Tampa is a long way from New York, but our men and women were not parochial. They had been citizens of the entire nation and were so remembered. When you read this impressive list of important people who lived among us, bear in mind that among those who live with us now are others who are just as important. We are not a bunch of has-beens or never-weres. You'll read about us in the Times.

Then followed a list of eleven onetime residents whose obituaries recounted the worthy contributions they had made, including a woman who had been a noteworthy missionary in Africa; a painter whose works had been widely shown; a general with many medals; a businessman whose operations had covered a dozen states; a newspaper editor who had fought the good fights and won two Pulitzers for doing so.

On the day Palm Fronds appeared in each mailbox, the four members of the tertulia could hardly wait for the evening meal for a discussion of the matter. Ral Jimenez remonstrated as soon as he was seated: 'The death of former residents is hardly a topic to be discussed at dinner,' but the others disagreed, all talking at once. Ambassador St. Pres voiced the consensus: 'Although it does have a touch of morbidity, that's discounted by the lift to the spirits of those who live here. Maybe some of us are worth remembering.'

That led to a discussion of what criteria the Times probably used in deciding which deaths to memorialize and how much space to accord each. The men also wanted to know why certain obituaries started on the front page and carried over, while others did not-as, for example, Margaret Mead on front page, full page later; Edward Land full page later but no front page. Here Jimenez volunteered a suggestion: 'Dr. Mead dealt with ideas, Land only with things. His invention of the Polaroid camera was a contribution, but a limited one. Her probing into primitive societies enlightened us all.' The men concluded that an editorial board probably adjudicated placement along the lines suggested by Jimenez.

Then they moved on to a somewhat macabre game: 'Suppose that the four of us were in an airplane that crashed. Whose name would be featured in the headlines next day?' It was a silly game but it had the virtue of driving each player back to fundamentals: 'What is a noteworthy life? How are men and women judged? Does a person have to stand for some one thing if he or she is to be noticed? Does where a person lives or operates make the difference?' The factors that led to an overall evaluation of worth seemed endless, but they were not trivial; moral, social and political priorities had to be established and defended.

President Armitage, who had been accustomed to adjudicating the competing claims of his faculty members, suggested: 'Let's take locus first. Senator Raborn was a nationwide figure of some importance. Ambassador St. Pres worked in the international field, so that many Americans might not even have heard his name, whereas foreigners were familiar with him. Jimenez was certainly known worldwide because of the ugly plight in which he was trapped. The two institutions I led were not equivalent to Harvard or Stanford, but they did play a significant role on the national stage. I'd not want to make the judgment, but if I had to, I'd incline slightly to the senator.'

Raborn demurred instantly: 'Like you, Henry, I was no Borah or Vandenberg, but I was a reliable workman.' St. Pres made a strong point: 'When the question was posed you didn't specify what newspaper's headlines we were talking about. I would suppose that each of us would have exercised considerable influence in our own communities. In Miami, for example, I'd guess that they'd feature Jimenez because of his importance in the Latin countries.' Jimenez would have none of this: 'Come on, we were talking about The New York Times, the best national paper. Let's keep the discussion focused,' and St. Pres made a profound observation: 'It would depend, I think, on two things. The mood that day of the editors making the decision-"We've had too many women recently"; "I'm fed up with the arrogance of scientists"; "Who the hell ever heard of Bismarck, North Dakota?"; and, equally important, "What kind of picture of the Times do we want to project?" If they presume to be the national paper, as Ral just said, they must show a national stance-or in my case, an international one. On those criteria I honestly believe any one of us might be eligible, depending on the mood of the board on the day after our plane crashed.'

St. Pres went on to make an interesting point: 'I'd say it would have to be Raborn because of the role he played in national life, except for one factor. There are one hundred senators and it's pretty hard to stand out in that mass. Suppose our friend President Armitage had performed some miracle that made him really stand out among the thousand college presidents. He might be the one chosen.'

Now it was Armitage's turn to broaden the definitions: 'But good old St. Pres, working anonymously in one foreign country after another, is, as he intimated, a roving nobody. Except'-he slammed the table so hard that the glassware rattled-'in Zambia that time he did stand up to the rabble that wanted to burn our embassy and he did lead eleven of our people right through the middle of the mob, daring them to touch him. Anonymous no more.'

At this point Ral Jimenez played his favorite role, that of the detached philosopher: 'Gentlemen, let's not be so parochial. We four aren't the acme of this place. The sun doesn't rise and set with us alone. Let's suppose everyone in our part of the Palms was in that plane that crashes. Some of those big planes could handle us all. Who, then, is noticed in the headlines?'

It was a good question, because the four men who constituted the tertulia had imperceptibly and justifiably come to think of themselves as the intellectual elite, but they were never arrogant about it, and Jimenez's reminder that there might be others at the Palms who, if their plane went down, might be deemed more memorable was quickly and easily conceded. But when they tried to visualize their fellow residents and identify who among them might be newsworthy, they drew a blank. There was no one.

Then slowly St. Pres, who had a remarkably solid approach to life, considering that he was from the State Department, began to think aloud: 'Always bearing in mind that the Times would be jealous of protecting its ecumenical reputation, it occurs to me that they might find Reverend Quade our bell-wether. She was one of the first women to be ordained as a full-fledged church leader. She led the fight for the true basic rights to which women were entitled, not the flashy right to enter a poolroom or a private club or a locker room where male football players take their showers. Dignity, perseverance, accomplishment, that's a heady mix, and if I were in charge of the obituary page it might capture my attention.'

As the men thought about this Senator Raborn snapped his fingers: 'I completely forgot. We're overlooking our most prominent member.' When the others looked surprised, he said: 'When I was in the Senate we were approached by a group of scientists who asked us to memorialize the Nobel Prize Committee in Sweden to consider the claims of Maxim Lewandowski in science. Yes, our propeller wizard, our rumpled beanpole whose wife cuts his hair with a bowl was judged to be our prime candidate that year, and my staff helped draft the memorandum we forwarded to the committee.'

'What came of it?'

'Obviously he didn't get the prize and I've often wondered why.'

'Let's ask him.' the pragmatic Armitage said, and next night at dinner the tertulia entertained their cohort Maxim Lewandowski as their guest.

It was easy for Senator Raborn to open what would have to be an intrusive interrogation: 'Max, when I was in the Senate, if my memory does not play me false, my staff put together a memorandum in your behalf, which the full Senate forwarded to the Nobel people in Stockholm recommending you as recipient of the prize in some branch of science, I forget which. Do I remember correctly?'

Each of the men leaned forward to watch how the gawky man would respond to this surprising probe into an affair long dead. To their surprise the old man, now eighty-six, leaned back, clapped his hands gently and smiled: 'Well, now!'

'It's true?' St. Pres asked, and the scientist replied: 'I believe numerous leaders, from various fields, nominated me. The Senate committee, yes, and strongly.'

'That's right,' Raborn said. 'Eight or nine leading senators signed the recommendation with me. What happened?'

Lewandowski closed his eyes and recalled the most painful moments of his life. 'Genetics made me, literally and figuratively, but it also destroyed me.' To help the others understand the terrible trap into which he had fallen, he started with simple basics: 'I'm sure we all know what role the many millions of genes each of us is endowed with play in human existence. They're the incredibly small, magical units that determine how we shall look, what color hair we have, our bone and tooth structure, our resistance to disease and, some think, our intellectual capacity; even when our biological clock will begin to run down and when death will follow is probably destined at our conception in the womb.'

The men asked about such things as genetic inheritance of characteristics, diseases that result from errors in the genetic inheritance and other aspects of the mystery. He handled all the questions patiently and with a marked skill for simplification and generalization. But after many minutes he waved his hands across the table as if he were clearing it and asked in quite a different tone of voice: 'We've talked a lot about genes, several million in a human body, but we haven't said how they exist or how they do their work. Well, the genes are on the chromosomes. Each chromosome is a threadlike filament incredibly long and incredibly thin. It's made of DNA, one of the life-directing substances. There are twenty-two chromosomes in every human being, and since each one consists of two strands, one from the mother, one from the father, we carry with us a total of forty-four. The pairs are numbered from one, rather large, to twenty-two, quite small, and through a process of isolating, staining and magnification we can actually photograph them.'

'Where does the stuff come from that can be photographed?' St. Pres asked, and Lewandowski gave an astonishing answer: 'Any body fluid. Blood, of course, but also perspiration or sputum or urine, or just about anything else.'

Lewandowski expanded further: 'In addition to the twenty-two chromosome pairs, which might be called the traditional ones, there's another pair, mysterious, outside the mainstream. It has no number but it's all-important, because it controls human sexuality. If this special chromosome pair has one component X and a second X-and they too can be photographed-the baby turns out to be a female. But if it consists of X and Y, it's a boy. And across the world, in all civilizations, for every one hundred girl babies born, there are around one hundred and four boy babies. Have to be, because boys are more fragile than girls. They die off easier. I forget the actual figure, but at about eight or nine, the balance is an even one hundred girls to one hundred boys, but thereafter it quickly falls into an imbalance and remains that way all our lives. There're always more females than males.'

'I'm guessing,' said St. Pres, 'that somehow you messed up with this mysterious twenty-third chromosome pair.'

'Close, but not quite. You see, in a constant minority of XY cases the poor fellow has a double Y. He's XYY, and right there my trouble began.'

'Why? What does XYY produce?' Raborn asked, and the scientist lowered his head, bringing his hands to his lips as if what he now had to say was too painful to share. Then, straightening his shoulders he coughed, looked at the members of the tertulia and said in a burst of confidence: 'I did most of the original work on XYY, me and a fine researcher in France. I was first in studying a large number of men in the general American population who were conspicuous for having the XYY syndrome.'

'How would you go about testing me, to see if I had it?' President Armitage asked.

'Same routine. A photograph of even a tiny drop of any of your body fluids and the telltale extra Y will leap out at you.' He pulled from his jacket pocket a folded, rumpled sheet of paper, photocopied from a medical textbook, and smiled ruefully: 'I keep this with me to study at odd moments.' When the men looked at the jumble of mixed chromosomes from a man with XY structure, they saw forty-six chromosomes, not arranged in the pair grouping under which they operated. At the bottom of the page, the twenty-two pairs had been drawn and arranged in descending order from No. 1, the largest pair, to No. 22 for the smallest, plus an unnumbered XY, indicating that this particular sample came from a normal boy.

The complexity of these data was so awesome, and their implications so profound, that editor Jimenez asked: 'You have researchers who can untangle this mess at the top? Could you, for example, arrange this man's chromosomes in their proper pairings?'

'I can do it almost automatically,' and with the point of a pencil he indicated in the midst of the jumble the big halves that were easy both to identify and to pair up with their partners: 'Surely you can spot those big differences,' and the men agreed.

'But when you work with this material, you memorize the chromosomes as if they were your pets,' and darting arbitrarily through the scattered diagrams he rattled off their numbers.

'And the X and Y?' Armitage asked, and without hesitating the scientist identified the big X, explaining: 'It's so big, makes you think maybe the female component is much more important than the male.'

'And the tricky little Y?'

Pausing for a moment, as if reluctant to identify the chromosome that had destroyed his reputation as a serious scientist, he at last pointed to a nondescript minor figure bearing almost no identifying marks: 'There the little bastard is,' but none of the men could spot it in the top tangle.

'So what happens when a male baby has two of the little terrors?' President Armitage asked, and with the tip of his pencil, Lewandowski drew a second Y in the top diagram.

'The Frenchman and I proved at about the same time that young males cursed with the XYY pattern were apt to have a handful of clearly defined characteristics. No question about it. Bigger, heavier musculature. Abnormally aggressive. Difficult to discipline. And, in their mature life, more apt to fall afoul of the law.'

'These were discernible traits?'

'Absolutely identifiable. Except that not every XYY adult showed intractable behavior. A man could be a hulking XYY and still be a good citizen.'

'What are you saying, Maxim? Is he an ugly type or isn't he?'

'That's where I stumbled onto trouble.' the scientist said. 'The truth seems to be that the XYY has a propensity toward bad behavior. You might say that he is eligible. But that doesn't mean that he will be a bad apple.'

'So what happened?'

'The Frenchman and I arranged for a brilliant experiment-study might be the better word. He would work through a large number of French prisons. I would do the same in America. And we would blood-type every man in those jails. It was a huge task.'

'What did you find?'

'In each country the prison population contained an abnormally high proportion of XYY male inmates.'

'They did?' Armitage asked. 'You mean that XYY men showed a propensity for criminal behavior?'

Lewandowski winced: 'That's exactly what a newspaperman asked me. "Does XYY pinpoint the criminal type?" That's where the horror started, with your simple question.'

'How?'

'Well, as you might expect, I pointed out to the reporter every caution an honest scientist would make: "Insufficient number of cases. Many possible collateral explanations. Possibly some overriding causative factor. Perhaps the fact that the XYY man was bigger and huskier made the police more watchful. Maybe the results were peculiar to French and American jails." I offered a dozen hedges against the easy conclusion that the extra Y chromosome produced a criminal or a potential criminal. But he didn't listen.'

'What did he do?' Armitage asked.

'As he left me he asked one short question: "Dr. Lewandowski, what's in a chromosome?" and I answered honestly: "It contains the genes that control human development." And the next day newspapers throughout America and soon throughout the world screamed: "American scientist discovers the gene that makes a man a criminal." ' He stopped and laughed sardonically and said: 'He didn't even get it right. We hadn't a clue which of the fifty thousand odd genes in that fatal extra Y was guilty. Only that it existed on Chromosome Y. When I challenged him about this he said airily: "Chromosomes are too difficult for the general public to understand. Genes are fashionable this year." So gene it had to be.'

'Then what?'

'The roof fell in. A French newspaper pointed out that my colleague in that country had done half the work and received none of the credit. I had stolen his material. What was worse, my French friend said accurately that he certainly had not come to the conclusion that there was a specific gene or chromosome that determined criminal behavior, and he cited all the caveats that I had given the reporter.'

'Were you able to explain what had happened?'

'Not to this day. Newspapers, magazines, television, full-length books were so captivated by the possibility that an identifiable gene could cause criminal behavior that in the popular mind I had made a titanic discovery, and reputable biologists began to speculate on how we might be able to go into the womb of a mother about to give birth to an XYY boy and alter the gene structure so that the child would be born normal and without a propensity for being a criminal.'

'And?' Armitage persisted.

'I became the laughingstock of the scientific community. The mad scientist from Vienna. Restructuring the human race. XYY baby boys in special incubators at birth. And any chance for the Nobel Prize went down the drain.'

This confession was greeted with a long silence, during which the waitress informed the table that the yogurt machine was still on the blink. When substitute orders were placed, Senator Raborn asked: 'So what's the state of the inquiry into XYY now?' and Lewandowski explained: 'Dozens, hundreds of careful investigations in prisons throughout the world have confirmed that the jail population contains a conspicuous plethora of XYY men.'

'Doesn't that prove your original point?'

'Not at all. For as I foresaw when I gave that damned interview that condemned me, we still do not know what exactly it means. Probably ninety-five percent of XYYs lead quite satisfactory lives. Why the difference in the others?'

'What are you doing now, Maxim?'

'I'm a born scientist. Science is all I ever did. Once you've been bitten by the bug you never quit. I have a small laboratory upstairs.'

'What are you working on?' Armitage asked, wondering if his college might make some use of Maxim's investigations.

'The Human Genome Project.'

'What's that?'

'Maybe the most ambitious project under way in the world today. Comparable, I think, to a trip of humans to Mars.'

'But what is it?'

'The scientists of the world have decided to draw up an atlas of the human chromosomes, all forty-six.'

'A big task?' Jimenez asked.

'So big it stupefies. The forty-six contain millions of genes. A map has to be drawn of every chromosome, showing where and how its strings of genes operate.'

'To what purpose?'

Solemnly Lewandowski said: 'To restructure the human race. To rectify God's mistakes.'

Recognizing the gravity of what the scientist had said, and the depth of his commitment to whatever role he was playing in this enormous undertaking, they peppered him with questions, at the conclusion of which he stated his creed: 'When we have solved the secrets of the genome, if we ever do, we'll be able to specify which genes in which chromosomes produce which anomalies in human life and perhaps correct them by adjusting the genes. Don't laugh. We already know which genes in one chromosome are responsible for Tay-Sachs disease, which afflicts Jews with a fatal disorder. That already permits us to do genetic counseling of young couples with the gene who may want to marry: "Since you both carry a defective chromosome, better not have children." And we are certain that a defect in Chromosome ten produces the sickle-cell anemia that plagues blacks. If we correct the gene deficiency in ten we protect the black man or woman from the disease, which is so destructive.'

On and on he went, identifying those errant chromosomes whose flawed genes had been proved to be progenitors or at least warning signals of this or that specific disease. For example, a defective gene in Chromosome 7 was suspected as an agent in cystic fibrosis and Chromosome 13 was related to eye cancer. The tertulia was astounded at how much information had already been collected. At the conclusion of his summary he dropped a bombshell: 'And through the most painstaking work plus accidental good luck, we've learned that a gene in Chromosome twenty-one is definitely related to the cause of Alzheimer's disease.'

His listeners leaned forward, for they had witnessed the ravages of this mysterious disease, and they were mesmerized by what Maxim said next: 'Yes, we've found a large family in Sweden, many of whose members contract what is known as early-onset Alzheimer's. Very unusual, death comes in the forties. When we reconstructed the life history of each member, some brilliant researcher, an Englishman, I believe, detected that the troublemaker was Number fourteen.'

The tertulia discussed this avidly as waitresses cleared the nearby tables, and Lewandowski said: 'Faint clues, not nailed down yet, also incriminate Chromosome nineteen. I'm a member of the team, scientists in various nations, who're working to map the genetic structure and history of Number nineteen. Maybe three hundred million genes in that system, but with a mix of luck and insight we may be able to spot the part of the chain that causes the trouble, maybe not.'

'What do you actually do, Maxim? Study a hundred thousand slides? Here in our building?'

'No,' he chuckled. 'Nothing so dramatic. I receive reports from many sources. One researcher explores one segment of the gene chain, another works on a different part. And if we're lucky, a third, maybe in Bombay, works on a fragment that overlaps the end of the first segment and the beginning of the second. He or she builds a bridge that I can report on to all other workers on Number nineteen. Parallel with our team, others are working on Chromosome fourteen, and refining what's already been accomplished on twenty-one.'

In the silence that followed, Lewandowski took a long drink of iced tea and said gravely: 'In time we shall discover this dreadful secret, and maybe we'll find some treatment that will enable us to help Mr. Duggan's wife on the second floor and restore her to him.'

No one spoke, for each member of the tertulia, deeply moved, had a lump in his throat. Finally St. Pres spoke for the group: 'Keep at it, Maxim. Lots of stricken people await your findings.'

Most human beings, thanks to the benevolence of God, are spared the more excruciating agonies of death, which cause the sufferer to scream desperately for relief. Berta Umlauf, a widow of seventy-nine who once lived in the most attractive red-roofed house on Island 5 across the channel from the Palms, had known death in its most horrible forms.

She had lived originally in Marquette, a town in the northern segment of Michigan, the part that is separated from the more important southern portion by the Straits of Mackinac. As a pretty, petite girl in high school she fell in love with a six-foot-one football star named Ludwig Umlauf, whose father, Otto, owned a profitable lumber business and whose socially inclined mother, Ingrid, had great hopes for her son, maybe winning a football scholarship to go to Notre Dame or at least to Michigan. Mrs. Umlauf was distressed when Ludwig informed his parents that he was not going to college; he would marry his neighbor Berta Krause and start work immediately in his father's lumber operations. To escape interference from his mother, Ludwig eloped with Berta and Mrs. Umlauf angrily felt that the marriage had damaged her son's promising future.

Ludwig did not think so, for with Berta's eager assistance and his father's stern tutelage, he helped the Umlauf lumber concern to thrive. But as Berta watched her husband closely she had the suspicion that he did not go away to college because he had been afraid to do so. He wanted to stay at home, in his familiar house and employed in the business his grandfather had started and his father had extended. With old Otto and young Ludwig growing timber in their extensive woodlands and selling it in a variety of outlets, the Umlaufs became more than prosperous; they were rich. When each year the ever-increasing earnings were made known to Mrs. Umlauf, Ludwig hoped that she would relax her hostility toward Berta.

But the wealthier the Umlaufs became, the more convinced Mrs. Umlauf became that Berta had damaged her son's prospects: 'A boy as wonderful as him, who can make money so easy, he ought to be farther along than he is. You're holding him back, Berta, and it's a crying shame.' Not even the birth of a grandson reconciled the contentious old lady to her daughter-in-law, and the older Mrs. Umlauf began to pressure her husband to leave the bitter winters of northern Michigan and find a pleasant home in Florida, a plea he obstinately rejected, sometimes with profanity: 'This is where we earned our money, this is where we'll spend it. Goddammit, this house will be our home as long as I live,' and he would remind his wife that he found his only pleasure in life when hunting in the Umlauf game-rich woods or sailing his boat on the waters of Lake Superior. Like the stubborn Lutheran he was, he refused to consider flight to an easier life in Florida.

When blizzards howled through Marquette, piling snow on driveways, Otto and Ludwig reveled in the challenge and frequently told each other in their wives' hearing: 'Real men like this weather, Florida is for sissies.'

So as the men battled through the winters, amassing greater and greater wealth from their lumber business, Grandmother Umlauf grew increasingly embittered, and while the men were absent much of the time either in the woodlands they controlled or in Detroit and Chicago selling their lumber, the two women stayed close to their tension-filled house, living together in a kind of hateful truce. It was ironic that old Mrs. Umlauf should have despised her daughter-in-law, because Berta too wanted to leave the bitter winters of Marquette and find refuge in Florida or Arizona, but regardless of how often she told Mrs. Umlauf about this the older woman could not believe that they were allies.

Berta often wondered why, with Ludwig's wealth, she could not have a home of her own, but he squelched any such suggestions by citing two good reasons: 'Umlaufs have always stayed together. That's where we get our strength. And besides, Father controls all the money. I don't think he'd let me have a house of my own. He always lived with his parents. Didn't get ownership of this house till my grandfather died.' If Berta reopened the question he would snap: 'It would be sinful to waste money on two houses when one of them is all we need.' He seemed unaware that few families in the region were so rich at the bank or so impoverished at home.

Berta believed that Ludwig's fear of moving to a new home was a continuation of his fear about going away to college and his fear of striking out on his own to escape the tyranny of his father: My husband is a big man, just as he was a big football player when I adored him in high school, but he's hollow-he really has no backbone. Yet despite the tensions that poisoned this hate-filled house, on Sundays the Umlauf family presented a portrait of unity as they marched together to the nearby Lutheran church: short, round Otto and tall, acidulous Ingrid in front, bulky Ludwig towering behind, with lively little Berta and their son beside him. They were referred to collectively in the community as the Umlaufs and to imagine one separated from the others would have been impossible, but when they returned home, each adult went his or her own way.

In this world of bitterness, Berta found solace in her son, Noel, a tall, handsome boy like his father. Endowed with a benign attitude toward life, he liked school, did well in his classes and had a host of friends with varied backgrounds. He never behaved with the arrogance characteristic of many sons of millionaires and he was a lad of whom any mother could be proud. Berta reveled in his companionship.

In the warm summers spent on the shores of Lake Superior Berta had a marvelous time with her son and his friends, but when January came to lock the four older Umlaufs indoors while Noel was away at boarding school, life again became hateful.

One wintry day she had her first taste of what death was going to be like among the battling Umlaufs. She was not afraid of the phenomenon; the deaths of her own parents had been a calm passage from existence to nonexistence, and she was proud of the courageous manner in which they had said farewell. She had suffered pain in losing them but not wrenching anguish. On this day, when she was alone in the house with Mrs. Umlauf, the old lady said: 'Today we settle it. I'm going to Florida, and if he doesn't like it he can go to hell.' Since she had never before spoken like this, Berta realized that a change of some magnitude had occurred, so she was not surprised when Mrs. Umlauf tore into her husband the moment he arrived home for lunch: 'Otto, I'm going to Florida.'

'Not with me. Florida is for sissies.'

'Then I'm a sissy and I'm going.'

'What are you going to use for money?' In the furious discussion that followed, Berta heard confirmation that Old Man Umlauf controlled not only his wife's money but also most of his son's. He had promised them that he would be generous at death, but until then he would remain in charge. Mrs. Umlauf stormed at his unfeeling dismissal of her wishes, and when her rage achieved nothing she tried tears, and these he dismissed with contempt.

When he returned to his office, she watched him go, accompanied by his subservient son, then told Berta in a harsh, rasping voice: 'If he wants to control everything till he dies, I hope he drops dead before nightfall'

This was such a horrid statement that Berta had to remonstrate: 'Mrs. Umlauf! Don't say a thing like that. You'll bring a curse on this family.'

'Shut up. Our bad luck started the day you came into this house.' Berta wanted to point out that she had tried many times to leave and had not been allowed, but she realized that such a comment would accomplish nothing. Sitting silently in the cold, dark living room, she stared out the window at the stormy lake, feeling frail and overpowered by her mother-in-law. She remained in low spirits for some weeks, contemplating the dismal present and an even bleaker future.

She was forced to rouse herself from her lassitude when Old Man Umlauf fell ill as if in obedience to his wife's curse. He was put in a downstairs room, which was converted into a kind of family hospital, and there he lay for three weeks, growing steadily weaker in body but more violent in spirit. He spoke abusively to his two doctors, made it clear that he despised his wife, voiced suspicions about his son's ability to continue the business, and ordered Berta around as if she were his slave. Expecting no consideration from his wife, he turned to Berta for his needs. One night after supper she suggested to Ludwig: 'We could get nurses, maybe,' but he gave a stolid German answer: 'We take care of our own,' and to his credit he did, watching over his father through the night and helping Berta with her arduous duties during the day.

She was in charge late one afternoon when the older Mrs. Umlauf came into the front room, studied her husband's inert form and asked almost hopefully: 'He isn't dead, is he?' When Berta said 'No' she seemed almost to accuse her daughter-in-law of intervening to prevent his death. There were ugly scenes with her son, too, until the entire house seemed to be contaminated by what should have been the simple and natural act of dying. When it became apparent that death was approaching, Berta begged her husband and mother-in-law for permission to move him to the hospital, but Ludwig said something she would hear frequently in the years ahead: 'We take care of our family. What would the people in this town say if we shunted him off and let him die in a strange place?'

Three days later Otto did die, at home, vilifying his wife, his son and his thoughtless daughter-in-law. It was a death as tormented and ugly, Berta thought, as her parents' had been serene and almost lovely. And at the burial, on a stormy day when the minister hurried through the ceremony to the relief of all, she did not join the group prayers, for she was intoning aloud, but softly enough so that those nearby could not hear: 'I shall not die like this. It is lacking in grace, and God could not have meant His children to go this way.'