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This is to certify that the

dissertation entitled

AFTERNOONS 0F ALLIGATORS
presented by
Diane Moody
has been accepted towards fulfillment

of the requirements for

M.A. degree in Enghsh

 

 

Major professor

Date July 28, 1986

 

MS U is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution 0-12771

 

 

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AFTERNOONS OF ALLIGATORS

By
Diane Heady

A THESIS

Submitted to
flichigan State Univeraity
in partial fulfillment of the requiremente
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of English
1986

ABSTRACT

AFTERNOONS 0F ALLIGATDRS

By
Diane Hoody

Afternoona 2:_Alliggto£g ia a collection of eerie-conic ahort
fiction in the olaaaical eanae-the hero aucceeda, but juat barely. Ad-
venture, ita challenge and riaha (hence, the alligatora), ia the theee
uniting theee piecea. Reilly ia the archetypal hero of adventure fic-
tion; he ia introduced in the opening biographical akatch; “Reilly and
the Garden of Kathar," and "Saint'a Raat, The End of Reilly,” coaplate
hie adventuraa; ”Purple Lace” addreaaaa the agony of the author in writ-
ing literate proae; 'flodern Love” inveatigatea the uait for love and the
Height of love; the title atory explorea the challenge of change and the
uill to riak in love and the uork place, and uhat happana the follouing

day ia the topic of ”Jeoel'a Afternoon.“

In Henry of

RUTH EVELYN HIGDON MODY
1927-1984

ii

ACKNOWLEDGEHENTS

I uiah to thank and acknouledge the assistance of:

Sheila McGuire, for her gentle courtesy both in and out of the
classrooa, for her unflappable and unfailing kindness toeard fledgling

creative writers, and for her "peregrine eye“ in astters aesthetic and
editorial;

Johnna Isbey and Sr. Christian, tuo finer Profess-ors of English
it would be difficult to find. I an fortunate indeed to have then as
my personal friends as uell.

John Saolens, to uhoe I dedicate ”Javel'a Afternoon"; eithout
introducing us to Andre Dubua I uould not have been able to urite it;

Mary Pierce, a forner student froa she. I learned the benefits

of brainstoreing, especially in application to "Saint's Rest, The End
of Reilly"—-

-illegitinats child (seer? someone else?)
-idsntical tuin sister?

-a return of favors?

-urite the ending first

Joan, my friendly proofreader and proved friend through thick and
thin (he he);

R.L.H.K., for the encouragement he gave, nest especially ehen I
use in darkness and doubt. I can always use a good cheerleader . . .

my father and stepaother, for their love, support, nagging, and
rare coanon sense. I have been tuice-blessed in matters of mothers;

and last, to my aother, eho did not live to see this work. I
thank her new for her belief in me.

0. RC".

iii

PREFACE

Sidney Reilly was real. He was born near Odessa in 1674. His
death is recorded by the Russian Government in 1925, yet reports and
sightings in the West of the Hester Spy surfaced in 1927, 1931, 1935,
and 1945. In 1956 the British Intelligence community applied to Khrush-
chev for information about Reilly. They received no reply. In 1966,
Robin Bruce Lockhart, whose father worked with Reilly on spy missions in
Russia, authored the book, Reilly: §£3_2£,Spies, which stirred the Soviets
to circulate two million copies of a book claiming to present a true ac-
count of the capture, interrogation, and execution of Bolshevism's number
one enemy.

The Reilly biography I present is based on facts gathered by
Loekhart. ”Reilly and the Garden of Kathar' is my own invention, while
”Saint's Rest, The End of Reilly,” presents an imaginary solution to the
ultimate mystery of his disappearance. I have distorted dates and manipu-
latsd characterization at will (there really was a Pepita-shs was Reilly's
third wife). I must confess the peculiar hold over my imagination that
this man's story has had since the 1983 PBS Mystery! dramatization when I
sat glued to the TV week after week. In no way can I hope to capture his
sinister charm or wicked'style, nor his keen intelligence, zest for danger,
and sexual magnetism. He was rumored to have had "eleven passports and a
woman to go with each.” He was also a bigamiet. Private life aside, he
contributed much to what our modern notion of espionage is; he has been
called the first spy of the twentieth century. He was also a bitter fee
of Communism, expending his private wealth in fomenting anti-Bolshevik
activities with the aim of over-throwing Lenin's regime. He very nearly
pulled off Lenin's assassination in 1916, and, if accounts are to be bar
lisved, it was Reilly who authored the infamous Zinoviev Letter which
toppled Ramsay RacDonald's pro-Socialist Labour cabinet in 1924. It was
on a trip to Russia in 1925 that Reilly disappeared.

The title story, "Afternoons of Alligators," also contains ref-
erence to a real life situation which I first came across in the February
1970 issue of American Heritage Regazine, the article, “ 'Never Leave Rs,
Never Leave Me,‘ a by New York lawyer Louis Auchincloss. It was the fee-
cinating treatment of an uncommon love affair between Henry Adams, hia-
torian and descendant of two American presidents, seventy-five years old
and a widower, and of flies Aileen Tone, the beautiful and gracious thirty-
four year old woman who shared the final five years of his life as secre-
tary/companion. I follow the ”tone" of their relationship closely.

I recommend both Lockhart's book and the Auchincloss article to
those who may cars to look further into the lives of these remarkable
people. It is my hope I have done then no disservice in helping their
memories to live again.

DQRQH.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ReillyxTheRero'sBsginning.................page 1
Reilly and the Garden of Kathar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page a
Saint'sRest,TheEndofReilly................pege 39
Purple Lace . . . . . . . . . . .,. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 79
RodernLove..........................paga 68

AftCMOWOTRIL'AQCtOusssssssseesesssssesP...118

H.8‘fuMsesssesesssssseessesessm 13°

Reilly: The Hero's Beginning

Sidney Reilly, n; Sigmund Sergei Aleksandr Pinssky, was born in
Odessa in 1904. Since there use nothing remarkable about either the
place or the year of his birth, that left only the man himself, or
rather, the man he would become. Of what he would and did become, let
this history be the humble record.

Sigmund made his appearance into a comfortably middle-class
Russian family who lived in a comfortable house in one of the more
comfortable districts of a city devoted to maintaining its comfort.

As Sigmund thrived and grew, which is to say as his critical auerenssa
expanded, as he was a boy of both brains and imagination, he rapidly
realized that all this comfort was leading him to an acute case of dis-
comfort. Granted, hia Rama and older sister Odils fairly doted upon
him; nothing was too fine for their ”dear boy.” And that was as it
should be. Has not Sigmund the center of their tiny universe? Has he
not their "perfect darling”? (indeed he was not, but that is fodder for
other biographers)

While sweetness and light circumscribed his boyhood world, what
saved Sigmund from a situation which threatened treacls and sunstroks
use his Papa. Papa politely tolerated his only son. While this fact
of life was puzzling to the little boy, it at least broke the monotony
of his at times too-comfortable existence. Sigmund's approach was to

live with this fact by working around it. His talent for ‘

accommodation would later reveal itself in his uork as well as in his
private life.

Sigmund-”Siggy‘-to his Rama and Odils, was therefore loved
and knew love in that largely feminine household (Papa never really
counted since he came homo from the bank at mealtimes). Some bio-
graphera contend that it is here, in these tender beginnings, that the
groundwork was later laid (no pun intended) for Sigmund's notorious
womanizing. Other biographera hold a Freudian view, that Sigmund
harbored definite Oedipus tendencies, tendencies which his environment
encouraged and which he never outgrew, though this biographer will
not repeat the scurrilous lie that no women between the ages of six-
teen end sixty was safe from his attentions, nor will we delve into
the prurient details involving the Dowager Countess Dregomiloff and
her scintillating young niece Rervilla Savinkoff at the 1935 Venice
Film Festival where Sigmund commandeered a private box in which to
view the screening of that year's winner, Aggg_§gggging, a sentimental
favorite among the Russian 6.19:6. present, not excluding the Dowager
Countess and her niece, who shared the private box with Sigmund-that
scandal would profane the lips and sully the pen of any conscientious
biographer, but it should be noted for the sake of journalistic integ-
rity and biographical completeness that Rarvilla was delivered of her
child a full nine months and two weeks after the said screening, that
she was contracted in marriage to a member of the lesser exiled Russian
nobility prior to the blessed event, and that the Dowager Countess

never failed to speak of Sigmund after that night in any but the most

rcseate terms, especially of his ability to

But that is fodder for other biographera.

_Let it stand that Sigmund was a man of great charm and nany
talents.

To return to our account, Sigmund therefore loved and knew love.
His Papa obtrudad his presence at best and worst but thrice daily.
Life therefore was quite simple for the young Sigmund until ens day
his world collapsed, comfort vanished, and his life truly began . . .

Prefatcry to the above comment, it is the duty of the biographer
to briefly inform the reading public of the rigors and personal hazards
attendant upon the task at hand, especially when said figure proves
as elusive to methodical research as this man. If one but knew the
sources and circumstances under which the biographer exposes hinself
(no pun intended!) in order to obtain information of the highest order
and most irrefutable caliber. But let us recommence our history, for
all good biography is at least three-fourths tale and one-fourth truth.

His home had never been robust, though she did have a rather
nice one which she kept freckle-free through nightly applications of
hcnsieur nun-2's Crane du Busts. her delicate constitution, there-
fore, required the continual diligence and bedside attendance of
Ddsssa's finest physician-whc happened to be Jewish, but although it
was the Pinssky practice not to over-trust Jewish scrupuloaity, Jaws
at least made, to Mr. Pinseky'e way of thinking, trustworthy physicians-
and so, following the birth of her son and for years afterward, Sigeund's
Hams received once and often twice-weekly visits by the good doctor.

These visits established thensslves into a fixed pattern of confortable

(that word again) and convenient regularity at the Pinsaky household for
as long as Sigmund could remember.

Then one day, shortly before Sigmund's thirteenth birthday, the
good doctor's visit was neither good nor comfortable nor even convenient,
for Sigmund'e Papa, arriving home unexpectedly between mealtinas dis-
covered his frail wife in bad with.her Jewish physician. From that
day forth the doctor never again set foot (nor any other bodily part)
inside the Pinssky door. Sigmund's hams thereafter became a tense
woman, tight-lipped and withdrawn. She took to dabbing at the corner
of her eyes with a white lace handkerchief. Only Ddile remained to
ccseet him as before, but even that relationship received a different
coloring, for Sigmund learned, on that fateful day, that he was not,
and indeed had never been, his father's son at all.

The profound shock of this news, that this doctor, this very
doctor, who had attended his precious Heme all these years and who
had also presided at his birth, had, unaccountably, inexplicably, and
outrageously presided also at his conception, would have undermined
a lesser personality, but the revelation, so long in coming, so dark
in its myriad implications, instead produced an immediate, liberating,
effect.

Sigmund, half-Jewish bastard though he was, was NOT the scion
of a self-contained bank clerk of impeccably dull (and comfortable)
niddls-class origins. He was now, to his agile young nind, a figure
of Byronic romance, the illicit issue of star-crossed lovers, the

palpable evidence of a secret liaison, the love-child of a hopeless

love. He saw hieself as a hero without a name-or rather, a hero with
a new one-Rosenblun. But Sigmund dared to drean even further; he
would make his own name. Trembling on the brink of young manhood,
Sigmund had behind hie the lie of years' making. Before his lay an un-
charted terrain open to possibility.

In short, the world lay before him and the prospect was sweet.

Life at home becane untenable. His ersstz Papa's half-concealed
resentment and icy reserve, the products of years' worth of accunulated
suspicions and dark wanderings, gave way at last in face of the truth.
Cuckold is neither a pretty nor pleasing title to any man, but it is
excruciatingly uncomfortable to an anxiously conservative bank clerk.
The boy's daily presence was but salt in the wound. Sensing this,
young Sigmund knew it was tine to cut the cord to hearth and home.

He vacated his comfortable nest in a most singular eenner.

As some biographers would have it, he died.

Shortly after the revelatcry accident which marked Sigeund's
first escape from mundane norality, a second followed. To date this
event with greater precision (the most worthy and time-consueing of
biographical pursuits), it was upon the exact occasion of Sigmund's
thirteenth birthday, as he was trying out one of his presents, a
gift of ice skates fron his putative Papa, when, suddenly, as with
all unexpected things, he fell through the ice to the freezing river
waters below.

The current was strong, and though Sigmund was a practised
swimmer, having lived near the water all his young life, he could not

break its icy grip. Bobbing beneath the ice for the last tine, he

was soon carried out of reach of his screaming companions on shore.

His body was pushed and scraped downstream under an implacable
canopy of ice. Burning to breathe, aching to breathe, but daring not,
our young hero (dare we evince such biographical bias? A resounding
yes!) clung to life. Seconds seemed like ainutes, einutee stretched to
eternity. Huacles screaming for oxygen began to prickle than tingle
then throb. He thought his brain would burst with the effort to hold
his breath. And then the cold claimed his, numbed him, froze his
heart. He gave up the unequal struggle and slept in the bosom of the
river. The sluggish fish ignored him. The weeds waved along the bottom
as before. Quiet and unprotesting, his body continued its course down-
strean.

As the waters neared the nouth of the Black Sea, the ice gradually
thinned and began to reoede. Paesersby noticed a dark blotch traveling
beneath the ice. Suicides and corpses were common enough freight for
the river in any season. he one attempted to fish it from the water as
it bobbed limply upward through a break in the icy crust.

washed to the edge of the bank, his cheek resting on a pillow
of frozen cud, Sigmund could not know that he had indeed died and been
reborn, that news of his death would reach but not solace his grieving
acther and sister, that he would travel the world and render service
to a foreign power, or that he would, many years hence, lie stretched
face down in the snow, a vision of terror to haunt the dreams of a psychic
aligrie . . . all theee wonders lay closed to him behind the door of the
future as he lay cheek down in the mwd-but that is fodder for other

biographera.
Simd Rosenblum reborn Sidney Reilly began to breathe.

Reilly and the Garden of Kathar

Another sultry afternoon in the sssmy bazaar quarter of Horocco's
market district found Reilly at his usual post, the Cafe D'Dr, drinking
his first scotch and water of the day. The hot white light of the
blistering Icrth African sun rarely found its way past the cheap pink
plaster facade of the Cafe D'Dr; in fact, the only thing golden about
it was the front tooth of its beaming proprietor, an Egyptian by the
none of Faisal-al-Harid.

Reilly had patronized the Cafe now for two weeks. he stood at
the bar, glass in one hand, the other resting on his Jodhpua-breeched
thigh. With a quick flick of the wrist he drained his glass in one
swallow. He was plenty sick of the place, the climate (beastly), and
the people. Damn! If only Ksnnedy'd show up. It was days like these . . .

Aaong the clientele of the Cafe eat the Fat hen. Hie red felt
for was perfectly centered on his thinning, sweat-ecaked hair. He
periodically dabbed at his glistening brow and flushed cheeks with e
sodden white silk handkerchief. The Fat Ron's once spotless Tropical
whites were no more. his Bond Street tsilcr>would have shraiked. The
Fat Han tcc hated the place, the climate (beastly), and the barbarous
lack of decent toga, but nothing, unless it were an intact fifteenth
century incunabulum, would persuade him to abandon his post.

Reilly sighed and shifted his weight to the other hip, resting

his booted foot against the low brass bar rail. He peered at his

smoky surroundings as if willing Kennedy's face to appear. A good
trick if he could pull it off. Unfortunately, he couldn't. His

keen slate eyes, pale against aun-bronzed skin, squinted. His aqui-
line nose (would the Screen lriter's Guild have it any other way?)
wrinkled distastefully at the heavy clove-scented smoke. He knew if
he waited ouch longer he would be reduced to the same stupor envelop-
ing the Arab crowd.

He .1» km. it would m. every trick in en. book to get the
Fat flan off his back, for get his off he must, but now all he could
do was wait for Kennedy, and he was already overdue. Reilly's one
hope was that the Germans had not gotten to him first.

his reverie cans to an abrupt halt when the beaded entrance,
gl.gigllg_to all hediterranean-facing North African cafes in the '40s,
parted. Reilly was ready to give thanks to Allah the Rerciful for the
sight that eat his eyes. No, it was not Kennedy. The brilliant after-
noon sunlight etched her silhouette against the parted strands. She
hesitated, balancing on ridiculously slia high heels. From there,
Reilly's gaze moved upward, from her shapely calves and long legs to
her narrow waist and sleek shoulder length hair curled down in a page
boy.

Her momentary indecision at an and, she stepped down, and look-
ing neither right nor left she glided through the curling smoke and
press of unwashed bodies at crowded tables, unconcernedly crunching
pistachio shells underfoot, heading unswervingly toward Reilly as if

in answer to his unspoken prayer. This ig.too good to be true, he

10

thought. Something'e up. The Fat Han too watched her entrenoe with
avid and oily interest, apparently the only kind bad guys know. A
hush fall over the Arab crowd. Silence reigned.

For some, the vision was too much. It always is in the movies.
Greedy brown hands reached out to stroke the ivory-skinned beauty but
it was the awarthy arm of Ased-ben-Achmed which snaked out to snag
the prize about her waist. Caught off balance, she toppled against
his burncosed chest. The crowd crowed with joy.

She struggled, snall white fists beating a tattoo against his
desert-toughened skin. Ased ohcrtled and shifted her'weight to his
plank-hard lap. The heroine did the only thing left her to do. She
slapped the blackguard. Hard.

Ased stopped ohcrtling. Hhite women did not slap Arab men and
get away with it. The saucy minx needed lessening. He lifted one
great teak-stained gold-ringed fist to strike her down when a movement
from the bar caught his equally keen but sable eye. Reilly was poised
to throw a knife. The whole bar held its collective breath; the air
noticeably sweetened. This was better than last week's sock fight.

Ased paused.

“Let the lady go," Reilly commanded in a deceptively dulcet tone.

"Let the lady gc‘ngg,”

The woman froze. The Arab debated. For two weeks the Anglo had
come to the Cafe and had said nothing and done nothing to warrant Asad's

attention; therefore, the Anglo was obviously bluffing. Rs accordingly

11

ignored Reilly's quiet commend. A silver flash out the air. Ased
screamed. Blood dripped. His. The woman was dumped to the pistachio
shell-littered floor.

Ml Shit! MI" The hairy teak-stained hard-nuscled
hawk-nosed villain swore, in the only three languages at his com-and.
He really did have a filthy mouth.

"Hell old chap,“ Reilly drewled, as leading man must, “that was
ay woman you were pawing.” A nan's woman is secrosanct in Islamic law.
In the eyes of the Arabs Reilly had correctly behaved in defending his
property. What they didn't need to know was that he had never set eyes
on the woman before.

”And if you don't mind,“ he added nonchalantly, 'I'll take this
back as well.” He stooped to retrieve his blooded knife still eabedded
in the Areb's dripping hand. “That looks nasty, old boy," he intoned
in his best Cary Grant accent, “I'd have that seen to if I were you.”
Sclicitude always goes down better with a British accent.

Retrieving his pearl-handled knife and wiping the blade clean
of cloying blood, Reilly once again concealed it behind the clever crease
in his jodhpur breaches put there by his London tailor, and extended
his hand to the shellshccked female on the floor. "Really m'dear,“
he crooned in honied platitude, "we have to stop meeting like this."
Her chatcyant eyes beaaed back. "All the excitement in this heat is
bad for one's nerves.“ His lips twisted in a mocking sails and his

slate eyes struck sparks the way an srsoniat torches tenements.

Thus far the beleaguered lady had not spoken. She glared up

at hin fron her position ancng the shells. Her green eyes snapped,

12

her perfect cheeks flamed in an otherwise sshen face, her rosebud lips
snarled. She grabbed the proffered hand and prepared to lambaste his
with the other but Reilly saw it coming.

"If you insist, m'dear.‘ He hoisted her to her high-heeled feet
and enfelded her in a liquid eebrace. 7

His kiss drained her. She'd been on a damn cargo transport for
ten hours Just to get to horocco. Ten hot stuffy cramped hours with
lousy service to boot. Then three hours from the landing strip (she
wouldn't dignify it with the word ”airport') to this crummy Cafe D'Dr—-
whore house, more likely, she reflected-because the French-speaking
Arab taxi driver couldn't follow her perfectly good instructions in
English. And now Reilly's knife-throwing act-yes, she knew his name
though he hadn't caught hers yet-followed by these cheap thaatrics.

It was days like these she regretted joining the Service, but what the
heck, her country needed her, and so thinking, she did what any heroine
would do badly in need of a change in toilette. She fainted.

As if waiting for his cue, Faisal, the grinning gold-toothed
proprietor, went into action. Stopping from behind the her he quickly
motioned two of his prime bouncers to escort the still-bleeding and
still-surly Ased outside. lext, Faisal indicated the narrow twisting
staircase to the rear of the Cafe to Reilly. The rickety stairs led
to the second floor guest rooms which, in quieter days, had been known
to receive the stray tourist. Uhoever said war was good for business
was a liar, Faisal thought.

Grateful for Faisal's innkeeperly tact, which he put down to a

keen nose for cash, Reilly shifted his load and trod the squeaky boards

13

upward. The Fat Ran watched the entire performance from his dark
corner. He was certain this wonen was Reilly's long-awaited contact.
That stupid Ased had had to go and put his hands on her, he thought.
He would ensure that Ased never again did anything so foolish. It was
days like these . . .

a a s a a s

Reilly turned left at the top of the stairs and down a dinly
lit corridor to the end of the shabby hallway. The Cairo hilton had
nothing to fear. Room Four housed the best bed in the house: a
double bed, in fact. Use it only three nights ago that he'd taken
that drunk little French cabaret dancer upstairs? Ry, haw tine jit-
terbuge. He shook his black brilliantined hair as if to clear his
nemory. Feeling his burden begin to stir in his arms, he kicked open
the door in best hills A Boon fashion and strode over to the commodious
bed, dumping her onto the cream chenille ccverlet.

Sprewled thus, her pencil-slim skirt hiked above dimpled knees,
her long pale legs skewed, her arms splsyed, one across her decorously
buttoned bosom, the other curled across tumbled auburn locks, she
looked like a disjointed and rumpled porcelain doll. Slowly she
opened her eyes into Reilly's keen slate stars.

I “have a nice nap?" he queried.

She was attracted to Reilly. Host women were. however, she
had one bad marriage behind her already. She knew from experience
it wouldn't do to look interested right away. Let'm dangle. So

she opted to fight. "I could'vs handled that Arab octopus without

14

attracting,“ she paused significantly, "the attention of the whole bar,”
she announced in a husky American accent.

”Your make-up's a seas,” he non-sequiturred, allowing him to
segue into, "and your stocking has developed a run."

She looked down at her leg. Touche. And damn those slate
eyes that made mashed potatoes of her knee joints.

“Besides which,“ he shot his parting salvo, “you have a nessage
to deliver, I believe.“

So much for her strategy.

"may," she agreed in s throaty purr calculated to melt his in-
pudence, "I surrender.” Reilly sat back on the bed and narrowed his
eyes at her. This one was 523,

"Kennedy was spotted by the Gestapo after his plane touched
down in Algiers.” She paused for dramatic effect. “It isn't pretty
what they do to suspected spies-eve (from neutral nations. North
Africa isn't the tourist spot it used to be-"

She really knew how to steam him. What she didn't know was
that Kennedy was a good friend, an old friend, and apparently now a
dead friend. 'Uhy are you here?" he probed.

"They needed a replacement, and with so many agents in the field,
well, you can appreciate the total chaos this war has thrown everyone
into,"she faltered. Things weren't quite going as she planned.

"Your nessags?‘

"hother told me never to truet-"

"Cut it, n'daar. The message."

15

“Bother says it's time to come out and play in the garden.
There. That's it. Happy?"

Reilly abruptly stood up from the bed. he moved over toward
the window and looked out. She couldn't see the light of joy in
his face. “Fix yourself up. we're going to take a little trip.”

“Look hr. Spy, or whoever-ycu-think-ycu-are, you can take a
flying leap out that window." Actually, that was the last thing she
wanted him to do for her, but it sounded appropriately tough and selfi-
raliant. ”I'e only a courier. I just deliver messages, I don't act
on tham—uhatever the hell they mean. I'm catching the first trans-
port out of this Rorcccan pesthole-'

Reilly swung from the window and faced her. ”You're coming
with me and that's final. I'll be back with a boy to fetch your
bag-I presume you brought one?h-and don't look the door. I
don't fancy looked doors.“ He turned and left the room.

Hell kiss as stupid too, she thought. Then she counted to
ten and got off the bad.

From the second story window of the shop across the alloy the
Fat han's agent had witnessed the entire scene through binoculars.

he was also a licensed lip-reader. His master would be pleased . . .

3
Her name was Constance Ford and she ran messages for the
Americans. Reilly found that such out and more after he'd left
the room. A quick call on the crank box, as Reilly called the portable

transmitter/receiver, to 0 at the Foreign Office had told him she was

16

trustworthy and resourceful but without foraal espionage experience.
She could jeopardize the success of Reilly's eissicn and change the
course of the war, but that was a calculated risk Reilly would have
to run. After all, he really didn't have much of a choice anyway.
The much time had passed. It was days like these . . .

when he pressed 0 for sore personal details on Constance,
Lieutenant Commander Hark Hing-Davies, HRH Navy, Retired, balked.
“Hhet the devil else d'you want," 0 sputtered into the handset,

'her stocking size!” 0 went on to explain how totally unsuitable
Constance use for the mission, that she was a last-minute loan from
the Yanks after the unpleasantness about Ksnnadyu-his condolences-
and that Toukins, though a bit dull at times, was a steady, reliable
chap who could be sent out in three days.

Sometiaes one had to put [up with 0's tiresomemess. And then
sometimes one did not. Reilly decided he did not.

”I'm keeping her with as on this assignment. I can't wait
for Tompkine-besides*which Constance has much nicer legs and Tomp-
kins's a silly ass.”

"Really Reilly! You don't bloody well give Uhite Hall orders,
you know!"

A slight pause.

”Hark, old boy, you do recall that little favor I did you back
in '40 that so pleased Binnie? I really pulled your bacon out of
the fire on that one.“

”You promised me you wouldn't hold that over my head!“ 0's

voice sounded worried. The old boy was slipping. He wouldn't have

17

cracked so easily in the old days. Reilly mercifully decided on only
one more tern of the screw.

"And you do recall the time I got rid of the charming Dowager
Dragcmiloff before your wife-' Reilly never got to finish his
reminiscence. Lieutenant Commander Hark Bing-Davies, NRR Navy, Rs-
tired, capitulated.

0 recited Constance's vital statistics from her service file on
his desk.

"That's fine. You can stop there,“ Reilly instructed 0. In-
teresting. Constance was divorced with one child, a girl, Marisa.
“what about after her divorce? Any jealous levers hanging about?

Bill collectors? Stray relatives? Parakeets?“

"You take the biscuit!" 0 roared into the handset. ”I realize
our line of work plays havoc with a home life (only too well, thought
Reilly, recalling the charming countess), but it's none of your bloody
business if she does-Reilly? I say, Reilly? Bloody cheek! The bas-
tard hung up on he!” The Commander replaced the handset, wishing he'd
never retired from the Navy. It was days like these . . .

Approximately ten minutes later, when Reilly returned to the
room, Constance was at the wash basin repairing the damage done to
her hex Factor in the fly-spooked oval glass that hung over the wash-
stand. She turned to face Reilly, osscara wand in hand, as the pro-
eised nulatto boy followed at his heels lugging a travel-stained
brown leather suitcase. Reilly notioned the boy to leave it on the bed.
He tossed him a silver coin which the boy expertly caught, salssning

as he scampered out the door.

1B

Reilly appraised Constance's freshly powdered face. Corn
Silk #6, Fector's finest. Ne node a mental note to buy her the
economy one-pound sire. She deserved it. After all, weren't women
always running out of face powder anyway? And besides, she was a
smasher, all spunk and fire. He wanted her. Trouble was, they didn't
have the time to go into it just now.

he walked over to the suitcase on the bed and opened it for her.
”I trust you brought some boots? v.11, never hind. I'll get you a
pair.” He looked up.

“we're going to drink tea in the Sahara at a very special
garden party.“

Constance dropped her wand.

4

Precisely three days later a weary travel-stained sweat-soaked
couple could be seen topping the crest of a sand dune at the border
where Rerocco merges into the arid and vast Sahara Desert. Reilly's
timetable had niraculcusly suffered no setbacks. Their journey, first
by jeep, than camel, then Arab guide, beset by scorching heat, blowing
sand, and the torturous black flies for which the Sahara is justly
infaecus, was now behind them, and such to Reilly's satisfaction all
argument from Constance had been quashed by the application of a
single sinple list “You've been ordered by O to acccnpeny oe.‘ vith
each step and every mile Reilly could only rejoice they were that
much closer to his goal, a goal Constance, perforce, had come to

share.

19

I’ ‘I' i i i- ‘5

Riding the crest of a wave of battle victories, Germany seened
invincible that summer of 1941. It remained only for the Axis Power
to launch a massive propaganda campaign to prevent the neutrals-
especially the United States with its large German-American popu-
lation-from entering the war on the side of Great Britain. Germany
wished to seal its destiny as ruler of the world, but propaganda
campaigns cost money, money which herr Ritler had rather were spent
on armament factories, airplanes, and shipyards. One solution to
the fiscal problem which would not siphon existing funds presented
itself one day to the Fuhrer at his mountain retreat of Berchtee-
gaden, a solution so congenial to the aims and purposes of the Ger-
man nation that hsrr Goebbel's face was wreathed in a smile-end it
took a great deal to make Nerr Hitler's Rinister of Propaganda smile.

Thus early that summer of '41 a German archaeological expedi-
tion was mounted in North Africa in search of the legendary Garden
of Kathar. Only recently had the German team cons upon the founda-
tion stones of a garden complex said to rival the Hanging Gardens of
Babylon. with pickexa and camel hair brush the crack archaeological
team, under the direction of herr Kubbeldcrf, curator of the pres-
tigicus Stsatliggg aggggg, Berlin, and the watchful eyes of his
Storatrccper escort guard, had labored under the blazing Saharan
sun to uncover the lost garden.

Concealed beneath the elaborate stone flag pathways and

mosaic tiled fountains, however, lay the real reason for the Nazi

20

expedition: the treasure heard of Kathar, pro-Christian Prince of North
Africa, rival to Pharaoh in earthly majesty and military might, a fit-
ting symbol for the fast-rising German military state. Kathar's tribute
would raise millions of Deutsche marks for the Nazi propaganda machine to
wage its paper war, but the most priceless object of all, and the one
most eagerly awaited, was the legendary statuette of the African goddess
Archite, carved from a single emerald stone totaling over eighty carats-
easily a fortune to fit a men's hand. Reilly's mission was explicit:
prevent Kathar's treasure hoard from falling under Nazi control and
retrieve the Archite for England.

Competition for the statuette, however, was fierce; the question
was, into uhoae palm would she fit? Not only did Reilly have the Ger-
man high Command to contend with, but he also had the Fat Ran, avid art
connoisseur and collector of antiquities with a passion for the rare,
the exotic, and the unattainable. Not one to be denied, the Fat Han
was an opponent of equal caliber to the Nazis.

Reilly and Constance certainly had their work cut out for them.
It was days like these . . .

a a» a a a a

Constance flicked a straying strand of auburn hair from her
nose. Mother never told her she'd have days like these, especially
the last three days. Whoever said the desert was romantic was a liar,
and as far as sheikhs want, they smelled as bad as their camels. "well,
we certainly have our work out out for us,” she negged as she tipped her
Sahara sneaker upside down, spilling its burden of yellow sand to the

21

desert floor. Reilly hadn't been able to locate a pair of boots, given
such short notice, and Constance wore a size 10, which didn't help either.
Hell, there goes my 'Ncst Chic Spy' nomination, she thought. But at
least my Italian heels had style . . .

Reilly's sun-bronzed face was starkly outlined in the glow from
their tiny caapfire. He lit a Players from the slim gold lighter-e
present from a lady-he kept in hip pocket. He pulled a deep drag into
his lungs. Leaning back on his haunches he closed his eyes and slowly
exhaled a white cloud of socks into the starry Saharan night. God,
that felt good. Reluctantly he opened his tired slate eyes and looked
about, focusing on nothing in particular, allowing the cooling night
air to run teasing fingers through the sweat-matted hair at the nape
of his neck. He wished it were Constance instead. Another chilly
night-in more ways than one-and she wanted to talk business. Rayba
this was where her first marriage had gone wrong. He wondered what
her little girl looked like.

Reilly sighed and stretched his six foot two inch frame upright.
Ne flicked his barely smoked Players into the dark. "I've outlined the
plan. Just do your bit and they'll never know what hit them." Heari-
ness filled his voice, weariness of the war, of the whole cloak-and-
dagger business which was the spy gems, and wearinsss cf Constance's
controlsd alocfness. It's those bloody sneakers, he thought: I should
have tried harder to get the boots . . .

"You make it sound all too easy,” she began yet again. Nag nag
nag. "Just what sakes you think those Germans are going to fall for my

22

story? They weren't born yesterday, you know." Neg nag nag.

Reilly restrained himself. Sometimes one had to put up with this
foolishness and sometimes one did not. Sure she was tired and cranky,
but did he deserve this? He decided he did not. ”They'll believe any-
thing if you show enough leg," he commented innocently.

Oh sure, Constance thought, too angry to reply. They'll really
go for these sneakers . . .

But as weary as Reilly was, he was nothing if not optimistic,
especially when they were this close to the green goddess. Their camp
was perched just beyond the etcrmtrccpers' patrol perimeter. Tomorrow
morning, bright and early, Constance would wander down to the Nazi dig
and play the stranded tourist who had become separated from her caravan.
while she provided the diversion Reilly would prime the camp with ex-
plosives; what the hell if untold millions in pound sterling of treasure
were buried under rock and rubble for another eternity? At least he'd
get the statuette (providing he located it first) and the Nazis nothing.
He'd dreamed of the Archite for six months now, and he'd be damned if
Kennedy's death, a pouty Yank, and a stormtrocper patrol would get in
his way. Get the emerald, blast the camp, and hie-tail it back to
England-with Constance in tow, though she didn't know that yet-, and
wave the bloody green bitch goddess under G's nose as if to say: Look,
I've done it again for King and Country, and now you can bloody well
stow it.

His pleasing reverie was cut short by the feel of cold steel

against his spine. Constance's warning scream was cut short by a muffling

23

hand from behind. Nor chatcyant eyes, bright in the flickering firelight,
widened when she behold a ghostly figure emerge from the shadows, the
figure of a tall burnoosed one-handed Arab.

Reilly had forgotten to count the Fat Ran.

5

The Fat Ran had had an exceedingly pleasing week thus far, and it
was less than half over. As soon as Reilly and the woman had left the
Cafe D'Dr he'd had them tailed by his agents, Ased and Abdul. Then the
Fat Man had checked out of the execrable dump where he'd been staying
and into his comfortably-appointed desert retreat, there to await fur-
ther developments while he burned his perspiration-soaked Tropical
whites and donned his preferred loose-fitting Turkish silk robes. Hy, ‘
what a refreshing difference a decent change of clothes made!

It was a pity about Assd's hand, though. It had not had suf-
ficient time to heal, but given a few weeks, the bandages would come off
and he would be almost as good as new. Now however the Fat Ran had better
things of which to think. He sat back in his gilded Directoire-etyle
chair and sbsently fingered the solid jade temple lion, an ornament from
a Thai palace he'd picked up in '33, which reposed on top of his Louis
Ouinze bomb; chest. It always amused his to juxtapcse the Bourbon with
the Napoleonic, with just a touch of the East for that certain piquancy.
The play of his thick sausage fingers over the jade surface paused; he
could almost feel the sensuous weight of the goddess pressing herself

into his moist palm. His mounded stomach shivered in delight. She was

24

almost his . . .
a a a a a s

Herr Kubbeldorf carefully ewethed the shapely green figure in the
cleanest lint-free cloth the camp could offer. They had just unearthed
her yesterday and he had personally photographed, numbered, and cats-
logued the green beauty for the sake of science. How proud he would be
to escort her to her new home, to his beloved Stgatliohe. The good
curator had no idea the carefully logged and crated artifacts would
never see the museum, that instead, their sale would fuel the Nazi
propaganda machine on the antiquities black market, a market the Germans
had controlsd ever since they'd overrun the treasure houses of Europe
like a horde of twentieth-century Viaigothg,

He lovingly gave one last pet to the cold green statuette and
placed her in a separate box apart from the other numbered boxes in his
tent. Goodness! He'd barely left an aisle from his cot to the tent flap
should he need to use the latrine in the night. He'd have to order these
clumsy cafe who paraded in black shirts . . . what were they calling them-
selves these days? . . . oh yes; stormtrocpera, that was it. The good
curator tried (and succeeded) in maintaining the proper scientific
alcofness toward current events, an alcofness which required little
studied effort since he neither read the papers nor considered the pre-
sent century proper focus for an antiquities professor whose provenance
was pro-Christian art.

Now, where was he? His mind longed for the quiet order of his

museum . . . aha! that was it! He'd order some of those guards to clear

25

the crated items into one of the trucks waiting to make the run to Al-
giers. The Archite he would regretfully send in the morning; regret-
fully, fcr he both wanted her to stay a little longer, and yet he knew
she would be safer the sooner she left camp for the security of the gtgggr
l£25£r° Nomen!-they're all alike, he mused to himself as he closed the
tent flap for the night-they all need protection . . .

n u a a s a

Uhat I could use right now is some protection, Constance thought,
as she surveyed herself in the pier glass in her apartment at the sump—
tuous desert retreat of the Fat Nan. This silk paignoir leaves nothing
to the imagination and the Rechlin lace negligee is just thet-negligible.
At first Constance had feared the worst when Assd's men had closed in on
them, but his orders had been to take them alive. Reilly had been bound
and Constance trussed in a sack for their trip to the desert hideaway.
Geezue, Constance thought; it's not like I'm a virgin waiting to be de-
flowered in one of those romances, but just the same, I wish it were
Reilly and not the Fat Han . . .

Reilly struggled against his bonds. his dark call gave his little
clue to his whereabouts. He wondered how Constance fared. If sweaty
obese Heltese put his pudgy paws on her he'd kill him, but first he'd
have to get free of his bindings, then find Constance, than get the hell
out of God alone knew where they'd been taken.

26

The next morning, bright and early, Nerr Kubbeldcrf breakfasted
sparingly so not to upset his delicate stoaach on the long and jolting
journey by truck to the Algerian airport. He had personally supervised
the loading of crates onto the waiting truck.

He had decided to leave camp to personally escort the green god-
dess to her destination, such was her hold over his imagination. I'a
her slave already but I really don't care, mused the bemused curator.
Thus Herr Kubbeldcrf rode up front with the driver, a particularly boorish
recruit row from the provinces, eager to prove hineelf and disdainful of
chauffeuring ”a lot of old rubbish about," on his virgin mission. As
they prepared. to leave cusp that morning Herr Kmbeldcrf balanced the
boxed Archite on his lap, her cold curves nestled within protective
layers of the purest gauze. He wanted to keep her safe and snag until

such time as she would take up new residence in the antiquities collection
thilmeee

i i 'h' 'I' 'I‘ ‘I

The next morning, bright and early, Constance awake refreshed
between champagne satin sheets in a Campaign-etyle.double bed-elona.
She stretched and yawned. Dne spaghetti strap of her lace negligee had
fallen from her creamy shoulder. She pushed it up as she reflected on
last night's activity. Somehow she felt vaguely disappointed; the only
moves she'd had to fend off were those node on a twelfth century ivory
chessboard from Norman England. Apparently the Fat Han was as avid a
chessplayer as he was a collector of international antiques and antiqui-

ties . . .

27

The next morning, bright and early, Reilly was rudely shoved
awake in his dim cell with a poke to the ribs. Asad's sable eyes glit-
tered with the promise of a score to settle. "Get up, Anglo!" he spat.
"My master awaits.” He brandished his rifle (cocked; Reilly had checked
to be certain) threateningly with his one good hand while his bandaged
stump balanced the butt.

"Stupid Anglo," Ased spat again, for emphasis.

It was not the best of mornings for Reilly. He retaliated.

He should not have. Asad uordlessly responded by knocking him to the
ground. He motioned tuo guards to carry the limp body up to the Fat Man's
private quarters.

Somewhat later that morning, not so bright and early, but at a:
more civilized hour approaching noon, the Fat Man entered his drawingroom
tastefully attired in a subdued TUrkish robe the color of pale green grapes.
Seated before him use a freshly bathed and breakfasted Constance dressed
in a smartly tailored Coco Chanel peach linen walking suit with kick pleat.
Beside her sprawled Reilly, neuly revived, unshaven and rumple-haired,
still clad in his sweat-stained jodhpurs which now smelled, unfortunately,
like rancid watermelon rind. He also had the beginning of a very nasty
headache.

"Friends,” boomed the Fat Man in a fulsomely mellow basso profundo
reminiscent of Orson Welles at his oiliest, ”I wish to announce that the
long wait is almost over for us all. I expect a very important guest

to be arriving at almost any moment. I'm sure she'll leave you all

speechless uith amazement . . . .”

28

i * 'I‘ 'I- ‘I‘ i

As Barr Kubbeldcrf and his green goddess jolted over the rough
desert track he thought his kidneys would turn to mush. "Can't you miss
gggg_ef the potholes?“'wailed the carsick curator above the roar of the
engine. he was convinced the young SS driver was determined to turn his
first assignment into a Uagnerian epic, even if it meant hitting every
crater in the roadbed at top speed. Dr especially if it meant hitting
every crater in the roadbed at top speed. figghtgng!" screened the neu-
eeated professor. "Stop this truck! §§gng;;!”

The careaning vehicle lurched to a halt as Nerr Kubbeldcrf over-
balanced, barely missing hitting his balding head against the dashboard,
still tightly clutching the goddess to his groin. 'I'm getting out to
inspect the crates," he prevaricated. "Stay in the cab and for God's
sake, stop revving the engine!"

The good curator couldn't decide which needed relieving the meet:
his bladder or his stomach. Stepping down from the running board, he
automatically headed for the back of the truck, thinking fresh air and
solid ground under his feet just might quell his queasias. His bladder
could wait another minute. Besides, he told himself, still clutching
the boxed goddess to him, it wouldn't hurt to check for possible damage
to the crates caused by his idiotic driver. “That young barbarian has
no idea of the value of what he's tossing around, much less of you,{3ggn
lllEléflflrn he ccoed to the box in his arms.

Satisfied none of the crates had broken loose from their moorings,

Herr Kubbeldcrf looked for a place to drop his pants. It was the last

29

thing he clearly remembered. A moment later he was knocked unconscious,
his driver bound and gagged, and the cargo-laden truck commandeered by
Arab agents of the Fat Han . . .

e e a a s a

Reilly turned his aching head over so slightly to the left to get
a better view of Constance sitting beside him on the brocaded Victorian
loveeeat. She looks a stunner in that peach walking suit, he thought.
And a traitor. She's gone over to the Fat Ran for a bar of soap and a
soft bed.

Constance felt Reilly's cold slate eyes boring into her. She
stiffened her spine, feigning indifference. I'm not going to grovel for
forgiveness simply because I'm clean and unmclestad, she thought. what
gives him the right to judge me? Just because he couldn't play Sir
Galahad he thinks I'm a slut and a turncoat. he's as bad as my first
husband . . . and then she wondered what Rarisa was eating for dinner.

As the hands of the ormolu-ornamented camelback Egglggg_ atop
the travertine marble mantlepiece approached the luncheon hour (such was
the perfection of the Fat Ron's timing, to say nothing of his decor), an
apprehensive Herr Kubbeldcrf, a failed would-be Siegfried, and the green
goddese-gift-bcxed, no less-entsred the elegant drewingrcom cf the Fat
Ron's desert retreat. His fantasy was now complete, his dream both fact
and flash, for he now held them all and he held the Archite.

"Friends," he addressed Constance and Reilly, “I do believe she's

arrived.“

E3. in my thought Nsrr Kubbeldcrf. That grotesque swine in
the green bathrobe means to take her from me! Constance locked directly
at Reilly; the disgraced SS driver looked at the box clutched to the
curator'e skinny chest; Ased and Abdul locked to their master. Herr
Kubbeldcrf did the only thing left him to do, given the circumstances.

He charged the Fat Han like an enraged bull-head down, shoulders squared,
heels flying. All ninety-five pounds of him. The impact, nonetheless,
was terrific.

Reilly propelled himself from the loveseat and grabbed the Fat Ran
around the threat from behind, pressing his tho-t. against the stunned
collector's windpipe. “asks a move and your master dies,” he snarled to
the Arabs. Herr Kubbeldcrf, crumpled at the Fat Ron's feet and equally
stunned to have found a protector, mutely communicated his thanks by
pounding his fists en the Fat Ron's insteps. The silk-gowned collector
of antiquities howled. Ased, who held the young 53 driver, inwardly
writhed. He wanted Reilly himself, and now he was once again at the
Anglc's mercy. Seeing a chance to recoup lost glory, the 55 driver
brightened. Perhaps all was not yet lost. Constance stood up from the
loveseat, uncertain what to do.

“Give me the Archite,” Reilly commended the Curator, still on the
floor.

hm. n

“Give the Archite to the pretty lady then.“

m. "

Reilly tensed his thumb pressure a fraction.

31

"Don't be an imbecile," burbled the purple-faced Fat Man. "Give
him the goddess."

fiflfléflh"

Constance walked over to the adamant little curator and hunkered
down on her new pair of Italian leather dress pumps. She was eye-level
with him now. "Please, you don't understand, Herr Professor Doktor Kub-
beldcrf." She deliberately used his full academic title. God, how
these Germans doted on rank. Maybe is I show him some respect he'll
listen to me, she hoped. Please God, you little shit.

She continued.

”You want to save the green lady, yes?”

’22!”

"Then you must give her up-to us-to Herr Reilly and me."

“flfiiflsn

"But you must. You must know Herr Hitler's destined her for the
black market-don't you?"

"EEEE.£2.§£EE§13" shrieked the distraught curator. Therein fol-
lowed a string of oaths in German. Herr Kubbeldcrf had never felt so
betrayed by his country, so confused, or quite so alone before.

Constance continued to work on him. "You must see that if the
Fat Man gets her no one will ever see her beauty but him. No one. Ever.
He'll lock her away and take her out for private showings," or should I
say 'gloatings,' Constance thought as she nervously surveyed an anxious
Reilly, an ompurplsd Fat Man, the bored 55 driver, and the two restless

Arabs. "You'll lose, the world will lose, everybody but the Fat man will

32

lose,R she breathed into his ear.

Still no response.

Then Constance played her trump card.

”Science will lose.”

That was the last straw. Herr Professor Doktor Kubbeldcrf
wimpered, kissed the box, and tenderly handed it to Constance; than he
stopped.

“Uhat will become of her?" he whispered.

Constance thought fast. ehat the hell would become of the
Archite? She was a national treasure of the African people. She
thought of the Nazi plan to coldly rifle and sell another nation's
heritage. She thought of Lord Elgin, the Parthenon frieze, and the
British Huseum . . . then again, if Keats hadn't seen the Harbles, where
would "Ode to a Grecian Urn' be? She was losing track of her thoughts.
And how about America? She thought of her own country's duplicity in
assisting Britain when America was still technically neutral. Uhat
could she tell Nerr Kubbeldcrf with his puppy-dog eyes?

"Please, Herr Professor Doktor Kubbeldcrf, I don't know. All I
do know is that if you allow her to continue her journey to Algiers,
she'll be sold. I also know that if you let the Fat hen have his way
the world will be the poorer for having lost her a second time. I can
only hope that after the war she'll be restored to her people." I also
hope, Constance added under her breath, that you make up your mind pretty
damn quick, you little shit. Those Arabs are getting antsy and I don't
know how much longer Reilly's thumbs can hold out.

33

After a brief but bitter struggle the plucky curator who, in
essence, held the war in his hands, blinked away a tear, rose to his
knees, and like some courtier of old presented the battered box to his
lady fair. It was a touching moment.

Reilly relaxed. The Fat Ran groaned. The Arabs stiffened. The
young 58 driver despeirsd. he would never get a medal at this rate.

Now what am I supposed to do, thought Constance. I've got the hot potato.
It was days like these . . .

Ased thought for her. Enraged that his master had been gotten
the better of, Ased went into action. No hurled his scimitar through the
air, aiming for Reilly's dark head. Reilly ducked, the Fat Ran bolted,
forgetting the curator at his feet, Constance shrisked, and the SS driver
brightened. haybs he still had a chance for a model after all.

The Fat hen fell over Herr Kubbeldcrf, effectively imaobilizing
both. Abdul, who still guarded the SS youth, swiftly left his post and
grabbed Constance with the box. Reilly, weaponlsss, glared at Aead from
behind a Louis Guinza double bench in burled beechwood. He despized his
defenseless state, especially behind that silly piece of furniture. The
scimitar had landed beyond his reach. Nhat an ignoble end to Reilly,
ace of spies, he thought. Serves you right, you silly bastard, for stay-
ing in the spy game.

Ased advanced on Reilly with a drawn pistol. His Arab compatriot
Abdul maintained a firm grip on Constance and the disputed box. Though
one-handed, Ased was still capable of inflicting a lethal wound. Reilly

remained absolutely still. As Ased continued to advance, he momentarily

34

paused to offer his bandaged stump to assist the Fat Ran to rise. Herr
Kubbeldcrf was in no position to get up, having had the wind knocked
out of him by the Fat Plan's fall.

”That's enough, Ased,“ the Fat Han coughed, massaging his bruised
windpipe as he rose. ”take them all down to the dungeon.”

Reilly, Constance, Herr Kubbeldcrf, and the young 55 driver
(who had yet to prove himself in action), were led down to the interro-
gation room. The SS youth promised himself that if he ever got out of
this alive he would retire to his Uncle Dtto's goat farm in Schlsewig-
Holstein. To hell with heroes, soldiering, and Siegfrieding about the
globe in the thankless service of the Fatherland. It was days like
these . . .

The Fat Ran followed the dejected quartet, bringing up the rear
behind the herding Abdul and Ased. He motioned the Arabs to handcuff
the prisoners to the wall. Abdul began to heat the charcoal brazier.
Ased prepared a branding iron, watching the dull black tip glow orange,
then a searing white. He judged it ready.

”Strip his shirt." The Fat Han pointed to Reilly, directing Abdul.
It was done.

"Now, Constance my dear," beamed the Fat Han, "how badly do you
want him to live? Choose! I'll dress you in silks and furs, designer
originals, diamonds! You'll never know the meaning of rationing, stand-
ing in line at the check-out, or those awful synthetic nylons coming out
on the market! You'll travel the world first class, you'll want for no-

thing! Choose!

35

‘Reilly looked sideways at Constance, who was chained next to him
on the well. .She had more than proven her worth back at the drewingrcom.
Resourceful in the field? Hell yes! He'd have to tell 0 how wrong he'd
been again. His eyes, however, registered disbelief at the Fat Man's
proposal; was he dreaming, or had he lost his mind? This was the twen-
tieth century, wasn't it? He certainly hoped she didn't hold those
bloody little sneakers against him.

Constance quicklv assessed the situation; choose the Fat Man and
she would be the most pampered, indulged showpiece this side of Marie
Antoinette-and no guillotine either . . . just the guillotine of the
conscience. But on the other hand, Reilly had deliberately waved those
ugly khaki sneakers under her nose back in Morocco, knowing how she
loathed the second-rate and the prosaic in fashion; and the Fat Man had
so much to offer: the villa on Malta, the house at Majorca, the casino
at Monte Carlo, the Paris apartment, the London townhouse, the cottage
on Cape Cod, the hotel in Rio, the palace in Hong Kong, the chalet in
Gstaad, almost limitless wealth, no worry about back child support from
Mungo, Swiss finishing school for Marisa, real silk stockings . . . and
Reilly's life.

There really was no choice after all.

She assented. "But first, you release Reilly and set him free.
No strings. After all, you have the green goddess and now you have me.
So you've won. Hooray for you."

Reilly thought he'd throw up. So she was sacrificing herself for
him? Bloody hell she was! Didn't she know the Fat Man would never let him

go, much less forgo his torture? Now who was born yesterday?

36

The Fat Man smiled. Beatifically. He motioned Abdul to release
Reilly. Constance eagged against the wall in relief. The Fat Man was
no barbarian after all; he merely wanted his way, and maybe, she thought,
he just wants a decent chess partner.

But Reilly wasn't through yet. Released from his manacles, he
dived for Abdul; the two men wrestled each other. Constance was speech-
less with shcck, the Fat Han speechless with anger, and Ased speechless
with delight. He waited his turn to jab Reilly with the white-hot iron.
The two men rolled to the ground, kicking and punching, each trying to
gain the ascendancy. In the course of their struggle they knocked over
a low table in their path, a table next to the brazier, a table holding
the momentarily forgotten boxed emerald goddess Archite, chief prize of
Ksthar's treasure house, chief object of despair and desire, than as now.
The goddess had never been one to inspire quiet worship. In short, the
box, with the goddess, went into the fire.

All gasped.

They watched her burn. First, the box. Then the goddess. The
flames licked her stony curves and coldly serene face almost like a lover
delivering a caress. Then the flames grew hotter and the ravished god-
dess so long to deny her favors to a suitor, melted at her lover's touch,
melted, into a pool of worthless green slag.

The goddess for whom Kennedy had died and countless schemsd, was
a fake.

The curator, still chained to the wall, fainted. The young 55

driver shrugged, turned stoical from so many defeats and the comforting

37

thought of his Uncle Dtto's goat farm. Reilly and Abdul stopped fighting.
Asad lowered his poker. The Fat Nan screamed one long painful drawn-out
wail of rage, despair, and frustration and then fell to the floor . . .

a a s» a o a

By December America entered the war on the side of Great Britain,
largely due to the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor for which Churchill
thanked his Imperial Highness for getting America off its area and into
the fray officially at last. Axis Germany now realized its dream of a
blitzkrigg was forever shattered. They would be in it for the long
count. The propaganda campaign was scrapped.

The crated treasure heard of Kathar was found to be largely
worthless trinkets. Apparently Ksthar's neighbors to the south had
fobbsd off shoddy tribute on the desert prince. The site was quietly
abandoned to scorpions and the stray lizard, to be re-opened after the
war as Ksthar's Garden Cafe, a fashionable watering-hole for jaded oil
shiekhs and their bored mistresses.

The Fat Man lived in semi-retirement after suffering a massive
stroke. Ased remained with his master, faithful as only one of his race
can be. One pleasure remained, however. The Fat Man could still enjoy
a game of chess, even though his collecting days were over.

After the Ksthar Affair, as the Foreign Office came to call it,
Reilly retired from active service to a smell estate outside London,
there to raise and breed thoroughbrsds and to live the life of a modest
country squire. It also made excellent cover for free lance jobs. He

took Constance with him. One weekend each year they relive the occasion

of their first meeting by re-visiting the Cafe D'Or and Faisal, its grin-
ning gold-toothed proprietor.

In addition to their annual pilgrimage, Constance perforlo one
small, unvsrying ritual: Reilly drives her to a secluded desert retreat,
there to play chess with a paralyzed stroke victim while his one-handed

aid pours tea.

Saint's Rest
The End of Reilly

Prologue

Out of deference to other aspiring or would-be authors elsewhere,
this history have to those who have trod the slippery path of biography
before; no apology will be made for a certain anount of incompleteness
to Sidney Reilly's story, for his life was full of the peculiar passion
forzsecrets and of;the passion to keep those peculiar secrets secret.

Nonetheless, the jigsaw that Reilly was would make a book in it-
self, and though this biographer has had to contend with a certain amount
of nastiness from the recordkeepers down at the 5.1.5. and with their zeal
regarding the Official Secrets Act, the portrait which energes of the nan
is, on the main, whole and true, despite certain gaps, holes, chronological
discrepancies, and a measure of wishful thinking.

Or in the happy words of George MacDonald Fraser, history is very
much what you want it to be. Likewise, both Mark Thain and winston Churchill
cans to a sonewhat similar conclusion about the idiosyncrasies of history-
writing: it's not so ouch whether it did happen or didn't happen as whether
it could happen or should have happened.

And if it didn't, change it.

"The End of Reilly” presents a tale of how it night have happened

in the best and worst of all possible worlds.

39

Biographical tyros, take note.

Let the idyll begin . . .

e e e a a *

October, 1954 and Constance was dead.

The fifty-year old Reilly, Ace of Spies, late of Saint's Rest, his
estate outside London for the breeding and sale of thoroughbreds, discovered
the partially unclothed body at 3:37 pm in the upstairs naster bedroon
sprawled across the partially made bed in the partially darkened room
since the blinds had been partially drawn against the partially slanted
rays of the westering autumn sun.

Reilly noted the partiality of everything, except for the wholly
dead condition of his beloved consort.

They had had thirteen neatly tranquil but sometines tenpestuous
years together as man and wife. Upon narrying, Reilly retired from active

service with the Secret Intelligence Service, but fres-lanced for fl.I.S

in the capacity of spy-catcher. The work was generally less hazardous,

uhich Constance liked.
His 5.1.5. days behind him, he devoted hineelf to another of his

consuming passions (other than Constance), that of horsaflesh. Because of
his uncanny business acunen, his innate ability to read human nature and
human greed, he succeeded in turning an increasingly tidy profit throughout
the years of his stable'e operation.

Now he would put that money to good use. Now he would track down

his wife's killer. And there would be nothing partial about it.

41

Constance‘s life had been ended by a bullet to the back of her
skull. She had been dressing for an appointment in town when the killer
fired. She had said she would be gone only an hour or so. Now she would
never return. It had been a professional job. Execution style. The
question was, who had been the perpetrator and why? Reilly'd handled
many cases over the years for M.I.5. So many suspects, so many reasons
to hate hio. He couldn't think.

The white-breasted moon coyly slipped behind a wispy veil of cloud
as Reilly sat on the edge of the double bad they had shared together, the
bed where he had found her three days ago, the bed he could no longer sleep
in. It was past midnight. The venetian blinds allowed one last peek be-
fore the Cynthia of the Skies chastely retired to the ninistrations of her
sister stars. Reilly was oblivious to the nocturnal strip show. His wife
had been foully nurdered in her own bedroom. How dare Nature show herself
as if nothing ontoward had happened?

He slunped, facing the slatted moonlight. Tomorrow he would begin
his search. Tomorrow he would rejoin the ranks of active agents. To-
norrow he would resume the title Ace of Spies.

He half-stumbled downstairs to the couch.

Now he could sleep.

1
In the interest of biographical accuracy, authenticity, and
honesty, let the narrative confess that things at this point looked rather

din. The trail of Constance Reilly's killer was already three days cold.

42

The Heater Spy was fifty and out of training. He also carried at least
ten pounds of excess weight. Frankly, he didn't have a clue.

So bright but not early the next morning, it being eleven of the
clock (since our hero had to catch up on the previous two night's nissed
sleep; heroes are only, in the last analysis, human and subject to the
wear and tear of Time) Reilly yawned, stretched, sat up on the couch,
scratched under his right armpit, and swung his cramped lags onto the
seventeenth century oak parquetrisd foyer, it being a genuinely old estate
outside London to which Reilly and Constance had retired after the Kathar
Affair.

He deternined to visit the Fat flan at his secluded desert retreat.
That would be the first stop on his quest for justice. 0r vengeance. He
couldn't be bothered with niceties just now.

By 1954 the Fat Man was a seventy-six year old paralyzed stroke
victin with a faithful one-handed Arab retainer by the name of Ased-ben-
Achned, as those readers of "Reilly and the Garden of Kathar" will doubtless
recall. Also, in the ensuing years since his fateful stroke, the Fat Man
could no longer be said to resemble his moniker. He had dwindled down to
a svelte one hundred and forty pounds, which is just about right for a five
foot one inch can of nedium build, according to the Metropolitan Life In-
surance actuarial tables for the height and weight of non aged twenty-five
(of course, the Fat Han wasn't twenty-five, but the folks down at Metropoli-
tan nade allowance for that too).

Within the week Reilly was knocking at the Fat Man's door. If
nothing else, he would tell him that Constance would no longer be able to

cone and play chess at their annual get-together. Abdul answered the knock

43

and ushered him in immediately. Although it was not time for the Reillys'
annual chess visit, Abdul sensed a certain purpose behind this call. Then
he noticed Reilly was alone.

The Fat Man, for he refused to relenquish that last tie to his
past, no matter how loosely the name sat on him these days, sat propped
upright in his antique Bentham cane-backed wheelchair ca. 1860, made more
comfortable by the addition of Chinese silk throw pillows embroidered with
erotic scenes from the sixteenth-century Ming dynasty novel Ihg.§2;ggg,gg§gg,

Reilly still possessed keen slate gray eyes.

Time, age, and physical infirmity had mellowed the connoisseur of
the rare, the unobtainable, and the exotic. Chess and the easing of physi-
cal discomfort, however, remained his twin passions; Constance had at one
time been a strong contender for the above two, but now untimely Death had
eased her out of the running. Reilly's news was an additional paroxysm to
his already impaired cranial synapses. In less grandiose terms, he gen-
uinely grieved.

It was these marks of true shock, the silent slipping of twin
tears down the Fat Men's thin cheeks, which tipped Reilly off that he knew
nothing of the plot against Constance's life. The formerly Fat Man was
clean. While this piece of news eliminated one suspect, it opened the
field to a nameless and faceless host of maleficent and significant others.
Where to start?

Ased stood behind his master, slowly waving a palmetto fan bound
to his stump back and forth, back and forth in hypnotic rhythm through the

still, desert-heated air. He listened to Reilly's grief and determination.

44

At one time Ased had dearly wanted to kill the upstart Anglo for spoiling
his fun with the deliciously writhing Constance on his ample lap. Now
she had returned to the dust from whence she came. Life was funny that
way.

Ased momentarily broke the monotonous rhythm of his palmetto-
waving long enough to reach out his remaining hand to crush a pesky black
blowfly between dusky fingers. Rho Fat Man certainly didn't stint on
quality help. Then Asad spoke.

"Anglo,” for such he still addressed and thought of the Russian-
born albeit Hibernian-named Hester Spy, "Allah the Herciful looks down
upon your suffering. Allah knows all. The miscreants will be found, for
surely not one but many were involved in the foul murder of the Lady
Reilly."

It was the longest speech Reilly ever remembered the laconic
Arab deliver. He was touched.

"Anglo," Ased continued, apparently on a roll, "my master and I
know of someone who may help you in your quest. Do not refuse her assis-
tance. She is a pearl beyond price. My master trusts fully in her powers.
She will help you in your search. Do not shun this offer. Seek her out.”

The Fat Man, silent throughout Assd's mystifying advice, cloaked
as it was in the miasma of the occult, nodded. These days Ased did his
talking for him. Everything seemed to tire him now.

Ased slipped Reilly a card with the seer's name and address hand-
written on the back in a flowing script. Her name was Karyll Auschlander,

her address the Albany, in London's posh west End.

45

He stayed the rest of that day and night at the Fat Man's desert
retreat. He would take the morning plane from Algiers to London, with a
stopover in Berlin to visit Herr Kubbeldcrf and break the news of Con-
stance's death. In the interim he supped at table with the Fat Man and
Ased, swapped stories, shared reminiscences, and burped at the banquet

provided.

2

The next morning he took a window seat near the wing in.a con-
verted German bomber that passed for one of the three craft in the hastily
organized Algerian Airlines which made daily hope to Ksthar's Garden Cafe
as well as points North. Strange how thirteen years ago Ksthar's was just
a German dig in the desert from which Hitler hoped to win a paper war aub-
sidized by a green lady. But that is another story and a lifetime ago,
he thought, looking out at the blurring runway as the belly-heavy bomber
took off in flight like a pregnant hippo with wings. First stop, the
Staatliche, to confer with the good curator.

* a a a a a

A gray drizzly day awaited Reilly as he stepped down from the
plane onto German soil for the first time in more years than he cared to
remember. He hailed a cab in flawless German (after all, he spoke seven
languages) and was whisked to the museum. Post-var Berlin wasn't a nutty
sight, but than, the Germans had lost the war. A gray day for a gray city.
He paid the cabbie, who had the face of a sugar-cured ham, and got out of

th. cab.

Herr Kubbeldcrf was fussily arranging the window dressing on the
Egyptian display case when Reilly stopped by. HUmmies do tend to become
unraveled. So did Herr Kubbeldorf. After all, it had been thirteen long
years since he had last seen Reilly and what Reilly told the curator un-
raveled him further. He recalled the fair Constance with warmth and
feeling; after all, it was to her that he entrusted the Archite on bended
knee all those long and faded years ago; it was to her that he had an-
trusted his dream for Science.

Well, they both knew how that had turned out.

And now she was stone dead. He almost fainted at the thought of
her inexplicable ending, all ninety-five pounds of him. He sighed. No,
he did not know of anyone who would profit from such a senseless killing,
such a brutal wasting of precious life. No, he did not know why someone
would want Constance dead, and no, he did not subscribe to terrorist acts
for political ends. He barely read the paper as it was. Besides, what
political connections could Mrs. Reilly have had, seeing that she had re-
tired from the Service upon her wedding to Mr. Reilly? Was it not so that
Constance had become the perfect hausfrau in all their years of wedded
bliss (indeed she had not, but Reilly had never held that peccancy against
her; she excelled in other areas)? So who would want her dead?

Indeed?

Uho?

Reilly shrugged all six fast one inch of himself (so he shrank
an inch; he's fifty) and thanked the teary-eyed little curator, not that

he'd been of any real help. Another lead down the proverbial drain. Time

47

to check into an hotel for the night and catch the connection to London
in the morning. He turned and left, his leather soles ringing down the
marble hall. Herr Kubbeldorf returned to pinning e scarab beetle of in-
ferior Riddle Kingdom dynasty workmanship on the mummy of the wife of an
assistant temple architect. A woman returned to her notebook, jottsd some—
thing down, pushed the bridge of her glasses back up on her nose, pulled
her wool skirt back down (it had the habit of twisting itself up as she
walked), pocketed her notebook, and followed Reilly at a discrete dis-
tance. Host mysterious.

* a a a a *

Pepita "Pumpkin Seed" Bombadilla adjusted her skirt and twitched
her supple hips one last time in the mirror before deciding on a hot bath
that evening in her room at the Hotel Excelsior. Her frizzed bleached
hair was swept up by a tortoise shell comb she'd cadged from a customer
the night before last when that hotel management kicked her out on her
proverbial can-end boy, could she can-can.

He was a traveling tortoise shell comb salesmen trying to make a
deutschmark and trying to get a good time out of the hot blonde number
he'd picked up before she rolled him for all he was worth, which wasn't
much, seeing as how sales had been consistently down that fiscal quarter
and Berlin was a depressed market for pretty much anything you'd care to
name, but especially tortoise shell combs. He thought he'd try Chicago.

Pepita was a nineteen year old struggling Cockney actress from
Argentina trying to hit the big time in Germany. Her real name was Haisie

Hicklewhite and she'd been raised in London's East End district, but

Argentine always sounded better on a resum‘. The name helped too. Un-
fortunately, it didn't help enough. She wasn't having much success as
an Argentinian actress in Berlin, so Pepita knocked on stage doors and
agents' doors, and finally on strange men's doors to make a living. Her
looks got her by and she usually split her takings with the management
where she plied her trade, only she'd been kicked out the night before
last for rolling the comb salesman and somehow she'd ended up here at
the Excelsior. Hhet was truly awkward was that this wasn't even her room.
The towel boy had got her in.

And so the failed Cockney actress from Argentina slithered out
of her knee-length red-spengled skin-tight evening dress, dropped it
to the carpeted floor where it lay in a crushed pile at her tawny ankles
like a circle of spilled Dutch Boy's best vermillion indoor latex, stepped
out onto the white hexagonal-tiled floor of the bath in nothing but her
three-inch red-sequined stiletto-heeled evening pumps, and turned on the

hot water.

3
Reilly stepped into the second-best room of the Excelsior since
their first-beet was the Bridal Suite. Everything had changed with the
death of Constance. He had grown older, the world had grown older. He
had no leads other than the Fat Men's belief in the occult. Herr Kubbelu
dorf had been his usual myopic scientific self, though sympathetic. Uhat
Reilly needed right now was some sympathy too. He began to dial room ser-

vice for a bottle when he noticed a red splotch on the carpet reminiscent

49

of spilled paint. On closer inspection, it was a woman's dress.

Pepita was lathering up nicely when the door opened and a tired-
looking middle-aged man stepped through holding a gun, but she'd seen a
lot of weird things in her line of work, so she just relaxed and smiled
because her mother told her to always wear a smile and in this case it was
all she was wearing anyway. And the tired-looking businessman (another
traveling salesman?) slowly relaxed and smiled and Papita slowly raised
one long and shapely leg and coyly'asked in her Cockney-accented broken
German for the scrub brush on the wall and Reilly smiled a little wider
because her accent was so terrible and thought, I'm getting too old for
these bathroom scenes; she's young enough to be my daughter, but he still
kept his gun trained on her.

Shrugging her tortoise shell-manacled frizz, Pepita lowered her
long and shapely leg, turned her shoulders toward Reilly, and slowly
(ostensibly to keep her purchase in the slippery tub; 75% of all household
accidents occur in the bathroom) stood up to grasp the desired brush. Iri-
descent soap bubbles clung and slithered down her glistening lavender-
scsnted cleavage to the dark V of her crotch like cascading ropes of jea-
lous sea pearls or glowing, moonstruck opals. Aha, thought Reilly, she uses
peroxide.

The goddess of the bath spoke again, this time in her native
tongue.

"Care for some comp'ny, luv?" Venus slowly descended back into

the foam, brush in hand.

50

Reilly brightened. “I certainly would.” He lay his revolver
(and other considerations) down on the bath chair and stripped, much
to the surprise of Pepita. He had looked so tired a minute ago. He
slid into the warm frothy tub and presented his back to her.

"Now you can use it."

Nonplussed, she went to work.

a e a a a *

Later, after they had toweled off and made their way to the bed,
Pepita eased Reilly further with a slow back rub, a special which she often
had neither the time nor the inclination to perform for her other customers.
He fell asleep under her supple fingers, totally relaxed and at peace.

Pepita smiled, then reached for the bedside phone. She dialed a
number.

”The fish is in the net.”

She replaced the receiver then lay down and drew the sheet over
them both for a well-deserved rest.

a a a a a *

Reilly awoke the next morning curiously happy. His tension and
self-pity were gone. He looked at the sleeping figure beside him. She
had been an unexpected pleasure. Constance was gone. She wouldn't blame
him now.

Constance. As delicious as last night had been, he had to make
his London connection this morning. There would be another time for this,
another hotel, another girl. But Pepita had been pleasant. He pulled a

bill from his wallet on the nightstand, then decided on two, and tucked them

51

under her pillow.

Pepita lay sprawled on her stomach. Actually, she'd been awake
the last half-hour. She was just too lazy to leave a warm bed. And she
needed to move very cautiously with this one. He hadn't been so bad last
night. Grunty pigs, most of 'em; real rutters, it you took her meaning.
Ho finesse. Sex and pleasure-that was for the customer. For her it was
businesa-that's where her acting came in. 'Cept 'e hadn't been clumsy or
too quick. 'E worked it proper. And 'cor! him jumpin' in the tub last
night! 'Nuff to give a workin' gel a right fright, it was, what with the
gun an' all. 'Cept, it wasn't as nice as the one 'e kept between his legs.
She thoudlt; th not send 'im off nice-like?

She looked up at him and smiled.

He saw the invitation in her eyes.

4

Karyll Auschlander was a buxom d__age_ 9.32.! certain £3; as the
French would say, or as the English would say, fifty-three. The number
corresponded to both her age and hip measurement. In 1940 she had been
a thirty-nine year old resident of the Byelorussian capitol of Hinsk,
which was shelled by the Germans on their advance into Russia. In the
panic and destruction which usually accompanies military conquest, rapine,
and civilian bombardment by mortar shells, a house beam fell on her head,
causing her to black out. When she woke, she had lost her name, her memory,
and her eyesight, none of which would return to her. The advancing Germans

herded civilian survivors of the attack into work camps throughout Eastern

52

Europe. Into one of these she was placed.

As with the other prisoners, she too was assigned a number, which.
considering what had happened, was just as well. Hencaforth, for the dura-
tion of the war she was known as #0924144. Despite the terrible blows Life
had dealt #0924144, the falling house beam had bestowed more than just
lasting amnesia and permanent blindness; what it had taken from her it had
conferred in ”second sight.”

She put her one gift to use, looking into the future since she
could see nothing of her past. She began by predicting camp work assign-
ments, especially the coveted kitchen positions. News of her amazing pre-
dictions soon reached the ears of the camp Commandant, who pulled her from
the kitchen (where she peeled more skin then potatoes with her sightless
fingers) to install her as his private Muse. After a few years, when the
tide of war began to turn in favor of the Allies, #0924144 began to fear
she would see her own number come up on the death squad quota; she recalled
the old saw about what-happeneded-to-messengere-who-brought-bad-nawa.
Luckily, her camp was liberated before the Commandant decided to terminate
her prophetic services.

Desiring a fresh start in life, #0924144 traveled to London, where
she found a talent agent who knew a good thing when he saw one. Said agent,
one Mervin Auschlander, asked her her name, got a number, and decided to
christen her himeelf. From Mervin she acquired both "Karyll" (because it
sounded ordinary but was spelled most artistically-narvin couldn't spell
worth beans) and "Auschlander," since he had no intention of letting this

prize pigeon fly the coop. He quit his agency, married Karyll, and

53

happily took more than his rightful percentage from her readings for the
rich and titled.

She practiced her trade on Harley Street and kept a consulting
room across from an ear, nose, and throat specialist. She reed fortunes,
predicted winners at the track, fast-rising stocks, future husbands,
future divorces, future deaths, and logically, conducted s‘ences with the
dearly departed. Police occasionally called upon her services (her record
was two out of three). She was respected in her field. She acquired
wealth and standing in society. As the years passed, she grew plump and
tinted her brown hair red (weren't most sears redheads?). In 1950 Hr.
Auschlander died. How Karyll no longer parted with an agent's commission.
She did quite nicely on her own through word of mouth, and she had built
up a rich and influential circle of clients, among whom was numbered
the Fat Hen.

This night the buxom fifty-three year old widow was cautiously
pacing her newly-decorated mauve apartment (she had been told by her in-
terior decorator that mauve was a mysterious color) in a bathrobe under
which she wore a flimsy pink chiffon nightgown trimmed in pink marabou
with matching marabou-accented moles of modest two-inch height. She paced
cautiously because she frequently bumped into the furniture. It was her
lot to see ahead, but never what was close at hand. Her decorator had
suggested padded furniture to reduce mishaps. As Karyll conceded, it
didn't inspire confidence in the paying customers to consult a seer with

bruised shins.

54

She continued her sedate pace though her heart beat like a voo-
doo tom-tom in four/four time. Her pre-wsr memory had never returned,
though she often had flashes of what seemed to be scenes from her past
life. Trouble was, these flashes rompsd promiscuously with her genuine
visions. It was difficult to tell them apart. Tonight's vision, however,
had been disturbing vivid. She clutched her chiffon gown closer to her
football-sized breasts. She felt around for her upholstered armchair.

She plumped down, squeezing her melon-round thighs together. Her heart
rate slowed. She breathed deeply, forcing herself to count between breaths.
She fingered her tinted curls. She concentrated. A man face-down in the
snow. Aching cold. Death by violence. Someone she had known or would
know.

She pulled her bathrobe closer to her shivering body.

a a a a a *

Meanwhile, back in Berlin the very next morning, the mysterious
woman-with-the-twisting-wool-skirt-end-eye—glasses-that-slipped—down-hsr—
nose-repeatedly tried to lurk inconspicuously in the shadow of a building
across the street from the Hotel Excelsior. She still had her notebook
with her. It had been a tedious morning. In fact, the morning was almost
used up, and he still hadn't emerged. What was keeping him?

Importuning German business-types had accosted her several times
already. What was it with them? Her slouchy raincoat couldn't even keep
them away. She knew herself not to be pretty in the classical sense, or
even in the conventional sense, but Freddy liked her. ”all, more than liked

her, probably; but she had no intention of giving up her career. Her

55

mother's blood ran too strongly in her veins for that . . . except Mother
had done so for one man.

She continued to wait, automatically frowning when any adult Ger-
man male looked her way.)

With more difficulty than Reilly had anticipated, or perhaps be-
cause hs had been so long out of practice, he managed to at last extricate
himself from Pepita's embraces long enough to dress and call a taxi to take
him to the airport. She, however, extricated a promise from him in the
hotel lobby; he must see her upon the completion of his London business.

It was an easy enough promise to make, knowing in the back of his mind that
such promises were easily broken.

After he had left, Pepita went back up to the room and dialed a
number.

”The fish has slipped the net."

She replaced the receiver. She was vaguely uneasy. It didn't
do to let these chaps down. No telling what they might do.

The noon sunshine greeted Reilly's eyes when he stepped down from
the Hotel Excelsior and walked the few paces to the cab stand where his
taxi would pick him up. The air had frashened, probably from yesterday's
drizzle. Berlin was still a gray place, but now at least it looked cleansed
and not quite so shabby. It was a bright October day. It took a minute
for his eyes to adjust to the outside light. Then he spotted a rumpled
female shape that gave his heart a start. ConatanceI Was it Constance
back from the dead? . . . Constance in the shadows scrunching her head

down, yet peering up at him through horn-rimmed glasses? . . . Constance

56

in a rumpled raincoat? And no lipstick?

It was Marisa, his stepdaughter.

Reilly relaxed. His heart slowed to normal. At twenty-five,
Marisa was the pudgy, eye-glassed replica of her mother as she had been
thirteen years ago. Except Constance had never been pudgy. And didn't
wear eye glasses. And certainly wore lipstick. And had better taste in
clothes. Actually, Marisa was more like her mother in spirit than in
flash. Marisa didn't wear high heels either. She preferred the safety
of flats and ballerina slip-one. She had trouble negotiating heels, what
with her glasses falling down and her skirt riding up. But Marisa had
been devoted to her mother. And, if truth be told, Marisa had had a
school girl crush on her stepfather at the time of the marriage.

Marisa had been a sixth grader in Baltimore at the time of the
Kathar Affair. After Constance's marriage, she sent her daughter to Eu-
rope to be educated in Swiss finishing schools, which nearly finished her
offl,but somehow never made a dent in her stubborn desire for comfort and
practicality over fashion. Marisa would've preferred the Sahara sneaker
to desert boots, had positions been reversed, but that would have made a
different story entirely.

The Swiss schools, however, placed Marisa in the rarefied company
of ambassadors' and movie stars' daughters and the special world of media
coverage in which they lived. It intrigued the plain girl. She decided
to become an investigative journalist. After the finishing schools, she

consequently studied political history, photography, and journalism at

University College of London, coming down to visit at Saint's Rest

57

between terms.. It had been a comfortable pattern for Marisa, one which had
instilled a touch of stability in her otherwise paripatetic existence.

She only guessed at the drama of Reilly's life. Now she determined to
help him.

i The plain, pudgy girl in tweed and uncle who wore horn-rims,
however, had a protector who watched over her by the name of Freddy Mac-
Corker, son of Elias P. MacCorker, M. P. House of Commons, gggggggpgisgg
heir to the HecCorker Colliery Works in the Hidlands (ngggggg-giggg_in
English terms is anyone who has acquired his wealth within the last one
hundred and fifty years, and certainly anyone who has acquired it manually
rather than through the accepted channel of inheritance). Freddy met
Harisa at a party in Cambridge. He attended the London School of Economics.
He was enchanted with the plain girl with career plans. He followed her
around a lot. He planned to marry her one day, whether she knew it or
not.

Reilly hailed Marisa from the cab stand and she blushed, pushing
up her glasses. At this rate she was a washout at sleuthing. They went
to London to see sedeee Karyll together.

As the night had been unkind to her, Karyll applied two cucumber
slices to what she was certain were puffy eyes that morning. Her red hair
had been dressed, but she wasn't. She called her lady's maid to choose
something suitable for an afternoon consultation. “But Madame,“ Lucy
said, "you don't have an afternoon consultation on your agenda." Madame

Karyll pulled herself stiffly erect in her vanity chair. “That is what

you think," she answered in a superior tone.

Her lady's maid was used to such I-have-spoken pronouncements
from her employer. What did one expect, working for a seer? She picked
out the eggplant wool suit with matching peplum jacket and lavender ascot
blouse. A redhead in purple should look mysterious enough, Lucy reasoned,
for whoever was coming. Madame often resorted to a little stage-dressing
for heightened effect. Just look at this god-awful mauve apartment, she

philosophized.
an a a a a a

Reilly pushed the buzzer to Madame Karyll's apartment at the Al-
bany just before tee time. Marisa was by his side, pushing her glasses
up, pulling her skirt down, and adjusting her wrinkled raincoat. Burton,
Karyll's butler, ushered them in when he saw the Fat Men's card with Assd's
flowing script on the back. He told them to wait in the salon.

Reilly was impeccably dressed in a flawlessly-tailored suit from
Savile Row. He was freshly shaved and had had his hair trimmed at the
barber's before coming here. He wasn't sure why he had gone to all the
extra trouble for a blind woman, but he had. Marisa had combed her hair.
Madame Karyll made her entrance on the arm of Lucy, since she detested
walking canes. She felt they added years to one's appearance and she was
old enough, thank you. Her bruised shins revealed her vanity, however.

She was seated and than Reilly sat in a chair facing here. He
extended his hand to her outstretched one and gave his name at her inquiry,
surely a formality for one so gifted as she. An indescribable shock ran
through Karyll's system at the touch of this man. Her medium'a sense told

her this was he whom she had seen in last night's vision. This was the man

59

who would die. A tremor seized her body. She forced herself to attend
to his speech, though it wasn't necessary. Her 'psychic window” was
crystal clear on this one. Windex couldn't make it brighter. She would
do all she could, gladly. She liked the sound of his voice. Something
in it drew her. That of his stepdaughter's sounded plain.

Reilly found himself inexplicably drawn to this plumpish, ovar-
dressed woman in tinted curls and rouged cheeks who offered tea and lemon
cakes and seemed to vibrate when he touched her. Her voice calmed him
and put him in mind of his home. She wasn't that much older than he.

It would be soothing to bed such a pillowy woman, he thought.

Marisa was frankly bored. Both Reilly and Madame seemed to share
an instant rapport and the lemon cakes were dry. She looked at her watch
and tried again, this time successfully, to pull her creeping skirt down.
Freddy was in town this weekend. Nothing much was happening here. She
looked up and begged to be excused. Reilly and Madame nodded. She could
be reached at Freddy's parents' townhouse, since Parliament was in session.
They had an awfully nice typewriter and she would just type up her notes
and if her stepfather could be so kind at to call her in the morning from
his hotel they would meet for breakfast to plan what next to do? Yes yes
yes he had said, continuing to gaze into Madame's sightless eyes and hold
Madame's hand. Marisa shrugged. Lucy showed her the way out.

Children could be so tiresome at times.

a a, 1e a a *
Karyll awoke once in the night with another vision, but this time

she simply turned on her side to the man and shifted her leg over his hip

60

and thigh, pressing her voluptuous breasts and opulent belly against his
back and sliding her arm under his and against his chest. He stirred,
clasped her hand in his, and sank deeper into his dreams. She was in-
finitely softer than Pepita.

As Reilly prepared to leave that morning to collect Marisa Karyll
talked to him from the vanity table. She was seated, combing out her
tinted curls. Last night had surprised them both, none more than Reilly.
She was giving him advice, the gist of which pertained to his staying out
of the snow. When he mentioned his Russian winters in Odessa as a boy, she
was the one who froze. "No no no, you must not go back to Russia," she
had said. She told him of her premonitory vision. He shrugged. It merely
gave him a clue where next to go. He had to find his wife's killer. She
stilled her hand, hair brush aloft; a flash went through her system once
more, than she recovered. Reilly asked her what it was. Nothing; an im-
pression of red, that's all, she had said, resuming her combing; of what
use could that be?

Reilly adjusted his tie, stepped behind Karyll, and encircled her
with his arms, giving her a brief kiss and a quick squeeze. He silently
thanked the Fat Men.

Now he suspected a connection between Pepita and Karyll's snow
vision. The flash of red. A woman's dress, certainly; there could be no
mistake. He would go back to Berlin, alone. He would keep that promise
to Pepita.) He mumbled something about catching a plane to Karyll as he
went out the door. She didn't even have time to share last night's dream

with him over croissants and tea, a dream of ice skates and drowning; did

61

he think there was a connection between the two visions? Now she
would not know.

That was the trouble; how could she know that it was not her
psychic window which had been open last night, but memories of her old
life? That Reilly's voice and touch had rocketed her fog-bound brain
back to memories of her Odessa girlhood, that she was, indeed, not only
#0924144, but Odils Sofia Pinnsky-Kutyapoff, half-sister to Sigmund
”Siggy" Rosenblum, aka Sidney Reilly, married at age seventeen to the
owner of Minsk's largest shoe store, or that Sam Kutyapoff, her husband,
still grieved his wife's loss?

5

It hadn't been easy prying the information out of Madame Karyll,
but enough cocoanut bon-bons and the promise of a date with Rosano Brezzi
(Merisa's Swiss finishing school connections had paid off at last) did the
trick after waiting fruitlessly at Freddy's parenta' townhouse for the ex-
pected phone call. She berated herself on the way over to Madame Karyll's
in the taxi. She should have known better than to trust that he'd call
her. What did she think she was on-e picnic? Something was up and she
had to find out what it was. The seer's confused mumblings about ice
skates and snow and red only confirmed Merisa's fears that Reilly was
headed back into danger, and most likely, back into the arms of that
frizzed blonds at the Excelsior. Well, Mother was dead now, and she had

outgrown her school girl crush, but couldn't man be a little more

62

discriminating than that?
But, like mother, like daughter; Marisa determined to follow

Reilly into danger. She bought herself a ticket for the boat-train and
prepared to depart for Calais that afternoon. No telling what she'd
find in Berlin when she got there. Marisa chalked it up to training for
her career in investigative journalism, and it would probably also look
good on a resum‘. Freddy, however, had other plans. Looking deeply into
his beloved's horn-rimmed eyes, he saw sheer idiocy. He determined to
follow her.
a e a a we a

Pepita had difficulty masking her shock when Reilly strode into
the Excelsior bar. He'd only been gone two days. She was meeting with
two KGB agents to discuss ways and means of luring Reilly back to Berlin
and covering her butt in the event it took longer than her superior antici-
pated. Now things had miraculously unclomplicated themselvee-or was it
too miraculous? Best to hook this fish and forget sweetening the bait.

She left the two men and ran over to Reilly, throwing her slender
arme excitedly around his neck and asking for a kiss first, then a drink.
He accommodated her with both. The agents watched discretely. It wasn't
too difficult or too imaginative what Pepita did next, but she didn't
have the time to be fancy. Reaching into her clutch, she felt for and
pulled out a slim gelatin capsule which she maneuvered into Reilly's
scotch and water. It dissolved on contact. Within seconds of finishing
his drink his speech slurred, his coordination slackened, and he blacked

out. Upon his collapse and Pepita's cries for help, two men emerged from

63

the shadows offering the lady assistance to get him into a cab. It
was that easy.

They switched transportation at the Wall and rode through the
check-points to East Berlin with a minimum of fuss or questions. The
border officials fell over themselves to cooperate with KGB. From East
Berlin Reilly was continuously kept under the influence of Pentathal, ad-
ministered intravenously every six hours on the 9OD-mile long train ride
to Moscow. The trip took seven days.

By the end of that week, upon arrival at Moscow's fortress-like
Loubianka Square, the Inner Prison, Reilly was allowed to gradually re-
gain consciousness. The Soviets found Pentathal a useful drug for trans-
porting valuable prisoners great distances with little expenditure of
manpower. Reilly, however, felt as if he'd been hit over the head with
a hammer. Repeatedly.

a s e> e a e

Marisa was frustrated and frightened. Her great adventure was
not going well. Why couldn't she get it right? Mother surely never bed
days like these. She and Freddy debarked from Calais after a calm Channel
crossing and took the train for West Germany. She cursed the time they
lost crossing each international border; she'd forgotten there'were so
many-France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and finally, Germany. Why hadn't
she simply flown, she asked herself. She could see it now: writing child-
ren's books for a living, instead of leading the life of an international
investigative journalist, wiring fast-breaking stories to fist-pounding,

cigar-smoking editors of the world's most prestigious newspapers-her beat:

64

the globe. All bunkum. She couldn't even get her transportation right.

And she was also frightened. Asking for information at the bar
(the only logical place she could think to ask), witnesses from two days
past recalled a drunk answering Reilly's build and description being as-
corted from the hotel in the company of two men and a beautiful blonde.
Where did they go, she asked; did anyone hear where they told the cab to
take him? No one could remember. It didn't seem important. Drunks were
always being escorted from bars, but usually not in such lovely company.

Tbs days, two whole days, her mind screamed. She thought back to
what Madame Karyll had said. The vision. Snow. Red. Death. And he had
spoken of his boyhood in Odessa. That was all. So little to go on. Where
could he be now? Where, dammit?

Freddy was all for packing it up as a poor job. Her stepfather
had nine lives; he'd been in worse scrapes before thie-remember the Km-
thar Affair? He'd get out of whatever or wherever he was, just you wait
and see. Marisa didn't see. Reilly was fifty years old this time. And
he didn't have Constance with him. He didn't have anyone with him, and
as far as she knew, no one knew where he was at precisely this moment,
and certainly not the British Government. He was utterly alone. And then
her racing mind took a quantum leap. She made an announcement to Freddy.

”Russia. It must be Russia. .Oon't you see, Freddy?”

Freddy didn't ass. She really did say the seat hare-brained
things at times. She needed someone to follow her around, she did. Marisa
explained in a calmer voice that Madame Karyll's vision was of a cold place,

and what, her flawless logic argued, could be colder than Russia? Plus

65

Reilly had done counter-intelligence work over the years for M.I.5. He'd
caught countless KGB spies in the West and knew the placements of others.
Perhaps an enemy had gotten to him this time, tripped him up, kidnapped
him, and taken the Master Spy back to Mother Russia? It could be true,
she reasoned.

Freddy listened. She made a little more sense this time. Then
she suggested following after him. Wrong again! They were private citi-
zens. It would take months to get the paperwork through merely requesting
permission to cross the Soviet frontier. The formalities would be too
time consuming, he argued.

And Freddy was right. There was no time.

6

Pepita made the journey with Reilly for the express purpose of
meeting the supreme head of KGB activity in the West, her superior's
superior, Felix Derjinsky. Reilly's capture had been a goal of Derjin-
sky's for over a decade, ever since Reilly had begun free-lancing for
M.I.S. Many ploys and stratagems had been devised, but always with the
same lack of results. Finally a plan had been executed which promised to
remove Bolshevism'e prime hindrance in the West. And it had all begun
with Constance's murder.

Oerjinsky used a woman in the plot, rehearsed her in her role,
sent her to England. This woman claimed to have information for Constance's
husband, a list of double-agents in M.I.S, a list of traitors vital to the

security of the West; she herself was a simple secretary in the Service;

now she feared for her life; would Constance see her, take the list from
her? she couldn't be seen in public talking to Reilly; she feared for her
life, but she loved her country; would Constance come and not tell her
husband? Constance had agreed to a meeting place over the phone. She
was dressing for the afternoon appointment when Pepita walked into the
master bedroom and fired.

a e. a a e a

When Reilly regained consciousness he found himself wearing only
a strait-jacket and strapped down to an iron bed frame. His tiny cell
was cold and damp. He judged it underground. His clothing and shoes had
been taken from him, as had his mattress and blanket. One naked light
bulb dangled from the cracked ceiling. No window alleviated the grayness
or told his day from night.

This was not his first time awake. He dimly recalled the hotel
bar in Berlin, meeting Pepita, than a gap of meaningless nights which
would have been days, a gray non-time. Then a hazy swimming-up to con-
sciousness, as of the time he nearly drowned in the icy, swift-flowing
Oneipsr. But now there were endless rounds of repetitive questions in a
room containing one long wooden table, a scribe to take down his confes-
sions, and another man to apply the pain of a rubber hose in vicious licks
across his body for each question left unanswered; always the same ques-
tions, always the same pain, followed by eventual loss of consciousness.

Coiled springs cut into the back of his head and the backs of
his legs. He looked down at his exposed thighs and calves. They were

purple with. bruises, as, he guessed, were his face, chest, and arms.

67

His testicles ached. He needed to use the lavatory, but there was only a
drain in the center of the tiny cell and he was strapped down. His throat
cried for water. He couldn't remember being fed or given anything to
drink. He shivered, unable to move.

The naked bulb continued to glare from the cracked ceiling.

a e, a s a e

Pepita was arguing with Derjinsky. Theirs had been a relationship
of whispered phone calls and meetings through intermediaries. Now they
were face-to-face, and the dislike was mutual.

Like Lenin before him, Derjinaky had been a school teacher before
joining the Party. He was a thin, dry, ascetic man with the high, proud
cheekbones of the Slow and tiny wire-rim glasses through which his cold
blue eyes looked on a world of pain. There was nothing coarse about him;
his body was small and compact, his thinning fair hair neatly trimmed, his
slim fingers long and tapering on soft hands with the power to sign life i
or death on the endless forms that crossed his desk each day.

Across from him, disturbing the quiet efficiency of his office,
sat Pepita, the insolent slut one of his agents had plucked from the gut-
ters of London's East End six years ago. Her coarseness offended him;
everything about her offended him. But she was useful. The KGB had given
her a home, friends, training, money; had watched over her welfare as her
alcoholic father lay dying in a charity ward and her mother had left to
take up with another man. The KGB, as she had come to know them, cared
for her; in turn, she showed first her appreciation, than her loyalty.
They had asked little things at first, and she'd dens them. What they

had asked was not extraordinary for a girl who had done many things just
to stay alive. And then they asked larger things, and she consented,
pridimg herself on her discipline and ability to survive. That's what
life had taught her: one must survive at all costs.

The unexpected combination of her fresh young beauty, amenebility
to training, and absolute rwthleesness had made her an ideal assassin.
This unlikely combination had made her more successful and more dangerous
than her older male counterparts. It had also made her arrogant.

Restless and uneasy with her stay in Moscow, she demanded a fresh
assignment with the delivery of Reilly completed. Derjinsky wanted her to
stay a while longer. She bickered. He listened in stony silence. In
some respects Pepita was childlike. It has been observed that children
often make the best killers because they have not yet developed sophisti-
cated emotions such as remorse, nor have they the power of self-analysis;
witness the children of Northern Ireland, the children of Palestine, Bei-
rut, Lebanon. Tbll them they are ridding the earth of evil and they will
believe you. Derjinsky decided to tell Pepita some home truths. Its
ultimate effect, he calculated, would be to bind her more closely to them.

She fell silent, her tirade at an and. Derjinsky opened her
dossier before him and began to read aloud, beganto read facts about her
life, parentage, origin that she had never expected, facts which she lie-
tened (to but did not begin to comprehend in their entirety until much
later, facts tirelessly gathered, culled, assembled, arranged from the
investigative work of years, facts which named her runaway mother and al-

coholic father not her parents, facts which told her of the ancient tie of

69

blood between her and this land, the call of Russian soil to her blood
and bones, the tie of heritage and race, of a seduction in Venice, a mar-
riage arranged, a Russian mother, Mother Russia, loyalty, loyalty, “father
unknown" read the certificate, but they know, bond of blood, family,
family, father unknown father unknown father . . . Sidney Reilly.

He did not stop there but continued on and on, voice droning,
boring, pounding into her skull; father father father where can you go?
where can you belong?’who would take you in who who who would take in
someone as vicious as you corrupt as you low as you? you a murderees of
the lowest kind you do it for money you do it you did it with your father
father it rang in her ears kill kill when do you kill? you kill your fa-
ther's wife you did it with your father didn't you didn't you rotten
vicious corrupt you did it and than you betray you betrayed him to us
to us where can you go? to whom belong? no home no home unfit to live
vicious wretched low creature you belong to us family family you are one
of us. You are.

e a a an a a

They were still sitting in the Hotel Excelsior bar. Marisa was
sobbing into Freddy's wet tweed shoulder. He determined to help her in
any way possible. He couldn't stand to see her this broken up over the
business. And he must disabuse her of this foolish cloak-and-dagger no-
tion. He must save her. From herself, if necessary.

"I'll talk to father about this,“ he soothed, stroking her
stretchedéout cashmere sweater on her heaving back. She really did need

a decent wardrobe. “Father's an M.P. He'll know what to do, pull a few

70

strings, collect a few favors. Don't cry so, pet. Don't cry. It'll

be all right, I promise you. Here," he said, taking her glasses off her
nose and wiping them, ”now than, Father will talk to the Foreign Office.
I'm sure it'll be all right. An official inquiry, a protest, something,
maybe pressure for a release, if that's where you think he is," he added
hopefully. He righted her dried glasses on her nose.

She raised her head. Her eyes were rimmed with ugly red circles
and the skin had puffed around than, giving her the look of a dyspeptic
owl with conjunctivitis. Tears, those which had missed Freddy's tweed
shoulder, had dripped a wet trail down the front of her baggy sweater.
She ceased her ache and looked deep into his eyes. He saw tear-washed
irises like panels of radiant stained glass.

She looked beautiful.

7
Pepita wore a grey jersey dress and low black heels. Her bleached
blonds frizz was pulled back severely from her face in a tight chignon at
the maps of her neck. Her roots were growing out. Her face was scrubbed
and pale without her customary rouge and eyeliner. She looked like a peni-
tent mum, and as she descended to the lower level of the Inner Prison she
realized she blended in with the walls. Her escort guards halted before a
door. She asked for five minutes alone. She had it with her. There was

something she could do for him now.

71

'I' 'I’ 'I' ‘I- i *

Reilly had been incarcerated six weeks when the Foreign Office
inquired after the status of one of their British subjects. Six weeks
into a Russian winter. Between beatings and questioning sessions he was
locked in solitary confinement. It was a crude but effective routine:
questions followed by beatings followed by solitary confinement followed
by more questions. He was bony now and he achsd all the time. His skin
was broken and refused to heal properly. His eyes watered from the in-
cessant glare of the naked bulb in his cell. He suffered from the intense
cold and damp. The short, monotonous rations of salted herring made his
lips crack. He begged for additional water. Help had to come soon or it
would be too late. He would use it on himself.

an e s a an e

The communiqw‘ from the British F.O. which had come to Dorjinsky's
hand courteously requested information on the status of one Sidney Reilly.
Should said British subject he unlawfully sequestered or maintained against
his will the British Government objected most strenuously and would take
the strongest possible action according to established guidelines sanc-
tioned by international protocol.

It not with the same silence which greeted other such diplomatic
inquiries. Nonetheless, the subject would be moved. He was too valuable
to kill just yet. He hadn't given them the names of all the agents operat-
ing in the West. And Derjinsky derived enormous satisfaction from his coup.

ill 'I' It ‘I’ it *

72

The months had passed since Reilly's disappearance. Herisa was
reading m m I.” in the townhouse of Freddy's parents, who had
put her up during the ordeal. She had become officially engaged. Her
eye scanned a small press release on the inside of the front page. The
body of a British subject had been found at the Russo-Finlandia border in
a routine petrol by soldiers . . .

Marisa fainted.

Reilly was dead.

0110900

August, 1955. Marisa wed Freddy in a small private ceremony at
his parenta' London townhouse. No members of the bride's family were pre-
eent. The bride was quoted in the papers as Huiehing her dear stepfather
could have been present for the happy occasion.“ They honeymooned in
Scotland, in time for the grouse season, of which Freddy was fond. Upon
their return, additional wedding presents had accumulated at the townhouse
address for the happy couple, but none were more mysterious or quite so
large as that sent by the Fat Man.

Prying open the shipping crate with a crowhar, Freddy and Marisa
found a rare and unusual example of the cocoon-style Louis Guinea heeded
chair in black leather and hand-carved solid walnut 9...... It stood class
to six feet tall. It was a horribly lavish and dear gesture to make to a
women he had never eeen, but did associations, a raft heart, and pressing

necessity had compelled the Fat Ben to use the wedding gift as a device to

conceal a private missive as unexpected and precious as the heirloom in

73

which it reposed, in a slit in the lining underneath the bottom of the
chair seat. But more of that later.

Upon their return from Scotland and the grouse season, the happy
young couple also discovered that the MecCorkere' wedding present to them
was the deed to the London townhouse. Freddy took up the administrative
and managerial reins of the MecCorker Colliery Works to great effect,
since he had taken a First at the London School of Economics. In later
years he cast his eye on his father's seat in the House of Commons and
maintained that family tradition with equal distinction.

After the disappearance of Reilly, the flat reception which hed_
met the official inquiry, and the death notice in the paper, Marisa
thoughtfully reviewed her career goals and performance in the Reilly A!-
fair. She found hereelf not to have the stuff of her mother in her. In
subsequent years, she took up the writing of children's books and received
no little success upon their publication, being much in demand by the
public and read with equal relish by her own two children, Freddy Jr. and
Sydney Constance. She had indeed come to terms at last with her own spirit
of adventure.

Though the coming years brought many changes, as Time invariably
can and will, let the biographer confess that some things did not change:
Merisa's glasses continued to slide down her nose in direct proportion to
her wool skirt riding up and Freddy continued to love her.

The Fat Hen, reclusive collector of the rare, the unobtainable,
and the exotic, one-time nemesis of Reilly, chess seven and grand soul,

died quietly at his secluded desert retreat within weeks of sending the

74

wedding gift to Rarisa and Freddy. He died surrounded by the objects he
had loved, in his sleep, which, let it be noted, was in a nineteenth-century
Victorian mahogany sleigh bed with hand-carved corner poets, side rails,
headboard and footboerd embellished with solid brass bosses. Had he

lived longer he might have died otherwise and in other fashion, since he
had been on the verge of ordering the new Swedish modular furniture units
which were hitting the market just then. It would have added depth to an
already considerably broad collection. As it was, he died with the cata-
logue in his hands, peacefully, Ased by his side.

He left his considerable collection of art and furniture to the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; to Ased, the desert retreat, tax-
free, with a lifetime annuity. In a mysterious codicil he willed to Reilly
his extensive collection of Napoleonic memorabilia, worth a veritable for-
tune, and in the event of his death, in trust to Marisa Ford Reilly Meo-
Corker, and no, meat assuredly, the Fat Men's collection of memorabilia
did not extend to the grossly vulgar, low, and ribald acquisition of prime
Napoleana despicably put up for auction at Sotheby's; that of the shrivelled,
dessicatsd, and finger-length member of the Grand Emperor said to have been
excised upon death by an unspeakably mercenary fortunehunter of even baser
scruplea . . . well, you know.

Though Herr Kubbeldcrf was never again sent on field expeditions
for the gtggtlighg,efter_the singularly embarrassing outcome of the Kathsr
Affair, the museum, as has already been seen, did allow the good curator
to stay on and oversee the maintenance of new acquisitions. His retire-

ment party was planned in 1960, but the good curator so abhorred the

75

thought of separation from the things which had meant so much to him-he
was quite similar in this regard to the Fat Man-that he barricaded him-
self in the Pro-Christian Art Wing of the Staatliche behind rows of piled
mummy cases for two whole days until the Board of Trustees voted him an
honorary lifetime position. Happy in service to science, the curator

died five years later, after conducting a tour of visiting Girl Scouts
from America through the Early Art of Man exhibit. The Staatliche erected
a memorial cenotsph to him in the southwest corner of the museum grounds
which stands to this day for all who care to see it.

Valentina Marie Eleni Savinkoff-Potiphar, aka Maiaie Micklewhite,
aka Pepita Bombadilla, disappeared from the list of active KGB agents
shortly after the Reilly Affair. Various reports place her as the wife
of a South American coffee plantation owner; a burlesque dancer in Cleve-
land, OH; in England as the genuine manifestation of Rule Lenska, formerly
thought to be a publicity-generated non-entity; the mother of Madonna in
Royal Oak, MI; and a Bhuddist nun in Tibet.

Madame Karyll, aka #0924144, aka Odils Sofia Pinnsky Kutyapoff
Auschlander, continued to live in mysterious style at her rooms in the
Albany. Her predictions continued to garner her success, wealth, and
popular acclaim as she continued to confuse flashes of her past life with
those of her genuine visions, though she managed to maintain her two-out-
of-three record. Approximately ten years after the Reilly Affair she ex-
perienced a momentary flash of an old man with white hair and rheumatic
joints conversing on‘a mountain top with a comely middle-aged novitiate

on the merits of Oriental mysticism, but dismissed it as indigestion from

76

too many cream buns from that afternoon's high tea. Harder to dismiss
was one Sam Kutyapoff, who, on reading of the celebrated Madame Karyll

and of her phenomenal success in contacting the spirits of the dead,
applied for and obtained a travel visa to make the long trek from Minsk

to London to consult the famed seer. The element of French bedroom force
was further increased since Madame Karyll, the lonely widow of Marvin, had
married her butler, Burton. The ensuing brangle is fodder for other bio;
brunt-ra-

Postscript

As readere of “Saint's Rest, The End of Reilly'*will have followed
the twisting plot line this far, they will have doubtless also noted that
nothing since has been said of the mysterious missive containing a private
message to Marisa secreted in the bowels (if indeed chairs may be said to
have such) of the chair which had been sent as a wedding gift from the Fat
nan.

Let the letter speak for itself, since it traveled a journey or-
duous by human standards-llama-carrier ,airplane, train, tramp steamer,
fishing heat, oil tanker, desert camel, Willis 3eep-then hence by insured
freight across the Channel and into Merisa's trembling hands when she dis-
lodged it with the dustmop one dismal foggy London afternoon in the spring
of 1957 (she would have found it sooner had ohe been a more meticulous

housekeeper, but such is the vicissitude of Fortune).

77

It was somewhat the worse for wear and handling. Its substance
is faithfully reproduced in the Appendix. The original now resides in
the biographer's private collection.

Here then, is the letter.

78

Appendix

January, 1 955
Moscow
The Inner Prison

My Dear Marisa,

Should this letter reach you know that I am well and in a place removed
from harm. Do not worry for me. I am not alone.

Knew also that I am no traitor to the West, that aid was given me by one
whom I had no reason to trust, and that en route in my transfer I slipped
free of my guards with the aid of my friend and made my way-South to the
lamesery of the Bhuddist adept Lao-Tzu. Know also that should my escape
succeed, it will have been with the help of one with whom I have made my
peace, one whom shall go by the name Valentine.

If you should ask and wonder in the years to come why I do not make my way
back to you, know these two reasons. First, they will never stop searching
for me. I have seen and know too much; and second, for my sins, m'dear,

for my sins.

Purple Lace

"Buick, Peacock!" Sir Baldwin Thornedyke Bush-
cock IV, also known as 'Baldy Bushcock' to members
of the Club, gabblsd to his man, faithful manser-
vant, personal valet, and family retainer to the
Iushcocks for sixty-six of his seventy-eight arth-
ritic (well, truth to say, at least fifteen of the
last sixty-six years were truly arthritic in the
medical sense) years, peering through the invig-
ingly open yet not obviously ajar (since they were
French) doors overlooking the splendid sunken gar-
den, “Bring me the spyglass!” as it appeared the
randy young Lord Harry Hungstud was about to com-
promise Lord Bushcock's nubile young niece the
Honorable Lady Maude Lucille Tbuchnot by the trel-
lis of trailing tuberoeee which exuded an inde-
finmble yet in no way unidentifiable fragrance of
musky seneuousity over not just the invitingly nice
sunken garden but also over the entire Bushceck
family estate in delightful Devon on a dappled day
in about the middle of the month of a splendid
spell of deliciously dry (but not too dry for the
tuberoeee) weather one balmy June in the Year of
Our Lord 17B9-

0b . . . shit.

I get an idea for a colorful commercial historical romance with
stock characters, a popular century, the scenic English countryside, an
impending sex scene with definite voyeur (too racy for Herlgggin? too
“period” for £2332?) overtones, but it's, well it just isn't . . . art.

Vow know. 5

Hey, it's not like I don't know gggg_writing. I'm an English

major. I've read Shakespeare. But the public roads pulp and the publishers

want “formula" and I just want to get rich so if I give the people what they

79

want then I can laugh all the way to the bank and then when I'm rich and
famous I'll give the people GREAT LITERATURE 'ceuse I'm an English major
and I've read Shakespeare but I'm damned if I'll be poor in the process

of becoming one of the most significant writers of the late twentieth cen—
tury.

Except I'm not really sure I can pull it off, so Lady Maude will
have to do for now. And Reilly. And Oariah.

I mean, look at Erica Jong. She's written her sex novels and
books of poetry and she teaches English somewhere-I think Australia. Or
is that Germaine Greer? Well, what I mean is, she's an academic, gets
revs notices, teaches, and laughs all the way to the bank. I mean, she's
got some credibility. Unlike Jackie Collins who just has gobs of money
and books on the Best Sellers' List but no accreditation by acedeme.
Jackie gets read now and has her sister Joan appear in mini-series of her
works but who will know who she is fifty years from now other than players
of the twenty-first century edition of Trivial Eggggit, right?

When I'm in class the plot lines, characters, and scenarios run
through my mind with the estatic abandon of Dionysian meenads.

I mean, I am HOT.

Inspired.

Imbued with direction.

Then the blank page in the typewriter confronts me and the spark
simpers and farts out Lady Maude, Reilly, etc.

For two hours each week I sit in class and I listen to trash and

I listen to treasure (but mostly trash) and I wonder how Sheila does it

81

for a living. I mean, Reilly is okay writing but it's not GREAT'WRITING.
She's published. She does it. Even though most of our stuff id good,
some of it is just plain awful (well, it is our juvenalie) and how does
she manage to sit still term after term and smile sweetly and offer posi-
tive comments without screaming in frustration year after year after year
after year?

Those anger and innocent feces; tell me it's good, Sheila; tell
me I'm a writer, Sheila; tell me I should think about getting an agent,
Sheila.

John is reading his stuff now. I look forward to class when he's
there, especially when he reads something of his. Trouble is, some writers
can't read their stuff aloud worth shit and John is one of them. He spits
his stories out in a stiff machine gun staccato punctuated by e racking
cough. His stuff is good-it mostly seems that way-but it sure is hard
to follow, especially with his bronchial accompaniment. (There I go again,
getting artsy idithyrambic) '

Now John is dark and curly-haired, with just a slight scroggle
of naps hair nuzzling his Oxford collar. Patched sweaters, tight, faded
jeans. He talks like a New Yorker. He can also talk about a piece of
writing-what it means, where it's going, what's dishonest about it, using
his hands and voice and eyes.

He's spell-binding. A word wizard wonderman.

I mean, I know I've got Kent and he's sweet but dumpy and lumpy
and a lousy dresser and . . . he's just not exciting. John is exciting.

John is a writer.

82

John exudes the musk of the writing animal. John vibrates with
the raw power of untenable words. He has this habit of standing close
to you and cooking his head just slightly, so as to hear you better, and
than he angles his face just a little bit downward and skewers you with
his dark eyes as he listens to you speak. He'd be great at book-signing
appearances. The ladies would be lined up for blocks.

I do get inspired when I listen to him read (between coughs),
listen to the dense rococo richness of his press as his words fill my
mind the way his cock fills . . . well, you know; like a writer.

And then I shake it off, because, after all, I do have Kent.
But I can dream.

And boy, can John write.

Can I write?

I grunt and out comes Lady Maude.

I get these great ideas iggigg_my head but I can't get than 225.

Sheila says Read other writers to get past a block, but I've
done that and all I get is depressed.because my ideas aren't there and
my words aren't there and my moaning isn't there. But theirs certainly
are. -

But more important: I saw this class as a Test. If I could do
well in it that would mean that I was a writer and that I might make my
living at it. I'd like an unpretentious estate in Ireland. They give
writers tax breaks.

Except I'm blowing my plan.

Does that mean I'm not really a writer?

63

Have I been fooling myself all along?

Did this happen to Hemingway?

But I'm an English major.

I've read Shakespeare.

(Those who can do; those who can't . . . .)

Shit.

Then myself-confidence gets blown out of the water further by
our class's forty-five year old overweight insecure housewife with three
kids who comes trotting in clutching the latest installment to her god-
damned fucking wonderful novel-in-progress which she thinks maybe she'll
feed to the incinerator. Jayzus H. Kee-rist. She'll beat me to the Best
Seller List yet.

”Those who can . .4."

5M.

So yeah, there's real honest-to-earth talent in this class which
makes my effort suck Grade AA turkey eggs.

And Roger. Dear Roger. Who likes to draw pages of screaming
heads with piano keyboards-howls and crescent jack o'lantern eyes with his
blue Bic pen. He's talented.

Kent eeye he's twisted.

Instead of taking notes during class Roger just bends his pals
pudgy acne-riddled pudding face closer to his notebook, scrwnohes his
spatulate fingers tighter to his Bic, and re-drawa theee screaming faces
over and over and over. '

Endlessly.

84

Sometimes with commentary.

He's.well-read, too.

I feel sorry for him. Hell, I sit right next to the guy. I can
see those faces. Sometimes I wonder how his sex life is. If he's getting
any. Wowldithelp? Vhydeeaeenaeuellyeeeeexaetheaneeertoeele
pain?

Roger is like his prose: tough, uncompromising, tortured, gritty.

It's sad, you know. So much talent locked up inside him and he
puts himself down, his writing down, life dllle

But by God he can WRITE.

And then there's Phyllis.

Phyllis is grey, a fading, flesh-toned fig-lined face; Phyllis
is rmbbitty-nerveus bugebulgy eyes and protubermnt front teeth; Phyllis
is heavy dangly earrings that swing and aunt against pewter hair.

Boy, she can write too.

Maybe she's a writing teacher.

Her stuff is clever, sweet, mystical, nostalgic, detailed, and
keyedein to the senses; sensats. Phrases like: 'peregrine eye" of her
mother; “skin like the petals of roses," or, one of my favorites, the
“uncomplicated neutrality of the door,” just blow me away.

And her themes-rich with LIFE. That one about the jasmine-
acented Chinese lady wedged popover-fashion in the bathtub with pearl-
eecent skin and porpoise-wet feet-what a marvelous image, as richly de-

tailed ae a jeweled bracelet, as hypnotic.ae a Byzantine icon.

Oh sure, there were clinkers. But for the most part, even
they were figuratively appealing. Phrases like “as constant as plaque on
teeth" tend to stick. Even schlock is memorable.
For instance, there was the sex fantasy about the bored postman
on Route #609 who gets a blowjob from a beautiful blonde homeowner and
a Mickey Finn from her husband who then ships him via air mail to Rio
where two garbage dumpster-sized hoods escort him to their boss who de-
mands to know the whereabouts of some microchips of which the dazed post-
man hnews nothing because he's been mistaken for the courier at the air-
port where the two garbage dumpster-sized hoods . . . well, you get the
drift. A popcorn romp through the American psyche.
Huh? Me, you ask?
Uh, well, ah . . . I did have this classical idea in mind.
The Parthenon by dusk, stuff like that. A re-telling of the Persephone
myth. But it didn't work out. I did my research-even went to the li-
brary and xeroxed pages out of the gagggg,Clasgical gistiggg;z_and gulf
figgh's Mythglggz, both of which I highlighted with fluorescent felt tip
markers. I even scribbled merginslia in the white space.
But it didn't work.
I get thoughts like
The little mermaid dives descends delves down
wet regions unknown, twists kicks spirals ever
deeper headlong down rapt in her desperate goal
past coral-opined cliffs she cleaves a path,
past rotting wrecks raft from the Ocean's be-
eom there to rest upon her mother's sandy cheek
past sea-fed ghosts, eyeless sailors' implor-

ing glares, past alabaster howls polished sleek/
as a bowl of new seal's milk ever downward she

86

glides banks curvas debouchea whers at last
upon an open plain in that wet region unused
to sun she finds her fate

but I can't write like that.
It Just stays locked up inaida my head. Instead, out comes-
'01 la, air!" the ravishing Regency minx llora

Prsvel, second cousin once-removed from Lady Maude,

her blus-usinsd ivory bosom Jiggling like two bowls

of soot in a high wind, tittered to the dashingly

rakish Captain Axel Uixley of the Light Horas Guards,

5th Platoon, Lincolnshirs, whers we lay our scans,

"you do quite take my braath away, you naughty

thing!” as she removed his questing hand from her

heaving bodice (he was searching for his Officer's

commission, having misplaced in a fit of rapturs at

the mere eight of Lady Iauds's second cousin once-

ramoved) bedscked uith purple lace and rous of sil-

ver faggotting-hsr second-best riding outfit.

See what I mean?

I want prose with the gymnastic wonder of a supple-hosed Errol
Flynn. I want rippling, wind-furled words with the vigor of Indiana Jonas.
Instead, I get paragraphs with the agility of a Lippanransr with a limp,
the poetic punch of a package of Farmer Pete's sausage (thawed), and the
shimmsring subtlety of Hollzgood gaggggg,

I'- M: I uritar.

George Drusll said that Good prose is like a window pane.

If that's the case, my efforts are scratched plexiglaa.

Why can't I write good?

hot well; I mean raally aggg_words. Real words. Honast words.

It's not that writing's hard. .

(It's hell.)

It can be fun.

87

(Like hell.)
I want it to be really SOHETHIHG.

But the work is sheer drudgs. Step. Drag. Step. Step. Step.
Dflga
Is this agony part of the Growth and Development of the Uritsr?

Is this the Exploring and Discovering Stage? Did Hemingway put up with
this? Did Shakespeare uads through this shit?

I'd give a hundred bucks for a flashlight.

Six days off the Cuban coast the privateer fri-
gate Golden Egg'captained by the snidaly rapacious
yet darkly handsome and somewhat knavish cad known
otherwise as “Dick the Dirk," known fondly as ”Dag-
gar," by his bloodthirsty crew of rum-drunk Limeys,
and known chiefly by the fair captive Euphemia Blank-
insop, half-sister to the Lady Hauds, bound and gagged
below decks in the disheveled ruin of her peach velvet
dancing frock accented with scallops of ion 9.191...
lace, her psrfoct pear-shaped breasts peeping above
daring decollet‘, lying on the invitingly capacioue
and silk-canopisd bed, as “Dag the Stag,” shuddersd,
convulssd, and gave up its gold-glutted hold to the
creamy turquoise sea as . . .

Enough.

Hodern Love

Imagine if you will a corn-fed heiress from Kansae-but No.

This stery will confine itself to the truth insofar as the facts
are known and the dialogue surmisable.

Imagine than, if you will, that somewhat more than thirty years
ago there was born unto the ounsr of the largest independently owned and
operated department store in Thunton Town, Iowa and to his wife, a girl-
child. Imagine also, in your mind's eye, the growth and maturation of
this girlchild surrounded by all the accoutremants of comfortable living
known to the mind of Hidwest Americas dolls that wet and cried when tilted
backward and rolled their cloudlsss China blue eyes open and shut; a rock-
ing horse on steel springs, engineered for a superbly smooth ride; mechanié
cal whuzzits that aquaukad as they walked; a Blue Delft tea set complete
with four place settings, plus sugar and creamer; and, as she grew older,
her first Barbie doll and accessory travel kit, complete with Barbie's
onerous wardrobe changes necessitated by Barbie's exhaustive social
schedule.

You will have imagined, than, if you have followed the girlchild's
progress with the least bit of attention, that she grew up in a pampered
environent showered with the material blessings which that child of of-
fluent America was heir to before the advent of computerized games and
Ha-Han and the Heaters of the Universe.

This Pre-Computer Age child rollicked and rambled amid vast ex-

penses of watered green lawns set on the family estate outside of Taunton

 

Then. She was free to frisk her chubby legs and to stretch her agile
mind an problama no more puzzling than the location of her missing purple
heels-hoop. Her father, for all that she was to be his only child, adored
her profoundly; stealing time away from such administrative and managerial
duties as the ounsr of Thunten Tcwn's single largest independently ounsd
and operated marohantile establishment use heir to, he delighted in his
darling baby daughter, holding her, talking to her, listening to her
childish dreams and crankish complaints, brushing away her baby tears

and posing reassuring ramonstranoss into her perfect pink ears.

People sf Thunton Town whispered the father was more a mother to
the little girl than he ought to be, or had a right to be; it was not
decent for a man to cars so plainly for his little girl in public; it
lacked downright suspect, if one knew what one meant . . . but let us
fargiva those whispering voices, for this was before the advent of Femi-
nism and the House Husband.

It is ts be imagined, than, that the girlchild's mother played
a lesser role in her baby daughter's existence, and this is correct, for
while Hr. Dave use cooing and coddling and cuddling and coaxing his in-
fant daughter's first steps, and later answering her first questions why
grass is green and the sky blue, Hrs. Dove use elsewhere. It is not to
be surmised with any great narrative accuracy what the good woman was up
ta in the time that lay heavy upon her soft white hands: indeed, if we
are able to guess at all, it is to infer that fire. Dave simply spent as
much time away from her baby daughter as could decently be arranged. at

Dariah (rhymes with "Delilah," if pronounced with a Japanese lisp; Hr.

90

Dove loved the mysterious and the exotic. The name simply irked hrs.
Dove) and her mother, let it be said that after an unnervingly long con-
finement of thirteen months she was more than eager to set her burden
down.

Fearing a repeat performance, Mrs. Dove never let hr. Dove within
reach again.

Thus the unhappy circumstances attendant upon Dariah's delayed
arrival into the world hardened her mother's heart against her own off-
spring while simultaneously insuring there would be no little brothers or
sisters for her to play with in future. Lest a harsher than necessary
judgment fell upon the head of Dariah's mother, it should be noted that
in every other respect Hrs. Dove was a model wife and mother, kept a spot-
less house with the help of a competent staff, fixed her husband's meals
on Cook's night off, chaired endless social teas, campaigned for safer
streets, more beautiful gardens, and better birth control.

Thus Dariah's toddler days melted into school days and her school
days into junior high and hence from junior high to high school and on to
college. Mrs. Dove missed them all, missed the long slow lazy burgeoning
of her daughter's youth, missed her daughter's smiling achievements and
aching defeats, but one thing which Mrs. Dove did not miss was Dariah's
first date, for Mrs. Dove could not miss what Dariah had never had.

a a a a a a

To put a thing plainly-—not unkindily, but plainly-Dariah was
fat. Dariah had not stayed little for long. Her chubby toddler logs
grew to stumps, her pleasingly plump arms to lumps of tallou-soft skin that

folded at the elbow. Her body itself had no discernible waist, but than

91

few toddlers do; however, when one reaches junior high, high school, and
college, one is expected to have one.

Dariah didn't.

Dariah didn't have much of anything except sheer bulk. Her pretty
face was semi-hidden under a pair of semi-chins. Her cheeks looked per-
petually stuffed, as one will have noticed in wild creatures of the nut-
gathering variety, squirrels, for instances or in the domesticated variety
of rodent, the school-kept gerbil. Her eyes and hair were her best fea-
tures, they being respectively blue and chestnut. Her skin, lovely to a
fault, if loveliness be blamawsrthy in one so needy of self-esteem, was
her finest asset, it being a glowing peachy-pink of the kind rumored to
have been possessed by "Eh," aka Harilyn Honros. The old saying, ”such
a pretty face if not for the weight,“ plagued Dariah all her growing days,
so it was not unreasonable that she kept growing after those days had
clearly come to an and.

Dariah was not of the circus grotesque variety and Dariah did not
have glandular trouble, as one might shrewdly suspect in a child who had
taken thirteen months to be born. That left Dariah with the startlingly
obvious fact that she and only she was accountable for her condition. The
difficulty with that revelation, however, was this: she knew she overete,
but not how to stop the business. After many years of trying to stop the
business, she went out of the business of trying to stop and resigned her-
self to her condition. Thus in kindergarten Dariah weighed ninety pounds;
by third grade, one-hundred and thirty-five; graduation from high school,

one-hundred and seventy-six; graduation from college, two-hundred and

 

92

tuenty-twog and by the time of this narrative, which is to say fourteen
years later, or “the present,” Dariah topped the scales at two-hundred
and eighty pounds.

It has been said that Dariah had no dates in high school, and
one would correctly attribute this lack to her physical condition; at one-
hundred and seventy-six pounds the only boys who out-weighed Dariah were
on the football team, and they preferred the slander cheerleaders and
Prom Queen-types.

Except that one boy did love Dariah.

One Ramsay Hinton.

Of the upwardly mobile and socially prominent Chicago Hintons,
these Hintons being known amongst connoisseurs of the potted meat variety
who especially praised the Hintons' innovative foray into the Vienna sau-
sage market with the introduction of their Hickory Smoked and equally
tasty Barbecue Flavored Vienna Sausages.

Indeed, as these Hinton Brand Hickory Smoked and Barbecue Fla-
vored tinned Vienna sausages had made their flavorscme way to Taunton
Town shelves, Dariah had acquainted herself with their meaty appeal and
had pronounced her approval to Cook, who forthwith included said sausages
in her charge's school lunch box on a weekly basis.

flight we, then, as careful readers see in Darieh's predilection
for these Hinton potted sausages a covert sign of her regard for the cou-
sin of the famed Chicago-based Hintons, as evidenced by her lunch box con-
tents, especially since this sema Ramsay Hinton attended the very same set

of schools which Dariah did, and, in nowiee a coincidence, lived at the

93

very estate adjacent to Deriah's very own parenta'?

Ho.

For it may be said that young Dariah Dove was quite eclectic in
her tastes comeetible and aesthetic and never once did it enter her head
that Ramsey, by seating himself next to her as her lunchtime tablemate
might suspect that she returned a measure of his regard through the, to
him, unfailingly regular appearance of Hinton potted meat products.

Alae-!

Such is modern love. The self-absorbed Dariah may as well have
been munching on Ramsay's potted heart for all that she noticed the young
meat hair's sighs.

And so Deriah's school years passed and time itself passed, as
it has the unshakeble habit of doing, and Ramsey waited. It may be won-
dered at by the reader uhy and how Ramsey, promising heir to the Chicago-
besed Hinton Heat Packing fortune, should have come to love Dariah. In
addition to her lovely hair and eyes and skin (though there was altogether
too much of it), Ramsay loved her because he loved her and because he
loved her. Such is modern love.

Hamsay therefore was Deriah's one true suitor, though having re-
ceived no actual sign from Dariah herself, he had never openly stepped
forth to proclaim himself as such.

' And while Time was passing for Ramsay, it inevitably passed as
well for Dariah. After her graduation from Thunton Town College, Dariah

spent the next fourteen years at home. Reading. And eating. And sleep-

ing. Quite soundly.

94

As Dariah had not been trained to do anything out of the ordinary
(here was an English degree) and as she had come into her Trust Fund at
the age of majority, she enjoyed a measure of economic freedom denied
most other girls. She had considered teaching, since that was the most
obvious employment of her learning, but that took too much time away from
her own studies.

Her speciality was pirate novels.

 

Dariah had read everything pertaining to pirates. She'd read
R. L. Stevenson's Treasugg gglggg_in grade school. And then all the Sa-
batini swashbucklers. Arthur Conan Doyle's 1125.29. 393 gm gm. And
Doro-'- MELMMO Show «on mum-nu comm
with Errol Flynn, 2.9. 2.355 §_e_en_ with Tyrone Pouer and 111; Pig-gt” g_f_
ganggngg,with Kevin Kline, and certainly Robert Newton's unforgettable
Long John Silver by the Disney studios. She took her studies very seri-
ously. It was her dream to pen pirate novels of her own; to become, as
it were, the reigning queen of the pirate genre in late twentieth century
literature.

This then, was her goal. Her father was lovingly supportive,
especially since he saw how it helped occupy Deriah's plentysome time.
Such is modern love. .

And it.seemed to keep her happy, as happiness goes. Admittedly,
it was a safe environment for a more than somewhat reclusive girl who one

day looked into her mirror and sew staring back a thirty-six year old twe-

hwndred and eighty pound virgin.

Ramsey had waited in true princely fashion until one day Sally
Sue Becker wiggled her considerably less than two-hundred and eighty pound
posteroir at Ramsay. Hot that Ramsay was fickle. It was just that after
grade school and junior high and high school and college, having waited
for a sign of interest from Dariah, Ramsay, in a moment of weakness or
despair, forgot the dream. So he married Sally Sue Becker. And they
settled down in Townten Town until such time as Ramsey would rightfully come
into the Hinton Heat Packing fortune and they would move to Chicago. Such
is modern love. .

And so, Ramsay had been wed to Sally Sue approximately fourteen
years and had produced two children, both boys, when Hrs. Dove made her
somewhat shadowy presence felt, whether from frustration at her daughter's
complacent self-imposed exile from Life, or from embarrassment at having
the town's “character" under her roof, or, from the uneasy edumbration
of Deriah's dietreseingly long gestation, it is not the place of this nar-
rative to speculate. leverthelese, Hrs. Dove decided to take the scissors
into her own slim hands and to cut the umbilical cord this time herself.

It was Hrs. Dove who put the idea into Hr. Dove's head that
Dariah should study abroad. In France. Especially since Deriah's abid-
ing interest was the seventeenth century French corsairs. Otherwise
Dariah would never truly accomplish her life's goal. Taunton Town's li-
brary use only just so big. Hr. Dove agreed. After all, his precious
daughter was not getting any younger. Dr lighter. And Hrs. Dove per-
ceptively pointed out that Dariah was also certainly not getting a hue-

band in Thunton Town. So Deriah's Fate was sealed from that day forth,

 

because Hr. Dove would not let the idea which Hrs. Dove had planted rest
until Dariah agreed to go.

And being a sensible daughter, Dariah did see the wisdom of con-
ducting her studies abroad, first hand, as it were; that would definitely
add flavor and realism to her projected novel. And she would take a place
for, six months or so, however long it took to complete her research, maybe
take a class, and then return to Thunton Town with her opus complete.

And after all, if nothing else, at the very least, France was
the home of the meet exquisite food. There would be compensations. And‘
after all, a few more pounds wouldn't show and would make negligible dif-
rsoshcs to her already shepelesa bulk.' So she smiled.

But Dariah had forgotten to take one other thing into account.

If France was reknown for its exquisite cuisine, it was also the Land of
Love.
a a. a a a a

So the thirty-six year old two-hundred and eighty pound virgin
plus her allotted forty-four pounds of luggage arrived in Paris in the
spring of the year, for what better time is there to see the glories of
Gaul?

Unseen by Dariah, Ramsay had waved farewell from the Taunton Town
airport. .

As it was spring in Paris, a most gloriously moiety-damp and
invigoratingly romantic season, Dariah immediately felt for herself the
literary effect of the environment upon her aesthetic sensibilities;

snatches of poetry from her copious reading days at home some unbidden to

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough

and this she took as a most propitious omen for her pirate research. If
standing in line for the subway at the Paris Retro could do this, than
what further serendipities awaited her during her academic sojourn abroad?
Indeed.
She took a place on the Rue de Bebillotte, not far from the Uni-

versity of Paris, where she did enroll in a course on Pirate Literature.

 

Her tiny apartment was also not far from, it being directly over, a most
wonderful pastry shop which Dariah had occasion to visit with far greater
regularity than her three-day a week university course, which is to say
she patronized the shop approximately three times daily.

The little shop was chiefly patronized by university students
and accordingly did a brisk business in brioches and pggguettse of fresh
bread, hot croissants dripping with creamery butter, as well as the stand-
ard delights of powdered madeleines, cream puffs, cream eclairs, and cream-
fillsd Hepoleons. Dariah was more than a regular customer of the shop,
and that is how the peach-faced and peach-shaped American heiress met
Julian.

Julian was the dark younger son of the proprietor of the pastry
shop. Julian also attended university. He was also interested in Dariah,
and last but not least, he was also considerably younger than she.

Julian made, unlike Ramsey, his attraction felt in numerous small

ways: he always waited on Dariah himself: he always gave her the freshest

9B

and craemiest cakes and buns: he always smiled politely at her: and, most
disconcerting, he always looked Dariah in the eye, a practice which she
put down to Gallic impertinence. And one last thing Julian did: he an-
rolled in Deriah's Pirate course and sat next to her in class three days
a week. The only thing he did not do, Dariah reflected, was bring potted;
Vienna sausages to lunch.

All Julian's attentions Dariah found puzzling in the extreme.

She had, indeed, walked through Life largely invisible, despite her un-
gainly bulk. She looked at the pavement when she walked. She looked at
the shelves when she shopped. She looked at the register when she checked
out. She did not look at people. Deriah's theory held that, if she did
not see them, they did not see her. This gave her a measure, if somewhat
spurious, of comfort. But Julian looked at her. Directly. Deliberately.
Disturbingly.

It was most distressing.

Dariah found him dogging her heels. Hherever she turned, Julian
was there. He offered to help with her daily shopping at the open-air
markets. He offered to translate in her commerce with shopkeepers. He
offered to show her the Left Bank and the Louvre. And most alarmingly,
he offered to show her Paris by night.

His offers of assistance became a steady drip drip drip on Deriah's
nerves. She almost considered patronizing a different pastry shop but she
changed her mind since these days she was getting short of breath on walks
of any great duration.

This she put down to advancing middle age.

 

Still, Dariah was greatly disturbed by the boy: he could not be
above the age of twenty-two. She was not in the least attractive (aside
from her blue eyes and chestnut hair and glowing peachy-pink skin) or
physically appealing (unless one went in for marshmallow Venuses). She
did not advertise the fact of her relative wealth. She knew she was up-
wards of ens-hundred and fifty pounds overweight. She had known this
fact a long time, and had deliberately thought, with no small relish,
that her exceptional size had blessed her with the armor to withstand
Life's blows.

This had made her feel smug.

Still, Julian, persistent French flee that he was, clung: until
one day Dariah did require his services.

One day, while on her way back from class to her Rue de Bebillotte
apartment, on the sidewalk, waiting to cross the busy intersection, Dariah
fainted.

Just like that.

In broad daylight.

With no provocation.

Poof!

Julian saw her collapse in one sinuous folding motion, fluid,
actually, and he knew something was wrong. Alarmed, he ran the few paces
which separated them and, squatting down on the pavement, cradled Deriah's
limp head in his lap. A chattering knot of Perisians gathered around her
inert body. A gendarme was called. Traffic slowed on the street, curious

at the clot of people on the sidewalk.

100

Dariah blinked and opened her China blue eyes into Julian's
worried brown gaze.

She was mortified.

Him again.

She knew she had made a spectacle of herself and that somehow,
he was involved. Uhere was her invisibility when she most needed it?
The genderme alerted the hospital: an ambulance was on its way. Hhen
Dariah tried to protest, Julian explained to the genderme that madelei-
sells was agiliggigg,ssd. consequently, did not know what was best for her.

 

w

The genderme agreed. He cleared the bystanders. '

Julian rode in the ambulance with her. He urged the driver to
use all possible speed, but since the driver was French, this was not
necessary.

After a prolonged wait in Emergency, Dariah was seen by a doctor.
He examined her and took her pulse (which was fast) and her blood pres-
sure (which was high) and pronounced the same verdict which she had
heard throughout her entire life: lose weight.

Hie verdict, radcundingly obvious, irked Dariah. Any fool could
have told her that for free. But the doctor added that unless Dariah
applied herself to e slimming rigime, her fainting spells would persist:
that unless Dariah stripped her frame of the unhealthy aggigggggig,:sha
would be bedridden by the time she was forty, if she lived that long.

This, needless to say, did worry Dariah. So much so that she
felt an eating attack come on. Time was running out. She could no longer

afford to complacently sit and watch Life pass her by. She had to complete

101

herresearch on her pirate manuscript. She had to finish her see-going
epic before the blue waters closed over her own head.

And, most depressingly, she had to diet.

Julian rode home with her in the cab. He had talked to the
doctor about Deriah's condition. He too knew the obvious. It was too
embarrassing. Embarking from the cab, Dariah stepped onto the curbing
in front of the pastry shop and resolutely walked through its welcoming
door. She resolutely picked out their largest strawberry and cream cheese-
filled croissant and walked out the door. Julian met her at the curb and
resolutely threw her purchase into the gutter.

"Shit!" raged an incensed Dariah.

"Em-92.2 21.12.? £92.22 £92: 29.? 3.2 232:"

The outraged Dariah loosely translated the above as a demonstra-
tion of his concern. She stumped up the outside staircase to her tiny
overhead apartment. Julian followed.

"I didn't invite you in," she growled, between puffing.

"I invite myself in."

It had not been the best of days.

Dariah wanted to be left alone, as was her custom. She remembered
the delights in her ice box, especially the almond cheese cake. Then there
were the day-old doughnuts in the bread box. Glazed. They at least pro-
mised peace.

“Get out. Leave me alone,” and, because he was familiar enough
to use the familiar voice with, ”vest-en!"

“You are always e-lone.”

102

She was running out of her limited French vocabulary. How
did one say ”Set-1" §_l_s franceis? She held the kitchen door open.

They were standing near the landing. Heybe he'd get the hint.

”I care for you,“ he muttered softly in his accented English.

Dariah snorted in disgust and impatience. The cheese cake was
drying out.

Julian, Frenchman that he was, took up her feminine challenge.
Stepping up to her, he wrapped his wiry brown arms around her peachy soft-
ness, squeezed, and clamped his mobile moist mouth over her protests.

It constituted her first kiss.

After what seemed an unnecessarily long pause he stepped back
onto the landing, saluted her with gallant flourish, and promised to es-
cort her to class the day after tomorrou. I

Then he was gone.

Dariah snorted again, touched her lips wonderingly, then headed
for the ice box.

a a a ;e a a

Thus began Deriah's curious courtship.

The semester by now was half over. Her manuscript had grown by
slim bounds. Her lack of progress she blamed on Julian's disturbing pre-
sence. He gave her no peace. So much for the inspiration of Paris. She
determined to leave at semester's and.

Julian had other plans.

He offered to go to the library with her to help translate a

court document relating to a trial of one of the French cosairs, the

 

103

notorious Happy Dan Pew (eee George HecOoneld Fraser's Ihg_£z;g§gg).
Dariah decided to take him up on his offer: she had not forget the curb-
stone croissant incident: she was deemed careful eating in his presence,
but he did speak the language as she did not.

They went to the document stacks first. From there they were
directed to the archive section, due to the age of the manuscript. dith-
out Julian she was sure she would never have been able to understand the
rapid French, as she smile her thanks to him.

The archives were housed in the basement of the library. As
with all such basements, French or domestic, it smelt cf musty paper,
greening mold, and Time itself. Dariah wanted permission to xerox the
court transcript. She could then, she reasoned, work out the translation
herself with a good dictionary sans Julian. The archivist had pulled the
transcript in question, the trial of Happy Den Pew, and was checking with
his superior about the possibility of xeroxing the fragile document.

While they were waiting, Julian made his move.

Standing behind her as she faced the counter, Julian whispered
into her perfect pink ear whether she would prefer the privacy of her
place in which to conduct a thorough translation.

That made sense. She nodded.

Instead, with the appalling ability of the French to translate
innuendo into action, a gift peculiar to that nation, he began to nuzzle
her neck and to squeeze her, pressing himself against her body as a puppy
nuzzlss for its mother's test.

The archivist stepped back to the counter. He politely coughed.

104

Dariah shook Julian off as a dog shakes water off its back.
Her peach skin blushed to the roots of her chestnut hair. Furiously.
Julian smiled. Gontentedly.

The supervisor would permit xeroxing of the court transcript pro-
viding he himself did it. Would madamoiselle kindly wait? Or, if made-
moiselle were in a hurry, as all gaggiggigg_eeamed to be, she could col-
lect the xeroxed copy the following day and pay the small charge than.

Iademciselle would not wait, glil.gggg_glgi§. Hademoiselle
would most certainly collect the xeroxed copy the following day, 9:52;,

Dariah trundled out of the library basement as majestically as
possible, Julian hwngrily nipping at her heels. He followed her all the
way to her apartment. She turned to firmly dismiss him from duty when
he reached out and pushed her back through her kitchen and into her study-
bedrocm where he grappled her to her bad, there to lie upon her heaving,
and indignant, bosom.

His whispered endearments, all in French, came thick and fast upon
Deriah's incredulous perfect pink ears. He groped. And slithered. All
over her peach-mounded perfection. He kissed. And licked. And teased.
And tasted. And fondled and tickled and blew and caressed every voluptuous
centimeter of her.

Heturally, this took some time.

Dariah was alternately stunned, shocked, revolted, embarrassed,
uneasy, curious, questioning, open, responsive, enthusiastic, and at the

last, excited. -
Let him see, she thought triumphantly, let him see.

105

Let him see me gg,gg§u;gl,
Then he'd leave me alone, she thought.

Unless he had a fetish about fat women. Perhaps he wasn't nor-
mal. Perhaps that was why he had dogged her steps from the beginning:
was she just another swollen crumpet ripe for conquest? Or was he making
a fool of her? Using her? Uculd he laugh at her?

Then he proposed. Of course, im.the heat of the moment, it was
in rapid French, which is, after all, according to the posts, the lang-
uage of Love. Except he had to repeat himself several times in English
when Dariah kept saying, 'Uhet? Uhat?“

He said he loved her because he loved her and because he loved
her. Uould she be his? Forever and over? His prospects were excellent.
He had come from a long line of French pastry chefs. They would not
starve. And he would see to it that she stuck to her diet. They would
be so happy. Hould she say yes? would she say yes now and put him out
of his agony? He so loved his chigg 22225,

It should be recalled by the reader of this narrative that this
constituted Deriah's first time with a man. In bed. A rather unclothed
man, by this time. Actually, in the interest of narrative accuracy, they
were both rather unclothed by this time. And out of breath. And Dariah
was rather more than startled. He had not only seen her in the all-
together, but he still wanted her.

Amazing.

Impossible. '

Unbelievable.

106

Outrageous.

Outrageous what he was doing with his big toe.

Unbelievable what he was doing with his tongue.

Impossible what he was doing with his elbow.

Amazing what he was doing with his . . . but let us drew the
curtain of privacy over the scene. Some details are too graphic for a
charming, if absurd, story of modern love.

And so, flies Dariah Dove, two-hundred and eighty pound virgin
spineter from Thunton Town, Iowa was proposed to in bed by a naked French-
man fourteen years her junior for the first time in the history of the
planet. And it was good.

And it felt good.

But Dariah couldn't say Yes immediately. She still had her res-
ervations. And her pirate novel to finish. And, perhaps, a plane to
catch at the end of the semester, now only two weeks away.

Really, this was all . . . rather . . . abrupt. To think about.
To seriously think about. It didn't hear close thinking about.

It was wonderful but terrible.

Glorious but stupid.

Ecstatic but embarrassing.

Hepturows but wretched.

Blissful but-

Dariah was running out of descriptors. And time. Those two re-
maining weeks, as the proverbial expression goes, flow, as Time will.

Julian gave every indication that his only thoughts were of her. Their

10?

course at the university ended and the marking period came to a close.
How it was Deriah's turn to give Julian his marks.

She decided, and this twist of plot was wholly ontoward in a
sedate child of the Post-Her Years raised by right-thinking, Republican-
voting, and God-fearing Episcopalians, that she would live with Julian
without benefit of clergy. Such is modern love.

She wrote home to tell her parents this.

Hr. Dove was stunned.

Hrs. Dove was pleased. She had, with the passage of years and the

 

onset of menopause, moved back into the master bedroom.

And so, according to all surmiseble dialogue and twists of plot,
Dariah lived with Julian above his parenta' pastry shop on the Rue de Ba-
billotte for the first year. They were quite happy, as happiness goes..

Dariah, with the aid of the xeroxed court transcript, ably trans-
lated by her lever, for such Julian truly was, was able to supply her pi-
rate narrative with the right amount of historical realism, legal proce-
dure, suspense, and intrigue consonant to the period. She at last put
the finishing touches to her first novel, which she proudly entitled,
Mania-rho

It was an instant success in France.

It went through five printings in America.

Hollywood negotiated for the movie rights. They wanted Richard
Gore to play Happy Dan Pew.

Ramsay kept a hardcover copy by his bedside.

As to Deriah's health, that too had taken an unexpected and

108

unlocked for, but certainly not unwelcome, turn. She still would, and
always would, love sweets and pastries. And Snickers bars. And peanut
butter ice cream. And cheese cake. And hot crusty croissants, butter-
rich. And raspberry straudel. And really decent double-cheese pizza
with all the toppings, including hot peppers and anchovies. And chewy,
raisin-studded oatmeal cookies the size of small moons. And-

But Deriah's list could go on and on, for she had had a lifetime
in which to compile and taste test, and seemingly, a lifetime in which
to set.

But now she had a new Life.

And a certain measure, modest, of Fame. Respect and recognition
also.

And a lover who came home to her every night.

And peace reigned in the Pirate Queen's kingdom.

She ensured that peace the first year by joining the fellowship
of the French arm of Overeatera Anonymous. Now she was ready to listen
to them. She lost ninety-one pounds.

In the vernacular of the Optimist, things were, indeed, locking
up for Dariah. But she still hadn't made up her mind to marry Julian.

And so, Year The commenced and Dariah wrote a second letter home.

Hr. Dove was not as stunned as before, since Hrs. Dove had moved
back into the master bedroom the previous year.

hrs. Dove was doing an awful lot of smiling, even for a right-
minded Episcopalian.

With Year ch Dariah wrote her sequel to Blood gnQDSwash;

 

109

mmmusmuotudium

It was an instant success in France.

It went through five printings in America.

Hollywood negotiated for the movie rights. They wanted Emilio
Estevez to play Richard Gore's son.

Ramsey kept a hardcover copy by his bedside.

Sally Sue Becker Hinton filed for divorce.

Dariah lost an additional sixty pounds.

Julian proposed again.

Dariah wanted an additional year in which to think. With two
best-selling pirate novels on the market, one Hollywood movie and another
in the works, healthy percentage checks from her publisher and movie agent,
plus her Trust Fund checks, Dariah was, indeed, sitting pretty.

She was also, much to her middle-aged surprise, looking pretty.
Granted, in the course of all surmisable twists of plot and dialogue,
Dariah would not be mistaken for, say, the still-glowing and poutingly
sensual Julie Christie, she of the tawny-skinned and honeyed-limb school
of acting, but Dariah did turn heads now. And for an entirely different
reason. with her weight loss, which had to her acquired the semblance of
permanent recovery so long as she desired to remain abstinent, she had
begun attending exercise class. Regularly.

Consequently, she did not become short of breath on walks of any
great duration. Her peachy skin did not sag. Her peachiness now consisted

of the glowing quality of tree-ripened fruit, rather than the shape of such

fruit.

 

110

And so Year Three opened and Dariah wrote a third letter home.

Hr. Dove had stopped being stunned by his daughter, but not by
hi. U1f'e

Dariah wrote a prequel to Blood and Swash: Blood and Swash III;

.70.! garly Years.

It was an instant success in France.

 

 

 

It went through five printings in America.

Hollywood negotiated for the movie rights. They wanted Robert
Redford to play Richard Gore's father.

Ramsay kept a hardcover copy by his bedside.

Sally Sue Becker Hinton married Almanzc Duvett, of the socially
prominent Long Island Ouvetts of golf ball manufacturing fame. She'd had
it with Vienna sausages.

Julian proposed for the third time.

Dariah was now thirty-nine years old and weighed one-hundred and
twenty-nine pounds of bone and muscle.

She accepted.

She wrote a fourth letter home to tell her parents the wedding
date, and a separate letter to Hollywood specifying the percentage she
wanted of the video sales when Disaster Struck.

Tuo days before the wedding Julian was hit and killed by a speed-
ing ambulance.

Peace did not reign in the Pirate Ouaen's kingdom that day.

Dariah quietly said her good-byes to Julian's parents and packed

her bags the day after the funeral. She would never return to France. It

 

 

 

111

must be said, to Deriah's lasting credit, that she did not turn to food
as an easy solace during this difficult time. It seemed she had learned
that lesson quite well. How she would have to learn to live without
Julian.

Dariah returned to Tountcn Town full of Fame but heavy of heart.
She moved back into her old room. It was as she had left it three years
ago. She, however, could never be that same girl again. Yes: that is
what Dariah had been at the age of thirty-six. A girl.

But now she was a demon. A successful women. A modestly famous
women. And a woman alone. Life had touched Dariah Dove.

But something, or rather someone, wanted to touch her too.

One Ramsay Hinton.

Ramsay had, indeed, taken over the Chicago-based Hinton heat
Packing fortune some years ago. He had moved with Sally Sue and their
two boys to the Uindy City to establish a base and to learn the operation,
first hand, as it were. All this time he had never forgotten Dariah, nor
his thwarted love for her. How he was divorced and alone. How she was
back and alone. How was his Time.

Casting aside all thoughts of the past, and of how meaningless
and somehow empty Life had been, even with the Chicago-based Hinton Heat
Packing fortune and Sally Sue and the two boys, Ramsay decided to fly to
Tounton Town and, as the Old Soldier is fond of saying, "Do or die!”

Such is modern love. ‘-
Uhile Ramsay was winging his way toward Dariah, she was in the

back yard exercising to a Jane Fonda tape. Appropriately, her leotard was

 

112

bledt, as, unfortunately, was her mood. 1ife just isn't worth living
without Julian,” Dariah muttered between log lifts. ”He alone was re-
spcnible for my rebirth, which took somewhat longer than the original
thirteen months, forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty, awitch,lego, but he
alone made me feel like a Homan," she pasted.

As the Post is fond of saying, “the world lay before her, various
and new,” but all Dariah could see were ashes and broken dreams. Her
financial success meant nothing to her now. The projected advertising
blitz for a new line of pirate romances, complete with movie and video
rights, toy sales, tee-shirts, a Saturday morning cartoon show, and a
weekly series on TV, lay untouched on her desk upstairs. Life, indeed,
had become a burden and black to Dariah. She had everything and she had
nothing without the love of a good man.

' "So much for Hodern Love,” Dariah intoned through her nose, fol-
lowing the suggested breathing exerciese. Dark indeed were her thoughts
that day and inconsolable her grief at the happiness which had been plucked
from her bleeding heart-strings.

Indeed, her heart felt as if it had been wranched from her body
and in its place a battery-powered pacemaker inserted to smoothly pump her
life's blood in syncopated rhythm to the suck-end-ewell euck-end-ewell
whoosh whoosh of the four-chambered valves of the artificial plastic
model which would be subject to neither dietary excesses of red meat,
eggs, and dairy products, nor to the excruciating loss of a loved one.

It was upon these very thoughts that Hrs. Dove stuck her head

from the upstairs master bedroom to announce to her daughter below that

113

she heard sou-sons ringing the front door bell.

Dariah switched Jane off and, grabbing her exercise towel, also
appropriately black, entered the house through the rear sliding door wall
to see who was there.

Hopping her sweat-glistening peach brow with a corner of her
black exercise towel, Dariah pulled open the door to see a middle-aged
businessman in a dove gray three-piece pin-striped suit holding a be-
ribboned wicker basket containing an assortment of Hinton Brand potted
meat products, including their new line of Cape Cod Style Oyster-Flavored
Vienna Sausages and How Orleans Style Creole-Flavored Vienna Sausages.

"I gave up red meat,“ she said automatically as she prepared to
shut the door on the face of what she took to be a traveling Vienna sau-
sage seleaman in her exercised, grief-stricked state.

"Dariah! I've come to offer my condolences!“ Ramsay expostulated.

I'Dh."

She let him in. She vaguely recalled his face. How could she
have known it was he who had waved to her from the airport observation
deck three-was it only three-years ago before her departure to France?
It must be remembered by the reader that that was back in Deriah's invisi-
ble days. Grief made neighbors of many strangers and more acquaintances,
she reflected.

V ”Dariah! Don't you remember me! Hinton! Ramsay Hinton! Your
former next door neighbor and old school fellow!”‘

"0h.” .

To be sure, once Ramsay had adjusted his eyes to the inside light,

 

114

he was quite taken aback by her appearance after is these many years. He
reflected on the winscmely chubby kindsrgartsnsr: on the coyly trundling
third grader: on the time he had defended her against the opprobrious
slur of ”spotted hog” in fifth grade: and on all the dances he'd never
danced with her in junior high and high school.

The Uoman, for such was she who stood before him now, was almost
a stranger. He offered her the basket but than thought better of it in
light of her previous comment and instead placed it on the foyer table.
He nervously flexed and unflsxed his hands, uncertain what to do or say
next.

”I say, Dariah, you are looking well these days, even in black.”

“Oh.”

Recalling the Famous Old Navy saying, Ramsay cast all caution to
the wind-'Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!“ as it were. Ho launched
his hurt and his longing for her on a protracted torrent of tortured prose
which, to the ear of the untrained, sounded rather like some very bad dub-
bing in a foreign movie, or, failing that, as if Dariah were watching an
American movie counterfeiting Swedish dialogue by running the actors' Eng-
lish backwards.

“would you please speak a l-i-t-t-l-e m-o-r-e e-l-o-w-l-y."

“Dammit dearest, I've loved you for thirty-three years! Couldn't
you guess!“

Dariah felt as if her artificial heart were beating more slowly,
that her hearing had somehow gone wrong, that the words Ramsey was utter-

ing sounded somehow very queer without a French accent.

 

115

”Oh."

hovsd to truly desperate action for the first time, Ramsay for-
cibly tore the black exercise towel from Deriah's grasp-no moan feet at
that, since she had developed an impressive hand grip through the exer-
cise of her fine motor muscles-he tors said towel from Deriah's firm
grasp and threw it to the marble floor as he wrestled-dwith somewhat
more success, since his attack was wholly spontaneous, even though Dariah
had the adventage.of rippling, Fondeeized muscle-—as he wrestled and threw
her to the floor, himself atop (lest the reader be anxious for Deriah's
bodily comfort during the exercise of Ramsay's fear-inspired maneuver
let it be said that even at the peak of his manly fit he had so engineered
the exercise that Dariah fell atop the Aubuseon rug atop the cold marble
floor before he fell stop her).

“Oh!"

”Dariah, my dearest, Dearest, DEAREST Dariah! I love you! I
need you! I've always loved you! I've come for you! Say you'll be
mine! Say it! Say it, dearest! I can't live another empty day without
you! It's just no good! I can't pretend anymore! It's always been you,
You, YOU!" .

“Oh!“

Dariah was quite taken aback. It was as if her artificial plastic
heart had now acquired a peculiar arrhythmia, as if her batteryffed pace-
maker needed to be sent back to the manufacturer, as if, as if . . .
indeed-! As if Dariah heard, for the second time in her life, Love's

faint call from s great distance, as if, as if . . . but He! Julish was

 

116

barely dead and buried! . . . but still: was this, than, was this Modern
Love, that intensely, profoundly, indelicataly relentless yearning for
fulfillment and, her ripe peach cheeks blushed to the roots of her chest-
nut hair, twentieth-century Vomen that she was, was Hodsrn Love the bio-
logically based refutaticn of Kierkegaardian Existentialism as inter—
preted by Sartre?

”But I don't set red meat anymore."

”I can fix that! I'll give up the business! I've more than
enough money for the two of us!"

”But it's too soon to think of such things."

"I can fix that! I'll wait!"

'Butt, butt,” Dariah gasped between torrents of kisses that
Ramsay rained down upon the Pirate Oueen's upturned face.

”I can fix that too if you'll just tell me what you mean!" he
pleaded.

“Hy butt is sore!” Dariah wailsd between clenched teeth. All
her exercising and careful dietary monitoring had, without doubt, built
up her muscle at the expense of her twin peach-halved posterior. Au-
buseon rugs are only so soft atop cold marble floors.

”Forgive me my precious!” pantad Ramsay, as he adroitly heaved
his dove gray pin-stripe suited frame from the object of his despair and
desire.

”Ramsay, you've given me new hope for Life," Dariah began cau-
tiously, rubbing her bruised peach posterior. 'I can't say what your

proposal means to me. I thought Life was over when Julian died. Give

117

me time to think about you and me together. Perhaps . . . we can live
together. And Ramsay, one last thing."

”Yes, dearest?" he said, love radiating from his green eyes
like a warming stream of split pea soup with bacon (or tiny, sliced
Vienna sausages) when poured from a thermos flask on a cold January after-
noon.

“Promise me you'll stay out of ambulance zones."

Such is modern love.

 

"To be is to do."
-Socretes

"To do is to be.”
-Sartre

”Doc-be doo-be do."
-Sinatra

Afternoons of Alligators

It was like this in sleep, even from the distance of
more than half a century, the lace curtains fluttering
discreetly in the wisping dawn breeze, the violet rays
pulsing across the half-drawn shutters of her sleeping
mind. Oh, I must get up, I must get up she thought, the
drowsing curtains fluttered, the half-light nodded and
winked, the dreaming lace streamers caressed the silent
sanded floorboards, Uncle John's coachman will be wait-
ing, he is there, and I must get up but oh! the river,

I hate the river, it is a misery to me the curtains
wailsd, the floorboards sighed, the damp the damp those
drives are hateful, hateful but I must get up he is
waiting, the pulsing dawn agreed, the curtains shook
themselves then settled, the floorboards relapsed into
silence as slowly, strangely, sadly the old woman
pushed open the waiting shutters on the dawn of a world
that Uncle John had not lived to see and Sabina har-
sslf near death-

Ho, I don't like that last line. Heads revising. Has to be a
smoother, more poetic nuance to it. That's it. Put a little poetry in
it. ":ust s minute, Mike, I'm coming.”
I The woman reluctantly filed her story under "possibilities" and
grabbed her battered portfolio in time to catch up with Hike. In time
for yet another dreary fifty-minute session in the process (as in processed

cheese spread, she wondered?) and craft (as in cheese?) of writing. Shit,

118

 

 

 

119

she thought: the older I get the more convinced I become writing should
not be taught for the simple reason it cannot be learned.

She moved her dissatisfied legs in rhythm to Nike's brisk stride.
Fhey taught in the same building, their classrooms at opposite ends of
the same hallway, she to English and he to first-year Spanish. Hike held
the door open for her, as always, and she entered, as always. My dreams
are slipping away, she thought, that's it, and all the green of spring
can't make them come back. flora and more her life of late felt like a
small stuffy room. Where's the exit sign, she wondered. But even if I
knew . . . .

”Hey Jewel, have a good one."

"Thanks Mike. You too.”

She curved her lips into a smile, swung left down the hall,
walked into her classroom, and looked out upon the familiar half-filled
tables and desks ranged against the walls. The start of yet another
session. A scattering of jean-clad bodies moved across her line of sight
as she began the hour by handing back last week's graded themes. A few
groans erupted. Earth tremors signalling a quake. She felt the air
stiffen with static. No doubt her office hours would be filled with
students this afternoon. She decided to ignore their hostility in favor
of a pop quiz. That would focus their energy elsewhere.

A few protests. Shuffling of papers. Book bags dropped to the
floor. She assigned an essay question from a short story considered a
classic and mercilessly anthologized. Her students had found it boring

and inscrutable in class. As always, it seemed.

 

 

 

120

Halcolm of the blondoend-black dyed Hohswk shot her a look from
the back wall. Her class punker, but one of her brighter students. She
smiled back sweetly, gritting her teeth.

"You have the full period to draft your answer. No books and
no talking. Any questions?”

Halcolm's hand shot up. "I suppose notes are out."

It was a statement, not a question. His naturally red hair was

starting to come back where it had been shaved down either side of his

head. He wore his ankh earring today.

"That's right. Any more questions? Fina. Begin."

Sabina had learned the libretti to the popular Gil-
bert & Sullivan operottas which she performed and sang
at small private gatherings, musical evenings, in Balti-
more and Vashington. It was at one such evening that
she met the man to whom she would become a "niece in
wish," a bullish widower, stout and dapper, supremely
confident, bossy and self-assured, a caretaker of civi-
lized customs and manners, the man she would come to
know as Uncle John.

He was seventy-five and in precarious health: she
was thirty-four and unmarried. In the crucible of hu-
man companionship neither expected a friendship as re-
fined and durable as steel or as pure, nor an intimacy
closer than that of couples long wedded.

She moved into his Vashington townhouse as paid
companion, secretary, and hostess to his dinner parties.
She had her own room. She attended to his correspon-
dence and hosted his formal dinner parties for the im-
portant young men of the town. Her days assumed the
regularity of clockwork: mornings she rose at seven to
ride with Uncle John to the river, a damp misery to her
but a source of contemplation for him: a 'gsthering of
one's reserves,‘ as he put it: then back to the town-
house to dress for breakfast and attack his mail:
luncheon at twelve: he napped from one to three: and
than the consult for the evening's entertainment, but

 

121

always the companionship of his keen mind, restless
and probing, active, lively, demanding-and jealous
of Sabina's time and physical presence. On that
point he was adamant. Yet, for all his tyranny,
his mental power resided in a crumbling shell of
which they were both all too aware. Sabina did

not begrudge him her time, for he fascinated her:
she did not begrudge him her youth, though he often
reminded her of the eventual price she would one
day psy—

"Hias Tone, flies Tone, here's my answer,” Helene Rodriguez said
as she thrust her scrawled essay forward while digging thick black hangs
out of her coffee-dark eyes. Deydreaming again. She took the paper from
her and looked at her watch. The period was over. Could she recall what
she had just thought in the time it would take to maneuver out from her
students' clutches, lunch with Hike, and hold office hours from two to
four? She thought not. Just as well. She wasn't sure she liked it well
enough yet.

After Helene, the deluge began. Hora hastily contrived circumlo-
cutions fluttered to her desk as students exited for the relative freedom
of a Friday afternoon. The pile thickened and grew, then settled. Hal-
colm, in an exaggeratsd'show of being last, stood before her.

"Here goes, He. Tone." He deliberated over her title, the sibi-
lance resonant of controlled hissing. She wondered if Hslcolm actively
disliked her.

“A masterpiece of Hsrxist thought, I'm sure.” This term Halcolm
was studying economic theory.

“See ya tonight.” He slouched off. He had the disturbing habit

of frequenting the some movies as she.

122

Jewel looked down at the depressingly full pile of papers before
her. It had grown like a yeast colony. She clipped the pile together,
stuffed it into her portfolio, and headed for Hike's classroom.

They ate at a small lunch counter at what had become their Fri-
day spot. Hike's dark fingers gripped his seeded bun as he sank his
strong white teeth into his burger. It had taken her some time to ac-
custom herself to what she felt were stereo and half-shy glances when
they went out together. Hike was black.

Today for dessert she ordered a crumb-topped cake doughnut. She'd
start her diet Honday. The doughnut tasted of memories: store-bought
crullers her mother had bought over twenty years ago: breakfast at home:
childhood: safety. Strange how food triggers memories. I haven't thought
of home in years. Hom's dead. The house is sold. Dad remarried. Hy
life is slipping away. She pushed the crumb-iittersd plats aside and
sipped her diet cola.

Hike locked at her. 'Uhat up, Jewel home girl?”

She smiled. He had written that to her in a letter once. Just
friendly illiterate greetings from Detroit, he'd said. They could joke
together.

”I can't make the Hetheny concert next Sunday.”

"He sweet. I meant the other question."

”Oh. Still thinking. Look, I've got office hours. we're still
on for tonight though, right?’

He nodded. They had been sleeping together off and on. Hike

smelled of clean coal. At night she imagined his arms around her were

 

123

those of Night itself: living night, breathing night. Envelopsd by
night, swallowed into unconsciousness she lost herself in the jungle of
him. He became human mahogany, hard and muscled, polished to a gleaming
perfection, the perfection of night, of secrets whispered in the dark,
promises made safe because there was no light. He loved her.

"Bye.”

may..n

She walked across the busy street to her office. A few students
were lined up outside her door. Dear God, here we go again.

Her last complaint came from Justine, the university's track
hopeful. Justine was a sleek black girl who did not carry the music of
English in her more. She substituted a high-fidelity Ualkman. Her head
was filled with the latest in running shoe technology. Her papers always
circled back to her athletic career. Justine came to class regularly and
occasionally asked questions. Perhaps it was enough, Jewel thought.

”And you see, don't you, that you have to go back and sharpen
your conclusion by emphasizing your three main points from the body,
okay?” Let her see it, she prayed, though Jewel was not given to prayer
as a rule.

Justina see. Dr pretended to ass. She had a meat to run in
half an hour.

"Okay Hiz Tone. Bye. See you in class next week. Have a nice
weekend.”

She smiled at the girl's platitudes. How easily the young

mouthed thfl.

 

124

She turned back to the typewritten page of the morning. Her
novel. Uhat would she be and do, her relatives had asked when she was
young. Be a writer and make a million bucks, she'd proudly answered.
They had looked at her parents as if they had raised a half-wit. Maybe
they had. They were all working on novels or short story collections in
the department. A bunch of frustrated Hemingways on academic pay.
Toaching writing was what they did to make a living,.but writing was
what they did to live.

And what of her? Uhere had her time gone? Uhat had happened to
those long lazy afternoons and quiet evenings spent hunched over a type-
writer, idsas flowing and pages writing themselves in the white heat of
creation? She had discovered that pages didn't write themselves, that
her manuscript lived a life of its own in her head, free of the fixity of
the typed page, free also of definable progress. Her story grew, breathed,
and outrsn her wildest hopes on Honday, but by Friday, the weekend ap-
proaching, her child faded, gasped, and stumbled into the darkness of
her mind. Her best ideas lived inside. Weekends she graded papers.

Jewel looked around the deserted office. Outside the dress of
winter was wearing away into the sludge of spring. Tiny green buds pock-
merked the forsythia. The campus dogwood had bravely bloomed last week.
A groundskeeper trudged across the sodden yellow lawn spearing litter.
The sun-starved tress shook bony knuckles at the bleak April sky. I know
how you feel, she addressed them: we are sisters under the skin, you and

I...

"Hi. "

 

125

Helcolm, her punk Herxist. Slim legs sheathed in printed black
denim. The snake in her Garden of indecision. The afternoon's trials
were not yet over.

“Look, I was just getting ready to leave, but if you need help-"

"Ho. I won't hold you up.”

Somehow his words made her think of a stick-up. Self-indulgent
foolishness, she thought. There is nothing here to fear. I need this
weekend more than I know.

”See ya at the movies.” He turned on black heels and walked

 

away. His leather boots rang down the hall, each step striking with
confident precision. Hy snake, she thought: my lovely, lovely snake.
Hell why not. She turned back toward the trees. Us are sisters under
the skin.

Jewel arrived early to buy her ticket and slink in unnoticed.
Ho ankh-earringed apparition pursued her. It must have been a joke to
worry her. What a great joke it had been. Uhat students wouldn't do
these days. But no joke would keep her from enjoying her evenings. They
belonged to her as her days did not.

She slouched down in her seat. A black family of four blocked
her exit to the aisle. The rows ahead of her sat a young mixed couple
holding hands. Further off she spotted a second couple, the girl a pale
ginger in white shorts and pink tee with her arm around the waist of her
white boyfriend. They looked self-absorbed and happy. She thought of
Hike and marriage and.facing car dealers, shoe salesman, and bank loan

officers with a black husband and black children. She imagined the eyes

 

j 126

of the businessman: would they be indifferent, or otherwise? would they
sneer or pretend out of politeness. Would they care?

She turned the picture over in her mind, handled it as she
would a framed picture, then set it back on the top shelf, out of sight
to gather dust. She felt a surge of anger, as if a conspiracy existed
against her feelings, a collusion which made her look unreasonable or a E‘
coward. Times have changed, Society said: but I know differently, she
answered.

Jewel looked at her watch. She overheard a girl behind her talk

 

of how she would structure her review of the movie for her professor. The
film department had assigned it as a technical exercise. Jewel repressed
her slight disgust. Uhy must they pick the bones of beauty? She was

here to lose herself.

The lights dimmed. The blank screen trembled and swelled, burst
into Tochnicolor with accompaniment by Korngold. Ihg_Adventures 21.322éfl.
Eggs, Errol Flynn, the god in green tights who swung onto a tree limb to
welcome Olivia DeHevilland to Sherwood Forest. Bring on the alligators,
Jewel thought: Errol's here and all's right with the world. Korngold's
swashbuckling score opened possibilities of action, avenues of escape.
Anything was possible, anything. Her spirit took flight.

Someone was stumbling across the knees of the black family,
groping his way toward her. It was Helcolm. Her heart sank. Uhat out-
rage would he commit? Basil Rathbone's face filled the screen. A close-

up. He sneered beautifully. Just like Helcolm, Jewel thought.

127

While the rest of the audience booed and hissed or clapped and
whistled, something had gone out of the evening for her. She shrank
inside, waiting. Uhen Hutch the Hiller's son prepared to shoot the
King's deer Jewel cringed inside, waiting for Helcolm to loose no less
sinister belt of his own. She hadn't long to wait.

At last the lights went up as Errol exited with Olivia through
the castle portal and out into the waiting world. Jewel stood up to
leave. Helcolm did not.

She tensed, waiting.

 

E4.”

Helcolm snorted. ”Let's go somewhere.”

She thought of excuses. I'm busy, I've got another date, I have
papers to grade, my head is splitting. Vhat did he want? Had he pulled
this on his other teachers? Uhat hadn't they told her? '

"All right.”

a a a a a a

They went across the street to the same diner where she and Hike
had eaten at earlier that day. She ordered a diet Pepsi and feigned a
"this happens to me everyday and I really don't care look” when the
waitress stared at Helcolm. He just ordered a cup of hot water.

They talked, she nervously of writing, its craft, the demand of
it, its fascination, its difficulty, of her love for it-

He cut her off. You're a fraud, he said. A fraud. He whisked
an herbal tea bag from the inner pocket of his jacket and dunked it in

his cup of hot water. Jewel caught an aromatic whiff of chamomile as the

water darkened to amber. He stirred his tea with a spoon, looking at her

 

128

sphinx-like, dark and exotic, unquestionably male and challenging.

"You're a fraud,” he repeated. “Words, just words. You blow
words out of your mouth you don't mean. You're a fraud." He looked at
her polite shock. “Do you only live in your head? Do you only live
up on the screen,“ he sheared.

what can I say to this boy whose freedom appalls me, she thought.
what right has he to judge, what divine gift? What if her life consisted
of the chambers of her mind? What is it to him if I teach forwlas useless
to help me? Uhat does he know? Uho are you, she thought. who are you?

"I'm sorry Helcolm, but I really have to be going." She stood
up. She owed him nothing, really. Hy lovely snake, she thought. I
won't take your bait, I won't. You can't tempt me.

He brushed the palm of his pals hand against the variegated tuft
of his Hohewk. It reminded her of the bristle from a Hoplite helmet. His
eyes challenged her to speak. She did not.

"Your name. Jewel Tone. I like it. It could almost be true."

Don't push me, Helcolm, shs raged. Jewel walked out the door.

a a a a a a

That night as she lay in Hike's area she thought of the answer
she would give him. She decided to tell him in the morning. Sleep was
overtaking her now, but she thought of her story. If she could just hold
onto the idea until morning. Sabina would take a weekend trip to the
country with friends. It would be spring and she would be tired and run—
down from the winter's nursing of Uncle John. She would need to got away

but at the same time she would deeply worry about his health: she would

 

 

129

call his townhouse repeatedly for updates but the housekeeper would re-
assure her that nothing, nothing was wrong, but Sabina would become so
agitated that she would cut short her visit to rush back, rush back to
the old man the deer tiger who would be sitting upstairs in a low chair
by the fire having a book read aloud to him and Sabina would kneel,
would kneel and put her arms around his body and his whole being would
tremble Never leave me, Never leave me and two mornings later she would
walk into his room and find him dead except the next morning when Jewel
sucks and Hike was in the shower she had somehow tangled her story up,
for she had the distinct impression that somehow it had been Sabina who

Md d1.de

Outside the feeble spring sunshine beckoned to the waiting trees.

 

to.

 

 

Jewel's Afternoon

Betty is a large motherly woman with rounded edges blurred from
living. She sits beside me on the stiff bench in the hall because I
don't want to disturb my office partner who is conferencing a student of
his own. Also, I want privacy from male ears. So we sit out in the hall.
Host conferences last fifteen to thirty minutes. Mine lasts three hours.

Betty comes to my morning class faithfully week after week,
though she is not always on time. Her oldest daughter, the one who will
be marrying this June, works the morning shift at McDonald's and there
is only one car so Betty must drop her daughter off then drive to my
class. She is apologetic when she is late. She wants to be there and
regrets the time lost almost as much as the eighty pounds she cannot lose.

Betty is my student. She makes up for the Helcolms. we exhaust
her paper revision as topic of conversation. We are two women drawn to-
gether by a community of kind, a community of need not easily available
but always indispensable. Betty talks.

She grew up in a small Catholic factory town one of six children
to a father who worked as a machinist and taught her carpentry and a
mother who cooked and sewed and cleaned for seven people because she
didn't have the time to make masses of her own. Betty speaks of her girl-
hood as a time of waiting: waiting for the bathroom, waiting for her
mother's attention, waiting for her carpentry lessons when father came

home. I see no real change in that pattern even though Betty is forty-two.

130

 

 

131

She is still waiting for deliverance.

She married at twenty-one, the same age at which her daughter
will wed. Looking back from the perspective of years, she sees that Tom
was a poor marriage risk and I silently ask Uhy is it women gauge the
success of their lives by the men they marry? Tom was an adventurer,
an outdoorsman. In ten years of marriage he was seldom home, though
Betty conceived two daughters by him. when he came home he drank and
carried a gun and took to threatening her and the children. Is that
what happens when dreams die, I ask. Ho, Betty answers: that is what
happens when the man doesn't die before the dream.

Tom became abusive and drunk when he was home so Betty filed for
divorce even though she saw it as a kind of sin. Tom didn't want the di-
vorce but he didn't want to be married either. Then he threatened her
and left the stats. It took three years to finalize it because Tom was
still on the move and hard for the court to serve papers on. Four years
later he shot and killed a man in a bar with one of his guns. Even after
almost ten years of marriage to her second husband, the FBI calls Betty
twice a year to see if she has heard from Tom or knows where he is. She
saw him around campus two weeks ago. They are on amicable terms now.

Her second husband would be afamily man, a nurturer, Betty
swore. Ho more rolling stones. Roy is fifteen years older than Betty.
He had never been married and was a prosperous farmer who lived in a small
town on his parenta' land and cared for his elderly mother. He owned the
strip of land Betty leased from him and on which she built the house where

they now live. Roy esteems family values. He is a nurturer. Betty

 

 

 

132

married him.

Three years ago Roy was officially diagnosed as a manic-depres-
sive. He undergoes regular and predictable mood swings, like a male
menstrual cycle. He withdraws from the form, from Betty, from the girls,
from their own daughter, born seven years ago. He retreats to his demons.

Betty did some checking and found that it goes back four genera-
tions in Roy's family. His mother was kept in s ssnitarium and given
shock treatments in the '30s. Perhaps he is haunted by that memory as
a nine year old. This winter Betty told Roy to go to the barn, so Roy
has been living in the barn since January. During the winter he let his
hair and board grow long and become dirty and matted. He let his fingers
become frost-bitten. He let the food grow moldy that Betty brought out
to the born for him to eat. He hid his money by burying it. Betty
manages the farm and the girls and life without Roy, but it is hard.

Roy longs for death when the demons have him, but he is too
afraid for the openness of the rope, the knife. He dies inside by inches
measured in fingertips. He waits for spring to return, waits for the
chemical winter to lift as lift it must and one day will until the cycls's
upbeat by its own momentum pivots and points downward once again gravity-
bound. Even though they have pills now, Roy prefers not to take them.
The pills make him slobber and drool, but that is not why he avoids them.
Roy prefers the blackness of his pit, the rhythm of its opening and clos-

ing. He knows its depth and circumference. There is no guesswork, only
the known and predictable quantity. The pills make life real. It is

life he cannot handle.

 

 

 

 

133

Betty longs for a weekend lover, especially since Roy has been
in the barn all winter and it is almost spring. Betty is a physical
woman. She built her own house on the land shs rented from Roy, but that
was when she was younger, lighter, when her body did not show that it had
borne two daughters or that she would hear yet another. She is proud of
her carpentry skills, proud of her ability with raw wood, hammer and
nails. She bartered her skill for medical care for herself, Roy, and
the girls and that is how she not Phil, the man she would like to be her
lover. Phil is quiet and kind and listens to Betty with his eyes when
she talks. Phil is a good doctor and understands Betty's life and what
coping with Roy must be like. Betty and Phil like to fish together.
Phil's wife is thin, sharp: a business-suited Amazon with long red nails.
Betty wonders if Phil is happily married since she and Phil are so much
alike and his wife is nothing like him.

Betty thinks about divorcing Roy, especially if anything hap-
pened to her and Roy were guardian of the two girls left at home. She
would not like them raised in a barn, like animals. Her littlest is only
seven. But it would be her second divorce and once in a lifetime is bad
enough but twice is failure and she is Catholic and Hichigan is a hard
state to prove mental incompetency in so she dreams of losing eighty
pounds and sleeping with Phil on weekends while Roy is in the born.

A Still, Betty is philosophical about her life. She waits for her
eldeat'a wedding to pass: one less victim. Then she will file for di-
vorce. Her priest told her it was no real marriage. If Roy will not

care for himself, than she must care for herself and the girls. She

 

 

V's

134

cannot fix him. She knows this now.

Betty.is a mountain of a woman and she limps. Betty limps be-
cause shs injured her ankle years ago in a fall that brought her to
Phil, a fall from the house she was building on a strip of Roy's land
and now she has developed arthritis from the crushing weight which bears
down on those nine inches of ankle like a one—ton block. She wants to
lose weight to ease the constant pain for which Phil writes prescrip-
tions and she wants to grow more attractive by becoming less of herself
so Phil will want to make love to her. Betty must somehow lose the
weight to find love because no man willingly makes love to a fat women.
So she eats bowls of carrot sticks and celery stalks and unbuttered pop-
corn to fill the emptiness inside she wants a man to fill. Betty is
still young, still on the edge of it, but losing eighty pounds takes
such a long time that she consoles herself with extra food and there
are times when she is not sure she will reach either goal, but while
she is waiting to grow slander and waiting for Phil to make love to her
and waiting for Roy to come out of the barn she is still waiting for
deliverance.

I look down at my watch and realize it is two o'clock. It's
Saturday and Betty must return home to the farm, the girls, Roy. She
extends an invitation to visit her at the farm. Us embrace, I nod, and
Betty limps away.

I go back to my office. My partner is gone, the office empty.

I sit at my desk and stars out the window on a wet spring. I am still

inside, quiet where it counts. Where would you go / That is not the

13S

same / Blank field? Ho, there is / Nothing left for you / But to
stand here / Full of your own silence /'Uhich is itself a whiteness /
And all the light you need. The poetry leaves me, contracts, breaks
off. It is something I have read not long ago. Betty's story has
settled inside of me like a stone that cannot be dislodged. Where
would you go that is not the same the same the same? Betty thought
she was escaping a bad marriage for a better one. She thought she
was escaping to safety. The same blank field. Nothing left nothing
left nothing left but to stand. Stand where? Where? I don't like
where I'm standing. I'm afraid. Nothing left for you nothing left
for you but to stand full of your silence silence silence echoes in
my head. I cannot hear my own silence. What is my silence? Listen
listen listen it whispers.

Betty's story. Betty groping her way toward happiness. Betty
the carpenter making a house she can live in, a house to stand for
life. I do not like the house of my life. I do not like my students,
except for Betty. I'm not sure I like Hike. I know I do not like
Helcolm. Roy is not so distorted that I cannot recognize myself in
him. Letting the disease choose. Roy lets the disease choose. A
cynic once said Life is the incurable disease. I am not sick like
Roy but I know about pain and despair. I know it is when they become
a way of life that life becomes a way of dying, like Roy.

The office phone jengles. I walk over and pick it up. It is

Hike, wanting to make plans for Sunday.

I say yes.

 

   

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