She examined the bas-relief above the mantel, a dour grinning angel with close-set eyes: rather like a gargoyle, impish and malicious, at this distance. Next, a row of funerary urns, all in graceless black stone that exuded damp. Then the large reproduction of Hieronymus Bosch’s early allegory “The Cure for Folly” that hung above a horsehair settee, overpowering that corner of the room. The painting was an oval “miniature,” a frame within a frame, filled in with calligraphic ornamentation that seemed to mock the burlesque scene depicted, and the victim’s prayer—Master, cut the stone out quickly—my name is Lubbert Das. It was one of Bosch’s engagingly ugly works; Marya tried to see it through Fein’s admiring eyes, tried to find it engaging rather than repulsive. She had read Fein’s excellent little book on Bosch so she knew what she was supposed to be seeing: the medical “master” wore a funnel on his head, and a pitcher (the sign of Satan) at his waist; the anxious patient in red tights begged to have folly (an actual stone) cut out of his skull—like any frightened sinner begging for deliverance. Close by, a monk with a tankard in his hand offered a sort of bland encouragement; and a nun looked on, bemused, with a large red book—a book of wisdom?—or fallacious knowledge?—balanced foolishly on her head. The colors were dark and earthen; the sky a faint watery blue. Church and steeple in the distance. A queer dreamlike slant to the earth. Fein had concluded his discussion of the allegory by saying that one could analyze it at great length without ever quite grasping it—its iconographic surface yielded superficial meanings, like most of Bosch’s work; its depth, its mysterious essence, remained elusive.

Marya shaped the words aloud, softly and wonderingly: “ . . .‘Master, cut the stone out quickly—my name is—’ ”

One of the cats brushed against her bare ankle, startling her. She stooped to pick it up—it was Twill, the snub-nosed Persian—but it shrank away.

Marya half closed her eyes, rocked on her heels, tried to summon back the last meeting of the circle in this very room. It had been at the very end of April, a Thursday evening. Marya had delivered a paper on the role of the madman as prophet in several sixteenth-century texts, and Fein had praised it—had praised it moderately—but then his most lavish praise was never more than moderate. He had startled the group, and Marya as well, by concluding that “Miss Knauer has a future awaiting her . . . if she is equal to its rigors.”