She was silent, biting her lower lip. “I guess it’s true,” she said in a small voice. “He’s been trying for years to climb on me. How much time you think we’ve got before he pounces?”

“Not much.”

“How do we get out of here?”

“We can’t.”

“What can we do?”

I had no answer, just an uncertain notion I didn’t know how to express.

“These people,” I began, “will screw anything that moves—”

“What’s that got to do with—”

“But they’re all monogamous. They might not like it if he busts up a marriage—tramples on the… the sanctity of wedlock.”

“On the other hand they might not give a damn. Abdul might not give a damn. Still…”

And then we both said, as in a timeless stage duet, “Let’s get married.”

Next afternoon I stood with Lipgloss, the vicar of Assama, solemn in the sunlight. Aware of the reverend’s prodigial eccentricities, I had arrived early to sound him out, to preview how he intended to conduct the ceremony, how to restrain his ecclesiastical excesses to a dignified minimum, and to make sure that he wore pants over his usual raiment, which was a little less than a jock strap. I wanted to have Lipgloss in order operationally and sartorially before Val arrived. She was due any minute now.

Odd, it seemed to me, that the first wedding I ever attended was my own. I felt a serenity of mind and at the same time a keen subcutaneous excitement that quickened the pulse and sharpened the eye.

I saw our guests unindividualized, as in a crowded frieze, yet I was aware of isolated shapes, sounds, responses… Daphne, maid of honor, misty-eyed and sniveling; somehow she understood that a proper attendant of the bride was expected to fight back tears. Shakir bin Zaki, poet laureate, floated about with a pad and a stub of a pencil, composing an epithalamium. Old Man Chatterton—holy moley, it dawned on me, my father-in-law in a dish-dash as filthy as any bathrobe he ever owned, trying with difficulty to sustain a little interest in the proceedings.

At the back, General Qazwini stood at spit-polish attention, the quarters in his ears newly shined. With him was a scattering of Assos, many of them feigning polite attention. The rest were under the trees, abstractedly scratching the screw-tailed dogs that moseyed about.

Abdul was elsewhere. I could not have concealed my impending marriage from him, but, to pour as little oil as possible on the flames of his unrequited love, I made sure he was the first to know. I asked him to be my best man. He declined, even offering an excuse; if he were to accept, he said quietly, he would be expected to perform that function at every nuptial in Assama, a task he found too daunting. He offered felicitations, but in his eyes was a look that I would long remember.