"By a depriver."

"Right. Once, everyone admits, such signs signified. Now they do not."

"How do you mean, once such signs signified?"

Again he smiles. Again it seems I have fallen into his trap. He rises, stands to one side, hands in pockets making fists. "I'll show you. Do you see that?" He nods to the horizon.

I look. There is nothing but the shaggy sea of bluish pines. My nose has started running. The air is yellow with pollen.

"Right there." He nods, hands still in pockets.

I look again. There is a straight wisp of smoke in the middle distance, as insignificant-looking as a pile of leaves burning in a gutter.

"Yes."

"As a matter of fact, would you help me report it? My hands are a bit unsteady."

Perhaps that is why he keeps his hands in his pockets, to hide a tremor.

"Sure. What do I do?"

"Line up the sights on the smoke."

I rotate the azimuth and sight along the upright posts to the wisp of smoke. "I make it eighty-two degrees."

"Very good. Wouldn't you agree that there is no question , about what the smoke is a sign of?"

"Yes, I would."

"What is it a sign of?"

"Fire."

"Right!"-triumphantly. "Now would you hang up the reading?"

I turn to the wall map, which is encircled by pins like the Wheel of Fortune. I pick up a weighted string and hang it over pin number 82.

"Very good!" says the priest. He's looking over my shoulder. "Now what do we have here?"

"We have the direction of-"

"Right! We have one coordinate, don't we?"

"Yes."

"But that's not enough to locate the fire, is it?"

"No, it isn't."

"What else do we need?"

"We need another coordinate."

"All right! And how do you suppose we get it?"

All at once I know what he reminds me of. He's the patient priest-teacher teaching the dumb section at Holy Cross Prep.

I am willing to play dumb. "I don't know. I don't see how we can get a triangulation fix from here."

"And you're right! So we need a little help, don't we? So-" He picks up the wall phone and dials a number. "Emmy," he says in a different voice, "give me a reading on that brush job in 5-9. Okay, Blondie, I read. How goes it in Waldheim? All right. That's a fiver-niner. You call it in. Over."

He speaks easily, good-humoredly. No, he's not a priest-teacher. He's a ham operator, one of those fellows who are shy up close but chummy-technical with a stranger in Bangkok.

He turns to me. "Her reading is 2-9-2. She's in the Waldheim tower." He shows me a pin. "Here. Now, what are you going to do about it?"

I pick up the string and the Waldheim sinker and hang it over pin 292. The weighted strings intersect at a crossroad on the map. The priest, I can see, is pleased by the elegance of the tight intersected strings. So am I.

The priest is pushing one fist into the other hand, hard, taking turns. I realize he is doing isometric exercises. Now he is pulling against interlocked fingers.

"We know what the smoke is a sign of. We have located the sign," he says between pushes and pulls. "Now we are going to act accordingly. That's a sign for you. Unlike word signs."

"Right." I look at my watch. I'm afraid he's going to get going on the Germans. "It's good to see you, Father, but I have an appointment. Do you wish me to tell Father Placide or Dr. Comeaux anything?"

"Sure," says the priest, who is back in his place across the azimuth. "Now here is the question." There's a lively light in his eye. He's out to catch me again. He has the super-sane chipperness of the true nut.

"Can you name one word sign which has not been evacuated of meaning, that is, deprived?"

"I don't think I can. As a matter of fact, I'm afraid that-" Again I look at my watch.

Two things have become clear to me in the last few seconds.

One thing is that Father Smith has gone batty, but batty in a way I recognize. He belongs to that category of nut who can do his job competently enough, quite well in fact, but given one minute of free time latches on to an obsession like a tongue seeking a sore tooth. He called in the forest fire like a pro, but now he's back at me with a mad chipper light in his eye.

The second thing is that I promised Father Placide to make an "evaluation" of Father Smith's mental condition. Can he do priestly work?

No, three things.

The third thing is that all at once I want badly to get out of here and see Lucy Lipscomb.

"Can you name the one word sign," Father Smith asks me, leaning close over the azimuth, "that has not been evacuated of meaning, that is, deprived by a depriver?"

"I'm not sure what the question means. Later perhaps-"

"Will you allow me to demonstrate," says the priest triumphantly, as if he had already demonstrated.

"Of course," I say with fake psychiatric cordiality.

"The signs out there"-he nods to the shaggy forest-"refer to something, don't they?"

"Right."

"The smoke was a sign of fire."

"That is correct."

"There is no doubt about the existence of the fire."

"True."

"Words are signs, aren't they?"

"You could say so."

"But unlike the signs out there, words have been evacuated, haven't they?"

"Evacuated?"

"They don't signify anymore."

"How do you mean?" From long practice I can keep my voice attentive without paying close attention. I wonder if Lucy- "What if I were to turn the tables on you, ha ha, and play the psychoanalyst?"

"Very good," I say gloomily.

"You psychoanalysts encourage your patients to practice free association with words, true?"

"Yes." Actually it's not true.

"Let me turn the tables on you and give you a couple of word signs and you give me your free associations."

"Fine."

"Clouds."

"Sky, fleecy, puffy, floating, white-"

"Okay. Irish."

"Bogs, Notre Dame, Pat O'Brien, begorra-"

"Okay. Blacks."

"Blacks?"

"Negroes."

"Blacks, Africa, niggers, minority, civil rights-"

"Okay. Jew."

"Israel, Bible, Max, Sam, Julius, Hebrew, Hebe, Ben-"

"Right! You see!" He is smiling and nodding and making fists in his pockets. I realize that he is doing isometrics in his pockets.

"See what?"

"Jews!"

"What about Jews?" I say after a moment.

"Precisely!"

"Precisely what?"

"What do you mean?"

"What about Jews?"

"What do you think about Jews?" he asks, cocking an eye.

"Nothing much one way or the other."

"May I continue my demonstration, Doctor?"

"For one minute." I look at my watch, but he doesn't seem to notice.

"May I ask who Max, Sam, Julius, and Ben are?"

"Max Gottlieb is my closest friend and personal physician. Sam Aaronson was my roommate in medical school. Julius Freund was my training analyst at Hopkins. Ben Solomon was my fellow detainee and cellmate at Fort Pelham, Alabama."

"Very interesting."

"How's that?"

"Don't you see?"

"No."

"Unlike the other test words, what you associated with the word Jew was Jews, Jews you have known. Isn't that interesting?"

"Yes," I say, pursing my mouth in a show of interest.

"What you associated with the word sign Irish were certain connotations, stereotypical Irish stuff in your head. Same for Negro. If I had said Spanish, you'd have said something like guitar, castanets, bullfights, and such. I have done the test on dozens. Thus, these word signs have been evacuated, deprived of meaning something real. Real persons. Not so with Jews."

"So?"

He's feeling so much better that he's doing foot exercises, balancing on the ball of one foot, then the other. Now, to my astonishment, he is doing a bit of shadowboxing, weaving and throwing a few punches.

"That's the only sign of God which has not been evacuated by an evacuator," he says, moving his shoulders. "What sign is that?"