“You’ll have to guide me,” I purred.

For a while he said nothing. From somewhere in the house came the sharp emphatic resonance of what might have been two steel rods slammed together.

When his reply came it was hardly fathomable. “We live in Hamlet times,” he said, “a new ice age of self-doubt and indecision.”

The sound of the rods expired; now in its stead came the percussive click of metal on metal, or perhaps a pair of hardwood blocks bouncing off each other.

“The world,” Chatterton went on, “has always had its systemic crises—peripheral brawls, bushfire squabbles, wars of every size and shape. Still, there has always been a glimmer of hope in history—the sign of the phoenix—the capacity of the crucified to rise again. The Jews, the Armenians, the Ch’ins who had the lousy luck to live in the swordlands of Genghis Khan, the peoples of the Roman Empire who fell before Attila.”

He paused again, warping his mouth as if to dislodge a peanut particle. “Yes,” he lamented, “the human race has always lived intimately with pain, but now, since that August day in 1945 when that terrible act of destruction was put to use in Hiroshima, the dread has intensified. And this time,” the jeremiad swept on, “this time every tree in the forest will fall, every living thing will die, give or take a few weeds and insects. Certainly the globe’s human population will peg out, flash fried on a nuclear griddle. However,” he glanced up at the fruitcake ceiling, the color of faded tattoos, “unless you recognize life’s dangers, you’ll never try to fathom its mysteries. It’s fear and peril that make one think. Don’t you agree?”

“Totally,” I said. “But what shall I tell Abdul?”

“Don’t rush me,” he answered. “To arrive at that point, we must first plow through a few more unpleasant clichés. Would you please,” he added in a voice treacly with sarcasm, “stop toying with your watch?”

“Sorry. I didn’t realize…”

“Today, just about every civilized, explosives-loving country on earth has a thermonuclear arsenal. And so the unthinkable is very much on our minds and the minds of our leaders, whose limited vision is set in a vise of prejudices. We are beset on all sides. Presidents and premiers may vary in size, shape, and luminosity of eye twinkle, but they are collectively clueless and arrogant, masters of the big stick, scoundrels flexing their muscles.

“As for the U.S., in just the past century we’ve picked a fight with Spain and Cuba…”

“That was 1898,” I said, to show him I was paying attention.

“We fought two world wars, we’ve invaded Korea and Vietnam. The Soviet Union was our reliable enemy for seventy years—”

“Seventy-three,” I said.

“—and since then we’ve stormed Iraq twice. Twice,” he repeated.