“I’d like that, Wilf.”

“When you have a vision of the universal wrath, intolerance—well hell, Rick, it isn’t a vision the way they get painted here and there, say in Italy, it’s real like a rock and you know it’s for ever like diamonds. That’s a rite of passage.”

“Yes, Wilf.”

“You recording?”

“I guess so.”

“Clever little thing! I feel like some coffee. Could you go and get me some coffee, Rick? Just to show the machine how much you venerate the old man?”

He rushed off with the kind of eagerness a child might show when after being rebuked he is assured that the sun has come out again. I sat and stared at the machine. I made funny noises at it since the camera function wasn’t taking any notice of faces. Rick came back with a small tray and coffee for two.

“We’ll have some wine first, Rick old friend.”

“Whatever you say, Wilf.”

“Just fill one of the saucers with wine, Rick.”

“Sir?”

“Well, whatever did you think I needed coffee for? To drink? Of course, come to think of it, tea would have done just as well.”

Rick put the tray down on the table. His eyes were bulging again. He sank into the chair across the table from me.

“This is a rite, son. After a rite nothing is ever the same again. You can go to bed and get up again and go on doing that till hell’s blue and nothing changes. This is different, isn’t it? Let’s see where we are? You will get authorization, like I said. But what assurance have I that you will keep your side of the bargain? So you’ll do anything. Just to prove it—just a friendly test, Rick. Take one of the saucers and put some Dôle in it.”

I waited, interested. He did nothing.

“Come, lad. You’ve been following me and recording me and pestering me and, yes, tempting me and persecuting me and buying and selling me all for the purpose of your lout literature. Are you going to fail now? Why—think of the chapter on Wilf’s accent!”

He was breathing hard.

“Yeah.”

“What do you mean, ‘yeah’?”

“Your Limey accent.”

“Too, too crude, Rick. Like I said, I’m satellite.”

“No, sir, I don’t mean now, I mean way back.”

“A fat lot you know about it!”

“I got an ear. Had an ear. That was why I did phonetics. I was real good. I am real good. But there’s no future— Well. My prof said to get a sample of you for the archive. I was working my way through college and I couldn’t be there. A friend of mind did the job. He got it fixed up, a recorder under the guest chair in the Faculty Club. Later on I couldn’t believe in you when I heard you. Those diphthongs! And the tones—my God they were near enough Chinese.”

“I was listened to in complete silence and with great respect!”

“No, sir. Not what you said but the way you said it. Then later—what you said.”