Marya and Eric looked at each other, distracted, rather pale, shaky. There might have been a way of dealing with the exhibit, of nullifying its effect upon their spirits, but neither could think of anything. Nervous clever remarks, a brief discussion of the long history of “man’s inhumanity to man,” that sort of thing, but Marya could not hope to strike the right tone and Eric, poor Eric, was beginning to look positively ill. They had had two bottles of wine at lunch, they had been up very late the night before.

The Chelsea adventure ended abruptly. They took a cab back to their hotel in Bloomsbury, closed the windows and blinds against the clatter of the street, lay down, tried to make love, tried to comfort each other, wound up crying in each other’s arms. They were weakened, fearful, demoralized as children. The torture exhibit could not have been the cause of their sudden grief but they had no idea what the cause might be. It would be the first, but by no means the last, time they would cry in each other’s arms.

DEPENDING ON WHO told the anecdote, and the degree to which Marya Knauer was admired, envied, resented by the speaker, she was said to have “collapsed” at the conference during a graphic account of torture in Argentina; or that she had been suddenly “taken ill” as a consequence of overwork and exhaustion; or that she had grown bored with the proceedings and had feigned illness in order to escape.

Marya had no theory. She put the humiliating episode behind her, she thought it best not to dwell upon causes or consequences. Back in New York City she made an appointment with a gynecologist for a routine examination and a Pap smear test and learned, not entirely to her surprise, that there was nothing wrong with her. The results of the Pap smear were negative—which is to say, positive. There was nothing wrong with her and nothing, grape-sized or otherwise, growing in her womb.

THE ASSISTANT EDITOR of The Meridian became the editor-in-chief.

Marya Knauer, who had had an informal connection with the journal for several years, was invited to be one of six associate editors; but she declined the honor.

It was too sentimental and self-pitying a position to say that The Meridian “wouldn’t be the same without Eric” but that was precisely what Marya felt, what Marya knew. So she said nothing. Except that she was declining the honor.