"Enoch always says he was a slave in Egypt" An interval. Finally I put it to him: "Would you have spoiled it for Enoch? Wrecked the Amba.s.sadorship?-Told those three newspapers," I stated.

"Mm, now you're getting subtle. Probing."

"But would you really? If I hadn't come?"

"Oh you," he said vaguely. "What d'you have to do with anything?"

I would not let go. "The bargain. I know every detail. I really do. Tourist with guidebook."

I was touched that he did not laugh. He smiled instead, the kind of smile that trembles gradually into being, so that for a long while it seems to beat in doubt of its own self-creation: imagine Buddha in the moment before that arch-moment by which he is usually represented. -Were his teeth clean? It was too dim to tell. "You have possibilities. Self-comprehension. At your age Allegra was obtuse as a wall. A drop of my Greek in you maybe."

"But it was a bargain."

"You think I care if they make him Amba.s.sador to the Court of the Angel Gabriel? If he wants it let him have it."

"My mother wants it."

"And he wants her. If he wants her let him have her. The high and mighty Mrs. Vand, Queen of the Universe."

"You don't like her."

He said narrowly, "Keen of you to spot that."

"I hate sarcasm," I informed him. "Why don't you like her?"

"Same reason you don't'

"I like her," I protested.

"Did you say something before about not being able to distinguish between the real and the unreal? Be humble, girlie."

"But I do like her," I said. "She's an interesting woman."

"She's a stupid woman. She's obtuse. She wants everything."

I looked around for logic. There were only the trees, the table, the kings, the white moon. "Well, you want everything too. You said it yourself."

"I deny it."

"You said a man knows when he's free."

"Being free isn't wanting."

"Being free is doing anything you want to in the whole world."

"A line not your own-Polly want a cracker?"

"I said that once before today," I apologized. "I said it coming over in the boat. I was telling that boy about my mother."

"And preparing him perfectly for the hypocrisy of the pulpit. That's your mother's Philosophy, I recognize it. She's an a.s.s."

"She's a bigger a.s.s," I flared, "to go against her philosophy if that's what it is. You've never let her do what she wants to do. Or me. Always intervening. She locked me in a room in Europe because of you. I would be in Europe right now if not for you. I'd be in London and Paris and Copenhagen and Rome."

"Europe? You wanted that?"

"No," I said, ashamed.

Musing laughter.

On account of it I emphatically resumed: "You've always been in the way. A schnorrer with your hand out What gives you the right?"

More laughter. "You."

"You just said I had nothing to do with anything."

"Not with me. But I can't help it about them-if they've always been afraid because of you. You've made them afraid."

"You've made them afraid. You're the one."

"You. You're the issue."

"Don't say issue. You've threatened and threatened-"

"Now and then I tell them I might come up to town. Is that a threat?"

"And badgered them from one end of the earth to the other-"

"The time we met by accident in France? That was just a coincidence. That Dutch girl that used to take care of you-you remember?"

"I remember," I said.

"I saw you on the beach. Couple of times I saw you. An ordinary little girl. Talking French to another kid. I wouldn't've noticed if she hadn't said who you were."

"I never saw you. I saw your bicycle. Bells on it"

"Bells! That's right," he said, impressed.

"I found your book."

"What book?"

"A little handbook of wild flowers."

"-What a b.i.t.c.h," he said reflectively.

"Anneke?"

"Also true. But I meant Allegra."

This time for some reason I did not contradict. The remnant of the fire sputtered. He took out his flashlight and stood it on its head on the table.

"They all think I want things from them, but they miss the point. They think I have a terrible ego. But the whole point is I don't. I'm the new man, modern man, Man without Ego. What I mean is this: I don't want anything. I don't want anything. They're always wanting something themselves, so they can't believe it, they can't understand it. That's why they can't cope with me. I can make them do anything I seem to want because there's nothing I really want. That's the secret, and it isn't a secret at all-excuse the paradox. It's just that the plainer a thing is, the harder it is to see it. Not wanting anything is what makes me perfectly free. I'm never angry, and your mother always is, day and night. It's true, hah? I never lose my temper. Why? Because I'm never disappointed. Why? Because there's nothing I'm ever wanting. There's not a thing in the wide world I want. Or ever wanted."

"You wanted me," I said.

He made a little noise, through his saliva, like the scratch of a match. "A second one way or the other and you might have gone the road of all the other dead cells on the planet. Is that what you call wanting?"

"I mean now. You wanted me now," I said with a hardness.

"Now?"

"In exchange for leaving Enoch alone."

"I didn't want you," he said distinctly.

"But I'm here. I'm here!" I wailed to the twelve kings' heads on the chairs. Some were in silhouette, like elves, with open mouths in profile, ready to quarrel. With my outrage they did not quarrel. It was incontrovertible: I was there. "It wasn't magic that brought me," I mocked, "was it?"

"Depends what you mean by magic."

I said: "Blackmail."

"Ah, you're a roughneck to use a word like that on a fellow like myself," he said softly. "Black magic maybe. Not that the laws of human nature get suspended. They get applied deeper than ever. A bit of pressure makes people become themselves all the more, haven't you noticed?-A piece of psychological poetry-that's all it is, and interesting you'll admit-and look at the bad name you pick for it, hah?"

"You didn't write to my mother?" I pressed. "You didn't scare her half to death to make her send me?"

"I wrote her. It doesn't mean I wanted you."

"You were ready to take everything from her-"

"Look, girlie," he broke in reasonably, "what d'you think I could want you for?"

I had no answer. "But she sent me," I murmured, "all the same. You made her send me."

"If she sent you it's her doing, isn't it? Don't try to shove it off on me. Besides, you know why she sent you. don't you?"

"So you wouldn't ruin things for Enoch," I said promptly.

His laughter turned along the shape of a boat: it began flat, and ended pointed.

"Girlie, she doesn't give a d.a.m.n for Mr. Vand. It's plain as G.o.d and always was. Would she come herself? Could she? Oh no, it wouldn't do. The high and mighty don't come themselves. They wouldn't dare-it's too honest. It's too close to the truth to come yourself, so you send someone else. Be indirect, that's the whole principle behind an amba.s.sador, ask any authority on the subject." He stated: "She wants to get the taste of things."

"What do you mean, the taste?"

"The taste of me!" he finished gloriously.

"You think all she cares about is you?" I shot out.

He waved this away, and at that moment the moon entered him. It poured into his eyes and tried to seep out again under his fingernails. On the hand that looped upwards five glinting hoof-shapes battled. "And you know why you're not in London and Paris and Copenhagen and Rome? You know why you came? For the same taste. Coercion's only a pretense-a trick of pride. You came and she didn't make you come. She sent you and I didn't make her send you. You wanted to. She wanted to."

Anger slid in me. "None of that's true."

"True as heaven, plain as G.o.d. I didn't want a thing. I never do. I've explained."

"If I tell her that-"

"Tell her. Tell her everything you see. I know she's relying on you exactly."

"-you'll never get any money out of her again."

"Won't I though?" he sang at me.

"If she takes you at your word."

"But she never takes me at my word; I wonder why," he said slyly. "Not wanting, by the way, isn't the same as not needing. I don't want her cash. Never did. Why should I want her cash? But I need it. It's my needs she's been supplying, not my wants. You tell her that. Make it clear." He stood, unexpectedly yet not suddenly-the whole of him rose, but without simultaneity, as though he were arranging himself, as he stretched upward, in alphabetical order. He was a taU bellyless man. His silver thumbs hung from the pockets of his shorts. His eyes seemed silver, rooted deeply into his face like a startling pair of flowers: the thick lids an inch of leaf, and the effect of this was to give the bridge of his nose a vividness of solitude. Under the ascending moonlight I saw atlast his undistinguished teeth-the ordinary human article, and he meanwhile must have felt my investigations, because he lowered himself to the ground and sat, looking up at me with a simplicity. He had changed the level of our two seeings, and it changed somehow the level of his tone. It came straight to me. It intimated an alliance. It invited me to his side of the argument "Tell her," he picked up amiably, "it makes no difference to me if she's the high and mighty Mrs. Vand in the Emba.s.sy or out of it. No difference at all. Tell her I don't envy her husband if he's looking to get more of the world on his back. I don't envy anyone with the world on his back-not that esteemed lawyer fellow either, who I put the horns on twenty-odd years ago. Not if they steer the universe. So what if she's rolling in it tell her-I live in her house when I like it I drop her cash when I like it in fact I'm quite a squire around the old place by now, I've got it humming, tell her, nearly like the old Bolshie days. Import kids to tickle me-kids tickle me, the way they're all phonies-and coolies in a pinch to do what's over my head, in this case a b.u.m outboard. I've had all kinds though. Sh.e.l.l want to know such items, your mother. How I'm getting on and such. Now watch it while I spit." He did spit "No apology, when my stomach's roiled I spit."

"You think that sort of thing'll bother her?" I said. "What you do around here? It's nothing to her what you do."

"Well, you tell her. Tell her and see. Tell her how surprised you were."

"Surprised at what?"

"Well? Say it yourself. You say it What were you surprised at, hah?"

Expecting the infernal Dante, I had found the Virgil of the Eclogues-a green land with a shepherd in it: this was not my answer. "Nothing," I answered, but without sullenness. I moved into the sense of being subdued. He was slow, and spoke inefficiently; this pleased me. He was leisurely, he did not mean to overrun. He had the wastefulness of a natural force. He was mediaeval, but not like a knight; he was like the horse the knight rode, and that at once made him modern, not a social factor, but a factor of earth. It struck at me: I had feared him always; it was against the facts to feel this invasion of spirit and delight. I was afraid of his three dread names, I was afraid of the globe of his forehead not far from my knees, with its cold flat blades of light sunk in the hair. The fire was crowing with cinders, grainy and ending. Hints of terror rambled like a faint familiar fever. We did not stir in that plain summer heat, but from the b.u.t.tonhole of his static lips laughter opened out like a magician's trick bunch of flowers: a great flossy abundant head. It made me laugh with him. "Surprised at youth," he called out to me, though he was not two feet away-it was nearly a shout, and set off a sort of reverberation, a little moan among the tents. Some of the smaller Purses were rustling in their sleep. "What a very young man he turned out to be! No one told. They didn't tell, hah? A surprise, hah? Vestiges. Your mother'll like to hear it, it'll interest her that I've still got a face. -Fact is I'm a ruin, a bagful of wrinkles, but never mind. She's not here to see for herself, she's got you to rely on, isn't that nice? You tell her all that."

"Man without Ego," I announced to the flashlight.

"It's nothing to her what I do?" he repeated, a speculative finger on his nose. "You go ahead and tell her everything all the same."

"All the same," I took up, rocking, "She doesn't care."

"I'm an enemy?" he said pleasurably. "An enemy. So be it. Tell her I'm free. Want nothing."

"Want what you need."

"Get what I need. A distinction. Tell-no, mention. Mention Mrs. Purse. Right into the inner flap so to speak. Not of the tent. Sand's where she does her work. Every night but one. This one."

It flew from me-"Mrs. Purse!"

Laughter: long, long, long; until I bent my body away from it. "I get what I need," he said. Was it fantasy and lie? The mother of seven asleep beside the nuptial pole, under the nuptial canvas tongue? Or was it Circe wandering nighttimes among her motors, her toes straining sand, her pale neck gleaming? "Not," he said, "that I don't have a settled life, that's what they call it y'know, and proof of it. Evidence! Full-fledged family man. Have that in common with Purse. A father. The time comes when you need to express that. Show what you have to show, if only to yourself-claim what you have to claim. The descendant of Vikings and Greeks, and it doesn't stop, it sits in the genes, the time comes to look into the mirror of the future. Young, young, young-you I mean: like a warrior's girl on an amphora-" He put forth a hand slow as water and gripped my ankle. "Hers was thinner. Nice foot she had. Ankle like an arrow, not this blunt thing all bristles. Don't you shave your legs?"

"Yes-" A whip of throb danced in me. "Why do you compare me to my mother?"

"It's natural, I only do what's natural. Lend you my razor if you like. How long're you staying?"

"Until after the Senate hearings," I said firmly.

"That's trust!"