Frontispiece Alchemy: An Appreciation Of Thelonious Monk Digital print by Stone Riley Originally published in a portfolio titled Black And White

Kindly Note:

1.)    The facts presented in this book are historically, geographically and linguistically incorrect in far too many ways to list or even count, sometimes deliberately.  Sorry.

2.)    "The Guildhall Book Of Holy Sketches" (as I call it here) was apparently, on the other hand, a real document, though rare enough that not one copy nor even scrap of it has recognizably survived to us from Greek antiquity, and secret enough among its users that no written mention of it has yet been firmly identified in the Greek philosophers we do possess, not even Aristotle.  It was, if our historians' guesses are correct, a scroll, a sculptors' and painters' and poets' and actors' pattern book full of standardized small drawings of incidents from lives of deities, heroes and such, to show each character's characteristic visage, physique, poses, costumes, associated places, plants and animals, their hangers on, appurtenances, equipage and et cetera, and as well their activities together in the rich fabric of the standard tales of Greek literature, folklore and religion.  I have the Guildhall Book Of Holy Sketches doing duty here as a wealthy couple's pillow book.

3.)    The "f . . k" word is printed in this book a lot.  In case this liberty offends you, gentle reader, please let me explain the usage before you venture farther on.  Let me first assure you that, unlike some other current writers of historical romance, I have only offered you one scene of horrible sexual brutality, and that only happens through a kind of terrible accident of human circumstance for which the perpetrator in the scene can even be pitied, and he is heartily sorry afterwards, and this experience even helps impel him forward in the quest for true love, a quest which is, of course, fulfilled in a later graphically described and highly detailed sexual encounter.  And for another thing: I’ve used the word always within context solely for plot and character development and with redeeming social importance too.  I have certainly not intended to excite your prurient interests, not even if you have some, not even if that's why you bought the book.  For example, as you will see, one of the literary motifs of significant social import which are herein very cleverly interwoven is the universal tension between most of us and society’s stuffed shirt stuck up mannered sophisticates.  For example, there is one exchange where a very well bred lady has an opportunity to verbally instruct a coarse fellow who has previously, in a situation of vulnerable trust, taken shocking advantages.  You may be sure she utilizes the wretch’s own kind of "colorful" speech in a commendable effort to communicate effectively.  True, the word does sometimes appear here with its expletive or "naughty" sense, but only when a character is naughty or expleting.  And I have most often used it simply as a straightforward item of thought and speech with its common meaning, where it’s simply meant to indicate that one or more common people are contemplating, speaking of or doing the kind of things you and I both have in mind right now.  I would have felt stupid, frankly, if I had told you that a backwoods woman confides to a cobbler’s son about an eventful evening when, among other significant plot and character developments, she "had int…..rse" with a certain man of the boy’s acquaintance.  She f . . ked the guy, for the gods’ sakes.  People f . . k a lot and everybody knows it.  I'm going to try to show you how we actually do it, and what we do it for.  As you will see, for the most part, in my sympathies, the common folk finish on top so I have used this ordinary Earthy item of our language largely as a token or celebration of commonplace abiding truths.  Indeed, it is a central philosophical thesis of this book that finally, taken all in all, on the average, we humans f . . k for holy love.

4.)    But here in this book which purports to more or less depict an actual pivotal event on which the fates of famous republics, mighty empires, and great civilizations actually turned, you might look dubiously upon the very prominent place allotted in our story to simple downright f . . king.  Well, if that bothers you then just re-read the title page.  This is an historical romance novel.  And anyway, that was an age when politics were very personal.  And besides; there is some actual evidence to support my rather tenuous conjecture that King Phillip II of Macedon, being a deeply and profoundly religious man, was very hot for priestesses.

5.)    Greeks of the time described herein had an effective harmless herbal contraceptive medicine, a plant of the carrot family now believed extinct, which was cultivated in a small area of the North African coast and widely distributed across the Mediterranean region.  Women who could obtain it and afford it took the herbal powder in small regular doses, or stopped doing so, to reliably plan their pregnancies.  Physicians viewed it as an aid to happy family life.  And they had this medicine for many generations by the time of our story.  This actual true fact is not mentioned elsewhere in this book (other than this paragraph) but it was most definitely considered throughout when imagining relationships between men and women, the social status of women, the economics of sex, its use as recreation, technical and theoretical developments in the art of love, etc.  My imagining of these results is based on what I saw happen with my own eyes when The Pill became available in my society, except:  In this book many years have already passed with safe, effective and convenient contraception available to many women.  I am especially guessing that this had a profound effect on religion, as understanding gained from the art of love was expanded to apply to spiritual arts in general.

6.)    There is a common belief in many societies that female orgasm aids conception.  (Not that it is necessary, but an aid.)  Modern science must tend to agree if speaking statistically (pleasure >=< trust >=< frequency . . . etc.) and that might be expressed in biological evolution.  So maybe this traditional belief is true.  Detailed research (e.g. the hormonal sequence of female orgasm) would be interesting.  In any case, if this belief were firmly held in a society it would affect relationships between men and women and all the rest as per note 5 above.  And this is mentioned elsewhere in our story.

7.)    Today surprisingly little is firmly understood by our historians about the ancient Greek religion.  Except for a few brief passages in a few of their essays and letters, the Greeks did not write personal testaments about their faith.  Even though we have a vast quantity of their literature, almost all the religious information in it consists of simplified standardized symbolic stories.  Imagine if you tried to reconstruct the heart and spirit of Christianity (the guidance and consolation it can offer in this world and the psychic connections with divine realms that it can provide) just from the stories of the life of Christ, even with his sermons omitted.  The old Greeks very seldom tried to write out clearly the experienced essence of their faith because that would have tended to undermine the way they kept it.  They kept their faith in the form of "mysteries" somewhat like the unassuming mystery of Santa Claus that we keep for small children in our society today: a kind of universal collusion in an artistic fiction for the sake of certain ideals and hopes that we believe are needed.  And yet the old Greek stories (unlike ours today of Santa) are jam-packed with numinous psychological metaphors, et cetera, so as to be very powerful even for quite mature persons in the generations since.  So their stories are useful to us.  Together with the large quantities of their sculpture, architecture, and suchlike other relics that we also possess, plus the general understanding of Greek antiquity amassed by researchers in many fields of study, these powerful stories have made it possible for some of our deepest thinkers to produce a few written works of mystical experience that are surely very close to the ones that we may wish the Greeks themselves had left.  In this pious little fable that is now in your hands (my flawed and modest contribution to that body of serious scholarship and art that is so full of treasure) I have largely relied on several modern authors including: William Shakespeare, Robert Graves, Carl Kerenyi and Barbara G. Walker.  Thanks.

8.)    A few of my readers might be curious about the ancient Greek metaphysic science (which I have summarized herein as "Musical Electric Force harmonics").  I very heartily recommend for you a small blue book that is available in many stores.  You'll know it when you see it.

9.)    The spots marked "(Lacuna)" in this manuscript are in fact real lacunae, places where some very interesting text was deleted irrecoverably from an early draft through a horrifying computer incident at 2:36 AM 1999 CE for which the author was entirely responsible, though not to be construed as legal liability for any pain and suffering caused the reader.

10.)    In this book, Syracuse refers to Syracuse in Sicily rather than New York.

11.)    A note on prose style:  I'm trying for a net effect that might be called "orchestral realism".  That is, I am trying to induce your brain to think about as many things as possible simultaneously.

12.)    Finally, a note on syntax:  I make long sentences.  Speaking as a poet and information engineer as well, I hope they're well constructed.  I hope you like the rhythms, harmonies and dissonances.  I hope, even though you'll often find the journey to the period is as long and winding as the voyage of Odysseus, that you will also find it to be eventful and never dull.

    Suddenly, even as she spoke, Vicki realized what she was doing: the extremely stupid thing of shouting to be understood by a person of a foreign language.  Here in this fellow's foreign country.  "We are going to Eleusis!  Is this the right bus!"  How very rude.  But the platform behind her, outside the open door, was certainly quite loud with the countless intermingling voices and automotive noises of a crowded city; that could be a reasonable excuse.  At least they had politely waited at the back end of the queue.  The map was in her hand and she was showing it to the driver, pointing at their destination; she had folded and creased it flat and tidy with their expected route on the front like Philip always had.

    The man squinted hard not down into the map but up into her eyes, his eyes glinting bright beneath the bill of his official Athens transit driver's hat.  Then he looked her up and down as she stood there waiting in the narrow entrance of his vehicle, he acting like she was applying at the Pearly Gates for Heaven sakes.  And yes; then a consulting glance up to his saints; three figurines of the expensive hand painted sort, bountifully wreathed and heaped about with a cloud of floral decorations on a wide shelf above the windscreen, from there gazing down beneficently on his whole mobile congregation.  She half expected him to next demand her passport.

    Was he frowning at her boobs?  He was.  Vicki knew they must seem prominently on display; loose inside the dirty shirt but with the fabric quite pulled tight by the shoulder straps of her heavy pack; and too her whole chest was splashed with the shirt's bright snaky rainbow spiral pattern.  And the red sweater must improve on the effect, she suddenly thought, as it was buttoned underneath like one of those bare breasted prehistoric bustiers on those statuettes from Crete; but still, they were not disproportionately large.  And her bloke liked them.  How could this one here dare stare at them to disapprove?  The objectionable sod.  If he were secretly Saint Peter, he really seemed to be a nasty incarnation. Page 5

    But she was filthy.  No denying that.  Well, damn it, she was a hippie.  Officially.  She'd claimed the title on a photo postal card to Mum, first thing on arriving in the airport in London back on April first, and since then had grown to really like the newfound membership.  Vicki straightened up and looked straight back at him.  As she must!  She was a goddess!  This was her own Summer of Love, a holy honeymoon with life.  Fucking underneath the stars.  Fucking while the rain came down on their little square of yellow nylon sanctuary.  Fucking lying, sitting, standing up, rolling on the grassy dewy ground, drunk or stoned or sober.  At least once of each, at any rate.  She'd even grown to like that word, speaking it right out loud whenever conversation might permit.  Fuck; fuck; fuck; fuck; fuck; fuck; fuck; fuck; fuck; fuck!  What would Mother say?  What would Mother's friends say?  And anyway, she felt a rather desperate sense that a bit of madness just might save her sanity, so why not nymphomania?  As she sometimes said.  And she'd left home as a virgin so to speak, officially at any rate.  And the good old tower of Big Ben; that had been the photo on the postal card to Mum, looking just exactly thick and tall enough, at least privately to her, to be a suitable representation of the THING her mother, in a very private final chat, had accused her vehemently of going out to find.  As though it were some treachery.

    The driver frowned silently, looking up above her head at the huge pack that pressed the roof.  He might want extra fare for it.  She had the yellow tent and half their other stuff as well.  Philip had struggled with the weight very manfully for all these weeks, with his poor wounded hip growing worse and worse until his quick lively step had grown quite halting, until she'd made him give it up just yesterday.  Goddamn Viet Nam.  That's what he'd shouted to the skies when she took it off his back. Page 6

    She glanced around to see if there was room in here for them and all their mud stained gear.  There was.  The wide rear seat was empty.  She must remember now to look after details like that.  Taking on the larger load, she'd seemed to take the lead as well and Philip had seemed to rather sink into a sort of guilty torpor.  Goddamn Viet Nam.  And goddamn her loneliness too; goddamn the necessary sin that she regretted.  But perhaps her man would lead her to a healing.

    It seemed a long long time and many miles already since they'd found each other's eyes and flesh in that first night in London.  It had been her first cheap hostel dormitory bed, a woman and man from opposite ends of the Earth, she Australian, he American, and certainly the first time that she had found herself settling down quite nude onto a cot quite deliberate of every sound and move, sitting by him, twining her legs among his legs then grasping his private part surprisingly hard while kissing him then nipping at his nose and ears and lips, herself starting in upon the sexual relations with a nude fellow who had been so patient of her reluctance, surrounded by other folks more or less equally engaged on other cots, and all of this in a dark large echoing perfumed chamber lit by a single lamp on a decorated shelf, a chamber also possessed of the great treasure of an open door through which a midnight glow and voices of all the Universe's vagabonds from every time and place seemed to ripple in with flickering shapes of colored energy.  Looking back, it seemed to be the shadowed cave at a Gypsy camp in a certain large Spanish painting, a very holy scene.  They'd gone to Spain to see the paintings.  He'd been asking people "Where can I get a bath?" when they first met; those were his first words to her, with an air of amusing appropriate smiling desperation, and she couldn't help but tumble into love at once.  To tell the truth, she'd never actually slept with a man before.  Well, strange situations do call for strange measures.  On the second day he'd carried his cot to hers and cleverly tied the mattresses with bits of string so as to not slip apart.  He was an actual West Texan cowboy of all unlikely things and used, he grinned, to handling things that buck. Page 7

    Trying to force this awkward passage past this disapproving guard, she wedged the map into a sweater pocket and managed to pull out a handful of coins for the driver to choose.  Europe on five dollars and fifteen cents a day apiece; that's what her man had calculated as they lay so happily in tender smoky incense scented darkness, darkness that was full of secret or merry laughter, mysterious cries and whisperings in unknown tongues.  She had been worshipped.  A strong man with a brilliant smile, a far better man than this frowning one, had worshipped her.  One who even had the sense to tot a budget up.  There and then they had pooled their cash.  But now of course the autumn winds had begun to blow.  She was pregnant and he didn't know.

    "Eleusis?" Vicki asked again, thrusting out the coins, and still got no reply.

    Really giving up, really ready to seek some other means of transport or a different destination, Vicki turned about and shrugged down at Philip who stood outside the bus leaning heavily on the mechanical things of the doorway's edge, rubbing fiercely at his aching buttock.  He had his foot up resting on the lowest step. Page 8

    "It's no use." she said.

    But Philip raised a hand for the driver's attention.

    The man leaned down to see around her.

    Philip touched the wounded medal which he always wore dangling from a pocket flap, always wore there dangling crooked on its soiled purplish ribbon even despite the hostility and derision that it sometimes drew from their fellow vagabonds.  He started in to speak but had to stop and clear his throat, started in again with clear dignity but with a depth of sadness, his head held cocked like some proud rooster ought to do;  "Please sir.  Can we go to Eleusis?"

    Vicki turned about again to look for the response.  And she was amazed.  The driver sat back in his seat then gazed up at her face with new respect.  Respect for her?  The man's eyes traveled slowly from her face up to the bulging pack above her head, down to rest a moment with no embarrassment at all upon her breasts, down to her thighs and legs that held a sturdy stance, down to her feet clad in their road worn muddy boots.  And then he looked upon her belly.  Was she showing?  Already?  Impossible.  Could he know?

    "Parakalo!"  the driver cried, somehow full of joy.  "Parakaaalo!"  It was a deep melodious voice that rose along the word's stretching length into a shout.  And he was grinning, waving her in, pointing back toward empty seats that waited.  "Parakalo!"  he cried as Vicki stepped on back and then he rose to lean down, bracing on a railing, and grabbed Phillip's arm and, with a calculated movement like a sailor, pulled him in. Page 9

    "Elephesis!"  cried the driver, turning to other passengers who were watching, earning smiles and laughs from them.

    Some of the passengers applauded.  Many smiled as this pair of courteous tramps, she and he both now embarrassed, made their difficult way to the last wide seat across the back.  A young fellow even rose to help the very limping man.  Then the kind young bloke even helped them with their stuff.  The driver even watched to see them safely ensconced there, the big packs lain down in the aisle to make an ottoman for Phil, before he pulled the lever to slam the door and blew his horn quick seven times and they all trundled off.

    Phillip Maselin, a sun burnt white man aged twenty-one, was sitting on a municipal bus riding through the streets of Athens, Greece in cool September 1971; or maybe not.  Where are you when you think you sink into the kind of dream that really entirely seizes your mind and heart while you fall?  It was the same dream again, of course, but it deceived him now at first like always.  Not because it felt extremely real, not in the way that walking in the sunlight in a sane world does.  It was a madness, dark and fearsome madness, just as he realized anew each time.  It was some unexplained possession.  But there was also something stern and courageous and demanding that led the way, something he could almost trust.  That unnamed unseen something said quite unmistakably into his ear that some tremendous knowledge must be dreamed completely and cleanly and purely to its very end.  So far he had not found the necessary guts.

    He thought that he was groggy waking up.  His head was pounding like the huge compression of a cannon firing endlessly nearby.  That was the bouncing of the bus this time, for he had leaned his head back against the window when the sleep had irresistibly called his consciousness again into the past, and yet he was now waking to find a bulky bandage covering his right temple wrapped around onto his cheek, also covering that eye.

    He realized a piercing stink was in his nostrils, realized that this amazing stink itself was pain.  Involuntarily he gripped the edges of the cot and strained so that his head started up with his free eye open wide.  It was a vial of smelling salts.  A firm strong hand was on his chest urging him to lie back down again.

    A black woman's face, quite dark complected, was bending close so that she filled his vision. Page 11

    "Let's have a peek." she said.  The bandage disappeared.  The monstrous headache too.  She had a gadget in her hand that shined a sharp light in his eyes.  "Well this is really good;" she said;  "you'll be alright.  Nothing went inside.  Afraid you're going back to duty though.  They stitched you up real nice.  When you get back to the world, just let your hair grow out long and the scar won't even show.  Hey, sign up with the hippies huh?  The dizziness should go away when we quit pumping you with happy juice."

    This time was only three weeks in, so suddenly the joy of life awoke in him.  He had been hit and yet he would be clean and whole.  And neither would this unwanted circumstance rob him of the chance to prove his worth.  The heavy awkward helmet that the army made him wear had saved his life.  And yet this now began to seem to be the dream.  It started out like this each time.  Soon, he knew, he'd wish to be absolved by his own death.  And beyond that would come even more.  Tenderness and murder would become entangled, sex and horrid violence, and yet the joy to be alive awoke again.  And with it came serenity flowing abundantly from his heart.

    And with it came incredible beauty to the woman's face.  Gazing on that still and radiant countenance, it was impossible to speak the wealth of its exotic loveliness.  The skin was smooth as milk but dark with mystery, the soft lips amply broad for kissing, textured just like silk must be; the amber eyes were deep.  He felt an urge as if impelled by all of Nature and, in this confused state, thought that in this intimate time and place the act would surely be accepted.  He found the strength of will to reach one hand to her.  She was bending close, doing something with the wound beside his head but he was drugged against the pain.  This man's hand which he was moving fumbled almost of its own accord until it found a round full mother's breast.  At once this seemed to him a joy past knowing.  His fingers very gently squeezed as if his parched dry mouth could taste her milk. Page 12

    In natural charity she left it there.  She was busy, carefully washing.

    And then he could not let her go.  It was a strain to even keep from squeezing hard.  Oh, he wanted that amazing thing between his lips, that object of desire.  God help him, it was good to be alive.

    God help him, he then found the strength and sense to joke.  He shifted so to look into her face and let go of his desperate grasp to simply clumsily pet her.  He smiled as well as possible and heaved a sigh and slurred out the stupid words which, with luck, might seem amusing: "You wanna fuck yet?"

    The corners of her silken lips turned up.  He had made her smile.  It was a pride to give the woman pleasure.

    She was smiling now very openly as if she had not smiled in quite a while.  How many men, in this time and place, were man enough to give her that?

    Letting the wounded soldier's hand have its clumsy gentle way, needing to go on with her proper business with the wound, she shook her head slowly and said with all sincerity;  "No, but thank you."  And so her voice was softly brushed into his memory.

    Three long weeks into this universe of shit, and he was innocent still.  He did not know if he had hurt someone or not.  All that he had done was fire his rattling self-detonating gun machine out toward some movement in the forest.  Then later on, when he saw them falling at a distance, it was still enough to say they were his willing mortal enemies.  And when his comrades bought the farm, as the awful saying went, after the frenzy and confusion settled down, he'd simply shake his head and say "poor bastard" as if some kind of luck must always smile more amiably on him.  That was the way of friendship here.  He was hit one time already and survived, even without a scar that would really show when he finally reached the world of sanity. Page 13

    But then to actually see close up a moving living body in a human posture suddenly torn apart by his own act – to see the gouting blood and flying lumps of flesh which he himself had certainly made, right before his eyes and little more than an arm's length away – that would bring a strange new state of consciousness.  To clean the enemy's sticky blood and bits of meat first off his weapon then his hands and face; that was different.  And when he'd bent to wash, he'd seen the dark water in his helmet cradled in his lap turn immediately black red.  At first he'd simply wish that he would die to balance that particular act and all the other slaughters done by him or anyone; if his guilty death would be enough.

    But then, a few months on, there would come another step into the blazing river.  In a moment which felt like blazing holy inspiration, spirit had rebelled against the guilt and found sufficient explanation.  Little comfort now that chance had never placed into his hands a tool to act by this new will that grew watered by his secret tears; for in his heart a choice indeed was made.  He had reasoned clearly and quite madly that a fuller sacrifice was due the deathless Gods of War, they who stride across the battlefield.  Some inoffensive offering surely was required to fill their righteous hunger.  In a dark low subterranean bunker lit with lamps and filled with acrid herbal smoke, he had immediately stood and preached this new doctrine at some ingenious length to his fellow warriors.  They had hailed him as a great philosopher.  They had sung a song of home.  Then he gradually came to think that he at least was competent to be the sacrificial priest if not the innocent victim.

    Little comfort that the lucky bullet came ripping through the forest and ripping through his butt to send him home before he sent himself to Hell or prison.  Comfort that might be to some, but to this powerful man the judging of himself is his.  He is the one who strives to know and thereby rightly govern himself. Page 14

    So the dream lets him linger in the woman's smile for only long enough to know how holy is its joy.  The hard dream now, on this bus in Athens, lets him just begin to remember the easy dream that came to a wounded soldier then.  Shot with a hypodermic needle, he spreads his arms and finds that he can fly as though the air were flowing water.  He finds the beautiful exotic woman has embraced him.  She clings upon his bosom with her firm breasts pressed between, smiling proudly when he looks at them, gazing into his eyes, embracing with her strong arms and strong legs too woven around.  And so they fly as rippling trout fly in a rippling stream, all bodies one.  He feels the penetration of their union then, feels it even more physically than he would ever feel again, feels his tender swollen member pressing in and then growing really extremely large inside of her, inside of her unspoken pleasure, resting there unmoving, held tight in her warmth.  The sensation is astonishingly real.  Seeing that he feels this gift, she smiles again and kisses him.  The taste of yellow honey flows from her tongue and a great enormity of joy opens all around as though a yellow flower has opened.

    But then, of course, he knows what must come next.  In that awful time and place he had turned away from what she taught.  He had argued with her beauty.  He had thought he could demand her gifts by right.

    The yellow petals of the flower turn, even while they're opening, until they've turned into the yellow sunlight through the woven reeds of walls around, reflecting on the woven roof above and floor below.  This grassy temple is the little whorehouse by the river.  It is a shady spot where breezes flow down from the hills.

    His copious sweat is splashing on her.  She is rather upside down with her buttocks on a thick hard cushion.  She becomes a thin teenage girl, the dull sheen of too much hashish in her eyes, and tears dripping from their corners to the thin hard pillow.  This pallet where she earns her livelihood is hard as well.  Her skin is bronze in the dappling light with purple bruises here and there.  His powerful fists grip her little titties like his life depends on holding on.  The poor girl's thighs are lifted on his chest, pressed shut between his arms, her thin calves around his neck, so if his manhood misses of its proper mark it will at least find other female flesh.  His loins are pounding at her bottom with a well experienced consistent rhythm while his fists jerk her body up to meet each blow then push her down again. Page 15

    She is helplessly enwrapped in him and yet her hands are shoving at his shoulders.  Her lips stretch open, showing teeth like gleaming pearls, so he stops and bends down to force a kiss onto her mouth.  He thinks this is an act of tenderness.

    Escaping from his kiss, the girl shuts her eyes and turns her face away and speaks;  "Please G.I.; you hurt."

    This is a fond retreat where customers can lounge at leisure in the yard outside.  He hears the laughing voices of his friends.  He thinks of gleaming beer cans in a tub of ice.  He thinks of bathing in the rippling river and then dozing nude up on the shady bank.  He does not wish to spoil this place with cruelty as some men do.  He looks at her again, pulls out his dick and lets her loose.

    She falls completely open.  She is lying there below him with arms and legs all fallen wide, her hips raised up, her face still turned aside and eyes still shut, and with his old man still hard, encased in yellow rubber, now lying disappointed on his thigh, not even pointing at the red folds of this open cunt.

    But now she's lying there without complaint.  And he has paid his money.  And he hears loud rough male grunts elsewhere in the house.  And he has heard that at this house the whores in fact are legal slaves by some peculiar ancient local law.  He thinks that certainly he has his rights.  He is a foreign warrior come here to defend this place at his own dear expense.  He is himself now stationed at this very section of their tense perimeter, defending this whorehouse from invaders.  So of course he picks up the narrow girlish hips with his hands and shoves himself inside.

    "Ah!"  she cries, now shrill.  "G.I.; you hurt!" 

    In physical reality he did not murder her.  In physical reality the stress of war rose to a fuming boiling point that brought all of the incredible delusions to a new sharp brilliant focus in the center of his brain; so that he looked in all directions, found no weapon close enough to hand, merely imagined that he held a long broad gleaming silver knife that he had held somewhere before, descended slowly to pierce her throat in imitation of every woman's female parts, and then crouched above the girl with his fists pressed onto the pallet to left and right above her shoulders and the knife withdrawn and fallen by.  In physical reality the poor girl's eyes were even shut so she was not compelled to watch the awful grimaces that passed across her patron's face.  She only heard his labored breathing dimly through the haze of her own pain and medication, wondering fearfully what it meant.  In truth he did no greater harm than any of his brothers who passed that way.  If souls are judged somewhere perhaps she'd testify for him. Page 16

    In truth he rose up from that bed of torture, found his weapons, clothes and armor, found his friends, found a savory lump of hashish as big as the end of his thumb, and let the hot smoke raft his brain away into oblivion.

    But in a different truth he'd done the murder.

    In that other truth, three years on, he rode now in a city bus in Athens, Greece, bound for Eleusis.  In this reality he was an unschooled pilgriming priest who now and then led on a follower or two – one who'd chanced along the way to make the highest sacrifice of all that can be made, the death of innocence – for such archetypal roles are very real in the human heart.  He was, in fact, a human being with great depth of mind and soul.  To the Greeks one of his names was Heracles.  In some other place, with other law, there might have been a proper priestly training for this sacrificing individual and better ideals and further riches too; but here and now he must struggle with enormous impoverishing guilt.  In this other truth of spiritual things Phillip Maselin was cringing from the knowledge of the undone deed he knew that he had really done, pressed upon him now again by the insistent dream.  But this time at least there was some progress.

    Crimson blood was spouting from her newly opened cunt up into his amazed staring eyes and flooding down onto his hands upon the yellow floor.  And yet he did not awake like always before.  More than ever, this time he remembered how it happened.  At first it was her words: "You hurt."  He knew that much already.  And he had often thought this was a clue to larger wisdom.  Who was hurting?  The poor girl's words were huge with ambiguity, speaking as they surely did of universal pain.  But this time he found the strength to fit this clue into some lock and turn it like a key and see what door would open.  There was only a moment of strength remaining but it was time enough to gain a bit of ground.

    The door which opened was somehow behind him.  The great yellow light was blasting out with sharp blades of red, accompanied by some perfume scent which could not be recognized.  Explosives?  The woman and man were floating together at some focal point of power but she was innocent and he was not and the weird trigonometry of that conjunction seemed to force their roles.  Now the Gods of War arose behind him in all their blazing power.  Impelled by them, his hands went down and did the work again which they now must seemingly do in slowly infinitely repeated rhythm.  Then in the center of that troop of horrid deities, on which no human can truly gaze and keep a grip on mortal sanity, there arose an even larger darker power. Page 17

    The power of this enormous shadow grew and moved around him.  And yet this was not the oblivion which he hoped some deity would grant.  And this one was surely the universal female whom he had betrayed.  And this one, if it spoke, would be the voice which lured him on.  He understood that this greater one was somehow all of death and life together, for him his past and future.  All of it.  For the Greeks one of her names is Fate.  Where would she lead?  But there was no time now for more.  The vast full oceanic aura of this thing was in him as he woke, then gradually fading from his vainly grasping thoughts.

    The bus was swaying to a stop, bouncing his head one more time on the window glass.  The damn thing needed new suspension springs.  He reached up one hand to feel the new bruise then shook his head hard and rubbed the heels of both hands hard into his aching eyes.  Then scrubbed his dry palms on bearded cheeks that seemed to be his as well.  He blinked and blinked but found no tears.  This different world condensed slowly to a grainy focus.

    A neatly dressed young man with plastic horn rim spectacles and a young woman even more dolled up were in the seats to left and right before him, turned around to see.  Their legs were out in the aisle amid his useless outstretched limb and the heap of gear.  They had been observing while he slept.  They seemed fascinated by the show and yet he didn't mind because they looked okay with it.

    Phillip Maselin realized the sweat was pouring down just like it always did, despite the remarkable new clarity and calm this time.  He definitely must get one of those famous Turkish baths someplace some time beyond the fucking Blue Horizon.  Had he flailed about?  Vicki said he sometimes did.  His cramped position was uncomfortable.  His canteen was tied onto his pack someplace; clean water that he badly wanted.  The bulky braided purple kerchief around his head was shoved down tight; it had made a bruise instead of padding one; he pulled it off.  He grasped the seat back before him and heaved upright and leaned forward to fumble among the bundles and all the tangled legs.  He wished old Pop was here somehow.  He would have said, as Pop had one time said when coming conscious from a very brief encounter with a certain horse:  I guess this must be Monday morning, but how come I don’t remember Sunday night?

    Vicki began to rub his neck.  To no one in particular, Phillip croaked;  "Water.  Please." Page 18

    The young man found it first.  Apparently he understood some English.  That was helpful.  Anyway, the large plastic bottle was right there in plain sight and it was bright blue.  Phillip now recalled; this one was the helpful guy who had helped him limp here from the front.  The fella even opened it to hand it over.

    And the fella spoke in English too.  He smiled cautiously and said;  "Hello pal.  My name is Socrates; but I am still a student only."

    Reclining back, Phillip managed one single terse tight laugh to show he liked the joke.  Should he introduce himself as a philosopher?  He writhed a bit to seek some comfort and finally only held two fingers up in the magic runic sign of peace that had started out in hope but now by 1971 had come to seem so ruefully pointless.  He tried to smile, saying;  "Peace unto thee brother!  Call me Phil.  Or Raving Lunatic.  Or just Shithead.  Whichever."  That was a quote from someone he had known in Viet Nam; himself.  He'd spoken that line numerous times to introduce himself to new recruits, to show his priestly self to them immediately.

    Vicki could not ever stand to hear him talk like that.  Coming close, she touched his brow to wipe away the sweat with fingertips.  She used her sweater cuff.  In her elaborate and beautiful Australian accent she whispered;  "How ya doin Sweetie?"  It was a phrase she'd learned from him – the question which he often asked when she awakened – but in her voice the clipped Yank contractions became a verse of song.  And so he drew his lover even closer for a kiss that in this time and place between these two became extraordinarily tender.  When that was done he put the bottle to his lips, tilted it up and poured it in and rinsed his dry mouth as well as possible and gulped it down.  He thought of finding some clean bit of cloth or such with which to give his teeth a scrub.

    But then the young man pointed to the woman who was with him and said, in thick but perfectly understandable English;  "You listen to her.  Okay?  She is a medical student.  Psychiatry."

    Phillip swallowed once again involuntarily.  He had managed to evade the U. S. Army shrinks.  He said, "Huh?"

    Vicki was thinking this: If this creature was the sort of woman whom she looked to be, she would dislike her very much.  The small young woman was extremely neat.  She looked quite conservative.  She wore the kind of professional lady's puckered asshole suit that you only see downtown in Sydney or Canberra; grey skirt and jacket, really nice white lace trimmed blouse shut at the lacy collar by an onyx pin.  She had been obviously uncomfortable to situate herself among a pile of dirty gear, and then embarrassed more to see somebody drop like a stone into sleep and start to writhe and mumble.  The bloke – the sod with the bad luck to be muffing the little heap – he had been a help but how conceivably could poor Phillip be any of the sheila's business?  But now the truth was out: a baby shrink!  Yes, she looked the part.  And, damn it, Phillip was interested.  Damn, damn, damn.  There was a pair of tits hanging off the front if it; ergo good old Phil is interested; you could always count on that.  And now this insufferable bitch seemed to begin striving for a posh Limey accent with long vowels, and seeming to relish saying "mmm" through pursed lips.

    And, despite this multitude of nasty provocations, Vicki was resolving to be fair.

    The mammal thing was speaking to Phillip, saying;  "Mmm . . . my name is Diotoma.  Mmm . . . from ancient literature.  Mmm . . . do you know this name?"  She gestured vaguely with each sentence, twirled manicured fingers in the air in evident impatience with the world.

    Vicki briefly blew a modest little raspberry, just a little "Pllllt."  This was preposterous; Baby Professor was handing out exams in ancient literature.  She forced herself to stop but then, thinking on it more, could not stop her head from wagging as her favorite little charming exclamation from adolescence came popping out;  "Damn, damn, double damn; stuff it in and call me Ma'am!"  The strangers glanced her direction for a puzzled moment first but then apparently concluded that they might continue to ignore her. Page 20

    And good old Phil was sitting there raptly studying the bitch with the olive complected oval classic Mediterranean face.  And the dark brows arching over gleaming eyes which reminded Vicki of that portrait of the dancer in El Prado, the one with the stupefying unbelievable provocative stare.  And the manicure and clean hair.  And the elastically suspended boobs.  And the armpits which undoubtedly must be scented with a reasonably good cologne.  And the nose that had not awoken yesterday with two enormous swollen zits each of which, even appearing alone, would have dwarfed Mount Etna.  And good old Phil was saying to this dolly;  "Diotoma?  Okay, well, maybe; I'm not sure."  He still seemed groggy from the sleep and from The Dream.  He was now vainly trying to push back his beautiful long and loose but, she must admit it, rather dirty hair.  He scratched his bearded chin.  He seemed to be honestly searching for a scrap of memory in that fascinating way of his.  He was proud to be a self-educated learned man.

    The woman rather shrugged;  "If you are going to Elephesis, I thought you may know."

    Vicki chose to interrupt by leaning forward, reaching out a fingertip with which to nearly poke the woman's finely delineated aquiline nose.  "Psychiatry?" she asked.  "Now what is that about?"

    This was not intended as the boorish fart it was; it was actually intended as a calculated provocation, a test of her own.  Vicki had watched headshrinkers and, even worse, had heard them privately discuss their work.  Waiting for her final year of nursing college, being strong and sturdy and badly needing funds, she had committed the regrettable mistake of accepting temporary employment at a loony bin.  She had found herself dropped into a pit of active evil where cruelty measured out rewards for innocence, where she herself was certainly without the means of bringing in one straw of good.  Three weeks of that were quite enough, thank you very much.  So now, here, might this prissy girl dare to suggest that her books held better therapy than real erotic love?

    The vaguely worded and offensive interruption had left Diotoma struggling to reply so Vicki pressed the advantage.  She tossed off a rather haughty laugh and continued;  "There's a song: Anything is a phallic symbol if it's longer that it's wide.  Have you heard it?" Page 21

    Diotoma tossed a laugh herself.  She was quick witted.  "I have.  Yes.  Ha.  Longer than it is wide.  Anything."  She gestured an oblong object with her hands.  "Yes.  And if it is square it is . . . mmm . . . vagina.  Yes . . . how shall I say?  Good satire!  Good song!  The idiot Sigmund Freud!"  But then she seemed to be sincerely pleading: "Believe me; I do not do that.  I follow Doctor Carl Jung.  Listen please.  I wish well for you.  This occurrence now is very interesting; you being here and Socrates at once, you see.  Perhaps coincidence.  There are no foreign tourists to Elephesis in these years.  Very much unusual.  Both of you . . . mmm . . . appear to be intelligent.  Are you going to there?  Really?"

    "Oh yes!"  cried Phillip.  "I've read about it.  I've got Professor Mylonas' book."  He put on a grin.  "I've been packing it around since Munich and it weighs ten kilograms."

    Socrates laughed at that flattering if gross exaggeration, really laughing simply at the effort of this foreigner to cast a friendly line across the language barrier, and also feeling glad to have a chance to break the women's tension.  And young Socrates spoke up quite enthusiastically: "Doctor Mylonas!  Yes!  What luck!  Do you hope to meet her?  You must take my telephone number.  It is only a dormitory."  There he shrugged.  "I and my sweetheart are staying in the country for this weekend – we have no privacy you see, but my sister's brother has a farm – but you should call in the city Tuesday night.  But you must visit the Sacred Precinct as soon as possible!  You must!  The photos in the book are not enough.  I go there for my studies often, you see.  I help the digging.  She lets me stick back together some of the bits and pieces, and drawing sketches.  I find things in the library.  The doctor has inspired me to devote my life to archaeology and history and mythology combined, as she has done."

    Diotoma beamed at him with clear affection.  Even though it was the slightest possible touch of fingertips upon his knee, her touch was done with a strength of tenderness.  To Vicki this – and the next words Diotoma spoke to Socrates before two strangers on a bus – explained the evident discrepancy in their ages, only a year or so at any rate.  Diotoma said to him;  "My dear friend, your signature is in the book in several places, on several of the drawings."  She was obviously, to some extent at least, a loving mother to this good precocious boy. Page 22

    And Socrates shrugged with a most becoming show of modest pride.  "Oh, very little." he replied.  He mimed the act of signing with a very tiny flourish of the pen.  "One can scarcely read it."

    And Vicki felt her coldness toward the woman melting into admiration.  Here was a woman with a man in a way that she had never seen before.  Was there any possibility of at least some part of such a role in the relationship between herself and Phil?

    So on the moment's urging, in this sense of admiration, Vicki quite sincerely sought advice from Diotoma.  Interrupting the tender silent look between the two, Vicki asked;  "So, what do you think?  About us going to Eleusis?"

    But then the bus lurched to a stop and Diotoma nearly slid out of her seat so she must squirm to pull the tight skirt back down over her knees.  She then gazed out through a window and, although she did not hesitate to speak, her voice seemed deep with regret.  "I am afraid . . . mmm . . . I am very sure of this.  He will be rejected."

    Phillip had been leaning forward smiling.  Now he instantly jerked back as though he had been physically struck and Vicki's eyes leapt to his profile.  What a thing to say; Vicki thought; such arrogance.  So typical.  Such a blow to hope.  And Phillip instinctively chose silence as the best reply.  He set his jaw into the stern defiance of the sick.  This was such a startling contrast to the quick and subtle motions which she knew and loved, it brought a stab of pain.  And so Vicki reached to touch his face, firmly turned his face toward her with fingertips on his chin among the wiry curly beard, but could not think of words.  She loved him; that was all.  And so she only smiled into his eyes.

    And God bless him, he leaned on her.  But then he fairly well collapsed.  He reached an arm behind her waist and leaned to press the unseen scar beside his head hard into her breast.  His free hand went to cup beside her other breast as well.  Tears started to Vicki's eyes and nearly fell.  She embraced him, caressed his hair and felt some brilliant colored power flowing back and forth between them.  She glared at Diotoma.

    Socrates, either shocked or embarrassed or touched by all of this, swaying as the vehicle started off again, shook his head, removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes.  He spoke something to his girlfriend in Greek, something that she did not like, in a tone definitely of reproof for what she'd said.  Then he spoke to Vicki;  "Okay; all right.  You are serious.  You are no tourists.  This circumstance, I think, has meaning.  But listen to her.  She is studying psychiatry, Jung's psychiatry.  She knows." Page 23

    So Diotoma continued, now again staring away from them toward the world outside;  "Perhaps I know; perhaps not.  Perhaps I know many things."  And she looked to Vicki.  "He was in Viet Nam apparently.  This is correct?  The medal he is wearing?"

    Vicki answered with a very bitter tone;  "He was wounded.  He did some things.  I don't understand it but that's why he has to go."

    "Yes!"  Diotoma said, suddenly angry and sharp herself.  "We have Viet Nam soldiers in Hellas too.  I have seen their treatment in hospital.  We are your allies there.  Only one battalion but you don't know even that, do you?  Do you?  War is terrible and that one is very bad.  But also Elephesis is a terrible place.  Perhaps he should not go; I mean perhaps not yet."

    "No!"  Socrates really shouted.  "It is beautiful!" 

    Diotoma reached to touch her fellow's knee again, now with a reassuring hand.  "I do not mean the ruins.  The ruins are very beautiful.  The hill.  The well.  The rock.  The view.  I speak . . . mmm . . . metaphorically.  This is a metaphor for what is going in his head.  It can be very hard to go into the temple, to the Hall of Mysteries.  They will not let him even to the Sacred Precinct, this way he is.  Other gods posses him.  The way you are, my sweetheart, of course you do not see these difficulties.  You are there.  Remember, the walls are high for reasons.  You understand?  I speak of the wandering soul arriving to the temple.  There is no key for outside of the gate.  It must open from within to those who are prepared.  Mmm . . . how should I say in English?  It is very dark before the light."

    Phillip came up to answer that.  Clutching at Vicki's shoulder with one hand and the other grasping the edge of the hard seat, he managed to pull himself up in an instant nearly straight.  He shook his head so that the long hair flew about.  "No." he said quite loud.  "You are wrong.  It is very bright before the dark.  And I do know.  I have been inside the temple.  And now I've got a key.  I'm going back." Page 24

    But Diotoma answered too;  "My poor friend, you are mistaken.  You have been inside a different temple.  You have been perhaps inside of one that stands beside a river, yes?  That one is inside the city wall before the start."

    Phillip's stern jaw dropped.  He gasped.  "Before the start?  That was before the start?"

    But now Vicki had truly had enough.  Not only for her dear man's sake but also for herself.  Whatever this mysterious trip might turn into, she was here.  Truly, she had come here on some business of her own.  Far away from here, some time beside this time, a crime was done.  She had procured and undergone abortion.  At least she'd found the best conditions.  At least it was a proper sterile clinic, a very sympathetic nurse, an old physician with a shaky hand.  It was reasonably early.  It was necessary.  There was a voluntary donation toward reproductive education for the poor and she had emptied out her purse, reserving only taxi fare.  She had murdered her own baby on a Thursday afternoon; that's how it was construed at law.  The nurse had kindly offered the suggestion that she ought to dine on soup and bread.  At least there had been rain.  And that was in a land where she could only ever be a maiden, wife, widow or whore; even if these choices made of countless women raving grieving ghosts while they yet breathed.  She had run away into the wide world seeking some sufficient answer for it, refusing to believe forgiveness must be bought for innocent transgressions, seeking something else instead.

    And then they found each other.  At last, finally, after that vast oceanic commotion in that first beautiful blessed narrow bed, resting there, lying on him, his tender softened manhood, to her immense unspeakable delight, still marvelously carefully held inside; there this man had, quite reluctantly, only at her urging, taken her fingers and placed them here then here upon his scars.  And he had said he walked a path of healing.  Some magic doctor of the Texan Indians, apparently from what he said, had pointed onward east the very day of his arrival home from war.  And she had told herself that she would follow.  His road was surely hers.  He seemed to be well on the way.  And, by every god that ever was, this man had worshipped her.  Despite her felony – even though she had quite deliberately, that afternoon in casual conversation, in his presence, confessed it to two friendly unknown women, a lesbian couple they were – despite that awful fact she had quite unmistakably felt herself blossom with astonishing Divinity in this man's hands and in his sight in that dark place.  And this strong man was he whom luck or destiny or fate had chosen to beget her second child. Page 25

    But now the thing was clearly out of hand.  Where were they going?  And the man, it now appeared, was sicker than she'd known, shaky on his seeming sturdy legs, now like some mountaineer suddenly fallen to the far end of a dangling rope.  He was no longer to be trusted as their scout.  So she was thrust into the lead and she must lead by marker stones that she could find.  She must find the way by what she felt to be her proper goal.  The faith must simply be that her path was his.

    But yet she was afraid of seeming selfish.  She could not say exactly what she meant, could not speak her need that might conceivably be separate nor demand her right of leadership.

    Vicki sat up straight.  She took Phillip's hand and pressed it into her secretly pregnant lap and now put her arm around his shoulders.  She said to them;  "Look here you freaks.  I have not read the book.  And I am definitely not a shrink.  But I am a nurse.  You understand; I have graduated already.  From Folkstone College of Nursing in Brisbane, Australia.  I have worked with the sick.  And there is one thing I certainly do know."  All three were staring at her quite attentively, poor Phillip most of all.  "When a person is trying to find healing, you must simply not tell them where they cannot go."

    Diotoma was impressed.  "Mmm . . ." she said;  "mmm . . . yes.  Even, even there are surprising outcomes.  There are always special cases.  One does not know.  Mmm."

    But Socrates, for some reason, got his teeth around the bit.  He said;  "Wait one moment now.  Wait.  The ancient authorities are very exact, very exact.  This is testified by best authorities.  There was a cleaning ritual required.  Very certainly required.  Especially for those who had taken human life."  But on that spot he stopped.  He suddenly saw how very serious this thing was he had just then said, how far it seemed to be beyond his ken.  And then he realized the even greater mystery of where his thought was leading.  His gestures rather froze: an open palm held in the air, a slight tilt of the head.  He was now wondering how to say it or if the next thing should not be said at all.  Perhaps he'd lost sight of the conversation's meaning for this wounded man before him and gone astray on theory.  But he was an honest scholar and it was the truth – with beauty in the thing somewhere which should not be lost nor tarnished – so he looked in Phillip's face, careful of the reaction.  And then he suddenly held up a finger and, though rather struggling with the foreign twists of tongue, he managed to hurry through the words with their intended emphasis quite firm: "Especially for those who have taken innocent human life.  Innocent human life."

    For a long moment Phillip, rather slumping as he was, stared straight back at Socrates.  But then Philip very slowly nodded.  He said;  "Yes.  I read that in the book.  I just picked it up in the store and opened it and that's what it said.  Page one-oh-two up near the corner.  See?  I decided to go right there.  That's the main reason why.  It was what you call in English: divination.  An old witch showed me how to do it." Page 26

    "Oh!"  Diotoma said, as though she finally understood.  "You have just been called.  And now you have simply got it . . . mmm . . . wrong way about.  Arse to frontwards.  Yes?  That is the phrase?  You do not want the Sacred Precinct yet!" 

    Phillip shook his head in disagreement.

    "Listen to me, sir, please.  Will you listen?  Yes?  Elephesis was designed in steps.  You understand?  The ancient priestesses and priests were very smart, not such as the idiot Sigmund Freud, whom we now struggle with.  No, they were expert.  They made smaller steps.  Yes, you do need the Sacred Precinct, yes, and the Hall of Mysteries.  But there are steps before.  First you go to be instructed so there will be abandoning of guilts, the cleaning.  Proper instruction, see, by people speaking language you understand.  Then the long walk, then the Sacred Precinct and then the Great Mystery is revealed.  But first of all, before all that, you need the celebration.  Understand?  You need the party with the grand parade and songs and dancing on the beach.  First of all, that!" 

    "Yes!"  cried Socrates.  "This will solve the question."  He clapped his hands and stamped a foot just like a college student gone on holiday should do.  And he shouted as loudly as he could;  "We all need beer!" 

    There was some startled laughter elsewhere on the bus.

    "Beer?" asked Vicki.  "Not soup and bread?"

    "Yes;" Socrates answered;  "the special sacred beer.  Oh well, you do not know?  May I explain?  Every year, you see, year and year and year, the whole city Athens got up and walked the grand parade to Elephesis.  Statues being carried home, everything.  The mystai, the, oh, the new initiates, they went along in front – followed a tall priestess with a big basket on her head and a little boy who was a priest and king, the mystai kind of following their own different journey – and only these mystai and old initiates too would go into the Sacred Precinct at the end.  But the whole Athens people come along behind and for them it is a great party every year.  This time of year, the autumn.  And they had big jugs of special barley beer from which to drink."

    Vicki could not help but smile.  Her hopes were up again.  "Sacred beer?"  She tried to find some joke as though it were a brand of beverage you could find among the offerings in a shop, but nothing came to mind.  "Dancing?" Page 27

    Socrates and Diotoma answered both at once;  "Yes!" 

    The girl went on;  "Sacred dancing.  Hypnotic . . . mmm . . . psychotropic songs and dances on the beach when the sun gone down and spirits come up dancing on the waves of the sea and every stream and brook.  And the stars and moon all dance with the spirits on the sea."

    "What a trip!"  cried Vicki; "Sounds like they had some LSD."

    "Oh well;" said Socrates;  "that is too coarse, too hard.  Too uncontrolled.  Too powerful itself.  And they had not any need."

    "Mass hallucination." put in Phillip.  "Diotoma, I know you're wrong about me.  There were special cases even then; the whole thing was sometimes done at once or with the order mixed around.  There was some emperor for sure, at least.  But they really were experts."  He turned to Vicki;  "They didn't need any kind of actual shit at all.  There was a little something in the beer – probably catnip or chamomile or something, maybe hardly dope at all, just something to help mellow out the alcohol – but really they tailor made this mass hallucination trip.  See?  Tailor made it with the songs and dances year after year to get everybody really into this specific vision for everybody with the mermaids coming up and dancing in the moonlight on the surf.  And they did it every year for . . . what?"  He turned to Socrates.  "How many years?"

    "One thousand and eight hundred years at least."

    "Oh, jeez!"  Vicki was impressed.  "Gollywhop me please!  Stuff a whistle up me snoot and make me sneeze."

    Good old Phil had given her a whole other side of this in explaining for these recent weeks.  To hear him tell, for all these days and nights, it was some huge ordeal.  Some torture trip like a ninety-nine day fast and then they nail you to a freaking cross.  And then you drag the cross through town.  And then they make you swim.  That's why she hadn't read the book.

    So now Vicki turned to the only woman present who seemed to know the scoop, so she might find out the truth about the other perfectly obvious and extremely interesting possibility about the stoned out party trip, and she asked Diotoma;  "Was there fucking?" Page 28

    A large giggle burst from Phillip's lips.  But then he thought and said "Probably not.  Wrong kind of trip.  Mermaids can't, you know.  Only temporary abstinence though, for sure, just for that particular thing.  Abstinence; it probably helped for that specific thing."  He looked to Socrates for confirmation but only got a blank look in return.  Phillip shrugged.

    "No?" Vicki asked, looking inquiringly at each of them.

    But somehow neither Socrates nor Diotoma seemed to know what she was asking.  She repeated the word, pronouncing quite distinctly, but they didn't seem to know it.  Could that be true?  Apparently it was.  And Phillip now only sat there straining to hold in a grin.

    She asked Phillip;  "So there wasn't?  Not even back in the shadows?"

    He only answered;  "My little chickadee, I love you very much."

    And she replied;  "Well, that's nice."

    Surprisingly, he flashed a wink.  He said;  "Why don't you explain to our new good friends what fucking is?"

    So then a whole panorama of possible pranks opened in her mind.  What fun!  What should she say?  "Mmm . . ." Vicki said.  "Well, you see . . ."

    But then she glanced again at Phillip.  And there was something different in his eyes: anger.  He flashed the wink again: conspiracy.  Against these two.

    Her first thought had certainly been the simple kind of harmless trick which she had learned among their fellow tramps, the sort of hook and gaff that lent a lively dash of sauce to ordinary chat and finished up with grins all round and pretended cries of outraged pain.  The target of the jest, discovering that they had been jerked about a bit, might clutch their chest and wail in agony or rise and pantomime a limp.  But these two had really hurt her man and now he wished to take this chance to hurt them back.  And he expected she could do it for him.  Or else he felt that they were standing in his way and wanted her to somehow clear them off.  Or else they'd simply made him mad.  This was different.  She had seen this in him now and then before and always thought it justified.  But thinking on it now, Vicki found that her own anger had quite melted; these two wished them well.  Did this arise from Phillip's weakness?  But Phillip wanted help and he was trusting to her wit.  And anyway, a little fun would do no harm; surely they could stand some sort of friendly jab. Page 29

    What was the subject?  Sex.  She must pretend to explain the favorite American word for it.  She spun it round.  Conjugations?  Just to hear the conservative girl speak the delicious dirty word a time or too unknowingly in peculiar forms and then to see the dawn arising, that might be a laugh.  Fucketh?  I fucketh thee?  But that was a King James Bible joke and surely wouldn't work in Greece.  Well, she had no Greek but did posses some college Latin.  Fuckimus?  Fuckiassimus?  Fuckimaximinimus?  Nothing seemed to have the gaff required.  She could get personal.  They were on a weekend holiday to someone's farm.  Domestic animals?  Perhaps.  But there should be a lead in from religion, more or less, to fit the general conversation.  A cleansing ritual?  Ah! 

    Vicki said to Diotoma;  "Water!" 

    "Yes?"

    "I was asking if they bathed in the sea."

    "Oh.  Well.  Perhaps.  That would be sense, I think.  That was proper other times."

    "Wait;" spoke Socrates;  "are you sure?  Isn't this word something . . ."

    "Yes, of course!"  Vicki cried aloud, hoping that a little volume in her voice might be convincing.  But the fellow only frowned; she must focus on the other one.  "Fucking;" she told Diotoma;  "it means cleansing of the soul like Socrates was saying, or, really, anytime you go out for some clean fresh air or anything like that, to get revitalized."

    "Oh?" said Diotoma.

    "Clean air is like bathing in the sea.  The sea of life.  The waves like breathing.  Mmm . . . yes.  Interesting.  But 'mermaids' he said; what is that word?" Page 30

    "You two are going to the country for the weekend?"

    "Yes!"  Diotoma answered with some pleasure.  "It is a nice place."

    "Nice air?"

    "Oh yes.  Much better than the city."

    "So you're going to get fucked.  You're going for some fucking.  You are going forth to fuckimus."

    "Fuckimus?" the woman asked carefully with a little earnest doubt but still no real suspicion showing.  She was puzzled mainly by the sudden appearance of Latin conjugation.

    "Do you want to learn some English?"

    "Surely."

    "Just repeat after me:  I'm going to the country for some fucks."

    "I am going to the country for some fooks.  Fucks."

    "I shall fuck me darlin's fucker till it's jam."

    "What?  I shall fook me darling's fooker till it is a jam?"

    "And when his fucker's jam, I shall find a handsome ram."

    "What?  And when . . ."  But now the day was dawning.  She was unsure a moment more, wondering what sort of jam could possibly be meant and then what sort of ram; but the poem's structure was so completely doggerel and her informant seemed so naughtily amused that two and two finally added up at least to three and she knew she was being cranked.  A fear of stupidity fled across her face, a blush began, but then she realized that if she did not play along she would not hear the ending.  To what obscenity, exactly, was the silly poem leading?  And for the sake of almost scientific curiosity, she chose to toss her prudery into the game.  ". . . his fooker has become jammed . . . yes? . . . jammed!  . . . then I shall find . . ."

    But Socrates held up his hands and cried in real alarm;  "Now wait!  Please wait here; wait!" 

    There then ensued a whispered little chat between the two in Greek.  "Fook" was repeated several times and "jam".  Socrates was quite in earnest, quite offended, but still Diotoma softly and reassuringly laughed until he got along to explaining "ram".  His voice rose with gesticulations.  Her blush returned quite full and warm.  She glanced about furtively while yet he spoke until, at last, there was no more explaining to be done. Page 31

    Diotoma looked at Vicki, saw that the vagabond was holding in a most mischievous but good hearted grin; encouragement without malice.  So Diotoma could not help but grin as well; and yet she thrust one dainty finger right at Vicki's nose and shook it there and cried in admiration that she could not hide;  "You are a nasty woman!" 

    And yet the prank led into argument.

    Socrates, feeling obviously betrayed, nodded vigorously saying;  "Both of you require the cleaning ritual; yes for sure.  The ancient authorities were quite exact.

    (Lacuna)

    was one thing she did love dearly.  He conjured up the strength to show a grin and even made a small dry laugh.  The others calmed a little, Socrates reluctantly.

    Phillip asked Vicki;  "Remember that freak in Avebury?"

    Immediately the place came flooding back.  Oh yes she did remember Avebury.  Most assuredly.  England.  Green.  A rare dry day in spring but very cool.  Quite heavy dew.  The giant interlinking circles in the land of giant standing stones that stretch away beyond the visible horizon, one and one and all.  A tiny Mediaeval village in the middle.  But which freak did he mean?  The witches surely.  A very English very peculiar couple.  His white frizzy hair and baggy seedy tweed jacket with mismatching plaid shirt and tie; the old lady screeching out strange songs very badly in some form of Gaelic.  This pair of old witches had shown around this little pack of young folks come in a bus from London, with dowsing rods and pendulums, guided them through some very interesting meditations you can do among the huge rough rocks that stand up from the sheep cropped grass.  Time travel.  Really.  Ancient visions.  Ancient conversations that have lingered in the Earth.  Ancient beings who invite you in to strange places that are familiar.  Both of them had come away very surprised and utterly convinced, at least of certain things, beyond all reasonable doubt.  There is magic.  And they had discovered something indescribable about time.  Time is not real. Page 32

    And then days later, many miles away over sandwiches and soda pop and smoke on some park bench in Paris, she had confided to Phillip that the funny old goat had made a pass.  He had.  Telling it, she had to giggle.  It made Phillip fairly roar with laughter.  New to all of that, not knowing what a proper hippie ought to do, feeling really buzzed out and highly spiritual, sitting lotus fashion behind one of the tall huge misshapen boulders in its deep vibrating shadow, she had kissed the geezer on the cheek and let him feel her up a little.  She was a goddess for that moment then, discovering her divinity was not conferred only by one certain man.  It seemed like such a lovely way to activate the magic.  She did not tell Phillip these specifics.  This had been a lovely summer.

    "Remember that guy?" Phillip asked.

    "What?  The old witch?"

    "No, no, no!  The freak you argued with."

    "Oh no!"  she cried.  "How dare you even mention it?  A fool's errand!  What a stupid thing for me to do."

    "All afternoon."

    "Arrgh!"  Vicki cried.  She waved her fists.

    Phillip then took up the tale.  "See," he explained, "this really stupid nit wit believed the Earth is hollow.  Hollow.  You know, the Earth is all empty inside with a whole other world in there.  Dinosaurs.  A jungle.  Really.  He went on and on about it, claimed he could even see it.  We were doing these very serious weird spiritual meditations and he just kept piping up with this incredible shit that he could stick his hands down and feel everything inside."

    Socrates and Diotoma were smiling gamely now but were not laughing.  Tension still.  The language barrier?

    So Vicki tried;  "He said Jesus Christ is down there.  Moses.  Preaching to the dinosaurs."

    Still no laughs.

    "You argued with him." Phillip mentioned.  "You were the only one who did.  All afternoon." Page 33

    "Arrgh!  I couldn't stand it!  What a waste of effort!"  But now she felt a danger that the story might be turning her into the butt.  She tightened her arm round Phillip's back to make him stop and said;  "Darling, that was a lovely day in any case."

    He looked into her face and frowned.  Just for a flash the frown turned ugly but then just as quickly disappeared.  A chill went up her back.  She had seen this frightening flash of his toward other people sometimes and merely thought it was a weakness in his strength.  And with his weakness greater now?

    But at least the tension of the moment past was broken.

    Diotoma asked her boyfriend for a summary in Greek, and then she laughed a tiny bit at last.  She got Phillip's point.  Shrugging broadly she said;  "So pointless to argue these things.  Dinosaurs?  Christos?  Atlantis?  Legends may be myth, perhaps with meaning.  Who can know?"

    And then a rapping at the window and a muffled shout;  "Hey hippies!" 

    "Holy shit!"  cried Vicki.  "It's the driver!" 

    The bus was stopped.  Right up beside a grocery shop.

    "How long have we been sitting here?" Phillip asked.

    "Hey aneekhto!  Aneeeekhto!"  cried the driver on the outside of the window, hefting up a heavy wooden crate of large brown bottles that sure as anything did look like beer.  He had another crate beside his feet.  His official hat was pushed back on his head.

    "May Demeter and Dionysos bless you!"  Phillip shouted.

    Diotoma clapped her hands and threw the fellow kisses.

    Her boyfriend stuck his fingers in his mouth and started whistling very shrill.

    Vicki bounced in her seat and then, thinking how to outdo Mistress Priss, rose, turned toward the driver, grinned, and vigorously waved her tits.  The rainbow colored tee shirt quite came up and so she thrust out her belly at him too.

    But suddenly all of them saw the problem.  There was quite a serious difficulty. Page 34

    Socrates, having quickly left off whistling, was now struggling to slide his window up.  That's where the driver stood, straining with the heavy box.  The spectacled young man began to curse.  The damn thing sure was stuck.  What would they do?  The next seat in front was occupied by a broadly grinning very highly amused old frail gentleman bent above his cane, with a suitcase and a sailor's cap, and who, in any case, was not among their party.  So Socrates began to struggle with the next window back, beside the wide rear seat, but could not manage it from there.  Vicki was over on the other side of Phillip and afraid to hurt his leg by climbing.  Phil was reaching for the window, trying to be a help, but in truth had found that he could scarcely move.

    But Diotoma was a smaller woman.  Laughing louder, she stood up in the aisle among the heap of gear and found a footing.  She wagged a reproving finger at Vicki and called;  "Hey!  You nasty woman!  Look at this!"  She pulled the tight skirt so far up her black lace panties showed.  She did a pelvic jerk.  A fringe of curly hair was even visible against her inner thighs.  Then, reaching out to grasp at Phillip's shirt, and yet constrained by the fitted jacket of her suit, hoping that the thrill was worth whatever injury his leg sustained, the small woman climbed right up into his face and over to the empty space where she then quickly and easily helped her boyfriend with the window.

    Phillip had certainly kept his mouth and fingers to himself.  He was a gentleman.  And yet you may be sure he had not shut his eyes.

    Vicki stamped her foot and shouted;  "Oh you slut!" 

    The big brown bottles started coming in.

    Peter, the driver, stood up and took a pace, paced the one step back, sat down in the sand again and leaned against his rock.  He threw his hands high and wide into the air in an eloquent show of disgruntled resignation.  "Pos pane ta praghmata?  Thavmaseea!"  He took another slug of beer.

    They were sitting on a beach gazing out across the gentle surf and the wine dark waters of the Adriatic Sea toward the setting sun.  To left and right were hilly headlands that curved in around to form a crescent bay with this low bit of strand tucked neatly in.  Behind them a crescent moon and countless pinpricks of the brightest stars were just now starting to ascend above the land.  Night certainly was falling here; it was that first long moment when you realize for sure it's growing dark.  The magic that seemed to drench the time and place seemed like a thing that you could simply nearly touch, like something in your breath or on your face.

    Peter made some other longer emphatic exclamation and repeated it with variations, waving a hand here and there in various directions.  At the termination of his largely waving arm his hand repeatedly shaped a gesture which, beyond a doubt, was sexually obscene.

    The old man – the frail old gentleman with the suitcase, cane and sailor's hat – more or less translated:  "He's cussing the cocksucker army again, doing better for 'em too.  Their papas sucked cocks, their uncles did, their grandpas; ya see, and many different ones."

    Phillip nodded.

    The old sailor wrinkled up his dark sun burnt face until it was transformed from its customary grin into what seemed intended to be a humorous sneer.  The comic look certainly got a startling touch from the way his face had shrunk against the bone with age.  Behind an open hand, in mock of secrecy, his finger pointed at the driver.  "He's a Christian too."

    Phillip smiled.

    This tough old bird certainly was Greek but spoke his English with the mingled accents of the whole world's shores.  The stretch and up-turn of a phrase would tug the ear with a hint of Brooklyn nearly and then the next word might nod somewhat eastward toward Bombay.

    There were only Phillip and the two of them sitting there, reasonably comfortable among a pile of large speckled brownish rocks worn smooth and round in fleshly forms by the storms of ages, half buried in the sand.  They had made a fire of driftwood trash but the breeze was growing cooler with approaching night.  Vicki, Socrates and Diotoma had gone exploring.  The other passengers apparently had gone away. Page 36

    The bus had been struck by a large military truck which had burst their front left tire and somewhat stove in the frame.  The bus now stood disabled, kind of kneeling down, up behind them by the road.  There had been a lot of gesturing and shouting.  The confrontation had seemed really dicey for a while; Phillip, struggling to hang out the open window, had believed the drivers might well come to blows and the soldier had a holstered pistol at his belt.  He seemed to reassure himself by resting a hand there.  But, faced with Peter's obstinate refusal to be a sheep and the screeching protests of three old lady passengers who all hobbled out to lend their bit of weight, the soldier had refrained from making an arrest.  And these were the days when civilians sometimes disappeared into the military barracks, although the corpse at least would be released, some official explanation would be issued and the opposition papers would be allowed to print your name.  The soldier finally only jotted down the bus identification number, climbed up to his truck cab and drove away.

    There was a suburb of the city crowded in among the small steep hills beyond the road, beyond the bus, below the climbing stars and moon; white square houses and little shops with orange tile roofs all of which, if you gazed on them in this changing light, seemed to ripple with their changing colors.

    The sunset was lovely, very brilliant, out there far across the waves that seemed to rise from the horizon to meet a human gaze.

    They were theoretically awaiting reinforcements from the Transit Authority but it was Friday afternoon and well past five o'clock.

    The aged seaman took a swig of beer, his bony hand showing surprising strength in the easy way he lifted the heavy bottle with a single finger looped around its neck.  He then wrinkled up his thin face again, this time in the semblance of a secretive cunning leer, tapped Phillip on the knee of his outstretched gimpy leg and said;  "Hey amigo, you got some smoke?"

    "Well, sure." Phillip answered.  He had given up cigarettes himself as a useless expense but on this trip he'd made a practice of keeping a couple packs for trade or comradeship.  He tugged his heavy bag over and fished around inside of it.  He found one pack, a good German brand.  He carefully tore the top and tossed the bit of paper in the fire, pulled up a butt and held it out.

    The sailor frowned.

    Phillip shrugged.  Okay, he thought, might as well be generous.  He turned the pack around to offer the whole thing, gestured with it.  "They're yours." he said.

    But the old man still frowned.  "What you thinking?" the fellow asked.

    "Huh?"

    "Come on Chingo; what you got?  Nobody's looking." Page 37

    Phillip smiled and asked;  "What are you saying?"  Apparently this might be Miller Time.

    "Eh?  Well, all I'm saying, this remembers me the time I shipwrecked on the beach in India."

    "Oh." Phillip laughed.  Actually it sounded pretty good.  He did feel beat from the whole long summer, his bum leg certainly had pissed him off, and a mellow high would help.  And he might make a friend.  Maybe.  But still he hesitated just for fun.  He slowly took another satisfying draught of beer then asked;  "What was that like?  Shipwrecked in India?"

    "Good!  Pretty damn good!  My purse was full of silver!" 

    "Dancing girls?"

    "Those were the days.  They set me dancing too in Kali's temple."  He briefly mimed a snaky wavy motion with his arms, arms which had no doubt been muscular in youth but now were thin and ropy with the unbuttoned cuffs of his baggy threadbare denim coat falling from them as they made their serpent movements in a surprising show of fluid grace.  He said;  "Gin and tonic.  Big tall hookahs"

    So, with another laugh, Phillip's preparation now began.  He stashed the damn machine-made cigarettes, reached way in to the center of the bag and pulled out his well loved herbal kit, as he affectionately called it.  It was, to the untutored eye, a pipe smoker's leather pouch of the ordinary sort that has a zipper pocket for the pipe and little tools, another for tobacco.  And indeed it held an ordinary looking wooden pipe with ordinary looking tools.  And indeed there was tobacco, but with a fair size lump of hashish wrapped air tight in silver foil buried in there too.  His medicine had got him through some situations.

    First he took another long and lingering gulp of beer.  It fortified his strength.  The leather kit was in his other hand, not yet unzipped.  He waved it and the bottle in a vague imitation of the old man's Kali dance, mimed a comic version of an appropriately fierce look and asked;  "You're not a cop?"

    "Don't be stupid!"  The old man swelled out his bony chest and struck it with his fist in a quick blow, declaring;  "In six countries I am a hunted man!"  But he shrugged and frowned.  "Ah, long ago.  All forgotten now.  So long ago.  Days come and come, and more and more.  But strange days sometime though.  Piracy."

    "What?  You a pirate?  Bull." Page 38

    "Ha!  You don't believe?  Old sonabitch like me, call me a liar?"  He glanced to the coast that curved around, glanced back toward the town.  He hooked a thumb in that direction.  "Yes;" he said;  "maybe this the place it was.  Looked like this.  Same country anyway; not too many bays like this one.  We anchor right out there."  He pointed toward the sea.  "I was captain; me and my boys we come up here in the boat and rob the bank.  Daytime even.  Took off to Sicily.  Killed some poor bastard local cops; by accident.  Not in the plan, I swear.  That's what pirates always done here in Hellas; come in a boat and rob the citizens.  Real old kind of job."  He shrugged again.  "What the hell did I know?  Real old kind of job; always like that in this country.  Wanted money.  Got off clean though, long ago.  Big war, you know, long war, things turn upside down.  You start to thinking somebody owes you."

    "Jesus shit; is that the truth?"

    "What's wrong, you don't trust me?  Come on, shut up.  What you got inside the little bag?"

    "What's your name?" Phillip asked.  He was speaking almost in some sort of charity.  "Maybe I have heard of you."

    "How is that your business?" the captain answered rather hard, suddenly proud again.  "I am a man; all you need to know.  What right you have to hear my name?  Do what you're doing now."

    "How 'bout the Christian?"

    "He'll be okay.  Hurry up.  The sun's going down.  The others will come back and want a share."

    And so then, once begun, this young man's easy handling of his stuff began to feel exactly like the comforting familiar magic ritual it was.  In fact this was his favorite old pipe from Viet Nam, a treasured and artistic souvenir, and it had often been a comrade worthy of his trust.  The carved wood bowl had been deep brown but now was scuffed and chipped, the nose and chin of the little face on the front long gone and fallen to the Earth somewhere.  He had carved and smoothed and dyed the face with boot wax himself, a private soldier's simple wartime rendering of a handsome African woman.  His black friends in his troop had welcomed him for this possession even though they also envied him the treasure. Page 39

    He fitted in the stem and blew it clear, packed in a pinch of the specially selected light tobacco, expertly shaved off a generous helping of the dope, another pinch exactly large enough on top to help it light and cook.  He tamped each layer down as though he were an old time musket man, holding the special sharpened teak wood tamping stick ready in the crook of his little finger.  No crumb was lost.  He carefully and quickly closed and put away the kit.  He sucked the trace of flavor from his fingertips.  And all these gestures quite distinctly hinted at his own past sin and all the memories that might come flooding back at any moment.

    So Phillip was already in a spirit state, holding and staring into the beautiful woman's face, thinking that he did not know her name, suddenly thinking that hers too must be the voice that lured him on, until the sailor's wizened steady hand held a flaming stick above the bowl.  That little flame cast a moving shadow on the marred but radiant countenance.

    The captain said;  "You wish to speak to her."

    Two words immediately rose from Phillip's heart and tumbled from his lips: "Thank you."

    The little portrait sculpture somehow seemed to smile.

    "Now smoke."

    Obediently, he turned the face away out toward the world and put the stem between his lips.  The flame descended.  The herbal mixture flared.

    (Lacuna)

    tones as always;  "You fellows better finish before my wife gets here.  She'll get her nose up about that stuff you're doing.  I promise that.  She's a real Christian."

    It did strike Phillip as pretty odd that the fella now seemed to be speaking something understandable; maybe he'd known English all along or maybe he himself now understood Greek or else it was simply drug induced hallucination.  Phillip damn sure did feel buzzed.  But maybe – he quite naturally began to suspect – this was another dream.  A new one.  He squinted out across the water with suspicion, looking for some other hint. Page 40

    The old skipper asked Peter;  "Your wife?  She bringing your dinner?"

    "Of course.  We're married.  I telephoned.  She'll take a taxi."

    The captain handed the pipe to Peter.  Peter acted some surprise.  He looked into the woman's face.  He sniffed the bowl.  He drew a cautious mouthful, quickly puffed it out.  "Mmm . . . not bad."  He shook his head, perhaps in wonder at this lapse of judgment, and passed it on.

    It was Phillip's turn but he was only cradling the pipe in his hands, looking at it in his hands.  He looked out to the glowing surf again, up at the crimson sunset shot with yellow rays.  He felt the chill come through his jacket and felt a shiver so he said;  "Everything seems so real."

    "Yeah;" the skipper said;  "you need this stuff.  It wakes you up."  Then he tapped Phillip's knee.  "Look here."

    The old man pulled a necklace out from his collar, a thick string with a big silver coin dangling from it.  He held up the disk and somehow used this sparkling thing to flash the firelight into Phillip's eyes as though it were a magic mirror.  He said;    "I make you a bet.  This will be my stake.  Look at it eh."

    There was a thread wrapped here and there across its gleaming face to hold it on the string, and grime caught in the snakelike coils of thread, even curly chest hairs from the man who wore it, but Phillip could somehow see it clearly by the still but radiant living presence that seemed to stand out from the gleaming surface.  The coin bore a picture of some ancient regal female figure wreathed around with sheaves of grain and unknown lettering.  It was bigger than a silver dollar and it shone.  It was antique.

    "Four thousand years;" the old man was saying;  "four thousand years ago the royal smith stamp it with his bronze hammer with these holy magic signs.  Four thousand years it lays in a chest of olive wood waiting in the buried treasury of Agamemnon King of Men.  You can buy a house and land with this, my friend, wherever in this world you wish; or I shall finally buy a ship to sail the Burning River." Page 41

    "Hot damn!" 

    "And I am offering this prize to you in a simple wager.  Your wife shall bring you dinner.  Eh?  That is my side.  I say when she returns here, she will bring your meal and so your marriage will be proved.  Your side is that she will not and so you are not married.  Eh?"

    Phillip had to laugh.  He fell into his native western drawl;  "I ain't got nothing to bet like that."

    "Ah!"  the old man cried, holding up a finger.  "That is the beauty.  See?  You must only promise, if you lose, that you will give to me the greatest treasure that you have.  Whatever it may be.  However small.  What, don't you trust me?"

    But yet the offer did not lure him in the least.  Phillip sat back.  He vaguely waved his arms again to indicate the old man's dancing girls.  He said;  "You want my wife but you can't have her.  I won't give her up.  Never."

    "No.  That is well said but no; I do not want your wife.  What good would such a one be for me, whose time for that is past?  She would kill me in my bed.  And as well, she is not your greatest treasure."

    "What?  No.  Whatever it is, I will not take your bet."

    "You do not trust me?"

    But Phillip nodded.  "I do trust you.  You'd keep the deal.  I know that.  It's only . . ."

    "Yes?"

    "Oooh . . . I see."

    "What do you see?"

    "I need instruction."  This new dream.  "This is my time for instruction."  That dark power he had seen, that tremendous spirit which had risen from among the deities he knew – that bit of progress – it had unexpectedly brought him this next step.  So then Phillip struggled to discover and drag out into the open whatever he had been thinking that had opened this revelation to his consciousness.  The ghastly bet.  "I'm going to find everything I need myself.  No matter how long it takes.  It may take a real long time, but if I can't find it for myself it won't be mine."

    Peter laughed out loud.  Peter asked the skipper;  "How long it took you to say that?  Many years and leagues of water, I am thinking." Page 42

    The old skipper truly smiled.  He smiled like a father would have done.  In fact his old shrunken face, which looked as if it had been carved of dark hard olive wood left rough about the grizzled chin and cheeks, now seemed for a fleeting moment in the dancing light to take on the half forgotten countenance of Phillip's father.

    The old sailor answered Peter; nearly in Old Pop's voice he said to Peter, "Smart kid, eh?"  He tucked the heavy coin and its string back in around his neck.  He patted Phillip's knee.

    But now Phillip very seriously asked the captain;  "What is my greatest treasure?"

    "Huh?  Why, of course, the three week's son and daughter in your wife's belly."

    "What?"

    "Yes, and I would have kept the bargain.  I would have come and found you anywhere and fetched the boy at least away as soon as he was off the mother's teats, I would, and gave him to be raised among the horses like was done before.  I would, for they are generous.  If you had gambled such a life away, then it would not be proper for you to teach a boy like that one.  Way too dangerous."

    "What!"  Phillip cried with the explanation sinking in.  "No, it isn't true.  She would have told me.  She hasn't told me."

    Peter shrugged.  "Just three weeks."

    "Three weeks?" Phillip asked.  "Well, then, she wouldn't know herself.  She might suspect it but that's all."

    But Peter nodded like a sage.  "She knows."

    "She felt it when it happened." the captain said.  "And she smiled at you.  Remember?  And then she felt the two take root inside of her like poppy flowers.  She knows."

    "Damn!"  cried Phillip.  "Damn women.  She should have told me.  Things would be different."

    "They have their secrets." Peter said.

    "Damn!"  And then it took an ugly turn.  Phillip really blurted out: "If they would just tell you things!  But no, they've got to twist you around, don't they?" Page 43

    The skipper was immediately reproachful.  "What's that?  What do you say?"

    "Oh, it just makes me mad, that's all.  Like when they put their arm around you and call you darling just to make you do what they want.  It just pisses me off so bad.  Is that love?  A friend wouldn't do that."

    "Ah, son," sighed Peter, "being married; it is not so easy.  Friend or enemy; it is hard to tell sometimes.  That is real love.  That is holiness.  That is the world of saints and gods."

    "Fuck that shit.  I have already had all the enemies I will ever want.  Yes indeed!" 

    "So;" the old man said;  "if she don't treat you right you will Goddamn hit the Goddamn road.  Eh?  Yes?  You will?"

    For a moment Phillip could not speak, struggling to examine himself for a truthful answer somewhere in between hard anger and soft desire.  But then he realized.  His wife was pregnant.  He had just found out.  His child.  This child would be an amazing gift to him and to the world.  How stupid could he possibly be?

    "No;" he said;  "I won't leave her.  Not her.  Not ever."

    Phillip wiped a hand across his brow, discovered that the hand was trembling.  Trembling?  He now realized with deep surprise that in that moment just now past he had been enraged.  Enraged.  At her.  Yes he had.  But why?

    "What's wrong with me?"

    "Aaah!"  the captain sighed.

    Peter said;  "Yes, smart kid."

    "Look here;" the captain said, reaching out a reassuring hand to Phillip's knee again;  "You have had all the enemies you need.  Truly.  More than enough for any man.  And even, to you, they were innocent.  What did they want except your death and what is that to a man of war?  But you kill them anyhow.  So maybe some time you kill again with no good reason.  No wonder it is hard for you to love.  Everything is riddles.  You cannot trust; you cannot trust yourself because you are a murderer, a real criminal and no bullshit." Page 44

    Phillip touched one hand to the scar beside his head, the other to his useless hip.  There seemed no reason in the world to trust.  He touched the medal hanging from his pocket flap.  He'd gone to war in hope of doing something good but all he'd found was this.

    "No!"  the captain cried.  "Not your wounds.  These wounds are honest, even if they are a crook's, for you have borne them as you should.  You know that.  These wounds are strong.  The hurt that has been done to you; that is not your pain.  The hurt that you have done, even to your willing enemies, that is your pain.  You say to yourself that it was all your doing and all for nothing and so you cannot trust yourself.  You do not trust your judgment."

    Phillip answered, "Oh.  Yes.  That's it."

    "And you say this to yourself:  So much more painful is the hurt that I have done to what was truly innocent and unoffending."

    "Oh!"  <