PATINA AND THE FALLEN ANGELS.

A serious social novel

of 85,000 words

by

Frits Kruithof

The simple absence of warning is the one ingredient guaranteed to make a pitfall infinitely more dangerous. Falling foul of such an unposted hazard would be all the more regrettable, pitiful or even tragic, because the suffering arising from it is needless, and yet, this is simply our lot in life.

We are given no warning about the very thing most likely to make our lives a misery, and this leaves us bereft of an adequate means of protecting ourselves. We might blame our forbears for this lamentable state of affairs, but their fault actually goes much further than a mere sin of omission: they actively lead us into danger; they push us headlong into it, then leave us to cope as best we can.

They do this without malice and with the best of intentions. But good intentions are fraught with unintended consequences. Without even realizing it, our forebears end up maneuvering us to the slippery edge of a spiritual abyss, from which precarious point many will lose their footing and fall into a bewildering conundrum, which is sure to confound and stultify even the best of us.

It all begins, innocently enough, with the eradication of vanity and conceit in children. This socializing process might appear necessary, justifiable and even eminently reasonable; but it has a costly downside, the consequences of which go largely unseen.

Where does pride and vanity come from in the first place? I am not entirely sure, but there is certainly no shortage of it--on the contrary, there is a vast oversupply, a surplus so big in fact that the government enlists the paid efforts of schoolteachers to help stamp it out.

It is like a part of their job-description to reprimand our vain boasting and bragging, our showing off, our arrogance, our every outward sign of conceit. They chip away at it, they disapprove of it, they cajole, they rap us across the knuckles; with unremitting repetition they try to drum the vanity right out of us.

But how can we as mere children, in want of a depth of insight into the spiritual complexities of pride, how can we make our vanity just disappear simply because a teacher tells us to? Even if we want desperately to do that, even if we try real hard, how can we, as mere children, make our vanity disappear?

If this expectation is not already an impossible one, it is made even more difficult in a world filled with contradictions; a world where children are routinely exposed to so many conflicting messages:

Matinee movies imply that pride and vanity are acceptable and even praiseworthy, because the hero is typically a vastly superior human being; superior in looks, strength, intelligence, courage, assertiveness, self-esteem-—superior in every way. Superiority in games like football is also viewed as acceptable and even desirable--the coach openly encourages our team to take pride in defeating rival teams and is likely to express disappointment and disapproval if we fail to achieve that end. But in church they tell us quite the opposite: that pride goes before a fall. In School they tell us it is good to take pride in our work. Our parents normally react with delight to see us come first in the class--but this very same result could also see us hated with a vengeance by some of our classmates.

As we grow into later childhood, we are also likely to notice, and be disquieted by the fact, that some adults, including teachers, are noticeably vain or even downright egotistical. Such apparent hypocrisy serves to further increase a child’s level of confusion by suggesting that bad can sometimes be good, but without their ever knowing when or why. It also introduces elements of unfairness and arbitrariness. The unfairness of "Don’t do what I do, do what I say" is likely to cause resentment, while the arbitrariness is likely to suggest there is no firm moral basis for eradicating vanity in the first place.

How can a child reconcile so many discrepancies and still proceed with the earnest intention of becoming truly modest? How can a child become modest in any case? What if you are a little guy (a runt or a little brother) who is routinely bullied and ridiculed? Boasting might be necessary to make you feel better about yourself—-then how can you just stop, change what you feel, do a complete about face, and become modest simply because an arbitrary edict demands it of you?

What children are actually confronted with is something like the following: Rule 1: You must be modest. Rule 2: If you can’t be modest, see Rule 1. Such an edict totally ignores what is in a child’s heart; and, in making no allowance for what even an adult is capable of, it amounts to a veritable attack upon the sincerity of a child. You can’t become vain simply by being told to be vain; similarly, you can’t become modest simply by being told not to be vain. Vanity does not work that way.

Other than get twisted out of shape, what is a child able to do in response to such absurdity? How can a child react to it? If you think about it there are really only three ways that anyone can react to it: (1) They can be openly defiant by continuing to make conceited remarks--but these are unlikely to continue unabated unless one can harden oneself totally to criticism and disapproval.

(2) They can consciously pretend to be modest in the presence of authority figures, other important people or for special occasions, but be openly conceited at other times. (3) They can resort to the delusion of modesty: With prolonged exposure to the indoctrination into modesty, children might easily come to believe that vanity is truly wrong, and this could cause them to become ashamed of any trace awareness of it in themselves. But being unable to truly eradicate their vanity, they can only resort to pretence. Denial could serve to keep the painful awareness of vanity at bay, and thus defend against the feelings of shame associated with it; it could also cause a child to believe he is truly modest even though he isn’t.

Strategy three commends itself over strategies one and two because it allows us to escape the disapproval of people who have the power to punish us, as well as the guilt of being knowingly deceitful. It (denial) solves the immediate, childhood problem, and that is why so many of us rely upon it. But the shift to this strategy is a fundamental one, and it has profound consequences:

It enables children to hide their vanity--not just from teachers but from themselves, and this is the crucial crossover point that changes everything; it is where the great sham is switched to the ‘on’ position; it is where we begin to lose contact with who we really are.

By their impatient efforts to eradicate our vanity, the civilizing forces of culture, which hope to make us better people, instill in us instead a shameful phoniness. The shame associated with this phoniness, in turn, causes us to deny the very existence of the delusion of modesty; and this, in turn, causes us to unwittingly pass it on to the next generation; which, in turn, serves to maintain this deep-seated problem in a veritable state of perpetuity.

The delusion of modesty is the greatest sham; is like the font of all phoniness, and it is collectively our best kept secret. It is our most paramount secret: the secret so momentous that we keep it hidden even from ourselves.

Deep down, and to varying degrees, we are all in love with ourselves in any case. But, with as much of our vanity hidden away as is necessary to make us feel comfortable, we can begin to happily think of ourselves as being the good guys who meet with the approval of ourselves, our parents, our teachers and society at large.

The upside of this socializing process is that we probably won’t get fired for asserting our superiority over the boss or our senior colleagues. The downside, however, is threefold and considerable:

1. We don’t truly know who we are any more, because a part of us has become invisible to us.

(2) Our moral character has been tampered with on the deepest level, because we are not able to be truly honest about who we are.

1. The arrogant portion now invisible to us is not truly missing; it still exists but in secret, and it will continue to operate and wreak havoc upon the blind and defenseless person we have become.

The downside of the delusion of modesty can be serious enough to assume the destructive proportions of a cancer of the character: There are things you can hide from a boss that you cannot hide in a close relationship. Your spouse is bound to see through you sooner or later--and probably sooner if the divorce rate is any indication. She will see what he cannot see. She will see the kind of pride that needs to puff itself up by putting her down. She will not only see, she will feel the ‘love’ that conspires to defeat her. She will see the traits of character that say, in more or less civilized fashion: "I am better than you!" She might see snobbery and condescension, competitiveness, smugness, envy and contempt; she might see all of these traits in a person who, in turn, views himself as a paragon of politeness and congeniality.

In our modern world, the delusion of modesty is the most dangerous and destructive thing civilization’s good intentions can impose upon us. In camouflaging our pride collectively, it creates the secret, hidden world of pride--a world of such enormous moment and gravity as to constitute a full-scale, parallel world. This nether world has a covert but overriding influence upon the events of our everyday, mundane world--the world we thoughtlessly take for granted as representing our only reality. This world of pride is appropriately inhabited by egotistical monsters, which are all the more formidable because they are invisible to the hosts they inhabit. It is a paradoxical world--timelessly modern and ancient too--where fearsome monsters lurk much like the medieval dragons of yore.

I am speaking figuratively now, of course, and yet, unlike fire-breathing dragons, pride is real, is very much a monster, and its negative influence touches each and every one of us.

It is at our peril that we hide our pride, and yet civilization has not only taught us to do this--it has taught us to do it with such skill and artifice that we have almost succeeded in denying its very existence.

The delusion of modesty is able to be maintained by even the grossest, maniacal ego--but it is all the easier for regular, decent people to maintain, because their relatively minuscule pride is necessarily a lot more subtle, elusive and easy to hide. This makes the world of self-delusion even murkier for regular decent people and a very hospitable environment for monsters to live and lurk in.

But despite the many advantages that murkiness bestows upon them, you might nevertheless capture one of these lurking monsters if you are persistent and patient. But it is imperative for you to first be able to see it, otherwise you will never even be able to get your hands on one, never come to grips with one, never even get started, and thus you will never succeed.

If you are very lucky you might even slay one. This is a task so arduous that it can only be accomplished with the greatest of difficulty . . . but it remains possible--ours, after all, is the selfsame world in which St. George was able to slay the fiendish form of his pride made manifest.

It is in just such a dragon-slaying landscape that our protagonist finds himself, but he, Paul, felt overwhelmed and hopelessly ill equipped to carry out the daunting task that lay before him. His delusion of modesty was an especially discordant one. This resulted, in part, from the nervous timidity of his sensitive nature; but Paul had also been dispossessed, and this made him more of a misfit than most.

In a general manner of speaking, this story about Paul and Patina had already begun at the point when Lucifer was cast out of heaven as punishment for having fallen in love with himself; but, in a very particular sense, it begins in March 1971.

Paul was in search of his father to ask him yet another question about Latin. Because it was eight o’clock on a Wednesday evening, he reckoned he should first look in the living room. But poking his head through the doorway, he felt the slightest twinge of disappointment to see--not his father, but his eighteen-year-old sister, Karen.

She was seated on a sofa and perusing a family photo album. Her legs were crossed. Her right knee was resting upon her left, and she was nervously jiggling her right foot, which was suspended in the air.

The odd expression on her face had the intensity of a caricature, the excessive nature of which introduced a comical element, which bordered on the absurd and it piqued Paul’s curiosity. There was definitely something going on here and he simply had to know what it was.

He entered the room creeping slowly and quietly toward her, almost as if he was sneaking up on her.

"What’s up?" he asked, taking a seat beside her.

"Darn it all to hell!" she said, with an indignation that seemed heavily admixed with resignation. "We lost this beautiful house. It was a villa, a mansion, and we lost it; but does that mean we have now descended to the level of lower-class riff raff?"

"Good grief! What’s this all about? Why the gloomy subject matter?"

"Well, it’s these two boys at school. They keep calling me a westie. They seem to think it’s funny. I don’t say anything to encourage them, I try not to react to them in any way at all, but they keep calling me that anyway."

"I’ve heard that sort of talk about westies too," said Paul, sympathetically, "but it’s just petty snobbery and there’s no substance to it. Not everyone living in western Sydney is riff raff--many sections of the west are well to do. The north, south and east sections of the city are not entirely free of riff raff either, nor are they all upper crust or even well to do.

People who say things like that have a desperate need to feel superior, but they are just lower middle class like us, and they know it, so they can only pretend to be superior by clinging to their one spurious claim to fame: that they don’t come from the west. Don’t let them worry you. You have nothing to be ashamed of: You were chosen to go to a school for intellectually gifted children when you were only ten."

"Yes, but Dad wouldn’t let me go. He thought commuting halfway across Sydney would be dangerous for a ten-year-old girl."

"But you earned a scholarship to N.S.W.U.--and your grades: you have all high distinctions. You shouldn’t let those creeps worry you, especially when there is absolutely no substance to what they say." Paul paused thoughtfully for a moment.

"Of course, if you think long enough on any given subject you might find both pros and cons to every different point of view. The truth has so many facets that there is at least a grain of it in the opinion of almost any kind of idiot.

There is, in fact, a criminal underclass in western Sydney, but you find them in other parts of Sydney too . . . although, admittedly, there are more of them in the west--I think that’s because the land is cheaper there, so low-income people are funneled in that direction. It’s only logical that the government should build more welfare housing where it can save money on the cost of land.

But you can’t generalize: not everyone living in welfare housing is riff raff. I think the real riff raff are petty criminals, and these only constitute a small minority of any community . . . and yet some places are worse than others. There are some parts of the west where the neighborhoods are just as rough as guts.

I know that for a fact because we used to live in a place like that: Tattoo Town. You are probably too young to remember much about that, but we lived there until Dad could save enough money to move us to where we are now--and I can tell you this is pretty darn good by comparison."

"Yes indeed! I remember that place," she said.

"Tattoo Town was a tough town; that’s how some would describe it: "Tough". But I really don’t understand why the people had to be so tough. I think there was a general tendency toward abusive and even violent behavior, but this was especially true of the teenage boys--and this seemed to always put you at risk of being beaten up.

Many had tattoos, which I think were meant to advertise just how tough they were and that they could take care of themselves. They had to be tough because other people were generally so tough and abusive, and that’s probably why they developed a thick skin and became callous and abusive themselves.

Some might beat you up, threaten you, or challenge you to a fight if you said anything to them at all-- but especially something they might interpret as an insult--and sometimes they would threaten you if you just looked sideways at them.

They were also very much in the habit of using the ‘F’ word to express verbal abuse."

"Yes, I noticed that myself," said Karen, squeezing a quick comment in edgeways.

"It seemed they were abusive in general, and so they were into all forms of abuse. And it seemed they were forever telling scurrilous jokes about women’s sexual anatomy. Those jokes were abusive too--everything seemed to revolve around abuse.

I don’t know why but there was just so much hostility there. It was like a constant undercurrent of everyday life. It was even expressed in the form of cruelty to animals. I remember Ian the ferret, who lived just a couple of doors up from us. One day he found a turtle, and was trying to cut it out of its shell with a razor blade."

"What a mentality!" said Karen, in a tone of horrified outrage and disgust. "Boy, but I’ve really got you going on this subject, haven’t I." she added, beholding him with a penetrating stare.

Paul’s long-winded discourse was in no way cut short by her interjection; he continued without skipping a beat.

"It was a rusty blade and, like Ian himself, it was none too sharp, so he wasn’t able to do too much damage. I had a shilling in my pocket and offered to buy the turtle. He was happy enough to sell it to me. He gave me the turtle, took the money and went running to the corner store to spend that shilling just as fast as was humanly possible."

"I remember him," said Karen. "Living just two doors down, he was actually a near neighbor, but he scared me so much, I avoided him like the plague."

"I heard a few things about him not long ago. Apparently he’s been leading an eventful, recidivist’s life." Said Paul.

"In high school, they might have voted him the boy most likely to recidivate." Said Karen, who began to giggle and then broke into an all out belly laugh.

"Yes, and he wasn’t the only one around there to follow that path. I had two particular friends, as a matter of fact. They were fifteen and I was thirteen when a--" Paul paused briefly and then continued. "--when a particular incident occurred. You would have been eight at the time. You don’t remember the Steptoe brothers do you--Sid and Mike?"

"Yes, I remember them, one was blonde and one was dark; they didn’t look at all like brothers."

"No, they were step brothers . . . anyway, we went to a remote place in the bush one day, the three of us--" Paul hesitated once more then continued to speak, but tentatively and haltingly. "--They ended up killing a little, stray dog . . . they drowned it just for fun."

All of a sudden, Paul found himself so deep in distracted thought that it had actually caused him to stop talking. He was barely even aware of his surroundings, let alone of what he was going to say next, but his attention was sharply re focussed in response to the vehemence in Karen’s next words.

"Why would a nice guy like you even associate with people of such a low ilk!" she said. The look on her face indicated puzzled disbelief and even disappointment, and Paul thought her tone of voice contained more than a trace of disapproval.

He felt reprimanded (as was his wont) and a disquieting sense of embarrassment and guilt suddenly imposed itself upon him. It was as if he had just stumbled into something unexpectedly, something he hadn’t seen coming, something unpleasant. It was as if he had crashed unwittingly and headlong into a trap, and, right in front of him, confronting him, staring him unflinchingly in the face, was Karen’s question.

It was simple enough as questions go, and salient to the point that it begged an answer. Why indeed had he associated with such people?

He had asked himself that same question on several if not numerous occasions in the past. And he had come to the considered conclusion that these were actually his preferred type of friends during a particular period in his life, which lasted about two to three years and ended when he and his family moved away from Tattoo Town.

There was a clear pattern to this choice: His friends of that era were petty criminals who were about two years older than himself--those were the two simple characteristics they all had in common. He had noticed that tendency before to be sure; moreover, he was also aware that it was he, himself, who had been the one to initiate those friendships.

He remembered how he went to the Steptoe house to befriend the brothers--this was not long after the Steptoe family had moved into the neighborhood. Mike Steptoe had punched Paul hard in the stomach, and yet this didn’t serve as a deterrent to Paul, who persevered and was soon after accepted by them.

Paul was now once more confronted with the consequences of his bad choice of friends. Tattoo Town was not a good neighborhood to be sure, but he was actually the one who had made matters ten times worse than they ever needed to be. Though only a small percentage of the people in his old neighborhood were truly crude and mean spirited, simply all of his so-called friends were of that same pusillanimous persuasion.

The probability of their all being like that simply by chance was beyond the realms of credibility. Indeed, he was the one who had virtually funneled the whole neighborhood through a filter in order to find these people, these people of lowest possible ilk. Paul felt a disturbing, nagging dissonance and a sense of blame, a sense of his being complicit.

He felt responsible, and yet, his guilt, after all, was merely guilt by association. It would be unfair to try him for that. No court in the land would find him guilty. No matter how serious the crime, it was not his crime, so why should he be blamed.

The memory of ten years ago was indelible, heartrending and gruesome: The poor little mutt had followed them, presumably in the hope of gaining their friendship and companionship.

But on reaching a creek at a location isolated enough to be free of witnesses, the Steptoe boys started throwing the dog into the creek. At fifteen years of age they were not exactly boys but young men, of full adult height if not weight. They had left school and they both already had two tattoos on each arm.

The dog would swim back to shore each time they threw it in, and one or the other of them would pick it up in their arms and throw it back in. It didn’t seem all that bad at first, but the two of them kept this up for the longest time, until the dog became exhausted.

In being picked up and held virtually to their bosom like a baby, the dog was in a position not only to bite but even bite them in the face. It probably only weighed about eight to ten pounds, and yet it was nevertheless capable, physically at least, of inflicting a nasty bite.

But it didn’t do that, it didn’t even bark, it didn’t bark at all but suffered in silence as they threw it in again and again. When it was totally exhausted and at the point of drowning, they started to hit it with long heavy sticks and push it under. These sticks had been cut from saplings, stripped of branches, and left in the vicinity by persons unknown some time before.

The dog died without a whimper of disapproval. It had nothing to lose by biting them but it seemed too scared to do that--or perhaps it wasn’t in its nature to be aggressive. It seemed the perfect passive victim, because it was unwilling to even displease or disappoint its murderers, but virtually cooperated with them instead and to the last.

Paul begged them to stop, but they were not pleased with his attempted interference. They were intent on having their fun and getting their kicks, and they warned him to shut up or they would do the same to him.

"Have you seen Dad?" he asked, in an effort to escape the tyranny of his dark pondering thoughts by changing the subject.

"I think he’s in the backyard," said Karen.

Paul now resolved to bring his interrupted quest to completion, and, with less than a minute of sustained effort, was able to traverse the distance between living room and backyard, where he found his father watering the garden.

"Dad, what does 'deus ex machina' mean?"

"Well, literally, it means: ‘a god from a machine’ . . . does that settle the matter for you or do you need more information?" The latter was something he was almost invariably willing and able to supply.

"No. That's fine, Dad! That's all I need to know." Paul turned and began to walk away.

"What a pity you didn't learn Latin in school," said his father in a tone of sadness and regret. "That bloody school! You didn't learn anything until after you left that school. It was nothing more than a breeding ground for infectious learning disorders."

With those last words said, and a nod of his head, and without saying anything by way of reply, Paul walked away and headed back to his room. It was just then that a voice entered his consciousness. It was a voice from the past:

"You're a parasite, son! Why you're nothing but a bludger! You are a bludger off the community!"

Despite their disparaging content, the words made him feel strangely like a celebrity guest on the TV show, This is Your Life, who would be asked to listen to, and try to recognize, the voice of a mystery guest standing behind a screen.

"Who said that?" thought Paul. "Who was that?"

"Why you're just a parasite, son! You are just a bludger off the community!" said the voice in reiteration.

"Ah, yes, I remember now. That was old Harry Westergard, my high school headmaster. It was the day I went up to his office to see him, to ask for money. He was indignant to the point of outrage. He went as red in the face as molten lava, and then he almost exploded like a goddamn volcano.

But asking for money wasn't really so bad . . . well, not as bad as it might sound on the face of it."

Paul had run the shooting gallery at the school fete and had provided the air rifles and the pellets. He had simply asked to be compensated for the expense he had incurred in purchasing one packet of five hundred pellets, which was about one dollar.

But old Harry wanted to know the price Paul had charged per shot and the total amount of money raised. The latter was about twenty dollars. He felt the pellets should have been donated in any case, along with the use of the rifles and Paul's time. If the school had to pay, it would pay not a penny more than was absolutely necessary. After Harry's calculations were complete, his rage reached a crescendo:

"Forty-five cents is all you're entitled to, you bludger! Why you're nothing but a parasite! You're just a bludger, son; a bludger off the community!"

Harry went almost off his brain. It wasn't a very dignified way to behave, and it contrasted markedly with the exaggerated air of dignity he was normally inclined to display.

Old Harry was a stately dresser. He would dress just as formal, prim and proper as the Chancellor of the Exchequer . . . or maybe the ambassador to Great Britain or the holy Emperor of Japan.

Paul could not understand how Harry could be so pompous and take himself so seriously as to dress like that--and why so angry? Paul was quite accustomed to having teachers speak to him as if he was a dog, but Harry's anger seemed out of all proportion even by those standards.

Having flunked the seventh grade, Paul was promoted to the eighth on probation: he would be allowed to stay in the eighth only if he passed the first-term exams. He failed those too, and convincingly, but was not demoted; the school failed to carry out its threat.

The half-yearly exams saw Paul come second-last in every single subject. Now, paradoxically, a result like that is actually most difficult to achieve. It isn't simply a matter of sitting back and taking it real easy. No indeed! To be placed second-last in every single subject takes skill and precision, to be sure, but it takes a lot more. It takes luck and plenty of it, and, for that reason, it was something he couldn't maintain:

The eighth-grade yearly exams saw Paul come first in math and either last, second-last or third-last in all his other subjects.

In retrospect, Paul thought it quite possible old Harry was never worried so much about the price of pellets, but was actually responding to the taunt implied by his fluctuating grades.

Paul had gotten into an adversarial relationship with old Harry almost right from the start and things never did get any better between them.

"What a pompous old bastard he was." thought Paul. "The only teacher more egotistical than Westergard was the headmaster we had in primary school. He had all the affected mannerisms of an artsy-fartsy movie director--the type who wear a coat over their shoulders without putting their arms into the sleeves, who wear a scarf, sun glasses, and smoke cigarettes through a long cigarette holder. He would display fits of 'artistic' temperament toward children as young as eight.

But, in a strange democratic twist of thinking, he would treat the kids as his equals--but only for the purpose of competing with them. He would pretend they were his equals in both age and knowledge, and then he would gain inordinate pleasure and satisfaction from demonstrating his superiority over them. What a phony bastard he was!

Tom Redden was the number one teacher in high school. He served in World War II as a fighter pilot and was badly wounded. He was not pompous, pretentious or in love with himself. He was straight as a gun barrel, and probably the best teacher I never had.

He only taught the slow learners, and I only had a chance to talk to him on a few occasions. They should have put me in with the slow learners--my grades were appropriately bad enough--but they never did. I couldn’t have been any worse off: my school days, from as far back as I can remember till I dropped out in the ninth grade, were a total disastrous failure and a waste of ten years of my life.

And perhaps a lot of it was my own stupid fault. I have an insane kind of stubborn streak, which can cause me to sabotage my own future by doing stupidly self-defeating things. I could cut off my own nose just to spite my face.

My grades in school were nothing less than a damnable disgrace. I was a disgrace to myself and a disgrace to my entire family. I can hardly believe I was such a poor student, especially when I did surprisingly well at night school, and in spite of holding down a full-time job. I matriculated into the U.S. (University of Sydney) and I have now satisfactorily completed first year.

I’m just about level pegged now with Karen, except that her grades are better and she’s five years younger. But my academic career is nevertheless on the upward swing, and I sure hope it continues that way, because I simply can't afford to have any more problems with it."

The chain of thoughts evoked by the events of this Wednesday evening caused Paul to have a perplexing dream that same night. In the dream his academic career had suddenly skyrocketed to unprecedented and superlative heights. Sitting in his lap were three golden letters of invitation to the finest Ivy League colleges in the USA.

He had his choice of Harvard, Princeton or Yale, and it was just like the fulfillment of a wish--yes, it was exactly like that. He had but to choose one, and that choice was so easy. It was Harvard--of course it was Harvard!

"It's in the bag!" he said to himself, with a confidence bordering on smugness. "I still have to attend an interview, of course, but that will be a mere formality."

The dream was progressing quickly, which is something dreams are easily able to do, being unencumbered as they are by the constraints of reality. As a consequence, Paul was now already on his way to attend that interview and he was walking down unfamiliar, city streets.

It was appropriate the streets should be unfamiliar because he had never been to the United States before. But it was not appropriate they should be city streets--it should have been a sprawling campus of beautiful gardens and lawns. But it wasn't. It was city, and it was central business district, and it was down town rather than up town.

What was even more disturbing was the overall appearance of the neighborhood. It seemed dirty and impoverished to the point of virtually being a slum. It was also night time, which struck Paul as rather strange.

The address he was given brought him to what looked like a two-hundred-year-old derelict building. It was large but narrow and tower-like and it was made of wood, which lent a rickety appearance to it.

Paul went through the front entrance. It was a wide sliding door you might find in a warehouse. Having entered he began to ascend a spiral staircase. There was only one partitioned room and it was situated right at the top of the stairs. The rest of the building was just one big open expanse, which appeared unfinished and seemed incapable of performing any kind of useful function.

Having reached the summit of the stairs, he came to a door with a sign saying 'DEAN'. Paul coughed nervously as he knocked oh so timidly on the door. His knock was so tentative as to be almost inaudible, and yet he was startled by an immediate response from a very loud voice.

"NEXT!" screamed the bellowing voice.

Paul entered to find a dinghy and dirty-looking office almost bereft of furniture, fittings and wall decorations. There was a desk and two chairs but no filing cabinets. A bare light bulb hung from the ceiling. On the desk sat a calendar and an old- fashioned telephone. It was not an extremely old or antique-type of telephone--it was something out of the nineteen-forties or fifties. It didn’t look much bigger than a nineteen-seventies-type telephone, but it was a great deal heavier. Accidentally dropping one of these on your foot could necessitate a visit to the hospital.

"Take a seat!" said a big man who was sitting at the desk and tapping his fingernails in a speedy and very rhythmic fashion on the desktop. His nails were unusually long for a man. They also appeared to be roughly chewed and there was just a hint of their being dirty.

Though the dean was seated, Paul nevertheless felt sure he was over six feet tall. It also seemed he must have put on a fair bit of weight recently because his suit coat had been stretched so much that the seams at the shoulders showed their stitches. The woolen material was also smooth and shiny in places, which made the coat look like it had been slept in on numerous occasions.

"Are you competitive? If not, then why in blazes should we take you? Can you explain that to me? I mean, can you compete against all comers? That's what I'd like to know, so tell me now and make it quick." said the big man, in a petulant tone, and with a garrulous impatience that made it difficult for Paul to get a word in edgewise.

"Well," said Paul, timidly, "I would rather win than lose. I would prefer to be one of life's winners rather than be a loser. I would rather be superior than inferior. As a matter of fact, now that you come to mention it, it is indeed my fondest and most ardent wish to be superior . . . but superior in a nice and friendly kind of way."

"Superior but friendly." said the Dean, in an irritated tone of voice. "That's a bit irregular, isn't it? I mean, it would be a lot easier for me to make you superior to your friends rather than superior and friendly at the same time."

Paul felt a descending sense of disappointment. "That's really not what I had in mind," he replied.

"Well, I could make you arrogantly likeable. How about that?"

Paul shook his head.

"Church-going superior?"

"I'm an agnostic," said Paul, apologetically, "so I regret to say I would find the latter distasteful. I really don't care to be arrogant or superior to my friends either, because it just doesn't seem right to me somehow."

"This really worries you, doesn't it. I don't know why it should. It doesn't worry most other people all that much and it would certainly be much simpler to just make you arrogantly superior but you can have whatever stupid thing you want. It's no skin off my nose. I don't take it as a personal goddamn affront! It doesn't bother me one way or the other."

From his tone of voice, Paul felt the dean was actually very irritated indeed.

"But how can I be both friendly and superior at the same time?" asked Paul, in a pleading tone of head-in-hands desperation.

"It's easy. Very easy if you know what you are doing. It can be just as easy as taking candy from a baby. A Harvard man should already understand this, but I'm in a good mood today so I'll spell it out for you in language even you can understand:

You can be vicariously superior--understand: You can find a lady to love and keep who has beauty, prestige and glamour. This will place you at the top of the heap, but without the need to fight and clamor."

"Wow! What an exquisite idea! And it's easier than taking candy from a baby, you say--not that I've tried that . . . well, not as yet."

The big man's attention was now transferred to his desk calendar. "Today is Thursday, February 25th. I'll make an appointment for you . . . mm March 1st . . . that's just four and a half days from now--you'll meet her in your first class this semester."

"How will I recognize her?" asked Paul, his curiosity aroused to the maximum.

"You can't miss her--she's a strange attractor," said the dean, in such a casual and offhand tone as to imply Paul would naturally understand exactly what that meant.

"Does that mean she has a strange magnetic power over men? Or is she strange? Or does she attract strange men?" asked Paul, who was beginning to rant and rave a little. This was due in part to his becoming distracted by some strange words on a plaque on the wall, which he could see just above the dean's left shoulder.

The inscription was written in very fine print that made it hard to read, but the portent of the words seemed so illogical that even a magnified view was unlikely to make it any more lucid.

Paul strained his eyes and his brain with the hope of making some kind of rational sense out of it. If he could believe his eyes, the top line read: "Lies are true". The second line read: "when red is blue". The third line was almost indecipherable and he could only hazard a guess as to the meaning of anything beyond the first two words, which were: "and litmus."

The dean began drumming his fingernails on the table impatiently. "Strange attractors are hidden patterns of order in disorder!" he said, tersely. "Now close the door . . . on your way out! Your time is up. Thank you very much . . . NEXT!"

*

Thursday night shopping is a tradition in Australia--or at least in its biggest city, Sydney. Paul’s three younger sisters had gone out shopping with his parents (he also had an older sister and brother, but they were both married and lived elsewhere). Paul was not in a shopping mood--his dream had seen to that--and so he found himself at home alone. He was sitting quietly and contemplating his future, though more in the manner of daydreaming than a really focussed thinking or planning.

What had transpired in his dream of the night before was now buried deep in his subconscious, but, although he was intellectually unaware of all aspects of it, his mood was nevertheless sufficiently up-beat to suggest some of the dream's portent had registered on a deeper level--the level of feelings. This fostered in him the subliminal expectation that something very good was coming his way, and it did so almost on the same level as music: music can make you feel things that words cannot, because music registers in another part of the brain.

Paul had lulled himself into an almost sedated state of reverie when, at about 8:30 p.m. he was startled half out of his skin by the shrill, metallic ringing of the telephone. Being as highly-strung as he was, the sudden noise almost caused him to jump out of his seat. Being the only person at home, he naturally didn't wait for someone else to get the phone but answered it promptly after the second ring.

"Hello," he said.

The man on the other end of the line was speaking in Dutch, and asked: "Can I please speak to Judge Van Zandt?"

Only Dutch people would ever use the title of 'Judge' to refer to Paul's father. Paul could understand Dutch but was no longer in the habit of speaking it, and, after a prolonged period of disuse, he could speak the language but haltingly; so he answered in English, knowing that most of the Dutch people he had met could speak English quite well.

"He's not home right now."

"Oh goodness, what a pity." said the stranger, in a nervously agitated tone of voice. "I was hoping to catch him at home. I don't have much time. Could you ask him please to call me if it isn't too much trouble. My number is 27 0847. Could you tell him, please, that I would be most grateful if he could provide me with background information concerning the pogrom."

"Pogrom!" thought Paul. "What the hell! A pogrom is an organized persecution of the Jews, which began in Tsarist Russia, or at least 'pogrom' is a Russian word. But my father couldn't possibly have anything to do with something like that. He's a perfect gentleman. This guy is talking double Dutch. He must be crazy."

In being led unexpectedly into such a strange topic of conversation, Paul was caught off guard. He felt confused, and his confusion was like a nagging irritation which began to grate on his nerves, and the Dutchman's nervously insistent tone of voice only made matters worse. As a consequence, Paul was becoming quite uncharacteristically irritated and even downright angry.

"What do you mean POGROM?" he asked, bluntly. "WHAT POGROM?"

"The pogrom of 1965," said the importuning Dutch voice by way of simple and instantaneous reply. "Would you please ask him if he would be so kind as to call me. It is most important I speak with him tonight."

"This is crazy," thought Paul, "but I'll convey the message anyway. It won't hurt to do that."

"Yes, Okay, sure," he said, thinking it perhaps prudent to humor this mad Dutchman. "He'll probably be home within an hour or two. I'll make sure he gets your message."

The Dutchman thanked him profusely and then hung up the phone.

Paul looked at the telephone number he had written down, looked at it with casual curiosity, and he noticed the prefix was a two-digit one. "That's inner city, central business district--that's the only area in Sydney that still uses them," he thought.

He then glanced at the rest of the number and noticed something so strange it virtually stunned him with all of the bone-shattering force of a pole ax. The telephone number was his date of birth exactly--in the non-American system of day/month/year: 27th of August 1947.

"This is so weird," he thought, with the hair of his neck standing on end in response to a sudden sensation of intense fear and foreboding, "but it must be some kind of joke . . . But who would do this? I hardly know any Dutch people at all, let alone someone who might play a practical joke on me.

Maybe it's just a crazy coincidence--even crazy coincidences have to happen sometimes. But what he was talking about has got to be all wrong in any case because there were no pogroms in 1965.

And it couldn't possibly have anything to do with me at all, for heaven's sake, or anything to do with my father. He was never in Russia. I have never hurt a fly."

Paul was readily inclined and quite able to conjure up worst-case scenarios as pertaining to himself and his life. He was a worrier by nature, and he was becoming increasingly worried now in thinking this matter through.

"Dates mean nothing. That girl at work, Mary, has the same date of birth too but the two of us are different as chalk and cheese. It's like astrology: it's nothing more than the egocentric theory of the solar system. Karen is a Taurus--just like Adolph Hitler--but the two of them are different as night and day.

And, wait a minute, what about all the people born on that same day who were called up to go to Vietnam--that was one of the winning lottery dates."

In pondering these many ins and outs until his family returned, Paul’s brain was almost at the stage of nervous overload. He was clearly in need of help and approached his father with that expectation, approached him immediately upon his return, thinking he would somehow be able to dispel the matter.

"Dad, some crazy Dutchman called and said he wanted to talk to you about the pogrom of 1965--as if there ever was such a thing."

"A journalist, I expect," said the Judge, casually.

"But there weren't any pogroms after the holocaust, surely?"

"Jews were expelled from Egypt in 1956--I don't know if that would be classed as a pogrom, but other minority groups are subject to pogroms too--the word can have a more general meaning.

Pogroms against the ethnic Chinese occur regularly throughout South East Asia. An especially big pogrom took place during a power struggle in Indonesia in 1965 and many thousands of ethnic Chinese were murdered.

This happened following an alleged, aborted Communist coup on September 30^th. The evidence establishing this as an actual coup consisted of the murdered bodies of about six or eight army officers.

I find it highly implausible that a communist attempt to seize power would be limited to an effort as enfeebled as this--they would at least have attacked barracks, stolen guns and tanks, blown up buildings. But they did none of that.

I believe the number of dead officers was so small because General Suharto was the one who had them murdered. And, being his own men, it was understandable he would want to keep the death toll down to the minimum that might serve to give him a pretext to retaliate--not just against communists, but against all of the potential enemies and rivals, who might prevent him seizing power.

And many thousands of these were murdered too along with the ethnic Chinese; some say tens of thousands, some say hundreds of thousands, some say more than a million.

No one can prove that, because all evidence is suppressed in a dictatorship, so no one can go over there and start digging up the dead bodies--but it’s a question of motive. Suharto stood to gain by being promoted from major general to cleptocrat for life--which was the same position Sukarno had appointed himself to just two years earlier.

Such a promotion represents an increase in salary of not just millions but sheer billions, so it constitutes a motive of astronomical proportions.

The so-called Communist coup gave Suharto the freedom to use any and all means (including mass murder) without even earning the disapproval of the USA, because an enemy of Communism automatically becomes a friend of theirs. And it wouldn’t be right to insult such a good friend by subjecting them to scrutiny.

Developing countries are inclined to be dictatorships and cleptocracies. The reason I say this is not to point the sanctimonious finger of blame at them--the Dutch have done enough dirty deeds of their own, and those deeds get dirtier the further back you go in history.

I’m letting you know this to help explain the precarious position the ethnic Chinese occupy in Indonesia.

They are both a privileged class and a useful middle class; you see, this is a class problem too and not just an ethnic one. They are generally prudent with money; they know what to spend it on and when to save it. They have long-term goals and can live poor for many years while saving for their long-term betterment.

But they are generally not crooks. They might cut a few corners, do a little smuggling at times, but mostly they get ahead by working very hard. They think nothing of working sixteen hours a day, seven days a week.

But, they don’t just work hard--they work smart. As a result, they are generally very successful--they only represent 6% of Indonesia’s population but they own 70% of the wealth, and this makes them the target of malicious envy. Without protection, they would be beaten up, robbed and murdered--it has always been like that.

The Sukarno government stole the people blind, stole them past the point of starvation; but, if they complained, they would be shot dead in the street, so malcontents preferred naturally to take the path of least resistance and vent their anger upon an unarmed and defenseless scapegoat."

Paul was becoming increasingly agitated and impatiently eager to say something:

"But we are middle class too and prudent with money--that is exactly what we are! You and mum scrimped and saved for ten years to get us out of Tattoo Town, but you were free to do that without the threat of pogroms."

"Well, there are other differences too, but, yes, of course, Australia is the lucky county; we have never had pogroms here and we probably never will."

"Well, of course," said Paul, who was still in a state of nervous agitation, "that is so obviously true. It would be crazy for me to ever worry about something like that. And I never would have either. Not in a million years! I would probably never even have thought about it except for this crazy telephone call and this phone number, which just freaks me out! Just take a look at this." He hands the piece of paper with the number written on it to his father.

"Good God! But this is remarkable! And yet it isn’t cause to worry: Just before I met your mother, I experienced a whole series of strange coincidences. None were as extreme as this, admittedly, but added together they were quite uncanny. I really believe this might herald a major life event for you. But it doesn’t have to be something bad. It could just as easily be something good."

"Would it have to have something to do with pogroms?" asked Paul, pensively.

"I don’t see how that could even be possible!" said the Judge, whose tone of voice conveyed a sense of disbelief powerful enough to be highly reassuring to Paul. "You really shouldn’t worry so much all the time. It isn’t right for someone as young as you to do that.

I’ve actually been meaning to say something to you about it. I know you are a very serious young man . . . and there is nothing wrong with that, but you must be careful not to focus upon the dark side of everything or you will become overly pessimistic about life in general, and there is really no need for that.

I believe this is a sign that you will soon meet your future wife, and that is surely something to celebrate. Think on the bright side. Expect good things, and life will take on a friendlier aspect for you."

Earlier that day Paul had been luxuriating in a vague yet marvelous mood, a subliminal mood of eager and imminent expectation. But his conscious focus now upon the potentially marvelous things that might soon be coming to him served to heighten that sense of expectation to the point where it electrified him. It electrified him for the rest of that night. But his intense euphoria was short-lived and gave way the following morning to acute pangs of anxiety and foreboding, which took the intellectualized form of an acerbic skepticism:

"Synchronicity, superstition, the zodiac," he thought, "it’s all bullshit! People are not that important! The stars are not placed in the heavens merely to supply us with information about our wretched little Lives. That is the egocentric theory of the solar system, which is even more stupid than Ptolemy’s geocentric theory."

CHAPTER TWO: A GOLDEN PATINA.

It was Monday the first day of March, and it was the first class of the first day of the first semester of Paul's sophomore year at university. For reasons unknown to him, a roll call was carried out in this class but in no other.

After forty students had acknowledged their called names, the professor asked if there was anyone else who's name had not been called. Only one person was thus affected, so only one hand was raised.

That person was sitting a little to the left of the center of the room--Paul was sitting in the back right corner of the room next to the doorway.

From a distance of twenty feet he felt sure the hand belonged to a female, but, because several students were obstructing his direct line of sight, he was unable to see anything more of her.

His idle curiosity prompted him to attempt to remedy this by raising himself up in his seat almost three inches, from which point of vantage he was then able to make out an abundance of blond hair.

"Patina Van Maanen," said a dulcet female voice, "Maanen with two A's."

Paul noticed several heads turn in the direction of the voice, and smiles of amusement and giggles too. They were covert, surreptitious little giggles.

It wasn't the two A's that inspired this ambient curiosity and amusement--it was Patina's accent. She was an American, and being the only foreigner amidst a group of Aussies, her accent stood out as being very different and even strange. This was exacerbated by the fact that American accents are not nearly so strong on the movies and TV as they are when spoken in person.

"Van Maanen?" thought Paul. "That's a Dutch name and it means: 'from the moons', moons plural, how strange."

When the class was over, Paul decided to remain seated until Patina had exited the room, because his proximity to the doorway would then allow him to observe her at a distance of only two or three-feet. This would enable him to make a positive identification of her. It was more than idle curiosity--he was fascinated, he found her intriguing. He wanted to know exactly who this American-Dutch girl was.

As the students rose from their seats and began to disperse, he was able to see the blond-haired figure previously obscured. He kept his eyes on her until she exited the room, so as to exclude the possibility of misidentifying her.

That task of keeping her in focus was made easier by her clothes, which were somewhat of a Hippie style and distinctively unusual by the Australian standards of that time. She was wearing blue bell-bottom jeans that were spotlessly clean and neatly pressed, and embroidered with ribbon on all the seams, like a Hippie of means set apart from the rest.

Immediately prior to making her exit, she looked directly at him. Their eyes met and locked together for just a brief moment. The chance of this happening was great indeed because Paul was staring fixedly at her; and her gaze, which was moving about at random, was sooner or later almost certain to turn in his direction. Paul felt as though an intangible kind of communication had taken place between them.

He was unable to say for certain whether she was beautiful or just pretty; there was something nondescript about her appearance, which made such an assessment difficult. It troubled him vaguely that this should be the case, but he had never laid eyes upon her before, so how could it be otherwise--the myriad pixals comprising her face had not yet been fully downloaded into his mind’s computer.

Just the same, her accent, her clothes and her natural good looks, had made an instant and enormous impression upon Paul--no, that would be understating the matter. He was actually quite obsessed by it all. Her accent almost addled his brain. He tried to imitate her drawn-out drawl, all the way home in the train.

During his freshman year, Paul had acquired the habit of staying at school until 6:00 p.m. He did this, whenever possible, to avoid the overcrowding of the peak-hour rush. On this particular Monday evening, his train carriage was almost empty, and this allowed him to talk to himself in a soft voice without attracting attention:

"Pattteeeeeennnna Van Maaaaaaaaanen." he said, stretching the vowels to the utmost limit. "Maa aaa aaa aaaaaaannenn." he giggled with tickled excitement. "Maaa aaa aaaa nen with twoooo aaaaayyyysss." he giggled again all engrossed in puerile amusement.

He was seated and pumping his legs up and down like pistons at high speed while he drummed his fists against his thighs with a synchronized beat. He was possessed of a manic, exhilarated sense of excitement.

"She isn't all that terrific!" he said, softly, but in a tone of surpassing smugness. "She isn't all that terrific!" he reiterated. "On the contrary, there is something faintly ridiculous about her."

Precisely what that was, he couldn't say for certain. He simply felt a vague yet intense subjective sense of certainty that there was something ridiculous about the girl. This was hardly a fair judgement. Her accent was a novelty, but it was northern, educated, middle class, and in no way ridiculous.

Paul thought about her all night. He tried to picture her in his mind, but the glimpse of an impression he had gained of her was by now far too attenuated, far too vague and nebulous to allow him to mentally reconstruct her precise image and appearance. Was she really beautiful or not? He was simply unable to say.

Paul saw Patina again the next day, Tuesday. He was pleased to find her enrolled in another class with him. But circumstances were such that he was unable to get a closer look at her. He was unable to get within thirty feet of her.

Wednesday saw a social get-together take place in their animal behavior class; the third class in which Paul found himself co-enrolled with Patina.

That class finished just before lunch, so the teaching staff took advantage of the opportunity this afforded by having the students dissect octopus, then fricassee and eat them immediately afterward; immediately after their first class of that semester. This would also allow students and staff to get to know one another.

The octopuses were small and failed to provide an ample lunch, but it was more or less expected everyone should attend and not leave until the function was over. The octopuses amounted to little more than a snack and were quickly devoured. This left lots of time for socializing.

Patina, however, appeared to have other ideas. She took it upon herself to do the dishes on behalf of the entire class. She opened the cupboard beneath the sink and found everything she would need. There was detergent, a mop, a sponge, and an apron, which she put on. She filled the sink with hot water and rolled her shirtsleeves up.

She gave the impression of having both initiative and resourcefulness in getting all of this organized, and this suggested the possibility of her being an old hand at this sort of thing.

She gave the impression also of having an unusual amount of altruism in her make up, and the extent of this altruism suggested, to a cynic like Paul at least, the more than faint possibility of an ulterior motive.

In the meantime, Paul had located a vacant, comfortable and very special seat. It was a ringside seat. She, the object of his intense curiosity, was standing only ten feet away and three feet to the left of his center of vision.

Thus strategically placed, he could hold her in his near-peripheral gaze at all times and train his direct gaze upon her at random intervals. And no one would be any the wiser: no one would notice the exaggerated and possibly strange interest he was showing her or even notice he was staring at her at all.

The room was a little too small for the number of people in it, so occasionally someone would bump into or rub shoulders with Patina. They would then also say a few words to her, presumably by way of apology. This, in turn, would elicit a few words by way of reply from her and a bout of intense smiling, which appeared to stretch her face to the veritable limit of elasticity.

The effort required seemed to involve a discernible degree of discomfort, and she looked as if her very awkwardness served as a secondary source of discomfort: that she detested being awkward to such a degree that it produced a strain in her.

"I've got her number," thought Paul, "she's doing the dishes to escape the far more tedious chore of socializing. If she’s not an introvert then I’m Ho Chi Mhin. What a scaredy cat!" He now, all of a sudden, felt superior to her. He even momentarily experienced a smug superciliousness bordering on contempt.

There was something vaguely indecent about the manner in which he was observing her: It was so carefully planned and calculated, he was unlikely to be noticed, he scrutinized her for at least half an hour, and he ogled her with the all-absorbed bemusement of a voyeur.

On Thursday, Dr. Alice Berkhart arranged her students in card-game groups of four. Paul was thrilled to find himself seated face to face with Patina. To his left and right sat two self-absorbed young men. Their gaze was directed mainly downward. They were thumbing through a number of psychological tests. They said little, and what they did say was confined mostly to distracted mumbling.

Paul looked at Patina in awe. She reminded him of daffodils. Her hair and skin had a light golden sheen. He felt subdued by a self-conscious timidity, and yet he could not help but stare at her, and in doing so he noticed her head turn toward each person at the table. Her head turned to the right, to him, to the left and then back to him again.

He felt she was trying to catch someone's attention so that she might initiate a conversation, which might break the ice. The self-absorbed young men were too preoccupied to even notice such an attempted overture but she found a willing participant in Paul.

"The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory." she said, smiling pleasantly and holding Paul's direct gaze. "I guess that's an abbreviation of the Minneapolis Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory." She smiled and giggled. Paul smiled too but in a nervously restrained fashion. "I'm a native of Minnesota," she said, still smiling, "and that can sometimes be an advantage."

Her voice was dulcet, her accent cultured. Paul sat goggle-eyed attending scrupulously to every word she said but could not think of anything to say by way of reply that might help kindle the conversation. He felt the inclination to gulp nervously.

"Say something, stupid." said his critical inner voice, but he was speechless. It pained him that she had made the effort to initiate a conversation and now he would mess everything up by not saying a single word to her by way of reply.

The painful pause was growing in both size and significance until, in a near sweat, he finally blurted out: "Minneapolis, St Paul, Duluth, St Cloud."

Paul was a student of American geography. Well, more exactly, he watched American movies all the time, and, whenever a place, town or city was mentioned, he would look it up on the map. He knew all of the states, probably all of the cities with a population of half a million or more, and some of the smaller cities as well.

Patina raised her eyebrows in a gesture of both surprise and approval. "You know a lot about the States!" she said. "Before I came to Australia I had only ever heard of Australia and Sydney. I had never even heard of the state of New South Wales or any other place, but it just amazes me how much Australians know about America."

Paul now felt certain Patina was a gregarious and self-confident extrovert, and he felt inferior to her on that basis. He was beset by the nervous constraint of introversion, and an awkwardness, which rendered him hopelessly ineffectual in almost any kind of social situation. It was his wretched lot in life to be an introvert.

She, by contrast, now impressed him as being relaxed, uninhibited and a skilful conversationalist. His awkwardness had prevented him from uttering as much as a simple sentence. But he could think of nothing further to say, could not keep up his end of the conversation but expected her to carry it almost entirely on her own.

He now felt convinced she was the college cheer leader, the all-American girl next door; whereas he was lacking in all of the finer social graces.

He felt inferior to her also on a deeper level because it now appeared he was more of a scaredy cat than she was. And this feeling was doubly reinforced by the self-contempt he felt at having blundered so badly in his assessment of her introversion, which had been so carefully considered. What was behind that enormous mistake that might account for it? Was it projection? Was it wishful thinking? He was so far off the mark it wasn't funny. He felt the error was more likely to be a symptom of insanity than a mere miscalculation.

Paul hated making mistakes. He would lash out at himself for making them, and found them extremely difficult to laugh off.

"Say something stupid, stupid." said his critical inner voice.

"Sydney," she continued, "is such a huge city. If you drive through from one end to the other and continue down to Wollongong, it seems to never end. It must be nearly ten times the size of Minneapolis-St Paul."

Her face was noble in Paul's estimate and it had a slight roundness to it, with a small chin and a small nose. Her eyes were blue. Her arms had a light golden tan and so did her hands, which were very feminine and pretty.

"How do you come to know so much about America?" she asked.

"We have all of your American movies and TV here," he replied, feeling much relieved that her question had enabled him to finally enter the conversation. "I've been watching American TV programs since I was a kid. I used to watch Disneyland and the Mickey Mouse Club; I used to watch the serials like Spin and Marty, Corky and The White Shadow--"

Patina listened with apparent total attentiveness to every word Paul uttered, and she smiled effusively on hearing the names of programs she had seen herself many years before.

"--Disneyland had four facets: Adventure Land, Frontier Land, Fantasyland and Tomorrow Land. I used to devour them all." He was coming out of himself quite well now. "We have all the American music here too," he added . . . "What did missa sip through her pretty lips?"

"She sipped a minna soda!" said Patina, by way of reply. "I remember that song. It was sung by Dean Martin, wasn't it."

Paul was enormously impressed with Patina. He felt she was an eloquent listener as well as an eloquent speaker, and this, to him, was a personal characteristic of singular importance. Her undivided attention appeared to be focussed upon his every word, and this contrasted so markedly with his general experience of people--that they were not likely to listen to him but were more inclined to talk over the top of him or just ignore him.

But Patina wasn't like that. She seemed so different in that and other important respects too. Her manners were singularly refined--more than that, he felt she was a virtual caricature of politeness and congeniality--more than that, he felt she was one of those very superior, all-American rich girls; the type you see on movies and TV; the perfect all-American rich girl next door. He thought her a surpassing sensation. She was exactly the type to have fun, fun, fun till her Daddy takes the T-bird away.

They didn't have T-birds back in Tattoo Town, but many families did, in fact, own three cars, and could therefore be categorized as three-car families. It's just that the cars were none too nice. One might have no wheels and would be sitting up on bricks in the driveway and dripping oil everywhere. Another could likely be found sitting on the front lawn with grass three feet high growing through it. A third might be clunking but still running after a fashion, but not registered let alone insured.

And the cars were not the only messy things in a neighborhood beset by endemic alcoholism: Take the clothesline at Ian-the-Ferret's place for example.

Mrs. Ferret was indifferent about clothes falling off the line. Once they were lying in the dirt, she figured they were already dirty, so there was no point in picking them up. They just stayed there and underwent a gradual process of weathering. The rain would spatter dirt all around the edges of each garment, and this process would continue in gradual increments with each subsequent downpour until the clothes became buried deeper and deeper under the dirt. Children's toys suffered a similar fate.

Children’s bedrooms would stink of pungent urine. Kids will wet the bed, of course, but alcoholic indifference aggravates this problem a hundred times over.

Mr. Ferret was a graduate of the alcoholic school of carpentry, where he had received particular instruction in the use of four and five inch nails. These handy and versatile fastening devices can be used for a hundred-and-one projects around the home--from hanging a picture to fixing a sheet of plywood over a broken window.

Mr. Ferret was a foreman, who earned a better wage than Paul’s father--the erstwhile Judge, who was now merely a paint mixer and a newcomer who was obliged to start again at the bottom rung of the economic ladder.

But Paul’s father was nevertheless a better provider than Mr. Ferret because he worked the night shift and overtime and he didn’t drink or gamble. It would take Paul’s father ten years to move his family to a better neighborhood, but Mr. Ferret was born in that neighborhood and would die there.

It is said that drink is the curse of the working class, but gambling is also a curse and it conspires to keep the ‘workers’ down forever, and yet they seem never to have a bad thing to say about either of these two insidiously destructive vices.

Even Labor politicians turn a blind eye to this problem. It simply doesn’t exist as far as they are concerned, or at least they don’t want to know about it. It isn’t politically correct. But their disavowal of this problem will only help to ensure that it is never solved.

While alcoholism in Tattoo Town was an endemic problem, it wasn’t the worst thing there by any means--not from Paul’s point of view. The obtrusive crudeness of everything in general was not even the worst thing about the place. What Paul hated most of all was the threat of violence.

One day when he was about ten, Paul and his big brother, John, who was fourteen at the time, were walking down the street less than half a mile from their home. On passing the Badkin residence, Tony Badkin, for no apparent reason, approached Paul and threatened to break a milk bottle over his head. Tony was about twelve, was bigger than Paul but smaller than John.

"You try it and I'll punch your head in!" said Paul's big brother.

Tony ran to his mother.

"Ma, this kid is gonna bash me up!"

"I'll PUT A BOOT UP HIS FUCKEN ARSE!" screamed Mrs. Badkin. Her voice was extraordinarily powerful. She might well have become an opera singer had circumstances been different, had she not been so rough around the edges, had she not been as rough as guts, had she not been as rough as the rough end of a pineapple.

Paul contrasted the crude vulgarity of Tattoo Town with the colorful portraits of upper-middle-class California he had seen so often on TV. The influence this had upon his perception of the world was enormous.

Paul saw Patina again in yet another of his classes on Friday. This meant he was enrolled in five subjects with her altogether--a coincidence he perceived as being extraordinary. The size of this coincidence, in turn, inspired in him a deep- seated feeling that it was a sign, a good sign; a highly favorable omen. He didn’t, however, get an opportunity to speak to her on that occasion.

Over the weekend, Paul resolved to approach Patina at his next opportunity. He felt she was certain to be snapped up soon if he didn't make a move on her fast. But that might prove to be a serious problem, because he had never made a move on such an attractive young lady before; therefore, if he could do it now it would be a first. And yet he sensed there was a kindness in her character that would make her approachable, even highly approachable--a kindness that might set him at ease rather than try deliberately to poke and prod his awkward sensitivity.

Paul entered his Monday morning class in a most determined mood. He would sit next to Patina and talk to her no matter what. For him this was like a plunge into a fearful unknown. If she didn't respond to him, his words would then quickly dry up and he would be left with an embarrassment, which was downright physically painful to him.

He had come early to class so he might approach her immediately upon her arrival, and, hopefully, before anyone else could get the chance. Upon entering the classroom, Paul noticed there were very few people as yet in attendance but he saw Patina already seated at the back of the room by herself.

He walked quickly toward her and sat down beside her. He was very nervous and dubious of the possible outcome.

"Hi!" he said, trying to sound, and appear, bright and cheerful.

She turned toward him smiling effusively and returned his greeting.

"How are you finding the course?" he asked.

"It's very interesting," she said, with her head twisted round to face Paul directly, "but I wonder just how necessary all of this animal experimentation is?"

"We fatten them, we eat them, we make leather goods out of them, we view them as commodities; when we ought to be vegetarians." said Paul, sympathetically.

Her face lit up with a beaming smile, which suggested emphatic agreement and approval.

"This is your second year but I didn't see you here last year?" he asked changing the subject.

"No, I did my freshman year at the University of Minnesota."

"Well, isn't that great that you can just transfer to a university in another country without a whole lot of fuss and bother and red tape."

"Well, actually," she said, beginning a new sentence but then pausing a moment. She drew her head down into her shoulders in an enacted cringing fashion, and she had a cheesy, Cheshire grin on her face which stretched from ear to ear. Her facial expression and cringing posture were feigning the anticipation of blows, or some other dire form of disapproval, which might result from her daring to disagree with Paul.

"Well, actually," she continued, "it isn't that straight forward, because I only get half credit for my freshman year, which means I'll have to complete an extra semester to get my degree. Then there's another problem in that our academic years are out of phase. We have our end of year break roughly in June, July and August whereas in Australia it's December, January and February; so after my three-month vacation, I had to wait another six months before I could resume my studies over here. So, in spite of a year of study, I'm now ready to start off again from scratch, from square one . . . do not pass go, do not collect two-hundred dollars."

"That's absolutely terrible . . . Worse than that, it's a violation of human rights; worse than that, it's nothing less than racial discrimination--seeing that you're a member of the American race."

Paul was almost kicking himself for having said something so unbelievably stupid, but was quickly relieved to see she was all smiles and even laughing as if he was some kind of brilliant comedian.

"Oh what lovely, beautiful teeth you have my dear," he thought, "and aren't you just as cute as hell!"

By this time Dr. Alice Berkhart had arrived, so their psychology class was ready to begin. She wanted to hand back questionnaires the class had filled out the previous Monday, and she wanted to hand them back one by one in person. This procedure would enable her to attach names to faces--supposedly, and would allow her to get to know the students.

Paul felt a little uneasy about this because some of the questions had been quite personal. While completing the questionnaire, he had no idea he would even be asked to put his name on it. But things had now gone even a step beyond that, and he would soon find himself face to face with his 'father confessor'.

The questionnaire consisted of a long list of personal epithets. Most of these were innocuous and even childishly self-congratulatory: terms like 'kind', 'considerate', 'friendly', 'helpful', 'generous'--things no one would balk at admitting to whether they were true and accurate or not. There were actually only three words with a significant emotive content. These were 'proud', 'ambitious' and 'inferior.'

Paul was consciously aware that all three attributes applied to him; therefore, not admitting to them would be tantamount to telling a lie, so he bit the bullet and ticked all three.

But he thought this might now be his time of reckoning. As a consequence, he was growing increasingly nervous in anticipation of Alice's prying scrutiny, and his nervous discomfort finally reached a maximum, at which point he finally said to himself: "To hell with it, who cares!" And, with a little willpower applied, he was able to worry no more about it.

The students gathered in a circular group around Dr. Alice and approached her more closely as their names were called. When she was more than half way through this process she finally called Paul’s name. By accident, coincidence or the random placement of his questionnaire in the pile, he happened at this point to be standing right next to her. He and Alice were almost rubbing shoulders.

"Yes!" he said, in acknowledgment, and Dr. Alice was struck by a sudden panic. She glanced quickly and furtively in his direction and then back to the pile of papers she was holding. Her face flushed bright red with involuntary embarrassment as she clutched and grasped awkwardly in an effort to get a grip on his questionnaire.

"Well, that's an unexpected turn of events," thought Paul, "it seems she's more scared of me than I am of her. Blushing is a highly emotive thing, isn't it, and such a dead give away. Perhaps Dr. Alice feels guilty about spying on me, or perhaps she is shocked that such a handsome guy could feel inferior, or perhaps both of the above could be true simultaneously?"

When all the students had returned to their seats, Alice described a somewhat complicated experiment, which would be the subject of their next assignment. Having repeated her description carefully and twice over, she asked: "Is there anyone who doesn't clearly understand what I've just said?" Paul, for one, didn't understand the instructions, and, because he was now on a binge of honesty, he raised his hand without the slightest feeling of embarrassment. Even when he noticed he was the only person in a class of forty to do so, he still felt serenely and surprisingly at ease.

"Well, at least there's one honest person in the class!" said Alice.

Paul felt she was alluding to more than the matter at hand: that her remark conveyed an additional message of personal approbation that only the two of them were party to.

"What I described to you, in so much detail, was an experiment with a deliberate mistake built into it. Don't be overly embarrassed though, because I usually catch most of the students in every new class.

The point I am trying to make is this: you cannot just accept something on faith, without understanding it, just because a Ph.D. tells you it's true. You shouldn't necessarily believe anything I say; you shouldn't take it on faith. You should understand it. You should think about everything I tell you, and decide for yourself whether you agree or disagree."

There were surely some red faces in that class, and some yellow ones too from the egg she had rubbed into them, though I guess she tried not to rub it in to excess, because she moved quickly to another and quite different subject.

She hung a picture on the wall for the class to ponder. "What is it?" she asked. "That's the question. What is it supposed to be?"

It was just an abstract drawing of a coffeepot to Paul's way of thinking, but it was also a test of analytical perception. Paul didn't bother to raise his hand to let Alice know he knew what it was, because he took it for granted everyone else would also know what it was. But after a while he wasn't so sure about that.

Finally Alice asked the class: "Is there anyone at all who knows what this is?"

With no one else responding, Paul finally raised his hand and said: "It's a coffee pot."

About half the class turned around to look at Paul with smiles and gestures of amazement on their faces. Patina was also within their field of focus, was within their direct line of sight.

The look on her face suggested self-conscious uneasiness at suddenly and unexpectedly finding herself placed in the limelight, and yet there was also a hint, a subdued smile of pleasure and pride in evidence on her face--to Paul's wishful way of thinking at least.

But this was Paul's day, to be sure. It seemed like he could make no mistakes. No matter which way he turned, he was still getting it right. Moreover, by scoring these points right in front of Patina, he was presumably making a good impression on her--a very much better impression, in fact, than he would otherwise, normally be capable of.

This, their Monday morning class, went from ten till noon. When the class had finished, Paul asked Patina if she was going to lunch, to which she answered in the affirmative, and the pair set off for the cafeteria together.

To Paul’s great pleasure, their conversation was taken up again so effortlessly from where it had left off before class. He found Patina amazingly easy to talk to. In that respect she was like no other girl he had ever met before, and he found this absolutely astonishing.

They talked again about Patina's impressions of Australia and about Minnesota. To Patina’s apparent delight, Paul was able to recite the beginning of Longfellow’s Hiawatha. He chose this particular piece because of its geographical connection with Minnesota’s Lake Superior:

By the shores of Gitche Gumee,

By the Shining-Big-Sea water,

Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,

Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.

But he was not consciously aware of a lunar connection between Nokomis and Patina until after he had finished reciting that opening stanza--Patina’s surname, after all, meant ‘from the moons’. Paul thought the lunar connection quite uncanny and the manner of its coming to him even more so. It was as if something else had selected those words on his behalf, something extraneous to himself--his subconscious mind perhaps, or intuition or even serendipity.

At about the halfway point on their journey to the cafeteria, they passed through the main hall, where the Physics Department had set up a display of electronic gadgetry.

The largest and most impressive of these was an apparatus consisting of two heavy metal rods about twenty feet high, which were standing vertically and eighteen inches apart.

A very high frequency alternating current was passed between these two rods (electrodes) and would form what might be conceived as representing a single rung on a ladder; an electric rung that would move, starting from the bottom and finishing up at the top. After that, a new rung would be formed at the bottom and the process would repeat itself over and over.

"What is it?" asked Tina.

Paul was a student of physics, amongst other things, and was familiar with the device.

"It's a Jacob's ladder."

"Ah, I see, a ladder that goes up to heaven, or at least for those people who believe in heaven."

Tina was a fast walker indeed and Paul would have to break his stride every now and again in order to maintain his place exactly abreast of her. They reached the steps to the cafeteria in no time at all and began their ascent.

"There's a lot more to that Jacobs ladder than meets the eye." Said Paul, thoughtfully. "There's quite a bit of physics involved in it and philosophy too."

He turned to look directly at her, and was surprised to find just how close her face was to his. She was smiling more effusively than ever, and she said:

"I just fell over! But I did it with such skill and finesse that probably no one even noticed. I fell down on my left knee on the step and bounced straight back up again without even skipping a beat."

Such a pretty face so close to his and smiling like that, Paul could scarcely believe his good fortune.

"My goodness. I didn't even see it happen. I didn't notice it at all."

They made their selections for lunch and located a table for two in a quiet corner.

"You were telling me about the philosophy behind the Jacob's ladder," she said, "it sounds like an interesting subject."

"Well, I think it is, but there are probably thousands who would disagree. I hope you're not easily bored, because it's a fairly long story, so tell me if you want to change the subject . . . Anyway, when I was at night school I studied Bohr's theory of the hydrogen atom--"

Paul was suddenly struck by a disquieting sense of fear, a vague fear that she might start laughing at him. But no such laughter was forthcoming.

"--Bohr was an advocate of the Chinese Yin Yang philosophy."

"Oh, I've heard of that all right. As a matter of fact, I've been meaning to study up on it, but somehow I just haven't found the time, so tell me more by all means."

"Well, it's the idea that the universe is entirely symmetrical, that everything is divided into positive and negative, and that these two qualities in conjunction make all things possible."

"Do you have any examples of this," asked Tina, "that might make it a little easier to understand?"

"Well, physics is full of examples that say "Yin Yang" so unmistakably loud and clear, and that's what led Bohr to investigate the subject already back in the nineteen-twenties: While matter can be converted into energy, energy can also be converted into matter. When that happens, when a sub-atomic particle is created--let's say an electron--a positron is always created simultaneously.

These particles have numerous characteristics and are symmetrically opposite in each and every one of them; and each of these symmetrically opposite characteristics has led to the discovery of a new law of physics.

Take the law of conservation of electric charge, for example: it says you cannot create or destroy a net electric charge. The electron is negatively charged, the positron is positively charged. You start with nothing, you add a positive and a negative, the two cancel out, and the net difference is still equal to nothing."

"I know what that's like; you could add my academic career to your list of examples." said Tina, giggling. "But go on, it's intriguing. Being a Buddhist, I have an interest in Eastern philosophies in general . . . so you can't create something out of nothing, except by following the rules."

"That's right, if you start with nothing, you can only create pairs of things, which are opposite to one another in every respect so that they balance out to equal a net sum of nothing even though individually they amount to something. In that way, you can create something out of nothing, which is a handy system to have if you need to build a universe."

"And what are some of these other laws of physics that relate directly to Yin Yang philosophy?" she asked, staring thoughtfully at Paul.

"Well, if we continue to look at the electron/positron pair: an electron has mass and rotation; therefore, it has angular momentum. As you might already anticipate, the positron spins in the opposite direction, which makes it equal but opposite, and it has to be in order to satisfy the law of conservation of angular momentum."

"Wow, that sounds really heavy, doesn't it, but I can understand it just fine."

Paul now felt it fortunate indeed that he had studied religion for five years, and had made a particular study of eastern religions. He was largely self-taught but had read a plethora of books on the subject, and he had digested their contents with the relentless energy that intense interest brings with it. He was the kind of high school dropout who could never stop learning.

After a full two hours had elapsed, the exigencies of their school schedule brought their lunchtime conversation to an end; it was time for Patina to go to her next class and for Paul to go to the library.

"I'll see you tomorrow then!" he said, smiling pleasantly.

"Yes, tomorrow." she reiterated.

He was alone again now and walking through the campus gardens to the library when he was suddenly struck by the sheer beauty of his surroundings. The lawns were manicured to perfection, many of the trees were rare and exquisite specimens and numerous flowering bushes and plants were basking, along with him self, in rays of golden sunshine.

"This is a perfect paradise," he thought. "All you would need is a pillow--you wouldn’t need blankets, and you could simply sleep the night on the lawn without even mosquitoes to bother you."

His thoughts then focussed back upon his lunchtime conversation with Patina and this brought him an extraordinary sense of satisfaction and accomplishment:

"What a rare day it's been. Today has been my day like no other day I can remember. Everything has gone my way, and at lunch I could hardly believe my own eloquence. I could hardly believe my ears. It was so good, so perfect. The words just flowed as smooth as silk. I didn't get tongue-tied and I didn't stammer. Isn't it wonderful! I couldn't possibly have made a better impression on Patina in a million years."

But on reaching the foot of the library stairs, a disturbing question sprang seemingly from nowhere into his consciousness. It was a question he had never asked himself before:

"Why do I stammer at some times and not at other times?"

Darker thoughts were now entering the picture in the form of a memory from the recent past: It was lunchtime at his place of employment during the previous summer. He had a job with the civil service, but he only worked there during the school holidays.

He was seated with work mates at the lunch table. One of the guys made a comment to the effect that vitamins made his urine turn a bright yellow.

Paul felt a strong impulse to comment on the matter and was all set to do so. He was going to say:

"That's caused by vitamin B2, riboflavin--flavin is from the Latin word for yellow."

That's what he intended to say, but, as he came closer and closer to starting the sentence, he became increasingly anxious until his hands began to shake so badly he had to quickly sit on them through fear the others would notice and think he was a weirdo.

On beginning his ascent of the library stairs, and in apparent response to his present train of thought, Paul finds himself starting to succumb to a growing weariness. This causes his pace to slacken--not in proportion but in exaggerated disproportion to the intrinsic degree of difficulty or gradient of the steps, and he continues to slow more and more.

His legs feel as if they are being held in the grip of an ever and steadily increasing inertia, which is induced by friction perhaps or even invisible strings.

Whether real or imagined, the forces resist his efforts at forward motion and quickly induce a profound torpor: a torpor portending an impending paralysis.

While he experiences this constraint as being physical in nature, even stronger and stranger sensations produce a simultaneous weariness in his head: a numbing of the skull, a blunting of the sensibilities, the overpowering stupefaction of being reduced to a semi trance-like state . . .

Or a dreamlike state . . .

Yes, it was like a dream to be sure. He could see it now; it was exactly like the very familiar dream, which had played a constant, nocturnal accompaniment to the countless unproductive days he had wasted in junior high school.

He was unable to discern even the trace element of a wish secreted within the dream; it merely inspired feelings of anxiety and helplessness in him. The simple story line was always the same:

In the company of his entire family, he would be traveling somewhere by train--probably into the city for Saturday shopping. Typically, he would be lagging behind; would just be entering the platform to find the train (with most passengers already boarded and disembarked) standing waiting to receive the last of the stragglers.

His entire family was also already aboard, all dressed in their Sunday finery, and gathered standing together, about, and just inside, one of the train’s wide doorways. These Sydney trains had wide, sliding doors and his parents had left this one wide open to receive him, as though he was deemed an honored family member, and they were beckoning to him.

Paul would need to take at least another thirty steps in order to reach them, but it was always at about this point in the dream that his walking pace would begin to slow at a rate, which was inversely proportional to the square of his distance from the train. Effectively, this meant he was never able to reach or board the train.

The time for departure would come and go, his mother in particular would be calling out to him, telling him to hurry, to catch up, to not be left behind; but he couldn’t move . . . or perhaps he didn’t want to. That thought now came to him, came percolating up from out of the depths and floated to the surface, where it was deposited like flotsom as a question in his mind: Was his paralysis inspired by fear or was it his own choice? He was eager, almost desperate to know. Was it perhaps a stubborn, rebellious recalcitrance? But why would it be that? He had no good reason to think so. It was just a guess, just the wildest kind of speculation. And yet, it had caused him to conclude, tentatively at least, that he might be a rebel.

Paul’s intense preoccupation with these thoughts had a further retarding effect upon his already decelerating rate of forward motion. As a consequence, he was now completely stopped and standing in the middle of the landing at the top of the stairs.

After an unknown and unspecifiable period of time, a man came up behind him, placed his hands on Paul's shoulders and said:

"Excuse me, but you are blocking the path . . . are you okay?"

The stairway was in fact part of the main path, so that blocking the stairs, or the landing to the stairs, was the same thing as blocking the path. Paul was shocked and startled, and turned to see a middle-aged man, who was probably a faculty member.

"Oh, I'm sorry." he said, moving quickly away and over to a portion of the library wall that was free of pedestrian traffic, where he might stand a moment without bothering anyone. He was eager to maintain his present train of thought, which he sensed was leading to something important.

He found himself standing in front of one of the library's large plate glass windows. These were darkly tinted to increase privacy as well as reduce heat and glare. They were much harder to see into than regular windows. The dark glass was almost black and was about as reflective as it was transparent--the ratio was about 50-50.

"A rebel." he thought. "Yes, perhaps so." But how could he be a rebel if he was so timid and subdued? Perhaps he was a subdued rebel--but that would be a contradiction in terms.

His desperation to learn the meaning of the dream stemmed from his conviction that it was important--that the dream had to be important if only for the sheer number of times it had been replayed inside his head.

Seen from that perspective, it amounted to a large slice of his psychic life. It was almost certain to be an intimately personal part of himself, as personal as his own flesh and blood, like a twin separated from him at birth. His being alienated from something such as this: his anima, his inner essence; could cause (as well as explain) the vague sense of disquiet he so often felt.

He was so eager in fact to solve this conundrum, he focussed all of his powers of concentration upon it, but his frenetic efforts proved ineffective and even counterproductive because they had caused him to strain his brain past the point of overheating. This had the dysfunctional consequence of leading him to yet another disappointing dead end.

His brain felt ready to shut down, felt like it was at the very point of melt down. He stared stupidly, gawking and gaping into the thick black glass. His mind couldn’t help but choose the soothing escape of descent into blankness and oblivion.

A somnolent feeling as restful as sleep was accepted, welcomed, surrendered to. Then it happened, right after he had stopped thinking, right after his conscious mind had shut down: he was struck by an intense flash of brightest light. It was insight. It was like a glimpse of the veritable light of heaven, like a message sent from another place. It came to him suddenly, as if emanating right out of the thick black glass: "I never stammer when I talk to women."

Paul's thoughts were now racing once more: "This is so amazing! No, this is doubly amazing! Why is it I don't stammer when I'm talking to women but only with men? And why was I never aware of something as strange as this until right this very minute?"

He felt stupefied and confused, and then the words to a nursery rhyme entered his head: "Georgie Pordgy, pudding and pie, kissed the girls and made them cry. When the boys came out to play, Georgie Pordgy ran away."

"Is it something to do with cowardice?" he thought. "Oh no, I hope not . . . but could the unpalatable nature of something like that explain why I was never aware of it until now: because I didn't want to know?"

He was now staring so fixedly through the library window as to be almost mesmerized and oblivious of someone else inside who was staring back at him. That person had become annoyed by Paul's obtrusive staring and was now staring back at him in angry defiance.

"God, he'll think I'm weird!" thought Paul. "I didn't mean to stare. I didn't even realize I was staring."

Paul averted his gaze timidly and walked away, having failed to recognize his own reflection.

*

The morning of the following day saw Patina arrive early for class once more--which was her habit in any case. Paul had made an extra effort to arrive early again himself--the size of his reward for having done that the previous day would see to that.

As a consequence, there were barely half a dozen people as yet in attendance. Paul found her seated to the left of the center of the room and made a beeline for her.

He reached her quickly enough but he then remained standing alongside her for a few seconds, because she appeared so distracted that she failed to even notice him; she was staring fixedly out of the window to her left.

He placed his hand on the back of the chair immediately next to her for the purpose of dragging it out and seating himself beside her. She still didn't notice him standing there until she heard his chair being dragged across the floor. At that point she turned suddenly and looked up at him.

Following the fraction of an instant, which it took her to recognize him, it seemed as if her body responded on her behalf, automatically and involuntarily, by discharging a pinprick of electricity. It was shock enough to unsettle her, and it was quickly followed by a change of color. Her face went from light golden to bright red in less than a second flat. It was the red tomato, the love apple of embarrassment.

Although Paul remained outwardly quiet and composed, inside his head there was ranting and screaming and the reckless abandon of trampoline jumping. He deliberately maintained a poker face in the hope it would leave her unaware of what he had just seen, because he thought such a disclosure would certainly cause her embarrassment.

He felt gut certain of her feelings toward him because his inner euphoria had arisen, not as a response to conscious mental calculations, but as a spontaneous reaction to an assessment of the situation his feelings had made on his behalf.

This should also perhaps have prompted him to trust those same feelings and ask her for a date without further ado, but Paul was never one to rush into things.

He would have to first think the matter through, and down to the last detail. That was his way of trying to control an uncontrollable world, and it was his way of dealing with matters of even an ordinary and everyday importance. But Patina was different: she was at the highest and unprecedented extreme end of importance, and so this matter would require a great deal more thought and consideration than usual.

Unexpectedly, however, he would end up going totally against this general trend in his thinking. He would even make a quick decision. By Paul’s standards it was a snap decision. It took him but an hour or two of actual thinking, and it was that same night, just before he went to bed, that the task was completed.

Immediately following the blushing incident and for the remainder of that day, Paul had felt a serene sense of comfort and well being. He felt Patina would be his, and it was just as simple as that. But that night, when he began to think further on the matter, he was suddenly struck by the disturbing realization that something was strangely amiss. It was simply too good to be true.

"You talk to her for two hours," said his critical inner voice, "and she is so impressed she falls instantly and madly in love with you. Well, it's just not believable. This can’t be right. It can’t be true!"

In his bedroom that night, Paul began pacing the floor until he had hiked a mile or more. Up and down the room he traipsed and a hundred times around his bed, and, in the process, he quickly worked himself into a frenzy of nervous agitation.

"This cannot be right! This is simply impossible! This could never be right! This can’t be happening! There were girls not half as good looking as Patina who wouldn't give me as much as the time of day, so how can she be romantically interested in me at all--let alone fall for me after a two-hour conversation? Do you have that sort of effect on women? Hell no! Have you ever had that sort of effect on women? Hell no! It makes no sense.

But if she blushes before you, then, she loves you . . . Yes, but not if there is something else about you that embarrasses her. If you dare to test reality, just ask her for a date, and she will look at you as if you are certifiably insane to even be suggesting such a thing.

The idea that she is madly in love with you, after hearing two hours of your mouthing off, has got to be some form of delusional megalomania on your part. It is simply, totally, one-hundred-percent unbelievable!"

After an unprecedented briefness of critical thinking, Paul was no longer able to take the incident at face value. His logical thinking (be it plausible or destructive) had poked and prodded the evidence until, by attrition, there was nothing left of it.

"She blushed before you. So what! It was an aberration. It was just a glitch."

To all effective intents and purposes, that was it, final verdict. End of story. His head had said an emphatic 'no'. And his head was the boss, was inclined to take control and keep control of the general order and management of Paul’s life.

But his heart had said a resounding 'yes' from the outset, and, deep down, and in spite of its playing a subordinate role to his conscious thinking, his heart continued to cling desperately to the hopeful belief that a 'yes' might still somehow be possible.

Far from having a favorable balancing effect, however, his feelings merely created a schism in his mind, which in turn would lead to an even greater state of dysfunction.

His head and heart were at loggerheads, were opposing forces pushing Paul in two different directions at once. It was like trying to drive a car with one foot applied to the brake and the other foot pressed against the accelerator. It was gridlock; it was an almost total shutdown.

Because of this, he could make no more positive move toward her, no romantic overture. The best he could do was just keep things going as they had been. He would continue his relationship with Patina at school; he just wouldn't ask her for a date.

*

That Paul and Patina were enrolled in five subjects together was made all the more unusual in that the combination of subjects constituted an unusual choice. Ethology, taxonomy, biochemistry, mathematics and psychology came close to constituting a bizarre conglomeration. For that reason perhaps, no other students appeared to be enrolled in more than two of these subjects.

In fostering a relationship between them, this concatenation constituted a highly fortuitous state of affairs, because it placed the pair together in classes, and at lunch, for a total of twenty hours during this, the second week of their sophomore year. And over subsequent weeks this arrangement would become their established routine.

In spite of Paul's decision not to ask Patina for a date or perhaps his non-decision by dysfunctional default to do nothing, a close community had nevertheless developed between them. And this had a further consequence in that it left so few gaps of opportunity for any other guy to make a move on Patina.

*

"Step on a crack, break your mother's back!" thought Patina, who was walking alone along one of the many campus footpaths. Her briskly athletic stride allowed her to step on several cracks consecutively, and without cheating by taking more than one step per crack.

"I wonder why he doesn't ask me out?" she thought. "Perhaps he's too shy. Perhaps I should ask him out. I mean, after all, if men can ask women out on a date then it's only fair that women should have the same right. It's a simple measure of reciprocity . . . and this is the era of Women's Liberation. He's good looking and he's really smart, so why shouldn't he be fair game. Why don't I just invite him to go see a movie or something."

"But have you forgotten," said a voice in her head, "have you forgotten everything. An invitation is a request, and a request is subject to the same laws of reciprocity. If you make a request of a person, and they accede to that request, it becomes fair for them to make a request of you; and by those same rules of reciprocity, you are then bound in turn to accede to their requests.

Now, as you already well know, a request is an incipient form of coercion, and that makes it highly dangerous because, once initiated, it can set off a destructive chain of obligations and entanglements. You know that only too well, because you have always been warned to be on your guard against such things.

This guy could end up deciding where you should go and what you should do. He could easily become domineering, a tyrant, a control freak."

"But Paul isn't like that." said Tina, by way of reply to her own inner voice. "He's sensitive, shy, and deeper than a wishing well."

"But have you forgotten?" said the voice once more. "Have you forgotten absolutely everything. You must never use his first name. You know what kind of bad luck that can bring."

"I didn't say it out loud." she said, hastily, defensively, apologetically.

"No, but it seems you've forgotten everything nevertheless, because you should have known, you should have remembered that you can’t even write it or think it, let alone say it--let alone say it in the same sentence that includes the words 'wishing well'. I really don't know what's gotten into you."

*

In their next psychology class, Alice Berkhart was up to her old tricks. This time she was getting the students to answer questions on a blank sheet of paper, which, she assured the class, did not have to be handed in.

One question went as follows: 'Who is the most intelligent person you know?'

Paul instantly wrote down ‘Patina’ and then boldly scrutinized her writing pad to see what she had written. He was hoping to see 'Paul' written there, but it wasn't. She had written: ‘Mr. Van Zandt.’

"But she has never even met my father." thought Paul, who was momentarily confused, but then the penny finally dropped and he realized she was actually referring to him, and yet he was still surprised by the deference implied in the title of ‘Mister’ applied to a peer.

He was four years her senior but she didn't know that, and he had such a baby face he didn't look at all older than the nineteen to twenty-year-olds who made up the majority of the class.

He thought it was a little over the top. He thought it already quite enough to be regarded as the most intelligent person she knew. That she might see him as such an exalted personage as to require a formal title, was something his logical thinking could not quite come to grips with.

It seemed queer, it seemed so strange, but after giving the matter some thought, he was unable to see it as anything other than a sign of her holding him in high esteem.

This served to intensify his feelings to the point where their force and power almost exactly equaled that of his thoughts; it was a state of equilibrium with a difference. It served merely to place him under greater pressure by intensifying the conflict between his thoughts and feelings; was like revving the engine even harder while still holding a foot firmly on the brake pedal.

It also rekindling his wish to ask her for a date, and this, in turn, intensified his anxiety on that score, because he thought such an invitation was more than likely to lead to a ‘no’ answer.

It was on the following day while they were sitting talking together in class and waiting for the lesson to begin that Patina took a newspaper clipping out of her shoulder bag and handed it to Paul.

"They're showing some good movies right here on campus." she said. "I didn't know about it until I saw this."

Paul perused the clipping. It was an advertisement for their varsity theater, which was screening movies on Friday nights. Admission was only half the price of a regular theater, and they were showing Alfie, starring Michael Caine, this coming Friday.

Paul was lost for words. "Oh yes," was all he could think to say as he awkwardly handed the clipping back to her. His "Oh yes" conveyed a distant, academic-type interest. He felt a little confused--why was she showing him this clipping? Why had she bothered to cut it out of a newspaper and bring it to school? Why didn't she just tell him about it? Why didn't she just mention it in a casual way? What did she expect him to say?

It was characteristic of Paul to be slow in reacting to any event which was unforeseen. Spontaneous reactions were something to be avoided. To act on impulse seemed to him like a kind of recklessness, which would always entail the grave possibility of making an error in judgement.

He did not set store in spontaneity whether it concerned feelings, impulses or reactions. No indeed, he would have to think things over very carefully before making a decision and hazarding a course of action.

One of the things Paul disliked about extroverts was their tendency to act without thinking. He perceived them as being thoughtless and insensitive. But Paul had his shortcomings too: being a true introvert, he had a pronounced tendency to think without acting.

And yet, halfway through the lesson, it struck him that Tina might well have been giving him a hint regarding the movies. It seemed possible, it seemed likely--but was it an absolute, Cartesian certainty? It wasn’t. But it was tipping the balance further in favor of his asking her for a date. But what if she said ‘no’.

He felt a sense of foreboding. He felt as though he was sinking in a quicksand of indecisiveness, an all-encompassing head-in-hands type indecisiveness from which he might never extricate himself.

The professor's words were buzzing meaninglessly in the background. There was now but one thought in Paul's mind, one thought which emerged from his aimless arguing back and forth, one thought only which held conviction: if he didn't ask her out immediately after this class, he never would.

This terrifying prospect forcibly instilled in him a sense of urgency bordering on panic, which temporarily overpowered his gridlock and served to strengthen his resolve.

Their class ended at 2 p.m. With no further classes that day, they were both heading home. She was walking home, and he would walk with her as far as his bus stop, which was situated at the southern edge of campus.

Just prior to reaching that point, he finally began to put an invitation into words. He spoke in a slow, deliberate and almost mechanical fashion:

"Patina . . . I was wondering . . . whether . . . you might like to . . . take in a movie?"

That was all he needed to say.

"I'd love to!" she said, with force of conviction, with a smile, and even the suggestion of an expression of surprise on her face.

Paul had the fleeting impression her surprise was enacted; that she was allowing his male ego to be credited with the masterful initiative which had brought about this entire sequence of events.

He felt an irksome discomfort at just how far this was from the truth, and this realization in turn provoked in him a momentary sense of his own ineffectualness; but it was only a fleeting one, because glad tidings were at hand. He was emptied of all bad feelings and vibes, and he was re-inflated with a scintillating, exhilarating optimism. He felt light, he felt buoyant, all his senses were rising, he was high as a kite.

"I can pick you up at seven. I can call for you at your place--where exactly do you live?" he asked, in a tone of manic, electrified excitement.

"I live at 30 Arbutus Drive, but it's quite a long walk. There's no real need for you to go all the way up there and then walk back to school again. I could just as easily meet you outside the theater."

Paul's sense of chivalry was unable to entertain such an idea for even a moment. "Oh no!" He said, almost horrified, "I'd like to call for you, it's no trouble at all."

"Well, you go up this main street and take the second on your left, you follow that down to the bottom of the hill--that's where Arbutus Drive runs across, perpendicular--it's about a mile I guess. My place is on the left near-side corner."

"Well, great!" he said.

"Yes, okay!"

"That'll be super!" he said.

Their parting gestures were a little clumsy and a little self-conscious, but their smiles were effusive.

CHAPTER THREE: CONFIDENCES CONVEYED IN CANDOR.

Paul sat down in the cafeteria to a simple meal, an indifferent snack, which would serve him as dinner. He was all but indifferent to food at this point and impatient to be off and on his way. A full stomach would only hinder him, his walking, his thinking and his attention. In next to no time, he was heading for her place and walking tall. There was a spring of euphoria in Paul's stride.

He felt a wonderful sense of optimism, an invincible optimism, a sense that life was exciting, exhilarating and an altogether positive experience. There was nothing to fear and there were no problems too difficult to overcome. And everything was beautiful: the night air, the stars, the trees, the buildings, the sidewalk; everything was infused with a cerebral, spiritual electricity.

And yet as high as his soaring feelings had reached, they descended suddenly to a more drab and mundane level as soon as he saw her house--it was just so surprisingly ordinary. It was no better than the house he lived in. His bubble had not burst exactly but it had been deflated in large measure, and Paul felt somewhat deflated too.

In addition to feeling surprised and disappointed, he also felt more than a little bit stupid, and yet all of these feelings existed on the vaguest level. For reasons not clearly understood he had formed the opinion that Patina's parents were rich, and yet, had he been asked, he would have been unable to say exactly why.

That was because he was not consciously aware of having a nose that could smell money, but he had one nevertheless, and it had made this assessment on his behalf. But if it made a mistake, he would be punished for it as he would for any other kind of mistake or failure.

There were snippets of information garnered from conversations that were semi-consciously filed away in his mind's private computer under the heading of 'social status assessment, Tina Van M '.

There were but a few scant fragments of information because Tina was not one to boast about the trappings of money. But subtle as they may have been there were nevertheless sufficient clues to foster in Paul a vague yet intense subjective sense of certainty that Patina came from a rich or well-to-do family.

There was the overriding influence of Hollywood too, and matinee movies in particular. Paul had never met a real American before. The only Americans he knew were on the movie screen or TV.

The men from Hollywood were incredibly handsome and muscular, and so smart. They never lost a single fight; they were always superior and always right. The women too were incredibly and flawlessly beautiful and could do anything they set their minds to. They could even jump out of helicopters and beat up big brawny men. They were the master race to be sure and if ever there was one.

Patina's house was situated on a one-third-acre block, which was large by suburban standards. The house was set well back from the front fence. Paul passed through the entrance gate and began the fairly long walk to her front door.

He felt nervous at the prospect of meeting her folks. He coughed nervously, and then pressed the doorbell. He was relieved that Tina was the one to answer the door. She ushered him in with an inviting, circular sweep of her arm. He looked around anxiously for any sign of her parents, but could see no one else there.

To relieve the tension, he decided to come straight out and ask her:

"Do your parents live here too?"

"No, they live at Harbor View."

"Good!" he thought. "I won't have to go through all the nerve-racking introductions . . . 'Harbor View', now that has a nice sound to it as addresses go."

Paul was now pleased on four levels:

1. There would be no need for painful introductions.

2. The Van Maanen's are rich after all and not ordinary.

3. There would be more privacy with them living far away.

4. He wouldn't have to be punished with painful feelings of self-contempt for having entertained a spurious hunch. He always hated it whenever that happened. It was something he tried to avoid at all costs and wherever possible. He had come to hate the very idea of being burdened with the obligation of having to entertain one of those, of having to take one out to lunch, or, worse still: of being out to lunch himself.

Patina had just finished doing the dishes. She removed the apron she was wearing and quickly put it back in the kitchen by throwing it from a distance. It landed safely on the kitchen table.

She wore bib overalls like hillbillies wear

With straps going over the shoulder.

But these had fashion's look of flair--

She smiled so sweet when I told her.

Her pants were beige, bell-bottom in cotton,

Which all but obscured her Mexican shoes.

Her detailed appearance I haven't forgotten

In striking complexity of pattern and hues.

The pants had a flap to cover her chest,

With a rose embroidered in the center.

A white puffy shirt stuck out of this bib vest,

Embroidered with scrollwork in deep magenta.

Her pants trimmed by ribbon along each border,

A ribbon printed with many small roses.

Her garb exuded such harmony and order

To belie the negative force which opposes.

Her hair was shampooed all fluffy and thick,

And appeared to cover her shoulders completely.

Her flawless complexion wore no rouge or lipstick,

Though a trace of perfume emanated discreetly.

Her shirtsleeves were loose and puffy as well,

But tight at the wrist and hemmed in lace.

Was Homo sapiens an angel that fell?

A purpose to life was implied in her face.

"You're probably thirsty after walking all the way up here." She said. "Would you like a drink?"

Paul wasn't really thirsty but was averse to the idea of rejecting anything she might offer him.

"Sure, that would be great."

She opened the refrigerator door to reveal an array of brightly-colored beverages, which she kept stored in milk bottles. The bottles had, of course, been washed clean of residual milk. The drinks were made from powder, which she poured into the bottles, then she added water and gave them a good shake.

There were five different colors and all were extremely bright and iridescent. There was signal orange, slime green, vitriolic yellow, Presley purple, and mercuric-sulfide red. There wasn't a blue one but had there been, Paul was convinced it would have resembled copper sulfate to such an uncanny degree it could certainly have been used as a flux for soldering.

He also wondered whether the drinks might glow in the dark. He felt an inclination to smirk with amusement, but that was quickly followed by a twinge of embarrassment, because he felt the drinks were entirely appropriate to a normal seven-year-old and were thus hardly compatible with the glamorous image he had unconsciously conjured up for Patina.

But he said nothing, as was his wont, and he kept a straight face. His funny bone had been tickled, to be sure, but he was not one to tease or make fun of people. He was not the kind to push a girl into a swimming pool under any circumstances--even a girl wearing bathers, let alone one wearing everyday clothes. He was far too serious, sensitive and timid to do anything like that.

"Which one would you like?" she asked.

"Umm, the red one, I think. I'll try the red one."

He was fond of mercuric sulfide--well, he liked the color of cinnabar at least: one of the brightest reds on any artist's palette. It didn't taste quite as fabulous as it looked but it didn't taste all that bad either.

Patina looked on as Paul drank, and was watching each mouthful go down. He felt almost self-conscious as a consequence. He looked around in a cursory fashion to avoid her direct, scrutinizing gaze. There were numerous paintings on the walls but only a few were framed.

"One of her roommates must be an art student," he thought, by way of drawing a distracted inference.

There wasn't much time to waste hanging about at her place in any case, because they had to be back at school before the movie started, so they set off on their way. Tina set the pace, and a vigorous one at that.

"I like walking." she said. "I nearly always walk wherever I go provided the distance isn't more than two or three miles. It gives me a feeling of freedom and independence because you don't have to worry about timetables or rudeness on the part of bus drivers or taxi drivers.

And the weather in Sydney is so friendly and mild you can go out in it whenever you want. Minnesota is different. There are only two seasons: winter and the 4th of July."

"You mean there's virtually only one warm day in the whole year?" asked Paul, a little incredulous at having taken her comment all too literally.

"It's a short summer . . . well, I'm exaggerating, but the summer is basically July and August--two months--the spring and fall are also two months a piece. The winter is all of six months long and very cold. I'm a native and I'm still not used to it.

It's often dangerously cold, with temperatures of minus- thirty Fahrenheit being common enough each winter. I was amazed when I looked up the weather statistics for Sydney and found the record minimum was plus thirty-five Fahrenheit, and that was set back in nineteen-thirty-something.

And don't have a proper winter, and so you don't really have a proper fall either."

Paul thought Patina had a perfectly beautiful American accent. He loved to hear her talk, and in what seemed like no time at all, they were walking through the broad and brightly- lit corridors of the main building, which housed the theater.

There was a multitude of young people headed for the same destination. Many had dressed for the occasion, but the women in general wore the fancier clothes and some were even dressed to the nines. The atmosphere was festive--to Paul it was electric.

There were three guys walking just in front of them, who seemed fascinated at hearing Patina’s voice. They reacted by turning their heads to a rubbernecking extreme of about one-hundred-and-fifty degrees while they continued walking at a pace brisk enough to keep up with the general flow of pedestrian traffic. They were obviously very curious to see who belonged to the voice.

Paul noticed the eyes of the guy directly in front of him widen and light up on seeing Patina.

"Yes indeed, isn't she something!" said Paul, under his breath. "And yes, she does look even better than she sounds. And, yes sir, she's my baby and I don't mean maybe."

Paul was proud as a peacock and high as a kite. He was now so far from Tattoo Town he had lost all conscious recollection of the place.

Alfie was the first in the festival series of Michael Caine movies to be screened by the Varsity theatre over a period of several weeks.

An inner circle of students from the drama department, who ran the theater, fancied themselves as connoisseurs of fine art, and would go to as much trouble as the practical exigencies of obtaining movies would allow in order to select films with artistic merit.

On this particular occasion at least, their efforts were wasted on Paul. He felt a simplistic but intense personal dislike for the character of Alfie, which overshadowed all else to such a degree it made it impossible for him to see anything else of value in that wonderful movie.

To Paul, Alfie was an inadequate psychopath, and that is certainly bad; but he was also lacking in chivalry, and that was even worse in Paul's book, because he thought chivalry the true measure of a man.

"If he had just married Gilda and been a proper husband to her, his life would have been so much better in every possible way, and so much better for everyone else." said Paul, expecting to earn brownie points as the pair exited the theater.

"But Gilda was a scheming sort of person," said Tina, "and I think she got pregnant deliberately so he might feel guilty enough to marry her--something he wouldn't have chosen to do otherwise. But Alfie didn't allow himself to be manipulated by her."

Paul was so stunned as to be lost for words. "Shouldn't women stand together in group solidarity," he thought, "especially in this era of Women's Liberation, and help protect one another from chauvinist pigs like Alfie . . . but maybe she's taking the villain's side just to be tongue in cheek and display a kind of outrageous, sardonic sense of humor?"

He looked closely at her face for any trace of a smirk or a grin but there was none to be seen. The matter was not of life -threatening importance to him and so he felt it was better brushed aside, and, in any case, he was certainly in no mood to start an argument about it.

He was more interested in absorbing the aesthetic impressions of the evening, admiring Patina and how gorgeous she looked in her outfit, experiencing the bright lights, taking in the festivities and gazing curiously upon the many students who had dressed up for the occasion.

In a matter of mere minutes after the movie had ended they were already outside in the night air and heading back to her place. The evening was comfortably mild, but being late April, it was just cool enough to be fresh and invigorating.

Because they were heading due south, the Southern Cross could not help but force itself upon their attention. It was standing upright like a kite, and it was as high in the sky as it ever gets.

"I guess you've probably seen the Southern Cross before?" said Paul, tentatively.

"Yes, a friend of my father pointed it out to me not long after I arrived in Australia. It's the one on the flag, isn't it?"

"Yes, and did he tell you the stars in it form an ordered sequence?"

"No."

"If you start with the bottom star and go round clockwise, each one becomes progressively dimmer. The one on the bottom is called Alpha Crux; the next is Beta Crux, which is followed by Gamma, then Delta and finally Epsilon Crux.

The probability of such an ordered sequence occurring by chance alone is five factorial (5X4X3X2) or 120 to one." Paul then thought of the probability of being enrolled in five courses with Patina; no one else was enrolled in so many of his courses.

"And the crux of the biscuit?" asked Tina, breaking into a giggle.

"The crux of the biscuit is . . . it doesn't mean a damned thing." He said, in a tone of resignation and defeat.

The walk home seemed to take no time at all to Paul, but its duration was actually in the vicinity of twenty minutes. Tina took the key from her purse and unlocked the door, and they both entered. She had not actually invited him to do so, but it seemed to just happen automatically and so naturally--almost as if it was his home too.

"I'll make some coffee!" she said, heading for the kitchen.

In the meantime, Paul was in the living room taking a second look at the many paintings on display, which occupied almost the entire surface area of the living room’s four walls.

"Her roommate must have gone out too, this being a Friday." he thought.

One large painting in particular caught his attention and held it. It was about two and a half feet wide by four feet high. It depicted a scene so strange and striking as to exert an attractive force upon Paul, a force compelling him to take the few quick steps that would bring about an interface between his nose and the canvas. Thus strategically positioned, he might examine its every minute detail.

The scene was a polar night, and the sky was black except for tiny bright stellar points of light. There was a woman standing barefoot on the ice, who had two huge polar bears with her, which served as companions. Their facial expressions conveyed a peaceful contentment, which was very much like that of a friendly, domesticated dog toward a doting master.

The woman wore a silvery-white diaphanous gown encrusted with diamonds, which was permeated by the pale blue glow of the ice. She wore a matching veil, which made her look almost like a bride, and a diamond encrusted halo--not a true halo above her head like an angel but a metal ring around her forehead and over her veil to hold it in place--much in the manner of Maid Marian. And she wore earrings, which resembled tiny diamond-encrusted chandeliers. Her almond eyes seemed elfin and unearthly, being depicted and portrayed to a stylized extreme and her irises were black.

Her arms were outstretched. Her hands were cupped together and contained a bleeding heart, which was dripping blood through her fingers and onto the ice. Her hair was white though she looked young and beautiful.

The picture didn't have the artist's name on the bottom right corner, as is customary, but it had a title: Everything About Her Was White. While examining the painting, Paul experienced eerie sensations of awe and wonder and extreme cold. And those feelings were strangely augmented by the music playing in the background, which served as a kind of fantastic accompaniment, either coincidentally or otherwise, and the song being played was: Everything Emptying Into White, by Cat Stevens. Patina had started an album running while waiting for the water to boil. She now reentered the living room carrying a tray and placed it on the coffee table.

"Gosh!" said Paul, coming over to take his coffee. "Your roommate is one hell of an artist!"

"Well, I was thinking about getting a roommate, but then I thought it might cause complications, so I never did get as far as advertising for one."

Paul suddenly became confused. "But if you don’t have a roommate then who painted this?" he asked, with a tone of disbelief in his voice of an intensity that virtually demanded an explanation.

"I did." she replied, simply.

"Oh, why of course, how stupid of me!" He felt suddenly assailed by embarrassment and self-contempt. "Why didn't I think of that. I am really so stupid!"

"No you're not. Why you're--" but she said no more.

"It's just that the work is so good!" said Paul, in an effort to expunge the implied insult that Patina would not have been capable of painting it. "It seems too good to be the work of anyone but an artist or a full-time art student. Boy oh boy, how do you paint the fur on the polar bears?"

He was now grinning from ear to ear and breaking into an uncontrollable giggle at what struck him as an outrageous extreme of meticulousness: the fur appeared to have been painted hair by hair, one hair at a time.

"It's just practice!" she said, enacting a stupid grin, and focussing upon her nose so as to go cross-eyed.

Paul was horrified. "Oh don't do that!" he said, moving quickly toward her. He grabbed her left forearm and squeezed it gently. This, ostensibly, was meant to convey a concern for her welfare, but in actual fact he just wanted an excuse to be able to touch her.

"You might stay like that." he thought, but didn't say so as it might sound insensitive or herald bad luck or violate some other kind of vague taboo.

"Boy oh boy! You are so talented!" His voice was still filled with amazement and incredulity. "But why don't you put your name on it?"

"Well, the painting was originally done by Edmund Dulac, so the ideas are his--that’s why I can't put my name to it; but I liked it so much I had to do a version of it of my own, though a little more stylized."

"What does ‘stylized’ mean exactly?"

"Well, do you see how the arms are a little too long and curved to be real, to exist in the real world. That's stylized. It’s of a particular style rather than a photographic depiction of the real world."

"Oh yes, and her eyes too are not really those of a real human being."

"Right, exactly . . . Take a seat."

Paul quickly assessed his seating options. There was a couch or a lazy-boy recliner, but Tina had seated herself on the carpeted floor, so he decided to do likewise.

It wasn't as uncomfortable as he might have imagined, and the floor somehow conveyed a stronger sense of his being at her place, and a degree of intimacy exceeding that of the usual arrangement of tables and chairs. He was closer to her, at eye level, and he sat feasting his eyes upon her pretty clothes, her pretty face and her golden hair.

It was all so much nicer now; the whole wide world seemed nicer now that he was at her place. He had made real progress in cementing the foundations of a friendship with her, and he felt a profound sense of accomplishment in that they were now finally more than mere classmates, but over and above all of this he felt a blissful sense of personal security and well being.

Of the paintings on the living room wall, many were of a

Hippie style and not to his taste, but the colors were nevertheless very beautiful and the color combinations were even harmoniously beautiful.

"I really like the music of Cat Stevens," she said, "but I like him even more because of what I’ve learned about his personal life. He suffered a lot. He was very sick with TB when he was young. I think he suffered so much that it touched his heart--much in the same way it touched St. Francis of Assisi.

Suffering is a perplexing mystery--don’t you think? I think so. It can have a strange effect on people. When I was young I was very withdrawn, because I suffered so much, but I would never let anyone know about it. I had a special wardrobe which was my secret hiding place where I could cry, and no one ever knew about it."

Paul felt somewhat confused. He was still struggling to formulate an answer to the question she had posed about fifty words earlier, when he became startled almost to distraction by her last statement. This had a disruptive influence on his train of thought, which might have rendered him unable to enter the conversation at all had it not been for something his father had told him only recently.

"My father often quotes a Dutchman from Indonesia, Sir Lawrence Van Der Pols, who observed suffering in Japanese POW camps. One of his favorite quotes is:

‘There's a place where the ground is soaked with blood and tears; that is where the brightest flowers grow.’"

"OH YES!" she exclaimed with such force and emphasis as to suggest she was--not merely pleased but pleased to the point of ecstatic delight. "That's just so fabulous," she continued, "and it says it all because it's so true.

My parents are in the Dutch Reformed Church, and my uncle is a theologian. He has a Ph.D. and a D.D. but he's not much of a theologian because I don’t think he has ever suffered.

When I was eleven, I wrote him a letter asking questions about religion, but he never even bothered to reply. He is youngish . . . well, a good deal younger than my father, and I must admit, he's handsome. He's single too, and the women from the church are all madly in love with him. It's true, they really are! And so they have such a lot in common with him, because he's absolutely madly in love with himself.

When I was twelve I decided to become a Roman Catholic because that was the original form of Christianity. But my parents made one hell of a stink about that. It was tantamount to a declaration of war, so, when I was a little older, I secretly decided to become a Buddhist instead."

"My father used to write letters to theologians," said Paul, "but he gave up on that. He said, if they wanted to know how many teeth a horse has, they wouldn't look in the horse’s mouth but would read Plato and Aristotle instead to get the information from them. They are a bunch of troglodytes."

"But psychology is almost as bad." said Patina, with an intense expression on her face. "Take Freud and the Oedipus complex: The little boy's love affair with his mother starts at the breast; begins with the warmth and sustenance he receives. Then why shouldn't the little girl fall in love with her mother in just the same way? Well, the answer is: she does, but that love affair comes to an end when she discovers she doesn't have a penis, blames her mother for it, and begins to hate her. What a worthless crock that is, and they try to call it a science."

"It’s a crock, to be sure," said Paul, "and yet it's really the only theory, which is a literal crock: It's funny that the secret of the universe can be found on the planet Uranus. In terms of anal retentiveness, people supposedly want to retain their own feces because it is such great stuff. Then why not save it all and keep it stored under your bed in five-gallon crocks. Like the flat-earth brigade, they just don't get it. It's the same as humor--you either get a joke or you don't, and they just don't get it. But it's sad in a way because it means we are still living in the dark ages."

"Yes," she said, "we are living in the dark ages and on a blighted planet. Would you like some more coffee?"

"Yes indeed." He stood up quickly with the intention of picking up the tray. He was positively energized by the excitement his conversation with Patina had engendered.

"That's okay. I'll get it. Pick out an album and put it on if you like. I'll be back in a minute."

Paul now had the hiccups. He would get those from time to time, especially if he stood up quickly after eating or drinking. Those nagging little spasms would sometimes last for hours and even days.

He was looking at her albums. They were unfamiliar to him. He had only vaguely heard of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention but she had several of their albums. There was Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and Joni Mitchell. Then there was James Taylor, Melanie, Led Zeppelin, Cat Stevens, Joe Cocker and Jimmi Hendrix.

Paul had no idea which one to choose and was continuing to hiccup.

"Just hold your fingers in your ears," she said, on coming back with the coffee, "and that will fix the hiccups guaranteed."

Paul was not sure whether she was joking or not.

"Just hold your index fingers in your ears for twenty seconds or so--it circumvents the vagus nerve."

Paul had tried countless remedies in the past, and with little success, but he was absolutely thrilled to find her method worked beautifully.

"Wow! Why didn't someone tell me about that before!" He was smiling with delight. "But I'm not sure what album to choose, because I'm not too familiar with any of them, so maybe you should choose one. Who is your favorite artist?"

"I like quite a few, and for different reasons. But if I had to choose just one, it would have to be Joni Mitchell, because she's a black crow."

Paul was intrigued. "What's a black crow?" he asked.

"Well, a black crow is someone who asks for nothing, expects nothing and depends on nothing. A black crow is totally independent."

"I'm sort of like that myself!" he said, in blissful ignorance of having just taken a headfirst dive straight into that special place where angels fear to tread. "I've always been very independent," he boasted. "Call me a lone wolf if you like, but that's just the sort of guy I am."

His tone of voice was self-congratulatory and his manner seemed smug and self-satisfied; and yet he hesitated, stopped dead for a fleeting instant, for just long enough to allow a nagging feeling of doubt to emerge. It was a feeling akin to a fear of ridicule. He wondered whether they were still talking about the same thing, or whether he would soon end up with egg on his face.

But the feeling was a fleeting one and quickly gave way to his continuing to mouth off: "I've been very independent since I was just a little kid. I could just sit by myself and draw pictures for hours and hours, all day long. I could just keep myself amused, entertain myself . . . but gosh, it's getting so late, I'd better be going."

Paul decided against kissing Patina good night. By the laws of reciprocity (which play a significant role in human affairs) if a woman invites a man to her home to see her etchings (which she didn't do exactly in any case) it is only fair that he be entitled to invite her similarly. But it does not entitle him to kiss her, because that would be like comparing apples with oranges.

Their parting words were said with Paul standing outside on her doorstep and Tina standing in her doorway. Paul was wearing a coat but Tina wasn't, and the midnight air was growing cold. She wrapped her arms around her shoulders in a kind of self-hugging embrace to keep warm.

"You poor boy," she said, "you have to travel such a long way home so late at night."

"It's worthwhile." he said, in a soft and understated voice, which caused her face to fill with delight and an expression of surprise engendered by modesty. She rolled her eyes and smiled so wide. Her face was intensely animated and alive with expression.

Paul had the feeling she was flirting, was using her charm to convey a 'come on', and a subtle admixture of awkwardness seemed to suggest she was hoping he would kiss her.

But he took his leave, he couldn't wait, he didn't kiss her, he was much too shy, and it didn't seem right on a very first date to a Calvinistic kind of guy.

Paul walked briskly through the invigorating night air. He was positively energized at being able to have a really intelligent conversation with somebody other than his father. And he was even more energized because that somebody was a beautiful young lady. Sure, all of that was true, but his feelings went a lot further than that, went all the way to euphoria and beyond, because he was high on the brain's natural amphetamines--the ones that are released into the bloodstream when you fall in love.

The streetlights were now magic, the sidewalk was magic, the trees, the night air, the moon and stars; everything was magic.

"What a smashing girl!" he said out loud. She exceeds all of the expectations of even my wildest dreams. Had I been asked previously to list all my requirements in a dream-girl and have her materialize, that dream-girl would actually have fallen way short of Patina, because I don't even have an imagination capable of conjuring up all of the fine qualities that Patina has.

And it's so strange because there were girls in the past, who were not even a quarter of Tina's stature, and they were not even slightly impressed with me. They were hard to talk to one on one. It was like they were uncomfortable and wanted to be elsewhere.

In a group setting, they were inclined to ignore me. If I did try to say something, they were likely to talk straight over the top of me. Because of that, I would just sit there in silence. Eventually one of them would notice, and, thinking it very strange, they would say, ‘ISN’T HE QUIET!’ at the top of their voice. And they would gape at me with a face full of distaste, dismay and even disbelief. That’s how they would talk about me in the third person while I was there in the first, as if I was some sort of strange laboratory specimen.

Those girls might have rated my attractiveness at about twenty-percent at best; therefore, Tina, being at least four times their stature, should rate me at about five percent.

But she doesn't. I think she rates me up around eighty percent or higher. It makes no sense at all. It amounts to an entire series of contradictions.

But it’s like magic, or grace, that has brought me here to this better person and this better place, a place where I'm accepted, where I can talk and be listened to, a place where I fit in. I am now transformed at being transported to the place where I truly belong. My father was right again. I even hate to admit it but he’s always right.

Patina is so clever, so erudite, and she's a gifted artist. She's beautiful, charming, funny, cute, sensitive, introverted, rich, glamorous, American, and she has her own house--a house just for herself, and for me. She is just the ultimate, and I must surely be the luckiest bastard in the whole wide world."

Paul was positively ebullient with excitement. His mood was manic. He felt like a skyrocket shooting through the air, he felt like a downhill skier pulling out all the stops and racing at maximum, breakneck speed through a forest of pine trees. He felt the wild and reckless abandon of being unbound by all earthly constraints--but it was merely a momentary and fleeting feeling. Fear followed close behind to check his speed and clip his wings, and his mood underwent a sudden descent as darker thoughts began to intrude.

"The Hippies will take her away, ha, ha!" said a voice of doom from deep inside his head. "The hippies will take her away from you sooner or later, and probably sooner, because there is something unconventional, left wing, bohemian about that girl. You mark my words!

She's the type, if she met a psychopath like Charles Manson, she would think he was beautiful just because of his long hair. Remember that hippie they interviewed on TV about free love, remember his attitude and his exact words: "Yair man, you come in some chick and it feels great."

"Damn it all the way to hell!" thought Paul. "Those goddamn Hippies can con these rich college girls so easy, just like Manson did. Most of these Hippies are no better than the riff raff I lived with in Tattoo Town.

But they grow their hair long and wear feathers and beads and stupid clothes. They paint rocks or small boulders, paint them pink, red, green and blue, and then lay them in the back yard and act as if they are great works of art. How phony can you get!

And that book she had sitting on her coffee table: The Poetry of Bertolt Brecht. That guy was the biggest phony fink of all time, and a communist to boot. He was the archetypal turncoat, the Benedict Arnold, the eponymous fink.

Why are there so many goddamn phonies in the world? That's what I'd like to know. And it really shits me how they get by so well. These phony hippies and communists might easily con Patina into having sex with them and then give her syphilis or gonorrhea!"

*

Paul had never been popular. He had made an attempt to become gregarious in junior high but that had proved disastrous. College had been a lonely place during his first year. The many thousands of students only served to make him feel all the more self-conscious and ill at ease; it was like going to a fancy restaurant and eating alone. There had been the occasional companion from one or other of his freshman classes but no one he really clicked with.

That had not only changed now, it had changed in a scintillatingly dramatic fashion. The simple routine of attending classes saw everything transformed and painted in brightest Technicolor. Going to lunch was even better: They were a matching pair of chatterboxes engrossed in a dialogue that delighted both of them; it even seemed as if their personalities changed when they were together--they were no longer introverts. To Paul, Patina was more than a classmate and more than a friend--she was also a gorgeous gifted girl, and that, in his estimation, made her the most delightful kind of companion imaginable. Going out on a date with her was electrifying, but even ten times better than that was just being alone with her at her place.

The second in the Varsity festival of Michael Caine movies was The Magus. On unlocking her door that night after seeing that movie, Patina once again failed to invite Paul in--in words at least, but, in terms of body language, he sensed there was an implied invitation extended, and she showed no subsequent signs of surprise or disapproval when he followed her inside.

"I'll make some coffee," she said, casually, "you can choose a record to play if you like."

Paul noticed that Patina had five Joni Mitchell albums. He had only heard The Big Yellow Taxi, which was currently playing on the Top-Forty, and so he resolved to redress that state of deficit by playing one now.

Tina came in with coffee and snacks, and proceeded to sit on the floor. Paul joined her there.

"Are you an oyster?" she asked, rhetorically. "Yyyyeeesss!" she exclaimed by way of answering her own question while nodding her head with long and slow up and down movements. She was grinning like a Cheshire cat.

She seemed nothing like an introvert now, she seemed like an actress on the stage. Her face was intensely animated and filled with expression. It reminded Paul of Clara Bowe, the 'It' girl of the silent screen, who could assume any number of intensely animated facial expressions.

"That was the title of a magazine article I read once." she continued. "When I was young I was very withdrawn. I guess it was pathological really. Now that I'm older it's not so bad, but I'm still inclined that way, and I think that's because I'm scared of people.

One day, on my way home from art school, I was waiting for a bus. I guess I was about eleven at the time. Some native Americans were waiting there, for the bus I suppose, and they were drinking alcohol. Anyway, they started fighting and beating the hell out of each other. I was absolutely terrified and I freaked out. I was so scared in fact that I totally lost it and I just started screaming uncontrollably; I went right off my head."

"Were you scared they would hurt each other?" he asked, thinking it unlikely they would have any kind of motive or reason to harm her.

"Oh no. I was scared they would hurt me. I thought they were going to attack me, but they didn't. I guess they were only angry at each other, but, at the time, I didn't see it that way."

"Did they stop fighting when they heard you screaming like that?"

"Oh no, they just kept on fighting until the police came and broke it up. They asked if I was okay, or whether I was injured, and then they drove me home. But my mother didn’t seem pleased by what she described as ‘all the hullabaloo’ of having the police bring me home.

But I think she has helped a lot to make me such an anxiety-case--and my father too. They both used to hit me all the time when I was a kid--they don't hit me any more," she hastened to add, "but as a child I could get a whack in the face at any time, for any reason at all, or for no reason whatsoever.

It would go something like this: Don't do what I do, do what I say--WHACK! Don't do what I say, do what I mean--WHACK! Don't do as I do, do as the Romans do--WHACK! Or you will arouse their wrath--WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!

"When I was seven," she continued, "I won a regional art competition. It ranged over a fairly wide slice of the mid-west or a population base of about twenty-five million people. I remember that so well because my mother would say it all the time. She was forever bragging about how I had won out over such a wide population base. But I was just a little kid, and I think winning something like that at that age is more a matter of luck than talent. I think it’s more like winning the lottery.

But my mom is very competitive, and she wanted me 'on the team' after that, which was sort of okay for a little while because we did more things together. We were sort of more connected, but perhaps for that same reason, the whole scene quickly became very disagreeable, tedious and even oppressive.

I don't even know exactly what it was, what happened or what caused it, but I went funny after that. I went really strange. I became more and more withdrawn until, after age nine, they took me to see a psychiatrist, who thought I was autistic. I think I was inclined that way in fact."

Patina picked up a book that was lying on her coffee table. It was Silent Secret Snow, by Conrad Aiken.

"This short story describes pretty much how I felt during that period in my life. You can take it home and read it if you like."

There was a childlike innocence in her tone of voice. She was not self-conscious about or seemingly even aware of the intense personal nature of the invitation. This enabled her, ostensibly, to extend the invitation to Paul in that spirit of mutuality and candor, which young children possess for a short period but lose soon enough to the guarded sophistication of adolescence and adulthood.

Paul took the book gladly. He viewed everything of hers as being something special that he would feel most pleased and even privileged to share.

"I went through a stage when I couldn't feel anything." she continued. "I was just like a zombie. I had no feelings at all, either pleasant or otherwise.

I was apathetic. I didn’t care about anything. I went to bed early and got up late. I was asleep nearly all the time. I don’t even know how I could have slept that much.

The only thing I did was eat--not that I even enjoyed it, but that’s all I did, and I put on lots of weight. Even now, I can put on weight real easy, but back then I was really obese. The kids at school noticed how strange I was becoming, and they began to make fun of me. My grades dropped to a bare pass mark, but that didn’t bother me one little bit at the time.

I was such a mess for about two or three years, and then I gradually came out of it after I started painting again. I invented a secret friend then too called Merlin--you know, based on the wizard. That was when I was young . . . well, but my recovery began with my art, which I got into then with a renewed vigor.

It was just amazing. My painting came alive. It just blossomed! No, it almost exploded! And I was praised so much for it at that point, with some even saying I was a real artist and not just a gifted child.

My grades in school started to improve too after that, and it wasn't long before I was getting straight A's, and then I came first in the class.

During my crazy period, some of the kids had become convinced I was stupid, and I think they were disappointed when they learned otherwise.

There was one boy who was so competitive--in front of the whole class, he boasted he would come first in every single subject. He was such a big head, with such a big mouth, but his boasting had no substance.

He used to say to me: ‘You're strange, but don't change’--he was quoting Crosby, Stills & Nash--that was his idea of epigrammatic wit, I think. He would laugh like a real jerk every time he said it. He thought it was so funny.

He always thought his own jokes were funny. But he stopped laughing after the next lot of exams, when I beat him in every single subject.

They'll make fun of you if they think you're stupid, but they'll tolerate you in a patronizing kind of way, because, deep down, they're really pleased about it. But they won't tolerate or forgive you for being a lot smarter than they are. I found that out from personal experience.

They can't afford to be generous toward you when their pride is hurt. They want to drag you down then if they can. Even the teacher, who had been supportive when I was an underdog, started to make nasty comments about my grades.

In front of the whole class she sneered and said: 'Don't worry, she's not a genius, she has to really work at it!' I could feel the animosity, and I felt just as much an outsider then as when the kids were making fun of me.

People can have such a herd mentality and they can be so petty. I think Aldous Huxley summed it up so beautifully in his Brave New World: to conform and fit in, one should be not too stupid but not too bright.

But, in spite of his stupidity, that jerk was not altogether wrong in saying I was strange, because I've been through so many strange phases.

In junior high I won a watch as a prize in a minor art competition that was run by the school. It wasn't a very expensive or fancy kind of watch, but there was something about it I really liked. It became my favorite thing in the whole world.

I took it with me wherever I went and kept it under my pillow at night. But after a while I began to worry about it. I was worried at the prospect of losing it, and my anxiety on that score increased steadily till it reached a point where I simply couldn't bear it any more.

So, one day when I was standing on a bridge, I had a sudden impulse to take it off and drop it in the river. It all happened so fast that the watch was gone forever before I even had time to think about it."

"But, had you kept the watch," said Paul, who had been listening attentively all this time, "there would have been a chance of your losing it, admittedly, but there would also have been the very real possibility of your still having possession of it to this very day."

"Yes . . . well, that's logical enough, but you don't understand--it would have driven me crazy to keep the watch. I just couldn't bear it--the worry and stress associated with it, although that went on for another year or two.

There was a compulsive kind of game I had to play. I would choose, or, more accurately, I would be forced by fear to choose my favorite possession, and then throw it away, or give it away, or leave it where someone else might find it--a poor kid perhaps. I had to play that game maybe once a month, choose my favorite remaining possession and dispose of it.

My mother would just freak out in dismay and disgust. She gave me some of my worst beatings during that time, in the form of punishment for being so forgetful."

Paul was shocked. It dawned on him now that Patina was not the all-American girl next door.

"I’m surprised she's telling me all this," he thought. "I would never tell anyone such personal things about myself. They could subsequently use that information against you, or go blabbing to everyone around the place, who might, in turn, start making fun of you. That’s exactly what would have happened to me in junior high school if I had told the guys anything really personal about myself.

How extraordinary that she would tell me all this . . . Yes, but she has entrusted me to be nothing less than her confidant; that's what this means."

"But you're out of that stage now, aren't you?" said Paul. "I mean, you've got favorite record albums, for example, and favorite paintings too no doubt, so you must be out of that stage, which seems to me like rather a negative and destructive stage."

"Yes, I'm out of the extreme throw-away stage, which you describe as negative, and it might seem crazy to most people, but I think there was method in that 'madness':

I'm now a Buddhist, you see, so I don't believe in having too many possessions in any case. I don't want to be driven around in a streetcar named ‘Desire’. I don't want to be on that treadmill: the wheel of life."

"Well, I'll be damned!" thought Paul, who was momentarily taken aback and lost for words. Is that how it works? Is that how it all fits together?

But I’ve never even heard of anyone taking this stuff so seriously. I’ve heard plenty of sophomore jive in college, and I think Zen Buddhism is the favorite stamping ground of bullshit artists, who are out to embellish their phony image of themselves.

"I've seen the cost to my father," she said. "He spends his whole life grubbing after money. He owns three houses in the United States and hasn't set foot in even one of them for at least two years, because he's always busy working. He says he's working for our financial future, but we don't even use half the stuff his money has already bought us. All he ever does is work and worry. Thoreau said it so well:

‘Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.’ Do you like race?"

Paul was confused. "Does that mean: do I like people of different races, as opposed to being racially prejudiced? Surely not!" Paul struggled to make sense of her question, but without success. His frantic reasoning could lead him nowhere but into a quagmire of garbled nonsense.

"I thought it might be nice for a midnight snack," she said, "but I can cook something else if you prefer?"

"Oh rhoyce!" The penny had finally dropped. It was her accent he couldn't understand. "Why, of course. I love rice! My father cooks it all the time."

While she cooked their midnight snack, Paul asked to use the toilet--or the ‘restroom’ as they euphemistically refer to it over in the United States.

It was while he was seated, on the throne, that he felt a great and comforting sense of well being. But it wasn’t a sense of relief, which might result from unburdening oneself of the body’s natural waste.

No it was something quite different. He felt safe and secure. He felt he was in rather than out, and that made all the difference in the world. He felt like the spy who had come in from the cold. The outside world could not intrude into these private rooms. Time would stop. Nothing else could ever matter. He was out of the gutter, clean and dry, and basking in a golden glow of warmth and wellbeing.

"I’m in. I’m on the inside. I am now her confidant no less; the bosom friend to whom she can confide all and sundry, the special anointed one, the one she trusts. I am the listener extraordinaire--I could have been a sounding board if I do say so myself, in all modesty.

I will listen and pay attention like no one else can, because she is surely so special and fine--a rare gem of innocence and candor. Girls like her don’t just grow on trees . . . just think, three houses, her daddy must be loaded.

When the rice was all cooked and ready to eat, Patina brought it into the living room. That is where Paul was now located; he was perusing her music albums.

His verdict on their late night snack was decidedly positive. The race was nace, was worth twace the prace. He liked rice in general, but liked it especially when she cooked it for him, because it made him feel--not exactly loved but accepted and valued by her, and this in turn made him feel safe and secure.

But after the rice was consumed, and in view of how very late it now was, Paul was becoming concerned about overstaying his welcome. He was quick to imagine such things, being as thin-skinned as he was. He would have to leave soon, he felt, but there was one thing he was determined to do before he left:

He would kiss her even if she didn't like it. He would do it anyway and she would just have to live with it. He felt certain she didn't want him to kiss her.

When Tina took the plates back to the kitchen, he followed her closely. He placed his left hand awkwardly on the small of her back. Having mustered the courage to assume this degree of physical intimacy, he didn’t want it to become an abortive attempt, and so he tried hard not to take his hand away. However, once committed to this course of action, he was obliged to walk very close behind her, which also necessitated his moving in synchronized step with her to avoid kicking the backs of her legs or heels. In consequence, Tina was smiling with amusement and Paul was feeling more and more like a gauche imbecile the further they traveled in that ungainly tandem configuration.

It seemed to take forever before she stopped at the kitchen table, put the plates down and turned around. She was wearing a very warm and affectionate smile.

"Before I go," said Paul "I wanted to--"

"Oh yes." she said, and her mouth came straight up to his before he could utter another syllable. He kissed and kissed her. He kissed her mouth, her face, her ears, and her hair. Then he looked at her pretty face and into her eyes, and her mouth came up to meet him again. And they wrapped their arms around one another.

Paul was just reeling, feeling he could easily fall faint and flat on his face on the floor, but this sensation of losing himself felt so positive and good. Holding her close to him sent a faint tingling of electricity up and down his spine.

And she smelled so wonderful--like a flower. But it wasn't a store-bought perfume: it was her own natural body scent, and it was so sweet and so wonderful. And her mouth was sheer delight to the taste buds; tasted better than anything else in the world.

Paul felt almost lost in a fantastic, ecstatic dream--almost, but not quite, because, in spite of everything, he remained persistently and stubbornly apologetic.

"I hope I'm not overdoing this," he said, to which her mouth responded immediately by coming up to meet him once again, and it would reassure and quiet him.

They remained locked together like that for an indeterminate period of time, after which Patina broke free of his embrace, walked away from him and into her bedroom.

Paul followed her curiously and found her stretched out supine on a queen-size bed. It was the most comfortable one she had in the house--the one in her main bedroom.

She smiled affectionately and invitingly at him. He took his place beside her, where they devoted another four delightful hours to kissing, just kissing and nothing more--as if that wasn't enough. It was more than enough.

*

Paul read Patina's book with considerable interest. It seemed obvious the boy in the story hated his parents and was withdrawing from them into the secret world of snow as a means of escape from the hostility and lack of love within the family.

Paul knew a psychiatric nurse from night school who, as it happened, was currently working at the University of Sydney.

"What's the score on autistic children?" he asked. "Is it just that their mothers are cold and unable to love them?"

"That's a crock," said Robert, "I've met the nicest people --wonderful mothers, who were told by some whacko psychiatrist that their child's autism was due directly to a lack of love and warmth on their part, even though they had other children who are perfectly normal.

Those autistic kids are head-bangers, for crying out loud. They are grossly and congenitally brain-damaged. They are vegetables, and vegetables can't respond to love and affection even when it's given in abundance."

"Well," thought Paul, "Tina is no kind of vegetable, so that's reassuring to hear; there shouldn't be any serious problems."

*

And there were no apparent problems either--on the contrary, their relationship was growing like a hothouse plant. From friends at school, to movies, to late nights filled with words and kisses, to whole days spent together:

I arrived at her door late Sunday morn.

The clothes she wore had been contrived:

Every shade of blue that could adorn

Was worn with blue above each eye.

Her contact lenses were tinted blue--

At the zoo she wore the tinted green,

Like a beauty queen in a single hue,

From caesius through to ultramarine.

Her long blond hair and light golden skin

Did win when blue and green did wear,

And fair was she with winsome grin

And sparkle in perceptive stare.

I wore a coat and tie with pin,

A thin black tie around my throat.

To connote my learning was hair on chin

Akin to Van Dyke beard of goat.

The navy-blue coat was almost black,

The shoes and socks black, the shirt bright blue,

And beige in hue were pants off the rack,

For Jack had planned what Jill did too.

Patina was dressed like a hippie princess. There was no evidence at all of the unkempt grubbiness, which Paul tended to associate with hippies. Her clothes were not only spotlessly clean, but the color combinations were beautiful to the point of being spectacular, and they made the outfit she was wearing look more like a theatrical costume than regular clothes. She had native-Amerindian designs on her belt in various shades of blue, and also on the ribbon she used so much to border the edges of her clothing. She wore a necklace and earrings too of an Amerindian design.

Paul had been very cynical about hippies in the past, but his attitude was undergoing a process of rapid transformation.

"Wow!" he exclaimed. "What a beautiful, dazzling outfit. It’s the work of a true artist, and that’s for sure. The colors just blend together perfectly."

"I plan them that way." she said, with a devious smirk on her face, to suggest she might have been able to put one over on Paul by making him think the colors were simply random and accidental combinations. "It sometimes takes me quite a while to lay everything out and get it all to match."

"I guess it takes quite a few items of blue clothing too," he said, taking her in his arms by way of a belated greeting, and they kissed and held each other for a time.

"Would you like a drink?" she asked, leading him toward the kitchen.

"Why sure."

"Which one would you like?" she asked, opening the refrigerator door to display an array of brightly-colored lolly water.

"Any one at all will do just fine," he said, casually.

Patina clenched her teeth and screwed her face up as if in response to someone scraping their fingernails on a blackboard.

"But you must make a decision!" she blurted, she demanded, she commanded, she beseeched. Her face was fraught with distress and dissonance, and her words were spoken in a tone of deadly earnest.

Paul was confused and taken aback. He wondered where she was coming from. But puzzled as he was, he nevertheless felt a twinge of guilt at the insensitivity he may have displayed by failing to exercise due deliberation in choosing one of her special drinks. And for some strange reason the phrase "Naughty Daddy" entered his mind.

"I'll try a green one!" he said, having affected a thoughtful expression for twenty seconds or so in the hope this would serve to convey the semblance of a considered choice.

That seemed to suffice in putting her mind at rest, and it served to fill her face once more with good humor and equanimity. She poured some of the green liquid into a glass and handed it to him. He sipped at it tentatively while she searched his face for feedback, after which they entered her living room.

"My father wanted me to go to the Australian National University (A.N.U.) in Canberra," she said, "but I chose the U.S. instead because I preferred the combination of subjects they offered."

"You'd never ever see him, or your mother either, if you were studying all the way down there, would you?"

"No, but I don't see them much anyway, and I do most things on my own. I went to Hawaii by myself last February--but it was no fun, because the sailors never stopped trying to pick me up. I guess they thought I was fair game because I was on my own, but it was really quite unpleasant because they were hounding me, just as if I was a fox at a foxhunt.

They absolutely spoiled my holiday, because I had to spend two weeks in a hotel room watching TV . . . though, admittedly, I did some artwork while I was there, but I could have done that anywhere."

"Some guys have the morals of alley cats or worse!" said Paul, sympathetically. Then he thought: "But they are not on the inside like me. They are not special or privileged like me, to have been allowed into her confidence, into her home, into her arms, into her queen-size bed."

"I spent a year alone in Minnesota without seeing my parents. That was my entire freshman year. They moved to Australia in a hurry because the previous CEO of the Australian division of Plutonic Petrochemicals died from a sudden and massive heart attack. My father was given about five minutes notice to get packed and get over here."

"And you don't have any brothers or sisters--it must get lonely for you sometimes."

"I don't have any brothers or sisters, but I have a cousin I'm close to. He's about eighteen months younger than I am. He used to visit me from time to time. I'd hear a knock on the door and I'd go and check it out and there he'd be on the doorstep grinning and saying: ‘Hi, Kid’--he used to call me that."

Paul felt she wanted him too to address her as ‘Kid’--that she had just invited him to do so, not with spoken words but with tone of voice, facial expression and body language. If that was true, then, by inference, she was also inviting him to assume an increased level of intimacy between them.

But he felt he should not begin doing this immediately, because it might lay bare her cryptic invitation and this might easily cause her to become self-conscious or embarrassed. He felt it was most important that he should do this, but he also felt it was even more important that he should do it with subtlety. But he would do it for sure and just as soon as he thought prudent.

"But I really don't get lonely." she continued. "I can get very involved in my painting and in reading, and I think I'm used to being alone anyway because, as an only child, it has always been the norm for me to be alone.

As an introvert too, I find I don't need company. I'm very self-sufficient. Introverts are like that I think, because they ask for nothing, they expect nothing, they depend on nothing."

"That's exactly how she described a black crow," thought Paul, who had no intention of making a pointed or argumentative comment about this apparent discrepancy in her thinking, nor did he wish to appear to be questioning her or cross-examining her in any way.

"But a black crow might be just her idiosyncratic terminology, might be just another name for an introvert," he thought, and this seemed to be confirmed by what she said next:

"I read a book called The Introvert, and it said an introvert has the potential to become a superior human being provided he doesn't succumb to schizophrenia."

"A superior human being--just think of that!" said Paul. "But I'm an introvert, and I wonder sometimes what advantage there can possibly be in being so sensitive and nervous and highly strung, because that's what introversion means to me.

I've often wondered whether it isn't actually a defect condition, and I wonder why there are significant numbers of introverts when, by the theory of evolution and the survival of the fittest, the introverts should have been removed from the population a long time ago."

"Emily Dickinson found it very difficult to interact with people," said Tina, "and she became an almost total recluse, but she also felt most people were not good enough to associate with in any case, so she had a defiant sense of her own worth rather than inferiority feelings."

Those words struck a chord in Paul's mind. He had always been ashamed of his introversion--consciously at least--ashamed of being awkward, timid, and trodden under foot. But her last statement connected with something deep inside him.

"Hey! I bet I can beat you at Indian wrestling." she said, stretching out prone on the carpet. Paul was surprised that she was tomboy enough to want to do something like that, since, in his humble opinion, there was virtually no possibility of her winning:

I was four inches taller, weighed forty pounds more,

And she seemed to ignore that I was a man.

But we clasped our hands stretched out on the floor

Where she strained each pore as we began.

In vain she heaved like mule or horse,

With force in proportion to stress over strain,

And against the grain she hoped to endorse

That Tarzan wasn't stronger than Jane.

But it wasn't quite working out that way in reality. Her best and most strenuous efforts had come to naught. Paul had subjected her to ignominious defeat time and again.

She was heating up rapidly from her many exertions and yet she was not one to give up . . . And why should she when her persistence and relentless energy had paid off so often in the past. She had the expectation it might pay off once more. And, sure enough, she was beginning to wear him down. Paul was growing so tired of the proceedings, he hoped to put an end to them by rolling over onto his back. But that was not an entirely successful maneuver.

"Let’s have a real wrestle!" she said, quickly coming to sit on his stomach. She grabbed his wrists with her hands and pinned his arms down against the floor.

She was filled with a cocky competitiveness and indomitable confidence--which formed a marked contrast to her public persona in class, which was often constrained to the highest degree.

He pretended to resist her by raising his arms a foot or so off the floor. He would hold them up there for the briefest time and then let them drop back down again in apparent defeat. It made him feel good to let her win, and it made him feel good in any case to have her sitting on him.

He felt like a fiendishly lucky frateur ensconced in a fabulous, heavenly frottage. Bouncing her around was horse- play with a difference, and the floor was now a delightful playground.

In this spirit of fun and games, Paul began to affect a cowboy accent:

"'Just wok on bay, de dong de dong dong, wait on the coroner.' Have you heard that song--that song about the autopsy?" He broke out in a fit of giggling.

"Are you trying to make fun of my accent?" she asked, laughing heartily and tickling him to make him giggle all the more. "Well, we don't talk like Texans in Minnesota, you know, and we certainly don't talk like cowboys in Minneapolis. I’ve heard Australia is exactly the same as America-- exactly the same as America was twenty years ago. Well, many a true word spoken in jest, ha, ha, ha."

"But we are with it down-under. We are abreast of the times. We are even trendsetters. We have done most everything down here already."

"Have you ever dropped acid?" she asked.

"Sure, quite a number of times," said Paul.

"Really!" she said, in amazement. "You don't seem like the type to me."

"Hell yes, I've dropped acid plenty of times--I've dropped acetyl salicylic acid since I was about seven or eight." His tone of voice was full of boastful bravado, then he began to giggle.

"Ah, har, har," she said, sarcastically, "acetyl salicylic acid is just ordinary aspirin, and that doesn't count. Real acid is LSD, is lysergic acid diethylamide."

She had stretched the three-syllable abbreviation, LSD, to its full and unabbreviated length of ten syllables.

Paul then repeated her full-length enunciation, except that he added a twist: he re-stated it in pairs of syllables and by accenting the second syllable of each pair. At the same time, he brought his legs up so his thighs would prod her backside. And, in synchronization with each syllable uttered, he prodded her alternately, first with his left thigh and then with his right:

"Lie sir jick kass id eye eth ill uh mide." he said, prodding and bouncing her up and down.

"Part of that sounds like ‘thalidomide’ when you pronounce it like that." she said, looking disheveled enough to remind Paul of a bronco-busting rodeo rider.

"It's iambic pentameter. Any ten-syllable word can be pronounced in iambic pentameter."

"Oh really!" she said, in a tone of enacted anger. "So what would you do in the case of a twelve-syllable word?"

"In that case one could resort to pronouncing it in dactylic tetrameter," he said, smugly, "and that would be a very simple solution to an only slightly difficult problem."

"Well, I should just beat you up!" she said, grinning like a Cheshire cat. "I should just beat you up for being such a big show off." She pushed her arms down hard to pin Paul's hands down to the floor, then she took the pressure off and sat up straight--her mood had suddenly changed.

"You know," she said, in a serious tone of voice, "you can be beaten up just for using big words. A friend of mine had that experience. He's an assistant professor in philosophy, and he was traveling cross-country with a couple of friends.

They stopped at this roadhouse--a truck stop with a pool- room. There were truckers, bikers, red necks and cowboys--a pretty rough crowd. The Prof. somehow got into an argument with some of these guys--a debate really--and he started coming out with his usual twenty-dollar words.

Well, they beat him up real good, and he felt sure it was the big words; that they had reacted to them almost like a bull is said to react to a red flag."

Paul was suddenly and unexpectedly thunderstruck. What she had just said was nothing less than mind-blowing in terms of the personal significance it held for him, and it had all happened so quickly and it had come to him seemingly from out of the clear blue sky.

It was like a grenade had exploded and blown a hole through the roof of a cave. And this hole was allowing a brilliant illuminating light to penetrate the darkness beneath. He was a troglodyte who was so used to living in a cave he didn't even know it was dark, or didn't truly know what darkness was until he saw it contrasted with the light, which was now staring him in the face:

"My stammering," he thought, "it's caused by my need to censor big words. Yes, that's exactly how it operates. I can talk normally until I come to a big word, which I can't use because it's taboo for me; so I censor it, I stop, then I have to start a complete new sentence. Then I get all tongue-tied and confused, which, in turn makes me nervous and self-conscious . . . but only with men and not with women . . . I guess because I'm not scared they'll beat me up.

Good God almighty, what is this? It’s like a secret world within a world. Am I a sleepwalker living in some sort of dream world? Yes! That's exactly it: the supposed real world is actually a dream world, and the oblivious world of the subconscious is actually the real world."

"Hey, you're a million miles away." she said, in protest at the lack of attention he was showing her and with a frown so glum upon her face.

Paul felt a sharp sense of guilt at having neglected the one he held in true and highest esteem. An impression of neglect and disrespect was not an impression he cared to make--on the contrary, he wanted to come back to her just as quickly as he could, so he suddenly stretched his arms out wide to the maximum extent.

Because their hands and fingers were interlocked, this also forced Patina's arms wide apart, and this had the additional fortunate consequence of bringing her head suddenly right down to where he could steal a kiss. He then wrapped his arms around her. She did likewise and they began to kiss passionately.

He opened his eyes and looked at her admiringly. He was still incredulous as to the flawlessness of her skin, the loveliness of her golden hair, and the perfection of her Hollywood smile.

Her teeth were sparkling, pearly white.

Her sight was shrouded underneath.

The reef-blue eyelids that invite

A flight of kisses to bequeath.

Her eyes, now blue, were natural gray,

Her body scent so delicately sweet,

As fresh and natural as new-mown hay

But with subtle pheromones replete.

They immersed themselves in the delightful intimacy of necking for maybe three hours--a mere warm up for later that night. They kissed until they got hungry. Then they went into the kitchen for coffee and a snack.

Tina was in the bathroom when, at about 6 p.m., the telephone rang. Paul was sitting right next to it in the living room, and, on impulse, picked up the receiver. It was in that very instant, even before the receiver had reached his ear, that he realized he shouldn't have picked it up; he realized he had made an error in judgement, and perhaps even a serious one, but by then it was too late.

"You imbecile, what have you done now?" said his critical inner voice. But he had passed the point of no return. He couldn't just hang up, he would have to answer it, he was committed now to a course of action and he would have to follow it through regardless of where that might lead him.

But after a brief delay, during which time he said nothing, the party at the other end began speaking first:

"Patina, this is your mother, are you there? Are you coming home?"

"Hello, this is Paul, I'm a friend of Patina's from college. She's in the bathroom right now, but I can take a message if you like, or you can wait a while till she gets out if you prefer. She should be out presently."

His words were somewhat stilted--perhaps due to nervousness--but he was also feeling pangs of guilt. Exactly what he was guilty of he couldn't rightly say, but that had never stopped him from feeling guilty before in any case, so it certainly wasn't going to stop him now.

"She's a great lairdle keird!" said the mother with the loud imposing voice and the enormous American accent. "She calls me nearly every week. You know, I can honestly say she has never caused me the slightest little bit of trouble ever, and I can tell you there aren't many around like that nowadays.

You will have to come for dinner. I'm not sure when we can arrange it, but I'll let Patina know. Just tell her, her mom rang. She doesn't have to call back. We'll see you sometime in the near future." With that much said Mom hung up the phone.

Paul was very relieved--no, he was more than relieved: he was actually very happy indeed with the outcome of a sequence of events he could not have foreseen even moments before: that his interference would lead to something positive--an invitation to meet her folks.

His tone of voice, however, was strangely and defensively apologetic when he broached the subject with Patina. It was almost like he was trying to explain himself or justify his actions:

"Your mother just called. I picked up the phone on impulse. Perhaps I shouldn't have? She said you didn't have to call her back."

"Oh yes, I heard the phone . . . Umm, that's okay." Her tone of voice was casual. "I'll pick out some albums to play. I'll put a stack on so they'll last maybe a couple of hours or so."

Patina set things up accordingly and they adjourned to her queen-size bed. She reclined supine to lay back in eager anticipation of his loving arms. Paul took his place beside her, which was something he was now habitually prone to do.

Their arms entwined in a firm embrace. Touching like that, chest to chest would send electricity right through his body and out to his extremities, and the sensation was intense enough to be almost physically painful. It was heavenly and ecstatic too, and yet it gave him such a helpless, hankering feeling, and a sense of losing himself in her arms.

They surrendered themselves to the delightful intimacy of mouths and bodies merging, of hands rubbing over shoulders and backs. Paul could just hear the faint buzz of hippie music in the background. He was beginning to like hippie music more and more.

Gradually over the course of a couple of hours, as they became ever more passionately and deeply ensconced in these proceedings, Tina would begin to make whimpering sounds like a tiny, blind puppy dog, and this caused Paul to conceive of her as a helpless little baby.

And she held his hand, but her grip was a strangely contorted kind of clinging, clasping and clutching:

Her hand was bent over at the wrist and to the maximum extent possible, she held on clumsily and tenuously to just one or sometimes two of his fingers, and she maintained that same ungainly, palsied grip for all of an hour at a time or even longer.

The words of an old Peter, Paul and Mary song sprang to Paul's mind: "Way down yonder in the meadow, poor little baby crying Mamma."

Patina appeared to lose herself by becoming totally immersed in and absorbed by what they were doing. It was more than just the pleasure to be derived from kissing or necking. It seemed vital to her in a manner reminiscent of mouth to mouth resuscitation or a blood transfusion or maybe even kidney dialysis:

Her senses centered on that vital infusion.

All else was lost to sweet abandon.

Her cares and woe, her fear and confusion

Were drained from her like spooks in tandem.

They stopped for a coffee break around 1 a.m., and then went back to work--it was in fact beginning to resemble a day's work, at least in terms of the latter's typical eight-hour duration. The ‘work’ continued then until 4 a.m., at which point Paul was forced to take his leave.

"I have to go, Kid!" he said, addressing her that way for the very first time.

This induced a blissfully irrepressible smile in her, and yet it was a shy smile, a smile encircled by bashful embarrassment. She dug her chin into her neck in a futile attempt to hide her face from him. It seemed as if she had become constrained by self-consciousness all of a sudden because she didn't want him to see the sheer strength and effusiveness of her feelings. But her face was an open book to an ingratiator's look:

Ingratiator's read faces, you see. They must do that in order to protect themselves from the disapproval and wrath of people, who are more aggressive than they are; which, in Paul's case, was almost everyone.

He needed constant feedback to see how he was coming across with other people, and he could slant a conversation in whatever direction would meet with the good-humored approval of the other party.

Such chameleon-like behavior might be viewed as unprincipled cowardice by some, and it certainly has a downside; but, by the law of compensation, it must also have an upside. The upside consists of an enhanced sensibility, which is, arguably, a more than adequate compensation.

"I have to go home!" he said. "I wasn't expecting to be here so late. I have to pick up an assignment and get it back to school by 9 a.m. There's no way I can get around it."

She let him go, and he headed off into the pre-dawn darkness to walk the two-mile journey that would get him to the railway station, from where he could catch the early morning train that would take him home.

"I don't think I'll get much sleep tonight, but who cares about sleep or anything else. Who gives a damn when everything is just so wonderful!

I've never had such a beautiful girl give me as much as the time of day before, let alone want to kiss me for hours and hours and hours. Isn't it wonderful! What a smashing girl she is. What a gorgeous gifted girl!"

Paul was high as a kite, but he was quite correct about getting little or no sleep. It would end up being a bare hour and a half, and he dreamed ferociously the whole time:

His dream commenced on a familiar theme: He was wandering once again through the downtown squalor of the inner city. It was night. He came upon a building, which caught his particular attention. It was actually a series of old, derelict buildings. They were smaller buildings, only one or two stories high and they were linked together in a circular fashion like a stockade.

The main entrance consisted of a wide opening in this circular wall of old buildings and it had a covered archway over it, and this, in turn, had a sign incorporated into it. The sign was made of large, three-dimensional letters, which read:

"THE MANUAL LABOR WILL SET YOU FREE."

"Is that right?" thought Paul. "Is that from the bible

. . . no, it's the truth, the truth will set you free. I'm sure that's what the bible says."

Paul headed for the invoicing office, which was located just to the left of, and conveniently close to, the main entrance. It was a place where truck drivers might have their paperwork checked and certified upon entering or leaving.

Paul had his eighth-grade report card with him--the one, which showed him placed second-last in every single subject. He had it folded open at the ready in anticipation that it would soon be needed.

He came to the door, and with all his courage mustered, was just able to suppress a nervous cough.

"Seize the day." he said to himself. "Seize the bull by the horns."

He knocked quite noisily and entered immediately. A man of Asian appearance was seated at a desk. He looked up in surprise at Paul. That man was none other than Pol Pot, leader of the Khemer Rouge.

"Pardon my boldness, Pol, but my name too is Paul--is almost the same as yours I'm proud to say. I come here like this at the risk of your displeasure, because I feel it is my destiny to serve you."

He handed the report card to Pol, who read it with more than perfunctory interest--he read it with unrestrained delight.

"Ah hah, every subject the same--you are special boy!" said Pol, grinning from ear to ear with a smile so disarmingly jovial it made Paul feel very safe and reassured. "I like your style. You are decisive flunky.

I shall make you officer. Here are lieutenant's stripes. Take them through that doorway at end of hall, and they will issue you with uniform, gun and assignment."

Paul bowed in gracious acknowledgment of the favor bestowed upon him, then turned and quickly took his leave.

"I think it worked. I think I got away with it!" he thought, even though he could sense the heat of a dragon's breath down the back of his neck. He was walking in the direction of the doorway and feeling a reckless sense of excitement, which was heavily admixed with fear.

Through the doorway he met a woman who was standing behind a counter. She was in charge of the quartermaster's store. It was Madam Qing, of the infamous Gang of Four, and she was issuing clothes and equipment.

She gave Paul a khaki uniform, a red polka-dot scarf and an assault rifle. She then proceeded to give him his basic orientation and instructions:

"The school teachers and librarians must work in the laundry, the engineers and architects must work digging ditches with pick and shovel, the brain surgeons and professors must clean the toilets, etc. etc. etc . . . unnerstand:

The really smartest ones must be treated worst of all."

"So these people are actually very smart?" asked Paul, inquisitively.

"NO! NOT SMART!" she screamed, her face going almost purple with rage. "They only think they smart. But they are not smart. They are just geeks, and they are stupid, because they are always reading books so they can fill their heads with trivia. But trivia is trivial, is worthless, is smallness, is nothing--that’s why geeks are nothing."

Paul thought it prudent to say no more, so he tiptoed away from her and headed through the next doorway to begin work. In that next room he found a man in his late fifties who had been badly beaten.

His spectacles were so badly cracked that his continuing to wear them seemed pointless. In terms of clothing, he was wearing a long-sleeved white business shirt that was all dirty and torn, and nothing else. He was lying in filth and debris on a damp concrete floor.

It was none other than Harry Westergard-- his old high school headmaster. Paul had never been overly fond of that pompous old bastard but seeing him now in his abject nakedness and degradation he felt a heart-rending pity for him.

Old Harry had always been far from perfect, it's true, but he didn't deserve to be treated with this kind of brutality either.

"Don't be afraid." said Paul, on seeing Harry cringe at his approach. "I've come to get you out of here."

"Paul Van Zandt--it's you! I remember you well. You know, I never meant to be so hard on you in school, but after you came first in math I checked your exam papers; and, after seeing all the working, I knew you hadn't cheated. I then checked your IQ scores and found yours was one of the highest in the school.

That made me so mad, because I know plenty of kids who really try hard and they just can't get the grades because they don't have the talent. You had a gifted brain but you just wouldn't use it. I thought your under-achieving was due simply to laziness or sheer perversity, and that made me so angry.

But I didn't understand. I was just too stupid. I now know you were hiding your light under a bushel, and I also finally understand why."

"Just take it easy on yourself. There's no need to feel guilty. You really don't deserve any of this."

"But I've learned so much in here--more than I've learned in twenty years of teaching: Pol Pot said, 'Come forward. All is forgiven. If you have a college degree or can speak French, we will find a special place for you in the new order.'

I went forward like a blind fool and began to brag and boast: 'I not only have a degree,' I said, 'I have an honors degree, and my French is better than excellent, if I do say so myself in all modesty.'

They shook my hand and offered congratulations, smiling all the while. Then their smiles changed gradually and became sarcastic, then sardonic. They then commenced sneering as they stood in a circle around me and began pushing me from one to another to another.

Then they began beating me, first just with fists but then with sticks and stones--they beat the hell out of me! Pol Pot then said I should be killed without further ado, but Madam Qing said I should be spared because I am really only a mediocre intellect.

Ho Chi Mhin then said he would kick all of the ethnic Chinese out of Vietnam even if it meant war with Red China; he said they are not a useful middle class but an exploiting class of Bourgeois parasites.

Pol Pot said Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus both had the wrong technique for dealing with the educated elite.

But, Paul, you understood this all along. You were way ahead of me. You are so much smarter than I am."

"Well, I didn't really understand it. It's been a mystery to me for most of my somnambulistic life. I just sort of sensed it on a very deep visceral or intuitive level . . . but enough talk--it's time to get you the hell out of here. Take my old civilian clothes and put them on. Can you see at all through those broken glasses?"

"Not worth a damn."

"Then you will have to walk behind me and hang on to my belt. I will try to walk at an even pace and not too quickly."

Paul and Harry set off in tandem and, with Paul up front and Harry in tow they journeyed to, and through, the next doorway. In that next room they found Patina. She was on her knees and bound by hand and foot. A teenage girl wearing black pajamas was in the process of placing a plastic bag over Tina's head with the obvious intention of suffocating her. In seeing Paul's weapon pointed at her in anger, the girl responded in agitated surprise and protest:

"But, but, but, but," she blurted out, "but this one has IQ one-fifty."

Paul forced the teenager to lie face down on the floor. He rested the gun barrel in the middle of her back.

"Hold this gun in place, Harry, and let her have it if she tries anything."

Paul then untied Patina, and used those same ropes to tie up the girl in black, and he used the plastic bag to gag her so she would be unable to cry out and warn the others.

In less than a jiffy, the three of them had escaped, and were seated in a train carriage in metropolitan Sydney.

Paul looked at Patina in deadly earnest and said, "Don't you understand?" Then he began walking around the carriage addressing all the passengers: "Don't you understand? GOOD GOD! Don't any of you understand? It's time to wake up and smell the coffee."

"Don't you understand," said Paul's mother, shaking him furiously, "you simply have to get up or you'll miss your train--you've barely got time for a cup of coffee."

Paul was deathly tired. He felt all of the fearsome fatigue of a narcoleptic zombie. With a singular effort of will, he dragged himself out of bed, got dressed, had half a cup of coffee and a slice of toast, and he was off and running to the railway station like his very life depended on it--just as he had done so many times before.

"What a dream!" he thought, as he seated himself inside the train carriage. It took him a minute or so to catch his breath. "It was so vivid, and the meaning of it seems pretty much clear and obvious:

That highly intelligent people can be the target of malicious envy, and, for that reason, it pays to keep your clever self safely hidden away from view."

"Well," said his critical inner voice, "that's some kind of fanciful notion, but there is a flaw in your line of reasoning, which makes your dream, and its implications, purely, simply and totally meaningless and irrelevant; namely: you are not clever. You barely scraped through with a pass last year in math. To become a physicist you will need a high distinction or at least a distinction in math. You won't even get a credit. You could easily fail outright!

It is the absolute summit of absurdity that you should be trying so compulsively to hide the high intelligence, which you don't even have in the first place."

"My IQ tests say I'm gifted in everything, including math. But I simply can't handle the higher math, so I guess it's true what they say: IQ tests are not a valid measure of intelligence."

"You are good at doing IQ tests, but you can't handle the higher math, and that's probably why you are studying so many stupid discrepant subjects like ethology, taxonomy, biochemistry, psychology, mathematics and physics. You will be a jackass of all trades and master of none!"

"Yes, but without those stupid discrepant subjects, I wouldn't now be so comfortably ensconced in Patina's affections."

CHAPTER FOUR: THE TRUNDLE OF DISTANCE MACHINERY.

It was the same sleep-deprived night, during which Paul had dreamed of anti-intellectual pogroms, that Patina had a significant dream of her own.

Immediately after Paul's departure, while she was readying herself for bed, some disturbing thoughts and suspicions began to work their way into her consciousness:

"Why did he answer the phone when my mom called? I wish he wouldn’t have. What would prompt him to do something like that in any case? I mean, what was the point of his getting my mother involved in our affairs? What would be the good of that? Was it really just a reflex action?"

"I warned you--didn't I." said Merlin's voice inside her head. "I warned you repeatedly, and I'll even tell you this once more, and you can mark my words: this boy will cause you heaps of trouble.

This boy is the type to attach strings to people and things. But you ignore my warnings; you think you don't need me any more."

Patina was by no means convinced of the validity of Merlin's argument but she felt distinctly troubled nevertheless, and her anxiety became manifest in a dream she had that night:

On getting to sleep, she began to retreat to the secret, silent world of snow. The snow was falling heavily and continued to do so without any signs of stopping. It was already several feet deep when she first ventured out in it, but she had an important and urgent matter to attend to and could delay no longer.

She was dressed like an Inuit and was even wearing snow- shoes, which resembled tennis rackets. The heavy snowfall continued even as the wind picked up speed and the combination brought blizzard conditions, through which she continued to walk while growing ever more anxious at the prospect of becoming lost.

She didn't even know exactly what it was she was looking for but felt it was something she needed badly and urgently but the blizzard had now become so intense as to cause a white out, through which she could see absolutely nothing.

This made the entire venture seem dangerous, and pointless too because it not only left her bereft of any realistic chance of finding whatever she was in such dire need of, it even prevented her making a decision as to which direction she should head in. As a result, she just stood impassive and feeling lost, totally helpless and resigned to whatever fate awaited her.

She was thus forced to remain in that hapless, forsaken state till help arrived. This, to begin with, took the form of a golden glow, which started out tiny like Tinker Bell or the morning star but grew and grew till it permeated everything. The glow was warm, deep and rich, it inspired a feeling of wellbeing and it had the further magical property of illuminating the white out.

She was then also able to see the source of the light: it was a lantern, and Merlin was holding it. He pointed his bony, wizened finger in Patina's direction.

She was at first confused and taken aback by the painful pangs of guilt she felt. This caused her to think Merlin was pointing at her in an accusatory fashion. Abashed, she looked down at the ground, down at her feet. But after a few moments she felt the inclination to look in the direction he was pointing in. It was just a sudden impulse that she should do that, an impulse to settle a fleeting hunch, but on finally turning to look behind her, she suddenly noticed a public telephone booth. It was a great but wonderful surprise.

"Exactly!" she said. "Of all the many things in the world, that's exactly what I need." With courage and hope restored to her, she walked quickly toward it, opened the door and entered. She was also pleased to find a respite from the freezing wind and driving snow.

Patina gingerly picked up the telephone receiver. A girl's voice at the other end answered promptly and said:

"Alaska operator."

"Oh, Hi! Can you please put me through to Long Distance Information?"

"Connecting yooooou."

"Oh, Hi, can you get me the number of Mr. Van Zandt in Sydney, Australia. He wrote it down on a piece of paper for me and he asked me to call him, but I never did, because I lost the piece of paper, so I couldn't call him even if I wanted to . . . not that I wanted to. You see, his name was in the book in any case, so I could have called him any time prior to that . . . not that I wanted to, but it was just like some kind of mindless stupidity, you see. But I do have to call him now for real to convey a vitally important message."

"Yes, hello." said Paul.

"Oh, it's you! I'm very sorry but I've had to get a job over the school vacation, and, unfortunately, it's in Alaska, so I won't be able to see you for all of three months, or the entire duration of the school holidays. I'm terribly sorry but I just can’t help it."

"That's okay. As it happens, I have to work too--I'll be working in Darwin building chicken sheds and for the full three months as well, so I wouldn't be able to see you in any case. So don't worry yourself about this for one moment, and try to enjoy Alaska as much as you can. It's good to have a little time apart in any case--isn't it?"

"You're so understanding. I really do appreciate your being like that."

*

Having gone to the necessary trouble of going home at dawn to pick up his physics assignment, Paul was able to hand it in on time at 9 a.m. sharp. With that feat accomplished he headed for the library to work on another project, but before sitting down to that job of work he decided to wander around a little in the hope of locating Patina. He was successful in that venture and it didn't take him long.

She had a window seat on the north wall of the ground floor. The sun was pouring in through that window like diaphanous gold and bathing the golden Patina in a gleaming radiance.

"My sunshine angel." he thought. "I must be the luckiest guy alive." He pinched himself. "Ouch! Well, it must be true."

Paul got down on his knees on the carpet, rested his hands on her desk, smiled and said, "G-day." She responded with a sweet and appropriately gilded smile.

"What's that you're reading?" he asked.

"It's a fairy tale. I read them all the time. I've read them since I was a kid. Have you ever read The Lord of The Rings or The Hobbit--they are also for adults, but I like fairytales that are written just for children too, and just as much."

"Mm," thought Paul, "this might be the cool new thing for college kids to get into."

He then said: "No, I can't say I've ever read anything like that."

He looked at the book she was holding. It was a tiny book made for tiny hands, measuring about three inches wide by four inches high and less than a half inch thick.

Patina's enthusiasm in talking about the book, and her holding it up for him to see; seemed, to Paul at least, like an open invitation to borrow the book, read it, and perhaps discuss it with her at a later stage--just as he had done with Secret Silent Snow.

I made a casual, perfunctory request,

Assessed as superfluous by amity weighed.

I expected an un-delayed ‘be my guest’

As my fingers pressed on the book she displayed.

But to my surprise she didn't let go,

Her head drooped low in doleful guise.

Her pensive eyes looked up as though

She feared this precious thing's demise.

"If you're sure you'll give it back," she said, in a slightly irritated tone of voice. After that, she finally loosed her hold on the book so he might take it from her.

He then finally had possession of it, but it was an ungracious victory. He felt as though he had snatched it out of her hand by force; that he had taken it from her under protest; that he had won a tug of war; that Tina had only acquiesced through the duress he had unwittingly imposed.

"She trusts me, she trusts me not." he thought.

He felt hurt because it seemed she didn't trust him all that much after all, and he was concerned and upset by the further implication: that their friendship was not really so solid or close-knit as he had estimated and hoped.

He was surprised too that she trusted him enough to have him in her bedroom late at night and kiss him for hours on end, and yet she had doubts about whether she could trust him with this little book.

He was upset especially by the unfairness of her mistrust, because he had returned Secret Silent Snow promptly and intact; therefore, he had a proven track record of trustworthiness, which she had failed to acknowledge. She should have trusted him enough to return the book.

Was it so valuable or beloved? Was the chance of her never seeing it again significant? Why didn't she just wait a week or two and then, if he hadn't already returned it, politely ask him to do so? Why should she become irritated by his request?

Paul read the book going home in the train. It took him less than half an hour to read the whole thing. It was clearly a book intended for small children. He didn't find it very interesting or enjoyable or unusual.

It was hard cover but very small, and couldn't have been worth more than a few dollars. It wasn't an old or rare book--it was only two years old. She would have been able to buy another copy without any trouble had he been determined never to return it. There was nothing written in the front cover to give it sentimental value.

He returned the book the following day. He felt just a trifle nervous about having it in his possession, and was eager to get it back to her as soon as possible. He also wanted to reassure her that he was a person who could be relied upon. He was vaguely anticipating praise for his punctuality.

On getting it back, however, Tina gave no indication of being especially pleased or relieved. She simply took the book in a matter of fact way while wearing a poker face, and put it in her shoulder bag. Paul was bewildered by the entire episode.

"My mom said you are invited for dinner this coming Sunday. Please don't say anything to remind her of my upcoming twenty-first birthday. She'll want to throw a party for me, and that would be an ordeal of the first magnitude."

"Oh how fabulous!" thought Paul. "I'm gaining so much ground, and so quickly . . . But, Oh Christ, it will be an ordeal meeting her folks, an absolute ordeal, I'm sure. They are probably both really terrible, horrible people.

They won't be accepting but will probably scrutinize me. I will have to choose my words with care and not declare my lack of brass. I must somehow keep them unaware that I am lower middle class.

Being Americans, they probably won't even know the socioeconomic topography of Sydney in any case; so, if I just speak politely, and casually throw in a twenty-dollar word here and there, they might never even suspect I'm a westie. Not that that's a fair label to stick on me, but they might do it anyway."

"You will have to catch a ferry boat to get there," she said. "I will already be there, so you'll have to find your own way, but I'll give you the directions.

You can catch a train to Circular Quay and then a ferry. I'll draw you a little map of how to get from the Harbor View wharf to my parents’ place."

"God, wowweee! The time has finally come for me to make my debut in high society." he thought.

The harbor was beautiful, and so was the weather on that bright sunny day. There was a briny smell in the air, a smell noticeably stronger than that of the harbor per se because it was intensified by waves crashing over the bough of the ferry and breaking up into a fine spray.

Sea gulls were sailing like kites in the breeze and just keeping pace with the boat. They were ever on the lookout for tit bits of human food; tasty morsels of concentrated sugar, fat and salt--as if they didn’t have enough of the latter in their diet already.

The Harbor View wharf was not grand or impressive to look at. It seemed quite as ordinary as a railway station or any other kind of public place, and this gave the initial impression Harbor View itself might not be such a grand place either.

But on leaving the wharf’s boardwalk on stilts, the solid ground he was now standing on only caused him to feel insecure. On making his way up that very first road, Paul found himself assailed and quickly overwhelmed by an imposing succession of mansions and prestige cars, which appeared to be growing more expensive with almost every step he took.

His massive inferiority complex had already primed and prepared him with the subservient expectation of being overawed, and with such a firm foundation laid, it was not likely to fail--and it did not, in fact, fail to achieve that self-defeating end.

He also felt an overpowering sense of being an outsider; but more than that, he felt like an intruder, an interloper, and even an imposter. The intimidating influence of these prestige cars made him cower to begin with, because they were up-market makes such as Mercedes; but as time wore on they almost made him shrink and shrivel, because they were the more unusual models like convertibles, which are so expensive in Australia. Paul felt like throwing up; the fancy cars were almost making him physically sick.

The socioeconomic gradient of the steep road he was on made his walk feel like a long hard climb indeed but, finally, he reached the Van Maanen residence. It was an enormous house on a quite large block of ground by harbor standards.

"It must be worth a million or more," he thought. "I should never have come, goddamn it!"

He unlatched the front gate and stepped onto Van Maanen land. He then carefully and scrupulously latched the gate behind him through fear of earning a stern Van Maanen rebuke. He then made his way cautiously along a steep, winding path, climbing an altitude of about fifteen feet in the process before reaching the front door of the house. He coughed nervously and knocked at the door.

He was expecting his state of nervous discomfort to steadily intensify until the door was opened; at that point it would either settle down or be ratcheted up another notch or even beyond depending upon how he was received.

But he was doubly surprised when the door opened after barely a few seconds, and he was very much relieved to find Patina standing there in the doorway, looking as pretty as a picture and smiling effusively at him.

In that brief moment, it also struck him as something so odd to see her in this totally unfamiliar setting. It seemed so surprising in fact he almost felt like saying:

"What are you doing here? This is such a coincidence that both of us should be at this same distant place at the very same time."

She ushered him inside with a sweeping motion of her arm.

"My Dad's working again today--he had to go in at short notice--so there's only my mother here for you to meet."

"Oh what a relief!" thought Paul, who was now standing within the vestibule to the front entrance. "Bless your heart for bringing me such glad tidings," he thought, "and for telling me straight away rather than keeping me on tenterhooks."

Within the confines of that small room, his senses were confronted by a preponderance of tranquil soothing green. Before him stood a small jungle of broad green leaves that was growing up out of several large ceramic pots. With the combined favorable effect of good news and an abundance of deep dark green, Paul’s anxiety level dropped to well below half of what it had been only seconds before.

In that improved state of mind, he followed Patina out of the leafy vestibule and into an enormous living room. It was about sixty feet long by thirty feet wide. It also had a very high ceiling and cathedral glazing that seemed to be all of twenty feet high.

About halfway along the interior wall of that living room was a stairway leading to a mezzanine floor. The incorporation of such a floor into the design had the effect of endowing half the house with two stories while the other half consisted of only one story but of double the normal height.

Mrs. Van Maanen came walking briskly towards them. She was quite tall at around five-eight, blonde, slender, attractive and forty-six years of age. She looked as if she could have been a model in her younger days. She had a very definite manner about her and something of a regal bearing.

She approached Paul in a manner, which was anything but tentative. With quick and deliberate strides, which seemed forcefully abrupt to Paul, she intruded right inside his personal space. She then attempted, ostensibly, to grab him by both hands.

Perhaps this was her demonstrative and physical way of extending a hearty greeting but, in response to this, Paul crossed his arms with the even greater abruptness of a defensive reflex. That action was aimed at warding off a lunge or grab at his private parts or a knee-kick to the groin--something his experience in high school had conditioned him to anticipate, and which he was now continuing to anticipate even after a period of eight years had elapsed.

Introverts are said to condition very readily. Paul would condition instantly and permanently; it was part of the downside of his sensitive nature.

Mrs. Van Maanen suddenly crossed her arms too, in an apparent effort to compensate for Paul's abrupt change of position, but she miscalculated just a little and ended up grabbing him forcibly by both wrists.

Paul felt like an imbecile at having reacted in such a gauche and puerile fashion, and he felt an even greater degree of discomfort and embarrassment too at the sheer clumsiness of now being held in such an ungainly grip:

They could have bent down and picked up a passenger who might have sat on their interlocked arms, which were now doubly crossed to resemble scissors, and that passenger might have enjoyed a ride in something resembling a four-footed, ambulatory sedan chair.

But Paul could not make a decision about which direction he should move in or what he should do next. By dint of her bold self-confidence, he felt Mom was well and truly in control of any such proceedings. It was attitude, it was mind, but it was body too: she seemed so amazingly strong and muscular--even though her muscles did not show, and she held him in a vise-like grip.

And the physical nature of their interconnectedness went even a step further. It seemed as strangely intimate as wrestling or football or some other kind of strenuous, body to body, contact sport.

"I'm so glad Patti has finally brought one of her little friends home from School." said Mom, patronizingly. "Come up stairs, and I'll show you my view."

They took but two or three awkward steps with their arms clumsily interlocked and entangled. Mom then released her grip at a convenient place to do so--the foot of the stairway--and the pair began their ascent of those stairs. Mrs. Van Maanen appeared not to show the slightest trace of embarrassment during these entire unfortunate proceedings.

"This is a beautiful house," said Paul, with a moderate enthusiasm that was calculated to steer the narrow path between politeness and obsequiousness.

"It's not too bad I suppose, but I have yet to get my house in order. I have had a new stove custom fitted into the kitchen, and this place was such an unholy mess for what seemed like an eternity while all of that work was being carried out.

Those workmen are as slow as molasses in January. You have to push and push and push them just to get anything done; how does that help me to put my house in order?

I'll show you my kitchen later, but first things first."

Having reached the summit of the stairs, they walked through a wide hallway, through another vestibule and out on to the front balcony. To maximize their field of view, Mom went straight to the front edge of the balcony and rested her forearms on the railing atop the safety fence, which was a good four feet high--Paul did likewise.

"How do you like my view?" she asked, brimming over with ostensible pleasure and pride.

"It's very nice," said Paul, guardedly. "It's picturesque and colorful, and yet it has something else, something less tangible . . . a certain ambience."

Mom suddenly seized him with an angry, penetrating stare, a stare to suggest disapproval at something he had just said. Paul, however, was of the impression she was just about to issue him with a very stern warning. He imagined it along the lines of: "Son, did you molest my daughter?" Her facial expression grew more threatening until she seemed to be glowering at him, and then she began to speak again:

"Patina paints, and I don't mind telling you, or anyone else for that matter--she's good!"

The edge of her mouth was curled up in a snarl and her words were spoken so ferociously that Paul felt intimidated. He felt she was just daring him to disagree.

"Yes indeed," he said, "I've seen her work--she has an extraordinary talent."

Paul had the highest, genuine admiration for Patina as an artist, which fostered in him a willingness to praise her work voluntarily and readily. But he felt as if the praise he had just offered had been extracted by force and duress, and this caused him to feel uncomfortable and embarrassed because it made him feel like a frightened sycophant.

This had a constraining effect on Paul and the manner in which he would continue to absorb all of the varied impressions her panoramic view could offer. His interest had become perfunctory and he felt pleased when Mom decided it was time to go back down stairs and embark on a guided tour of her kitchen. Paul had never seen such a stove in all his life. Imported from England, it was about ten feet long and five feet high, and built into the wall. It also had no less than five separate ovens.

"It must be a real pleasure to own and have the use of something really special like that," he said.

"Well, yes . . . because cooking is messy, you see, and it's important, it’s a matter of priority to me that I get my house in order, and soon. Having five ovens definitely helps in that department, because they can't all get dirty at once, and they don’t get dirty too quick, and because you can lay everything out just so. It really does make a big difference."

During his general overview of the kitchen, Paul had noticed, and counted, all of eight refrigerators. That struck him as something strange enough to be downright mysterious--like some kind of abstruse riddle, which was likely to contain locked within it the unabridged and unexpurgated answer to the meaning of life.

"Why so many?" he thought.

"Don't ask." said a voice in his head. "That might be the biggest faux pas you could ever make. When in doubt, play it safe by saying nothing. And who knows, they might not even be refrigerators, they might be upright freezers."

Dinner was surprisingly simple, and consisted of a chicken salad. That would certainly create less mess than a big slap-up dinner, and would presumably assist Mom in getting her house in order. The three of them sat at the end of a long table to eat it and to talk over dinner.

"We were at a party at Clara Goodman's place again last week--you've been to her place before haven't you Patti--she has the most wonderful city apartment, which occupies an entire floor of the Australia Tower--"

"Yes, Mom, I've been to her place."

"She's on the forty-first floor, and what a spectacular, 360-degree, panoramic view! But what I like and admire about her especially is--not just the fact that she really knows how to throw a dinner party, but that she is also able to keep her house in order.

I mean, she will spend two hundred dollars each and every day just on flowers for the dinner table, and, I mean, it just makes it, flowers like that.

Now Clara has just bought a million dollar's worth of gold. Just think of that--an even million . . . I wonder how heavy or big that much gold would actually be? Gold is so heavy, you see, that such an ingot might only be quite small."

"It's easy to calculate," said Paul, enthusiastically. "Gold sells for three-hundred dollars an ounce, so divide a million by three-hundred and that gives you three and a third thousand ounces.

Convert those ounces to grams--there are 28.4 grams in an ounce--and that gives you approximately ninety thousand grams.

Divide that by the density of gold--which is 19.5 grams per cubic centimeter--and that gives you four and a half thousand cubic centimeters or, four and a half liters, or almost exactly one Imperial gallon, or one and a quarter US gallons."

Mom gaped open-mouthed at Paul for a mesmerized moment before snapping out of it. "That was a rhetorical question!" she said, angrily. Her facial expression then appeared to grow increasingly angry as if in preparation for the issuance of another stern warning. "You had just better be careful or they'll make you a math teacher and pay you twenty dollars a week for the rest of your life . . . now the law is an area of opportunity for a smart young man.

At Clara and Isi's place, we met a young attorney by the name of Llewellyn O'Brien. Now he is a young man who is really going places.

He told me the Australian government has allocated sixty million dollars to hold a royal commission to investigate the atomic tests the British carried out in the Australian desert back in the fifties.

He is only a junior attorney but he'll be getting a thousand dollars per day for his part in the proceedings, and that will be paid over a period of nine months.

That works out to one quarter of a million dollars. And, because he doesn't need the money, he can channel all of it into the purchase of a rural property at Bowral. He can then claim that as a tax loss but use it as a holiday home, and so he doesn't have to pay one penny in tax on the quarter million he gets from the government. It's really quite clever.

"But is a royal commission really something of value or of use to anyone other than lawyers?" asked Tina.

"Why, yes, of course, because it revealed the safety standards of the fifties were inadequate by modern standards."

"But I could have told them that for sixty dollars, and I don't think it's right for lawyers and judges to misappropriate large sums of taxpayer's money," said Tina, "especially when they add insult to injury by paying no tax either.

The rich generally pay little or no income tax. I can even name at least one Australian Prime Minister who fits into that category."

"No, for heaven's sake!" said Mom.

"Yes, that Prime Minister is a millionaire who pays no income tax. He is greedy, and he leaves the tax burden to be shouldered by the ordinary people while he makes no contribution toward it himself even though he is one of the most able to do so--he is a tax bludger.

We live in a system of taxational feudalism, a de facto taxational serfdom, where only serfs pay tax. The Tsar doesn't pay tax and neither does the Prime Minister."

"That couldn't be right," said Mom, "and what in blazes is a bludger anyway? If the PM was just a greedy swine, like you say, if he was just a pig at the trough, then the church leaders would come out and denounce him; but they don't, and that's because he isn't a greedy swine at all. I'm sure he makes a bigger tax contribution than almost anyone else. After all, he has to set an example for the whole country."

"Yes, as Prime Minister, he is a fiduciary and should be held to a higher standard than ordinary people rather than a lower standard, and still the church leaders say nothing. They are too concerned about maintaining their place in the hierarchy and their privileges. They don't want to rock the boat, so they say nothing."

"Oh Patti, that is just so cynical."

"It's not my intention or my wish to be cynical, it's just the way people are. All they want is money. When I was in junior high, the Beatles put out a song called Just Give Me Money--I cried for three weeks straight when I first heard that song."

"Oh you never did, you never cried. Patina, you are being melodramatic. You never ever cried, you were always a happy girl. I don't know what sort of nonsense this is, but I will just ignore it and go and make us all some coffee."

With coffee and biscuits now sitting on the table, Mom suggested they should play cards. It was an ostensibly simple and straightforward suggestion, but bringing it to pass in the real world would be anything but simple because there was only one card game Paul could play. That happened to be euchre, and it also just happened to be one of the very few games Mom couldn’t play. What she really wanted to play was bridge, but teaching that in five minutes to a raw neophyte was out of the question.

Her palpable disappointment manifested itself in both her facial expression and a squirming in her seat, but it was not something she would live with for long, because, for some reason or other, she was determined they would play cards no matter what. She settled upon a compromise solution to this almost gadding problem, and that was to teach Paul a very simple game.

While he was familiarizing himself with the rules of that game, Paul found himself so preoccupied that beginning another conversation, or commenting upon any of the points Patina had raised earlier, seemed to be out of the question.

Patina’s present silence was indicative of a similar restraint, which she was exercising presumably so as not to distract Paul from his present learning task.

Whether by accident or by intentional design, this would effectively remove all serious conversation from the present agenda. It did . . . for a while. It may have lasted twenty minutes. It may have lasted even longer, but soon enough the conversation began to intrude once more into the proceedings and the subject matter became quickly and increasingly serious.

"I finished reading Sexual Politics, by Kate Millet, just yesterday," said Tina. "Now that is quite a work of literature. I don't think there'd be many people around capable of completing such a comprehensive task of research and writing." She placed a card on the table.

"I don't think a normal person could have written that book, to be sure," said Paul, "and she must have written it when she was in a manic phase--she's bipolar, you know." He placed his card on the table.

"Oh, a manic depressive." said Tina. "I didn't know that. Manic-depressives can be very creative. Take Van Gough: his Starry Starry Night looks like the work of a crazy person, but people like things like that--they like crazy things."

"I think Van Gough was certainly a seeded oyster," said Paul. "You know, they seed an oyster by placing an irritating piece of shell grit inside its muscle tissue; the oyster then grows a pearl around the source of the irritation as a kind of self-protection.

I think pain and suffering and persecution can also enhance creativity, because it makes people serious rather than shallow and this gives them focus."

Mom looked ill at ease now rather than angry. "Why do people have so many opinions?" she said, in a quiet and perplexed tone of voice, which, along with her confused facial expression, bestowed upon her the persona of someone diametrically different from the overly self-confident woman Paul had seen so far. "Why should they have loads and loads of opinions about every different subject under the sun. For that matter, why should people have opinions at all--I don't have them."

At this point her face seemed fully fraught with bewilderment.

"Where do opinions come from?" she asked, in a soft subdued voice that seemed serious and introspective yet strangely so.

Paul wondered if this was another rhetorical question. He thought it unlikely, and, if it was a regular type question, it was not directed at him in any case, or at Tina, because Mom was not looking at either of them; she was staring across the table at an arbitrary point on the wall. The question seemed too strange in any case for him to even attempt to find an answer to it.

A moment later Mom began to squint and pull funny faces. Paul was amused by this to the point where he had to exercise considerable restraint in order to refrain from smiling with an amusement intense enough to easily cause offence.

Mom all but closed her eyes, leaving just the narrowest slither of an opening between her eyelids. It seemed like she was straining to see through these narrow apertures in order to magnify her field of view--much in the manner of a pinhole camera. This technique might perhaps have enhanced her vision just enough to enable her to see something that was otherwise almost but not quite visible to her.

It looked to Paul like she was trying to see through an impenetrable fog. He had become so intrigued by her facial antics that he was now staring at Mom with a curiosity that was becoming intrusively intense. He was not normally one to stare, because he was too timid to risk earning the displeasure of people; but, being almost mesmerized as he now was, he became temporarily insensitive to the exigencies of etiquette and decorum.

It was not until she looked directly into his face, and noticed him staring, that he looked away. Quick as a flash, he looked down, ostensibly to look at his cards.

It was barely a fraction of a second later when he felt a painful charge of adrenaline go through his body. He looked in the direction of the source of the pain and met the hostility.

"IT'S YOUR LEAD!" screamed Mom, in a furious fit of rage, after having hit Paul very hard with her closed fist on his upper arm near the shoulder.

Paul was shocked. Not that he was unable to imagine that things like this could happen--he did, he often did, he even anticipated them, and he had even done so on this particular occasion. To be sure, he could and would imagine all sorts of things of precisely this nature--but Mom had actually, really and truly done it, had done it in the real world, and she had done it to a degree surpassing even his wildest imaginings.

That is what took him so much by surprise and made his shock all the greater; moreover, he was shaken too by the sheer physical force of the onslaught. He had never been hit as hard as this by a woman before, and was not now in the habit of being the recipient of corporal punishment in any case.

After the initial shock of adrenaline had died down, he became very upset and embarrassed.

"Mom! You're hitting him!" exclaimed Tina, in a tone of outraged disapproval and embarrassment.

"Well, he's got broad shoulders, hasn't he." said Mom, who was already looking quite composed and dignified again after her little outburst--almost as if it had never taken place.

"But you hit him so hard you knocked the cards out of his hands." said Tina, driving her disapproval deeper.

Mom then exhibited a slight chink in her armor, in the form of a momentary loss of composure, in the momentary quivering and un-stiffening of her upper lip. But she was nevertheless able to scurry quickly back to the safety of self-righteous security once again, and said:

"Well, it was his lead, so it was his fault--what was I supposed to do?"

"No, Mom, it was your lead!"

A look of terror now entered Mrs. Van Maanen’s face, which caused her dignified composure to break down altogether. She excused herself to have an early night, saying she had a headache and the headache had made her irritable.

It wasn't so early now in any case, and Paul had a longer distance to travel home than usual, so he thought it best to take his leave.

At the front door they uttered their parting words.

"I'm sorry this happened." she said. "I'd like to explain, but now is not a good time to talk."

"Patina, I was wondering . . . next Saturday--"

With these opening words Tina's face was suddenly and visibly beset with a fear of considerable intensity. It was a reaction of fear to take Paul aback. It was a reaction of anticipatory fear--as if his subsequent words might soon disclose the portent of something dark and unpleasant.

"--would you like to go to the zoo?"

With the latter part of his invitation came an immediate and enormous look of relief on Patina's face. She smiled beamingly.

"I'd just love to!" she said.

He gave her a quick little kiss on the lips--it was little more than a peck. He squeezed her forearms affectionately, almost reassuringly, and took his leave.

*

I arrived at her door on Saturday morn,

The clothes she wore were again contrived.

Every shade of green that could adorn

Was worn with green above each eye.

This time Patina was wearing green suede boots, which added an attractive finishing touch to her assortment of green clothing. This had the effect of making her even greener now than she had been blue before. That previous occasion, of course, had seen her bereft of blue shoes; but the belt she was now wearing, with its Amerindian designs, had a slight admixture of yellow and red in it, which detracted from her perfect greenness, so perhaps the color score was still about even.

"You look different every time I see you." he said. "There are seemingly so many of you now already; you have more facets than the Hope Diamond. Your clothes are the inspired work of an artist."

Patina was smiling profusely. Looking different is not automatically a good or positive thing, but her apparent pleasure suggested she had taken it that way.

Paul, on the other hand, was pleased his words were deemed sufficient to serve as a compliment, because this obviated the need for him to say something more personal and explicit. He was much too reserved to say what he really felt:

That she was every bit as beautiful as a fairytale princess, that he would love her forever, that he would like to marry her and live with her happily ever after--just like they do in all the fairytales.

But he was too scared to dare to say anything of the kind; it would be too imprudent. Deep down he sensed it would be a reckless challenging of fate, which might cause his whole world and everything in it to come unstuck.

The best way to get to the zoo from Patina’s place was by bus. The bus stop serving that particular route was very conveniently situated; it was barely fifty yards from Patina’s house. That piece of good fortune was further enhanced when the bus arrived so promptly as to subject them to less than two minutes of waiting. Paul and Patina were then both pleasantly surprised and additionally pleased to find themselves ready to board a double-decker.

Tina jumped aboard and ascended the stairs to the upper deck in a briskly athletic fashion. Paul quickened his pace behind her in the hope of diminishing the growing distance between them. She was already seated when he caught her up. There were lots of vacant seats. He took his place alongside her. He felt a strong sense of it being his place.

"These are great!" she said, bubbling over with enthusiasm. "Oh, I still can't believe the weather you have in Sydney--it's just so friendly; you never have tornadoes or hurricanes, you can go outside almost anytime, and even in the rain if you have an umbrella."

When they arrived at Taronga Park Zoo there was a crowd of people concentrated at the entrance who were waiting to get through the turnstiles; this created a bottleneck and a delay of several minutes as people awaited their turn to go through.

While standing amongst the crowd, Paul became aware of admiring glances Patina was attracting. These were not merely from men or of a sexual nature--they were also from women.

He felt this was due in part to her beautiful clothes, which somewhat resembled a theatrical costume, but it was likely also a response to hearing her voice and her American accent. One woman, an older woman in her seventies, approached the young couple directly and began a conversation with Patina.

"Are you here for the International Art Festival?" she asked, smiling pleasantly.

"Oh no, I live here." said Tina in apparent surprise at being asked such a question.

"I’m sure I’ve seen you on TV," said the lady, "you must be someone famous."

"No, I’m just an ordinary person," said Patina.

"She is and artist," said Paul, "but she lives in Sydney."

"Oh, I knew it! I just knew it!" said the old lady.

Paul was fiercely proud of Patina, and he felt both consciously and self-consciously proud of her. He felt he was likely to be noticed and admired too, if only by association. He felt the way a person might feel if they were driving a Rolls Royce, or if they were deemed to be the owner of a Rolls Royce. Patina was just the ultimate in class to Paul's way of thinking: she was rich, American, and beautiful like a movie star, but her beauty had a much finer quality to it than the regular, two dimensional portrait of a magazine-cover-girl.

This was due in large part to her facial expression, which was just so fine, thoughtful, sensitive and intelligent; and to her eyes, which were always busy looking here and there and probing into things.

Patina was the girl Paul just had to have. She was the girl to only come your way once in a lifetime--and then only if you are very lucky. She was the girl he would have to get either by hook or crook.

She was the girl who was simply too good for him--the girl who had become involved with him only by accident or by mistake; a mistake she was bound to notice sooner or later, and rectify.

While Paul was not consciously aware of this, it registered nevertheless on the deepest level, where it manifested itself as a kind of paranoia about being rejected. This deep conviction, that she could never possibly love him or want him, instilled in him a terror of losing her, which was silent and sinister but never far away.

Sydney's Taronga Park Zoo sits on sloping ground, which, at its peak, climbs high above the harbor and affords some spectacular views. Observing the many animal exhibits necessarily entails a good deal of walking and standing. After two or three hours of this, the young couple seated themselves on a park bench to take a rest, but also to enjoy the view.

"The war is going so badly," she said, "and I know it doesn't affect me personally, because I don't have any family or friends over there, but I think the situation is dreadful per se."

"I was called up," said Paul, which caused Patina to be abruptly startled, "and I was even going to enter the army and do my patriotic chore, but I didn't because my father intervened. He has such strong views on the subject. He said he would never let me throw my life away to defend a cleptocratic thiefdom like South Vietnam. He said I could accept the draft only over his dead body."

"How was it you had a choice to accept it or not?"

"Well, I was supposed to go in when I was twenty, but the government chickened out. My family was originally Dutch-Indonesian, you see, so the Oz government gave me the option of renouncing my Australian citizenship and a year to decide.

After that I was given the option of moving to Holland, but no other option than leaving the country--it would be Holland or Vietnam.

My father then said I should write a letter requesting student deferment, and I did. But they declined my request. They said I had already been given one year and they didn't regard deferment as appropriate in any case to someone who was only in the eleventh grade, because I would need a minimum of another six years of deferment to finish my intended course of study."

"So what could you do then?" she asked, without commenting on the discrepancy between his age and rate of academic progress, or that he had never mentioned anything about this before.

"My father went to the library and did biographical research on the minister in charge of military conscription.

He looked for anything we had in common, then wove those things into a letter, but with enough subtly so as not to appear overly or obviously ingratiating.

I then copied the letter in my own handwriting and sent it in. I was surprised it worked. It worked so totally well--I have unlimited deferment now provided I don't give up my studies or flunk out."

"That was very clever of your father to be able to save you from being fed into the machine guns, and especially if English is not his first language.

I thought you were of Dutch descent like me, because of your name, obviously, but I had no idea you were actually from Indonesia . . . you were born there, I suppose?"

"Yes, I was born on Bali."

"Bali! How fascinating! Why didn’t you tell me that before! I love Balinese music and most anything to do with Bali. There was one particular dance--I only saw it once-- where the men sit on the ground and jump around, and all move and chant together in unison, and they make these strange, chattering sounds like: yucker chucker, chuck chuck, chucker chucker. And they stop and start instantaneously and in unison, and they go off on a tangent together and their chanting builds up to a frenzy."

"That's the Army of the Apes from the Ramayana." Said Paul. "That's a Hindu myth, the story of Rama and Sita."

"Oh it sounds fascinating. What's it about?"

"Well Rama was a prince and an avatar and he was next in line to inherit the kingdom but, through a series of unfortunate circumstances, he ends up being banished from his island paradise and is forced to flee to another country.

Some time later his wife, Sita, follows him there but she is kidnapped and held captive by demons.

The rest of the story is taken up with his efforts to rescue her. He has one hell of a job trying to do that in fact and he would never have been successful at all if it weren’t for the considerable help he receives from the Army of the Apes.

The apes are actually monkeys, macaques--you know, the belligerent little ones with the sharp canine teeth."

"How long did you live on Bali?"

"I was born there in 1947 and we left in 1951, by popular request. It seemed everyone wanted us to get the hell out of there: the Americans, the Australians, the British and, of course, those Indonesians who were politically vocal. And so we got kicked out and we lost everything.

My father says the United States is arbitrary in its edicts and out of its depth in the sphere of international politics.

Take the case of the French:

They were not only allowed to remain as a colonial power in Vietnam and the rest of Indo China, the US gave them every kind of military and financial assistance to keep them there and in control.

The arbitrariness is twofold. Firstly, it consists of the fact that the United States has determined the Vietnamese are not entitled to independence whereas the Indonesians are. Secondly, they could just as easily have chosen the opposite. They could have told the French to get out of Vietnam while allowing the Dutch to stay in Indonesia. They could then also have given the Dutch huge military assistance if they needed it to retain power, and they could have conscripted French-Canadian boys from Quebec to fight a guerilla war in Indonesia after the position there had become untenable.

That's why my father said with respect to my going to Vietnam:

"We obey no more rules!"

"Oh yes! Right on! But you know so much about it. I thought I was keeping abreast of the news, but I hardly know a damned thing by comparison."

"I wouldn't know much about it either except my father tells me things," said Paul, who tried his best to look modest, but looking modest and being modest are, of course, two different things.

"My parents never talk about the war. They are always too busy grubbing after money . . . How long had your family lived on Bali"?

"My mother was born there in 1918, but her family moved there from Java, where they had already been living for some considerable time prior to that--the Dutch were in Indonesia for about 350 years. But, for some strange reason, Bali had been entirely independent of Dutch influence up until 1906--that's when they had the massacre.

The Dutch claimed that whenever their ships ran aground or were wrecked on the coast of Bali, the Balinese would salvage the cargo. This complaint was probably a pretext but, in any case, it's the reason they gave for invading and taking control of the place.

With modern weapons, they were able to do that quite easily. But the Balinese wouldn't accept conquest and they began to commit suicide by the thousands. The whole situation got right out of hand.

It was a culture clash in part perhaps, and the Dutch were somewhat concerned about the deaths, but not to the extent that they'd let go of the prize. They have certainly done some dirty deeds and I don't deny it, and there were even times when they behaved just like pirates."

"I can understand that," said Tina. "There are skeletons in all our closets. The Indians in America were almost wiped out, and they didn't just allow them to commit suicide either--they shot them and starved them and gave them blankets deliberately infected with smallpox."

"When the Dutch arrived in Indonesia, the indigenous population numbered four million; when we left, they numbered one-hundred-million. We also left them a vast and valuable infrastructure. We were not nearly so bad as the political left tries to make out.

Colonialism had to come to an end, there's no doubt about that in my mind, but it was just bad luck that we were the ones who were there at the wrong time and had to lose everything. When I was a young child, we lived in a beautiful villa house. When I was born, we had a brand-new 1947 Ford V8 and even a full-time chauffeur. My father was a judge then but he lost his career along with everything else and was reduced to doing low-paying unskilled work.

We lived in a slum for ten years and I never had more than one pair of shoes, and the old pair was always totally worn out well before I got a new pair. If the political left loses five dollars, they scream blue-bloody-murder; but if we lose everything, they don’t care at all. Even Holland didn’t care. They abandoned us."

Paul now felt a deep and poignant sense of loss, the full intensity of which he had never previously experienced, and it must have shown in his face.

"Gosh!" she said. "I mean . . . things are tough all over. Life is tough in any case. I don't believe money really does anything to change that. I don't think it has done me any good at all, and it hasn't helped my parents either. My mother is a lost soul--you saw how she reacted the other night; serious conversation scares her.

She is a social butterfly who is always throwing parties. She stops and talks to people for barely twenty seconds at a time and then straight away moves on. The only subject she will discuss at length is money, prestige, and the trappings of success."

"Yes," said Paul, "I can see what you're driving at, but there's more to money than that--you see, if you have no money, you are forced to live with riffraff."

"Riffraff!" she exclaimed, with an expression of distaste on her face. "What do you mean by riffraff?"

"I mean petty criminals who will even steal from their own friends, who will beat you up, who will threaten you, who will burgle your house, who will siphon your car's gas tank--"

"Why would they siphon your gas tank? Is it like a practical joke or something?"

"No, it's not; it's mostly done because they've got no money, because they've spent it all on smoking, drinking and gambling; so they can’t buy petrol, so they have to steal it."

A magpie goose came waddling toward them. It approached on Patina's side of their bench seat. It was apparently in the habit of being fed by visitors at this particular location, and it was approaching them now with that expectation.

With its head stretched forward, its beak was its most prominent feature; and it was perceived as threatening by Patina, who quickly stood up and sat down again on the other side of Paul, thus effectively transforming him into a safety barrier.

"It wants to peck me!" she yelped. And she grabbed both his arms and clung to him with the full force and desperation of a terrified child.

"Go ‘way!" she said, flicking her arm out in a shooing motion. "Go ‘way!" she said again with such a serious look on her face; it was like the fierce determination written on the face of a five-year-old Shirley Temple.

Paul put his hand out toward the goose and let it nibble gently on his fingers. But disappointment was evident in the puzzled look on its face when it found no food.

"It won't peck hard or hurt you," he said, reassuringly. "It just wants something to eat."

Upon being adequately reassured, Tina reentered the conversation but on a slightly different tack: "You know, a friend of mine from high school bought an abandoned farmhouse in Minnesota for the equivalent of twenty weeks minimum wages (about $6,000 in year 2000 money).

She describes the area as something out of Norman Rockwell--all apple pie and church on Sunday--and she said the people are friendly to the point of being spontaneously helpful.

Your experience is your experience, and I don't dispute the validity of it--and maybe it's an urban versus rural thing. But I believe my friend's experience is equally valid yet entirely different, and in her rural situation it's possible to live alongside people of fine character even if you have almost no money at all."

Paul was flabbergasted to the point of feeling offended.

What she had just told him flew in the face of everything he had ever known or experienced throughout his entire life.

The bobcat paced the concrete ground

On padded feet that made no sound.

To eight by twenty her fate was bound,

Yet she used each inch to march around.

Her nose would all but touch the wire

Then she would turn as on a dime.

Just like a machine that could not tire

Going back and forth time after time.

She was forced to tread a narrow path

Within the bounds of her constraint.

Her territory now far less than half

Of Nearctic bounded by Bering straight.

"Oh, how sad!" said Patina.

"Yes," said Paul, "I don't know why they would give a bobcat such a small cage. The lions get a huge cage and don't even bother to use it; they just lay on their backs asleep all day. They should swap cages, throw the lions out, and give this poor little bobcat the freedom and space it deserves."

Patina smiled effusively but self-consciously. It was as if she took the favoritism Paul had bestowed upon an American animal as favoritism vicariously bestowed upon her self.

"I wouldn't care to live like an animal trapped in a cage," she said. She appeared seriously alarmed and agitated. "It's not right. Freedom is the most important thing in the whole wide world.

I saw a bobcat once at our vacation house on Lake Superior. It came right into our front yard. It was probably starving to risk coming so close to human habitation, but it was near the end of an especially bad winter, the snow was still on the ground, and it was probably scavenging for anything it could find."

"It must be an interesting experience to see snow," said Paul. "I have never seen it myself. But it must be especially interesting to actually live in a region where it snows, as opposed to being a temporary visitor to a ski lodge. It would be lots of fun to travel through the bush when the entire ground is covered in snow."

"Well, most Minnesotans would say you're not missing very much, but I love it in spite of the cold. Minnesota is very cold and Lake Superior sometimes freezes over completely--"

"I'd sure hate to pay the refrigeration bill for that one," he said, interjecting a facetious comment.

"Yes, right." she said, giggling like a little machine.

"But, when the weather turns really bad, people are confined to their homes and can't go outside at all. That’s when some succumb to cabin fever . . . I guess they feel just a little bit like that bobcat.

Cabin fever can drive some people crazy, and they can even become violent, while others turn to drink and can become alcoholics. It doesn't worry me except when I get so cold that I can't get warm.

When I was a kid, I would sometimes have to wait for a bus and, even with two pairs of mittens, my hands would get so cold I would cry."

"Wow! I can't even imagine cold of such an extreme intensity, but I think I would love to spend the winter in a cabin, all snowed in, provided I didn't have to go outside in all weather.

But if it turned mild, I could explore around the yard in snowshoes or drive a snowmobile. It wouldn't worry me to be confined, you see, because I'm very self-sufficient--I've always been like that." He was smiling pleasantly.

"Americans are all very self-sufficient--" said Tina, in a sweeping statement of such gross magnitude as to appear glaringly odd and eccentric to Paul. He was tempted to raise his eyebrows in amusement and amazement but decided against it.

He didn't want to upset her or argue the point but, in school, they had been told ten-thousand-times that you shouldn't generalize. And yet, the generalization she had just made was so comprehensively egregious that it struck him forcibly; it struck him as a strangely stupid thing for a clever person to say.

"--That's why they don't get tied down." she continued. "They move around from place to place. They stay a short while just to break new ground--it's our frontier background that sets the pace. The early settlers were always on the move."

"But Australians are like that too." he protested, trying not to be outdone by her in terms of an over-generalizing one-upmanship. "We were pioneers. Our axes rang in the woodlands where the gaudy bush birds flew. We were pioneers every bit as much as the Americans and every bit as self-sufficient . . . Gosh," he said, awkwardly and distractedly after a momentary pause. "I've been meaning to ask you . . . umm, since I've been over to visit your folks, I thought it only fair and proper that you should come over to meet my folks."

Her face was filled with sheer terror upon hearing his last three words. It seemed as if every burglar alarm and siren in the city had just gone off inside her head, and they had been set off in response to what Paul had just said. As a result, he found himself now also called to battle stations, called to the emergency room, but only in an effort to remedy the fearful mistake he had just made.

He changed the subject and her fear subsided, his words were guided by facial cues; clues to the do's and don'ts that abided in those un-confided avenues.

Her face was a hotbed where emotions would cook, a window to complexes deep in her brain, an open book to an ingratiator's look, a conglomerate of clues to guide and explain.

"Well, maybe that's not really such a good idea." he said, in an effort to backtrack his steps. "I'm sure there are better things to do, and much more interesting things too. I should use my imagination a little more and think of something else. I don't want to limit you to any one particular type of activity."

Paul applied damage control as best he could but his words merely served to embarrass her, because, they seemed to alert her to the fact, seemed to tip her off; she now knew that he knew that she didn't want to meet his folks. It worried him that his attempt at damage control might prove to be an abortive one.

The bus was quite crowded going home to Tina's place that night. The only vacant seats remaining were right at the back, and they faced perpendicular to the direction of travel; they faced one another rather than faced forward. People sitting opposite had an apparent constraining influence on Patina. She didn't care to look them in the eye.

Paul could see the reflection of Tina and himself in the window opposite. Because her gaze was downcast, he was able to enjoy staring at her reflection for extended periods without her noticing.

On thus seeing the two of them side by side, he felt they resembled one another to a high degree, were virtually a pigeon pair. In his opinion, they looked simply wonderful together and their window-framed reflection could also have served as a perfect wedding portrait.

And yet, Patina's mood was so down beat he couldn't help but notice it. It marked such a contrast to her mood that morning. Could people have such a constraining influence on her?

Paul thought it highly likely, because he had seen her like that quite often at school. And sometimes in restaurants: her conversation could be beset by a self-conscious constraint, which censored what she was allowed to say or do, and he felt this was caused by a powerful fear of disapproval. She wasn’t always like that, of course: her clothing was often flamboyantly extrovert and she could sometimes take the lead in a group conversation with a half dozen or so people.

After getting back to Tina's place and having a cup of coffee, Paul made use of her bathroom once more. It was then that he noticed for the very first time his being alone and away from her for a few moments had given him the freedom to just sit and think about Patina without being distracted by her. Having been in her company all that day, he suddenly found himself strangely pleased to be able to get away from her, if only for a short period of time.

In that respect he felt almost like a smoker who was forced to go without a smoke for an entire day, and who was now finally free to light up and take a hit of nicotine.

When it came to Patina, privacy was a paradoxically important thing to Paul. It seemed like he couldn't think about her properly while she was there in his company in the flesh. In that particular respect she seemed little more than a distraction. But he was now finally free to think about her, to think just how wonderful she was as well as rethink some of the day's highlights.

"Introverted thoughts in a land of you and me." was a phrase that came to him just then, seemingly from out of nowhere and then continued: "Introverted thinking just as true as it can be. I'll slay each beast and dragon for you, just you wait and see."

It was only 8pm when Paul emerged from Patina's bathroom. For that reason, he was surprised to the point of amazement when she said she would have to have an early night; that she had to get up early and visit her parents, and that their late nights had left her chronically short of sleep.

Paul was almost stunned at first by the amount of sheer surprise he felt but that was soon followed by a grating sense of disappointment; a disappointment that was downright discombobulating. His unthinking assessment of things as they stood had left him with the expectation they might just kiss for about eight hours--just till 4:00 a.m. But, unfortunately, that was not to be.

He felt baffled and thwarted but hurt and rejected too, and the latter feeling rattled him enough to mobilize the deep-seated insecurity of his rejection paranoia, but he tried not to let it show. He tried to act as if it was a casual matter to him, that he could take it on the chin, and that he could easily take it or leave it.

He wouldn’t hang around and be a pest. He wouldn’t make petty or childish demands on her time. He was quite capable of being big and grown up about it. It was a minor matter in any case. They could catch up on lost opportunities the following Friday, Saturday or Sunday. That was not a long time to wait at all. Surely he could wait till then.

CHAPTER FIVE: RHESUS NEGATIVE IS INCIPIENT CLAUSTROPHOBIA.

The diverse events and topics of conversation, which took place during their day at the zoo, were woven like a tapestry into a vivid and elaborate dream Patina had that very same night:

She found herself dressed in a toga like a vestal virgin.

She was standing at the altar in the circular stone temple of the goddess Vesta. The altar was a solid slab of granite. It was shaped and dimensioned like a coffin, and it was covered with flowers.

The temple was a cool and tranquil place where the outside world could never intrude, and this made it just perfect for meditation and spiritual contemplation. It was serenely quiet; a place that lent itself, by its intrinsic essential nature, to whispered mystical utterances and religious incantations.

"Souls are mystic temples," she said, "and what takes place within their sanctified walls must always remain the profound and inscrutable secret, which can only be known to the inner circle of the high priestess and her custodians."

She raised a chalice of solid gold as an offering to the Gods, and began to chant in a strange and mystical language. But the incantation’s proper sequential recital was disrupted when a noxious distraction began to pull and tug and draw her away and out of her meditative frame of mind.

Her senses thus arrested were forcibly brought back and refocused upon the crude reality of the outside world, and with this came the sudden realization and identification of the nature of the disturbance. It was the all-encompassing intrusive sound of a great explosion, which had desecrated this most holy of rituals.

"Who would dare to violate the sanctity of the temple of Vesta!" she said, in a tone of outraged indignation.

To further disrupt these sacred proceedings, Merlin violated a stringent taboo by entering the temple through the main door, which was dedicated to ritual usage only. Moreover, he came inside walking quickly, panting and sweating. He was wearing his long dark-blue robe and wizard's pointed hat all festooned with stars and moons.

"They're here!" he said, momentarily catching his breath. "Those pirates are back again. They've dragged a siege gun all the way from the coast, all of twenty miles through the jungle."

Another loud explosion was detonated just as he had finished saying those words.

With her toga flowing behind her, Patina walked quickly out of the temple and onto the high rampart walls of a fortress castle of supernaturally massive proportions. There was a cold breeze blowing, which caused her to wrap her arms around her shoulders in a self-hugging action to momentarily brace herself against the cold.

Through a large pair of binoculars mounted on a turret--like those atop the Empire State Building--she looked down to the jungle floor a thousand feet below to see a disorderly bunch of pirates messing about with a cannon of heavy caliber.

From what she could see at that distance, they appeared to be mostly pushing, shoving and fighting one another. Then a third shot was fired--was fired at walls, which, unbeknown to the pirates, were one-hundred-and-sixty-six feet thick at the base.

The gun made a great deal of noise but without causing any damage whatsoever. Tina could not even feel vibrations through her feet, because the castle was simply too massive to allow that to happen.

"You wish!" she shouted, defiantly shaking her fist. "You can just keep on wishing."

"Just look at the riff raff down there," said Merlin, who was now standing beside her, "they are poised to pillage and plunder. And look, they are shaking their fists at me in particular. They threaten and hurl foul insults--they call me the dark demon. They are the vile, low-life, scum of the earth! Why do they keep coming here?"

"They must have heard rumors," she said. "They must have heard about the priceless patina--the treasure of gold that lies hidden within these mighty fortress walls."

"Where would they have heard about that?" asked Merlin, in a pointed and vaguely inquisitorial tone.

"How the hell should I know!" she snapped, angrily. "But your question is academic, because they shan't penetrate this deep and mighty fortress in any case, not in a million years."

From about this point on, there was an explosion a minute for about fifteen minutes and then all was silent.

"I think they have used up all their gunpowder," said Tina, looking through her binoculars, and feeling comfortably safe and secure once more.

But it was just as she had spoken those last words that she noticed what looked like hundreds of small furry animals lined up in columns. With the signaling of a semaphore, these small creatures began to climb the fortress walls at every different point along its perimeter.

They were climbing steadily with speed and skill and were scaling the walls with apparent ease. There were so many of them they looked just like fleas on a dog's back.

When they had reached a point about halfway up the precipitous castle wall, she could tell they were macaques. In what seemed like no time at all, some of the strongest and most skilful climbers had reached the summit. Patina then noticed that two of these leading members of the troupe had string tied around their waists.

Upon reaching the summit, the elite pair of macaques began hauling on the string they had carried up with them. That long length of string happened to be tied to a thicker and stronger length of string. That stronger string, in turn, was tied to a rope, which, in turn, was tied to a rope ladder.

As the load grew heavier, more and more monkeys fell in behind to join the line and help pull, in a tug of war fashion. Their combined weight and muscle lent a force of considerable power to the task at hand. Finally they had mounted a rope ladder securely over one of the castle's turrets.

"The pirates will come up that ladder." Said Tina, and she rushed over to chase the macaques away. "Go way!" She shouted, flicking her arms out at them in a shooing motion.

But the monkeys were not a bit scared of her. They stood their ground and bared their sharp canine teeth at her. She grimaced and recoiled in fear. She then ran back to the binoculars and was able to see a pirate already halfway up the ladder. But he didn't look like a typical pirate, because he wasn't ugly or brutish. He was actually quite handsome in a boyish kind of way, and he looked every bit as wholesome as the archetypal clean-cut college-boy. He even looked familiar. Then, all of a sudden, she recognized him: it was Paul.

"Who told the pirates about the treasure?" asked Merlin, rhetorically. "It was the fifth column who told them--the enemy from within. I've been finding these paper airplanes in the jungle for some time now with messages written on them. Here are just four of them to serve as a smattering sample and an indication of just how absurdly stupid the messages are: "Help me", "save me"--from what? And look at this one: "lonely single-white-female seeks handsome college boy'. And this one's the best of all: A newspaper clipping about the varsity theatre and half-price tickets to a festival of Michael Caine movies."

"I don't know anything about that," said Tina, innocently.

"My God! Have you any idea of what's about to come down now? I told you not to ask him for anything."

"But I didn't!" she protested, in a tone of all-abused innocence.

"Yes you did--you pulled a fast one with that newspaper clipping, and now he, by the laws of reciprocity, has pulled a fast one on you. Don't you understand: he answered your phone to get himself an invitation to meet your folks, then he would use that against you as leverage to obligate you to reciprocate by meeting his folks. Ostensibly, it would be tit for tat, and only fair. But don’t you see that it was sleight of hand: it wasn't tit for tat at all, it was two tats, and they were both his. He is slick, he is good, he is a smooth con man, and he could make you believe butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. I warned you, didn’t I?"

"But I really and truly don't remember ever showing him a newspaper clipping." she protested, feebly.

"You have no idea of what's about to come down now, do you?

And you have no idea of where this guy is coming from, even though I’ve warned you repeatedly. Well, let me spell it out for you, let me tell you just what he’s about: A dependence that clings to exclusive devotion, a friendship with strings seen as love's pure emotion, a status promotion, a halo and wings; these are a few of his favorite things."

"But what can you do to help me now?" she cried.

"I can't do anything to help you. If you ignore all my advice, then you must pay the price."

Tina ran back to the temple and, ignoring the taboo against using the entrance reserved exclusively for ceremonial purposes, she closed its enormous double doors behind her and leaned back against them with all her weight. But after a brief moment, she realized the doors were not fitted with locks, and so she quickly came to the conclusion that her attempting to bar the ingress in this way of almost anyone or anything would be futile.

"Would they violate this sanctified place?" she thought. Patina was horrified. She looked for a place to hide. "Would they commit the unforgivable trespass and enter the inner sanctum?" If she couldn't be safe here, she couldn't be safe anywhere. "No place to hide," she thought. "What can I do? What do I do now?"

The door then opened once more and Paul poked his head through. "Don't worry, my sugar-plum-fairy, my little apple dumpling, I'm here to save you!" he shouted, in a corny, melodramatic tone of voice.

"Oh, you sneaky snake!" she shouted, angrily. "You answered my phone!"

"Don't worry. You'll never be lonely again--or even alone for that matter!" he shouted, totally ignoring her words, her mood, her objections and her adverse attitude.

"From now till eternity, you will see my loving face staring at you across the breakfast table. And you can depend on it right until death us do part, because I'm your little old clinging vine and I’ll never let you go. Never! NEVER!"

Patina let out a blood-curdling scream. She then turned and ran, ran for her life. She exited the temple through a doorway in back. This led to the main corridor, which, in turn, led to the very depths of the castle’s interior.

"GET HER!" screamed Paul, in a tone of voice that had now changed from saccharin sweet to menacingly vindictive. That transformation had come about in less than an instant, along with a simultaneous change in his personality.

The macaques were apparently under Paul’s total control, and an entire horde of them had set after her immediately upon hearing his order to do so. They ran with a furious four-legged speed and were rapidly gaining ground on her.

She looked back over her shoulder and noticed a small and presumably elite detachment of the monkeys carrying what looked like a large sheet of canvas, which they would presumably use to catch her in. As she reached and put her hand on the knob of the door of her intended avenue of escape, the hands of half a dozen monkeys took a firm hold of her by her arms and legs and clothing. She then knew she was well and truly trapped and caught.

"Oh please don't wrap me up!" she cried, staring with intense phobic terror into the monkey’s faces and pleading with them in a tone of voice that was abjectly pitiful. "Please don't wrap me up! I’LL DIE! I’LL DIE! If you wrap me up I won't be able to breathe! I really mean it! It will really and truly kill me for sure! Don't you understand? Don’t you understand what this will do to me?"

But the monkeys appeared altogether incapable of understanding anything she said. They ignored her words and even seemed totally oblivious to her obvious and dire state of distress.

They laid the sheet down on the floor and her on top of it. She then noticed the canvas was coated in a thick and extremely sticky substance--it was like a gigantic sheet of flypaper. She felt the horrible stickiness against her bare arms and then her face as the macaques began to roll her up in it like a cigar.

It was the combined effect of her repulsive sticky discomfort and the terrifying fear of being embalmed alive like a mummy that made Patina scream and scream, and continue to scream uncontrollably until she succumbed to a rabid epileptic foaming at the mouth.

Her state of sheer terror had caused her to go into convulsions. She began thrashing about in a claustrophobic frenzy; but, like a Chinese finger puzzle, her most strenuous efforts only made matters worse--she became more and more hopelessly trapped and caught the more she tried to thrash about.

She then sat up suddenly and found herself in bed at home and wide a-wake, but still screaming. Familiar objects in her bedroom were made reassuringly visible to her by the pale light of early morning, but she felt an immediate need to get out of bed.

"Oh, what a relief! Thank God, it was just another nightmare." she thought.

Her nightmare had been accompanied by an intense night sweat, which had left her all soaking wet and sticky. This produced a dreadful discomfort, which could only be remedied by taking a shower and changing into a fresh pair of pajamas.

The relief she then felt was considerable, yet it was not long lasting, because a disquieting thought soon reentered her consciousness: what was she going to do to keep Him away from her?

But why would she want to do that? She wanted his conversation and his kisses too. Yes, but not if it was going to make her feel like this. But what was he going to do to her that should make her feel so anxious?

He now seemed so very much like a sneaky snake who couldn’t be trusted, who had sinister motives, who was all set to ensnare her in an insidious game of entrapment. And yet he had immediately retracted the invitation to meet his folks as soon as he saw how it upset her--and that would indicate it was not of any great or overriding importance to him.

If he were dangerously domineering or manipulative, she would have expected him to really push the issue and not take ‘no’ for an answer. But it was in his nature to be gentle, timid and sensitive--he was hardly the type to trap her like a wild animal in a cage. Was she going paranoid to even be thinking such things?

He had always seemed so meek and mild in her estimation, but might he not do something subsequently that was out of character, that was maybe even crazy or reckless? He might even become violent. How would she be able to get away from him then?

What if he wanted to become closely involved with her? But she had asked him for nothing, so he was not entitled to expect anything from her in return, because that would be unfair.

And what could he possibly do that was so terrible or terrifying? She couldn't rightly say--and that was the worst part of it: it was a nameless terror, and yet it was an anxiety so insidious that it now permeated everything, and it spoiled everything.

It had been triggered off by him and was maintained by him--but what was so frightening about him? He seemed almost absurdly harmless. He was one of the archetypal boy-scouts who wouldn't say ‘shit’ for a shilling.

But what if he got serious. He might ask her to marry him. Couldn't she simply say "thanks but no thanks"? Yes, of course, but that wasn't exactly it. It was something else, something intangible but something abhorrent, something repugnant, something sinister.

*

From the relative vantage of being seated by a window in a traveling bus, Paul could see Patina striding on her sidewalk trip to school. At the point where the bus sped past her she had barely a quarter mile to go before she would enter the campus grounds. Paul was suddenly struck with the idea that he should walk back to meet her, and, in a split-second decision, he resolved to do just that.

They were not having a class together that next hour, so he could enjoy her company for only the short time it would take to walk a hundred yards or so--because she walked quickly, that in fact was the extent of the distance remaining by the time he reached her. After that their paths would diverge once more.

It was hardly necessary for him to make such a gesture, I suppose. And perhaps it was a mere matter of courtesy, or perhaps it was habit; or perhaps he just thought it would be nice to see her, greet her and say a few brief words to her by way of small talk.

There was no such need, no such necessity, but then there was no need of necessity in any case to govern or even play a role in the interaction between himself and his number-one, constant companion, friend and lover.

"Hi!" he said, smiling pleasantly.

"Are you going home?" she asked, in an uncharacteristically loud and sarcastic tone of voice, after having failed to return his greeting.

"No, I walked back to meet you," he said, sheepishly and in a tone of mild-mannered protest that was intended to give only the subtlest indication of his wounded feelings. A more revealing indication was his being lost for words; her rebuff had unsettled as well as hurt him and it had caused him to become absorbed and distracted by troubled thought. What was wrong? What was the matter? Why was her attitude toward him unfavorable?

They walked an awkward hundred yards together in virtual silence. Upon reaching Tina's classroom, he said: "I'll see you in our 10 a.m. class." His state of mind was worried but his tone of voice was polite and pleasant.

"See yuh!" was all she said by way of reply, and Paul felt she said it in a deliberately cold, abrupt and affectedly indifferent tone of voice. He had never ever heard her say "see yuh" before, either in a friendly or any other tone of voice.

Paul's rejection paranoia made him acutely sensitive to any problems that might threaten his relationship with Patina. Even latent or imagined problems gave him sufficient cause for concern, but the events of the previous evening had given him something dangerously real to trouble himself with.

He had sufficient reason already to be worried on that score, but the events of this morning were now causing him to become almost desperately worried.

"I shouldn't have bloody well told her I spent ten years in a slum--goddamn it! What was I thinking! I just had such an impulse to be honest, open and candid with her--as she is with me . . . and what do I get in return for adopting the supposed best policy.

She probably thinks I'm a real loser and a dead-beat. She now looks down on me, disapproves of me, finds fault . . . sits in judgement. Candid honesty is like a luxury that she alone can afford. It's a double standard!

She is forever revealing all of the crazy events of her disturbed childhood to me. And she does it all gratuitously, because I never ask her questions about her personal life . . . The funny thing is, if I did start asking her personal questions, I reckon she'd shut up tighter than a clam.

She's a funny one. She really is strange. I always found her stories about being abused by her parents hard to believe. I found them especially hard to believe--unbelievable in fact, because I know how adults feel about gifted children.

When I took Karen to the special school for her one orientation day--the only day she ever went there--they treated her just like a little princess. I think some of those teachers would have traded their own children for Karen, with a substantial cash adjustment thrown in to the bargain.

It just isn’t natural then when parents abuse the gifted child they are just so lucky to have as their very own. That's what never made any sense to me, but now that I've met Patina's mom--she's a strange one. She is positively combative. She can’t keep her fists to herself or under control. I wouldn't put anything past her.

But, either way, I'm likely to lose: if Patina is lying about being abused as a child, it means she is probably crazy; if she is not lying, it probably means she is just as crazy.

And she expects me to accept her like that simply because she's rich. Money gives her idiosyncrasy credits, but I'm poor, so I can just be judged and disapproved of, and to whatever extent she arbitrarily deems appropriate."

In class later that day, Tina presented a distracted aloofness which Paul could not help but notice. She seemed so distant, and her conversation was scanty and devoid of its usual zest. This made his mood sink even lower, because it meant her mood amounted to more than just a momentary trace of irritability. This, he felt, was a veritable disturbance in their relationship, was almost certainly something serious, something bad, and this realization caused the force and intensity of Paul's rejection paranoia to be increased by another notch.

He now felt much like an investor who was really far too nervous to risk money in any part of the stock market, but who had purchased a large quantity of the most speculative stocks in the futures market. His mood was inextricably linked to the day to day price of his stocks. A rise in the price would bring on the euphoric expectation of huge sums of unearned wealth coming his way, while a fall in price would lead to the terrifying prospect of utter ruin . . . and perhaps a leap from a tall building, the way they did it back in 1929.

But a deterioration in her mood or attitude toward him would also increase Paul's IQ--his Ingratiation Quotient. Without resorting to false flattery, he would endeavor to say things that were true but of a complimentary nature. That was the easiest thing in the world for him to do in any case, because there were just so many things, which he genuinely liked and admired about her.

On their way to the library after class, he said: "I really like those little white boots of yours--they have such a special stylish look about them."

"Well, they ought to," she replied, petulantly, "seeing they came all the way from Mexico."

Paul felt like he had been slapped in the face, but he wasn't as yet deterred from his efforts. "Gee, you look great in slacks." he said, to which there was no nasty retort, because she needed that kind of support. It had stopped her dead in her tracks.

Patina always wore long pants because she was extremely self-conscious about her legs, which did not meet the standards of perfection that might win the approval of her fault- finding pride. Her legs were rated second worst of all her physical attributes.

Paul’s last ingratiating remark had stopped Patina’s petulance dead in its tracks. For the moment at least she was pleasant enough in that her caustic sarcasm was totally absent, but she was still quiet, distant and constrained.

It was as if she couldn't bear to be nasty to him right then; but, after a few short minutes, she took her leave of him, saying she had an assignment due and was unable to accompany him for lunch.

Paul simply didn't believe her. She had a subsequent excuse every day of that week, and she was saying "see yuh" at every apparent opportunity. The words said "see you later", but her tone of voice said "piss off you asshole", and the emotive content grew more intense and more explicit until it was simply unmistakable:

An obtrusive stare so full of guile,

A glint of gloat in her eye,

A sarcastic "see yuh" and a perverse smile

As her fingers wiggled "goodbye".

Paul's rejection paranoia had by now assumed the massive proportions of a Saturn rocket, and it was waiting for countdown and preparing for blast off. His nervous distress was now palpable.

But he was still hoping to save the situation and had planned to do so by taking a direct course of action: He would go to her place late that afternoon and set the cat among the pigeons by discussing the problem with her in an open and forthright fashion.

Upon approaching her house to a distance of 150 yards or so, Paul thought he saw a car exit her driveway. It was right at this point that his rejection paranoia took off straight through the stratosphere and headed into outer space.

He experienced such a fearful sense of abandonment, the like of which he had never known before at any time during his entire lifetime.

He was not even sure if the car had actually exited her driveway in any case or whether it had exited the side street that was situated right next to her place; parallax error made it virtually impossible to differentiate between the two at that distance.

He was shaken up quite badly by the experience, but after taking a moment to re-appraise the situation, decided he should still go in and talk to her.

He was nervous enough to cough just before he knocked on her door. She answered promptly. She said ‘Hi’ and invited him in, which he found reassuring, and which raised his hopes a fraction; but after a few rambling words about his not having seen her at lunch, he sensed a growing tension and uneasiness in the room until he felt downright unwelcome. He was embarrassed.

"I guess I came here uninvited." he said, in a tone verging on self-pity.

"That's okay." she replied, in a slightly more friendly tone. "You can stay . . . for a while."

"I wanted to ask you--" he was now really ready to up-the- ante-- "I wanted to ask you whether you want to be my girl?"

"Gosh!" she exclaimed. "I really don't want to go steady with anybody. I have three other boyfriends in any case and it wouldn't be fair to them if I were to go steady with just one."

Paul was flabbergasted to the point of feeling disorientated, and yet, on a deeper level, he didn't believe what she was telling him now any more than he believed she was too busy to have lunch with him all that week.

He tried to pull himself together by saying exactly what was on his mind: "I'm sorry, and I don't mean to offend you or insult you, but I just don't believe you."

"Well, I've got letters from them. I guess I could show them to you if you really want to see them or read them." She went to her desk, sorted through some papers and came back with two letters and a postcard.

The first letter was from Florida, from Brian. Paul perused the letters with nervous, sweaty hands. The second letter was from Minnesota--from her philosophy teacher.

The postcard was from Japan; was sent by an Australian married man, who was told by his wife that he could go out with other women if he wished.

"I must apologize," said Paul, somberly, "for not believing you. I was way out of line."

"That's okay," she said, sympathetically, "I shouldn't have hit you with so much all at once."

Paul then went to sit on the couch next to Patina, who was not now in her usual, casual sit-on-the-floor mode or mood. In an effort to seek reassurance he moved his head toward her in order to kiss her. She, in turn, moved her head as far to the opposite side as she could so as to effectively prevent this.

The look on her face was colder than charity, was frigid, as hard as marble, hostile and defiant. It was a powerful slap in the face for Paul and it left him feeling utterly rejected and defeated. He politely and timidly took his leave, with his tail figuratively tucked between his legs.

He took off trudging despondently up the hill. It was not the same hill now, because, like everything else, it had somehow changed completely. His scintillating world of wonder and enchantment now lay in ruin, was now scorched and blackened by fire, pestilence and gloom; and all it took to bring about this transformation was a change in her attitude toward him. That's all it took.

Paul was thunderstruck by the sheer force and simplicity of the logic: "She now has it in her power to determine whether I will be happy or unhappy, or whether my life will ever be worth a damn again. She has total power over me to do me good or ill. My life and happiness depends upon her attitude toward me--just as a helpless baby depends on its mother.

I have lost my self--Goddamn it! How could something like this just happen? How could something like this just sneak up on me and ensnare me without as much as an inkling of a warning. And now it's too late. How could I walk right into something like this with all faculties functioning?"

Paul had never been aware previously of being dependent on anyone in this kind of relationship. But he couldn't help but see it now. It was absolutely true: he was dependent, and he had learned something new about himself, had located another piece of the puzzle that was Paul.

*

Paul saw Patina in the library the following day, saw her seated at a desk and working, presumably, on a school assignment. Despite the chilly reception she had subjected him to the previous day, he was unable to just walk past her without at least saying something.

Perhaps it was residual force of habit, his daily routine of associating and interacting with her in class, at lunch and elsewhere. Perhaps it was the inertial force of his more-deeply-ingrained habit of ingratiation.

Be that as it may, he was quite unable to ignore her or pretend they had never met before. He could not seriously entertain such a notion in any case when winning her love was still the greatest ambition in his life.

It was at least some and perhaps all of the above mentioned elements that prompted him now to make another friendly approach toward her, if only a casual or fleeting one.

Normally, in finding her working in the library, he would assume the intimacy of getting right down close beside her--his knees would be on the carpeted floor, his elbows resting on the edge of her desk.

However, he felt such a degree of familiarity would be inappropriate under the present inauspicious circumstances; therefore, he remained standing, and he also stood slightly further afield of her.

It was the moderate distance of about two feet that would create a buffer zone, a margin to safeguard her personal space. But, this, his strategy of not infringing boundaries had a further and unexpected practical consequence.

It caused his head to be situated both two feet above hers and two feet to one side, and this enabled her to look up into his mouth at an angle of about forty-five degrees.

He was feeling insecure already right from the start and this caused his opening words to be nervous and tentative. Patina's face at that point conveyed an enacted, almost theatrical kind of boredom and indifference.

But that was soon followed by something else. Paul noticed she had begun to stare intently up and into his mouth, and she continued to unblinkingly maintain that penetrating stare while she moved her head to another and ostensibly more strategic location. She moved her head down as low as she could go, positioning it so that the right cheek of her face was virtually resting upon the flat work-face of the desk.

Paul felt a painful sense of disease and unreality. He was incredulous. He could hardly believe what she was doing. He wondered if he was imagining all of this.

He was painfully self-conscious of a black carious spot of decay on his second, left incisor tooth and it was precisely upon this that she was now zeroed-in like a marksman upon a bulls eye target.

It is doubtful whether this ogling maneuver of hers would actually have improved her field of view over and above what it had already been, but it had a devastating effect on Paul, and that was perhaps its sole purpose in any case.

She had not stared previously. Nor had she even given an inkling of an indication of having noticed that carious blemish before. She had done none of that, not to mention deliberately attempting to cause him self-conscious pain and embarrassment.

But her eyes were now staring as pointedly as sharp daggers that were mercilessly cutting right into his flesh, and written on her face was an apparent expression of sadistic glee.

Paul was mortified to the point of feeling disorientated. He almost stumbled, almost collapsed. He felt as if he had just been pole axed. He tried very hard to retain his composure by pretending nothing had happened, but he feared he was just about to dissolve or come apart at the seams.

In an effort to deny to her its impact on him, he muttered another phrase or two, a dozen meaningless words of small talk, and then he politely took his leave.

"See yuh!" she said, sarcastically.

He made his way back to his study desk, which was far enough away to be out of sight of her. He had taken his leave of her to escape the acute stabbing pain, the assault upon his pride, which he experienced as a kind of noxious aversion therapy.

He was still so shocked and unsettled in fact, he had to sit down slowly and carefully to obviate the chance he might faint or fall over. He felt thoroughly crushed and broken. He felt dejected and defeated, and he was growing hopelessly desperate.

"This is no bloody good at all," he thought. "My increasing efforts are in vain; worse than that, they are counterproductive."

Ingratiation, his old friend tried and true, was now failing him totally, and failing him like it had never failed before. Its effectiveness was now reduced to a level much lower, much worse than useless, because Patina appeared to be feeding on it like a hungry, ravenous vampire. His abject, obsequious ingratiation, his groveling degradation and humiliation--she was feeding on that as if it was edible, or so it seemed.

"How can you feed on something like that?" he thought. "How can you derive sustenance from something like that? I don’t know, but I'm going to have to do something different and soon, or I'll lose her for sure. I had better attempt a 180-degree turnabout."

*

He arrived at their next class a little earlier than usual with the specific intention of looking for another girl to sit with. He didn’t see one in particular but there were two girls sitting together who were likely to serve the purpose admirably, because he knew them from his freshman year. They were friendly extroverts and eminently approachable. Paul did just that--he took a seat and began a conversation.

They accepted him immediately. They allowed him to make their duo a trio, he seemed to fit right in, and the conversation prattled along in a relaxed and effortless fashion--this would allow him to keep one eye on Patina when she entered the classroom.

The lecturer had sorted through his notes and was on the brink of beginning his address, but Patina was not as yet in attendance.

"I reckon she's outside waiting for me." He thought. "Would you believe that? Her waiting for me? That would be quite a role reversal, wouldn't it?"

It was not until after the lesson had actually started that Patina, in an unprecedented display of tardiness, finally made her way inside. She was moving slowly and cautiously down the lecture theater's terraced steps. She was facing into the seats and walking sideways, crab fashion. While carefully eyeing the floor, she would cautiously position her right foot before dragging her left foot across and level with her right. This, her present awkward gait, gave the erroneous impression that her left leg was lame.

Upon seeing Paul sitting with two young ladies, Patina was visibly upset. She even seemed shaken to the point of disorientation. She clumsily grabbed the edge of aisle seats in order to steady herself. Her footing seemed as unsteady and insecure as she herself appeared. She was as wide-eyed as little Bo Peep who had lost her sheep, yet Tina looked more like a little lost lamb, or like Cinderella bereft of her fairy godmother. She looked like one of the walking wounded and that was so powerfully apropos. Her face was a heart-rending sight; it conveyed all of the fearful, helpless insecurity of the archetypal shrinking violet. She came down about six terraced steps before taking an aisle seat in a vacant row.

The lecture went from ten till noon but there was a five-minute break in between at eleven. Most students were in the habit of going outside to stretch their legs during this short interval; Paul and Patina were normally numbered amongst that group, and this day would prove no different--at least in that respect.

But it was now Paul’s particular intention to go outside so that he might be reunited with her--the strange ambivalent love of his life. He was nervous about being away from her for too long. He felt she might somehow disappear in a puff of smoke if he left her alone for more than an hour or so.

Patina exited the theater first, followed closely by Paul, who had been keeping a sharp eye on her and her movements. He found her at the outer perimeter of the throng, standing by herself.

As he approached her more closely he could see she was extremely and fearfully nervous. She avoided looking directly at him but chose to look everywhere else instead. Her eyes darted abruptly from side to side then paused to focus upon the ground. Her nervous tension was palpable.

Paul said "G-day." She looked at him then and not until then. Her face was pink with embarrassment. Her smile was effusively broad but subject to a tremor of the upper lip, which tainted it with so much fear as to render it artificial and false. Her smile was appeasing rather than friendly.

During that five-minute break, in which they indulged in small talk, her behavior was in many respects like that of a very timid stranger, someone who didn't know him at all, who had never even met him before. And being unsure of herself in relation to a total stranger, such a timid person might tend to be overly self-controlled in observing every detailed aspect of etiquette and politeness, because this would likely protect her from the possible disapproval or hostility of a person of unknown aggressiveness. It was fear, fear and more fear that seemed to motivated all of this.

Paul also felt her present behavior was reminiscent of their first few meetings, which had caused him to think of her at that time as being a caricature of politeness and congeniality. But her politeness was now so stilted and so heavily overlaid with nervous tension that he could tell it wasn’t genuine. It was a mask, a persona, a role enacted upon a stage.

"Perhaps it was just an enactment when I first met her as well." he thought. "Perhaps it was just appeasing behavior, devoid of sincerity and depth of feeling; just a persona, a phony mask designed to assuage her fear of people."

They reentered their classroom together, apparently to resume the relationship, which had just undergone something akin to a glitch. That seemed possible, because Patina's sarcasm and cold aloofness had disappeared completely. All that remained was constrained politeness.

It seemed as if the glitch had spontaneously corrected itself. It also seemed like they were strangers who had met for the first time that day, it was like they were given a second chance, given a clean slate to start their relationship off again from scratch--almost but not quite.

Paul didn't invite Patina to go to the movies that Friday, nor did he go to her place to see her. That was because he really didn't know what to do next. He felt his reverse psychology had worked so very well indeed, but, if he stopped using it, Tina might revert to her sadistic behavior. This prospect was too distressing to entertain. He reached the conclusion that the reverse psychology would only work if he used it all the time. But that, paradoxically, made it a total failure, because he couldn't have a relationship with her while it was in operation.

"What if she started behaving like that toward me in front of my family and friends. It would be an embarrassment of the highest possible order. It was bad enough when we went to the bush for a picnic with my brother and his wife.

We brought a rifle along to shoot some cans just for fun, but she took it so deadly serious that she ended up by trying desperately to out-shoot us. It was so embarrassing--my brother even raised his eyebrows in response to it.

And when we were looking at a pencil-sketch portrait by William Dobell, she was visibly upset when I marveled at how talented he is.

But ego is one thing--sadistic behavior is something else again. It would be downright mortifying to have her continue to treat me like that, and if she loved me she wouldn’t treat me like that in any case, and if she doesn't already love me now she probably never will.

I just can't believe how something so good can become so bad virtually overnight. She must be a clinical case for sure, and I guess I should have known that from all the things she told me about her childhood.

This is such a disappointment--no, it's more than a disappointment; it's a goddamn catastrophe! It's like you had a million-dollar mansion that burned to the ground, and it was a total loss because you had no insurance.

Why does life have to be like this? It's beyond a joke. I don't think I want to get involved in anything like this ever again. Goddamn it! It's just too painful. It's more than I can bear! This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me in my entire life. I feel as crushed and broken as if I had been flung against a brick wall at sixty miles an hour."

*

Paul and Patina met again in their Monday morning class. Their conversation was downbeat, was strained and stilted and tense. Paul's words were spoken without zest or enthusiasm, and this may have had a further constraining influence on Patina.

After class, while they were walking once more toward the library, Paul finally bit the bullet and said what was on his mind.

"I thought I should tell you rather than say nothing," he said, in a funereal tone, "that I am unable to continue."

There was a deathly silence, during which he felt mortified by guilt. To Paul, the silence was painful enough to prompt him to say anything at all just to escape it: "I--" he began again feebly, in a strained and croaky voice, but he stopped short--he didn't know what else to say.

"I thought that's what you would do," said Tina, filling the gap in the conversation, "when you didn't come over last Friday." Her tone of voice was polite and pleasant. Her mood seemed calm and composed. Her smile was just as sweet as pie. She seemed to be taking it very well--a lot better than Paul. She apparently wasn't angry with him nor was she disappointed; her pride wasn't hurt at being rejected, nor did she protest his unilateral decision in any way, shape or form. Her frame of mind was apparently one of total, unresisting acceptance and equanimity; her demeanor was all unabashed sweetness and light. Perhaps she could afford to be like that because she had three other boyfriends in any case.

Paul was unable to give her reasons or an explanation for his course of action. He felt the subject too disconcerting and embarrassing to broach. He couldn't discuss Patina's sadistic behavior with her, partly because he sensed she would be unable to cope with the subject matter. But it was also so personally and deeply upsetting to him as to constitute a taboo subject that simply couldn’t be discussed, and that was that--end of story. And yet he had to escape her ’aversion therapy’ by hook or crook, because he just couldn't bear to have her be so horrible to him.

They entered the library in search of a study desk apiece, but there were so few vacant at that particular time as to exclude the possibility of finding a pair located conveniently close together. So Patina took the first and Paul continued to search for a second, which he found pretty much at the far opposite end of the building. With that feat accomplished, they were both free to sit down and start working on their respective assignments.

*

Patina was uncomfortable in her skin; was too uncomfortable to begin working on her essay. She felt distracted by a restless visceral sensation akin to hunger, and irritability too, and she was beset by a quivering, quaking nervous agitation that grew gradually more intense and more disturbing.

"Drat this pen," she thought, "it's just no good, it won't write properly. There is something wrong with it. It’s just worthless junk!"

She scratched and scraped the pen over her writing pad, with an angry force applied, and crumpled the top two sheets of paper in the process.

"Blast," she thought, "the paper is no good now either." She tore the crumpled sheets out of her notepad and squashed them in her hands as tight as she could until they formed compacted lumps. Then she threw them in the wastepaper bin.

"Curse us and crush us, my precious," she thought, "it took two months just to get a goodnight kiss out of him, and now he's history--he's flown the coop. I CANNOT BELIEVE I could have done something SO STUPID!"

A buzzing sound was building, was growing steadily louder in her head. She felt too restless, too disagreeably perturbed to sit any longer, so she stood up and began walking. She ambled aimlessly until she came to a stairwell.

"When one door closes, another door opens." she thought. She opened the door to the stairwell and yet another choice presented itself: she could go upstairs perhaps or down.

But what difference would it make? It was all the same. Life was all the same. Bad was good, and good was bad, so choosing was unimportant, was pointless; choosing didn’t matter one way or the other. Yes, but walking down would at least be easier than walking up.

"Yes, that clinches it," she thought, "downstairs is decidedly the better choice."

Being deserted, the stairwell was a surprisingly quiet and peaceful place in a building otherwise crowded with people. It was so quiet in fact, it might have offered her solace if it wasn't for the buzzing, droning din inside her head. That noisome noise was merely exacerbated by peace and quiet and it was becoming increasingly loud and aversively oppressive.

She began to go into an unthinking and quasi trance-like state. Upon descending the first half-flight of stairs and reaching the landing, she was confronted with a featureless wall. She would have to turn left at this point in order to descend the next half-flight of stairs that led to the next exit, but, instead, her eyes became intently focused, became glued almost to that wall.

Her mesmerized stare left her unaware of the outer periphery of her surroundings. But her tunnel vision could clearly discern that the wall before her was made of bricks, could discern moreover those bricks had been fired with patches of metallic oxide mixed into the clay--which made the bricks look really hard and brittle.

She could see striped markings too that had been scratched into the clay, and these made the sides and edges appear rough and abrasive. The bricks were all lined up so perfectly straight.

"It looks like the perfectly-measured work of a machine," she thought, "but it must have been done by a skilled artisan, a true artist--a person who can impose order upon chaos."

Then, all of a sudden, she lifted her right hand up high above her head, then sent it crashing down in an almost parallel glancing blow, but with full karate force applied against the rough textured skin of the harsh abrasive wall.

"Mmmmmmmm!" she exclaimed, with her lips pressed tightly together so as not to attract attention by crying out. She was bent over double, bobbing her head up and down, and holding her right wrist tightly with her left hand in an effort to reduce the unexpected intensity of the pain.

"Oh shit, mmmmmm, have I done it now?" she said out loud, then checked her vocalizing once again, resolving to say no more through fear of being heard.

She looked around nervously to see if anyone was coming up or down the stairs, and, seeing no one, she thought it prudent to assess the extent and seriousness of the injury sustained.

She confirmed at a glance that the bricks were indeed as abrasive as she had imagined, they had certainly done their job well, had plowed deep furrows into her flesh.

But there was surprisingly little blood; instead, a clear sticky liquid (thromboplastin) would quickly fill the deep abrasions.

Her hand was trembling with nervous energy--it was just as if the nervous agitation in her brain had been transferred to her hand, had been offloaded, had been channeled away. Her hand was now also beginning to show a significant discoloration. There was a redness to begin with, which, over time, would be admixed with blue, black and yellow.

The buzzing droning had now left her head completely and she was feeling strangely better. She also felt an immediate and urgent need to say something to Paul, so she set off quickly on a short quest in order to find him.

After scouring two floors of the library--a task of about five-minute’s duration--she found Paul sitting at a study desk and in the process of writing something--presumably an essay.

"I've hurt my hand," she said, holding it out for him to see. She was once again holding her right wrist with her left hand, but this time to support and steady it. "I just flicked it out sideways like that," she said, motioning to make a feeble flick of the wrist, "and I ended up hitting the wall by accident."

"Oh my God!" said Paul, in surprised response to suddenly seeing a serious injury; and injury which, in his opinion, could not possibly have come about in the manner she described. It was unexpected. It was shocking. Her beautiful hand appeared defiled, was like a priceless work of art vandalized by barbarians. "You should get a doctor to have a look at that!"

"Oh, it'll be okay," she said, casually, "I've had worse than this--I think I'm accident prone."

She took her leave of him then. It was as if she had come to deliver a special message. But that message had now been conveyed in full, so there was nothing more for her to say. Brief though this encounter was, it was nevertheless an approach toward Paul; and, by Patina’s standards, it was an extrovert move of almost unparalleled proportions.

It was a one-of, it would not be repeated, and she would now withdraw back inside herself. She would make no further moves toward him, no positive steps, nor would she speak to him again unless he was to take the initiative and begin a conversation with her.

"That was no accident," thought Paul. "That could never have been an accident. It was deliberate, and her coming to tell me about it was deliberate too. It was just like she came to tell me how very sincerely sorry she is. And I believe her without question, because actions speak louder than words. This makes all the difference in the world. If she's as sorry as this, she must surely have strong feelings for me, so perhaps there's some hope remaining of us getting back together.

But how can I go back to her now after having broken it off with her? How could I explain myself? What could I tell her? I can't just say I've changed my tiny, fickle mind for no reason at all."

In light of the events earlier that day, their afternoon class found Paul and Patina sitting at opposite ends of the lecture theatre. With Paul being unable to continue their relationship, there was no longer a reason for them to sit together. A mutual acquaintance, a young lady, was sitting in the front row. She was turned around in her seat and looking back at the class (rubber necking) out of idle curiosity presumably to pass the time during the short interval prior to the commencement of the lecture. She was visibly shocked and saddened at seeing Paul and Patina sitting in the same room but at opposite ends of it.

It was Dr. Alice Berkhart’s class, at the end of which Alice screened a short film. The subject matter was strangely apropos; being a story concerning young love gone wrong and it was almost a parody of the events of that morning:

A young guy had given his girlfriend the brush off in a particularly cold and callous fashion. The commentary Alice gave when the film had finished was almost certainly intended to be facetious, because the plot was too melodramatic to be taken seriously by her or anyone else: "He told her it was All OVER! Well, at least he didn't push her DOWN THE STAIRS!"

Those loud lampooning remarks would mark the end of that last class, the last class of that day. Tina was quick, was the first to stand, and she ran immediately up the stairs. She seemed very upset.

Paul made his ascent of the stairs on the other side of the theatre. He had been seated in a higher row, and closer to the doorway; therefore, in spite of her head start, he was almost able to catch her up in the lobby. She was just going through the exit doorway. He was the shortest distance behind.

She was apparently so upset, upset to the point of distraction. She failed to even notice that he was located but six feet away from her.

Mortification pervaded her face, a face so susceptible to pain, and sensitive tears were running down the self-control that now was lost.

She slowed to a walk to negotiate the doorway after having run quickly up the stairs, then proceeded in haste up the main pathway that would lead her out of the school grounds and out on to the road, the road that would take her home. She walked at top speed for just a short time, then broke her stride and began to run.

"I LOVE YOU!" he screamed, under his breath, and then continued to watch her alternately running and walking briskly until she was out of sight.

CHAPTER SIX: APPROACH AVOIDANCE APPROACH.

"What makes Patina tick?" thought Paul. "I would sure as hell like to know the answer to that. And there's another question I've been thinking about all my life without finding an adequate explanation: Why are we all so madly in love with ourselves? I know I am, but so is everyone else, deep down, even if many or most are loath to admit it.

Now where is the book that can shed some real light onto this subject? Is there one? If so, is it hidden somewhere in the college library amidst a numberless horde of lesser books? Is it just fifty feet away from me at this very moment? And if such a book even exists, how would I ever find it?

I simply don't have the time to read right through an entire library. That could take years, decades or even a lifetime; in order to have any chance of success I would have to find a timesaving technique.

Mm . . . what if I read just the chapter headings. What if I glanced through every book in the psychology section using just the chapter headings as clues pointing to the nature of the subject matter? That might only take twenty, thirty or maybe forty hours. I could do that in a matter of a week or so. If it didn't pan out, I would have sacrificed little.

But it would give me a chance, and any chance of finding something as potentially valuable as this is certainly worth a try. In the process of making a quick, subjective assessment of the chapter headings, my intuition might grab hold of something it deems important . . . and maybe that's what I'm already doing right now? Perhaps this idea has already been formulated for me by my intuition, my subconscious mind--that all-seeing eye.

Twelve hours! It took just twelve hours of actual searching time; twelve hours spread over four days, or an average of three hours per day. And the serendipitous treasure was his.

He went as far as H in the alphabet, H for Horney, Karen Horney. He immediately knew he had hit pay dirt. He knew it with gut certainty, knew it without having to read a single word beyond the chapter headings.

It was 5:50 p.m. on a Friday. Paul’s bus would leave at six. This left him just enough time to take the treasure under his arm, through the book loan turnstile, through the campus grounds and onto the bus that departed mere seconds later.

It was exactly what he needed, exactly what he needed most, and whether by grace or good fortune, it was made available to him right there and then.

It was a treasure trove of insight and edification. It was amazingly powerful. It far exceeded his most optimistic expectations. It was serendipity on a grand scale and it would change his life; that is exactly what great books do--they change lives.

Is there a divine providence that helps those who are trying to do the right thing? Or is it simply true that: when the student is ready, the teacher will appear? But why limit the choice to ‘either’ or ‘or’ when the answer to many important questions might just as well be ‘both’ or ‘all of the above’.

"There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face of things for us. How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book."

Henry David Thoreau.

Paul immersed himself so deeply as to enter into the very substance and essence of those two books, read them with the inexhaustible delight of a grand passion. By the end of that first weekend he had read both books many times over. He would read till late at night, then, after only four hours sleep, would wake up feeling revitalized, empowered with energy and eager to start reading again straight away. He hungered for the light.

The books in question were the last and most advanced books Karen Horney had written: Neurosis and Human Growth and Our Inner Conflicts. They were (are) all about you and me. Everyone Paul knew, or had every known, was (and still is) featured in the text.

Because knowledge is power, life for Paul was no longer random, arbitrary and irrational. There was now a reason for everything, and this meant the world had become a much more benign place. Paul felt a tremendous, glorious sense of peace, serenity and well being.

Nothing phased him at this point, because he knew he would no longer have to go through life like a sleepwalker who was always painfully bumping into the many things he could neither see nor understand. He was no longer at the mercy of blind ignorance--on the contrary, he now saw the world from the high vantage of standing upon the shoulders of a giant; he could see by the veritable light of heaven, a panoramic overview of all that was previously veiled in darkness.

*

Paul approached Patina just prior to their Monday afternoon class and asked to speak to her afterwards. He was able to do that feeling calmly self-confident, and without a trace of telltale embarrassment, which might have suggested he had come crawling back to her under a pretext.

Tina was subdued but friendly and polite as they began their mile-long walk from school to her place. It was one week ago exactly to the minute that she had made this same journey alone, having run away in a distressed state and with a badly injured hand.

She was now waiting patiently and silently for Paul to begin telling her whatever it was he wanted to tell her. She seemed a trifle apprehensive as to what it might be about.

"I've made a discovery," he said, grinning like a Cheshire cat. "The world is no longer the same, because everything has changed: I have found the key to unlock the door to a world within a world, and I feel so calm and at peace with everything. My anxiety has, incredibly, just disappeared."

"I have tons of anxiety," said Tina, in a solemn and serious tone, "and nightmares too."

"Well, in that case, we'll have to decrease your anxiety level," he said, in a quietly understated tone of voice, which exuded as much confidence as the ant that thought it could move a rubber-tree plant.

"Well, first of all, where should I begin . . . well, it all starts with pride I guess. You see--pride is a powerful force that tells people what to do and punishes them if they fail to do what it tells them to.

Now that is not a good thing, because in ordering people around, pride robs them of the freedom to choose. Living under pride’s control is analogous to living life as a slave, because you are not only told what to do you are punished for failing to do as you are told. That is a seriously sinister situation to find oneself in, but that’s how most of us live and we don’t even know it.

But pride is even worse than that because it also punishes people if they try their very best to obey its orders but fail in the attempt. Pride then attacks them with vicious accusations of being contemptible and worthless. Pride can destroy self-esteem, can make people feel depressed--even suicidal. Pride uses verbal abuse by labeling people as losers, failures, as worthless, and by making odious comparisons between them and someone else who might be better than them in some way. Pride perpetrates a gamut of dirty deeds.

Pride, figuratively speaking, puts the boot in, kicks the hell out of people and does so with total ruthlessness, because pride is inherently incapable of feeling pity or compassion."

Having reached Patina's place, Paul took a seat at her kitchen table while she made some coffee.

"I can sort of see what you are getting at." She said. "It sort of makes sense, and it's kind of similar to Buddhism, and yet it seems so generalized and abstract . . . so tenuous. I can't really get a handle on it. I can’t get a firm hold on it or see how it applies to me specifically or exactly."

"Well", said Paul, who was overly zealous perhaps in his eagerness to explain exactly how the system works, "pride also manifests in trying to beat people--"

Before he could elaborate on the point he was trying to make, before he could even utter another word, Tina had become suddenly and visibly terrified. It was not just her face that went red as a beet root but her arms as well. The sheer look of frantic fear in her face suggested her heart rate had reached a frenetic number of beats per minute, as if in response to a life-threatening danger.

Paul was shocked too and concerned about what he had unwittingly unleashed. He quickly tried to remedy the situation by taking the spotlight away from her and turning it on him instead.

"I’m just lucky I’ve got no talent," he said, smiling affably, "otherwise I’d have to go and compete and maybe show some people a thing or two. And I reckon I would too if I was as clever and gifted as you are, but I don’t have that sort of talent, so I don’t even try."

It wasn’t really very funny--it was just ad lib, it was nonsense, it wasn't even funny at all; but she laughed so disproportionately loud as to suggest it was absolutely hilarious. And yet, her laughter appeared very strained and artificial. Her mouth opened wider than Paul thought possible, but she only appeared to be letting off steam and tension.

Thinking his words had in fact sufficed to put her at ease, he asked her, "How are you feeling?"

"Threatened!" she exclaimed, with enough force and conviction to take Paul aback. "I feel like a spy who has been found out and caught by the KGB, and who is now likely to face torture and execution. I know it’s crazy, because I haven’t done anything to merit that kind of punishment.

What gets me into trouble is my competitive streak. It’s too powerful, too extreme for my own good, and it pushes me sometimes to try to defeat people even in unimportant games. It’s really pathetic, I know, but it’s like a compulsion.

I try to pretend that the people concerned won’t notice, but they do--they are not stupid."

"We can change the subject if you prefer." he said.

"That’s okay, the cat is out of the bag now in any case."

"Well, pride is to blame for all of this in any case, not you. Pride pushes you to compete, because it wants you to look good by being the best at everything, including unimportant games. But to be the best, it also dictates you should be above petty forms of competition, because pettiness looks bad. It therefore presents you with conflicting orders, which are virtually impossible to obey--unless you can compete in unimportant games without anyone else noticing. If you can achieve that it’s okay, but if they notice, pride will then severely punish your failure to juggle those inherently conflicting and mutually exclusive elements.

But such hypocrisy doesn’t phase pride, which uses its power arbitrarily--much like the insane tyrant, Caligula, and that can make it just as impossible to please and just as ruthless in the punishments it metes out for perceived failures, which are infinite in scope and variety.

A tyranny like this is bound to be the source of great distress and unhappiness . . . How are you feeling now?" He asked.

"Threatened!" she exclaimed, with a seemingly undiminished intensity of conviction. "I still feel very threatened."

"Does pride have power?" thought Paul. "Darn right it has!"

"I'm sorry." He said. "I'm new at this. I promise I won't say anything so pointedly personal in future--I'll just speak in general terms . . . well, I guess that's more than enough for today. I can come here each Friday afternoon and we can talk a while if you like?"

He stood up in readiness to depart. She stood up too.

"Yes, that will be nice." she said, and then she began to stare absent mindedly at the floor while her right foot traced patterns on the kitchen linoleum. "You know," she continued, "some people are so aggressive and demanding. They'll say: ‘Why do you do that?’ And they will go on and on and try to interrogate you and give you the third degree--but you're not like that."

Her demeanor was subdued, and her face was filled with a quiet and affectionate gratitude. Paul felt a powerful impulse to take her hand and give it a squeeze in a gesture of affection. But he took his leave of her and headed home--their relationship was now a quasi-professional one, and so he felt it wouldn't be right to stay and socialize, or take in a movie, or kiss her or anything like that.

*

At school they were constant companions again, but they were now friends rather than lovers, and their extra curricular activities were confined to lunch each day and Friday afternoons set aside for philosophy and psychoanalysis.

At their second such session they began a comparison between Buddhism and Karen Horney's theory of pride.

"It's the self that places us on the wheel of life," said

Patina, "because the self is full of desire, and the more things we want, the more we have to work to pay for them, and the less free we then are to think about important things like philosophy. In grubbing after money, we are distracted from our higher purpose."

"Well, Horney differentiates the self into two very distinct types: There's the proud self and the true self. According to her, it isn't necessary to get rid of all desire or all of the self--as Buddhists say--it's only necessary to get rid of the proud self.

It's the proud self that makes people chase after money and prestige, and, because of this element of compulsion that pride imposes, the trappings of success and prestige are pursued even though such goals haven't really and truly been chosen by the people concerned. They have been chosen on their behalf. They have been chosen by pride.

It isn't just a question of doing everything perfectly either--it's a question of autonomy: of doing what you yourself have chosen to do rather than obeying the orders pride imposes upon you. In being autonomous, you might make a good or a bad job of a particular undertaking, but it's you doing that job that you yourself have chosen to do. That’s what counts."

"But how can you tell the difference between the proud self and the real self?" she asked.

"That can be difficult, because it's like dealing with an invisible enemy. Pride might say ‘jump’, and the person concerned might simply say 'how high' without questioning the orders given, because they believe their pride and their real self are one and the same.

They are not the same but the person concerned is often unable to see that: Your true self might choose to buy an expensive car because it's safe, but your proud self will make you buy that same car because it's a status symbol.

It's hard to tell the difference because it's hard to tell what's in a person's heart. But there are clues and pointers nevertheless, because the proud self will try to force you to buy that car even if you can't afford it, will make you pay the higher price plus interest, and might lead you into financial trouble--the latter is a tell-tale sign of pride's involvement. But sometimes it's easy to tell--I was trying to use you as a status symbol to bolster my pride, because you are rich and glamorous and gifted. That's something I could see without any trouble at all."

Patina was visibly taken aback, which, in turn, caused Paul a momentary twinge of embarrassment. She then returned to the conversation.

"Thoreau made a study of this sort of thing: Eastern religions, pride, and keeping up with the Joneses--I guess nothing much has changed since his time." She laughed out loud, ha, ha, ha. "I know I was incredibly competitive in high school. There was a period when I would have preferred to get cancer rather than fail to come first in the class--terrible, isn't it! That must have been my proud self rather than my true self, but it felt just like me, it felt oh so much like me!"

"In the natural world, competition for survival is normal; it’s all to do with the survival of the fittest, isn't it," he said, "and yet animals aren't proud."

"Lucifer was proud," she said, "that's why he was cast out of heaven way back when."

"In the movie, The Big Chill, there was a brilliant student who dropped out to become a hippie," said Paul. "He dropped out because he disapproved of grubbing after money. Anyway, after so many years of living in a tent and grubbing in the dirt, he grew thoroughly sick and tired of that lifestyle, and so he fell back in with an old college friend who had built up a successful business.

The business was so successful it was going to be floated on the stock exchange as a public company. The rich friend would buy some shares on the hippies’ behalf prior to the float. Those shares were certain to increase in value subsequently and would see him with enough money to buy an old abandoned house in the country.

Technically it was insider trading but the sum of money involved was really only paltry, and no one would be hurt by it; and it would enrich and enhance his life enormously, and that of his girlfriend too. Despite his idealistic disavowal of money, the hippie was sufficiently tempted and so he accepted the deal, but he ended up committing suicide because he felt he had sold out.

His pride thought he should be above ordinary people by being above the desire for money, and so he wasn't allowed to want money or the things it could buy, and he was punished for accepting it.

You see--punishment is the litmus test for pride; therefore, the hippie was proud, was very proud. He gave the outward appearance of modesty because, up until that fateful point, he said ‘no’ to money, status and possessions. But his disavowal of those things was so extreme as to seem theatrical. He made a virtual song and dance about his rejection of ‘society’s values’, but that was only because it gave him an opportunity to assert his moral superiority over others.

He was not just in the grip of pride all along but he was the most proud of anyone amongst his group of friends. His pride was so important in fact that nothing else mattered to him nearly as much--not even his own welfare, not even a basic roof over his head. Nor did he care or even give a damn about the girlfriend he abandoned through suicide.

When his true feelings emerged, he was sufficiently tempted to want an old house, a home, something potentially life enriching. But in reaching out to that, he lost the one thing he couldn’t live without--his phony image of messianic saintliness; the image his pride had fabricated for him, the role it expected him to play and the proud standards it expected him to live up to on pain of death."

"Wow! Isn't that amazing!" said Tina. "It's the absolute opposite of what you would think: that he was the least proud because he was the least concerned with the outward trappings of success, but he was actually proud to the pathological point of self-destruction. Isn't that just so devious--a process like that. But it's fascinating too."

"It's so skillfully deceptive as to appear deliberately and malevolently calculating--and pride is like that. And it means outward appearances mean nothing, because they are not necessarily a true reflection of what's in a person's heart. But pride punishes failures, and that's as certain as the sun will rise tomorrow. So, if you feel bad, you just have to search for pride till you find it--till you find the specific manner in which it's hurting and punishing you, and then you are not helpless against it.

Another seriously bad thing about pride is that it stops you from being yourself, because you cannot be a real person if you don't have the right to control your own life, and you cannot be in control of your own life if pride is already controlling it for you."

"Gosh, this is really powerful stuff." she said. "You've really discovered something here. It's like a world within a world. It’s a real eye opener:

You can't be free if pride is telling you what to do. It's like being a puppet and having pride pull the strings. It's like being a dumb animal and having pride lead you by the nose. It's funny, I feel as though I already knew about some of this, and yet it was all so vague . . . And pride must be such an incredible obstacle to freedom. Even if we've won our political freedom, there is still more freedom for us to fight for and attain--a whole new-world of freedom."

"I'm sure glad you've been able to tune into this so quickly," he said.

Their afternoon session had been well and truly overextended into evening and it was now already dark. Tina lit some candles and placed them seductively on the kitchen table, then she switched off the lights.

After an exchange of affectionate smiles, which were tinged with amusement, Paul accepted the implied invitation. He stood up, went over to her, and, taking her by both hands, beckoned her to stand up. She responded accordingly and he held her hands against his heart.

"Hi Kid." he said, in a tone both cheeky and cute, to which she responded with her best smile yet. It was a smile so effusive and sweet as to easily melt the heart of a criminal. And Patina seemed to melt away also, to dissolve into a helpless self-conscious state of ga ga.

He kissed her tenderly, with his lips upon hers. Then he kissed her forehead, then her eyelids. He then moved her hands from his heart and kissed them too, giving particular attention to the wounded one, which was more than half healed already--just like their relationship.

He then took her in his arms and she wrapped her arms around him in like manner. He was so glad to have her back. She held him tight, held him in arms that were almost powerful. As the proceedings progressed he felt the abrupt little tugs her hands would make on his back.

Their mouths intermingled in sublime sensation. Her mouth tasted better than apple pie, peaches and cream; was more delightful than any nectar. It was yummy, yummy, pure and simple in words a child could understand.

Of course, a Freudian might say they were simply stuck at the oral stage of development, and that diagnosis would explain all their problems with such illuminating clarity as to effect an immediate cure.

*

It was on the following Friday afternoon that Paul tried to broach the subject of his intermezzo of groveling, which he had endured only a short time before:

"There was a time just about three weeks ago when we didn't get along too well", he said, in vague and euphemistic terms that alluded to her aversive or sadistic behavior.

In response to this, the look on her face conveyed sheer agony. She was wringing her hands together.

"That's just something I do to upset people!" she blurted out.

Paul thought it imprudent to ask her why she wanted or needed to upset people, or what her motive for doing such a thing might be, because she was in such an obvious state of anguish that he didn’t feel she could cope with any further questioning on that score. So he decided to drop the subject altogether and quickly.

"The strength of pride varies with the individual," he said, proceeding on a different tack. "If a child receives a lot of love, then the power of pride is usually diminished to a significant degree.

Also, people who are bullied--and that includes most of us to at least some degree--will feel inferior because of that, and develop an increased need to feel superior--an increased pride in other words.

Inferiority and superiority are the opposite sides of the same coin, are like the inner and outer face of the same garment."

"I was bullied a lot by both my parents," she said, "and that must have made me as proud and competitive as I am . . . although I used to be my daddy's little girl for a while--you know how fathers are with their daughters. But that only lasted maybe two or three years and then he was into hitting me again like my mother, except he wasn't home so much . . . I used to have this recurring dream about this big man who used to make love to me. He was about 6' 2" and 250 pounds . . .

It's funny you mention this: for almost my entire freshman year at the University of Minnesota, I lived in an apartment by myself, because my parents had already left the USA to come to Australia.

The only contact I had with them then was to telephone my mother once a week. Two of my friends commented at the time on just how good I looked. The difference in me was obvious to them. Amazingly perhaps, I didn't think anything of it at the time, but what you've been saying now rings a bell, because my improved state of mind, or health, must have been directly related to the fact that my parents were well and truly out of the picture."

"Have you ever thought of leaving home?" he asked.

"Well, no, I haven't, and I guess at this point in time I'm no longer living at home in any case."

"If you were to buy a house of your own, where would you choose to live?"

"Well, I don't know really. Being a Buddhist I don't really place a priority on it. One place is as good as an other."

"Well, getting back to pride again," he said, "I think it exists pretty much universally. It's not as if you have to be especially disturbed or pathological to have it. There's an example my sister told me about.

It concerns a young girl about nine years of age. She went to a party, and it was the kind of party to which girls bring these fashionable new dolls, and it was fashionable also to own at least three of these and bring them all.

But one girl only owned one; moreover, while it looked bigger and better, it was actually made in South East Asia and was less expensive. The other girls noticed it was different, and this led them to examine the label in back. They then couldn't resist pointing out the inferior status of the doll in question to the little girl who owned it, the little girl who then ran home in tears."

"Oh! Isn't that sad!"

"Well, I think this example is about par for the course. They start so young with pride and even snobbery, and that seems to diminish only a little bit, if at all, throughout later life. Keeping up with the Joneses is a widespread phenomenon. It's dangerous to fall too far behind the Joneses, because pride will punish you then with painful feelings of inferiority. Pride has the power to punish human beings severely--just think of the implications."

"I think it's scary," she said.

*

At their next session, Paul began to discuss the differences in personality between Patina and himself.

"You know, in many ways we are similar to one another: We are definitely both introverts, both very sensitive, timid and easily threatened. Yet in other ways we are total opposites: In the sphere of romance, I have a need to get really close to somebody whereas you have an equally strong need to keep yourself at a distance--"

"HEY! WAIT A MINUTE!" she shouted, abruptly interrupting Paul’s monologue and startling him in the process. "This has happened to me before! It happened in Minnesota and again here in Australia . . . with Barry." She added, belatedly steering her words in a censored and defensive direction.

"You did it with me, you mean." he thought, but didn't want to upset her by saying so. Barry was the married man just back from Japan, who came equipped with a perfect, guaranteed twenty-four-carat safety device--a wedding ring, which would effectively serve to keep him at a safe distance in any case and thus rule him out as any kind of serious threat to her.

She then re-lit the candles, which had been sitting on the table since the week before, and she switched off the lights.

"We're not going to get much work done are we." he said, smiling affectionately and succumbing to her invitation.

*

As the weeks passed, things remained cordial between them. There were no more incidents like the intermezzo of groveling which had shaken Paul to his very foundations just a couple of months before.

But Tina had clamed up about her need for detachment. That was a subject she would not discuss further in any shape or form. She would always find some way of changing the subject or wriggling out of it.

Paul, however, was happy enough with the progress they had made in other areas--no, more than that, he was extremely happy. He felt he had it all--he had not only the key to happiness but Patina too.

With the academic year now drawing rapidly to a close, Paul was struck with the idea of writing a letter to Patina--that way he could broach the subject of her detachment in a carefully worded fashion. He could write and rewrite the letter and polish it till it gleamed.

He also felt a letter would be less threatening to her than a face to face encounter. And with no other progress being made on that score, it might be the only way to effect a breakthrough.

Tina would need her detachment as a kind of security blanket, and taking it away from her was sure to cause a lot of fuss and commotion. The letter would have to reassure her to the highest degree, and show her so much light at the end of the tunnel that she'd be willing to risk the hardship involved in reaching that light; the hardship of changing her fundamental orientation toward life.

That will usually lead to a great deal of resistance, says Karen Horney, because people don't like change--they perceive it as a kind of reckless leap into a dark and threatening unknown.

The period following their end-of-year exams had the outward appearance of being an especially auspicious one in that Tina was growing emotionally closer to Paul, closer than ever before. She was into holding hands. She was in her connected mode. She would hold his hand (one or the other of his hands) for hours on end as they lay together passionately entwined. While doing this, she would also make little whimpering sounds like a tiny helpless puppy dog. She had done that before, to be sure, but not so often or as routinely as she was doing now.

One day, during this connected period, she was sitting on the floor and checking out a couple of record albums by way of comparison.

"Pop star A is quite handsome," she said, "but pop star B could never be described as handsome."

She looked at Paul, and then back at the handsome pop star, apparently by way of comparison. This caused her to break out in yet another effusive, helpless, self-conscious smile, which she tried to hide-- first by burying her chin in her neck, and then by raising the album cover in front of her face like a fan. But the latter gesture was in vain because it was too late; Paul had already scanned the page and had ascertained that Patina was well pleased.

"Does she think me handsomer than either one?" he thought. "I do believe she does."

He didn't seek direct confirmation of this by asking her--no, but not because there were limits to his narcissism; it was due merely to the covert nature of the latter.

There was no doubt, however, that Patina was now well and truly into her big-smiley mode. She would smile compulsively whenever their eyes met, and these were enormous, helpless, ga ga smiles; and while they were sometimes a source of amusement to Paul, he nevertheless enjoyed them immensely because they were effusive expressions of feeling and so they warmed his heart to the core.

But something else had changed too, because Patina would now allow Paul to undress her completely. Previously she had been quite happy to be naked from the waist down; but not from the waist up, because she was extremely self-conscious about her breasts, which her pride judged to be far too small. She was also self-conscious about her upper arms, which were somewhat flabby. She had lost weight, had got her weight down to 115 pounds, but her upper arms hadn't quite kept pace with the rest of her.

On one occasion a few months earlier, Paul had grabbed her affectionately by her upper arms while they were standing and necking in her doorway. Tina had reacted with sheer terror on that occasion, which Paul was careful never to repeat.

In now allowing Paul to see her naked from the waist up, the power of her fault- finding pride was apparently very much diminished and it seemed as if an even more powerful force had entered the picture to displace it.

During this period, things were so good in fact a pessimist would have been tempted to suggest they might be just a little too good to be true.

But why couldn’t they have a close and loving relationship? Patina was certainly not an emotionally cold person; on the contrary, she was capable of the most intense and passionate feelings: feelings for art, beauty, music, nature . . . and love too.

But the latter feelings, though intense, were inclined to be short-lived, evanescent and frail. They were likely to go up in a puff of smoke at any time or could disappear into the mist like a veritable will-o-the-wisp. They were feelings so intense and yet so brittle that the slightest inadvertent impact could shatter all of them into a thousand tiny pieces. This tendency toward self-destructing impermanence lent to her romantic feelings the further quality of being transitory in the sense of being always poised with bags packed in readiness to depart.

Paul knew this pleasant period would be paradoxically difficult for Patina, but he was enjoying it too much to give the matter much serious thought. This halcyon time lasted but a few weeks. After that, Patina began to rally her defenses, and mobilize her distance machinery in preparation for a tactical withdrawal.

She went to her parents’ house to spend part of the holidays with them, or so she said, and was no longer available for romantic interludes. Paul was finally forced to heed the signs of danger, which were now revisiting their relationship.

He resolved to redouble his efforts immediately and finish the letter he had already been working on for some considerable time; the letter he hoped would explain all and convince Tina to change her way of life by giving up all of her old, tried and familiar defense mechanisms.

He expended several full days of focussed, concerted effort and many more nights too on the vital task of completing it, honing it and polishing it to perfection. At that point he was extremely pleased with what he had sitting on his desk. It was a letter of power that he thought might move mountains. The letter read as follows:

Fearful people are not free to just say and do whatever they like. They need the protection of a special technique for dealing with the people they fear.

There are really only three ways of dealing with potentially hostile people: You can fight them, appease them, or avoid them.

While it is possible for well-adjusted people to make use of all three of these strategies, the rest of us will tend to lean toward just one and use it as our predominant means of defense; we will choose the one that works best for us.

I, for one, have chosen appeasement, and, after many years of practice, have become quite skilful at it. I am amenable, agreeable and submissive toward others. If I feel threatened by somebody, I read his face to get feedback and then slant the conversation in the direction that keeps the face happy.

Appeasing behavior is useful in that it can ward off hostility and prevent a fight. It's really not so different in animals like dogs who display submissive behavior to save them from a fight which could be life threatening, or which could cause life-threatening injuries.

Appeasing behavior is especially highly developed in China where it is virtually institutionalized in the form of Confucianism, and it produces a self-abnegating, kowtowing behavior, which is especially highly developed amongst women.

The force producing this behavior is fear pure and simple. It is fear of the threats leveled against us by aggressive people. You scored in the top one-percent on threat-reactivity. If there was no threat to begin with, you would be unable to react to it, and in that case there would be simply no need for appeasement behavior at all.

Of course there is threat! We are threatened all the time, by glowering, by intimidating facial gestures and body language, by critical, judgmental and disapproving looks.

Why do people threaten us? Because it works! It frequently gets them what they want, and behavior, which is rewarded, will tend to continue or increase.

Appeasing behavior will keep us out of a potentially dangerous fight, but there is a price to pay for the protection it provides. It is damaging to one's self esteem to be trodden underfoot.

And such damage produces a compensating pride, which quickly becomes overbearing and abusive toward the timid person, who is unable to defend himself against it because he is not a good fighter per se. He cannot impose Pride’s arrogant standards upon others either but only upon himself, and so he is then beaten down at every turn for failing to do so.

Such a downtrodden person is condemned to live with a pride he can never please. This exacerbates his sense of inferiority, which, in turn, further reinforces his pride, etc., etc., etc., in a vicious circle.

You have developed along these lines too and I have seen your pride often enough beat the hell out of you. But nobody should have to live like that and be punished just because they are not the best artist, marksman or mathematician in the world. Using pride's logic, everyone would have to be punished all the time, because only one person can be the best painter; therefore, the rest of the human race would have to be punished for failing to be the best painter. Similarly only one person can be the best mathematician; the rest of the world, including the best painter, would have to be punished for their failure to be the best mathematician.

If you expose pride's logic to critical scrutiny, it simply dissolves into garbled nonsense.

But while you have developed some appeasing behaviors and skills, you have not developed them to a high degree, because your primary and most important technique for dealing with people is to avoid them.

This is probably because appeasing behavior was not always an effective means of dealing with your parents, who must have been unappeasable in some crucially important ways. But you couldn't adequately avoid them either except by withdrawing from them emotionally. This is known as emotional detachment and it must have been your only means of escaping an impossible and untenable situation.

To achieve detachment, you had to give up all of those needs, the fulfillment of which would cause you to depend on your parents in some way. But in order to achieve total, emotional independence, you had to free yourself from all wishes, desires and feelings. And to achieve that, I think you went to the extreme of numbing yourself to all feelings--that was the stage in junior high when you described yourself as being just like a zombie who couldn't feel anything either good or bad.

And perhaps it was necessary for you to go to that extreme in order to achieve detachment, but I think this whole trend toward suppression of feelings and desires was then rationalized as constituting Buddhist philosophy--which you got into at such an early age.

But there's a short circuit in the wiring here because you are not suppressing the desires of vainglorious ambition which Buddhists reject, because you are still so heavily into that. What you are suppressing is the normal, natural desire for love, closeness and mutuality. You do that partly in order to avoid the pain of possible disappointment in love, but also out of fear of being engulfed and overwhelmed by a potentially aggressive domineering person. You do it also for a host of other non-spiritual reasons, and you do it at the price of choking off your natural feelings and wishes.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with wishing for something; on the contrary, it's harmful to try to destroy your own wishes, because our wishes are the alive, inner core of our being.

Pride destroys the innocence of our wishing for things, and cares nothing for our happiness. The hippie who committed suicide was proud of not wanting money (proud of being morally superior) but his true wishes continued to exist, and his heart went out to the old house in the country that he and his girlfriend could fix up.

But pride said ‘no, you can't have it, you sold out to the establishment, you are not morally superior after all and you must be punished for that.’ What a tragic waste when you realize he did it to himself.

"And the devil did grin, for his darling sin

Is pride that apes humility."

Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Detachment, on the other hand, specifically destroys those wishes, which depend on other people in some way for their fulfillment. It is therefore taboo to love someone, because love will make you dependent, and your dependency will endow your lover with the power to hurt you.

Secondly, when your own wishes are silent the wishes of others tend automatically to fill the void and take over. In all the time I have known you, you have never made a request, or a suggestion as to where we might go on a date. I made all the requests--perhaps too many--and all the suggestions too, but that was because you never made any, so what else could I do.

You can pass this passivity off perhaps as conventional, female behavior, and you can even try to hide behind that. But the intrinsically negative nature of this process will not only impoverish you by circumscribing your life, it will also inevitably reinforce your belief that people generally are domineering and thus to be feared.

But it was never my intention to take control; I would be only too glad to go anywhere you want--you have only to want. I find this development especially incongruous in our present era of Women's Liberation.

When, due to pride or detachment, you are prevented from feeling your own feelings, you grow out of touch with the alive, inner core of yourself. In being robbed of your own feelings, wishes, desires and dreams, you begin to cease to exist as a human being and slowly shrivel up and die.

Pride then supplants more and more of your true self, replacing it with a tyranny of senseless punishment for the failure to meet its procrustean standards and demands. That's no way to live, Kid, with pride's jackboot on your neck and it doesn't have to be like that.

You can escape. You can find a better life. You can fight your pride, fight your detachment, and win your true and real freedom; and I feel certain you will agree this is a goal worth pursuing, because I know how important freedom is to you.

Finally, because detachment has always been your primary means of defense, you haven’t put in the time and effort needed to sufficiently develop your fighting skills or your appeasement skills to the point where they might serve to protect you in a difficult interpersonal situation.

In such a situation you would be forced to fall back on your avoidance behavior, but this means you must always have an escape route, otherwise you will suffer extreme anxiety.

But you will effectively loose your escape route if you become so closely involved with someone as to be enmeshed in love, or if you are living with them, or if they are coming to your place all the time. You will have no sense of even having an escape route if you feel engulfed by somebody or feel they are virtually sitting on top of you. That is how ‘freedom’ can conflict with love to the point of ruling out long-term romantic relationships.

Well, I sure hope this makes sense to you, because I don't think there's anything more I can say.

PAUL.

He folded the letter and placed it inside an envelope; an envelope he had preaddressed in his finest handwriting a week earlier already. He mailed it to her from his place of work and mailed it care of her parents’ address, because that’s where she was currently hiding out. Paul was working five days a week now that the exams were over. He worked for the civil service for three months of each year--the entire duration of the annual college vacations.

It was five days after he mailed the letter that he had an especially good day at the office--two really nice things happened to him.

Firstly he learned that an obnoxious mid-level boss was leaving that day. That was fabulous news, because Paul’s job was otherwise free of aggravation and so it would be a breeze from now on, for all of the next three months.

Later that afternoon, Paul also learned he would be getting a promotion to the position of clerical Officer Grade 2. This actually gave him four very small wage rises in one go, which amounted to a quite pleasing sum of money.

These two fortuitous events boosted his spirits enormously and caused his overall expectations to become optimistic, because good things were inclined to come to him in threes. This phenomenon occurred often enough to make him entirely confident he would receive a third item of good news; more specifically, he knew on a very firm gut level there would be a letter from Patina waiting for him when he got home, and a really nice letter at that.

Sure enough, the letter was lying waiting for him on his bed right where his mother had put it. He was pleased about that to be sure and yet he was also very nervous about what might be in the letter. It read as follows:

Hi,

Thanks a million for your letter. It was right on!

RIGHT ON!

Love's incompatibility with freedom, a need for detachment--that is the story of my life!

The conflict, the impossibility, the REACTIONS! But, Oh WOW, you have blown the roof right off it! You have blown the roof off everything.

I was never able to believe that love could ever be a genuine emotion, and yet deep down I still held out the hope that it might be real, and I've never been more convinced of that than I am right now. Your letter was RIGHT ON! RIGHT ON!

You have changed the outward appearance of the entire world!

I've just had time to quickly write this and put it in the mail before I return to the States for my annual vacation. I'll be back in about two or three weeks.

I'll write to you from there, love . . . Patina.

In the process of reading the letter several times over, Paul’s initial anxiety had risen and fallen several times before finally subsiding to the point where he was feeling quite relaxed and composed. He then also felt confident and pleased. He felt he had really achieved something, had gotten through to her and had really made his mark. And yet, there were a few things still bothering him; namely:

If she was really all that thrilled, why didn't she telephone him? He had given her his number, written on a piece of paper, twice before and had asked her to call him on several occasions over the course of the academic year. She had even politely agreed to do that and yet she never did. She never phone him at all, not even once.

He was also very doubtful about whether she could change in any case, because a true change would necessitate a change in her personality and her overall orientation toward life. That would constitute a change so powerful and positive it would enable her to do away with her old defense mechanisms, and from his reading he knew it would be extremely difficult for anyone to do that.

It was all of two weeks before Paul would receive--not a letter, but a mere postcard with just a few perfunctory words written upon it. Moreover, the words were platitudes, were tourist cliches and nothing more personal than that.

She had said nothing more concerning the vital subject matter of his important letter--the letter he had almost sweated blood to write. Her compulsive wariness inspired a gamut of feelings in him:

It was a deeply felt insult--not as overtly crude as a slap in the face, and yet it was far more powerful. It was a rejection of him as a lover. It was a rejection of the value of his work and ideas, and a rejection of his willingness to help her. She had, seemingly, a thousand tricks up her sleeve, a thousand different ways of rejecting him, and each rejection was a simultaneous insult that stung him painfully.

But what hurt him most of all was his opinion, belief and conviction that he was bound to lose her. This arose as a reaction to her wariness as well. It gave him good cause to become pessimistic and despondent, and those feelings in turn increased steadily as the date of Patina's return drew near.

"I don't think I can stand much more of this." he thought. "It’s like torture! Why can’t she just love me? She should be happy to have me, happy to have my love, happy to have someone who really cares about her. I can’t see why love should be so goddamned difficult in any case. This whole business is becoming so damned tedious. It’s just like pushing shit up hill, and I’m really getting sick and tired of it! I would really like to just get it over and done with one way or another and once and for all."

After waiting all of five weeks for Patina’s two-week vacation to come to an end, Paul had still not received a telephone call or any other kind of message from her. This was yet another insult to him. He felt it was a small effort, was the least she could do in return for all he had done for her.

Although he had telephoned her several times without anyone picking up the phone, he was convinced she was already back in Australia. He felt she was home, was making outgoing calls but was not answering any incoming calls.

He finally resolved to take direct action by going to her place and having the matter out with her, face to face. He decided to go straight after work because it was a shorter distance to travel than going from his home.

Upon his arrival her house and garden appeared altogether unchanged, and Paul couldn’t help but wonder whether Patina’s state of mind would follow suite by remaining unchanged as well. He was quite nervous when he knocked on her door.

She opened it promptly. She was wearing shorts and a T-shirt. She looked dirty, and even dusty like she had been rolling around on the ground. Her hair was all greasy too and looked like it hadn't been washed for maybe a week. And she had bad breath for the first time ever.

She ushered him in with a customary sweep of her arm. Her manner was polite but not really friendly. There was no evidence of spontaneous pleasure written upon her face in response to seeing him--no, on the contrary, she appeared apprehensive.

There was partially completed artwork laid out all over the floors of at least three rooms.

"Is your telephone out of order?"

"I don't know, I don't think so," she said, casually and indifferently. She then sat down on the floor to resume her painting, leaving Paul standing above her in a state of awkward and pained embarrassment. Her attention was trained upon her work with an apparent intense focus.

Although he felt hurt and insulted that she would ignore him like that, his outward or predominant feeling was one of anger.

This made him less diplomatic than he might otherwise have been and intensified the stubborn determination he felt at wanting to resolve and finalize this matter once and for all. He hoped to achieve that end by putting the question to her regardless of her present obvious lack of receptiveness. He no longer cared whether she wanted to hear what he had to say or not; she could just like it or lump it.

As he began to utter his proposal, tension and fear were visible and building steadily in her face:

"I wanted to know, Patti, whether you are willing, and or able, or whether you would like to be my girl, or not?"

"I'm really sorry," she said, and, after a short pause, she continued speaking in a somber tone, "but things have changed so unexpectedly. You see--I met this guy back in Minnesota, and the whole thing just got out of hand so quickly. I never meant for it to happen but it just did, and I don’t even know what I can say to you now."

"Goddamn it!" thought Paul, who was more than half prepared for the worst but not at all prepared for this. "This is just my luck. I do all the work to fix it so she is able to love someone and she just turns around and gives her love to somebody else." His mood descended rapidly as he sank into a slough of despond and self-pity. He was devastated, but he tried to hide it from her.

"Well, what happens now?" he asked, after an extended and tension-filled pause.

"Yes, what happens now?" she repeated, anxiously.

"Well, I'm not going to hate you like blazes." he said, in a tone of glum resignation, to which she responded by blushing with fear and embarrassment. "I'll see you around at school, I guess. We could maybe have lunch together from time to time."

There was another tension-filled pause in their conversation. Paul’s head was filled with confused disbelief. There was something that didn’t quite make sense to him. "But when is this guy coming over here?" he asked.

"Probably in a few weeks. I think it will take that long before he is organized and ready to relocate."

"But, I mean, you do love him, don't you; so, after he gets here, I wouldn't still be able to come here and kiss you all night, would I . . . or would I?"

She mused over the question for a seemingly protracted period, a period of probably ten to fifteen seconds before she finally and grudgingly replied: "Probably not."

She seemed so much like a stranger to him then, a beloved but perennial stranger.

"Well, I wanted to finalize this matter once and for all," said Paul, maintaining a stiff upper lip and even an outward pretence of polite indifference, "and so I guess, with your help, I've been able to achieve that much." He sat down on the floor beside her. "Bye, Patina." he said somberly. Then he kissed her goodbye and took his leave of her.

Paul traipsed wearily up the ever-changing hill. It was steep now--the road that led from her place. The hill traversed by the road he traveled was ever changing to match his moods and Paul was now engulfed in an all-encompassing sense of doom and gloom. He was so disorientated, it was as if he didn’t know up from down, and so he didn’t even notice the trees or the sidewalk at all let alone their particular magical nuances.

The first thing he did notice was music being played on a bus he boarded at the top of the hill. The source of the music was probably a radio, though he wasn’t even certain of that, but he did think it was under the control of the driver. It seemed doubtful whether this was company policy; more significantly, the radio was playing A Whiter Shade of Pale, by Procol Harum, and that song was exquisitely apropos in describing just exactly how Paul felt.

The bus brought him to a railway station where, after waiting an inestimable period of time, he boarded a train. That train took him all the way to Lower Middle Vale station and beyond to places further west. His total sense of mortification had made him oblivious, had caused him not to even notice, had caused him to overshoot his destination.

When he finally got off the train, he was confronted by two simple alternatives. He could wait for another train to take him back in the opposite direction or he could take a taxi. The latter option seemed like a profligate waste of money to Paul’s usual miserly way of thinking, but that no longer mattered to him at this point.

"Goddamn it," he thought, "I've put in so much effort to figure out her problems, I haven't had time to do much else. I'm sure I'll flunk math, but does she care about that? No way! She just drops me like a hot potato as soon as she finds someone better.

And I thought I was finally going to do something clever. I was finally going to do something that would make a difference.

She is so callous to just dismiss me like that. She didn't even bother to make a simple telephone call. She didn’t even bother to write me a Dear-John letter so as to let me down gently. Why? Because she doesn't give a damn about me! She has never tried to help me with any of my problems, even though I've gone to a lot of trouble to help her. It just isn't fair! Why did I ever get involved with her? I'm worse off now than ever before, and I'm more unhappy than I've ever been in my entire life."

Paul was taking things very hard, and continued to do so over the subsequent weeks. The release of the exam results only served to make matters worse. He had flunked math, just as he had anticipated and feared, and this exacerbated the serious sense of failure and self-contempt he felt in the areas of love and psychoanalysis.

Even more odious was the sense of sheer ignominy he felt at seeing Tina gain a high distinction in Math as well as all her other subjects. He now felt he was exactly like the stupid arrogant jerk Patina had told him about--the one in high school, the one she had defeated in every single subject after his public outburst of bragging bravado.

She had failed to defeat Paul in physics. But that was decidedly a hollow victory, because physics was not even one of her subjects. It was a simple fact that she had defeated him in everything including love, and especially love--that was the area in which he felt she had totally vanquished him.

His analysis of her, which he had hoped would be totally brilliant, had just collapsed in a heap; had been transformed into something totally ineffective and inane.

It was a farce of irony in the first place that he should be helping her at all when she was the one who should have been tutoring him in math.

But his pride had made it impossible for him to ask her for help, and yet his pride now had ample reason to put the boot in to him for flunking a subject of such pivotal importance to his future.

"She is like a machine," he thought, "she doesn’t care what the subject is or whether it’s difficult, interesting or boring. It makes no difference to her at all. She goes at it full bore and gets either 98 or 99%--that’s the full extent her grades range over."

He now also felt immeasurably worse off and more debilitated than after their first break up. The shock of that had been so short-lived, it barely had time to sink in. But on that occasion he had also been the one to do the rejecting, and so his pride had not been able to punish him for that.

In subsequently losing out to his rival from Minnesota, Paul's pride had sustained another serious injury, the full force of which would take time to sink in, but sink in it would, and this onslaught against his self-esteem would cause him to feel progressively worse as time went by.

Also, while he intellectually accepted his relationship with Patina was finished, on a deeper subjective level, he was simply unable to bite the bullet, to give up hope, to let the dream die. He still needed her desperately, and this nurtured a wishful kind of thinking, which caused him to feel there was still the faint possibility of effecting a re-conciliation, but a possibility he could feel growing ever fainter as time went by.

His depressed state of mind intensified his plight and caused him to become desperate enough to think he could hardly live without her; desperate enough that he felt he should go back and see Patina to put the question to her once more. His desperation had also led him to cultivate a theory to the effect that: if he put the exact same question to her, it was quite likely to produce a different outcome.

It was now about five weeks since he had last seen her, and having had that time to rethink things, he was no longer convinced the man from Minnesota even existed. Had he been possessed of a greater self-confidence, he might not have believed any part of her story in the first place--not even believed it for one minute. But he had been so crushed at the thought of being rejected in favor of a more desirable rival that he was left unable to even think clearly.

He resolved to go and see her again, to put the question to her once more and, once again, he set off after work. It was a Wednesday afternoon, and thinking it pointless to telephone her, he simply went to her place on the off chance she would be there.

She was indeed. He rang the bell and she answered in her usual prompt manner, but not everything else was the same. He noticed immediately that her hair was shorter. She had cut it to just half its former length. It was now a fraction less than shoulder length. Also, if there really was a man from Minnesota, he was not home right now and so he must have been out somewhere.

She began by listening with apparent interest to what he had to say to her. There was even the suggestion of an eager anticipation written into her face. But having listened to him and having heard him say nothing new, her face disclosed disappointment, after which she grew quickly and increasingly impatient.

Her adverse reaction inspired a concomitant deterioration in Paul’s attitude. His words began to speed up in response to the time limit her impatience implied, was likely to impose, and his words also began to disclose a subtle but steadily increasing hostility.

"I was wondering," said Paul, in an obsequious tone, and wringing his hands . . . "I was wondering if your new boyfriend from Minnesota is real, or if he's just a figment of your imagination?" He added the latter comment with just a trace of sarcasm in his tone of voice.

"This is not the first time you’ve called me a liar!" she said, angrily. "I have to go to my parents' place. My bus is due right now."

She opened the door, showed him out, and came out herself right behind him but without carrying an overnight bag or anything else. She seemed more impatient than angry--impatient to be on her way, but she certainly appeared in no mood to hear his recriminations.

"I never asked you for anything," she said, "and so you have no right to ask or demand anything of me."

She walked quickly ahead of him.

"I was wondering to what extent you live inside your imagination," he called out after her sarcastically.

She stopped, turned to face him with a serious expression and said, "I know I'm very withdrawn and very introverted, but I have my friends . . . my real friends!" she added, in a tone of angry disappointment, and she began to walk away again.

"You're implying I'm not a real friend, but I've always been a good friend to you, and I've always treated you better than you ever treated me."

"But you even confessed it: you said yourself you wanted to use me as a status symbol. That means you see me as a means to an end; not a friend in my own right."

"But you would never even know about that if I hadn't been honest enough to confide it to you."

"Well, perhaps I wouldn't have known precisely and explicitly but I would nevertheless have sensed it deep down--I would have sensed there was something fraudulent about you."

"Oh my God! That's so harsh. You make a mountain out of a mole hill--and it's got nothing to do with the price of eggs in any case."

She was now walking at a brisk pace and getting away from him. Paul quickened his pace to catch her up. He felt this was his last chance to put his case to her.

"This is all about incest, isn't it?" he blurted out.

"What do you mean?" she demanded to know, turning to face him in anger once more, and in the manner of a person confronted by a small, menacing dog.

"The big man, 6' 2" and 250 pounds who used to make love to you--it was your father, wasn't it?"

"OH MY GOD!" she exclaimed in sheer horror. "There's nothing you won't stoop to, is there. But if that's what you think of my family--that we are like a bunch of backward hillbillies or something--then why is it you're the one sucking up to us. It makes no sense! And if that's what you really think about my family, I don't want to see you anymore in any case."

She then turned a final time and walked away angrily, at which point Paul noticed her rear end was more substantially filled out than ever before--she had put on an extra thirty pounds or more. Her walk was angry. Her gait was angry. Her hair was angry. Her hair was bobbing and bouncing angrily up and down, and swinging left and right till she was out of sight. Paul was left just standing there mortified.

"You've really done it now!" said his critical inner voice. "You've ruined everything for good and always. You have really FUCKED IT UP so good and proper! You have fucked everything to the nth degree. You really don't do things by half measure, do you? This is the absolute end of it now. You've burnt your bridges."

The start of the new school year saw Paul relegated to the outer periphery of academic endeavor. His progress in math had been abruptly curtailed by his failure in that subject, but his progress in physics too was similarly afflicted because of its pivotal dependence upon the former, and mandatory, co-requisite subject. Repeating math was an option of limited merit, which he might entertain perhaps--following a tour of duty in Vietnam. He decided instead to enroll in any subjects he had the prerequisites for. He didn't really want to go to school anymore in any case. He had lost his ambition. But he didn't want to go into the army either.

He would have to find a means of getting around the problem, and to achieve that end he proceeded to enroll in school as usual. It wouldn't even cost him anything, because the Federal government paid all student fees on behalf of its employees. Although he would not even be attending classes, the government wouldn't know he had flunked out completely till the end of the year, the end of 1972, by which time he would be long gone.

In the meantime, he could get a full-time job and earn some more money. He couldn't go back to his government job, because they were bound by law to tell the army that he was no longer a full-time student, and that would see him sent to prison or to Vietnam. He would have to get a job requiring no form of ID; he thought that was most likely to be a menial type of job with a high turnover of employees.

Paul was a tightwad with considerable savings. He had worked full-time for seven years, had worked right through his night school years and had never bought a car. He had squirreled all of that money away and it amounted to a tidy sum. But he would now be able to supplement those savings with another year of full-time wages.

He would be able to use that nest egg to live on, to see him through in case he had to re-establish himself overseas. He had an aunt living in Vancouver Canada, whom he could stay with. He didn't care to live in Holland.

But there was also evidence the Vietnam War was drawing to a close. If it ended before the end of 1972, he would have no further problems in any case--except problems of a personal nature . . . and a virtual forty-ton truckload of those to be sure.

After much deliberation, Paul decided to apply for a job as a storeman, thinking this a likely position to meet his need for anonymity. If he was, in fact, asked to provide ID, he had resolved to promise to bring it in the following day and then simply fail to come back.

This, however, was not a problem, because he was asked for nothing. With a total of about fifty positions of storeman, employees were virtually coming and going through a revolving door.

There were a half dozen vacancies advertised at the time of Paul’s job interview but just two applicants. The other person was a casually dressed guy of about Paul’s age. He wore a T-shirt, stubby shorts and flip-flops, and that is all. His stubby shorts were so tight and brief as to have no usable pockets. Consequently, he kept his cigarettes and matches housed in his shirtsleeves. They were short sleeves, of course, but folded over twice, till his arms were bare to the shoulders, they kept his essential cigarettes and matches wrapped up inside.

He had tattoos up and down his arms and legs and even on his ears. Having just been hired, the pair sat waiting together until they could be assigned to a work area.

"I seen you before," said the tattooed young man to Paul.

"I seen you in the jug, di'n’ I?"

"Nar," said Paul, "haven' bin in yet."

"Could a swore I seen yuh there, or somewhere . . . hey, that cunt in there arst me if I ‘ad ever bin in trouble wif the cops. ‘No fucken way,’ I said--couldn' tell ‘im I ‘ad a record long as me fucken arm. Fuck the cunt! What he don't know won't 'urt me."

It was a wait of maybe fifteen minutes before the personnel officer came to take the new recruits to meet their respective foremen. Paul was assigned to the foreman who was known as cranky Frankie. The tattooed guy went to a different section. Tattoos were actually very common amongst the storeman at this particular place of employment, but were mostly confined to their arms. Tattoos on legs were not so common, while tattoos on ears were rare. Tattoos in prison, of course, are even more common, widespread, endemic but not universal.

"Open them crates an’ unpack ‘em then stack them boxes on the floor." said Frankie. "Stack ‘em five high. Mad Mick'll be back in a minute tuh help yuh. I'll be back later. I got somefint else tuh do."

Mad Mick returned about ten minutes later. He had supposedly been to the toilet.

"You're the new guy!" he said, eyeing Paul with apparent curiosity. "You'll learn what's what here pretty quick. First there's the stock take, and that's on most every day--we take the fucken stock, see. An' no one ever sees nuffent, dig?"

"Sure," said Paul, "I can be blind as a bat sometimes. Dunno what comes over me, but I can't see nuffent for an hour or two. Then after that I'm okay again."

"You dig! You'll do okay here," said Mick, approvingly. "Yuh can knock off lots uh stuff. Just put it in a garbage bin with a little garbage on top to cover it over. Take it out the back and leave it with the rest of the garbage cans, then take it out and put it in yer car after knock off time--that's knock off time--dig?"

"Yair," said Paul, "I dig yuh."

"Spark plugs are specially good, yuh can sell 'em in the pub. Always lots uh people needen' spark plugs. Anyway, fuck this work, time for a smoko."

Mad Mick sat down on a box and lit a cigarette. Paul kept working.

"Yuh don't have to work all the fucken time, yuh know!" said Mick, in an irritated tone of voice.

"That's okay, I'm new, it'll take me a while tuh get used tuh everyfink."

A woman came walking to the back of the warehouse where Paul and Mick were located. She was from the packing department and she was looking for a wooden pallet. There was no shortage of those but they proved somewhat heavy and difficult for a neatly dressed, middle-aged woman to carry.

"Can one of you boys carry one of these pallets upstairs for me?" asked Margery, who had no intention of carrying it herself.

"Nar," said Mad Mick. "We can't do that. We don't do pallets."

"It will only take you a minute," she said.

"I'll carry it for you," said Paul, pleasantly and agreeably.

"Arrr, what a crawler!" said mad Mick, who seemed nervously upset and agitated.

It did only take a short couple of minutes or so to carry out the task, during which time Paul and Margery engaged in some small talk about his being new and the weather.

Upon his return, Paul found Frankie had returned too and he was in a cranky mood:

"Don't put them fucken boxes there," he said, irritably. "I gotta walk there. They're in my fucken way! Put 'em over here."

Paul could hardly understand what the foreman was complaining about. The warehouse was a huge open expanse, without rooms or corridors or any other form of partitioning. It seemed a matter of total irrelevance whether the boxes were placed ten or twenty feet to one side or another. But Paul wasn't there to argue the point; he was being paid to take orders.

"Sure," said Paul, politely, "I'll put 'em over here."

While the working conditions were not overly congenial, lunchtime nevertheless came around soon enough, and Paul headed for the lunchroom. It was too small for the number of employees using it. It was really crowded.

Paul had brought sandwiches from home, a mug and tea bags. He just had to make his way over to the urn to get boiling water. He couldn't help hearing the ongoing conversation:

"We went and seen the Beatles the first time they ever came to Sydney way back in 1956," said Wally.

"Bull-fucken-shit!" said Black Bazza, breaking out into a belly laugh. "Bull-fucken-shit!" he reiterated, in a bellowing voice. "You stupid dumb cunt; the Beatles were never in fucken Sydney in nineteen fifty fucken six, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha."

"Yes they were," said Wally, stubbornly, "I was one of the first to go an’ see ‘em."

"The Beatles were only about ten fucken years old in nineteen fucken fifty six, you stupid dumb cunt!"

Having made himself a mug of tea and having succeeded in locating the last remaining chair, Paul found himself in a position to take note of the continuing, ambient conversation:

"Six of us picked up this sheila last Saturday night," said Black Bazza. "She was fucken pissed paralytic. We took her home to Bluey's place and rooted her--all six of us did her. Then we went out and got Bluey's German shepherd.

We got her down on her knees and bent her over the side of the couch, and then tried to get the dog to mount her. But he wouldn't root her. That's because she was SO FUCKEN UGLY! Ha, ha, ha, ha. She was FUGLY: FUCKEN UGLY!"

Such conversations during the lunch-break served to divert Paul's obsessive thoughts from focusing upon Patina for half an hour or so here and there, and so it served, more significantly, as a period of respite for his beleaguered state of mind. This had suffered an ever-increasing onslaught of obsessive thinking ever since his breakup with Patina.

But for the remaining twenty-three hours of each day, this kind of reprieve was virtually impossible for him to find. His thoughts and feelings concerning Patina had intensified to the point where they had become overpowering and uncontrollable, and even bipolar in a sense:

His moods would swing between the extremes of love and hate, and with little or no middle ground between. He would swing from pangs of unrequited love and longing for his perfect-dream-girl-princess, to feelings of intense hostility towards the callous bitch whom had rejected and abandoned him.

The negative feelings he harbored toward her would build steadily till they reached a crescendo of hostility, and the hostility took two forms. His passive hostility found expression in his suffering and feeling abused by her ‘unfair’ treatment of him. His active hostility took the form of the nasty names he would use to refer to her, in his thinking, and the nasty things he would think about her.

But his hostility was never a steadfast or lasting feeling, nor could he hold a consistently low opinion of her. The feeling was exceedingly intense but never steadfast, and it could change at a moment's notice. Hate could change to love, and love could change back to hate. From focusing upon her hateful or ‘nefarious’ qualities of character, he could suddenly stop, undertake a 180-degree about face and begin to focus on her many likeable attributes.

He would then experience powerful positive feelings of love and longing, and begin to yearn for her all over again. He was alternating between these extreme feelings on a daily basis. And he would conjure up images of Patina, first as an angel and then as a devil but never both things at the same time; it was like the angel and devil were kept in two separate compartments.

"She chooses someone just like me--someone so timid he wouldn't hurt a fly. Then she can stop and start the relationship whenever she pleases and without any adverse consequences. She is cunning, cunning as a con artist.

And she can choose to have just as much sex as she wants but stop short of going all the way. And she can easily get away with that with me, but she'd better be careful--one of these days she might try it with the wrong guy, and then she might get raped or beaten up, and that would just serve her right.

Given all her left-liberal phony ideals, when it comes right down to it she doesn't really give a damn about people--not real people living in the real world, not real people like me. She just makes use of them and then throws them away like yesterday's garbage--that goddamn callous bitch!"

Such a diatribe might have given him some solace by strengthening his determination to have nothing further to do with such a supposedly obnoxious person--if he had been able to maintain it, but it never lasted for long.

It may have scared him to think such terrible things about her, or use the term ‘bitch’ to describe the love of his life. He probably also understood, at least at some level, that he was exaggerating her faults to a considerable and even spurious degree. Thirdly, deep down, he was still secretly hoping for a re-conciliation. He knew too, in all fairness, that he had pre-existing problems which she could not be held responsible for.

"She's not really all that bad a person," he thought. "She does have some redeeming qualities. She was only really sadistic to me during that one episode. She never really lied to me about anything. And she used to cook midnight snacks for me--they were great. She even had some unusually fine and likeable qualities. She always listened to me attentively--oh, and she had such an amazing honesty and candor. That was a singularly unusual quality of hers.

Her candor was so sincere and fine.

It seemed like a need for confession.

She laid it straight upon the line,

With honesty close to obsession.

My friends would keep such things in hiding

Perhaps it just wasn't done.

It wasn't etiquette to be so confiding

Others might even poke fun.

It was candor so innocently unaware,

A childlike quality she had retained

Despite all the pressures brought to bear

That cramped and stifled and maimed.

No matter what they did or said,

They could never take that away.

Preserved untarnished inside her head,

It could never be made to obey.

Bless your heart for this part of your soul retained,

Your sincerity's credit is yours alone.

Assistance from others was never gained.

This comes from your autistic zone.

At exactly this point--and it was a recurring point in the cycle--Paul would break down and cry. More than that, he would cry tears of impassioned blubbering, the like of which he had never cried before at any point in his life. He wasn’t normally given to tears in any case and had not in fact cried since he was a little kid.

With such powerful positive feelings still in existence, he couldn't hate her for long, and yet those hostile feelings were inexorably certain to return and torment him whenever circumstances permitted his thoughts to have free rein. That could be when he was at home or when he was doing repetitive tasks at work. The hate would return and would always be followed by the love and longing, and feelings of guilt. It was like being on an emotional roller coaster.

"It’s like I’m being pulled apart." He thought. "I can't stand any more of this. I've got to pull myself together and put my life on a new and firmer footing. All this time I’ve been expecting Patina to change, because that would be easier than having to change myself. But I’m the one who has to change. That’s where I have to put my efforts. But it's just so hard to put theory into practice.

Patina is like a giant mirror in which I can see everything that's wrong with me. And there's plenty that's wrong:

My timidity leads to my lack of assertiveness, which leads to my being bullied, which leads to my loss of self-esteem, which leads to my inferiority complex. This leads to my developing a compensating pride and ambition. But that also conflicts with my timidity and leads to my fear of competition. And that leads to my reliance and dependency on somebody else to provide me with vicarious pride, which then leads to my hostility toward them for failing to supply me with the kind of prestige I want. This has spoiled my life, and has even undermined my moral character.

I thought it was so unfair of her to say there was something fraudulent about me, but she was right. I'm a phony! I really am! And I simply have to put a stop to this never-ending phony cycle of love and hate, and get down to the real nitty-gritty."

It was during the night of this day, the day on which he had clearly and consciously formulated the above resolution that Paul had another noteworthy dream:

He was going to see a student counselor who might give him the kind of advice he so badly needed--someone he could establish a rapport with on the basis of mentor to protege.

In the dream it was night, and Paul found himself once more in the seedy, downtown part of the city and standing in front of the same derelict building, in which the dean's office was located. Having expended the energy required to climb the lofty spiral staircase, Paul found the dean sitting at his desk.

"By the way--good news!" said the dean, excitedly, on seeing Paul standing in his doorway. "I have just the girl for you. She's an autistic, intellectual introvert."

"Autistic! Isn’t that bad?" said Paul, taking the liberty of entering the room and taking a seat without waiting for permission.

"Did I say autistic? I meant artistic. She's an artistic, intellectual introvert. All functions of pride shall she perform: you will never have to fight. A life vicarious but cozy and warm--an ugly word ‘parasite’. But don't alarm yourself, my boy, remember the word ‘satellite’ had a meaning inclined to vex and annoy until Kepler set things right:

A satellite was a hanger on, a sycophant, a hireling paid to flatter and accompany the nobility. But just think of what a satellite has now become? It is something heavenly, shiny and bright. It is hardly something to be ashamed of."

"But I want to find the center of gravity within myself." said Paul. "I don't want my life to revolve around someone else."

"You are clearly confused, Paul! Now just let me explain something to you of a technical nature:

All celestial orbits in the observable universe take the form of an ellipse. This generalization has always held true and is known as Kepler's first law. It means that a satellite's center of gravity can never be located at anything like a true center, but only at the eccentric focus of an ellipse; therefore, there is no such thing as a true center of gravity: each satellite goes about an eccentric--just think of the implications."

"Patina was an eccentric, but the gravitational attraction of our orbital interaction was nothing better than a damnable folie a deux, the sheer untenable hopelessness of which caused me to come crashing down so painfully hard and right flat on my face."

"Don't worry!" said the dean. "Have I got a girl for you. She's an autistic, intellectual introvert. Her daddy's rich, and her mommy . . . Hey, have I got a girl for you. Her daddy's rich, and her mommy dearest . . . Have I got a mommy dearest for you . . ."

From his crazy talk and confused manner, Paul felt the dean was exhibiting characteristics remarkably similar to that of a robot, which had been short-circuited by an electrical glitch or something similar.

In the hope of following up that hunch, and because the dean appeared too disorientated to even notice or object, Paul walked around behind the dean so he might take a look at the dean's back.

"Yes, indeed!" he said. It was just as he had suspected. There was a square panel on the dean's back, which Paul removed to reveal a series of switches and dials, and above this was a placard which read: Deus ex machina.

"GOD FROM A MACHINE!" screamed Paul at the top of his voice. "The dean is nothing but a stupid goddamn robot. The dean is just a stupid, mechanical, inflexible, pre-programmed, goddamn robot!" He was shouting at the top of his voice and with all the frenzied excitement appropriate to the ‘eureka’ phenomenon. "The dean is the poorest, pathetic substitute; is a defective little tin god stupidly programmed by pride!"

This dream was significant indeed, but its full implications were as yet far from being understood by Paul, who, at this point, could do little more with it other than record it in his diary.

*

Paul had been at his new place of employment for a relatively short period of weeks before he inadvertently caused a minor sensation. He accomplished that feat simply by forgetting to pick up his pay from the personnel office on payday, which was normally a Thursday. It seemed everyone had heard about this singularly strange event by Friday, and there were all kinds of comments being made along with expressions of disbelief.

Black Bazza's commentary was the most salient and succinct: "Rich cunt!" was all he said, and yet that said it all.

It didn’t matter much to Paul whether he put his money in the bank on Thursday, Friday or the following Monday. Most of his work-mates, however, were in desperate need of money by payday, and many were already broke before the weekend was over.

Being unable to manage their money, they were nearly always in need of it and inclined to borrow it when they could. They would borrow money from Paul too so they could buy expensive lunches that he wouldn’t dream of buying for himself, but they would always pay him back on payday, when they were momentarily loaded with cash.

They seemed unable to think in the abstract, they seemed unable to plan for the future; and, because of that, many of them didn’t even have a future.

Margery came to cranky Frankie with a request at about this time--a few weeks after Paul had helped her by carrying a pallet. She was short staffed and needed someone to help with addressing and wrapping parcels. She specifically wanted Paul.

"I can't spare ‘im. I got fings fer ‘im tuh do. Yer can 'ave mad Mick, and that's all I can give yuh."

Margery was not favorably disposed toward that idea at all. She didn't like Mick's attitude. She didn't know he was also a vandal who cost the company many thousands of dollars in damaged equipment and inventory.

Margery didn't know all about that, but sensed he would give her heaps of aggravation. She was determined to get someone better, and so she went to the manager to put her case to him.

She came back accompanied by the manager about ten minutes later.

"Frank, do you reckon you could spare Paul to help Marge in the parcel department?" asked the manager.

"Why sure, Clarry." said Frankie, smiling obsequiously. "No trouble at all."

There were about a dozen people working in the parcel department. Merchandise, along with an invoice, would be sent there from the picking section, would arrive in open cardboard boxes, which were then filled with protective, styrofoam padding, wrapped, labeled and addressed.

Some of the people doing this work were illiterate and would try to copy addresses as if they were drawing a picture. Some of the younger ones didn't know that Melbourne was the capital of Victoria or that Victoria was even a state of Australia--some didn't even know whether Melbourne was in Victoria or whether Victoria was in Melbourne. "How is that possible?" thought Paul.

Some didn't know the location or names of suburbs as near as five miles away.

*

Paul had another noteworthy dream at about this time: He was going to Harbor View in the hope of finding Patina at her parents' house. He caught the ferry as usual, but when it arrived at the wharf, he noticed it was low tide.

This presented an immediate problem, because it put the ferry far too low in the water to allow passengers to step off and onto the wharf.

As a consequence, all passengers would have to slip over the side of the boat and wade ashore. It was inconvenient, but, if little old ladies were doing it, it was hardly Paul's place to complain.

It was actually quite difficult for the women over seventy. Slipping over the side caused their dresses and petticoats to ride halfway up their thighs, which proved a decided distraction to their being able to place their feet firmly upon the sandy bottom without losing their balance.

That balance was placed in further jeopardy by the rising and falling of the waves and the need to maintain a hold upon their groceries and other purchases.

The passengers were then required to wade through waist-deep water, which was continuing to rise and fall with a considerable abruptness of force and energy.

Everyone made a beeline for the shore but most walked beside the wharf. Paul felt he might just as well walk directly underneath the wharf, because there was virtually no one there to get in his way.

On walking under the wharf and looking up at it from underneath, he was given the opportunity to view things from a new and different perspective, and he was straight away surprised to see nothing had been painted under there for many years if not decades.

He was even more surprised at how very shabby and shoddy it looked; worse than that, it looked absolutely filthy.

"I had better not smirk or snicker," he thought, suppressing a powerful urge to do just that, "or these rich people might be offended. But, my goodness, they have really left it in a deplorable state. They have neglected and perhaps completely ignored this problem for probably decades or even longer.

Perhaps they thought no one would ever get under here to notice it in any case."

But it was worse than filthy--it was rotten. All of the wood appeared to be rotten, and this may have been caused in part by the salt water and salt-water microorganisms, but the wooden pylons were also infested with marine worms that were causing the insidious decay of the entire foundations of the wharf.

Upon coming closer to shore, Paul could smell something unpleasant. He thought it was probably rotting seaweed. It smelled a lot like hydrogen sulfide (rotten egg gas) which can be given off by decomposing vegetation.

He looked down in the direction of the stink and became suddenly aware he was standing waist deep in human feces. Struck suddenly with fear and disgust, Paul looked back out toward deeper water by way of contemplating a possible escape route. Looking in that direction, he was surprised to see Patina standing about halfway back toward the boat.

"Be very careful of what you're doing." she said, in a somber tone of voice. Then he woke up.

The dream’s meaning seemed pretty obvious to Paul now that he was well and truly involved in the process of rearranging his values.

"I do want to change." He thought. "I want to change big-time, and I’m trying as hard as I can to rearrange my whole life and place it on a firmer footing."

At work, the person in the parcel department, who’s job it was to record and compile a summary of each day's output, had quit. Margery was thus in need of, and looking for, a replacement. It would have to be someone who could add figures without making too many mistakes and who could write neatly.

She was apparently of the opinion Paul might be able to do a job like that, because he was the person she ended up selecting to do it. She gave him a trial run at first and his performance of the task proved to be entirely satisfactory.

"How come he gets that job?" said several other disgruntled employees. They said it complaining to Marge, they said it among themselves and they said it to Paul. "We were here first and he just pushes in front of us, an' you give ‘im the job. WHY?"

"Well, I gave you a try before and it didn't work out, and you didn't even like the job, because it was just a big worry and a headache to you . . . to you, Mary, and you too, Gail. And there was no extra money involved in it in any case, so why knock yourselves out."

"How come you get the best job," said several to Paul, "when we were here first?"

"Well, it's nuffent tuh do wiv me," said Paul, in an attempt at washing his hands of the matter. "They tell me what tuh do, and I do it long as the bastards pay me." He was hoping to divide and conquer by making this a matter of them versus us. "If the bastards pay me that's all I care about." he reiterated. "Yuh can tell Margery I don't care one way or the other what job I do. She can give the job tuh you as far as I'm concerned."

"AArrr Hawwrr Haawwrr!" they moaned sarcastically, in response to the unfairness and humiliation Paul had subjected them to. They would need some time to lick their wounds and recover from the insult of being passed over.

Whether they came to terms with that in an amicable fashion or how long it took them is hard to say, because Paul didn't remain in that section for long in any case.

The accountant was in urgent need of a cost clerk. She needed someone immediately and Paul was recommended. The manager took Paul upstairs, and introduced him to the accountant.

That was a most remarkable turn of events for Paul. The accountant, Jane Alexander, was a beautiful single woman of forty-three, who looked thirty. She had short blond hair and blue eyes, and she was petite and replete with feminine curves. She was attractive beyond a shadow of doubt, and Paul thought she was just gorgeous to look at.

But that was not the foremost of her most outwardly obvious assets. That title would have to be awarded to her smile, which was so singularly striking in fact as to be orders of magnitude greater than any other smile Paul had ever encountered. This led him to suspect she was not human but an angel who was sent to Earth to help a struggling and wretched humanity.

To say Paul was really pleased with his new position of cost clerk would be to understate the situation to an extreme degree. It was more than a good job with congenial working conditions; it was like he had died and gone to heaven.

The work environment Jane created was nothing less than a superlative state of comfort, wellbeing and serenity, because she was never bossy, never arbitrary, never unreasonable or ill tempered or impatient or demanding or irritable. Jane was a total pleasure to work with--more than that; she was a total pleasure just to be with.

"That's the trouble with work", thought Paul, "it's not the work itself, because that can be intrinsically easy; but it's the people you have to deal with, who can give you so much aggravation as to make your job, and even your life, a misery."

After a trial period of one week, Jane told the manager Paul's work was more than satisfactory; thus, there was no need to advertise the position in the newspaper. Paul felt his new job was almost too good to be true, but certainly the perfect way to spend the remainder of the year.

Whenever the work was finished there would be a little time left over for some personal conversation, and, as the weeks passed, Paul found himself gradually getting to know about Jane’s personal life.

Her parents lived in the country. She had left home at twenty-four to move to the city. She had never married, and finding herself "left on the shelf", as she described it, had pursued a career to better provide for herself financially.

She grew up in a strange family--but it was only strange because she had eight younger brothers and no sisters, and that is certainly a strange situation to find oneself in.

"How is it that such a beautiful woman should choose to remain single?" was a question that sprang to Paul’s mind immediately upon learning she was single. And that same question was answered immediately upon discovering how her family was structured:

"She is single because she has already raised the equivalent of two whole families--that's why! And so she knows exactly what marriage has in store for her, because she's already been a beast of burden for long enough to last her a lifetime.

Her supposedly being left on the shelf is some kind of nonsense comment designed to ward off criticism and disapproval. I'm sure she's had to beat them off with a stick."

Jane had rescued an entire family from drowning during a flood. She was only fifteen at the time, and had used a rowboat in three separate trips to get them all to safety. The incident made the Sydney newspapers.

Jane was quite a gal and quite a lady, and that seemed obvious enough to Paul, who felt her smile could likely melt the heart of Lucifer. This viewpoint was formed by his own experience, of having her use it on him so often, because this would cause him to virtually dissolve into a helpless state of ga ga.

"I would have become a nun," said Jane, in all seriousness, "if they didn't have to get up before dawn. That was the one condition I was not prepared to meet."

As the weeks passed, Paul’s bank balance was a steadily increasing source of security to him. But that sense of security was now being supplemented by the even greater sense of wellbeing he derived from working with Jane. Her influence went deep, and much deeper, in fact, than he was even consciously aware of.

There seemed to be a circle of warmth around her, which was radiated by her, and it formed an invisible refuge broad enough to encompass him and protect him from obsessing over Patina. The working days he spent with her were like powerful and long-acting sedatives, which soothed him for virtually eight hours at a dose.

In consequence, he felt almost like an inmate of a sanitarium who had been acutely ill and was now given the opportunity to convalesce and grow stronger. He would now only be troubled by thoughts of Patina when he was at home or sometimes in his sleep.

But he was also growing very fond of Jane, and, in spite of their age difference, was beginning to think romantic thoughts about her. This had the positive consequence of increasing the strength of the sedative effect he derived from her by another dose or two, and served to protect him further from dark bipolar thoughts.

"I saw a show on TV last night," she said, "about an animal that has a nose like a pig . . . well, it resembled a dog or cat really, but it had a long snout, with a nose that could bend and poke into everything." Jane was not really posing an actual question, so she was hardly expecting an answer; rather, she was trying to clarify the matter in her mind so as to describe it clearly to Paul.

"Oh, you mean a Coati mundi," he said.

But narrowing her train of thought with a comment of pinpoint accuracy would, in fact, lead her to ask him a direct question, and this was almost certainly the first academic type question she had ever asked him.

"A Coati mundi--is that like a dog or a cat?"

"It's closer to being a dog. It's not actually in the dog family but in the super family of dog-like animals (canoidea). I guess you could say, loosely speaking, it's in the raccoon family, but technically it's in the family procyonidae.

The suffix ‘idae’ denotes a family in the animal kingdom as distinct from one of the many other groupings, such as genus, class, phylum, sub order, infra order, etc.

‘Procyon’ means ‘before the dog’. I guess you could say it's an earlier and more primitive form of canoid . . . and that's an interesting twist on the original usage of the term, which was derived from the star, Procyon, which is situated in the constellation Canis minor (the little dog). It was given that name because it rises before Sirius, which is also known as the Dog Star.

Both Sirius and Procyon were hunting dogs connected with the giant hunter Orion, who is located in the huge constellation of that same name."

Jane appeared almost stunned. "You absolutely amaze me!" she said. "You’ve been working here with me for about six weeks now, and in all that time I haven’t heard you say one clever thing up until right this very minute. I thought you were just a quiet little kid. But now, all of a sudden, I find you are completely different from the impression I had of you. Completely different! It isn’t right. You shouldn’t hide who you really are. You shouldn’t hide your true identity. You shouldn't hide your light under a bushel like that."

Paul was hardly flattered to learn he was coming across as a quiet little kid. He was also surprised and confused by her other comment that he was hiding his light under a bushel. What did that mean exactly? He was curious to know but didn’t care to ask her more about it.

He was able to derive a great sense of pleasure, in any case, at her describing him as being "completely different" from a quiet little kid. That was a description he could live with happily enough.

The events of this day would mark the beginning of a period of change and awakening for Paul, which Jane would initiate and cultivate. She began this with the simple tactic of asking him questions. The questions from that day forward came on a regular, daily basis. They were like quiz questions, academic in nature and on all sorts of different subjects. Paul was able to answer a surprising number of them.

"Who was Orpah?" she asked him one day.

"Orpah was a Moabite." he replied. Moabites supposedly were an inferior group of people, because their lineage was said to have originated in incest. You remember when Lot's wife turned back to look at Sodom and Gomorrah and was turned into a pillar of salt?"

"Yes, that part I remember," said Jane.

"Well, Lot also had two daughters, and to continue their lineage, they got him drunk so they could have sex with him and get pregnant. That's the stigma the Jews placed upon the Moabites. But Orpah's sister, Ruth, married in with the Jews and became grandmother to David, arguably Israel's greatest king."

"I have studied the bible but I don’t remember ever reading anything about Lot having an incestuous relationship with his daughters." she said.

"Well, that part is in Genesis chapter 19, verse 30 and onward."

The nicest thing you can do for the intellectual type of person is ask them questions, because they love supplying the answers. But Paul was a closet intellectual, so Jane would have to give him more than a mere opportunity to answer questions. She would have to first coax him out of the closet, and she would do this by going the extra step of rewarding his correct answers with effusive praise. With forceful exclamations and even expressions of amazement, she would say such things as:

"Oh, you are SO CLEVER!"

and

"The THINGS you KNOW!"

This kind of praise was something new to Paul, and it was powerful indeed, and yet it would still take a whole lot more than this to convince him that Jane's assessment of him was an accurate one. He enjoyed the praise she gave him, to be sure. However, he secretly felt she was merely saying nice things to cheer him up. He felt she meant well, but he was nevertheless convinced her praise had no real substance, because she would probably say the same thing to almost anyone. She was a nice person, and so it was like her job to say nice things to other people, and especially to lame ducks like himself who were down at the mouth and in obvious need of cheering up.

He didn't want to argue the point with her. Had he done so, she may have been able to talk some sense into him. But he felt he wasn't really clever, because, even though he might give Jane the impression of being clever, it was only because he read books written by clever people.

But he was just interested in things like that because he had geist: a spirit of intellectuality and sensibility which kindled his curiosity and excited his interest in intellectual subjects even though he wasn't clever.

And the logic was not altogether stupid--on the contrary, it was all too simple and powerful:

If he was really clever he wouldn't have flunked math, he wouldn't have flunked out of college, and his letter to Patina would have successfully solved the conundrum she was caught up in. It was just as simple as that.

But while he was unable to take Jane's praise seriously, a solid friendship was nevertheless growing steadily between them. They appeared to be very much in sync--not just because they got along harmoniously or even swimmingly, but because they had something important in common. It was difficult to say exactly what that was but whatever it was it seemed to draw them together. They were becoming real pals--almost bosom pals.

"I had a dream about you last night," she said, in a mood of vivacious excitement. The dream itself and her retelling it to Paul seemed to make her ebulliently happy.

The dream centered upon Paul and Jane living together and cardboard boxes featured prominently in it. Paul, as it happened, had been moving large cardboard boxes around the office over the last few days. Being a junior of the male persuasion made him the designated dog's body when it came to most forms of manual lifting.

Paul was pleased and flattered to be deemed important enough to take up time in either her thoughts or her dreams.

"You came to live at my place," she said. "You knocked and I opened the front door. But when I looked behind you, I noticed the whole veranda was piled high with cardboard boxes, which you had used to pack your belongings in.

Anyway, at that point I became quite angry. I said, ‘You can't bring all that junk to clutter up my house’--isn't that terrible, my referring to your things as junk," she said, patting him reassuringly on the knee.

"But, after that, you became even angrier and you said you had already paid your rent in advance, so you were legally entitled to move in, and there was nothing I could do about it."

Far from being resentful or unhappy at having someone insinuate himself into her home, Jane was as overtly pleased as punch. Her face radiated with a sense of satisfaction bordering on sensuality, and yet she was apparently oblivious to the dream's almost transparent meaning.

People tell us about themselves all the time; if you want to know who they are, all you have to do is listen to what they say. Jane was almost a nun, and as transparent as the dream’s meaning was to Paul, or may have been to anyone else, it was nevertheless still relegated to her subconscious, and this made it possible for her to talk about it with the candid excitement of an innocent child.

Paul’s feelings on the matter were mixed. He was extraordinarily flattered and pleased, to be sure, but he also felt embarrassed on her behalf. The dream's meaning was so transparent in his estimation and, therefore, so close to the surface that he was expecting it to dawn on her any second, and he was concerned that such a realization might cause her a good deal of embarrassment.

"That's just because I've been carrying all these boxes around," he said, in an attempt to remove the matter from the focus of her attention by making little of it.

Paul wondered at the prospect of making it with an older woman. Although Jane was eighteen years his senior, her looks were youthful enough to effectively mitigate that age difference. And she was so attractive--downright beautiful. But he felt she would be put off, might recoil in horror even, if he made a direct overture. He decided, therefore, to leave her to choose that option if she so wished. If she did, he would be quite happy to lay back in her loving arms.

As the weeks passed, and in spite of the discrepancy in their ages, their relationship was blossoming into something more than just friendship. There was a romantic atmosphere, an intimacy and a close community building up steadily between them, which others in the office could scarcely fail to notice. Jane would allow Paul to hold her hand or hands--it was sometimes one and sometimes two. But it was all done under a pretext. Jane wore fancy emerald and diamond rings, which were fairly expensive--as you might expect of a woman her age. In spite of their value, however, she would allow Paul the liberty of taking them off her fingers, ostensibly to examine them more closely. It didn’t seem to concern her that he might conceivably drop one of her more expensive rings down an inaccessible hole or behind an immovable piece of furniture. She appeared serenely at ease the whole time he was holding her hands and examining her jewelry, and she showed no sign of relief when they were finally put back on her fingers again.

She made no form of protest but appeared quite happy to sit passively and allow him to do that just as much and as often as he liked.

"She likes the young ones," said Roger, on observing them together like that one day. His comment, which referred to Jane in the third person, was ostensibly addressed to Paul and to anyone else who was within earshot, but it was actually aimed at Jane and was intended to needle and bother her.

Roger was the chief draftsman, and the drafting section was located next to accounting. He would come in from time to time, mostly to socialize, but sometimes on a work-related matter.

He was in his early forties, had a wife and two children, and he was one of three other men in the office who were visibly and obviously enamoured of Jane.

But Roger had already made a pass at Jane and had been soundly rebuffed. She was not a home wrecker, and would not under any circumstances get involved with any kind of married man--not even one as charming and handsome as Carey Grant, let alone one who was uncouth.

Roger was definitely uncouth and not a bit handsome either, but he prided himself on being smart. He had emerged from a bad neighborhood and had worked his way up the social-economic ladder to a level which was quite lofty compared to the humble place he had started out from.

It was on an especially cold day--one of the first really cold days of early winter that the manager found a bird, which was near death. He brought it into the office in the hope of saving its life by giving it food, warmth and shelter.

"What sort of bird is this?" asked the manager. He posed that question repeatedly to a number of people, and for a short period of time the entire office staff was preoccupied with the task of trying to identify it. When he showed the bird to Jane, she said she didn’t know either but she turned to Paul and asked if he knew.

"It’s a wattle bird," said Paul, "family melliphagidae or honey-eater-family. If you offer it some sugar water, it may lick it up with its long tongue provided it isn’t too close to death already."

Jane prepared the sugar solution and, sure enough, the bird began to lap it up.

In the meantime, Roger, who was one of those the Manager had posed the question to, had been running around in an unsuccessful effort to find an answer. He came back a few minutes later.

"I’ve got a book at home on birds and I’ll be able to look it up tonight and tell you what it is tomorrow." he said, enthusiastically.

"We already know what it is," said the manager abruptly, "Paul knows all about it. It’s a wattle bird, a member of the honey-eater family. We’ve already got it drinking sugar water."

A week or two after the incident with the bird, Roger was in Jane's office when Paul came in with some figures to give her.

"Why is the sky blue?" she asked, shooting the question straight over Roger's shoulder to Paul.

Paul looked at Jane and Roger a little nervously, and, after pausing a few seconds to collect his thoughts, he began a tentative dissertation:

"The color is determined by the size of the particles in the air. They have to be very small usually to remain suspended. Being so small, they can only absorb blue light, which has the shortest wavelength. Longer wavelengths simply bend around these tiny particles and continue off into space. After being absorbed, the blue light is later re-emitted (scattered) in all directions, and this is why the sky is blue."

"Mmmm," she mused with apparent pleasure, "aren't you clever . . . but why are sunsets so often red?"

"By sunset, the sun has had all day to heat things up. Hot air rises, and this rising air is able to suspend larger particles; particles big enough to reflect the larger wavelengths of red and orange light."

"AREN'T YOU CLEVER!" she shouted. She seemed thrilled to bits, but Roger didn't look happy at all. "While you're here you can maybe settle a dispute." she said. "Roger was talking about racehorses and what characteristics make them good, and he said: ‘I don't really know what the criteria is for a good horse'. And I said it should be:

‘I don't really know what the criteria are, because ‘criteria’ is plural."

"Yes, but I was only talking about one horse," said Roger, petulantly, "so you're the one who's wrong."

"Well," said Paul, a little sheepishly, "it's really not the number of horses that's in question--it's the number of criteria. And, to be correct, there must always be a plural number of criteria because ‘criteria’ is the plural form of ‘criterion’.

You can consider a single criterion or two or more criteria. You can't combine the plural form ‘criteria’ with the singular form ‘is’; therefore, you can't use the two together regardless of how many horses or whatever else might be added into the equation."

Paul was suddenly taken aback to see a glowering malevolence in Roger's face; his eyes were like sharp daggers reflecting a gleaming light.

Paul's hypersensitivity to hostile tension caused him to feel distinctly threatened and avert his gaze timidly down to the floor.

"What is Jane trying to do--cause trouble?" he thought. "It's as if she is deliberately trying to goad Roger for some reason, and now I have earned his undying disapproval or enmity perhaps. But maybe, if I keep a low profile and refrain from saying anything clever in front of him in future, he might forget about this incident and stop being angry with me.

If Jane asks me a question in front of him in future, I will just say I don't know the answer."

Paul was prepared to go to considerable lengths to avoid trouble or even hostile tension. But that would not even be possible in this particular instance, because the matter was taken out of his hands and settled for him--and it would all come to a head in a matter of just a few hours.

Paul was working at the very back of the office, where large tables were located and used for collating reports. One copy of each page would go on each pile, and once compiled, they would be stapled together and placed in folders.

Paul was standing while carrying out this task when Roger came up quietly behind him and placed his knee between Paul's buttocks.

Paul turned in fright and was shocked to see the mean look of malicious contempt on Roger's face. But in less than a second his fright was transformed into something else.

In that briefest flashing of an instant, Paul could see clearly the price he had paid for kowtowing to the petty envy of arrogant people like Roger.

His deferring to such aggressive people by tip toeing around their pride had reduced his stature in much the same way an in-utero iodine deficiency might stunt the physical and intellectual growth of a cretin.

Figuratively speaking, it had caused him to shrink to a mere fraction of the man he might otherwise have been, the man he should have been. It had stunted him to the point where he couldn't even stand up straight. He couldn't even be himself.

These arrogant people were the loud mouth, spoiled brats who felt they had a God-given right to always be the best at everything. They should always be number one, always be the smartest, and anything less than that was an affront to their pride.

But where was it carved in stone that they alone had the exclusive right to be the best. And why should Paul be forced to go along with the illusion that they were. Why should he assume the role of a subordinate human being just to keep people of this low ilk happy, especially when the cost to him had been so great.

It had cost him his happiness and his peace of mind; it had cost him his love life, his moral character and his place in the sun with Patina. It had cost him everything!

This realization struck him so forcefully now as to fill him with rage. "TO HELL WITH THEM ALL!" he thought.

Fright turned to fight in less than an instant, and Paul turned in a frenzied fury to grab Roger beneath the very knee that was giving offence. He grabbed it first with his left forearm, then with his right. He had that knee gripped in a bear hug and would not let go.

Paul was possessed of such a rage that it caused Roger's face to fill with fear. Roger was now also beginning to hop just as awkwardly as the one-legged Long-John Silver in an effort to maintain his balance, and this was becoming an increasingly difficult task.

It was also an ungainly and undignified position for a man of his age to find himself in; moreover, it left him almost totally vulnerable and defenseless. Roger's face was now full of discomfort and anxiety too. He was at risk of hitting the floor real soon and probably headfirst.

Moments later, Roger began finally to topple like a felled tree. Paul's fury was then unleashed in full force and it supercharged his strength to the point where he was able to toss the bastard up and over like a Scottish caber. Roger was a good four feet off the ground before Paul let him drop, drop like a dead weight, headfirst onto a metal wastepaper bin.

Paul’s rage had not abated one iota, and so he was altogether ready to proceed to the next level of hostilities: They might fight it out with fists for half an hour, break furniture, chairs, windows--he didn't care.

He had lost Patina and, compared to that, nothing else mattered. He could get fired and find another place of employment the following day like any of the tattoo boys in the storeroom.

Being made of sheet metal, the wastepaper bin had dug painfully into Roger's back. The injury was painful, no doubt, and yet he moaned and groaned in such an exaggerated and histrionic fashion as to suggest he was at death’s door.

"Arr Arr Arr!" he moaned.

But to Paul this sounded like a ploy intended to elicit sympathy and thereby stop or at least mitigate the threat of Paul’s continuing his physical onslaught.

Roger didn't really know Paul very well or what else he might be capable of. He had doubtless gained the impression Paul was timid and totally harmless, but that assessment was now in obvious need of reappraisal.

Paul might even be dangerous, might put the boot in, might even hit him on the head with something hard and heavy, and possibly cause some very serious injuries.

"It's just my luck to have a practical joke backfire," said Roger, by way of appeasement.

"Practical joke! I'll fight you anywhere, any time!" said Paul, in deadly earnest and still shaking with rage, and by way of totally dismissing Roger's phony words.

Well, that's how the spook was dispelled. Paul had no more trouble from Roger after that.

"If it's important, you have to fight for it," thought Paul, "and it's amazing how easy some problems are solved. They can seem as formidable as the wizard of Oz, and yet there's no substance behind the threatening bluff and bluster."

After having gone to bed that night, Paul was unable to get to sleep for quite some time. That was not unusual in itself, because his mind was always pretty much preoccupied with thinking or worrying about something or other.

But his mind was now busy rehashing the gladiatorial events of that day, when he was suddenly struck by a flash of insight into a subject that seemed totally unrelated.

It seemed like a discovery worthy of his exclaiming "Eureka!"

"I've got a good memory!" he said out loud, and the realization struck him so forcibly as to cause him to sit up straight in bed. "I have actually, really and truly got a good memory. And that now makes sense of incidents from the past: There were people from my childhood I had met again after an absence, an intervening period amounting to years. I could remember them clearly even though they couldn't remember me.

And I could remember their first names, their last names and even some of their middle names, and I could remember further details about them like things they had once said and done.

I remember their initial puzzled looks at having no clue who I was and their subsequent look of apparent pleasure in thinking themselves so important I should bother to remember them even though they didn't remember me.

But my remembering them had nothing to do with their importance to me; it just happened inadvertently, without my even making an effort. It was simply a consequence of my having a good memory."

That insight had barely enough time to sink in before another sprang to his mind:

"Roger actually gave me a left-handed compliment, because that's what envy really is. And it must be a deeply felt compliment too, because a hurt to one's pride is deeply felt; and such a depth of feeling lends both sincerity and credibility to the envious person's opinion that you are better than them. It's strangely ironic too that Roger's assessment of me should be a better barometer than my own. Perhaps, compared to him, I really am smart."

Paul was now on a roll. He had made an important breakthrough under Jane's mentoring influence and great strides of progress too. His fight with Roger had been a liberating experience of the highest order and it brought about a significant improvement in his overall state of mind. He still felt good all of the time he was in Jane's company, of course, but he now felt bad less than half of the time he was away from her. That, for Paul, was a remarkable change to his status quo.

One Saturday, he found himself in the front garden at home--his parent's house was still home to him. He was surprised-- startled even, by the sudden realization that the birds were singing, were still singing. They were all so busy it seemed and so happy flitting from tree to tree through the dappled sunshine.

"This is a real garden," thought Paul, "it’s modest but veritable and alive. There are even flowering plants and plenty of trees and shrubs. With a bit of work it could be built up and cultivated into something really nice, something really beautiful and even into something of true intrinsic worth.

I could get the hose and water some of these delicate ferns and maybe pull some weeds." he thought, but postponed that course of action in favor of sitting down in the grass to commune with nature and try to formulate an overall plan for the garden. The weather could not have been more perfect.

But then a mood of darkness suddenly descended upon him:

"Don't sit out here," said his critical inner voice. "Don't sit out here on a Saturday in plain view of neighbors and passers by. They will be able to see at a glance that nobody wants your company, and that nobody wants your company even at a time when everyone else is socializing and having a good time--every normal person, that is. Don't go and advertise the fact that you are not attractive enough to have a girlfriend. Don't be gratuitous about telling them exactly how unpopular you are.

Don't sit out here and make a public spectacle of yourself. You are an embarrassment! You had better go in the house quickly before someone sees you."

On impulse perhaps, Paul hastened to escape and hide from the accusations and the shame, which his pride had conspired to impose upon him. He was actually already inside the house before he had time to give the matter a second thought.

"Goddamn it!" he exclaimed. "That's my pride working me over again. I didn't even realize it at first. I forgot to remember the golden rule: that whenever I feel bad, I have to search for pride as being the root cause of those bad feelings. And I know I'll be reasonably sure to find it, because in my experience, whenever I feel bad it's always pride that's behind it.

I reckon if I could defeat my pride, life would become as easy as a walk in the park. If I could slay the dragon like St. George, I would have no more self-imposed problems--which means I would virtually have no problems at all.

Well, I'm not going to be intimidated. I won't be driven out of the garden in shame like Adam and Eve. I'm going straight back out there, and I'll spend the whole day out there to celebrate a special occasion.

Today, I formally declare my independence from the malevolent influence of an even bigger and stupider tyrant than King George III. I will no longer take orders from my pride. I will no longer obey its edicts.

Why should I take stupid advice from my stupid pride, and have it turn around and blame me when its own ineffectual advice comes unstuck. I will no longer allow pride to lead me by the nose as if I was some kind of dumb animal."

Paul was full to the brim and overflowing with a scintillating self-confidence. His mood was euphoric and yet serene. He felt a quiet power and dignity and a sense of all things being possible to him.

He also thought a declaration was all that was required to sever his ties with an unsatisfactory way of life and that such a move would be unopposed. But, in the real world, a declaration of independence is more often tantamount to a declaration of war.

That's certainly how it happened with King George III, who placed a sentence of torture and death upon the head of Thomas Jefferson.

Paul's metaphorical Fourth of July would precipitate an immediate response. It would come that very same night in the form of yet another noteworthy dream:

He was trying to ride a donkey but the animal was uncooperative and wouldn't move. He whipped it with a riding crop but to no avail. He was sitting on its back and rocking back and forth while digging his spurred heels into its side but it still refused to move.

He then dismounted and started hitting it in the face with a horsewhip, but it wouldn't budge an inch. The donkey then turned into a bull, which had a ring through its nose. Paul tied a rope to the ring and started pulling on it.

"This will hurt plenty!" he thought, taking up the strain on the rope. "It will hurt more and more until the bull is simply forced to move--it will have no other option."

He pulled harder and harder and harder. But no matter what he did, the bull refused to move. It seemed glued to the ground. Finally it started bellowing in agony.

Paul felt a heart-rending pity for the poor dumb brute, and pangs of guilt too at pointlessly inflicting so much pain. But it was the bull's fault, because the bull should move in response to pain applied to its nose--it was simple self-interest.

The bull again bellowed in agony and, in the process, opened its mouth wide. Then Paul noticed it had beautiful, perfect teeth, which looked exactly like Patina's.

The meaning of the dream seemed obvious enough to Paul: He had tried to make Patina do something she was unable to do. After pondering the implications of this, he felt listless, then depressed, and he began to sink once again into a slough of despond.

"You tried to use her," said the critical inner voice of his pride, "and in order to make use of her, you had to make her do something she was unable to do.

It is coercion to try to force people do things, and that isn't nice in the first place.

In the second place, trying to make someone do something they are unable to do is pretty damned stupid to say the least. In the third place, trying to make someone do something you know they can't do is far worse--is exquisitely perverse. You knew Patina was emotionally detached and not properly able to love you or anyone else. YOU KNEW THAT!

But you even went a step further. You took the fourth step. Big mistake! You HATED her for failing to do what YOU KNEW she couldn't do. Now what is the word to describe that? Want a clue? It starts with a capital ‘B’ . . . It is BLASPHEMY! That is exactly what it is, and that makes you a goddamn blasphemer! If you think the truth will set you free then meditate on that one!"

This serial onslaught of hard-hitting accusations carried such force as to have a stunning effect upon Paul. He was not knocked literally flat on his back. He was still standing but staggering. He was disorientated to the point of being rendered effectively dysfunctional and thus defenseless. He felt crushed and defeated, distraught and caught in a writhing, spiritual anguish; the anguish inevitably arising from the eternal and intrinsic conflict between love and pride--the positive force versus the negative force.

That conflict is the source of motive power that drives the Jacob’s ladder, and, as such, it is an intrinsically good thing but people subjected to its disruptive power are not likely to agree with that assessment until much later.

Sunday-morning’s glimmer of insight into the meaning of the donkey and bull dream was like a point of demarcation--from that point on Paul became immobilized by guilt and depression.

He was so overwhelmed, he had forgotten his personal golden rule: that pride would be found lurking nearby whenever he felt bad. But this time he felt it was different. This time it was really and truly his fault, and the accusations leveled at him were altogether justified.

It wasn't pride that was causing the trouble, it was his own misbehavior, and so he was genuinely deserving of punishment.

But pride was so much slipperier than Paul had ever imagined--it also had access to everything he knew including all of the information stored in his subconscious.

Well prepared and well armed, it had laid in wait for him, had ambushed him, and had beaten the hell out of him before he even knew what was happening. And with his hands tied defenselessly behind his back, pride was continuing to beat him up and put the boot in too.

There was an elapse of several days of writhing guilt and anguish before Paul had another noteworthy dream, which held the key to unlock the conundrum:

In the dream there was a little girl about three or four years of age who had her hand stuck in a candy machine; it was a scene from a TV show he had seen probably years before. The police, ambulance and fire brigade had arrived but no one was able to resolve her predicament.

Finally, one smart spectator had a hunch, and he asked the girl: "Are you holding on to a candy bar?"

To which she replied: "yeth."

"Do you think you can get your hand out if you let go of the candy bar?"

To which she once again replied: "yeth."

Paul was so excited by the dream that he jumped immediately out of bed and switched on the light. It was 4:20 am. He wrote the gist of the story line down on a note pad, which he had set aside for just that purpose.

He found there was no need to study the dream in depth, because an insight came to him immediately, and with that Paul held in his hand the key to unlock the conundrum he was presently ensnared in.

He could plainly see the connection between the candy bar the little girl was unwilling to let go of and his pride in moral superiority, which he also was reluctant to let go of.

But right at this point, Paul had a most amazing experience: He sensed pride’s presence with such manifest clarity that it suddenly became real to him. It was right there in the room with him. For the first time in his life, he had come face to face with his own pride. The invisible monster had materialized right before him, and it was so gigantically enormous it almost overwhelmed him.

He quickly sat on the floor to guard against the danger of fainting and falling. He steadied himself with both hands placed flat on the floor and made a conscious effort to take deep and steady breaths.

He had known intellectually he was in love with himself--had known it almost forever, but had accepted that truth on the shallowest level of intellectual abstraction. What he had seen of his pride previously were but glimpses of the most fleeting kind--were not even the tip of the iceberg.

But the berg was now visible and so absolutely gigantic it could easily have sunk a battleship. He could now clearly see that his pride was one hundred times bigger than his previous biggest estimate.

This realization was of such a powerful intensity, it struck him with a ground-shuddering force; a force he could feel right down to the very depths of him, right to the core, right deep inside his guts. He continued to sit on the floor, steadying himself with his hands. His breathing was audible.

"It's so amazing!" he thought. "It's even hair raising, but liberating too. Knowledge is power. An invisible enemy is so much more formidable than one you can see.

I saw my pride today!" he said out loud.

"Through the eyes of pride I could see myself as a martyr saving the world, the benefactor of mankind, St. Francis of Assisi, the anointed one, the second-coming of Christ, a moral wonder to be proud of.

This image of myself would cause me, at times, to try to maintain such absurdly high moral standards that I could never measure up to them. At other times it would simply turn a blind eye to my tendencies to exploit people. To my pride, those tendencies were perfectly acceptable and fine as long as they were kept under wraps. That is pride’s idea of morality in any case. It’s what you can hide. It’s what you can get away with.

It's all as phony as a monstrous, lurking hypocrisy, and it makes me a phony too. I'm not a great and powerful spiritual presence; I’m really just a nervous, frightened guy struggling to sort out my problems.

And the strangest thing is I never really wanted to be a phony in any case--on the contrary, I always found phoniness abhorrent in others as well as myself, and I took steps to stop being a phony whenever possible.

Deep down, that was my true and highest priority, but pride's overriding influence would undermine my good intentions, because it would not tolerate mediocrity. But with its influence eliminated, or at least reduced, I might now be able to like and accept myself as just being ordinary.

Being ordinary could even be the key to everything, because ordinary can equate with authentic or genuine; and genuine would put me right at the top of the heap, along with other people who might look drab on the surface but who might possess an untold depth of character.

Pride would surely look down its nose at something like that--which is negative confirmation and thus proof positive of my being on the right track.

After dinner that night, when his mother was doing the dishes, Paul went up to her and offered to help. Her eyes widened in surprise at beholding this strange and unexpected twist in their normal family routine.

"Okay, I’ll wash and you can wipe, if you like." she said, continuing to smile while continuing to behold him with a bemused stare of considerable curiosity.

"There's something going on here," she said, a little later. "Something is happening."

Paul smiled. It was a noteworthy event indeed: It was one small step for mankind, but one gigantic leap for Paul.

"I had secretly thought of myself as the apostle Paul," he thought, "rather than just plain Paul, but had my mother asked me to help with the dishes, I would have whined like a ten-year-old--so much for that load of phony pretentious crap!

I could never have continued to carry such a heavy load of bullshit; it was more of a burden than I could ever possibly bear. What an incredible relief it is to be rid of it.

I felt inferior about being timid, so my pride retouched that picture until it had transformed my timidity into a fraudulent semblance of saintliness. I was too frightened to fight and defend myself from the start, but my phony image of saintliness made me even more timid and defenseless and even less able to stand up for myself or my rights.

I'm not a saint and I'm not a criminal either. I'm just a guy who wants to be happy, and I'm prepared to change my life in order to bring that about."

*

"It seems like I’ve lived in the city forever," said Paul to Jane when the pressures of work allowed them enough time for some personal conversation. "But I’ve wanted to live in the country almost forever, and, provided I have enough money saved, I will finally be able to make the big move by the end of this year."

"I hope you meet a nice young lady there," she said. "That often happens when you move to a new area. You just meet so many new people and that opens up all sorts of possibilities. I miss living in the country myself. Where are you planning to go to?"

"Well, I've been studying the population demographics, you see, because price is my main consideration, and by the laws of supply and demand, a loss in population is a good indicator of lower prices.

There are also particular situations where the closure of a mine, or something like that, will create a drastic oversupply of houses for which there is virtually no demand. Such an extreme imbalance should, in theory, send the price plummeting downward. You might then buy a house for a tiny fraction of its intrinsic worth or its cost to build. You might have it almost given to you as a gift.

And you would get the infrastructure thrown into the bargain--electricity, telephone, reticulated water and sealed roads. The cost of providing those things in a remote location is usually prohibitive for a private individual, but industry can afford it because it usually has a ton of money to work with.

You might then have a situation where you live in the middle of an enormous forest, somewhere in Tasmania perhaps, but you have all mod cons and a mortgage-free house almost handed to you as a free gift. That would be a lot better than living in a tent."

"Boy, you really go into things, don't you," said Jane. "You go right into everything! You've got an analytical mind. It sounds like a real good plan to me. I'm sure you'll find a way of making something valuable and creative out of it."

*

Paul was in the supermarket one Thursday evening. He was shopping mainly for food items he could spread on sandwiches to take to work or prepare as snacks for weekend lunches.

Music was playing pleasantly in the background over the store’s public address system. That quiet music instilled a relaxed mood in him, which seemed to enhance the very process of pushing his cart here and there; it even appeared to facilitate his maneuvering it sideways through tight corners and around sharp bends.

During these proceedings, a particular song was played which instantly arrested Paul’s attention. It was Every Thing Emptying into White, by Cat Stevens--the very first song Patina had played for him.

The highly evocative nature of that tune brought on some very powerful emotions and sad memories, but also a glimmer of insight:

"I found it necessary to bask in Patina's reflected light, in part because she was gifted and I thought I wasn't. But now, like the scarecrow, tin man and lion before me, I find I was like that all along.

I am not a saint but I am intellectually gifted--it's true! I'm sure my IQ scores in college were pretty close to the mark--apart from the math perhaps. But my IQ was high enough, in fact, to make me a misfit, especially in the neighborhood I grew up in.

I’m gifted. It’s true. It’s a fact. My high IQ is part of who I am and I want to know who I am. But I don’t want to be arrogant about it--and not merely because people might disapprove of me.

No. I don’t want to arrogate to myself the credit for a God-given gift, because I know now it would be a huge mistake to do that. It’s the first big mistake that Lucifer made--the very thing that caused him to be cast out of heaven. I sure as hell don’t want any part of a deal like that!

I know how destructive pride is. Pride is so destructive in fact it will disrupt and can even destroy the very things it becomes most proud of.

Being my most outstanding attribute, my IQ was the very thing pride was most likely to attach itself to--and sabotage. That's what pride does, and that is also why ‘The Oz Phenomenon’ is a recurring one.

Like a little league father, pride attaches itself to talent, but its boastful arrogance is bound to exaggerate that talent over and above what it actually is. This effectively raises the bar to the point where the child is certain to fail. And this is how above-average talent can be transformed into feelings of inferiority. It is a destructive process worthy of the negative force.

Pride can attach itself so grotesquely to our gifts as to smother and incapacitate them. And the pride and envy of others can have a similar negative effect.

But we are all made proud like Lucifer, we come like that pre-packaged, and we must somehow defeat our pride before we can reenter the garden.

And that is really the most important task, the most important thing in life. It's not whether you are rich, beautiful or have a high IQ--those things won't guarantee happiness; but if you can truly defeat your pride, you will be happy, and you will also be able to refrain from making other people unhappy.

And the separation of pride from self is not a stupid, play on words or a means of abrogating responsibility for our misdeeds. Pride is not a fixed, immutable and inseparable part of us. It can be changed, it can be diminished, and in the process we become better people. Albert Einstein said, "The real measure of a man is the extent to which he has rid himself of his ego." It is comforting to know that he is thinking along the very same lines I am. And so does Christian philosophy. They see the same reality. The ancient Greeks saw it too--that hubris leads to nemesis. It’s true, it’s real, it’s the same reality and that makes it so reassuring. It is inexorably true that pride goes before a fall--that’s just as true as the laws of physics.

It is so good to know and understand that. It is so good to have my pride out in the open where I can keep tabs on it. My dependency on Patina was a powerfully destructive thing and terribly disruptive to my state of mind. I’m so glad to be free of all that burdensome toil and strife. Everything is going just fabulous for me now.

Everything is falling right into place for me. Next Saturday is the big election. If the Labor Party wins, military conscription will be abolished and I'll be free to go to Tasmania. If he loses, I'm heading for Canada.

It will be either the far north or the far south, but I won't be staying here regardless. I don't like it here in the city, and I just don't want to live like this anymore."

The intense struggle Paul had been enmeshed in since Patina’s departure, had enabled him to make great strides of spiritual progress; this left him with a deep-seated sense of confidence that the future course of his life would be much smoother sailing from here on in.

Moreover, his sense of confidence was so buoyant it inspired a generalized optimism, which led him to believe the outcome of the election would be favorable too. Everyone was predicting Whitlam and the Labor Party would win and, when that did in fact come to pass a few days later, Paul’s optimism reached the stage of euphoria.

"I'm really on a roll; everything's going my way." he thought.

On the very Sunday, the day after the election, Paul was in his garden celebrating the start of his new life when he heard the telephone ring. He quickly went inside and was able to pick it up after the fourth ring.

"Hello," he said.

"Is that you, Paul?" said the American girl's voice at the other end.

Paul was suddenly thunderstruck with surprise. He had never expected to hear from Patina ever again, but he was strangely and almost equally taken aback at hearing her use his first name, because that was something she had never done before.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"Well, yair, sure." he replied, tentatively and guardedly.

"They didn't send you to Vietnam?"

"No, no, I've just been working."

"Oh, I’m so relieved to hear that. I was so worried they had sent you over there. I heard over five hundred Australian ground troops were killed. I was so worried you might have been one of them, and it would have been entirely my fault.

Your father went to so much trouble to keep you out of that mess and I would have been the one to put you straight back into it. If you had been killed I would have been simply unable to live with the guilt. I would have had it on my conscience for the rest of my life.

There's always so much collateral damage wherever I go. I hurt people! I don't mean to but I do!"

"Don’t feel too bad about it; it was really my own problem." said Paul, sympathetically. "You were just like a mirror in which I could see everything that was wrong with me. It was a bit tumultuous for a while to say the least, but now everything is going just fabulous!"

"But you must be mad at me for messing you around so much?"

"No, Honey, I’m not mad at you. I was for a while, admittedly, but I'm really not angry with you now. Not a bit!"

"I'm really glad about that," she said, "I've been through a whole elaborate process and I’ve changed. I've been through a really tumultuous period too. I'd sure like to see you if that's okay with you"?

"Sure, I'd really like to see you too."

"I have a million things to tell you."

CHAPTER NINE: RENAISSANCE.

I arrived at her door on Saturday

In gray and gently drizzling weather,

Within her private rooms to stay

On this perfect day to spend together.

Knocking on her door again now a whole year had elapsed. A plethora of crucial events had taken place during that time. The surroundings also, for the first time, seemed strangely different, yet Patina opened the door in her prompt and familiar fashion.

She was wearing glasses set in thin metal frames, behind which Paul could see her sparkling gray eyes. She was wearing a gray T-shirt and blue jeans. She had clearly put on weight, and was probably now a little heavier than Paul, but she looked wonderful. Her hair was embellished by two narrow braided plats--one flowing down each temple, which made her look like a beautiful Viking girl.

"It's so goddamn great to see you!" he said, taking hold of both her hands, and taking a moment to feast his eyes upon her. He was almost overcome with emotion.

"I'm so glad to see you safe and well," she said, in a contrite and serious mood. "I was worried about you for what seemed like forever, but I guess it was actually a little less than a year. I thought the army had taken you off to Vietnam to be killed or maimed. I'm so glad that didn't happen."

"No, I wouldn't have gone into the army in any case. I had my plan B: I would have gone to Canada if necessary."

"When I didn't see you in school any more, I imagined I had hurt you so badly as to cause you to drop out and join the army."

"No, your messing me around was actually the best thing that ever happened to me. It has changed my life for the better. It has placed a new aspect upon the face of things for me, as Thoreau might say."

"I'm so glad to hear that. I've changed too, and I have so much to tell you that I hardly know where to begin. But perhaps first of all I should tell you that I've now changed my life in a radical way, and I couldn't have done it without your help. Your letter was the key to finally open the dungeon door and set me free.

I went back to it at a point when I was finally ready and able to do that, and I continued to study it until I had re-orientated my life. The life I had before was just a miserable sea of gray, and I don't want to live like that anymore . . . Oh gosh, but I don't want to subject you to a three-hour monologue just standing here in the hallway . . . Oh, I'm so nervous! Come into the kitchen and I'll make you some coffee after your long journey."

"Yes, indeed, a long journey--that's exactly what it's been. You could even say I've been traveling at full speed and non-stop for a whole year, so coffee will go down just fine. It might also settle my nervous excitement."

Absorbed as he was in these unfolding events, drinking coffee seemed nothing more than a distraction to him. He drank it hastily and in a perfunctory fashion.

You know, I didn't think I would ever see you again--I really didn't. But I'm sure glad to be here now."

"Would you like another cup," she asked, standing at the kitchen sink.

"No, thanks, that was just fine." His nervous agitation was such that it left him with little sense or memory of even having drunk the first cup.

He stood up and approached her tentatively and then took her in his arms. They stood wrapped tightly together for several minutes in quiet meditation, their entwined bodies rocking from side to side in a gentle swaying motion.

"Come into the bedroom where we can lie down together." she said. "I've got such personal things to tell you."

They took off their shoes and stretched out side by side on the snow-white bedspread of her queen-size bed.

"I have been learning to tune into my own feelings so that I might experience the full intensity of my own wishes," she said, "and these new and enlivened wishes are now strong enough to guide me, and thus perform their proper motivational function.

Cultivating an increasing strength and directness of feeling has enabled me to quickly reach the point of planning a move to rural Minnesota to buy an abandoned farmhouse.

I've discovered this is what I really want, and I know I really want it because I can feel it now so alive and strong. I want you to come with me and I’m sure of that too because I can feel it as strong and alive as anything.

My endocrinologist told me I might never be able to have children. I've also put on weight. Even as a child, I was able to put on weight real easy, and I'll probably always be at least a little overweight if not more than a little, so you would have to accept me like that--accept me as I am. But if you want me, I'm all yours."

Paul looked into the depths of her sparkling gray eyes.

"Of course I'll take you as you are, my precious Patti, my special princess, my dearest darling girl--that should go without saying.

I hope you'll accept I was just lured by glamour and prestige, and that I was never after your father's money."

She placed two fingers on his lips momentarily to prevent his saying anything more. Then she said: "Of course I know that!" And the tears began to well up in her eyes.

"I accept your proposal, my dearest darling girl, I accept it without reservations or second thoughts. And I'm thrilled to bits at the prospect of going to the USA with you."

"I want to tell you how my big metamorphosis came about and how all the pieces fell into place. It's quite a complicated chain of events, so I hope my rambling doesn't confuse you too much, but I'll get it all said eventually and I think you'll understand it then:

Anyway, when I came back from holidays last January I was absolutely terrified of you and the mere prospect of seeing you again. It was certainly irrational, because you are far from being a scary kind of guy--but phobias are just that: it was like the senseless frenzied fear you might attribute to a wild animal caught in a trap.

The intensity of that fear was caused by the vulnerability I felt after sending you that letter, in which I admitted to being emotionally detached. I regretted that admission almost immediately but it was too late to do anything about it, because the letter was already in the mail. At the time of writing it I was feeling so optimistic and high, because you had illuminated everything for me and I could see for the first time there was a reason for everything and therefore a way out.

I had made myself vulnerable by admitting to being detached. But, to make matters worse, I not only admitted to but I even denounced my detachment, and it was all written down in black and white like incriminating evidence that could be used against me to render me defenseless. I felt I had then placed you in a position where you could just encroach upon me, engulf me, sit on me, smother me and intrude right inside me. That's what scared the hell out of me . . . Because I needed my detachment. I couldn't survive without it.

That's what caused me to become so anxious I thought I might completely lose it and go insane, and that’s what caused me to take drastic action to get rid of you even if that meant hurting you. I’ve done that to other people too and I’m not proud of it. I get so scared at such times that my fear causes me to become self-absorbed and self-interested to the point where I am no longer able to care whether other people get hurt or not.

My anxiety subsided dramatically after our break up, but after you had been gone for months my anxiety was gradually re-focussed upon the task of worrying about the prospect of my never seeing you again, because that was something I didn't want. I was also worried you might end up in Vietnam.

I would hear reports about the war all the time on the radio. One day, just after they announced the death toll, they played the song, I Don’t Know How to love Him, by Andrew Lloyd Webber. The quick succession of those two events made the song seem like an accusation aimed directly at me.

As a result, I was so overwhelmed with guilt that I cried non-stop for hours. That's what set the process into action: It prompted me to take your letter out and read it once more.

I was then struck with a powerful insight into its deeper implications, so I studied it and read it again and again, and this led to a strange and unexpected reaction, which ended up being the next stage in the process.

It was strange because it simply took the form of banjo music. It went on and on all day long in my head, but it was just the banjo and no lyrics, but it made me cry and continue to cry. Late that evening the lyrics finally and suddenly came through to me, and I was able to identify the song.

It was a Leo Sayer number, and the words that really struck me with such emotional force were: "Baby, though I chose this lonely life, it seems it's strangling me now." That made me cry even more. I cried for three days straight. In seeing my face inadvertently in the bathroom mirror, I was shocked: it was all red, like I had a terrible dose of sunburn.

That night I had a terrifying dream, which I remember in detail to this day:

I was in some kind of coffee lounge and there were young people there who were probably college students. They handed me a banjo and asked me to sing a song for them.

I felt very nervous and put on the spot. I said: "I can't play the banjo. I could never play the banjo, and I can’t sing unaccompanied--I've always been like that."

Then they handed me a guitar--which I can play--but I still felt uneasy about the prospect of singing in public. I was also a little resentful of their asking me, but I felt obligated to do a number for them.

I decided to do a Melanie song: Lay Your Hands Across the Six Strings. I was just about ready to start when I noticed the guitar had been recently re-strung. But the strings hadn't been trimmed, and the surplus lengths were far too long--a foot long or more--and those untrimmed ends were dancing and wobbling around all over the place--as you'd expect from loose lengths of wire--and they presented an annoying distraction to my playing.

In the dream, I found it very irritating to begin with and then intensely irritating, but that feeling quickly changed to anxiety, because, in wobbling around, the strings made a whipping sound and began to speak in funny, high-pitched, metallic voices.

And in unison the strings said: "Choke your feelings, choke your self." Then, after a little while, the smallest, top-E string wrapped itself around my little finger, like the tendril of a grapevine.

But it was so fine and sharp it hurt, and it wrapped around so tight, and it was steel and so strong it choked off the blood supply to my finger completely, which quickly turned red, then purple, then blue and then black. It then became hard and brittle and it shattered, then it fell off.

After that, one of the young people in the audience came right up close to me and said: ‘Don't just sit there--make a decision. You have to escape from this.’ But I couldn't move. I just passively sat there staring at my hand.

Then, one by one, the other strings wrapped around my remaining fingers and thumb, which all suffered the same fate as the first finger. But I just couldn't move. I was staring in horror at what was left of my hand when the bottom-E string wrapped itself around my neck and started to choke the life out of me.

I couldn't breath at all and I was terrified. One of the young people in the audience then came right up to me and reiterated: ‘Choke your feelings, choke your self.’ But he seemed totally indifferent to the predicament I was in and did nothing to help me. I then became so terrified; I went into a claustrophobic frenzy.

Upon waking, I realized immediately that by choking off my feelings and my wishes, I was actually choking off living parts of myself, and by continuing to do this I would end up choking off the alive, inner essence of myself.

And that explained so much to me: I have always found it excruciatingly difficult to make decisions, and now I could clearly see why--no, more than that, I was suddenly struck by a logic of thundering simplicity:

I couldn't make decisions without having preferences; I couldn't have preferences without having wishes; I couldn't have wishes if I was forever trying to suppress them, and I couldn't successfully suppress my wishes without choking off my feelings!" She burst into tears.

Paul kissed her tenderly until she regained her composure and was able to continue her story.

"Without feelings, I could have no significant source of motive power other than pride. The choking-off process started with checking the feelings I had for other people, but it continued to spread into other areas of my life--to permeate the hopes and dreams and wishes, which I did not have and the plans I could not make.

I had thought that, to be independent, I must ask for nothing, expect nothing and depend on nothing. But these restrictions and taboos went far deeper than I knew: I was also trying to wish for nothing, to suppress my wishes and my dreams too.

I remember, years ago, seeing a science-fiction movie about a mad scientist who had invented some kind of laser device. He would shine this on people while they were sleeping, and steal their dreams.

That idea seemed far-fetched to me at the time--after all, how can you steal dreams? But I was intrigued, and so I posed that question to myself at that time, and it has stayed with me ever since, like an abstruse Buddhist riddle. It's funny how time can find an answer to almost any question.

That was the turning point for me. I could see what a dangerous thing I had been playing with nearly all my life, and that you cannot choke off your feelings without damaging yourself on a most fundamental level.

From that day on I have been moving in a diametrically opposite direction. I have been busy cultivating my feelings, my wishes and my expectations; and allowing these emerging positive forces to restructure my life, reappraise my values; and, more recently, I have been making all sorts of plans for the future.

It's such an exciting time for me. It's something I've never done before. It's like a renaissance, a rebirth. I feel so alive!" Her mood was positively ebullient.

"I'm thrilled to bits, my dearest darling!" said Paul. "I'm so glad you came through all of this, and I'm so glad my letter was able to help you so much. At the time I mailed it to you, I felt it was so powerful, but later, after months and months went by, I became convinced it had missed the mark.

Then I felt I would never hear from you again, and, as more time elapsed, I gradually became a hundred percent convinced of that. When you finally did call, I was taken totally by surprise.

But I'm so incredibly glad to have you back. I'm just electrified with excitement! Your plan is so exciting. I already have my passport too--I got it in case I had to escape to Canada."

"That will get you to the States okay," she said, "but to work and stay there permanently you would need a green card. Of course, you could get one of those easy enough." She smiled an enormously mischievous smile. "Will you marry me?" she asked.

"Yes, I'd just love to! I still love you to the very depths of my being!"

"I love you too and I always will, Paul, my darling. I'm so thrilled and happy for the first time in my life!

I’m just feeling the desire to do something: There’s a slogan that says, ‘Save water, shower with a friend.’ Let’s go and do that, let’s save some of that water. I want to get close to you. I want to relate to you in an intimate, physical kind of way. I want to scrub your back and touch your skin all over. I want to shampoo your hair. I want to celebrate my newfound belief in love." She turned suddenly serious again and the tears began to flow down her face once more. "I believe in love because I believe in God--those are the two precious gifts you’ve given me!"

Paul was deeply moved.

*

The Boeing 747 was taxiing down the runway and queuing in preparation for take off. Its four enormous engines were then throttled up to high rpm and it began picking up speed at a phenomenal rate. Paul and Patina were cuddled up together.

"Wow, it's exciting, isn't it?" said Paul, who hadn't flown since he was a little kid and then only in an antiquated Lockheed Super Constellation.

Patina insisted Paul should have the window seat since it was his first time on a Jumbo. She had the middle seat, and there was no one occupying the aisle seat. That piece of good fortune virtually provided them with their own private compartment, and the eight-hour flight to Hawaii (the first leg of their journey) was almost exactly equal to one yummy unit of necking, with just enough time for some snacks and drinks between.

"I'm off on an exciting adventure with the most wonderful girl in the world," said Paul. "It sure beats going to Vietnam!"

THE END.

-----------------------------