I asked him in return for the quickest route to the Campanile, the top of which I could see over several imposing buildings. He pointed me along a path to my right and I continued my uphill walk, envying in a not resentful way those who got to attend this university. On those rare occasions when I’d stepped onto a campus, usually to play a sock hop or prom, I’d always felt estranged from the students, even though for a number of years I was very close to them in age. I’d watch the girls moving about in groups of four and five, who strictly observed the rule that saddle shoes must be worn only while giggling. I particularly envied the guys who had so much sweet time ahead of them before they’d have to buckle down or knuckle under. I felt like I’d lived on a different planet, and I suppose I had. I’d been playing professionally, taken a wife, become a father, and departed Juilliard to support a family well before my peers had their diplomas. I didn’t feel this made me one iota better than any of the campus crowd. Just apart from them.

I felt that difference now as I picked my way through the boys in sleeveless sweaters and cuffed trousers, many of them without ties, the girls in jumpers or skirts with little vests or their beau’s oversized U.C. jacket. All of them seemed to be heading in the opposite direction.

The afternoon had turned cool but bright, as if September were trying to provide us with a keepsake of the summer now behind us. I rounded a steep corner and saw the tower. It was stemmed by a square cupola with Roman arches, below which a clock on all four faces gave it purpose.

I entered a short esplanade filled with the strangest trees, a mustering of bent, crazed growths in a plaza that was almost perfectly filled by the tower’s shadow. There were several rows of these angry, deformed gnomes, their resentful branches groping and twisting at the air. I felt as if I were standing in an orange grove gone mad. Their leaves were turning brown and crumbly. An elderly Japanese gardener was clipping at the swollen knuckles of their branches as if to remove their fingers.

Church bells began to toll, but not the standard “Westminster” chiming that we associate with Big Ben. They were playing . . . yes, “St. Louis Blues” by W. C. Handy. It was no challenge to Louis Arm-strong, but it was still pretty astonishing to hear. The sun glinted off one of the larger bells in the Roman arches as it began to swing. I realized that this was the “wink” that had summoned me from Treasure Island.

I tried to imagine the kind of musician who would have the pluck to play the blues on carillon chimes. “Gail,” I murmured to myself with a smile.