indeed, surely, though what that would be she could not specify. She felt a need to keep
her soul clean, not to be thoughtless and slatternly as she had become when she lived
with Lucas. She remembered the routine she had had as a girl, confession, the veneration
of saints, a general idealism in the house, even if she had daily rebelled against it, not
ignobly, she thought, but out of some other ideal which was not getting a look-in, some
urge to a creative openness. She had always found it strange that Jesus and his apostles
had talked the whole time about something new and had done remarkable, unclassifiable
things, while his followers down the ages had presented the highest wisdom as one of
clinging to the old. Well, she and Edmund had certainly not done that. She would go to
confession, as they had agreed. A priest was the best outsider to tell it to, someone who
would never find out who she was.

One Saturday afternoon, therefore, she went to her nearest church. The light was on over
the old-fashioned wooden confessional and there was only one other penitent, an old
lady who took quite a long time, while Agniezska sat and composed herself after her
walk. The woman didn't come out, but Agniezska noticed that the confessional had two
sides and went and knelt in the vacant place. After a minute or two the little curtain over
the grille was thrown back with a rasping sound and she could see a shiny bald head
bent towards her. She began to speak in German, talking about her life with Lucas, her
arrangement of the material influenced by how she had learned to do this as a child, how
many times she had been unfaithful, when she had stopped going to Mass, yes, that was
about it for the early part, though she said she had failed to love her husband, had not
tried enough. The priest interrupted her.

"How old are you?" She was surprised he did not call her his child. Fashions must have
changed.

"Sixty," she answered.

"Is that true?"

"What do you mean?"

"Please continue with your confession."

"No, why did you ask that?"

"Forgive me, please. I thought for a moment it was a young person playing a joke on me.
It happens here quite often now, you know."

"Oh, I am sorry. Father, can you promise me you won't think what I am going to tell you
is a joke?"

"Should I?"

"No, but it's difficult, very difficult."

"If in your conscience you need to confess it, then you must, and I must listen."

"It will be easier for me if you don't ask anything until, until afterwards."

"You mustn't make conditions. Just believe I'm here to help you."

This melted her sufficiently. She told the whole story in chronological order. The priest
seemed totally motionless, and she began to feel something of the triumph of the
successful story teller.

"And so here I am," she said at the end.

"You forgot something," he said, still not moving.

"Oh? What's that?"

"When you used to go to confession wasn't there something you had to say at the end?"

She knew what he meant, an expression of sorrow for sins. "The problem is, most of what
I've told you I don't see as sins."

"Why did you tell me then?"

"I needed to tell someone."

"I understand. Well, you said in the beginning you were sorry about not loving your
husband. At least, you wouldn't have said that unless you were sorry. Not so?"

"Yes, that's true."

"But what about the other things, besides this thing itself you say you did to get away
from your marriage? I mean, you know the Church's teachings."

"Oh dear. Yes, I know them, and I'm very sorry for whatever I've done wrong."

"You tell me you are having sex with your son. Do you intend to continue with that, just
for example?"

"Need you ask, after all I've told you?"

"No, not for myself. But you must see I can't give you absolution."

She had almost forgotten that was what this institution was for, but she did not want to
offend such a patient listener. "Oh, of course I see that. I just wanted you to listen to me."

"Well, my child, we could leave it at that."

"Come on. I'm not your child."

"Fair enough. But I must tell you, I mean honesty is the best medicine, I must tell you I
don't believe you are sixty, though, how shall I say, I'm inclined to believe that you
believe that you are. Do you take drugs?"

She laughed loudly, the church echoed with it. "Father, I do believe we've reached our
limit here. Thank you for listening."

"Wait. Don't you think you need help?"

"Only my friends can help me."

"You mean your son, your husband's colleague, the young girl?"

"Precisely. But what I had hoped, I nearly forgot, I had hoped that you might somehow,
how can I put it, that you could find a place, that you could tell me how I might fit in, I
mean the Church is big, isn't she?"

"Ah, she is. Well, so you want me to be big." He chuckled. "You're not trying to seduce me
by any chance, are you?"

"What a thing to say, Father. It's you putting ideas into my head."

"No, no, really not. Please forget the question. We're human too, you know."

"You like me, don't you?"

"Yes, but not like you're implying. I'm an old man and I've had wilder types than you
here. Now you asked a question just now, about fitting in. Was that sincere?"

"I'll leave that to you to judge."

"I deserve that. And I do judge it sincere. Only I can hardly answer it. To be brutal,
deranged people, and I'm leaving it open if you're one of them, have to live from within
their derangement. An English poet said their lives were hidden with Christ in God. I
believe that's true at least of some of them. I feel quite a lot of goodness in you. So I ask
myself, why should God want to waste it? You know I'm quite drawn to, not to
Buddhism exactly, but to their representation, you know the fat laughing man?"

"Isn't that a statue of Buddha only?"

"Maybe. I'm not an expert. But we can take it as an image of God. One can take many
things as that, even a giant spider for example."

"No. How horrid. That's just the false God people are so frightened of."

"No, I mean a spider it is truly terrifying to approach but which turns out to have been
spinning a web of love to catch us all in, who wants to embrace us with his eight furry
legs and take us into himself."

"I'm not sure, I think I've got a bit lost."

"Yes, I'm sorry. Maybe it's a male thing. Well, it's men who wrote the scriptures, after all.
No, I was thinking of the fat laughing Buddha. I mean that God is not serious in the way
we priests and religious men are. He doesn't need to be. So maybe he's let all this happen
to you as a kind of joke, or as if he were telling you a story. It certainly sounds like a
story."

"You mean he just plays with us, doesn't care?"

"Oh no, he cares, more than we can imagine. We know that through Jesus Christ, I mean
especially through him. He laughs eternally, like the fat man, but it's not wanton, with
him. He plays but he certainly doesn't tease. He's kind."

"Interesting. So where would that leave me?"

"It would leave you going on as you are, with hope and love and whatever faith you
have. You may get better, wake up, become more normal."

"But what if it were true? If I'm not deranged? Can't you tell me that, for my sake at least."

"I can only tell you that in that case God would be there at the end, as he is now. He will
not give you more to bear than you are able. His mercy awaits you. Do not hate, do not
resent. Love him who made a world in which all this is possible. You obviously have a lot
of love. Now I will bless you and I think you should go. Before that, and if you remember
it, I would like you to kneel in the church and say the Our Father. That would be your
penance if I could give you absolution, and, we don't know, perhaps God himself is
absolving you."

She did not reply. After a few seconds he jerked the curtain over the grille again.
Agniezska went out into the evening sunshine, thinking that it was not so easy to dismiss
the Church. Why did one want to, really? She felt peaceful and light-hearted; but a
spider, she said to herself, I ask you. The man must have missed his vocation.

*************************************

Edmund came in from the airport to South Kensington, putting up at a small hotel where
he had stayed years before with Leticia on his way out to Africa for the first time. He
intended to stay a few days again now before flying to Milan, although this meant
resisting the temptation to call on some old friends and colleagues. Realising this to
himself on the plane had been very painful. He had been in a way cocooned with his
loved ones, or with new friends in Stockholm and Berlin. He would not even be able to
contact acquaintances he had made at that last congress in Sweden. It seemed that
without Agniezska he was irretrievably alone. It struck him now like an icy blast, as he
took a turn on the crowded pavements, looking at all the young faces. Then it struck him
that he was one of them, on the outside. He could take steps to be less lonely,
unhampered by that shyness that had dogged his earlier years. He recalled how
introverted he had been, getting on for fifty years ago now, when he had walked these
very pavements while doing his postgraduate studies at London university. The
melancholy of that time, the studious young man's feeling that he was of no interest to
anybody, the repressed passion and longing, the urge to deny its validity, the
pusillanimous aloofness and compensatory arrogance, it swept back over him as he asked
himself if his state now were not worse still. How would it end? In whom could he
confide? He recalled their agreement that he would try the confessional. Well and good.
Tomorrow maybe. Like Lucas, his thoughts turned now to the companionship of the
streets. He would go to a pub, and then sleep. Unlike Lucas though it was not women he
especially looked for. Agniezska, Anne-Marie, Leticia, they filled him tonight, he wanted
to feel them beside him as much as possible. They would be thinking of him he knew,
even Leticia, he did not doubt it. How he hoped his finding her, if he could, would bring
her consolation and not grief. She would know she still mattered to him, though she had
wanted to make his way free. How good and lovely she was, had been.

Instead of waiting till Saturday he found a church where you could press a bell and then
wait for a priest to come to the confessional. He had a disagreeable feeling of acting out
the behaviour of a previous period of his life. He would go through with it none the less,
having nothing to lose. He saw as the priest approached through the church that he was
youngish.

"I'm afraid, Father," he began, "that you may have difficulty in believing what I have to
tell you. But I have promised someone dear to me that I would do it. I am a Catholic, but
I'm quite a long way from the usual attitudes." He waited. The priest spoke.
"The usual attitudes? I can guess what you mean. I wonder if they are so usual nowadays.
But if you're on the level, however strange your story, then I can assure you you are
among the tamer visitors to this place."

"How do you mean?"

"I mean that I get sworn at, fooled around with, not to mention some of the women."

"Sounds interesting."

"One is human, I suppose. But I don't want to distress or shock you. Tell me first, how old
are you?"

"Sixty-eight."

"Good Lord. I could have sworn you were younger than me. I was speaking like that to
put you at your ease. Please don't think me disrespectful."

"Of my grey hairs, you mean?" He chuckled. "But I haven't got any, and that, in the main,
is what I've come to tell you about."

"Well, as I said at the beginning, may the Lord be in your heart and mind that you may
worthily and truly confess your sins."

"Amen to that, and now please listen."

The young priest listened. When Edmund had finished he waited quite some time before
speaking. "Don't worry about whether I believe you or not," he began. "I am too amazed
at your story to answer that question sensibly. You certainly sound too sober and wise for
that young voice I am hearing, and I only tell you that to show that I'm open to you, don't
want to dismiss it as delusion and so on. Right so far?"

"Go on, please."

"Yes. The thing to remember is that what you have just delivered, spoken out here, is a
confession. It's only under that aspect of it that I'm qualified, that it's appropriate for me
to speak here. My difficulty is, I wasn't sure if you were presenting it in that light."

"All right. I admit my greatest need was just to tell someone the story, and a priest
seemed the best bet. But I'm not averse... I mean examination and let's say purification of
conscience, there's no reason I would want to avoid that."

"Still, you're not going to let me lay down the law to you, are you?"
"I don't really feel you're likely to do that."

"Well it's what my employers, so to speak, expect of me. But let's forget about them for
the moment. It's a pity I'm such a young fellow if you are indeed nearly seventy."

"Don't worry. I want your response, as man and priest."

"Well. It seems to me your confession is mainly about sex and women, three women to be
precise."

"You're a good listener."

"I know from experience how angry penitents can get if one doesn't listen, though some
of them can bore the pants off you quite often, especially the women."

"That's the second time you've mentioned women as a source of trouble."

"Oh, dear me, yes. I'd always avoided them before, you know, but here they really take
their clothes off for you, in one case literally."

"Father, I can only assume that you have believed me, if you entrust me with that."

"You're very perceptive. But let me try to do my duty by you. I was going to say, in my
personal opinion the Church's official sexual teaching is in total disarray. As a body of
celibates we have just not been able to respond to the sexual revolution, which I'm not
sure, by the way, began with Freud. I would date it back in the Renaissance or before. I
even suspect it was endemic to Christianity from the beginning, known to Jesus perhaps,
but prudently kept quiet about by Paul, John and the rest. This ought to make sense to
you as a philosophy teacher."

"Go on. I'm all ears."

"What I'm saying is I can't tell you what's right or wrong in this area, apart from ordinary
questions of justice to your partners which I know you can evaluate as well as I might. It's
a matter of your conscience, after all, and I am sure you are sorry wherever you feel you
have let someone down, your wife, for instance."

"Yes, that's my greatest misery, as you can guess. In fact I'm only here because I'm on my
way looking for her."

"I can hardly imagine that meeting, but I will pray God to bless it. It seems like an
expression of penitence for you to be making that journey."

"Oh rot. It would break my heart not to."

"But that's it, that's penitence. Don't you remember those prayers. I love you more than
myself, never permit me to separate myself from you again and so on. If you're married
all that emotion goes through your wife. She's your commitment, as you are for her."

"I am separated from her. Anyway, aren't you contradicting yourself? You just said the
traditional teaching had lost its way."

"Well I didn't mean everything traditional. But yes, I am in some contradiction. I think we
in the Church have been too afraid of what one of our philosophers called contradictions
in performance."

"That's Lonergan."

"Maybe. Who cares? He meant something different, I think. I just use his words because I
had to read him once. I mean, you probably had to have all these involvements. I'm
thinking too of what has happened to me."

"It's obvious to me that you've been sheltered from all this, apart from all you hear here."

"That's my point, really. It can't be confined to hearing, as the authorities would like, just
as they want us to go among people, to read everything, without getting involved. Will
you listen to me now for a while, of your charity I mean?"

He started to tell Joubert in flawless detail about how a woman had come to confess, or
rather simply to seduce him with her words, alternately arousing and challenging.
Eventually she had come round to his side of the box and finished the job. He had been
powerless to resist, had only feared she would leave too early. In the box-like darkness he
had given his heart and body to her and now sat in the confessional as often as he could
in the hope that she would return. He had fallen in love with her. That was the only
reason that he hadn't given up his position and perhaps even left the Church, since he
could not repent of what had happened. Here was the place where he was most likely to
see her again. Yet her non-return made him fear that she had not shared his feelings, that
perhaps she collected priests in that way, or that something had happened to her.

By this time there were tears in the young man's voice and Edmund's first impulse to
laugh had left him. He began to speak rapidly. "Listen, it's for your sake I came here
today. You don't know anything, you don't know women, you don't know that woman.
Probably you didn't even see her face properly. You should understand that sexual acts of
themselves, at least when one is sensitive, create a bond or, I should say, a feeling of a
bond. So, the best way, the only way, for you to be rid of this misery, to get back into the
stream of life, is to perform sexual acts with one or more other women. But don't go and
start a scandal with a parishioner and fall in love with her too. Go down the road, go to
discos, or, what's probably easier for you, pay for it, read the advertisements, anything,
and go on until you have another experience that you enjoy, don't stop if some stupid
bitch freezes you up. It could easily happen with your background. Then after that you'll
be better equipped to decide how you want to live. If I thought you were truly in love I
wouldn't speak like this, but you're not. She was a stranger and almost certaily playing a
game, perhaps a pretty intense, auto-erotic game."

"Auto-erotic?"

"Why does she go for a man she can't see?"

"She may have seen me before."

"True. But you need to break free of the memory, or at least see it differently. That's my I
know very profane advice."

"We seem to have switched roles. I'm grateful. Who knows, I might just follow your
profane advice, as you call it. Well, I shouldn't have burdened you with my problems."

"No, not at all. It's a long time since I've felt I can be of use, except to that other person like
me I told you about."

"Well, I just don't feel worthy enough to talk to you about this burden of yours any more.
I don't think you want absolution from me either, do you?"

"Well, if you could give it. Life is rolling up pretty rapidly, three times the usual rate and
in the wrong direction."

"You really are... no, sorry. I was going to say crazy, but you're obviously not. I think I can
give you conditional absolution, like one gives to those no longer conscious."

"Well that's very encouraging."

"It's the best I can offer. I still believe in the sacraments, even though you know I have
desecrated this very place."

"Maybe it's that notion of desecration that's the trouble in these matters, some kind of
Jewish hangover."

"Well, it's not just Jews, but maybe. Let me give you the absolution."

*************************************

Finding Leticia was not as difficult as he had anticipated. From the hotel in South
Kensington he telephoned her daughter's residence in Milan, where he heard that Maria
had moved with her family to Rome some years ago. The people in the house were able
to give him the address and telephone number and did not ask who he was. He then
dialled Rome and when a man answered he pretended to be a German, in case they had
been told to put him off, and asked straightaway if Leticia were there. A few seconds later
she was on the phone. She cried when she heard his voice. "Why you phone me? Why
you phone me?" She seemed to have become more Italian again, while the voice sounded
old and hoarse. "I thought it was safe to come back to my daughter after all these years.
Why you still looking for me?"

"How can you ask? I..."

"Listen. You not to come here. Understand. You think this is Disneyland or something? I
can hear your voice, you are like a boy now. This madness. Listen, don't you understand.
The people here, nothing is secret, nothing. You want them to know I am an old woman
with a boy husband?"

"I must see you."

"Must, must. Why? You only want to see if you can make me cry. Listen, I know you are
sorry, I am sorry. There is no point."

"I can come to a hotel, we can meet there."

"No. No. You are frightening me. Promise, promise you won't, if you still love me
somehow. Yes I know you do. Don't start to speak about that."

"Leticia, I must see you before I, before, while I am still a man."

"What are you saying? You know I cannot bear these things. But I know what to do. I
have thought about it all these unhappy years. I am coming to you. Can you wait there?"

"How long?"

"I come at once. Tomorrow. I tell them I meet you. They think you left me for another
woman. I tell them you want to meet, something they can understand. It is only they
must never see you, never."

She was there in London within thirty six hours. She insisted on booking her own room
and repulsed him quite sharply in the foyer when he attempted to embrace her. He went
up with her to her room. "Now you may kiss me."

He hugged her, as he had once used to hug his grandmother. Certain things were
familiar from before, but she held him away before any erotic currents might set up. "Just
sit down and tell me everything," she said. "About me there's not much to tell. You could
imagine I would come to Maria in the end. She needed me, anyhow, and, well, the
children are older now, but I still help with things. Enough. I haven't come here for my
health. Now young man, Mickey Mouse or whatever your freak name is, you just tell
your old Nanny what's been going on."

After initial protest at her brutal tone, which he recognized as a defence, Edmund told her
in ordered detail the history of the years since their parting. He discovered that she had
received his letters from Milan. "It was the first thing I did," she said, "to arrange that
your letters would go somewhere else, never to my daughter's house. So I know more or
less this story."

Then he told it his way and she asked quite a lot of questions. Any talk about his feelings,
however, or his thoughts of her she brushed aside. "Now," she said, when they were
finished. "I am going to use this phone and I am phoning Africa, the university. Are you
going to sit quiet and listen or must I go to my own room and do it?" She pulled out an
address book.

"Who do you want to speak to?"

"I think you men are all stupid. Lucas of course. Who else? The university will put me
through."

"But I have his home number here. Use that."

"Give it to me... Hello, Lucas. Leticia Joubert here, or did you think I was dead? That's
right, now just cut the crap, Lucas, this is expensive. Listen, I've a young spotty-faced boy
here. You know all about him don't you. And there's a girl in Germany beginning to look
rather immature, the fillings in her teeth are getting too big, I hear. Listen Lucas, these are
two young people, let's call them that, they are your responsibility Lucas. No, yes they
are. You want to help them don't you. Be quiet. Listen, there is just no way we can keep
this quiet in Europe, in any country. The authorities will come round, there will be
scandal which even you won't escape, never mind that doctor arse-hole. O.K. he's not an
arse-hole, we call him something else then. He has to help too, because, believe me Lucas,
Africa is the only chance. Now listen, your son, he loves this girl who was once his
mother, your wife... yes, yes, I know Euphonia, give her a big kiss from me. Now this
girl, she loves Mickey Mouse here, Professor Joubert to you, she needs him and he needs
her, because they are alone in the world. They are so alone that they are out of the world,
Lucas. You know that, you've seen them. Yes I heard about your trip, heard a bit more
than Euphonia, I'll bet. You naughty man, yes, yes, you think with it, don't you. That's
why we're in such a mess. Stop this and listen. Your son is clever, and he's qualified in
computer science. Pull some strings Lucas, find him a job down there, with his wife, she's
a teacher too, some place where they can get a quiet house and live with the two children,
I mean these two. No not with you. People there will remember. Fuck his career, Lucas.
This is more important, even to him. Anyway, you can try South Africa, if the universities
there are better for him. You should know that. Now Lucas, do we agree? Yes, I don't
know why you didn't think of it either. Probably still using the wrong organ too much, eh
Lucas? Well if you're offended you're stupid. It's only me knows what to do here. Of
course you agree. Will you do it? Now? Good. And you write to Harry. You tell him to
prepare his mind, prepare his wife too, what's her name? Anne-Marie, that's right. She
seems to have some sense. Now Lucas, this is my last word. Lucas, you have caused me
sadness, you, you interfered with my husband. I forgive you you stupid man, you lost
your wife too, just like me, but now show me, Lucas. Swear to me you will not give up.
What? You won't swear. You promise? What's the difference? I'm in London, with
Edmund. He's going back to Berlin. Write to Harry there, and here's my phone number,
so you tell me what's happening..."

"You must let me pay for some of that."

"No, no. I bring money with me. Now, if you want to eat dinner with me you keep your
hands to yourself. Swear. Promise."

Dinner was not a great success, as there were so many subjects Leticia refused to talk
about. Edmund fully accepted the solution she proposed, but he knew that they were
both glad when the time came to part. He understood better why in literature visitations
from other worlds were always presented as hair-raising necessities, to be kept as short as
possible. He remembered Anne-Marie. Seen in that light, what an amazing girl she was.
For her lover's sake she would be ready to take care of a former lover and his lover, who
was also loved by her present lover. Come to think of it he still loved her himself, loved
the memory of those rapturous days in Sweden, loved her begging him not to hurt her.
Yes, that was why he had had to leave her, and now she had found Harry. But Harry had
Agniezska too. So couldn't he perhaps, would Harry mind if, when they lived together in
Africa, if the current could flow freely also between Anne-Marie and himself? That would
leave the only blockage as being between Harry and himself, since the two women loved
unrestrainedly, but perhaps more like passionate sisters than like deliberate sensualists of
any kind, not like Lesbians. So perhaps he did love Harry already. Well then he loved
Anne-Marie and she him, and what form that took or would take could remain happily
open. End of speculation. Yes, as the young priest had implied, the main effect of "the
experiment" had been to throw the latent problems of sexuality, why did one want to say
"modern" sexuality, into greater relief. The larger metaphysical problems of life and
death, on the other hand, seemed further than ever removed from possibility of
worthwhile discussion. Had Kant been right after all about that?

VI

Edmund and Agniezska

In my end
Is my beginning.

It took Lucas, with his son's cooperation, just under two years to find Harry the job
teaching computer science at what had formerly been a homeland or "bush" university
under the old South African regime but which now enjoyed international recognition. It
would not have been the young man's first choice. He had set his sights on one of the
main European centres. Anne-Marie, on the other hand, found it much more exciting and
interesting. She had got herself a job teaching German as a subsidiary subject in the
French department. This was a new departure for the university and heavy support from
the German and Swedish embassies acting in concert from Pretoria, donating text books
and even blackboard erasers, had been required. When it was found that she could help
out with French as well her position seemed assured.

Harry, however, had no regrets. The wisdom of Leticia's energetic intervention had been
becoming more and more apparent, even before they left the cottage in Berlin. Agniezska
had started having strange problems with her teeth, her face and jaw were in fact getting
smaller, and the dentist had started to ask awkward questions. Also the neighbours in the
Kleingarten Koloni were too close for comfort, and Frau Tamm next door had taken to long
periods of staring over the fence on lazy summer days. Harry, as also Edmund and Anne-
Marie, were deeply oppressed by what they saw happening, understanding also that it
would soon be Edmund's turn. After the visit to Leticia he had lived alone for a few
months, but it showed plainly that he had little inclination left for the carefree, extrovert
life he had once found so attractive. In truth it had hardly survived the original break
with his wife, so little had he known himself. At Agniezska's insistence he moved back
after a while with the other three. As she confided to Harry and Anne-Marie, she felt
alone without him even amid so much shared love, "as if he has become my twin," she
said. By this time, in any case, the move to Africa, on which they were all agreed, lay on
the horizon.

On arrival there they took a farm house some miles from the university, by the seaside in
fact on the Indian Ocean side. Agniezska and Edmund were presented as Harry's
children by a first marriage, as Anne-Marie did not yet look plausible as Edmund's
mother. They made it a rule not to visit the old campus but Lucas came down to visit
them quite often, and it proved impossible to keep Euphonia out of the secret. Lucas
vouched for her keeping quiet, but added that it would not be a disaster if she didn't
since her people already believed stranger things about white people and would anyhow
never rouse themselves to travel down to see the phenomenon for themselves. There
would after all be nothing to see if one had no unambiguous memory of Agniezska or
Edmund from fifteen years previously.

Someone else they did bring one day was Dr. Dzimba. The moment he saw Agniezska
and Edmund he covered his face, which did not increase the general cheerfulness, though
Agniezska took it well. "Come on Patrick, you old butcher," she said, "give us a kiss." But
then as he bent towards her she whispered, "Can't you do something about this?"

After this visit Patrick travelled back over the mountains in the car with Lucas. Euphonia
drove. There was virtual silence in the vehicle for a long time after they had taken their
leave, Euphonia quickly understanding that her initial bright remarks were not welcome
for the moment. Dzimba finally broke the silence. "She asked me to do something, Lucas."

"But you can't, can you?"

"As I've told you so often, I had always hoped that the process would arrest itself when
the stage was reached when that damned gland would no longer be active, because one
had passed the time when it first begins to exist normally. I mean I had hoped that stage
would be reached before she, or Edmund, might cease to be viable outside the womb."

"What womb?" asked Euphonia, with a suspicion of facetiousness, being less personally
involved than the two men.

"Be quiet and concentrate on your driving," Lucas almost snapped at her, perahps
startling himself more than her. "I'm sorry, my dear. Just let Patrick talk now. Go on,
Patrick, please."

"Well, I still have quite a bit of confidence in that. What's upsetting me so much is, well,
quite frankly, I think that it might destroy your son, seeing her getting reduced like that."

"Harry?"

"Yes. I know he's got the other girl, but I've seen him looking at his mother, I mean we
remember, we knew her as his mother. I just know. He's feeling everything she's feeling.
She's drawing him away with her. These are things we never thought of, Lucas man."

"No. She would have been a normal sixty-five or a bit less. He would have come home to
her, or us. I know. What do you suggest?"

"Suggest? Why, just that we help her and Joubert through that time. At their present rate
it might not be more than four years or less."

"It would certainly be noticed," said Euphonia again, "if I'm allowed to speak, that is."

"Think of Joubert," said Dzimba again. "Not to be a man anymore, and yet to remember,
not knowing if one would ever get back."

"Yes. You don't even know what will happen if the process indeed stops. Correct me if
I'm wrong, but it seems to me it might even perpetually recommence and go back the
next instant. We can't assume they will grow again. I could imagine they might probably
just languish and die, as infants. I mean why should the gland itself grow again as if it
hadn't been injured?"

"Well, we don't know how necessary that is anyway. But if everything else grows..."

"This is a circle. Why should anything grow?"

"Just for the normal reasons that any baby grows."

"Yes, but you don't know that. Are we to let them, and Harry, and even ourselves, go
through that terrible trauma you mentioned just to find nothing but horror and death at
the end?"

"What's the alternative? You don't want us to give them an overdose, do you?"

"The others, none of us, will ever accept that. No, never."

"I think I might," said Patrick. "I should have learned from what I did to my father." They
drove on in miserable silence. Then Lucas spoke. "Stop the car please, Euphonia."

"But it's not safe here."

"Please pull up by the roadside."

She switched off the engine. The other two waited. "I think we need to concentrate," said
Lucas. "Let me ask you, Patrick... no, you were still in your village. You wouldn't have
seen it."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"It was a film, after the war, in black and white. It was a film about how they broke the
sound barrier."

"Sorry," said Euphonia. "What's that?"

"I'm sure you know. It's when a plane, or anything, starts to move faster than sound
travels, like the jets do. Back in the fifties or before no one knew if it was possible. But for
some reason it was important to them, they had to know if it was possible, and how."

"Bloody stupid white men."

"Please, my dear, that's not the point at the moment."

"Well what is your damned point?"

"My point... let me come to it. I don't even know if I remember the film properly. This
may be something my memory has constructed. What I remember, what struck me was
this. I'm not a pilot, I don't know about flying, but it was all something to do with the
controls, what they call the joystick, like the gear lever in a car."

"Joystick," chuckled Euphonia. "Bet I know why they called it that."

"Yes all right. What I'm coming to... you see, in the film one pilot killed himself trying to
break the... to go faster than sound. The plane started to shake and went out of control.
He pushed the joystick as far as it would go in whatever the right direction was, but the
plane wouldn't pull out of its dive. He had climbed very high and started to dive, you
see, in order to reach the highest speed, but the plane just went on diving till it hit the
ground."

"Bloody stupid white man," said Euphonia again. Lucas ignored her.

"Lucas," said Dzimba, grinning in the dark. "Just what the hell are you getting at, and
why are we parked here waiting for some lunatic to come and smash the windows?"

"Well, let me go on with the story for a moment. The next pilot..."

"They never learn, do they?"

"My dear, you're wrong. They did learn. What they never did was give up, and we
mustn't give up either."

"Is that all this is about, a little moral tale about not giving up?"

"No, of course not. This second pilot, the one who wanted to go on, even after the
sponsors really had given up..."

"Well, they'd caused a man's death, hadn't they, with their stupid money?"

"Well I never mentioned money. I don't know if that was even a factor. Anyway, this
second chap, he went around thinking, he got quite obsessed with another idea. So he
went to these sponsors or whatever they were, maybe it was the government, I don't
know, and he said, what about if the pilot pulled the joystick in the opposite direction,
maybe then he would come out of the dive."

"Did he have any reason for saying that, like it was the reverse position in a car or
something?"

"I don't remember. But he just wouldn't give up, that's what I mean."

"Sometimes you have to give up."

"I agree. And they could easily have done so. There was no danger, such as we are
threatened with. But then we wouldn't have had jets and rockets today, probably."

"I wouldn't miss them."

"Well what's the parallel?" asked Dzimba. "You're making me nervous."

"Well Patrick, I'm wondering if in our situation, given that unbearable scenario you were
looking at, I'm looking at, they're looking at..."
"Don't mind me," said Euphonia.

"Euphonia, please my dear, this is really serious. Yes, given all that, isn't it time that we
too thought of trying something so to say in the opposite direction?"

"Yes, sure, if we could. But what? What would be opposite? You must have something in
mind, after all this hullaballoo."

"I have. But it's you who are the doctor. I don't know if you would accept my idea, and
after that I don't know if you would think of risking such a thing."

"Oh God, Lucas, not a second time. This reminds me of that night you first got me into
this with your talk. But go on. What is it?"

"Cut out their pineal glands. Now."

There was silence to rival the grave before Euphonia spoke. "Haven't you interfered with
those poor people enough? I mean they've come here to live peacefully in the time that's
left them, like we all do..."

"Wait," said Dzimba. "Lucas. Do you think I never thought of that?"

"Did you?"

"Of course I did. I mean you still think the blacks are stupid really, don't you?"

"No, I..."

"Yes you do. What the hell did you need to give us all that rigmarole for? You made me
start to hope, damn you."

"Wait. So you thought of it. What did you think?"

"That after my father that would make me into a triple murderer."

"Patrick, you didn't murder your father."

"O.K. And Oedipus didn't mean to fuck his mother, I know that."

"No, he didn't, and that's important too, though not a very felicitous example in our
present circumstances."

"Oh fuck your felicitous," said his wife. "You tell me it's serious and now you start your
fucking word games again. I thought I'd cured you of that."
"Lucas," said the doctor. "I didn't only think that, not just that. But that's my fear. This is
the worst possible choice for me."

"Not if it worked. Could it work, Patrick? Tell me that."

"It could, for what I know. The regressive action would stop, just like I'm hoping when
they get to the infant stage."

"And then?"

"Well, I suppose either normal life processes would take over, so that Agniezska, for
example, would grow a bit again. Or..."

"Or what?"

"Or that wouldn't happen. In that case, well they couldn't just stay as they are for ever."

"Why not?"

"Well, you'd need some kind of miracle to sustain it. Any organism, like a flower, like the
animal body, flourishes for a time and then wears out."

"So they would flourish in either case, like they are doing now at least, not go back any
more?"

"You would think so, unless the gland has some essential function no one knows about,
so that something terrible happens if you don't have it, like they might look old and
young at the same time. But that's not my main worry. I'm afraid to operate. I suppose it
would be me."

"So that's why you never told us about this, until old sexy Methuselah here came up with
it. Patrick Dzimba, I think I'm ashamed of you."

Dzimba replied with something in their own language which sent Euphonia off into fits
of laughter. "Oh do excuse me, my two darlings," she said after a while. Then she
thumped Lucas in the stomach. "You're my man," she said. "You're my man. Why didn't
you fly planes instead of writing books. You'd have broken the light barrier by now. This
is our answer. God spoke to you."

"But I told you I'd thought of that myself," said Patrick.

"Yes, and we wouldn't have got to know about it if my wonderful husband Dr. Lucas
Linton emeritus hadn't given you a kick up the backside."

"Well, hardly that, Euphonia. I understand how Patrick feels. But now, Patrick, shall we
say this? We'll let them decide if they want to risk it."

"All right. But promise me you'll stand by me, cover up for me, if it fails."

"Of course. None of us would ever be other than grateful for your trying. It needs
bravery. And we can keep it quiet."

"It'll be a local anaesthetic, though I may have to use chloroform as well. I'll need helpers."

"Here we are."

"This is a happy occasion," said Euphonia. "Shall I drive on now."

"No. Turn the car round."

"What?"

"We'll go back, ask them. Right, Patrick?"

"Well, I..."

"Come on. You told your wife you might be away longer anyhow."

"That's true. Aren't you tired, Lucas?"

"Tired? At a moment like this? I feel I'm just coming out of years in prison."

"Does it make all that much difference?" his wife asked. "They'll still die in the end."

"Oh, this is no time for philosophy. Drive on, drive on."

****************************

They arrived back not long before breakfast, but waited until this meal before explaining
their return and putting their proposal to the others. There was much doubt and
deliberation, somewhat to Lucas's impatience, and in fact he had to wait until two more
nights had passed before the decision was made. During that time people kept splitting
up into pairs and walking off together into the fields, or they would come up to Dzimba,
as he sat trying to read on the stoep, and ask him often and repeatedly the same
questions. Euphonia found that she had to take a hand keeping domestic order as the
other two women spent so much time in talk or just plain worry. In the end, however, it
was Agniezska who made a decision.

"I'll try it," she announced, "but on my own. Then we will wait six months and if it goes
well with me then you must operate on Edmund as well. Correct, Edmund?"
"She won't have it any other way," he said. "Otherwise I'd like to do it now, with her."

"That's not very kind to me," said Dzimba. "You don't care if I take a double risk?"

"Kind to you? Look, I don't in any event want to go on if something happens to her."

"But Edmund," said Euphonia, "she's right, isn't she?"

"Oh I suppose so. When and where, then?"

"We'll do it here," said Dzimba, "next weekend. Anne-Marie, you will assist me."

The next few days were naturally tense, and while the other two were away at the
university it became more clear than before to Agniezska and Joubert how close and, in a
sense, exclusive their bond was. They began to discuss a future together, what they
would do. "I don't need to stay physically by Harry's side," she said. "He knows that."

"And my side?" She had tied her nowadays glossy hair into a single plait, which he
caught hold of, pulling her head and face down against his right shoulder. Her flesh was
young and firm and smelt of some kind of fresh dairy product, while her eyes, burning
with ever renewed brightness, looked frighteningly intelligent, so that a stranger would
have wondered what this girl was going to develop into. She looked about fourteen.

"Well, not if I ever got in the way. Otherwise, well, there's nothing else I want any more."

"My side it is, then. If this is going to be what they call a second time round, then I'm only
interested in sampling it with you. It's taken too much of my inner energy for me to want
to start out on my own again." He now looked not much older than her, and less
physically assured. Only the eyes commanded respect, though not so much for that moral
integrity and severity of which the young are commonly bearers. It was more as if he
were hurt and scarred by early experience. The eyes were without arrogance, again
uncommon in youth. They looked through you, they were knowing without being
"knowing". Only when he looked at his companion did they soften and relax.

"Then it's only your weakness that wants me."

"No, I'm sorry it sounded like that. Even if I got stronger and more ambitious I would
always want you by my side, even if you got ill and disfunctional as they say. It would be
my illness too. We're like Siamese twins."

"So you're being done tomorrow as well, in spirit?"

"Yes. It's only, Agniezska, well, its like a principle, no, just an impossibility, I could never
kill myself. But I think I would die anyway, quite soon, if you went."

"My darling, why should I go? And did you possibly imagine I might want you to kill
yourself? We're still Catholics of a kind, remember."

"What a thing to say, now. You've got to be Polish, I suppose."

"I don't know, but I pray, all the time. Don't you?"

"Yes, I do. So why don't we think more positively about this? I don't believe this operation
can make anything worse than it is. It will stop what's happening to you and then we can
enjoy what's left with less fear, less apprehension. It can't be worse than your shrinking
down to some kind of child."

"Well, I'm a little bit afraid I might have extra trouble with my neck."

"No. I really think Patrick knows how to look after that, at least." He lifted her plait and
kissed long and lovingly the old scar of fifteen years back. "Now I must kiss yours," she
said, pushing him to the ground and on to his stomach. She licked the back of his neck
like an affectionate dog. Rising, they took their way hand in hand to the house.

The day came and Patrick arrived with the tools of his trade, including a somewhat
antiquated-looking chloroform kit. Agniezska was laid out on an air mattress on the
kitchen table and the blinds were drawn. The others were not allowed to watch, although
Euphonia assisted, preparing water for sterilization and generally standing by. Anne-
Marie handed him his instruments, wearing with him a surgical mask. He first
administered the local anaesthetic until Agniezska was certain she was totally numb in
the relevant area. Then the chloroform mask was held over her face. He seemed to feel
this was the most dangerous part. "It mustn't be too much," he said. "Just to help along the
local."

Then the incision was made, the little nut of a gland found and removed. Bleeding was
not extensive, the small wound was soon sown up. Agniezska's stomach had been kept
empty but when she woke up she retched somewhat, while Anne-Marie carefully held
her head as the jerky movement was extremely painful to her wounded neck. She was
then carried away to the bedroom to sleep.

No immediate results of the operation were observable. Harry religiously photographed

her each day and arranged the pictures in sequence on the dining-room wall. Her weight
and height were also noted. After about three months she appeared to have grown about
half a centimetre, but they had not been precise enough in their methods to be certain.
Still, optimism reigned. As Lucas remarked, she should otherwise rather have got shorter.
He had decided to ignore the possibility of failure so as to save time, since his mind was
already racing ahead beyond that of the others.
"You're going to need new passports again," he said. "I'm afraid they'll have to be South
African, Europe's too difficult now. They'll be forged, of course, since there are no birth
certificates, still less South African ones."

"Couldn't you get those forged as well?" Edmund asked.

"It's easier to say they were lost. You and Agniezska were both born privately at home,
we'll say if challenged, here in the Transkei or thereabouts. As far as the South African
authorities are concerned, and you may never need to treat with them, your parents were
missionaries who out of principle failed to register you with the state, some sectarian idea
of theirs."

"You mean we're brother and sister."

"That's the easiest way for me to do it. But you could say that Agniezska was only your
sister by adoption. She was taken over from some girl protegée who had concealed her
pregnancy. That would explain the unlikeness and make your behaviour less offensive to
people at times when they notice how you love each other, as they will."

"So we won't be Harry's children any more?"

"That would have been too difficult to arrange."

Edmund contemplated a future of skulking around in South Africa without enthusiasm.

He talked with Agniezska of returning to the garden house in Berlin, but she brought up
the spectre of Frau Tamm and the other neighbours peeking over the wall at them, an
eventual visit from the authorities not exactly suspecting witchcraft but one of the various
modern equivalents. He thought of Spud Murphy, who knew their secret after all, if he
were still living. Edmund had thought it safer not to keep up contact. A new future of the
old school-teaching filled him with weariness in advance. He wondered how long the
state would keep on paying his pension. He was only seventy after all, so that ought to
give him twenty-five years at least. But they might come round to check up, to have a
look at him.

It was on the day following these perplexities that a letter arrived for him from Sweden. It
was from Nava.

Dear Edmund,
First, I hope you are going to excuse me my bad English. Next that you will
also excuse my knowing your life and problems. I guessed something when
you were here already and I found ways of making Anne- Marie tell me it.
You must not be angry with me. We have been writing all the time to each
other, and now she tells me her worries for the future. I heard now the
operation has gone well for Agniezska, whom I did not meet, and I do not
doubt it will go well for you too.
 Here is my idea. I am now running a gymnasium in Gustavsberg, outside
Stockholm, towards the islands and Finland, you know. I believe they are
setting you up as sixteen now, just the age of my pupils. Anne-Marie tells me
you have no home, have lost all belonging. I am very sorry to know that, but
I remember how you felt at home when you were with me and my poor
Brian, and I just wondered, I hope you will not find it ridiculous, if it could
help you to come here, live with me, and get Swedish qualifications in my
school here. If you have now a good passport I am sure it can be arranged
with the authorities for you to stay here. Of course Agniezska is also
included in this, you must be so very close together. It would be a chance for
a new life. In Sweden now it is very easy, you can change names, everything.
Then you could later choose your work. But of course I understand if you
want to stay in Africa, with Harry and Anne-Marie.

And now you must tell that good doctor that one more person is watching
his hand, so that he must do a good job. I hope we will see each other again.
Nava.

He could not have concealed the letter from the others, even if he had wanted to, as it was
delivered while they sat at breakfast. It was a day when Harry and Anne-Marie did not
need to go to the campus. Agniezska found the letter disturbing. "It's obviously you she
wants," she said. "I wonder why exactly."

"Agniezska, that's not like you," said Anne-Marie. "I asked her to try to come up with
something. Of course I know she liked Edmund."

"And I liked her," said Joubert, "very much indeed."

"Not like you liked me though," said Anne-Marie, but giving Harry's leg a sudden
squeeze. Edmund felt a surge of sheer desire for the first time in weeks and Agniezska
sighed, saying "Well, we're all polygamists here, or poly what do you call its. I'd almost
forgotten."

"Yes, but it doesn't change anything. It's just that we are ready and open, but we don't
hurt one another, either by fickleness or by holding each other back." Edmund smiled at
Agniezska. "Anyway, Nava was a different kind of friend, as Anne-Marie said. She'll be
about fifty or more now."

"But I've never been to Sweden."

"Well, we don't have to go if you don't want to."

"You could go though, you know that. I have no right to hold you back, as you said. And
then, well, it will be hard for me and Harry to part."

"Hard for any of us," said Anne-Marie. "Harry knows I don't want to lose Edmund either.
As a matter of fact I'm starting to miss Sweden sometimes, and I've asked Harry to think
if he might not find something there. I think he's ready for further research in his field,
which he couldn't do anywhere here."

"Yes, that's right," said Harry. "Ever since you sent me away to school in Europe," he
looked at the lovely, hoydenish girl who had been his mother, "I've tended to slightly
resent my tie to this backward corner of the globe. Sweden sounds exciting, besides being
quite close to Berlin and the other European centres."

"Well, I'm beginning to think the Swedes are a lot of rather dark horses, especially the
women," said Agniezska. But she smiled and put her hand out to Anne-Marie, who took
and held it.

"Well we're rather jumping ahead," said Edmund. "We haven't measured Agniezska's
height today yet."

During the next weeks Dzimba was able to satisfy himself that she was now living and
growing at the normal rate. The more bizarre nightmares began to recede. The wound
had healed quickly and gave her very little trouble. She agreed that Edmund's turn could
be brought forward, as everyone now wanted.

After his operation they all agreed not to wait around, but to act as if all had gone as
hoped. Partly through Anne-Marie's obvious enthusiasm for getting them all to her
country it became virtually a foregone conclusion that Edmund and Agniezska would
accept Nava's invitation. The Swedish academic year was due to start in a few weeks and
so they turned a deaf ear to Dzimba's insincere pleas for prudence. His chief real emotion
was relief that they would be so far away, the sooner the better, though he rebuked
himself for this egoism. Lucas, on the other hand, received the news with equanimity. It
remained always a slight pain for him to look upon Agniezska, to see her, and now he
understood that his son was not troubled by the parting, hoped indeed to rejoin them
overseas before long. These days the world was smaller, the telephone more efficient,
airfares cheaper. He and Euphonia would certainly be keeping in touch.

***********************************

The old, when they retain their wits, are often able to dispense with preliminaries we
others find so necessary. This was never more true than it was of the preternaturally
youthful seventy year olds now landing at Arlanda airport, Sweden, on a brightly sunny
and warm July night, where they were met by Nava, who drove them to Gustavsberg.
The quiet warmth of this blonde, Nordic woman of fifty made an instant conquest of
Agniezska, who sat as she insisted in front with her, her dark glossy hair in front being
reminiscent of a young horse, while the plait hung over one shoulder so that she could
pull upon it with her free hand.

Nor did her contentment change in the house when she at once observed that Edmund
and Nava had fallen in love at first, in fact second sight. It seemed to her that they had all
known this would happen, if only because it had once happened. Edmund had often
spoken of that unique peace he had felt in Nava's presence. Yes, she had expected this
and during the car had herself fallen in love. She knew that the situation presented no
threat to her, or, more precisely, to Edmund's and her love for one another. Nor did she
particularly care what the sleeping arrangements were going to be.

"You've been waiting all the time, haven't you, Nava, for us to come here."

"No, Agniezska, we can't say that. I didn't know what would happen. I have never
forgotten Edmund, but I was prepared never to see him again, never to meet you. This
makes me very happy."

"This is home," said Edmund, relaxing in his armchair as far as his still sore neck would
allow. Nava and Agniezska sat on the sofa. "Will you be my mother?" asked Agniezska,
staring adoringly at Nava.

"But I want to ask you to be mine," said that lady. "You are twenty years older, you
know." This was a joke, however. All of them, including Agniezska herself, knew that she
was the simpler soul. She had already explained to Edmund that her approach to the new
life beginning was less complex than his. He for his part could not help seeing it as a
slightly wearisome repetition of the old, scarred as he was by his emotional sufferings,
above all by the parting from Leticia with the lasting knowledge of how he had hurt and
failed her. But Agniezska's appetite for youth was undimmed and in fact, and despite all
her finer feelings, when she saw how he and Nava were in love she experienced a pure
jerk of sexual excitement as she remembered again how free she was, and would ever be,
to initiate as many liaisons with the local young or less young men as her nature might
prove able to sustain.

This did not mean, however, that she felt pressure either from herself or from Edmund
and Nava to move out. The conditions for the usual instinct of self-protective privacy in
this matter were absent. Besides this the emphasis, the current that passed between the
three of them did not seem for the most part to be overtly sexual, though it was heavily
erotic in the sense that they mutually and constantly turned and tended to one another.
Why just Nava had this effect upon them both they were unable to explain, nor could she
say. Sometimes she talked about her early life. She had been an only child, apparently
resented by her parents. An early accident had cut short a promising career as a dancer;
she had a daughter who lived in America. No clues there. "You are our future," said
Edmund, "since Agniezska and I are two halves of one, and she loves you as much as I
do."

"She is my younger self," said Nava, "my seventy year old younger self."
"Isn't it strange," said Edmund, "that we never think of being of any use to the world?"

"Well, I have my school."

"Yes, but this will be more important to you now, won't it? To you as well. We can only
sit and marvel at our fate. It has somehow fixed our attention upon love. And we've
suffered too, awfully. Really we are still suffering all the time; we have been placed
outside. It's only our wisdom, I mean I know we have it, which consoles us."

"I don't know," said Agniezska. "What about all the lovely sensations?"

"Well," said Nava, "Aren't they a kind of knowledge too? Isn't that why people have often
been afraid of them? A knowledge which the body needs, of course, I mean which we
need. There is no body on its own."

"One thing I've thought," said Edmund, "is that death seems to be of no interest to any of
us. We don't even bother to talk about it. Yet it was always one of humanity's main
preoccupations."

"When Brian died I thought a lot about death," said Nava. "He wasn't really ready, you
see. Not at first. But not long before the end it all came right, because I had found out that
death was not our business, and I taught him that. Be right now and you'll be right then,
either in that last moment or in something beyond."

Thus life went on in Sweden. Edmund began to organize a new life for himself as a
translator, while Agniezska started to discover she had acting talents. Nava continued to
run the school, and after a few years they were joined by Harry and Anne-Marie and
their two children. Lucas and Euphonia stayed in Africa, where in due course they
helped bury Patrick Dzimba. His English widow, who was privy to "the experiment",
came to live with them on campus in the stone house, which she kept in good order when
Euphonia and Lucas made their frequent trips to Sweden. On these occasions Lucas liked
to make a little excursion of his own down to Berlin, where he had two good friends
named Erika and Heidi.