The waiter said, "'I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.'"

"d.a.m.n it!" Barnes slammed his cup down. "Peace! Get away while we eat, you, Keats, Plato, Holdridge, that's your name. I remember now, Holdridge! What's all this other junk?"

"Just fancy," said I. "Conceit."

"d.a.m.n fancy, and to h.e.l.l with conceit, you can eat alone, I'm getting out of this madhouse." And Barnes gulped his coffee as the waiter and proprietor watched and I watched him gulping and across the street the bright bonfire in the gut of the monster device burned fiercely. Our silent watching caused Barnes to freeze at last with the cup in his hand and the coffee dripping off his chin. "Why? Why aren't you yelling? Why aren't you fighting me?"

"But I am fighting," I said, taking the book from under my arm. I tore a page from Demosthenes, let Barnes see the name, rolled it into a fine Havana cigar shape, lit it, puffed it, and said, "'Though a man escape every other danger, he can never wholly escape those who do not want such a person as he is to exist.'"

Barnes was on his feet, yelling, the "cigar" was torn from my mouth, stomped on, and the Chief Censor was out of the door, almost in one motion.

I could only follow.

On the sidewalk, Barnes collided with an old man who was entering the cafe. The old man almost fell. I grabbed his arm.

"Professor Einstein," I said.

"Mr. Shakespeare," he said.

Barnes fled.

I found him on the lawn by the old and beautiful library where the dark men, who wafted kerosene perfume from their every motion, still dumped vast harvestings of gun-shot dead pigeon, dying pheasant books, all autumn gold and silver from the high windows. But... softly. And while this still, almost serene, pantomime continued, Barnes stood screaming silently, the scream clenched in his teeth, tongue, lips, cheeks, gagged back so none could hear. But the scream flew out of his wild eyes in flashes and was held for discharge in his knotted fists, and shuttled in colors about his face, now pale, now red as he glared at me, at the cafe, at the d.a.m.ned proprietor, at the terrible waiter who now waved amiably back at him. The Baal incinerator rumbled its appet.i.te, spark-burned the lawn. Barnes stared full at the blind yellow-red sun in its raving stomach.

"You," I called up easily at the men who paused. "City Ordinance. Closing time is nine sharp. Please be done by then. Wouldn't want to break the law-Good evening, Mr. Lincoln."

"'Four score,'" said a man, pa.s.sing, "'and seven years-'"

"Lincoln?" The Chief Censor turned slowly. "That's Bowman. Charlie Bowman. I know you, Charlie, come back here, Charlie, Chuck!"

But the man was gone, and cars drove by, and now and again as the burning progressed men called to me and I called back, and whether it was, "Mr. Poe!" or hullo to some small bleak stranger with a name like Freud, each time I called in good humor and they replied, Mr. Barnes twitched as if another arrow had pierced, sunk deep in his quivering bulk and he were dying slowly of a hidden seepage of fire and raging life. And still no crowd gathered to watch the commotion.

Suddenly, for no discernible reason, Mr. Barnes shut his eyes, opened his mouth wide, gathered air, and shouted, "Stop!"

The men ceased shoveling the books out of the window above.

"But," I said, "it's not closing time . . ."

"Closing time! Everybody out!" Deep holes had eaten away the center of Jonathan Barnes' eyes. Within, there was no bottom. He seized the air. He pushed down. Obediently, all the windows crashed like guillotines, chiming their panes.

The dark men, bewildered, came out and down the steps.

"Chief Censor." I handed him a key which he would not take, so I forced his fist shut on it. "Come back tomorrow, observe silence, finish up."

The Chief Censor let his bullet-hole gaze, his emptiness, search without finding me.

"How . . . how long has thisgone on . . .?"

"This?"

"This . . . and . . . that . . . and them."

He tried but could not nod at the cafe, the pa.s.sing cars, the quiet readers descending from the warm library now, nodding as they pa.s.sed into cold dark, friends, one and all. His blind man's rictal gaze ate holes where my face was. His tongue, anesthetized, stirred. "Do you think you can all fool me, me, me?"

I did not answer.

"How can you be sure," he said, "I won't burn people, as well as books?"

I did not answer.

I left him standing in the complete night.

Inside, I checked out the last volumes of those leaving the library now with night come on and shadows everywhere and the great Baal machinery churning smoke, its fire dying in the spring gra.s.s where the Chief Censor stood like a poured cement statue, not seeing his men drive off. His fist suddenly flew high. Something swift and bright flew up to crack the front-door gla.s.s. Then Barnes turned and walked after the incinerator as it trundled off, a fat black funeral urn unravelling long tissues and scarves of black bunting smoke and fast-vanishing crepe.

I sat listening.

In the far rooms, filled with soft jungle illumination, there was a lovely autumnal turning of leaves, faint sifts of breathing, infinitesimal quirks, the gesture of a hand, the glint of a ring, the intelligent squirrel blink of an eye. Some nocturnal voyager sailed between the half-empty stacks. In porcelain serenity, the restroom waters flowed down to a still and distant sea. My people, my friends, one by one, pa.s.sed from the cool marble, the green glades, out into a night better than we could ever have hoped for.

At nine, I went out to pick up the thrown front-door key. I let the last reader, an old man, out with me, and as I was locking up, he took a deep breath of the cool air, looked at the town, the spark-burned lawn, and said, "Will they come back again, ever?"

"Let them. We're ready for them, aren't we?"

The old man took my hand. "'The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together.'"

We moved down the steps.

"Good evening, Isaiah," I said.

"Mr. Socrates," he said. "Good night."

And each walked his own way, in the dark.

THE WISH.

A WHISPER OF SNOW TOUCHED THE COLD WINDOW.

The vast house creaked in a wind from nowhere.

"What?" I said.

"I didn't say anything." Charlie Simmons, behind me at the fireplace, shook popcorn quietly in a vast metal sieve. "Not a word."

"d.a.m.n it, Charlie, I heard you . . ."

Stunned, I watched the snow fall on far streets and empty fields. It was a proper night for ghosts of whiteness to visit windows and wander off.

"You're imagining things," said Charlie.

Am I? I thought. Does the weather have voices? Is there a language of night and time and snow? What goes on between that dark out there and my soul in here?

For there in the shadows, a whole civilization of doves seemed to be landing unseen, without benefit of moon or lamp.

And was it the snow softly whispering out there, or was it the past, acc.u.mulations of old time and need, despairs mounding themselves to panics and at last finding tongue?

"G.o.d, Charles. Just now, I could have sworn I heard you say-"

"Say what?"

"You said: 'Make a wish.'"

"I did?"

His laughter behind me did not make me turn; I kept on watching the snow fall and I told him what I must tell- "You said, 'It's a special, fine, strange night. So make the finest, dearest, strangest wish ever in your life, deep from your heart. It will be yours.' That's what I heard you say."

"No." I saw his image in the gla.s.s shake its head. "But, Tom, you've stood there hypnotized by the snowfall for half an hour. The fire on the hearth talked. Wishes don't come true, Tom. But-" and here he stopped and added with some surprise, "by G.o.d, you did hear something, didn't you? Well, here. Drink."

The popcorn was done popping. He poured wine which I did not touch. The snow was falling steadily along the dark window in pale breaths.

"Why?" I asked. "Why would this wish jump into my head? If you didn't say it, what did?"

What indeed, I thought; what's out there, and who are we? Two writers late, alone, my friend invited for the night, two old companions used to much talk and gossip about ghosts, who've tried their hands at all the usual psychic stuffs, Ouija boards, tarot cards, telepathies, the junk of amiable friendship over years, but always full of taunts and jokes and idle fooleries.

But this out there tonight, I thought, ends the jokes, erases smiles. The snow-why, look! It's burying our laughter. . . .

"Why?" said Charlie at my elbow, drinking wine, gazing at the redgreen-blue Yule-tree lights and now at the back of my neck. "Why a wish on a night like this? Well, it is the night before Christmas, right? Five minutes from now, Christ is born. Christ and the winter solstice all in one week. This week, this night, proves that Earth won't die. The winter has touched bottom and now starts upward toward the light. That's special. That's incredible."

"Yes," I murmured, and thought of the old days when cavemen died in their hearts when autumn came and the sun went away and the ape-men cried until the world shifted in its white sleep and the sun rose earlier one fine morning and the universe was saved once more, for a little while. "Yes."

"So-" Charlie read my thoughts and sipped his wine. "Christ always was the promise of spring, wasn't he? In the midst of the longest night of the year, Time shook, Earth shuddered and calved a myth. And what did the myth yell? Happy New Year! G.o.d, yes, January first isn't New Year's Day. Christ's birthday is. His breath, sweet as clover, touches our nostrils, promises spring, this very moment before midnight. Take a deep breath, Thomas."

"Shut up!"

"Why? Do you hear voices again?"

Yes! I turned to the window. In sixty seconds, it would be the morn of His birth. What purer, rarer hour was there, I thought wildly, for wishes.

"Tom-" Charlie seized my elbow. But I was gone deep and very wild indeed. Is this a special time? I thought. Do holy ghosts wander on nights of falling snow to do us favors in this strange-held hour? If I make a wish in secret, will that perambulating night, strange sleeps, old blizzards give back my wish tenfold?

I shut my eyes. My throat convulsed.

"Don't," said Charlie.

But it trembled on my lips. I could not wait. Now, now, I thought, a strange star burns at Bethlehem.

"Tom," gasped Charlie, "for Christ's sake!"

Christ, yes, I thought, and said: "My wish is, for one hour tonight-"

"No!" Charlie struck me, once, to shut my mouth.

"-please, make my father alive again."

The mantel clock struck twelve times to midnight.

"Oh, Thomas . . ." Charlie grieved. His hand fell away from my arm. "Oh, Tom."

A gust of snow rattled the window, clung like a shroud, unraveled away.

The front door exploded wide.

Snow sprang over us in a shower.

"What a sad wish. And . . . it has just come true."

"True?" I whirled to stare at that open door which beckoned like a tomb.

"Don't go, Tom," said Charlie.

The door slammed. Outside, I ran; oh, G.o.d, how I ran.

"Tom, come back!" The voice faded far behind me in the whirling fall of white. "Oh, G.o.d, don't!"

But in this minute after midnight I ran and ran, mindless, gibbering, yelling my heart on to beat, blood to move, legs to run and keep running, and I thought: Him! Him! I know where he is! If the gift is mine! If the wish comes true! I know his place! And all about in the night-snowing town the bells of Christmas began to clang and chant and clamor. They circled and paced and drew me on as I shouted and mouthed snow and knew maniac desire.

Fool! I thought. He's dead! Go back!

But what if he is alive, one hour tonight, and I didn't go to find him?

I was outside town, with no hat or coat, but so warm from running, a salty mask froze my face and flaked away with the jolt of each stride down the middle of an empty road, with the sound of joyous bells blown away and gone.

A wind took me around a final corner of wilderness where a dark wall waited for me.

The cemetery.

I stood by the heavy iron gates, looking numbly in.

The graveyard resembled the scattered ruins of an ancient fort, blown up lifetimes ago, its monuments buried deep in some new Ice Age.

Suddenly, miracles were not possible.

Suddenly the night was just so much wine and talk and dumb enchantments and I running for no reason save I believed, I truly believed, I had felt something happen out here in this snow-dead world. . . .