“Signed and sealed. We could seal it with the bottom of a brandy glass. S.W.A.L.K. No, that’s different.”

“I’m not following you, sir.”

“Ha! Something you don’t know! Victory!”

“I’ll write on this one. ‘I hereby authorize Professor Rick L. Tucker of the University of Astrakhan, Nebraska—’”

“Getting both feet in the door, aren’t you?”

“There you are, Wilf. Use my pen.”

Rick’s balloon glass still had much brandy in it. I took it, spilled some on the back of the menu. I pressed the foot of the glass into the mess. It left some sort of circle like a seal.

“You needn’t write where the brandy is, Wilf. Write there, on the side where the menu’s dry.”

The whole truth and nothing but the truth. Not even the time plant with its clouds of seed but other plants of this and that, all busily flourishing in the present and pressing on into my future—deeds unknown, but to be resurrected—

“No, Rick, no! I’d rather die than say yes!”

“Wilf—please! You don’t know what it would mean to me!”

“Oh yes I do indeed. And what it would mean to me.”

I printed a large, fierce NO on the back of the menu and held it out to him.

“A memento of a happy occasion.”

Chapter VI

This isn’t going to be an account of my travels. I suppose it’s mainly about me and the Tuckers, man and wife. It’s about more than that, though I can’t really say what, the words are too weak, even mine; and God knows, by now they ought to be about as strong as most words can be.

Cry, cry.

What shall I cry?

Useless to cry. We have no common language. Oh yes, there is language all right, as for example regulations for transporting flammable materials by air or how to make your own Russian salad. But our words have been clipped like gold coins, adulterated and struck with a worn stamp.

Well there.

I put myself to bed and did not get up next morning. As the manager had said, I needed to acclimatize. Rick came and knocked so insistently that I had to let him in, even though I’d only just got round to drinking my breakfast coffee. He said Mary Lou was having her breakfast in bed too. He commented on my sitting-room, said what a marvel the view was. Their window looked out on the back of a chalet so near you could count the flies on it.

“Mary Lou is welcome to my view any time she feels like it.”

Rick paused, then said they might take me up on that. Was there anything he could do for me? For example, did I need anything done about the hire car? He looked covetously at the journal open on my bedside table. I shut it pointedly. Rick asked if I had anything to dictate. His machine—

“Nothing. For God’s sake, what do you think I am? A writer?”

He was electing himself my secretary.