 
What others are saying about

Autumn Shadows in August

"Autumn Shadows in August is an extraordinary and enjoyable kunstlerroman or artist's novel. The protagonist, David Thompson, is a writer who is influenced by and identifies with two master novelists, Hermann Hesse and Malcolm Lowry. From the surreal prologue to the final page, Autumn Shadows in August is packed with direct and veiled allusions to the lives and works of both authors....

"Author Robert Norris's writing style is rich in symbolism. Norris tends to intersperse his narrative with expository writing -- a technique employed with great effect by yet another expatriate pacifist writer, Aldous Huxley. Autumn Shadows in August reminds me of Huxley's later novels in other ways as well, in particular for the protagonist's almost mystical detachment and sense that he and his loved ones are part of something greater than themselves. By the novel's end, the reader has glimpsed the forces and obstacles that shape an artist and compel him to write." -- Karen Breda, librarian and Amazon reviewer

"Robert W. Norris writes fully and well of the question many of us are coming to -- what on earth have we done and did any of it matter? The whole of Autumn Shadows in August as the protagonist looks backward and his wife looks forward is a finely wrapped gift." -- James Fadiman, author of The Other Side of Haight

"Autumn Shadows In August is an engaging and entertaining novel...very strongly recommended for all general fiction readers for its evocative telling and unique style and presentation of a timeless tale...an overall remarkable story." \-- Midwest Book Review

"This absolutely breath-taking novel brings the reader to a whole new level of understanding life. It will not only stir your own realizations of where your life has taken you, but also open your mind and heart to new adventures." -- Reader Views

"This is one of the best novels I've ever read! It's an inspiring, meaningful story of a journey through the mind of an enlightened and experienced soul; at the same time it's an exhilarating and humorous adventure, an exploration of great art, literature, and architecture, and a beautiful, emotionally enthralling romance. But this book is far more than the sum of its parts, and my feeble literary reviewing skills can do no justice to this eloquent and multifaceted tale. This book is highly recommended." -- Amazon.com reader

"Though Norris's writing is descriptive and fluid, this is not a book I would recommend to a casual reader. However, those who have a taste for books with deep, intense, emotional, and soul-searching plots will find Autumn Shadows in August a great read." -- Joanne Kiggins, The Compulsive Reader

"Autumn Shadows in August is a journey in miles and of states of mind. The reader travels through Europe with an American expatriate who recapitulates his past in a transcendental and evocative fashion. Along this mind-expanding sojourn, we also travel over the Khyber Pass from Afghanistan and into India, where the protagaonist's life is transformed. Autumn Shadows in August is an insightful and very enjoyable read. I'm glad I went along on this personal journey." -- David Echt, author of Messenger from the Summer of Love

*****

AUTUMN SHADOWS IN AUGUST

by

Robert W. Norris

SMASHWORDS EDITION

*****

PUBLISHED BY:

Robert W. Norris on Smashwords

Autumn Shadows in August

Copyright © 2010 by Robert W. Norris

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

Some parts of Chapter 4 have been adapted from Robert W. Norris's Looking for the Summer (Lulu, 2005)

All lyrics quoted in this novel are the property and copyright of their owners.

Lyrics to War, recorded by Edwin Starr; written by Eddie Holland and Norman Whitfield; copyright © 1970

Lyrics to Closer to Home, copyright © 1970 Michael Farner

Lyrics to Time Has Come Today, copyright © 1968 The Chambers Brothers

Cover images:

Autumn Sky by daydreamdph. Copyright © 2009 daydreamdph. Click  here to view full picture.

Sunset at Oude Kerk by redserenade. Copyright © 2011 redserenade. Click here to view full picture.

The Crypt of the Capuchin Monks, at whattoseeinrome.com. Click here to view full picture.

David Teniers the Younger's Hemp-Smoking Peasants in a Smoke House (1660)

*****

AUTUMN SHADOWS IN AUGUST

*****

Acknowledgments

My eternal thanks and gratitude go out to the following friends for their invaluable counseling, encouragement, and editorial advice in pulling the various parts of this story together: Jeff Conine, James Fadiman, Hammond Guthrie, Susan Newton, and Bill Cornett.

Dedication

To the memory of Malcolm Lowry (1909-1957)

and Hermann Hesse (1877-1962)

*****

In the Amazon and other places where visionary plants are understood and used, you are conveyed into worlds that are appallingly different from ordinary reality. Their vividness cannot be stressed enough. They are more real than real, and that's something that you sense intuitively. They establish an ontological priority. They are more real than real, and once you get that under your belt and let it rattle around in your mind, then the compass of your life begins to spin and you realize that you are not looking in on the Other; the Other is looking in on you. -- Terence McKenna

...and now I saw as clearly as in a picture what an illusion my former personality had been. \-- Harry Haller in Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf

Prologue

Trapped in a flying metal coffin and gripped by a powerful sense of hurling through space and plunging earthward, of imminent death, of poignant regret for past sins, for all the things left unsaid and undone, I peer through frightened eyes at the rigid figures of the other passengers, then fix my gaze on Kaori, who is looking out the window at the rush and swirl of the clouds and sky outside. I want to reach out to comfort her, to apologize for dragging her along on this suicide journey, to tell her I love her in these our final moments together, but my mouth and body are frozen and all I can do in our death descent is wallow in the sordid imagery of those unheeded premonitions prior to and after boarding the plane in Japan.

There was that big bold headline "Sudden Death of Jackie Sato" we saw in the newspaper at the Fukuoka airport coffee shop and the front page story about the famous Japanese woman pro wrestler who had succumbed to stomach cancer at the age of forty-one. The similarity to Kaori's age and situation made my head spin. Then there was the sign above the gate leading to the onramp at the Taipei airport transit terminal where we'd changed planes and again in bold lettering our plane's departure time and gate number slammed into my head: 13:13 at Gate 13.

Then several hours later in the plane when I asked Kaori what the name of the hotel we'd be staying at in Amsterdam was, she answered nonchalantly, "The Terminus Hotel" and that took my breath away because although "terminus" as applied to the name of the hotel probably meant "top," "head," "ultimate," or even "objective," the other symbols of the last few hours had already taken control of my brain and I could only make the association with "terminal" and all of that word's implications of disease, finality, and death.

I feel a tap on my shoulder and look around to see Thomas Knorr standing in the aisle. He's dressed in a pilot's outfit and is as handsome as he was twenty-two years ago. He cocks his head slightly, smiles, and says, "It's a pity, isn't it? Your coming all this way to see me and now this."

But no time to respond because the plane is in a nosedive. Kaori is facing me now, eyes wide open, mouth agape, pure panic engraved on her face.

Chapter 1

I woke with a start, forehead sweating, pulse beating rapidly. I rolled slowly and stiffly to the side of the unfamiliar bed, sat upright, and wondered for a moment where I was. I wiped the sweat off my forehead and shook my head to get rid of the lingering images. My eyes gradually grew accustomed to the darkness of the Amsterdam hotel room. Kaori was sleeping soundly in the twin bed next to mine. I pushed myself off the bed, steadied myself for a moment to get some blood rushing through my ankles and knees, and shuffled to the toilet. The clock on the table at the side of the bed said three-thirty.

I returned to the table, sat down, and took a drink from the bottle of water I'd left there. I picked up the half-smoked joint in the ashtray, lit it, took three quick hits, put the roach out, and leaned back in the chair.

I can't believe I'm actually back again, I thought. It had been twenty-six years since my 1973 journey when Amsterdam, Florence, Corfu, Madrid (ah, the apocalyptic visions of Bosch's canvases in the Prado!), and all of Europe's art and history stirred me, and twenty-two years since that 1977 life-changing adventure that started on European soil. That was the journey on which I'd met Hasan and Ataullah in Paris and gone with them to Lorrach to meet Thomas Knorr, who as the years passed became in my mind a kind of guiding angel who helped prepare me for my descent into the inferno of Iran, Afghanistan, India, and all my Asian revelations. Those were followed by the many roads still later to be traveled that eventually led me to Japan and Kaori -- the one person in a lifetime of rambling and searching who had managed to tame my wandering spirit and convince me to slow down my death march, focus my energies, and share my life and thoughts and eccentricities with someone, something, other than the eternal lonesome road of the nomad.

I watched Kaori sleep for a while. I wanted to show her the paths I'd trod, the places that had influenced me. I wanted her to see clearly with her own eyes those parts of the past that had prodded me in her direction. I felt that by returning to the past, we could find a new start in life. This was particularly important after all the bad luck we'd had the past couple of years. First, she'd come down with stomach pains and gone to an internist, who had her swallow a stomach camera, found an ulcer, and took a biopsy. A few days later the lab report came back: cancer. We were devastated. Within a week she was in the hospital preparing for surgery to cut out two-thirds of her stomach. The depth of depression she fell into over the next few months of recovery was unlike anything I'd ever seen or experienced. It was excruciating to witness. Then just as she was pulling out of that abyss and beginning to get her strength and a grip on life back again, I found out I had hepatitis C. In fact, had probably had it for thirty years without knowing. I'd opted for six months of interferon treatment and that, too, was no picnic. The side effects -- those awful chills, knotted muscles and joints, sweats, paranoid thoughts, rotting nails, headaches, and overall fatigue -- kicked my ass badly, but I managed to keep working the whole time. The treatment had suppressed the virus considerably, but it hadn't killed it. I didn't look forward to the next round of battling that poison. The fact was neither of us had been a joy to live with for quite a while. This trip would be important for both of us.

I took another hit off the joint. Ah, stoned again. It had been several years since the last time I smoked any pot and God knew I needed a change of consciousness. It sure would've been nice to have while Kaori was recovering from her surgery. It would certainly have helped me in dealing with her depression. It might even have helped balance her way of looking at the world during that dark time when she'd lain in bed staring at the walls, cursing life, and contemplating all kinds of strange ideas from the people of Fukuoka having caused the cancer to retiring to an isolated temple to become a monk.

That period, however, was over and anyhow the pot might have exacerbated the depression she'd fallen into. Perhaps now with her new upbeat approach to and appreciation for life, getting stoned might heighten that consciousness. On the plane, I'd looked forward to sharing that with her, too. I'd tried many times to explain all the details of my life and the many roads I'd traveled and how I'd come to Japan and met her, but no doubt it was hard for her to imagine me as a long-haired hippie wandering the world. In those days marijuana, not to mention LSD, had been as much a daily part of my life as eating and sleeping.

I remembered the first time I'd smoked pot. There I was, a nineteen-year-old kid back in 1970 struggling with the decision to declare myself a conscientious objector from within the military (I'd already received the order to fight in Nam, but hadn't reported to the base in Texas where I was to undergo a few weeks of intensive combat training before heading off to war), returning to my original base and wasting time and one day running into another airman who invited me to go for a ride, smoke some pot, and watch the sun set. That sunset was absolutely the most beautiful I'd ever seen and the feeling I got was so light, exhilarating, comfortable, and interesting that I made the CO decision right then and there.

Even more revelatory than that first time smoking pot was the first time I took LSD a few months later in the Denver prison I was sent to. Now that was one extraordinary experience in a life filled with extraordinary experiences, but also something I wouldn't want Kaori to share with me. It was just too dangerous, knowing how she needed to have control of her mind and thoughts and emotions. It wasn't her style to probe deeply into the inner layers of her psyche to uncover what could turn into an unbearable hell. I'd seen a few people on bad trips and it wasn't pleasant. But for me there in Denver, LSD revealed a profound cosmic humor in the world around me and enabled me to laugh at and endure the absurdity of the circumstances I found myself in: having to meet with military psychiatrists, chaplains, doctors, prison guards, and other assorted professionals whose job was to "rehabilitate" the prisoners, change their thinking, break them down mentally, and mold them into model soldiers that could be sent back to the military machine. As a conscientious objector (the only one in the prison and certainly the only "political" prisoner), I was unique among the five hundred or so nonviolent prisoners on the base, most of them busted for drugs or being AWOL for months. I resisted the brainwashing as best I could and in the end when my prison time was up I was kicked out of the service with an "undesirable" discharge and I was free.

Which is exactly what I'd looked forward to feeling in Amsterdam: a return to that old freedom: to the time I'd wandered the earth freely, giving myself up to the wind and fate, always driven on by an overwhelming urge to experience and see everything possible because quite frankly I no longer cared whether I lived or died. It had been out of my hands, but deep down (and maybe this was the result of all the acid trips I'd taken, who knows?) I'd somehow developed a faith, an inarticulate faith devoid of religious or philosophical attachment, that all would come out right in the end, which it had, and it was my mission back then to record it all, this before I landed in Japan and eventually settled into my current state of affairs as a workaholic associate professor of English at a new university. Of course, the freedom I hoped to find again in Europe would only be temporary, but it was still important I find it if for no other reason than to re-ignite the fires in me that I'd lost and knew were necessary if I was to get anything out of the little time I had remaining on this planet.

I got up to look out the window. Looming one street away was the high bell tower of the Oude Kerk, the old Gothic church built in the fourteenth century in honor of Amsterdam's patron saint, St. Nicholas. The narrow Warmoestraat below was quiet, except for two shifty black men nervously smoking hashish. Straight ahead was the Enge Kerksteeg, a short alley leading to the Oude Kerk. The street seemed to belong to drug sellers at this time of day. The two figures approached a young stroller, who ignored them and kept walking.

Down the Warmoestraat on the right were the Highlight Coffee Shop, the Budget Youth Hostel, and Stone's Cafe. On the left were more rundown businesses -- the Route 66 Coffee Shop, the Hotel Croydon, and Coffee Shop Sheeba. A seedy area on the edge of the Red Light District and not very different from the many skid row places I'd lived in years ago when I wandered the streets of many American cities. I took a final toke on the roach and watched the dawn approach. The two black men took off when a truck delivering supplies to a restaurant farther up the street appeared.

Kaori rose from her bed and groped her way to the toilet. I sat down on the bed and listened while she brushed her teeth. When she reemerged, a smile was on her face. "Good morning, honey-chan. How are you feeling?"

"Well, my legs feel surprisingly good, but I'm stiff all over from all the walking we did yesterday and carrying our backpacks. How about you?"

"I feel rested, but stiff like you, too."

"So what do you want to do today? Where do you want to go?"

"It's Friday, so I want to go to the cheese market in Alkmarr. It opens at ten, so we need to get going soon. Then tomorrow I want to see the Van Gogh museum." Kaori sat down next to me on the bed. "After that, you can go your way and I can go mine. I'm a tourist on this trip and there are so many places I want to see, places I've been studying about. I guess I'm typically Japanese that way. I want to have a schedule to follow."

"Sounds good to me." I got down on the floor and did some stretches while Kaori ate some blueberry yogurt we'd bought the day before at a market and read through her tourist guidebooks and maps.

Chapter 2

We were at Central Station by eight buying round-trip tickets to Alkmaar. It was a thirty-minute ride. We watched the flat, expansive, green landscape with many trees fly by outside the train window. Canals criss-crossed the land here and there. We saw many clean, orderly, brick houses. Dairy cows, sheep, and horses huddled in groups and grazed in the fields.

There was a large crowd of tourists at the cheese market. Kaori took many pictures of the round, thirty-three-kilogram blocks of cheese being stacked, checked for quality, then carried to the weigh station by porters in colorful hats who afterward stacked them back in delivery trucks. We got separated. I rested at a cafe awhile, then walked around the nearby streets taking in the sights.

By the time the show was over at twelve-thirty, the sky had turned gray. A light, cold rain began to fall. I couldn't find Kaori. The crowd thinned out, but still she was nowhere to be found. I figured she had already taken the train back to Amsterdam.

I wandered down some side streets and came upon a small head shop called The Black Eagle. I entered. Reggae music on low volume filled the room. There were some displays of smoking paraphernalia and seeds in the front, a wooden table and four chairs in the back left, and a counter in the far right corner. A young, dark-eyed man with slicked-back hair and wearing a silk jacket was behind the counter. He looked up and smiled at me.

"Is it all right if I smoke a joint?" I asked.

"I normally don't allow anyone to smoke on the premises, but you are the only customer I've had today, so I think I can make an exception. Please, sit down," the man said, motioning toward the table.

I sat down, pulled out the little baggie and rolling papers I'd bought the day before, and set them on the table. "Would you like to join me?" I asked.

"It's a slow day. Why not?" The man brought an ashtray and put it on the table. "What are you smoking?

"It's called Red Bud. I bought it at the Siberie in Amsterdam yesterday. The lady said it gives a pleasant, mellow high that's very nice for morning time when you just want to ease into the day. My name is David."

"I'm Pablo. It's nice to meet you."

We shook hands and Pablo sat down. "May I take a look?" Pablo asked.

"Go ahead."

Pablo picked up the bud, looked at it closely, then pinched it and held it to his nose. "It has a nice fragrance, but it's a little dry." He handed it back to me and said, "You should save it for later. Let's smoke some of mine. It's fresher."

Pablo got up, went behind the counter, disappeared behind a curtain, and returned with a large bud and a small brass pipe. He clipped some of the bud, filled the pipe, handed it to me, and gave me a light. We took three hits apiece.

"What do you think?"

"Very nice," I said. "It's not too stony, kind of refined. It tastes a bit like the sinsemilla I used to smoke years ago."

I felt quite comfortable with Pablo, almost as if I'd known him all my life. We talked for a while about places we'd traveled, adventures we'd had, and the quality of the dope we'd smoked in Nepal, Afghanistan, and Madagascar. Then we fell into private ruminations and listened to the music.

I suddenly became aware of Pablo gazing intently at me. "Is something wrong?" I asked.

"Not really. I just have a feeling that you're here on a special journey."

"I suppose you could say that. There's a German friend who helped me years ago when I was lost and confused and I want to see him once more and thank him."

Pablo leaned forward and said, "Please tell me about him."

"His name is Thomas Knorr. He gave me a place to stay for a short while and turned me on to all kinds of things about Iran and Afghanistan in 1977 before I went to those countries. I used him as the model for one of the characters in my first novel."

"I see." Pablo took another hit off the pipe and passed it to me.

I took a good hit, held it for a moment, exhaled slowly, then continued, "We really only knew each other for about ten days when I stayed at his place in Lorrach. I'd gone there with Hasan and Ataullah, the Iranian and Afghan I met in Paris. Anyway, those ten days and all the adventures I had on the road from Germany to India changed my life forever," I said. "In a sense, Thomas is partially responsible for leading me to Japan, to my wife and my present life."

"So now you expect this Thomas Knorr to give you some kind of affirmation of your life?"

Pablo's question startled me. I hadn't considered it. "I'm not really sure what I expect. I only know that I want to see him once more to thank him before I die. That's all."

Pablo smiled gently and raised his eyes a bit. "I think there's more to it than that," he said confidently.

"What do you mean?"

Pablo's smile disappeared for a moment, replaced by a look of serious intent. "I sense that you are here on a journey of the spirit. It's in the aura surrounding you." Pablo put the pipe and lighter on the table and leaned forward. "May I speak honestly with you?"

"Yes, please do."

"You remind me a bit of Harry Haller, whom I got to know quite well. He, like yourself, was a self-exiled member of his society, unable to integrate himself into that society. I get the feeling that you are ailing spiritually, that you are restless, astray in an alien world, unable to find contentment and fulfillment."

"How can you see that? We've only just met." A shiver ran through me.

Pablo ignored my question. "You had a dream recently that disturbed you, did you not?"

"Yes, yes I did. Last night, in fact."

"You should reflect on the symbolism that was in the dream. Dreams are a mirror into the soul and can give you profound insights into what is ailing you. Think also of the symbolism of the book you brought. Think of the symbolism in everything you encounter. Just remember that all the symbols do not necessarily pertain to you personally."

Pablo's words and what he knew about me were unsettling. It was as if he knew me better than I knew myself. I didn't know how to respond. I turned my eyes away from his for a moment and took a deep breath. "I don't know what to say. What are you? Some kind of shaman or something? How can you possibly know all this about me?"

Pablo leaned back in his chair and laughed softly. "No, not a shaman. You could say I'm one of life's Chess Players."

"Chess Players?"

"Yes. Chess is like the game of life. And the pieces of each person's game are made up of the many broken parts, the many selves, of his or her personality. It is my job as a Chess Player to help those whose soul has broken into pieces. We do this simply by showing people like yourself that you can rearrange your own pieces in any order you want. In this way, you can build up the soul again, reclaim your artistic vision, and achieve an infinite number of moves and possibilities in your own game."

"Are you inferring that I'm unstable? Insane?"

"Perhaps. That may be your own perception or the perception of others, but what I'm saying is merely that madness is the beginning of wisdom. A wise man is one who has developed the game of his life to such an extent that he can see the humor in the pathos, the pathos in the humor."

I didn't like the way the conversation was heading. I'd hated the military psychiatrists psychoanalyzing me in my prison days, and I didn't like Pablo doing it now. "I'm not sure I understand what you mean. I should probably be getting back now. The rain is letting up and --"

Pablo raised his hand gently and said, "Please wait a minute before you leave. I have something I'd like to give you." He got up, went into the back of his shop, and returned with a small box, which he handed to me.

"What's this?" I asked.

"You've heard of the Magic Theater, haven't you?"

"Yes, but I don't understand."

Pablo smiled and touched my arm. "Inside the box is a door to the theater, more of a key to a door, really. There is also a small chessboard and some pieces to play with. Use them as you see fit, or throw everything away if you will. I only want you to have this gift for the proper time."

"Well, thank you very much. I appreciate your kindness." I put the box in my pocket.

Pablo shook my hand with a brotherly firmness and looked directly into my eyes. "I feel a certain sadness about you. I think you have lost the ability to laugh innocently. You need to regain that ability. You've read Hesse's books, haven't you?"

"Yes, a long time ago."

"Then you should remember what I said to Harry Haller: the magic theater is for madmen only and the price is only your mind. Do you admit to being a madman?"

I laughed nervously.

"Good," he said and smiled brightly. "I'm glad to see you haven't forgotten completely how to laugh. I hope you will enter this little theater and find much to marvel at. Also, remember that you'll be required to leave your personality, your ego, at the door. Good travels, my friend."

On the train ride back to Amsterdam, I thought deeply about the strange things Pablo had said. Much had been on target. The book I'd brought with me, for example. It could be seen symbolically. The facts of the current journey I was on weren't unlike Malcolm Lowry's novel Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid with the main character Sigbjorn Wilderness taking his second wife along with him to Mexico to confront his past and search for his old friend and mentor Juan Fernando. I empathized greatly with Sigbjorn, with Lowry himself. There were many things we had in common.

Lowry was, if nothing else, a symbolizer. Everything he thought, saw, experienced seemed to mean something dark and foreboding to him. The landscape of Mexico in both Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid and in his greatest work Under the Volcano is filled with abysses, labyrinths, and demons that represent his own personal hell. Numbers and snippets of conversation overheard or combinations of words seen on a poster or menu represent various premonitions and omens. Throughout my own wandering life, I'd reacted to the stimuli around me in a similar fashion. The fictional version of my journey to the East was filled with symbolic descriptions of the landscape and, indeed, the character of Hasan, with whom I'd journeyed from Lorrach to Iran, had become my own Virgil guiding me through a Dantesque Inferno. And India. Good God, India. The madness that overtook me by the time I was sleeping on the streets of Calcutta with all the lepers and Untouchables had me seeing all sorts of strange visions and creatures from the netherworld. Yes, I had a strong connection to Lowry's madness.

Alcoholism was there, too. I was a lightweight compared to Lowry's excesses, but I'd had my own battles with the booze and no doubt that had exacerbated the hepatitis. I had an unquenchable thirst for beer mainly, and the six months of abstinence I'd just completed while on the interferon was a constant battle. More to the point, though, I was a stoner, which is difficult in Japan because there's not a lot of pot to be found (not to mention the possibility of seven years in the slammer with nothing but fish heads and rice if you're busted for possession), but in my twenties I must've done a good seventy-five trips on one hallucinogen or another. Never had a bad trip, either. Lowry was no pothead, but his choice of drink was mescal, which can produce a hefty hallucinogenic experience, so there was that connection, too.

What else? We were both expatriates. That in itself is the source of many strange neuroses and thought processes concerning one's identity, the meaning of life, the constant dealing with a foreign language and no matter how proficient you become there's always a nuance of misinterpretation to everything you say and hear because no matter how you try you can't escape totally from the culture you were raised in, the influences and values and judgments that marked you as a child and adolescent. You are in a sense doomed as a man without a home, an ibasho wa nai ningen as they say in Japanese. Again, perhaps Pablo had been right. I was a self-exiled man unable to integrate myself fully into society, destined to be the eternal outsider.

We were also both ex-cons. I'd done my time, six months' worth, in a military brig as a conscientious objector refusing my order to fight in Nam in 1970. That single experience had catapulted me into the whole cauldron of mixed-up madness that comprised my life experiences and confusion of the following umpteen years, that is, until I met Kaori and somehow managed to bring it all under control. As for Lowry, he'd been arrested three times in Mexico during his first sojourn there. How he had suffered. Such a story! Such self-inflicted suffering! My own life, once I'd read Lowry's books and biography, seemed a breeze in the park, a mere comedy. But as I say we both knew what it was to be locked up, to be an undesirable in common society, to have, in Lowry's words, "a Dostoevskian fixation" on prison and "practically a pathological sympathy for those who do wrong...and get into the shit." These prison visions, no doubt for both of us, caused us to pour words on paper in a purging of the soul and a search for understanding. The result for Lowry was his masterpiece Under the Volcano; for me, a minor novel that, if nothing else, proved therapeutic.

There were more connections and similarities, but the main thing was that while reading Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid I was finding on nearly every page some passage that described exactly what was happening or had happened to me. How could Pablo have known all that?

Kaori was still out when I got back to the hotel room. I pulled a chair up to the window overlooking the Warmoestraat, opened a beer, and watched the activity of the street below. I propped my right ankle up on a stool, sighed heavily, and thought again about my earlier days wandering through Europe.

Those had been good days when my legs were strong and I could pace the streets for hours. Nostalgia came over me. I wished for a moment I was in my twenties again, walking and walking, driven by hunger and thought, ready to take any new road, to follow freely strange yearnings that would take me to all corners of the earth. Life had been poignant then with all the multitudinous mysteries I'd faced head on. Of course, there was comfort now in having a good job, some money, staying in a decent hotel, eating good food, not wanting for anything. But passion had left me, replaced by an inexplicable emptiness.

It was hard to pinpoint exactly when my fatigue and apathy had set in. Certainly, when I arrived in Japan at the age of thirty-two, I was still consumed by a vast store of energy and a thirst for more knowledge and more experience. Perhaps the years of adapting to a new culture had drained me -- the living rough and broke for the first few years before the time came to make the decision to commit to the permanent life of an expatriate, knowing that in order to secure a more stable visa, job, and life I'd need to gain the qualifications necessary to teach at a university. In my mid-thirties I began the correspondence course that eventually took seven years to complete -- pure stubbornness it was to stick with it that long -- but in the end while working several part-time jobs I'd gotten that master's degree and all the efforts paid off when I landed a full-time job teaching at a women's junior college.

Maybe those years of teaching too many hours at too many places and working in every spare moment I could garner to complete the degree, this in addition to trying to learn the Japanese language, had burned me out, but I felt a tinge of pride in what I'd accomplished, in my perseverance, the one quality that through my life had allowed me to survive to the age of forty-nine \-- an age I once thought distant, strange, somehow unattainable -- and outlive my literary heroes, the ones who had burned themselves out, too: Thomas Wolfe, dead at thirty-seven; Jack Kerouac, dead at forty-three; Malcolm Lowry, dead at forty-eight.

Not that I could count myself in their league, but if I died tomorrow I could still say that I'd left behind something of a literary legacy: two novels, a novella used as a textbook in Japanese universities, two other reference books collaborated on with a group of Japanese authors, and fifteen papers on teaching English as a foreign language. All in all, my work had had some merit.

In rationalizing my life and accomplishments to myself, I could probably point to the time spent in the Denver military prison as the original spark that had motivated me all these years. Yes, I thought, if I ever had the chance, I'd dearly love to take my resume back to those psychiatrists, chaplains, officers, and others who had tried to break me down mentally and show me that the choice I'd made in refusing my order to fight in Nam would ruin my life and that as a coward and ex-con and communist I'd never be able to hold a decent job, raise a family (maybe they'd been right there), or hold my head high as an upstanding citizen of the late great United States of America, the greatest country in the history of mankind, the only country to truly have God on its side, and with the stigma of an "undesirable" discharge, an undesirable for Christ's sake, I'd be forced to live a life of shame if I didn't admit to my wrongdoing, adhere to the morals of society, and return to the fold as a "rehabilitated" man.

Well, I'd proved them wrong. I'd rejected their efforts to save me and created my own life, a good life, an independent life. But at what cost? Even though my stubbornness, my quirky independence, my drive, my obsessive nature, I supposed, had pushed me onto a path that held for me tenfold the experiences, discoveries, horrors, loneliness, and miles and countries covered in the lifetimes of most other men, there was still something missing. Perhaps that was the main reason for this trip.

I thought of Thomas Knorr. Perhaps Thomas had the final answer for me. Hadn't Thomas, or at least the image of Thomas, always been a man who, from an early age, knew what his ideals and dreams were and pursued them? Hadn't Thomas been the personification of a man in tune with his time, a man with purpose to his life, a man of adventure who was not afraid to follow his dreams to their end in order to realize them?

Perhaps it had simply been the intensity of the psilocybin we'd taken or the quality of the hashish we'd smoked while discussing life and philosophy during our ten days together back in 1977, but I believed I'd never connected intellectually as closely with anyone (except for Kaori) before or since. There had been an immediate and mutual understanding. Thomas hadn't questioned all the amazing coincidences he said had guided his life, the times when a second earlier or later here or a couple of inches closer or father apart there had saved him (as if by a crazy kind of divine intervention), the strange appearance of benefactors of unknown origin who either saved his ass in one way or led him in another before disappearing into the dust. It was in the unquestioning acceptance of whatever fate threw at him as being right for the time, the free will of allowing himself simply to be carried off by the winds of the moment, the willful act of giving himself up to fate, accepting, knowing the path that lay ahead was already preordained and irrevocable. It was a faith, he'd explained, that could not be articulated.

In listening to Thomas, I'd understood completely. During our time together the unfathomable mysteries of my own life became clear and I gained a vision of my future. My fears disappeared and all the paths of the past that had led me to Thomas's house suddenly became meaningful as the inevitable ones I'd had to follow. It was an astonishing revelation. I'd been born to be "undesirable" in order to free myself.

Or so I'd thought back then. Anyway, what did it matter now? Shouldn't I be thinking about what to say to Thomas after not having any contact for twenty-two years? It was possible we'd both changed immeasurably since that time. If Thomas's "situation was bad," as his wife Undine had said on the phone when I managed to contact her a couple months before, would he even want to talk about the old days? What if he'd lost his faith in himself and the meaning of his life? What if he'd become a grumpy old man? Would he even want to see me? That was something I hadn't considered. What would Thomas think about my having used him as a character in my novel? Would he be angry, especially since I'd not even changed the name and place? If anyone else from Lorrach read the parts in the book about his drug and smuggling experiences, would any harm come from it? And what about his appearance in my dream and the words he'd spoken? What did it mean? What was the symbolism there?

I found myself rubbing the box Pablo had given me. I pulled it out of my pocket and opened it. There were four mushrooms, a tiny chessboard, and some figurines of different ages from infant to elderly inside. It was strange that Pablo knew so much about me, but like all the chance encounters with people I'd met throughout my life, I accepted it as natural. It had been that way with Thomas, with Hasan and Ataullah, with Kaori, with everyone who had influenced the direction of my life. I wasn't sure if I'd actually take the mushrooms or throw them away. Maybe I could take them just to get back into that hallucinogenic and revelatory frame of mind that had connected Thomas and me on the hill above his place where we'd walked after taking psilocybin and looked out on three countries and up at the stars two nights before I left with Hasan for Iran. Yes, that was an idea. After all, the last time I'd taken a hallucinogen was at least twenty years ago when passion still burned within me and I felt deeply about everything in life.

There was a knock on the door. I got up and opened it to find Kaori outside. We talked for a while about her discoveries and adventures after we got separated in Alkmaar. After she finished writing in her journal, we went out to dinner and decided to visit the Siberie again. I'd run out of the Red Bud and wanted to try something stronger. It was crowded, but we got a table to ourselves after I bought a gram of Siberian Tiger. I rolled a joint, took a good hit, and passed the joint to Kaori.

"That other stuff we tried our first day here tasted nice, but I didn't feel anything," she said and shrugged.

"You have to hold it in your lungs longer. You only need a couple hits off this stuff. It's pretty strong."

Kaori took two deep hits and gave the joint back to me. A little later she looked at me strangely and said, "Honey-chan, I don't feel very good. I think I might have to throw up. My head is spinning."

"It's probably the smoke and lack of fresh air in here. Too many people. Come on, let's go outside and get some fresh air."

"I don't think I can stand up."

"Here, I'll help you."

I got up, helped Kaori to her feet, and guided her outside. A cool breeze fanned our faces. Soft light from two street lamps danced on the canal and the tree branches swayed.

"Do you feel better?" I asked.

"A little, but I don't like this feeling." A note of panic had crept into Kaori's voice. "I think I'm losing control. I don't know if I can walk. What's happening to me?"

"Don't worry. I'm here. I won't let anything happen to you. Here, take hold of my arm. I'll guide us back to the hotel. This is strong pot, but the intensity will go away soon enough. Trust me. Once we get back to our room you'll feel safe and you can take a bath and lie down. Everything will be all right."

Kaori held on to me tightly until we made it back to our room. Her anxiety seemed to pass and she took a long time in the bath. She lay down on the bed after that and soon fell asleep. I stayed up for a couple more hours and watched a Robin Williams movie on TV.

Chapter 3

The next morning we had a continental breakfast at the hotel restaurant at seven o'clock, then hit the streets about eight. The sky was clear with only a few low clouds, but the day was cool and we both wore sweaters. We crossed the Damrak to Nieuwendijk, turned left and strolled slowly, Kaori's arm in mine, along the walking path with its myriad shops and businesses. The end of the street opened out to Dam Square and we lingered for a while with Kaori snapping pictures of the Nieuwe Kerk and the Royal Palace. We crossed the square to where Nieuwedijk changed into Kalverstraat and walked along the street until it ran into the Spui.

We headed down Heiligeweg and past the floating Flower Market on the Singel, Kaori taking pictures and marveling at the colorful array of flowers, then on down Leidsestraat and over three canal bridges until coming upon the Leidseplein, where we spotted the Cafe Americain and stopped for a half hour to rest my ankles and drink an expensive pot of coffee.

Another fifteen minutes of walking brought us to the Van Gogh Museum. A long line of tourists was outside the museum, but it moved quickly and soon we were inside. The ground floor was jam-packed with tourists milling around the souvenir shop, information center, and restaurant. On the next floor there was a large selection of Van Gogh's paintings arranged in chronological order. We fell in behind the crowd. The line moved slowly but steadily. Many people stood in awe before certain paintings.

We came to The Potato Eaters. The dusky lamplight in the center of the painting gave a slight warmth to the gray space surrounding the lamp and highlighted the hard and grave faces around the table. The five people in the painting were coarse and ugly. A mood of coldness -- the harshness of life -- jumped out at me.

Kaori took my arm, gripped it tightly, and peered closely at the painting. "These people are alive," she said. "Their eyes and expressions tell me that."

I nodded and we moved on. We stopped next at a series of self-portraits.

"Check this out," I said, pointing to Self Portrait with a Felt Hat. "This is kind of what the world looks like on acid or mescaline. Look how his brush strokes seem to swirl and move about. All those individual colors are amazing the way they come together. He painted himself in the same colors he used in the background. You get the illusion that he's fading into a kind of ambiguous surrounding. Incredible. Hallucinogenic."

"It makes me dizzy to look at." Kaori moved a step back, then closer again. "He was suffering. I can understand what he was feeling." She stared hard at the painting, then lowered and shook her head slowly. "It's like looking at myself after my operation."

Kaori took my hand, looked into my eyes, and said, "I can feel the painting in my heart."

I squeezed her hand, but said nothing. We started moving again and became immersed in our own musings. I moved ahead of Kaori as she began to spend more time in front of each painting. I moved quickly through a section of landscapes until coming to three paintings of skulls. Skull with Burning Cigarette disturbed me. Its sickly greenish yellow tones and black background reminded me of my own failures, losses, and mortality. It was another omen that resonated inside my own skull. I wondered if Malcolm Lowry had ever thought about this painting and connected it in some manner with his love of the Mexican Day of the Dead.

I moved on until I came to Wheat Field with Crows. I stared for a long time at its desperate urgency \-- the bold and wild strokes, the menacing black and blue sky, the jagged, descending crows, the paths running off the ends and the center path disappearing into the wheat field. It gave me a sense of no escape. Madness and dark foreboding everywhere. Disastrous omens. I'd probably kill myself after painting this, too, I thought. I hadn't quite reached that stage yet, but Vincent had made his point.

I went outside to have a smoke, collect my thoughts, and wait for Kaori. Unconsciously, I put my hand in my pocket and started rubbing the box again. A strong desire to take the mushrooms came over me. It was as if both Pablo and the spirit of Van Gogh were egging me on. For madmen only. The price is only your mind. Reclaim your soul.

Kaori emerged twenty minutes later. She sat down on the curb next to me. Neither of us spoke a word. We proceeded to Vondel Park. We stopped near a pond to listen to some reggae singers, then walked on the footpath to the Round Blue Teahouse, drank a beer, and listened to the sounds of birds before retracing our steps out of the park and back to the Leidseplein, where a large crowd had gathered to listen to a Mongolian street band with string instruments and voices that sounded like reed instruments.

On a side street, we stopped for raviolis at an Italian restaurant run by a Turkish family. High wisps of white clouds scudded across the sky. Late afternoon shadows covered the narrow street. We shivered.

Kaori said, "It feels like autumn. Like just before winter in Japan."

Back at the hotel, we took a bath. I rolled a joint to smoke while Kaori outlined on a map the roads and places we'd followed and seen since arriving. Every fifteen minutes the Oude Kerk bell rang. I think we were both content at that moment, each in a separate world of thoughts and memories. At seven-thirty I went alone to the Siberie while Kaori studied about the history of the relationship between Japan and Holland. The Siberie was crowded again. After two cups of tea and another joint I returned to the hotel.

I propped myself on the bed and Kaori began massaging my feet.

"I've been reading about some interesting things today," she said.

"Like what?"

"Mainly about the history of the relationship between Japan and Holland. I brought a book called Oranda Kiko by Shiba Ryotaro, one of my favorite writers. His way of writing is so human and he has a real grasp of ordinary people acting with spirit and courage to meet the demands of their times. He has great respect for the Dutch people and their independent spirit, especially for how they could reclaim this land from the sea and make it theirs, make a country from nothing."

"Yes, I remember watching some documentaries about Mongolia by him on TV with you. He had a great love for those people, too, it seems."

"He was a humanist. And a man with a great passion for art. I could appreciate what we saw today at the Van Gogh museum because of reading what he wrote about Van Gogh's life. I could feel what was in Van Gogh's soul while looking at those paintings. You know, I actually cried when looking at the paintings from his Arles period. I've never cried from just looking at a painting before. It was a new and beautiful experience." Kaori stopped massaging my foot, flashed me a smile, and started again.

"I know what you mean. I remember a lot of the feelings I had back in 1973 on my first journey to Europe and the profound influence the art and history had on me. Everything was so new and powerful and passionate, and it gave me the impetus to want to create something myself."

"That's not exactly the feeling I meant about me. It was more a private feeling. I could feel the same sadness. I felt the same sadness. And I understand how depressed and low a human being can be. You remember how I was after my operation." Kaori stopped again for a moment and looked at me with sad eyes.

"Yes, I do. That was very low."

"Now I feel how important life is, how important every moment is and how wonderful it is to be alive and feeling nature all around us." Kaori gestured toward the window and the sky outside. "I have really loved looking at the sky in Holland. And the Dutch painters really know how to paint the sky."

"I think I know what you mean. I like the landscapes and the different shades of blue and white and gray that are used. I don't know exactly, but there is a sense of great movement across the sky, like the wind blowing off the sea."

"Yes, that, too, but what I've really noticed is how high the sky is. The sky seems higher here than in Japan. I always look at the sky every day when I hike at Tenpai Mountain and it's different here, different from any place I've seen. Maybe it's because we're at sea level here. And the clouds are not summer clouds. They're autumn clouds."

"Even the shadows and light are autumn shadows and light. I've noticed that, too."

"Very unusual, but I love it." Kaori shifted her weight on the bed and began massaging my other foot. "I really like Amsterdam. I'm so happy you brought me here."

"I'm glad you're happy." I leaned over and stroked Kaori's hair. "It does feel good to be here again for me, too."

"The interesting thing for me is that I'm enjoying learning. And I really feel, more than I've ever felt using English in any of my jobs, that all the years of studying English have been worth it. Without English I couldn't do all the things that I'm doing."

"Such as?"

"Such as trying to understand the transportation system, where you can go, what it costs, what kind of discounts you can get. If you can't use the transportation system, you're not free. Or at least you're limited in what you can see. We have only a short time and I want to make the most of it. I want to see as much as I can, just blend into the crowd, appreciate the history and culture of this place, or any place, and enjoy being a small part of it. There." Kaori shook her hands "My hands are tired. Is that OK? Do your feet feel better?"

"Yeah, much better. Thanks. You're a dear. I don't know what I'd do without you."

Kaori laughed and returned to her books. I was proud of the way she was approaching this trip, proud of the incredible amount of study she'd done over the years to be able to communicate and work in a second language. What she had said about the Dutch sky was true, too. I liked looking at the colors of the sky and the scudding clouds that constantly changed shape and size and color. The afternoon shadows were indeed unusual in their depth and length. It seemed to me that Kaori's observation symbolized our own lives. Our decline had begun. We were now past the peak of our days. Autumn shadows in August. The cancer and hepatitis had already consumed a portion of our flesh. Drowsiness came over me. My last thoughts before drifting off were: What exactly have I accomplished with my life? What exactly has it been worth?

Chapter 4

I was lying on the bed. Kaori had left earlier to do some sightseeing in Edam and Volendam. Early morning sunlight poured into the room, periodically hiding behind moving clouds. I rolled a joint, took three puffs, and once again fingered the box of mushrooms.

I got up stiffly, limped over to the small refrigerator, took out one of the cartons of blueberry yogurt, and returned to the bed. I grinned mischievously as I opened the box of mushrooms, dumped the four dried spores into the yogurt, stirred them around with a spoon, and uttered "Here's to you, Mother Earth" as I lifted a spoonful with two mushrooms into my mouth.

The yogurt helped suppress the bitter mushroom taste for a moment, but the familiar acrid rush at the back sides of my mouth appeared as I began chewing. I took another spoonful of just yogurt and washed the mushrooms down. I repeated the process for the remaining two mushrooms, gagged for a moment, but forced them down. Two more spoonfuls of yogurt took away the remaining bitterness. All I had to do now was wait.

I picked up my notebook and began writing some sentences, but grew bored after a few minutes and set it down on the bed. For a while I watched the branches on the large tree in front of the Oude Kerk sway in the light breeze and listened to the sounds of the street below. I got up once to pee, returned to the bed, took a few more hits off the joint, and let random thoughts float around in my head.

In the few days we'd been in Amsterdam I'd not really taken much notice of the two paintings on the walls of our room. I moved over to one of the chairs on the other side of the room so I could look at both the painting behind the bed and the one on the adjoining wall. The one behind the bed was an abstract work by Kadinsky. It had various geometrical shapes with JAUNE, ROUGE, BLEU 1925 written at the bottom. The other was a 1905 Picasso print of a skinny clown holding his baby and watching his nude wife doll herself up in front of a hand mirror.

As I was concentrating on the Picasso print, numbness crept over my body. The Siberian Tiger high had crossed over to the beginning of the mushroom high. I stared at the checkered black and white outfit the clown was wearing. The lines and colors were sharp and vivid. They seemed more real to me than anything I'd ever seen. My gaze shifted slightly lower to the basin on the table at the bottom of the print. There was a green tint to it that hadn't been there before as well as a peculiar transparency.

That's me in the painting. That's my life summed up in a few strokes, I thought, then grinned. I felt a sudden, poignant connection with the clown in the painting, with the symbolism it contained for my own life. My gaze swept around the room and every object within it was transformed. There was an intensification and deepening of color, texture, and substance in everything surrounding me, even my own body. I felt a connection with everything. The room breathed quietly and shimmered in the rays of sunlight entering through the window. Everything glowed and pulsed.

A breeze wafted through the open window and with it a cacophony of sounds from outside, each sound hanging in the air and ringing loudly in my ears. A shiver passed through me and goose bumps rose luminously from my skin. I looked down at my right hand and it was a huge, living organism separate from myself, yet containing the entirety of myself. Each tiny hair, too, had its own separate, meaningful existence. The pattern of my skin pores was a fascinating web of intricacy, much like the Persian carpets I'd seen years ago on that fateful journey around the world. The swollen, arthritic joints of my index finger loomed above the rest of the hand like large volcanoes in the middle of an island. The island-hand glowed with an orange light, but the volcano-joints were deeper, almost crimson. My blue and red veins flowed down the length of the arm like so many interconnected rivers, each carrying my virus-infected blood throughout the body. A particular luminosity formed along the long scar on my forearm. I stared at it for a long time.

I took a big breath and stretched back as far as I could. I could feel the tightness in each vertebra on the spinal cord. I leaned back in the chair, exhaled slowly, then rolled my neck slowly, each crack of the neck reverberating and sending colorful explosions throughout my head. I felt the need to get up and move around, but the lower half of my body was heavy, as if sunken into thick mud. I looked down at my legs and stared at the folds and lines in my jeans. The ends of my legs disappeared into the thickness of the carpet. Again my legs were both separate from and a part of myself. The ends turned into the carpet. Or was it that the carpet had just turned into my legs? Everything melted and molded into everything else. Where one mass ended, another began.

"Wow," I said out loud. "Wow, it's great to be back in rubber land." And I knew the familiarity of the experience. I had confidence in the experience, confidence in knowing that I alone, like a god at the center of the universe, could will the experience into whatever I wanted it to be. After all, had I not, at the age of twenty-four or so, had one of the greatest basketball games of my life on acid, scoring thirty-four points on slow-motion jumpers from long range that flowed off the end of my fingertips with a perfect follow-through that gave the ball a perfect backspin and extended rainbow arch and settled perfectly into the net each time with a sweet swishing sound that had all seemingly been preordained? That had been a great night in a distant country gymnasium with only a few spectators to watch the city league players, but I still felt its perfection deeply within, and it gave me a rush to replay in my mind and remind me of what I'd once been and of the possibility of perfection in an imperfect world.

I craved a cigarette and a beer. I had to will myself out of the chair, will myself into movement. At first, I was unsteady on my feet, my body feeling like lead, and it was hilarious as I observed myself struggling, like the mass of humanity. My senses floated freely in space. I felt the breeze in the room, heard the rumble of a truck changing gears and the sound of voices outside and below on the street, and saw the sunlight reflecting off every object in the room. I stared a moment at the texture of the linen on the bed, then at the grain in the wood of the nightstand, and thought, Yes, I've crossed over to the other side now and it's great to be back.

Getting back to the original purpose, determined ages ago but still the original purpose, which was to move toward the portable refrigerator on the other side of the bed, I willed my leaden body into movement and it became light and functional. The first step was easy. With the first step made -- just like when dealing with the potential confusion and paranoia of conversation with real people, the challenge of it, all that's needed is to will that first sentence out of your mouth and see the other person's natural response (while staring at and being fascinated by the tiniest of facial hairs moving and the blotchy variations of skin color on that other person's face) and the wave of paranoia about not being able to deal with the situation will pass and you can even control the situation in your mad state of mind -- the rest was easy.

I walked over to the refrigerator, opened the door, grabbed one of the two beers I'd bought earlier, pulled the aluminum tab, luxuriated for a moment in the sound and the rising of foam out of the hole in the top of the can, took a short drink, realizing suddenly how dry my mouth had become and how coldly and smoothly the beer slid down my throat, and trembled as an electric shiver went up and down my spine. I returned to the table and sat down again. My pack of cigarettes, an ashtray, and a lighter were on the table, so I pulled a cigarette out of the pack, picked up the lighter, lit the cigarette with trembling hands, inhaled deeply, blew the smoke into the air, and watched in fascination as the blue smoke formed rings and clouds that rose up and floated for a moment, then disappeared, just like Kaori and I and the rest of the world would in due time.

The sun went behind some clouds again. Grey pervaded the room, and the air moved like waves. I breathed in the scents wafting through the window. The tree by the Oude Kerk was shaking and, as I looked down upon the alleyway leading to the church, I noticed the pink brick building behind the soot-stained building on the corner was jutting forward, sinking deeper into the street with each breath I took. Sunlight cut through the clouds once more and those distinct autumn shadows stretched beyond the end of the alleyway and crawled up to the looming bell tower, from which the sound of the bell began to ring, each note floating on the air, growing slowly louder and instead of just my ears hearing, all my senses encompassed the individual clanging notes, filling my body and mind in such a way that instead of hearing the music, I was the music. I closed my eyes. Dancing arabesques appeared in the darkness. The arabesques changed colors and became varied and fantastic objects that waved about as if under water.

When the last note finally played itself out and drifted away with a strange gentleness, I opened my eyes. I felt as if a hole had opened in my head. I breathed deeply, then picked up the beer can, reassured by its weight and the knowledge there was still plenty of beer left in it and I would not have to get up again for a while, raised it slowly to my mouth, and took a sip. My cigarette had gone out, so I lit another one, and turned my attention to the inner world, that world that to me was as vast and real as the external, physical world, and ever so much more interesting.

There I was, the vibrant force that filled the room, was the room, and all was natural that I should be there at that particular place and moment. Everything I'd ever done, thought, experienced, every path I'd traveled upon had led me there. I was glad Kaori always talked about how we'd been fated to meet and that our paths had been destined from the beginning to come together. I believed that entirely. And, yes, exactly how many paths had I trod in the forty-nine years of my life? How many lives had I touched, had touched me? How many significant moments had changed the course of those many paths? It was time for a mushroom reexamination of everything.

Let the journey begin, my head says, and I'm back in eighth grade when I meet Damian Riley. I've recently bought a table baseball game, StratoMatic, which advertises a statistical accuracy similar to the real major league players' performances if one plays the games and manages the teams over an entire season. I've started playing my first full season, the 1964 National League season, keeping all the pitching and hitting statistics, managing the teams, living in a dream world of baseball, neglecting my studies, keeping game-by-game accounts, and entertaining a desire to become a major league statistician. The games and statistics are my constant companions. Damian and I are introduced one day by a boy who knows we both have baseball table games. Damian's is the APBA game. He's convinced it's superior to StratoMatic. I invite him to my home. We play a StratoMatic game between the San Francisco Giants and Milwaukee Braves. Willie Mays, whom in real life I dislike because he's considered a better player than my hero Hank Aaron, hits five home runs. I order the APBA game the next day.

I've never met anyone like Damian before. There's nothing he can't do well. He has all the confidence I myself lack. He's a handsome boy who moves his five-foot, eight-inch frame with such ease, has such deep, green eyes, and carries such a confident satisfaction with himself, his abilities, and the world around him that it's impossible not to like him. His is a sarcastic humor that coincides with my own. For the first time in a long time I've found someone in whose presence I feel completely at ease, someone who can make me burst out in belly laughs -- this grin right now feels great, just great, ah, those belly laughs \-- someone who reciprocates with a mirth that has no bounds. Best of all, Damian, too, lives in a world of baseball dreams and fantasies.

Our friendship revolves around APBA. We're inseparable. We spend hundreds of hours together playing APBA. In all my life I have known few joys comparable to the sessions we have at our "APBA tables." In my room there's a wooden table with a Formica top, but Damian's table is much better. It's a large, circular, glass table that seems made for the express purpose of playing our beloved game. We polish the glass in a pre-game ritual \-- (I touch the table in front of me; start making circles with my hand; peer into the patterns, circular patterns themselves; a hundred little baseball fields in those patterns) -- as if we are groundskeepers preparing the infield for play, set up the game boards, select the starting lineups and pitchers, place the player cards in correct order, write down the necessary information in the scorebooks, pick out the special APBA dice (one is a little larger than the other to give a possible thirty-six number combinations that correspond with numbers on the players' cards, which in turn correspond with more numbers on the game boards, which have all the possible game situations on them such as bases empty, runner on first, runners on first and second, second and third, bases loaded, as well as adjustments for strong-, medium-, or weak-fielding teams and differently-rated pitchers) and dice cup, sharpen our pencils, and place the current statistics at hand for vital information needed during the game to broadcast to our imaginary fans or for the managers (ourselves) to use for making decisions based on batting streaks, averages, pitchers' total innings pitched (the pitcher might be tired from recent overwork), lefty-righty pitching and hitting percentages. You name it, we have it.

Once the preparations are made, we sit opposite each other. The games begin, each of us announcing his own game, filling in the time between plays with commentary on the ballplayers, team standings, importance of the game to the pennant race, the weather, the pitcher's motions on the mound, the expression of the umpire on a close play, the distance of a line drive to the outfield, the merits of a particularly difficult play, whatever comes to mind. The glass table is perfect for the rolling of the dice. They bounce on that table for an agonizingly long time in a clickity, metallic rattle -- whoaaa, metallic shiver up and down the spine \-- that extends the drama of the moment before finally settling upon the fate of each player's turn at bat.

When announcing my games, I always struggle during the flash and click of the dice to think of something beyond my singular pattern of "Aaaand here comes the pitch. It's a ground ball to Wills at shortstop. He scoops it up and fires a strike to first. One down and the next batter is..."

Damian, on the other hand, is a master at instinctively spitting out euphonic baseball expressions and metaphors. In the capsuled moment of the dice a continuous stream of baseball drama spills from his mouth. "That was a close play at first. Alston doesn't like the call. Here he comes out of the dugout. He's walking to first base like he's walking to his brother's funeral. The fans are on their feet. Now here comes Durocher out of the other dugout. He's racing across the field. Both managers are screaming at Donatelli. Donatelli looks as if he's caught between bookends. Yeah, we've got a real donnybrook here today folks."

Then Damian twists his mouth to the side, lets out a roar simulating the unified voice of the fans' disapproval -- (I'm doing the same now, hhhhrrrrrrrrrrrr, breath exhaling long and slow, feeling face muscles scrunch up) -- scoops up the dice with his thumb into the cup, which he holds in the other four fingers of his right hand, and continues with the next play. At times, I become so absorbed in Damian's game I completely forget about my own. I can almost smell the infield grass, feel the sunshine on my face, hear the cry of beer and peanut vendors in the crowd, and see the nervous movements of the players between pitches and the cloud of dust rising from a runner's slide into second.

We are thoroughly devoted to APBA and to each other. We develop a special APBA song -- AZL and X and Y and DZ, we're just two APBA devotees \-- and our own secret language so we can talk about the game in classes at school, at the hamburger shops, at the park, wherever we go, and not risk the ridicule of others who don't understand our obsession. We have our own APBA attache cases inside which we've fastidiously placed the game contents in designated spots: the team packets containing the player cards in the back flap; the schedules, batting average books (so we don't always have to compute our statistics on paper or in our heads), pens, pencils, and rulers in the front pocket of the back flap; and the game boards, notebooks filled with all the players' statistics, scorebooks, dice, and dice cups on the bottom. We plaster team decals on the outside of the attache cases to show the world we're not scholars but serious APBA enthusiasts.

We spend hours at a time on the telephone complaining to each other about the boredom of a Mets-Astros (two weak expansion teams) game, comparing our leaders in all the statistical categories, describing in detail the excitement of a game in which two pitching aces like Sandy Koufax and Juan Marichal have hooked up in a 1-0 thriller, reporting on game-winning rallies and our favorite players and how they're performing, and trading new baseball expressions and gossip picked out of baseball magazines and The Sporting News.

Later during high school summers of working for our dads and saving some money, Damian and I begin taking trips to San Francisco. For quite a while our minds have been filled with a romantic vision of the City, a vision stimulated by the magic of radio and the voices of our favorite sports announcers. We've often talked about the City as if it were a secret place imbued with mystery and adventure calling to us like a siren in the night. We're growing bored with the dull characters and slow pace of the small lumber towns of Humboldt County. We need something new, a breath of fresh air to inject some life into our mundane existence.

We take our first trip by bus during my sophomore year to see a professional basketball game. San Francisco is an enormous playground pulsating with excitement. On every street corner lies a wealth of characters to see, drama to watch, comedy to laugh at, dialogue to listen to, movement to be swayed by, a treasure chest of sounds, smells, and sights to devour. It's a rich tapestry of infinitely varied life. It flashes before us like a jewel, blazing brilliantly with a life so strangely and continuously interesting it's intolerable that we miss any of it. We walk the swarming streets drunk with innocence and joy.

After our first visit, we are two addicts in need of larger and larger doses. The City beckons to us with an uncompromising lure. Over the next three years every penny we earn working for our dads goes toward our trips. In the beginning we take the Greyhound bus, but after Damian's parents buy him a new sports car we take our pilgrimages in it instead. We check into downtown hotels under false names, usually the names of obscure baseball players, hole up in a room for three to five days playing marathon sessions of APBA (going out only for baseball games at Candlestick Park or wandering the nighttime streets), then check out of the hotel without paying by dropping our suitcases from the second floor to an alley and walking out the entrance nonchalantly as if going out for coffee.

After the APBA sessions when we prowl the streets, our breasts heave with an unbearable joy to be a part of the panorama that surrounds us. -- It's wonderful to be alive now too in this hotel room and that feeling then and this feeling now are connected, I know they are. -- There are the sharp cries and strident voices of the shoeshine men and newsstand vendors. Our favorite is Smokey Joe, who sits on the corner of Powell and Geary Streets, a dwarf of a man with an oversized head. His eyes bulge out of their sockets; his short legs are bowed like those of a miniature cowboy; and a long, fat cigar protrudes from his thick lips as he says, "Dere ya go, dere ya go, whadaya wan', whadaya wan', dat'll be a quarter young man, dere ya go."

There are the street artists in a colorful array of costumes who play music, perform acrobatics and mime, and juggle bowling pins. There are the throngs of shoppers streaming in and out of the clothing stores, department stores, shoe shops, hat shops, all the shops that line the downtown area. There are the cable cars, filled to bursting with tourists, clanging up and down the hilly streets. There are all the women dressed in the latest fashions who walk proudly and sensuously, their heads tossing about and hips swaying. There are the gaudy prostitutes filing up and down Eddy Street who call out to passersby, "How 'bout a date, honey?" There are the black pimps in pink, red, and purple costumes -- just like those colors dancing in front of my eyelids now \-- who prowl softly through the shadows. There are the hollow-eyed winos in tattered clothes who hang out on Market Street.

There are the street corner food stands with their aroma of hamburgers and grease, the coffee shops with a wide selection of waffles and cakes, the sleazy theaters on Market Street where we can see double features any time of the day. There are the neon lights and billboards showing naked women on the Broadway Strip, the ringing sounds of Chinatown, the grandeur of the spacious ballrooms, bars, and restaurants of the Fairmont and Hilton Hotels. There are the cheap and tottering rides of Playland before it's closed down. There's the Greyhound Bus Depot, where we play pinball machines and watch homosexuals on the prowl.

Everywhere we go there's an abundance of characters. The world of Humboldt County is dull and moribund in comparison. At the center of our vision of the City stands Candlestick Park, the home of professional baseball, the site for the contests that have stimulated our young hearts for years, the stage for all we deem good in life. We always go to the stadium two hours before game time to watch batting and fielding practice. Everything about the place excites us: the cries of the vendors, the crack of bats meeting balls, the sounds of the scoreboard organist playing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," the cheers and taunts of the crowd, the rhythmic dance of the players taking infield practice and whipping the ball around the horn, the pitchers running laps, the foul balls landing in the stands and the crowd scrambling for them, the public address announcer calling out the starting lineups, the days of warm sunshine and nights of fog rolling off the bay, the wind that swirls dust in mini-cyclones around the pitcher's mound and the base paths, the hot dogs and peanuts that always taste better simply because we're at the ball park, the starting pitchers warming up on the sidelines and occasionally chatting with the fans, the uniforms the players wear, the scorecards in which we keep notes of every nuance of the game, and the fans of every shape, size, and nationality.

Here are the players we've read about, dreamed about, managed in our APBA games, the players whose exploits we've listened to on the radio in Damian's room: Willie Mays, Orlando Cepeda, Juan Marichal, Gaylord Perry, Sandy Koufax, Tommy Davis (Damian's favorite after he led the National League twice in batting and knocked in 153 runs in 1962), Willie Davis, Don Drysdale, Maury Wills, Hank Aaron, Jim Bunning, Willie Stargell, Roberto Clemente, and all the others of that glorious age of baseball. Here we witness the games that still burn in my memory: the time we see the Giants defeated by my Braves 17-3 and Tony Cloninger, the Braves' pitcher, clubs two grand slam home runs (he also hits another that lands about three feet foul in the right field stands) and adds a sacrifice fly to drive in nine runs; the time Gaylord Perry pitches a one-hitter, allowing only a scratch single up the middle by the Chicago Cub second baseman Glenn Beckert in the seventh inning; the time Jim Bunning outduels Juan Marichal by hitting a home run in the tenth inning to win the game 5-4; the many home runs and shoestring catches by Willie Mays; the line drive home runs and singles by Willie McCovey, who hits the ball harder than anyone we've ever seen; the pitching duels between Koufax and Marichal, Drysdale and Perry, when the Dodgers and Giants play out their intense rivalry.

Often after the games we go to the hotels where the teams stay in hopes of catching a glimpse of our heroes, snatching a few words of conversation, or collecting an autograph. One time we follow two Dodger players, Wes Parker and Jeff Torborg, to a movie theater, sit behind them, and mimic their every move. (doing the same thing now, hunching my shoulders, rolling my head back, nudging ol' Damian next to me, shit-eating grin on my face) Another time we meet Bill Sudakis, a Dodger rookie, in the hotel elevator, and he pinches my stomach and says, "Take care, kid," and I turn ten shades of red. Another time we knock on the Pittsburgh Pirates' announcers' room door, hoping to meet Bob Prince, the famed announcer, but instead meet his assistant Nellie King, who takes us out to breakfast and invites us the next day into the stadium announcing booth so we can see how a game is actually broadcast. One time we see Vin Scully walking down the street and Damian, in a state of great excitement, darts across the street yelling, "Vinnie! Vinnie! You're the greatest!" Scully's visibly startled, but still kind enough to give his number one fan an autograph.

There is never a dull moment during these trips to the City. If the crowds at the ballpark and in the streets are not enough to entertain us, we entertain ourselves by dancing in the streets, running zigzag courses like football halfbacks eluding tacklers through the throngs of people in the downtown area, playing slow-motion games of mime baseball or football in the aisles of the movie theaters, biting people's shoulders and scampering off like madmen, always spur-of-the-moment madness to make each other laugh. If I do something particularly original and insane that strikes Damian a certain way, he hits the ground as if shot by a bullet, curls up like a fetus in a struggle to catch his breath until seemingly ready to explode, then lets loose with a long, piercing scream, his arms and legs suddenly extended as if electrocuted. (laughing out loud now myself) -- Damn Damian, you're too much, man, too much. I love that scream laugh.

San Francisco becomes for us the gateway to the outside world. Although we live in a genuine paradise tucked away in the redwoods, impervious to the events of the 1960s -- the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement, the political assassinations, the drugs and sexual revolutions of that generation \-- we're becoming dissatisfied. There's too much to life, the world's too big, for us to be contained forever behind the redwood curtain. Innocence will not last forever. But while it does last, it's splendid. While the world remains a dream and we create our own diversions, life is one continuous joyride, a marathon APBA game played in a San Francisco hotel room.

A car horn from below reverberated through the hotel room and broke my train of thought. My focus fixed on the Picasso clown and his checkered outfit, which I now realized was a chessboard on which several pieces were moving about. Pablo's trick? I rubbed my eyes and craned my neck to get a better focus. I'll be damned if that isn't Damian. And me. Or at least one of my many me's. A different me from long ago, but part of me nonetheless. I'll call him David the Innocent, that's what I'll do. Oh, Innocent, what happened to you? Where did you go?

I took a drink of beer, set the can back on the table, and closed my eyes. The mushroom journey shifted into high gear and catapulted me to the time just after the court martial: Oh what a lonely feeling it is to be put behind bars, the sound of the cell door slamming behind me (which is so real in my head that I nearly jump out of the chair; heart pounding; body shivering) as I'm placed in solitary confinement for the first two days cause I'm supposed to be separated from the other prisoners until I'm given a medical checkup to make sure I have no communicable diseases, those first two days of pacing the floor of the eight-foot-long, four-foot-wide cell with its walls of concrete -- walls of concrete, walls of concrete, and, man the walls right now are breathing, moving, closing in on me, yes they are, don't believe it, boy, it's the 'shrooms it's the 'shrooms \-- its solitary bed with one blanket, its toilet with no seat, its one window looking out upon the desolate landscape, then after the checkup being allowed to join the other prisoners in a separate ward consisting of two cells, each with six beds and six lockers, a recreation room with a bookshelf containing western and romance novels, a ping pong table, and a TV we can watch for two hours in the evenings; yeah, there are four other prisoners, Steve the twenty-one-year-old guy from Los Angeles who's in jail for thirty days for punching his commanding officer over some petty regulation he broke, Jerome the twenty-year-old black from Chicago who went AWOL for six months and is waiting for his trial, John the Texan who was busted for drunk driving on base and is serving a twenty-day sentence, Bob the New Yorker who was also AWOL for a month, and for all of us the days pass slowly, the routine being to get up at six in the morning, clean the jail, go to breakfast at the chow hall with an armed guard, return to the jail to wait for our daily assignments of going to various spots around the base to perform menial chores like scrubbing toilets, digging ditches, stripping and waxing and buffing office floors, all kinds of general cleaning duties (it's not such a bad existence and sometimes I even run into David or Robert, my two buddies who are involved in running an underground antiwar paper, and they talk to me about the progress of the paper and turn me on to a few joints I can easily smuggle back into the jail as the guards don't frisk me when I come back to the jail in the evenings, and the nights are fairly relaxed), go to the chow hall again with one of the guards, return to the jail for a couple hours of ping pong, then get locked up in our cells at nine o'clock when the lights are turned off; Sundays we just lounge around the jail, sometimes get a visitor...

...the only visitor I get is David and there he is that one Sunday handing me four tabs of mescaline, and after he leaves I give one to Hank, the huge black guy who just entered the jail a couple days before, and it doesn't take long for us to become friends cause we're both big revolutionaries, I the conscientious objector, Hank the big Black Panther; there we are at the back of the jail eating our tabs, spending the rest of the day talking, giggling, discussing revolution, watching the jail pulsate and change colors -- just like the room is pulsating now and cool colors around me moving, waving, shimmering, and damn I'm cold \-- and now he's telling me he's joined the Air Force to get trained in the use of sophisticated weapons so he can later train other Black Panthers in guerrilla warfare in preparation for the violent revolution that's coming between whites and blacks across the nation, and pretty soon with tears streaming down his cheeks in a mescaline-induced display of emotion he says: "You a good man, David, an' I have nothin' but good feelin's towards you, man, but the day's gonna come when we gonna hafta blow all you mothafuckin' white boys away, even you, you see, cause it's the only way we blacks'll ever achieve total freedom from white control."

...(eyes blurring with tears; Hank's face right in front of me) and Hank kind of scares me with this talk and all the propaganda newspapers he shows me that have been smuggled in to him, but at the same time I feel excited in the same way I felt before in David and Robert's room when we talked revolution talk and I learned about Gandhi, Thoreau, Tolstoy, Marx, and others, but Hank's language is different from theirs and he talks about other men like Malcolm X and Eldridge Cleaver and Bobby Seal and in my heart I feel the black revolution is futile but still Hank's sincerity touches me and I feel I've traveled a thousand light years from my days of APBA and San Francisco baseball games and my old redwood home...

...Hank and I are now friends, every night we're smoking the pot I smuggle in, the pot given me by David or Robert when I happen to meet them during the hours spent doing details around the base in the daytime, (fumble with the joint; manage to light it; take two hits; put it down on the table; gaze for a second at the trails of movement my hand makes) and pretty soon two of the other prisoners begin to join Hank and me during the two hours of free time every night; it's like a big party getting stoned and all, and there we are in the back cell blowing the smoke through the barred window, which has a lever to open the glass to allow in fresh air, one of us standing guard in the front to make sure we aren't detected; the prison experience is becoming more pleasant or at least more tolerable, and then it happens: the fire alarm goes off one night and all six of us prisoners are hustled outside in what we are told is a fire drill; we stay outside for about fifteen minutes then are led back inside and the first thing I notice is the film capsule we've stored the pot in is sitting on a window ledge in the back cell; we completely forgot about it during the previous night's smoking session, so I pick it up and hand it to Hank, who stashes it in his locker, and a minute later I notice blue ink all over my hands so I go to the wash basin to try to wash it off and I look over at Hank and he's got the stuff all over his hands too and then in a flash the prison doors open and about ten guards, Central Intelligence Division agents, and the prison warden rush inside shouting orders; everyone freezes -- freezes, froze, frozen, helplessly frozen in mushroom spacetime. Hank, you OK? Can't get you outta my mind. \-- and Hank and I are separated from the others; the guards spread-eagle Hank against the wall and frisk him and he's screaming "You mothafuckas!" and one of the guards cracks him over the head with the butt of an M-16 and Hank slumps to the floor and is dragged into one of the solitary confinement cells; one of the guards shouts at me: "Boy, if you don't keep quiet, I'll bash your head, too."

...then I'm spread-eagled against the wall and another of the guards searches the lockers and finds the capsule of pot and I'm thrown into another confinement cell next to Hank's and through the walls I hear him singing, "Freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom. Sometimes I feel like a motherless child...a long, long, long way from my home, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah" and he keeps it up far into the night...

...there we are Hank and I the two big revolutionaries stuck in solitary for two days and the guards are checking on us every hour on the hour to make sure we haven't done anything drastic like committing suicide; our meals are brought to us twice a day on trays that are placed on the floor just inside the cell door, and now Hank isn't singing freedom songs so much but just scowling I imagine at the guards when they make their rounds, and twice a day we're taken out of the cells for interrogation sessions but neither of us says a word other than we want to see our lawyer, and finally on the second day our lawyer shows up at the jail and it takes him about two minutes to figure out that the guards and CID agents bungled their bust cause they didn't really catch us with any pot in our possession and the blue ink we had on our hands is just circumstantial evidence and he goes over to the window ledge where the pot was found and sprinkled with some kind of invisible fingerprinting powder that of course was the stuff that turned blue on our hands; so the lawyer runs his finger across the window ledge and gets the same blue ink all over it and proves to them that all Hank and I had to have done was accidentally touch the window ledge to get the stuff on our hands and in so doing blows a hole in their case against us, which could've added another year or so to our sentences, and now the rumor spreads all over the base about the keystone cops who busted their own prisoners inside their own jail and messed up the job so badly that they can't prosecute and the story appears in the underground paper and without our knowing it Hank and I are suddenly Robin Hood-type heroes, which makes the guards hate us even worse...

...I'm stuck in that solitary cell for the last two weeks of my stay at that base jail, and one day the guards come and take Hank away; don't know where they take him or what happens to him; -- Jesus, Hank whatever happened to you? I just know it was too wretched to fathom in this miserable world, oh why are we all fated to suffer? And all the other prisoners, too? What cosmic powers threw us all together and how many of us escaped? \-- (an icy breeze rushes through the room; shivering and bent over, head to my knees and eyes open; sadness of life just weighs me down till I'm on the floor and into a fetal position; groan twice before breaking into spasmodic sobs wracked with a guilt I don't understand; that emotion passes; drag myself back into the chair; quivering hands; light another cigarette; inhale deeply; lean back in the chair once more; exhale slowly; try to get my emotional bearings; look around; walls really are moving toward me this time, closing in on me...) -- just like the walls of that prison cell \-- (...shift my gaze to stop the movement; look once more at Picasso clown; by Christ that fucker, my alter ego really, moving around dancing, giggling sardonically, pointing a mocking finger at me) -- Hold on there David boy, get a hold of yourself, you're OK, don't let the 'shrooms control you, you gotta control them \-- nobody is talking to me anymore and being separated from the other prisoners I can't get any information anyway, so time passes in that little concrete cubicle, no contact with anyone until the day comes for me to gather up my few belongings and they're shipping me by plane to Denver to complete my six-month sentence at the 2230th Rehabilitation Group, where all the Air Force's nonviolent criminals are sent in the hope of rehabilitating them, retraining them in a different career field, and sending them back into service to complete the time remaining on their four-year obligations; the thing that surprises me most, however, is that there's no guard accompanying me on the plane, just spent two weeks in solitary and suddenly I'm on a plane and if I have the inclination I can just up and split to Canada or wherever and be a free man, well, maybe not so free, a kind of fugitive, but I decide not to do anything as rash as that and so there I am being greeted at the Denver Airport by an unarmed military policeman who drives me to Lowery Air Base and it's almost like basic training again the way we prisoners are herded into open bay barracks and given a strict daily regimen where we get up at four o'clock in the morning, all one hundred of us placed in each barracks, and have fifteen minutes to be shaved, showered, have our beds made and living areas spotlessly clean, and be down on the parade ground lined up in formation ready to be marched a mile away to the chow hall for a breakfast of cold toast and runny eggs; we have to be done eating by five-thirty as that's when the regular soldiers on the base begin their breakfast and of course the brass don't want the regulars rubbing shoulders with the prisoners, nonviolent as we may be, just part of our punishment...

...anyway it's quite a madhouse to see a hundred or so prisoners haggling and pushing and shoving over the ten showers and ten sinks in the latrine at the end of the hall and someone's always getting knocked down and tension's in the air but no way anyone can really fight cause if they do they'll get shipped out to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas for the remainder of their prison term and from what we all hear Leavenworth is worse than hell with its stories of brutal guards, hard labor, beatings, time spent in the "hole"; nightmare images are all we hear about the place, and when we return from the chow hall another hour is spent cleaning the barracks and then there's the morning inspection in which half of the prisoners have to remake their beds, redust every corner of their living spaces, stand at attention for two hours waiting for the head guard to reinspect the premises; then for the first two months we have to go to rehabilitation classes for five hours a day, and really to me they're more like brainwashing classes cause the military psychiatrists, chaplains, psychologists, doctors, instructors, all have one common theme, that is, to show us prisoners that our way of thinking is wrong and bad and nonconformist and that the only way to become human beings again is to follow the path they're providing for us, which in essence is to pound into our heads over and over again the fact that we've committed crimes against society and must change our way of thinking, our behavior, our very selves if we ever want to become worthy citizens and reenter the military and eventually society and carry on with lives of dignity and worth despite the terrible stigma of shame that is ours at the moment; they tell us they are in fact offering us a second chance, something that only a country as great as the United States would do for its citizens, something only a humane democracy would think of doing, and aren't we lucky to have this second chance, and if we blow this chance then God help us cause great as our country is we'll never be able to live a decent life if we don't allow ourselves to be rehabilitated -- What's that sound? Laughter? From the psychiatrists? Picasso's clown mocking me? \-- (feel deeply a shameful impotence; feel defeated, exhausted; heavy, helplessly frozen, imprisoned in spacetime again; stripped of will and soul, just like those brainwashers wanted) -- Tell me who I am. Picasso, Vincent, Hank, anybody out there, just tell me who I am, who I was. Please. \-- (tears gushing; difficulty in swallowing; mouth dry; take another drink of beer; more trails of the hand)...

...what the authorities say may be true for the other five hundred or so prisoners who are at the 2230th for crimes ranging from drug abuse to theft to being AWOL for over a year, but I'm the lone prisoner of conscience, a political prisoner so to speak, and all the therapy classes and private psychiatric sessions and role plays and discussions about morality and duty and obligation and correct thinking only serve to drive me deeper into myself cause I can see right away that the first step toward rehabilitation is for the prisoner to admit he was wrong to have committed his particular crime, and all around me the prisoners are playing the game, showing their willingness to do what's expected of them, and there the professional brainwashers are telling me over and over in their condescending avuncular manner how screwed up I am and what a big mistake I made and how I'll come around sooner or later and see the light, but I've already come too far to admit to having done anything wrong; it's almost as if I feel a perverted loyalty to my lawyer, David, Robert, Hank, the underground newspaper, and the "movement" for Christ's sake, and most of all to myself cause if I give in now then not only am I admitting I was wrong to the military, I'm also admitting weakness to family and others who doubt me, and burning deep inside of me is a stubbornness not to yield to any kind of renunciation by family or society, but still I do have some doubts myself about what I'm doing and these daily therapy sessions begin to put questions about everything in my head; the psychiatrists are too skilled at twisting my words and explanations of feelings around and at showing me the contradictions of what I say, the lack of logic, the inconsistencies, and they seize on my inarticulateness and turn it against me, and many is the time I want to fall on my knees and beg them to stop, to leave me alone, so I just quit talking to them, start giving them the silent treatment, but this only inspires them to play further with my mind, to show to me how insane I have become, and gradually ever so gradually I begin to believe them -- Those assholes did come pretty close to breaking me, didn't they? \-- (ribbon of light bursts through the hotel room window as if a sign to lift me out of despairing obsessing thoughts; diamonds of dust sparkle in the air; damn if the clown isn't now rolling a cup of APBA dice)...

...believe them until I stumble on the APBA idea -- Thank you very much God for that beam of beautiful, life-affirming light and that lift to my spirit. \-- which comes at about the point where I just want to escape the constant invasion of my private world and besides they have me so tongue-tied and disoriented that I can't think straight and as each day passes they're coming closer and closer to breaking me down; I mean, I can put up with the physical confinement cause it's not so bad, not much different from basic training and I survived that once and figure I can survive it again, but it's just this constant wearing down of my mental state that I can't take and I need some private place to retreat to where they can't reach and it finally dawns on me: APBA, yeah, APBA, the same game and mental exercise I used in high school to retreat from teenage fears and apprehensions, and yeah APBA once provided the perfect utopia for me, once captivated my every waking moment in such a blissful innocent joy that the real world at one point almost ceased to exist; and why not, they're already convinced of my insanity to have done something so absurd as to defy every young man's duty to fight halfway round the world in a war to save demo-crazy and crush the communist threat before it spreads to other countries in a domino effect until it reaches the shores of the United States, the greatest demo-crazy of all, and certainly I've kept my APBA case with me all through my Air Force experience, occasionally bringing the game out to pass certain lonely hours in my barracks room back at my first base but never with the same passion and intensity Damian and I played it way back in high school, but still I've brought the game along with my other belongings to the 2230th Rehabilitation Group, so I take it out of my locker and in the two hours free time we prisoners have every night I begin spreading the game boards and notebooks out on the little desk I'm allowed for writing letters and such and also take out the player cards of the 1967 National League season and the dice and dice cup, and now there I am rattling the dice, scooping them back up into the dice cup, marking down in the notebook each player's turn at bat, doing the announcing in a low mumble, escaping the misery of this prison time, replaying the games in my head during the psychiatric sessions, answering the psychiatrists' questions with answers pertaining to end-of-the-month batting averages, team standings, pitching leaders, and the psychiatrists just shake their heads and jot something down in their own notebooks...

...pretty soon some of the other prisoners, most of them black, start crowding around my desk in the evenings to relieve their own boredom and cheer for their favorite teams and some of them start talking about me and calling me "one gone dude" and cause there're a lot of drugs being smuggled into the prison, it being minimum security and all, they start turning me on to a joint here, a pipe of hash there, and two or three times a hit of LSD, and yeah there I am high on acid rattling the dice, listening to the cacophony of sounds surrounding me, and suddenly the overwhelming humor of the situation hits me and I break into a belly laugh I can't control cause everything seems so outlandishly hilarious and I know I'll survive this prison experience cause you see it's all one big joke not a nightmare at all and even in prison I'm able to make a few friends cause the clown in me hasn't died after all...

...yeah, those old prison friends, maybe the best of the bunch is Slick the black from Detroit who's still officially in the rehabilitation program even though he's served out his bad time cause he hasn't fully rehabilitated so in a sense he's like a free man cause he can leave the base sometimes and go into downtown Denver and meet the brothers on the streets and score some stuff and smuggle it back on base and pass it on to some of his buddies; I guess he trusts me cause I'm the only white guy who'll play basketball on Sundays on the outdoor courts in the snow and cold and yeah ol' Slick's a great guy, one of the many Kerouackean "Dharma Bums" I've met on many roads and I'll never forget the times he brings me back a sandwich or something from the chow hall that week I'm laid up with a sprained ankle I've gotten coming down with a rebound on some guy's foot and can't march the mile in the snow to the chow hall...

...getting back to my APBA strategy, I'm lucky the authorities start leaving me alone after I start playing the game, they must figure it's a waste of time to try to rehabilitate me, and after that the therapy sessions end and they put me to work every day doing the same stuff as before, clean-up details, K.P., shoveling snow, and oh once in a while they're nitpicky like the time the drill sergeant has me do two hours of close order drill by myself on the parade ground cause I was out of step marching to breakfast that morning and there he is barking commands, about face, to your left, to your right, that kind of stuff, the other prisoners looking on and getting their kicks, but still it ain't that bad considering how I'm back at my desk that night, APBA dice rattling, the same group of bored blacks hanging out listening to my announcing of the game, giving me a hard time, good-naturedly, and finally one night the prison warden pays a visit and I explain honestly that I'm not going to change my mind about rehabilitation, that I'm just as stubborn as the psychiatrists and instructors and I don't care if I get a bad discharge and I just want to get out of the military and it's a waste of time for the military to keep me in after my prison sentence is over; he nods as if in agreement, and in the end that's exactly what happens: I get kicked out with an "undesirable" discharge and a new life starts, one in which I become "incurably forlorn," as Melville wrote about Bartleby, with whom I form a complete identification years later because my single sentence repetition of "I don't feel I'm mentally or physically capable of killing another human being" to my commanding officer's order to proceed to Nam was in effect not unlike Bartleby's "I would prefer not to" and provoked in my commanding officer the same consternation as in Melville's narrator; Bartleby, indeed, the world's ultimate conscientious objector...

I shifted in the chair and took a deep breath. I guess that me was Clown Number Two. Or better yet, David the No Longer Innocent. Nah, that's too moronic. How about David the Bartleby CO? Yeah, that's rather cool. At any rate, another player on Pablo's chessboard.

I rolled my neck slowly, and as it popped and visions exploded in my head and my mind was spinning like a ball on a roulette wheel the sudden AIINNNGG GONNNGGG GIINNGG GAANNNGGG of the Oude Kerk bell yanked me out of the chair and forward toward the window and my focus shifted to the outside world. It took a moment to adjust to the warping and blurring and waving of everything in my field of vision. My nerves were tingling.

The sun broke through the clouds again. I lifted my face to soak in the warmth beaming in from outside. The warmth permeated my entire body and loosened my taut muscles. The buildings were in motion. A BMW cruised up the street below. -- Just like the BMW Hasan was driving the morning we left Ankara heading east.

On that April morning in 1977 a freezing wind is blowing dust in miniature twisters across the bleached land and ahead of us are sun-baked hills with stone-and-mud houses scattered throughout and in the distance lie looming, white mountains and the bright sun gives the illusion of what lies ahead as a shimmering landscape with a ripple of white rising beyond.

"This could be dangerous from here, David-jan," Hasan says. "It is still winter and there are bandits in the mountains. The road has much ice and they can easily stop cars on the road. There are still many gypsy types in the mountains. Yes, it is true. Four months ago they robbed and cut off the heads of three tourists. So when we go, we take three or four cars. The bandits only stop the single cars. There is no problem."

Then we're driving on in silence for about an hour and Hasan turns to me, smiles, and says, "The next twelve to eighteen hours will probably be the worst. All Iranians are afraid to go through this country in the dark. When they go, they go during the day and in caravans. They are afraid of the bandits. Maybe I think I will be one of the first to cross alone in the dark. What do you think? This is adventure, yes?"

"I think we'll make it."

"Insha'allah, God willing."

We're driving into the hills, climbing steadily as mounds of arid, brown-yellow soil and rock roll smoothly into mounds of a darker purple-brown, shadows growing longer. We pass a grave. The road's now empty. The land looks cadaverous.

"You see what I mean," Hasan says, shifting gears. "There are no cars. This is the really dangerous part. These people that live in the mountains, sometimes they come down to the road at night. They can look from far away and see if a car is alone. Then they can put a huge stone in the road to stop it. Many people have been killed for being so stupid. Maybe we can find a bus in Sivas and follow it. But don't worry, David-jan. If they come, I know what to do. I am not afraid. I will just run over them and kill them. I am crazy enough to do it. The bastards! Sometimes they come after you in an old car and pull over in front of you, but if that happens I will not let them overtake me. I will run them off the road. This car does not matter when it is life or death. The bastards!

"It is very dangerous when you have something on top of your car. So many Iranians are crazy because they bring so much back from Europe with them. It is like inviting the bandits to come after you. I have heard many stories. But we will make it, Insha'allah. Maybe we will stay in Sivas."

The road has many potholes and rocks, but Hasan's in control and I'm feeling secure with him at the wheel as the BMW seemingly flies over the road, avoiding the potholes, and we're climbing higher into the hills where strong winds are blowing. We pass sparse, wind-sculpted brush, thin patches of snow, and an occasional mountain village where the soil has been worked by hand. Darkness is now on us as we stop in Amasya, a remote village, for gas and tea. Inside the teahouse are some fat Turks playing backgammon, smoking cigarettes and hookahs, (take a hit off my own cigarette) and drinking tea. They have oily skin and long eyelashes. The teahouse has a rancid, sweaty smell.

We're on the road again and Hasan has me take the wheel. There's no traffic. My brain's filled with Hasan's stories of decapitated tourists and I feel an accumulating excitement. Shadows along the road jump at me. Around every corner lie expectations of a boulder or log with fifty bandits prepared for plunder. I have a sense of alternating abstraction and terrific concentration.

Hasan retakes the wheel after about three hours. "You drove well, David-jan. Your concentration was good. It is not easy to drive this road. It is not for the unafraid or the meek. It is very dangerous here, but if you like adventure, this is it. I think I am the only Iranian to ever travel this road at night. The truck driver back there in Amasya, the one carrying the cars, he told me I was crazy. But I told him I am not afraid. Allah is with us."

We're in the high mountains. Snow is everywhere and the road is icy. At the top of a high ridge there's a crude restaurant, the only stopping point for many miles. We stop for tea. The owner is an amiable man and speaks with Hasan about the condition of the road. We warm ourselves by his fire. After a few minutes we continue.

The weather changes. In a matter of seconds the clear sky turns into a blinding snowstorm. The driving snow shoots against our windshield like thousands of tracer bullets. Hasan deftly turns the car around and guides us safely back within a couple of kilometers of the restaurant before we're forced to stop. We cover ourselves with our sleeping bags, lock the car doors, and wait for the storm to subside.

I wake feeling as if sealed in a tomb of white. Hasan wakes about the same time. We crack our windows to see light flakes of snow still falling, but without the intensity of the night before. We get out to clean the snow and ice off the car. A few yards away are three men, one on a half-dead horse and the other two to one side, staring at us through steely, black eyes. They're wrapped in worn and dirty sheepskin coats. Long knives protrude from their belts.

Hasan tugs at my elbow and whispers, "Kurds. Mountain gypsies. You stay here and let me talk. They will not do anything as long as they don't know what we have. You get back in the car and reach under your seat as if you have a gun. Don't show any fear and all will be well, Insha'allah."

(gripping the table in front of me) I do as told. Hasan walks within a few feet of the three men and stops. He speaks to the man on the horse, the elder. They exchange a few words, then Hasan returns to the car.

"Reach in the glove box and give me my wallet. Do it slowly. While you do it, keep your eyes on the horseman and stare in his eyes. He thinks you have a gun and he must keep thinking that. He wants twenty lira for sleeping on his land. The bastard! But we must pay. There will be no trouble that way."

Hasan walks back and hands the horseman the money. They say something to each other. The Kurds turn and disappear slowly into the sea of white. Hasan returns, gets in the car, and starts the engine.

"That was very close," he says, letting out a long breath. Then he laughs. "So what do you think, David-jan? This is adventure, yes? We were lucky. Allah was with us. But I knew what to say. I praised his horse and his fine sons. The filthy bastards! I spit on their graves! He said we are on a ridge and the road is better in a few kilometers. We must try the road or he may be back with more Kurds."

Hasan eases the car slowly into motion. An ominously beautiful white surrounds us. The outline of the mountains is indistinguishable. Snow flurries blow crossways making it difficult to see. Hasan's concentration is remarkable. He guides the BMW as if he knows the road instinctively.

Soon the road becomes easier to mark as we descend from the peak. Then the road rises again. The wind increases as we approach another peak. Snow flurries envelop us. Four trucks are stopped near the peak. We have to stop with them. One of the trucks moves out. Everyone follows, going on the assumption the road can only get better. In a few kilometers we can see ahead and discern three buses in the distance. The road is icy, but there is some traction as the road is full of rocks and potholes.

For the next four hours our progress is the same: twenty to thirty kilometers per hour, Hasan maneuvering the sliding BMW ahead of the trucks and buses for fear of not being able to start again if forced to stop, the road rising to summits where wind flurries are a blinding white and hurt the eyes, then dipping to lower elevations where boulders of slush and white mud crash against the sides and frame of the car, always Hasan finding areas of the road with traction where other vehicles can't and are forced to stop. At one point we pass Salur, a mountain village of about twenty-five rock huts covered with snow. The land around us is more remote and beautiful than anywhere I've ever seen, but I wonder how these mountain people can survive the winters.

We hit another low elevation and Hasan begins to speed over the muck and slush of the rocky road. Suddenly, we smash into flocks upon flocks of small brown and yellow birds. -- Van Gogh's crows transformed? \-- (I wince and swallow hard; sun disappears behind the clouds; room grows colder; shivers run up and down my spine) There are thousands of them on the road, drawn to the warmth of the mud. Hasan plows into them. For a good twenty kilometers this continues, Hasan speeding along at a hundred and twenty kilometers per hour, honking, braking, flicking his headlights to scatter them. The birds fly in all directions like a grotesque parting of the Red Sea. The sky is full of birds. Hundreds of them ricochet off the windshield, the headlights, and the front bumper, making dull, thudding sounds. It begins snowing again. It's a morbid scene: snow pellets shooting at us and an endless wall of birds pitching away from us. -- No escaping these birds. No way out. Where's the fuckin' wheat field?

Hasan's laughing. "Some hungry man will have a feast. The sparrow meat is sweet and good." Then his tone changes. "I don't want to kill them. They are too nice. It is spring for them, too. They want to live. But that is the order of nature. I cannot stop and wait two months for them."

The birds disappear when we reach Erzincan, a foul city full of beggars, mud, slop, and neglect. We continue without stopping, a look of disgust and hatred written on Hasan's face. We drive on into the savage, white land.

About an hour from Erzurum, we come to the worst part. The road is solid ice. At the top of an incline there has been a wreck involving a bus and a truck. Other cars are pulled over. Several bodies are stretched out on the side of the road. A few peasants are attending the injured.

"We cannot stop, David-jan. These peasants are doing what they can for those who are hurt. We can do nothing more for them. Most of them will die. It will take more than a day to get them to a hospital and there are no real doctors in these mountains, only those who perform suspicious medicine and take your money. It is sad, but we must continue. Besides, these are Turks and they would as soon kill us and take our money and car and leave the others to die anyway."

We pass the scene slowly. Rivulets of blood streak the snow. (and drip in the corners of my mind; uneasy now, feeling as if a violent thunderstorm is approaching, ready to unleash its fury) Those who notice us stare with hollow and lifeless expressions.

Now we're behind a group of trucks and some cars driven by Europeans and the procession is moving slowly up another steep incline.

Hasan's pissed off again. "These idiots! People think it is so easy. They drive these cars from Germany to Iran for five hundred marks. They play with their lives. They make it dangerous for others because they are afraid. They are stupid idiots!"

Hasan maneuvers the BMW, slipping and sliding on the ice, to the front of the pack. All along the road cars are pulled to the side. Only Hasan manages to keep moving. We approach another incline, but have to stop when a truck forces us to the side of the road. We can get no traction to go forward. Hasan backs to the side of the road, where a foot or two of gravel is exposed. Another two feet to the side is a steep precipice. Snow begins falling again. An icy wind stirs up more flurries. I get out of the car and within thirty seconds am covered with snow. I push while Hasan guns the car up the incline. I run after the car, slip on the ice, catch up, open the passenger door, and jump in. At the moment we cross the top of the incline, the BMW runs out of gas. We coast down the other side for seven kilometers to Askale, where, luckily, we're able to buy some gas.

We push on until arriving in Erzurum, where we spend the night in a squalid hotel room. The next morning we leave the city. The road's open and we're traveling in a caravan of six cars. Hasan takes the lead. We take an alternate route that leads us into the mountains on the way to Agris near the Turkish-Iranian border. In the high hills is a honeycomb of caves filled with outcast families. The BMW passes stone huts with turf roofs and cone-shaped earth mounds where mountain people dwell.

We descend to a lower area. The sun breaks through the opaque sky. The ice on the gravel road is melting. Here and there are trucks off the side of the road, stranded as no vehicles can rescue them until the snow melts completely. One tipped-over truck has a tent pitched next to it. There are about ten scavengers milling about. Half are children, the rest harridans and worn-out men. They see our car approaching and begin walking toward the road. The walkers move through the snow as if in a trance. Thin and ugly people, coarse-featured, thick-lipped, insolent, savage-eyed, they look as if they're waiting for something, hungry for something. We lock our doors. (heart's pounding; grinding my teeth; old woman's voice rises up from the street) Grim-faced, Hasan guns the accelerator and races by them. Some of them pound on the BMW with their fists and grab at the windows as we pass by.

"A man would be a fool to travel this at night alone. It would be inviting death," Hasan says.

My hands are shaking. My body feels like ice. -- Mine, too, frozen solid, petrified. Jesus. \-- I don't look back.

On and on we continue. The others in the caravan have safely passed the scavengers. Time passes and we come to the top of an icy pass where at least fifty trucks are stuck. At the bottom of the hill two trucks are completely off the road. The road's not wide enough for the two trucks to pass each other, but they tried anyway and failed. Now all the other trucks are backed up in both directions. It appears there's just enough room for a small car to squeeze through. Hasan gives it a try. Near the point where the two trucks slid off the road, we hit an icy patch. -- Hold on tight, boy, we're losing it! \-- The BMW swerves to the side of the road into a snow-filled ditch just behind one of the trucks. We get out and begin digging. Eight of the truck drivers help us get the car back on the road. We're caked with mud, and our hands and toes are nearly frozen. The others in the caravan make it through safely. We're on our way again, but the trucks will probably be stranded for days along with the traffic that stacks up behind them.

We drive on without incident. A few times we pass a truck stranded off the side of the road, but see no more scavengers. The only life we see is an occasional flock of black and white sheep tended by dark shepherds who live with their families in stone huts built into the sides of the snow-covered hills.

We enter Agris, another squalid military outpost where Soviet tanks and troop transport trucks are scattered on the sides of the road. We stop in a back alley restaurant. Hasan inspects the kitchen before we eat kebab with rice and cream yogurt. We're about three hours from the border.

The road grows worse. The potholes become larger and more numerous. We're at the back of the caravan. Trucks approaching from the opposite direction splatter the BMW with slush and thick, brown muck. It's blinding and makes driving difficult. One truck sprays us with small stones and the windshield cracks.

We climb atop another plateau to find two of the caravan stopped. One of the drivers, the German, has been forced off the road and hit a boulder sunken in the snow. He has a flat tire. The other man is one of the Iranians, a strong and quiet man whose arms ripple with muscles. A raging wind blows snow flurries over the road. The temperature is below zero. Wearing only a light sweater and no gloves, the Iranian changes the tire. The German watches in awe. Behind and below us lies an ocean of white. It's as if we're floating on top of a world of clouds. The wind howls. (head's exploding; swallowing colors of sound)

We're back on the road, trailing the other two as darkness approaches. Hasan's on another tirade.

"We are moving too slow. When it is dark, the road is too dangerous. These stupid idiots! We will be lucky to make the border like this. But we must travel in a pack because their spare tires are being used. If something will happen to another tire, it can be their death. They will freeze or the bandits will come. Fucking bastards! Sons of bitches! Look, David-jan. He doesn't know how to drive. He is afraid. He crawls through the holes in the road like a coward dog. He must go faster. It's worse for the car to go the speed he is going. The bastard! Look how he brakes when a car comes at him. I see these freaks all the time. They get paid five hundred marks and think it is like driving in Europe. Sons of bitches! He makes it dangerous for everyone."

We drop out of the last elevation to the lower ground. We're out of the snow. The road is muddy, but getting better. We pass two more villages of mud hovels where wild dogs roam the streets. Finally, we reach the border. Hundreds of trucks and cars are backed up. We'll have a long wait to cross over into Iran.

My body was all tensed up again and I was gripping the windowsill. I sat back down in the chair and lit another cigarette. I tapped the ashes into the ashtray several times, concentrating on the sound of my finger against the cigarette. So who was that me? David the Wandering Hippie? Spiritually ailing and adrift in an alien world, as Pablo said?

I got up again, groped my way into the bathroom, turned on the tap, and splashed water over my face. I looked into the mirror and saw a grotesque image staring back at me. Van Gogh's self portrait with all those swirling colors. -- Jesus, that's me in India. -- I returned to the chair, plopped down, and closed my eyes. -- India. Good God, India.

Now there's that beggar woman being led down the aisle of the train coach and she's on a leash and being lightly twitched with a willow stick by the man who is holding the leash. Her head is shaped like an ugly, distorted pyramid with the jaw and mouth forming the base. I'm looking up toward the eyes, now the forehead, and now the top of the head where it narrows to almost a flat point. A metal band is wrapped around her forehead. Moving in spastic jerks, she places her right hand in front of her and makes grunting noises in the way of begging for money. No one seems to pay her any mind, but I'm gawking and can't take my eyes off her. -- I've never seen anything like this before. For Christ's sake, doesn't anyone even care? \-- A porter ushers the two of them to a third-class car containing various animals.

Another passenger nudges me with a grin and says, "Untouchable."

"Pardon me."

"She is an Untouchable. That band was placed around her head at birth so the brain would not grow. It is the only way she can bring money to her family. Her life is good only for begging."

"That's sick." I want to strangle this guy.

"That is India."

The train arrives at the old section of Delhi. A seething swarm of people surrounds me. Everywhere skinny, brown rickshaw drivers and hawkers of cheap goods clamor for attention. One swoops me up, takes my duffel bag, hooks it onto his bicycle rickshaw -- Is he that clown? I can't get away from him. Why's he dogging me like some kind of irritating asshole? Malcolm! Get him out of here! \-- and drives me to a bazaar area where I can find a cheap room.

...now we're passing through narrow, winding streets and wide bazaars littered with debris and thick, intimate odors filling the air as women in tattered rags with cracked, yellow feet and rings in their noses stand cooking stews of begged vegetables over smoky fires and children run back and forth, some pissing on their toes and Jesus Christ look at all the cripples walking the streets there alongside half-naked natives with elephantiasis, with jaundice, with pellagra, with paralysis, all scooting about or assisted by various wooden supports and carts; thousands of people with rickets, leprosy, skin diseases, and bloated bellies are moving through the filth of the streets, and old English buses, bicycles, scooters, taxis, horse-drawn carts, camel-drawn carts, human-drawn carts, all carrying different cargo, are competing for limited space; and there's an elephant ambling down one street, its rider seated upon a howdah; my senses are assaulted on all sides...

...now I'm in a brick cubicle in a ramshackle hotel and the only furniture is a charpoy bed and in the corner is a squat toilet; there's a single window overlooking a narrow street in the bazaar and the tumultuous crowd in the street; the heat in the room is suffocating and I've got to get out of there. -- What's happening to me, dear God? How long's this gonna last? Why me? What am I doing here? Is this my life?...

...now I'm out there walking the streets for the next few days and everywhere there's poverty, hunger, disease, violence, nightmare misery and I'm walking through the refuge quarter of the city to stare at the chained-off society as if it's a perverse circus sideshow; poverty-stricken and diseased people are living there in houses built of tins and boxes; their faces smug, their eyes shining with a sleek look, they seem almost glad of their misery and they're scattered all about in every pose of contorted collapse; look at those people with catalepsy, with tuberculosis, with syphilis, with all sorts of worms and eye diseases and look at the old men sitting there, wrinkled and hideous and staring back at me, and look at the others lying prostrate about these chained-off streets, their faces gaunt and colorless; when they close their eyes, they look as if they're dead; my God the lepers are spotted head to foot with sores that are covered with a dirty, whitish foam and there's an awful stench pouring forth from their putrid limbs; some of them are clawing their fingernails upon themselves in a frenzy over their itching skin. -- I can't take much more of this. I'm gonna lose my head. I know I am....

...I'm down to my last hundred dollars and riding a bus from Delhi to Calcutta and one vista's shifting into another, my head spinning from the displacement of hill and air, of haze and all the shades of green and brown, and along the road there are all kinds of animals and people: green parrots flying across the road; fat, black water buffaloes ambling slowly along; monkeys and apes performing acrobatics on the cornices of houses; elephants and zebus, half-asleep, deliberately stepping between staring, waving groups of people; peacocks shrieking at the bus; half-naked figures squatting around flickering fires, preparing evening meals; bandy-legged men in the bus spitting betel juice from their red lips through the windows; there's no end...

...I'm in Calcutta now and it's a mass of tenements, hovels, temples, mosques, shrines, warehouses, shops, and factories, and hanging over the city is the smoke of thousands of cow-dung fires, and crows -- Crows, my God, more crows, those awful black crows. Vincent, why are you doing this to me? \-- yes crows are prodding the bodies of those who have neither the will power nor the energy to destroy themselves by their own hands...

...as some do, like that one man who leaps in front of a train pulling into a station and after the train passes he's on his back, his legs amputated at the waist and bleeding profusely, his hands extended upward, his wild shrieks sounding like the laughter of a madman (which reverberates in my head; terror and fear of my own powerlessness grip me; ego's dead and gone now; will is threatening to turn against itself) \-- Was he me? That alter ego clown? What? \-- before he finally collapses and his lips move for a moment as if he will speak and blood flows fast from his mouth and then he lies still, his eyes open and staring wildly at the sky...

...(tears gushing down my face; room is stuffy; try to breathe slowly, deeply; try to open my eyes; they won't; they insist I ride this roller coaster through to the end; car shifts gears in the street; voices rise up, but they're still far away and this India shit is so damn close; runaway train) -- Gotta ride it out. Gotta ride it out. -- and now I'm passing through a leper colony that's on the other side of a railway bridge and not far away is a vast garbage dump where some of the lepers lie on beds inside mud huts with their limbs bandaged; there's one boy sitting against an outside wall, his arms and legs smeared with a blue ointment and next to him another child whose finger stumps are raw and bleeding; and now there's a woman using the gray stump of her hand like a wooden spoon to stir a pot of steaming liquid (two sobs explode from my chest like poison)...

...later I'm walking along the Hooghly River and it's silted badly from the ashes of cremated bodies; garbage lines the streets and more than once I see resting in the piles of garbage a dead baby whose skin's parched and cracked (another heaving sob); it's just too much so I buy a bottle of rotgut wine from a black market dealer, get drunk, and pass out on the streets...

...God, let me die. There's too much suffering in the world, at least that's what I was thinking when I was living that nightmare long ago, but really what was it I learned from all that horror? The horror, oh the horror. Yes, it was the look in the eyes of those people that scared me, not so much their physical suffering but their own acceptance of their suffering. Yes, that was it. The acceptance of their own suffering! That's what I saw. And what scared me most was they felt no pity for themselves, no one there felt pity for those suffering souls, and what I saw in their eyes was pity for me! Yes, pity for me in all my superior western morals and values and upbringing and education and way of looking at the world, and despite all that I -- perhaps as a symbol or representative of the culture I came from, that same culture bent on consuming the raw materials of the earth and prosecuting so many wars and sacrificing thousands of her own while killing millions from other cultures -- had not found a place in the world while they had. Oh yes, that scared the livin' shit outta me, let me tell you, and I knew my life was worthless at that moment, all life was worthless, and from that moment on a huge question mark was violently placed on top of everything I'd ever believed in and I guess that me is David at the Bottom and Pablo how can I rearrange that character and those events?...

...(eyes blurred from tears; fumble for another cigarette; take a long swig of beer; room is shaking; I'm shaking; trees and walls shaking) -- It feels like an earthquake in here, a real goddamned earthquake....

The mushrooms slammed my head forward to January 17, 1995.

There I am in Kyushu with Kaori about seven-thirty in the morning and we've just turned on the TV; at first there are some pictures from a news helicopter hovering above Kobe and trying to assess the earthquake damage; the newscaster is telling commuters in Kobe and Nishinomiya to stay home as some of the main lines are closed; gradually the nightmare images start appearing -- a collapsed section of the Hanshin Expressway; trains flipped on their sides; many sections of track snapped in two or torn loose; cars catapulted off the toppled sections of elevated expressway; pancaked commercial buildings in downtown Sannomiya; ruptured water and gas mains; entire neighborhoods engulfed in flames; the numbers of dead, missing, and injured rising into the hundreds, then thousands -- and we sit riveted to the television all day until finally I tear myself away about one in the morning because I'm tired and have to work the next day and I wake at five in the morning to Kaori's sobs and get up to embrace her while she points to the TV screen showing the inferno engulfing Nakata-ku and cries out, "That's where I used to live. I know people who live there. That's where I used to live."

I swallowed hard.

No time to think of a name for that me because it's suddenly three years later and I'm getting up early on another January morning, my arthritic ankles and sprained knee taking longer than usual to function; I'm taking a painful, teeth-grinding bicycle ride in the cold to the hospital and arrive at Kaori's room at ten o'clock to see her laughing and joking, already the cheerleader for all the patients on the cancer ward; the nurses come in later to prepare her for surgery and they stick a tube down her nose, give her a shot, wash the polish off her toe nails, dress her in a green smock and night cap, and put her on a gurney while outside in the hallway several patients line up to wave and cheer her on; then the nurses wheel her out of the room and into the hallway, where Kaori waves at everyone and says, "I'll be back soon" in Japanese. -- Kaori, you were so brave, so brave that day....

...a lump forms in my throat and tears well in my eyes as we take the elevator to the second floor, and there's barely time to lean down and kiss her before the nurses wheel her into the operating room; the two hours in the waiting room drag on for an eternity before the surgeon finally appears and calls me into a side room, where he outlines on a whiteboard the details of the surgery and explains that everything has gone according to plan except for one detail: the tumor was slightly larger than anticipated, so he cut out a larger section than planned, including the duodenum...

...there he is showing me the removed section of Kaori's stomach; it's in a Tupperware container filled with ice and the mass of pink matter looks like a flattened squid with its tentacles cut off and I can see the cancer itself looking like a pale bruise on the pinkish slime and it has little white strands spreading outward and the surgeon's handling the stuff with wooden chopsticks and I feel like I'm going to be sick...

...at that moment Kaori's wheeled out of the operating room, barely conscious, her eyes glazed over, and she makes a weak attempt to flash the "V" sign before being wheeled into the intensive care room; I'm allowed a few minutes at her bedside and I touch her arm and say, "Can you feel me?" and a barely audible "yes" escapes her mouth as she smiles weakly, then says, "I'm cold." -- I love you Kaori. I really do. Where would I be without you? What would I've done if I'd lost you?...

A hundred more vignettes marched across the stage of my mushroom mind, a phantasmagoria of my entire life from Little League baseball and high school basketball glory and family relationships in the early days, on to prison dramas, the journeys far and wide, all the characters of those multiple episodes, and all the intellectual explorations of why, why, why, what is the meaning of all this, the mind twisting left and right down philosophical and religious avenues, and then finally reaching the stage where I wasn't questioning anymore, just merely accepting that all things, all experiences, all people thrown onto my path at certain moments, had been absolutely natural, preordained and perhaps even my own personal angels sent to guide me, and at that moment I was Enlightened, for Christ's sake, and my face was one big Cheshire Cat grin, and all was right, I felt right, and I thought, Yes, it's great to be back again!

Then came the crashing BOOM BOOM BOOM of someone knocking on the door, which propelled me into the kind of paranoia that has the potential to go wrong and you have to deal with decisions, game-playing, and all kinds of imaginings of what the interrupting people, straight people, who now surround you are thinking and planning concerning your own miserable little existence, and...

What? Gotta move. Gotta snap out of it long enough to go straight for a moment, take up the challenge, and confront this intruder. I took a deep breath, willed the body to move, and found myself shouting, "Just a minute!" and suddenly giggling because there you have it, I just took control of everything, like I always had, and now I was walking over to the door and opening it, and...

Whoa Nelly! There was a beautiful, young, black maid in a maid's uniform smiling and asking in a melodic accent: "Would you like me to come back later, sir? I can come back later." And her face had a glow around it like everything else, and behind that smile lay the history of Africa and I felt an immediate warmth and security in her presence, and all I could do was just smile and say, "Yeah, come back in a while. I'll be going out soon, anyway." And she smiled and said "OK" and turned around and disappeared into a fog of dark orange shadows, and now I was back more or less in the present again and had a new energy prodding me to move it, to get out there in the world and dig on all those strange people.

Chapter 5

I waited for a minute, then poked my head out the door and looked around the corner. The coast was clear and there were no people to confront. I stepped outside, closed the door behind me, locked it, put the key in my pocket, and headed into the orange fog. The passageway led to a narrow staircase on the right about ten meters away. Going down the staircase was a tricky business as it felt like it had been made for midgets. I gripped the wooden banister tightly, breathed slowly, concentrated on each step, and navigated the way as it went downward in a semi-spiral.

A crowd of people was in the lobby, but no one took notice of me as I passed through and exited onto the street. I stood for a while, breathing in the fresh air, getting my bearings, adjusting my senses to the new world of sounds, sights, and smells on the ground level, then headed off into the labyrinth of the Red Light District.

I walked slowly, keeping my eyes on the ground, watching the slow progression of each step on the cobbled street, engrossed simultaneously in my inner journey and in the outer vortexes of sensation I passed through. Sounds, smells, and brushes of wind and sun on my skin slowed down as I approached each vortex, then sped up again as I broke through into its opposite side as if I were a piece of sand passing through a succession of hour glasses. Snippets of conversation swirled about my head.

"They're now in a position where the government is very reticent about..."

"The reason for my success in furniture is..."

"...and I went up to this English boy and said..."

"You can say him come in Venesday..."

"That one with the eyes is scary."

"Looks like he came from the ironworks of hell."

I was unconscious of time passing. The sun, shadows, movements of people, their voices, and the wind prodded me forward until I was standing in front of the Bluebird coffee shop. Rock 'n' roll music was playing inside. It pulled me in like a magnet. I stepped inside the entrance and was greeted by the soft, soothing blues and greens of the wall murals and houseplants. A few people were seated at tables relaxing. I was past the mushroom peak now and buzzing pleasantly. I climbed a narrow staircase to the second floor. To my right was a small bar with five stools.

"I'll have a cup of coffee, please," I said.

I reached in my pocket and pulled out a few bills. I didn't have the concentration necessary to figure out what they were worth, so I handed the money to the bartender, who smiled at me, took the necessary amount for the coffee, and handed me back the rest.

When my coffee came, I went to the counter across from the bar and sat down next to a man who was reading a Dutch newspaper. In front of me was a large window looking out on the street. I sipped my coffee slowly and watched the movement of passersby. After a while, intrigued by the paintings on the walls, I got up to take a little tour around the rest of the bar. One painting in particular fascinated me. A large eagle was swooping down on a plant blooming with human fetuses. The eagle's wings were spread widely, its sharp talons stretched out as if to attack, the tip of its beak a glowing crimson. Its eyes bored into my head and held me in a hypnotic trance. -- Is this another omen? A messenger sent from the grave to warn me of some calamity? Nah, can't be. It's gotta have something to do with The Black Eagle head shop, Pablo, the Magic Theater, symbolism, what? \-- I broke free of its grip and moved on to a corner of the room where a large sofa surrounded a low table that had a tall hookah in the center. I plopped down next to three other stoned customers, closed my eyes, and sank back into the sofa.

The urgent voice of Edwin Starr belting out WAR -- HUH -- WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? ABSOLUTELY NOTHIN' jolted through me. WAR -- I DESPISE -- CAUSE IT MEANS DESTRUCTION OF INNOCENT LIVES -- and once again I was tumbling through earlier days. Relationships and images of Vietnam War vet buddies with black eagle heads on their shoulders spun in my mind. WAR HAS SHATTERED MANY YOUNG MEN'S DREAMS -- Yes, it has. Yes, it has. \-- and Jesus there was ol' Harrison Gant my buddy of long ago hovering in there and now his story unfolded in my mind.

Harrison's three years older than I. In high school he's one of the top athletes in the county, not to mention an all-county football, basketball, and baseball player and active in drama and school politics -- has the lead role in two school plays and is student body president his senior year. He's hot-tempered and likes to fight. He ends up drafted into the Army after graduating, spends a year in Vietnam, returns to marry his high school sweetheart, and soon has two children.

There I am not long after I return to Arcata from my 1973 European journey and I join a hippie slow-pitch softball team that Harrison is on. Everyone's afraid of him because he's fought frequently since his return from Nam. It's not really his size that intimidates them -- at six-three and a hundred and ninety pounds, he's big but not overwhelmingly so -- but rather his attitude. He's simply not afraid of anything or anyone. When he fights, he won't quit till either he or the other guy can no longer move. What's strange is that at times he's the most compassionate and gentle of men. The sight of children at play is enough to make him cry. At other times, he leers at the whole of mankind with a look of such misanthropy, condescension, and evil that you feel he could kill with just the slightest provocation.

I spend a considerable amount of time with Harrison. I like his strangeness. After my prison experiences and feeling myself something of a cowardly pariah, I see Harrison as another lost and confused soul, damaged by his war experiences. I can empathize with his rage and anarchy.

He's a forceful speaker and we spend many hours together smoking joints, drinking, taking LSD, and discussing sports, study, and our experiences. I'm a good listener for his prodigious monologues on the elements of revolution and philosophy. He often chastises me, calling my writing attempts "juvenile stories." He implores me to get on with the serious work of literature.

"Together," Harrison often declares confidently, "we will overcome the chains by which society has bound us. Our lives are meant for greater things than our contemporaries. We're both dreamers. That's what separates us from the others."

Harrison's the first man to encourage my writing. I half believe his grandiose schemes. Later I move to Los Angeles, find a clerical job, and begin preparing for a return trip to Europe to write my first novel.

One Saturday about three months after I move to L.A., Harrison shows up at my apartment door. He's hitchhiked eight hundred miles, bringing with him a small suitcase filled with some clothes and two ounces of Columbian pot. He says he heard I moved to L.A. to begin work on some serious writing, and he's now here to start serious work on a project of his own. He's also dropped out of university, is being sued for divorce and custody of his two children, and has little money. But all that is nothing compared to the importance of his project. He's decided he's going to make an antiwar movie based on his experiences in Vietnam. It's 1976, America's bicentennial year, only a couple of good movies have been made about the war, and, according to Harrison, badly misrepresent what really happened. His own movie is to be based on the actual suffering the ordinary soldier has undergone and will include a highly symbolic and socialist point of view.

Harrison moves into my apartment. During the days, while I'm working as a clerk, Harrison hitchhikes to Hollywood and Westwood, trying to locate and arrange meetings with movie producers, agents, scriptwriters, and artists he thinks will be receptive to his idea. In the evenings, I bring home food and beer. We sit around drinking, smoking Harrison's dope, and discussing the philosophy of Herbert Marcuse, the lyrics of Bob Dylan, and the work of such antiwar writers as Dalton Trumbo, Herman Hesse, and Kurt Vonnegott.

Harrison is a man possessed. Nothing can keep him from succeeding in his righteous cause. He's utterly convinced of the inevitability of what he sees as the divine mission of his life. It has been his fate to undergo the suffering he has in order to become an important voice of his generation. Had it not been the same for Jesus, he reasons, for Rimbaud, for Appollinaire, for Bob Dylan? Even his current family crisis is part of the plan. It's tearing him apart emotionally to know he'll lose his wife and children, but it's still a necessary sacrifice to make.

Harrison's motivational fires are fueled when he's able to contact and interest both the movie director Paul Schrader and Christopher Trumbo, Dalton Trumbo's son and a television scriptwriter. Harrison envisions the artistic and commercial success of his project. No longer will people scoff at his ideas and plans. They'll now have to stand up and take notice that he, Harrison Gant, is not just another demented Vietnam vet who babbles at length about idealistic notions and unattainable dreams. No. They'll be forced to give respect not only to him, but also to all the forsaken ones of his generation, all the silent suffering artists of a malevolent and insensitive world. All he has to do is prepare a rough draft of his idea, and his friends Christopher Trumbo and Paul Schrader will polish and fine-tune it into the final screen product to which he'll be the technical advisor. In the end a great message will be given to the people. Harrison and I'll be rich and able to pursue our true artistic destinies instead of having to toil like automatons for the rest of our lives, lost in the vast complexity of the machination of the American system. It'll be a grand future.

More practical matters, however, must be dealt with first. Harrison receives a phone call from one of his brothers who is living in L.A. and working as a carpenter. The brother explains that Harrison has been given a summons to appear in court in a week's time. Harrison doesn't have the money to pay for a lawyer and court fees. He persuades me to loan him seven hundred dollars. He says he'll return in two weeks to continue work on his project. I wish him good luck and watch him disappear on a hot August day.

Three weeks pass. Harrison doesn't return. Then one night I get a phone call from him. He says that two nights after returning to Arcata he went out with a friend drinking and explained about his project, but the friend didn't believe him and began ridiculing him and saying that he ought to quit dreaming and start acting like a man and take better care of his family. They left the bar and while outside began arguing. Harrison grabbed the friend, who then stabbed him in the side and back with a knife. I later hear that Harrison, who is a much bigger man, was choking the friend, who, afraid he was going to be killed, stabbed Harrison in self defense. Harrison spent ten days in the hospital recovering from his wounds. He lost the divorce case and custody of his children.

A week later he shows up at my apartment again. A great transformation has taken place. Gone is the energetic, intelligent man of substance and inspiration. In his place is now a haggard, unshaven wreck of a being. He looks tired and defeated. His eyes emit a continual vacant stare. He hasn't even bothered to contact his lawyer, but has used my money to buy a half pound of marijuana. He says he plans to sell it to recover the money and pay me back.

The antiwar film project now becomes the biggest event of the century, bigger than the Woodstock celebration. Harrison will organize it and call it "Peace Talks." Every famous musician, artist, and politician of the far left will be involved. Harrison believes himself the revolutionary hero of the times.

When I leave the apartment in the mornings to go to my job, Harrison is lying on the couch smoking marijuana, listening to Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks album, and lost in his thoughts. His head's held in his right hand as if the weight of his reveries is too great for any man to endure. When I return in the evenings, he's in the same position, listening to the same album, still smoking marijuana. The ashtray on the table beside the couch is filled with roaches.

At night while I sleep, Harrison walks the streets for hours before returning to the couch. Other than these nocturnal wanderings, he seldom leaves the apartment. One night he returns about four in the morning with a street bum he claims is Bob Dylan. Twice he has loud arguments on the phone with his brother, whom he accuses of conspiring against him. He passes one week in a state of extreme paranoia, searching every inch of the apartment looking for bugs planted by the CIA.

I don't know what to do other than provide a sympathetic ear for his maudlin soliloquies of self-pity and rambling diatribes against the United States. I encourage him to put his sufferings down on paper, to get to work on the rough draft to be given to Paul Schrader and Christopher Trumbo, to give his lamentations a canvas, to work out all the bitterness and hatred inside him and turn it into something positive. But he dismisses my encouragement as so much patronizing. He continues smoking the marijuana and listening to the same Dylan album.

Then one afternoon when I return home from work, Harrison is in the apartment talking animatedly with a woman who lives in one of the other apartments in the building. She's in her forties, a bit plump, wearing an excess of makeup, and has the look of a woman who was once beautiful but is now ravaged by time, experience, and alcohol. She's a chain smoker and has a deep, guttural cough that interrupts every other sentence she speaks. The two are discussing her life. She seems to regard Harrison as a man from whom she can learn much. Each time she explains a particular phase of her life, she leans forward eagerly in anticipation of Harrison's response. I open three bottles of beer and sit down to listen to their conversation.

The woman says, "You know, just the other day I saw a doctor. They took X-rays of my lungs and found a cancerous tumor on the left lung. I don't know what to do. I just know that God is punishing me. This is the last of a long line of problems in my life." She stops, coughs violently for a minute, then continues. "They want to remove the lung. I just know I'm going to die a painful and horrible death." Tears roll down her cheeks and she coughs again.

Harrison jumps up from the couch, paces the room a few times, sits down again in the head-held-in-the-right-hand position, and begins murmuring incomprehensible sounds. The woman looks incredulously at me for a moment, then back at Harrison. An excruciatingly long time passes. Then Harrison sits up straight, opens his eyes, smiles at the woman, and says, "Go now, my child. You've been healed."

"Who the hell are you, anyway? Jesus Christ?" she says, half laughing.

"Go now, my child. You've been healed," Harrison says.

If not for having been with Harrison over the previous few months, I'd think it all a strange joke, but Harrison has an entirely serious expression on his face. There is a certain aura about him at that moment. The woman seems to recognize it, too. She thanks him for his kindness in listening to her problems, thanks me for the beer, and disappears out the door. Harrison puts the Bob Dylan album on the stereo, lights another joint, and returns to his broodings.

Two hours later the woman returns to the apartment. She bangs on the door, rushes inside, and begins dancing and jumping around as if unable to contain herself. She embraces Harrison passionately, exclaiming, "I can't believe it! I can't believe it! I'm cured! I'm cured!"

She lowers herself to her knees and begins kissing Harrison's feet and wrapping her arms around his legs. Harrison remains upright, expressionless, his right hand gently touching the top of her head.

"Thank you! Oh, thank you so much!" she cries, tears streaming down her cheeks. "You really are the Christ, aren't you? I knew from the first you were no ordinary man. Oh, thank you, thank you!"

She rises to her feet and gathers her emotions. She breathes deeply a number of times. Her cough is gone. She hasn't coughed once in all her excitement since entering the apartment. Harrison looks at her kindly, not saying a word.

"I'm not coughing! I'm not coughing! I'm going to live! How can I ever thank you? I haven't been able to breathe like this for ten years and now my lungs are clean! You're truly a savior, a healer, a saint! How can I ever thank you?"

She gets down on her knees again and begins weeping. Harrison places his right hand on her shoulder. "You must leave now. Please, don't tell a soul what took place here tonight. I don't believe I can do it again. Please, you must leave."

She rises to her feet and says, "I'll do anything you ask. My dear man, I'll do anything you ask."

She leaves. I stare at the door for a moment, then turn around to look at Harrison. He's back on the couch, head held in his hands. Small tears are running down his cheeks.

Two weeks later I get four days off for Thanksgiving vacation. I pack most of my belongings to take to the San Francisco area, where I'll meet my mother and stepfather at a family friend's home. I plan to store my things at their home in Truckee until I return from my next journey abroad. The apartment is bare except for the bed, the couch, the kitchen table, two chairs, and the refrigerator, all of which came with the apartment. I shake Harrison's hand and tell him to take care and that I'll be back in a few days. I'll live in the apartment for one more month, quit my job at the end of December, and leave for Europe on January first.

When I return a few days later, Harrison is gone. There is no note. One of the chairs is broken. The landlady appears at the door.

"I want you out of here within a week," she says.

"What happened?"

"Your friend and his brother had a fight and there was much shouting. An older woman downstairs nearly had a heart attack. Then the next day your friend wandered over to the school next door, the all girls Catholic elementary school. He entered the school grounds and started touching some of the girls while they were at recess. He was telling them he was Jesus Christ. The nuns called the police and they took him away."

"Do you know where he is now?" I ask.

"I don't know and I don't care. I want you out of here and I don't want to see any more of your friends. Do you understand me?"

One of my co-workers allows me to stay in his garage until the end of the year. There is a sofa in the garage I can sleep on. Two days later I receive a phone call at work from Harrison, who sounds calm and rational over the phone. He's being held at a mental institute about twenty miles away. He asks me to visit him that evening.

At the institute, an orderly leads me to a locked door that opens to a wing with a main lobby with tables and chairs. Beyond the lobby is a hallway that has several rooms on both sides. Each room has two beds and a nightstand. At the far end of the hallway is a single chair, bolted to the floor, that has leg and arm straps attached to it. Harrison comes out of his room and meets me in the lobby. We're given an hour to visit. We sit down at a table with four chairs around it.

Harrison is pale and gaunt, but his eyes are clear and defiant whenever one of the orderlies walks by.

"These fuckin' orderlies, man," Harrison says, "They were forcing all the inmates to take Thorazine. I refused at first and when three orderlies grabbed me, I beat the shit outta all three of 'em. Ten more were called in. They strapped me to the chair at the end of the hall and injected the Thorazine into my ass if you can believe it."

Harrison shows me his buttocks, which are still black and blue.

"It hurts like hell to sit down, but I'm not gonna show the others I feel any pain. They all respect me now. They call me 'The Rock,' ya know, like Rocky Marciano."

Harrison introduces me to some of the inmates in the room. They have glassy eyes and giggle nervously.

"So, Harrison, when do you think you'll get out? Will they keep you here long?" I ask. I'm not sure whether I should ask about what happened at the school. It doesn't seem relevant.

"Not to worry, bro." Harrison looks directly at me and smiles. "They're not charging me with any crime. They're just holding me till they think I'm well enough to return to the outside world. My brother's talking to a lawyer and they're gonna get me outta here soon."

"Are you sure? Can they do that?"

"No problem, man. They're workin' on the maladjusted Vietnam veteran angle. And there're plenty of us around. Should be no problem. I've been through worse than this." Harrison reaches across the table, gives me a soul shake, and says, "Thanks for comin', bro. It means a lot to me."

I visit Harrison once a week for the next three weeks. During my last week at work I get another call. He has suddenly been released for no reason and is now in downtown Los Angeles. He has no money. He begged the quarter he just used to make the call. He has no clothes other than what he's wearing. I agree to meet him after work.

I drive downtown, take Harrison to a restaurant to eat, and give him an extra sweater and ten dollars. After that he's on his own. I'm leaving to Europe in a few days. We shake hands. As I start to get in my car, Harrison calls to me.

"Don't worry 'bout the Rock, bro. I'm gonna make it just fine."

He walks down the street in the opposite direction, singing a Bob Dylan song from the album he played over and over in my apartment. That's the last time I ever see him.

WAR -- GOOD GOD Y'ALL -- WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? -- GIVE IT TO ME ONE TIME NOW -- HUH -- WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? \-- ABSOLUTELY NOTHIN'

Harrison faded, replaced by Tommy Edwards dancing in my head a few years later after I'd been around the world and returned to the States and worked here and there before ending up in West Palm Beach, Florida, where I found a room for forty-five dollars a week in the Cuban section and came across Tommy, a blonde, powerfully-built young man from South Carolina. He had a room in the same run-down motel, and was working as a heavy equipment operator at a job site on the outskirts of town. We decided to become roommates and moved into a two-room bungalow after I found a job as a day cook at the Hilton Hotel.

There we are in the languid evenings of early autumn, exhausted from our days of labor, swapping life stories while swilling bottles of beer. Tommy tells about his youth, about growing up in a small South Carolina town, about how his mama raised five kids after his daddy left home never to be seen again. He remembers months of eating nothing but tomato sandwiches on dry bread. There is a memory of his daddy's liquor still and the bottles hidden in different corners of the shack they live in. One day his daddy beats his mama and Tommy pisses in one of the bottles. Later, his daddy drinks from the bottle, pukes, grabs Tommy, and beats him until Tommy's ears bleed.

Another memory is the time five blacks gang up on his older brother and beat him to a pulp. A year later the brother dies. Tommy blames it on "them fuckin' niggers." He says with a bitter smirk, "Four of 'em're now wearing concrete shoes at the bottom of a lake. The fifth they found in a ditch, his head torn apart by a shotgun blast."

There are stories of teenage Friday nights in the boring South Carolina summers when Tommy and some of his buddies ride around in souped-up Chevies and Fords, drinking beer and throwing the bottles at elderly black people. Another story has the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan and their arms cache hidden in the hills, where they undergo guerrilla training and use real blacks for hunting practice. I never know how much of these stories to believe.

Tommy's memories of his army days aren't very clear. He says he was chosen for Special Forces training near the end of the Vietnam War. At the end of the training, he's one of a few who are picked to experience simulated prisoner of war conditions. He's given a drug being tested by the army for interrogation purposes. About a week later, he's just coming off guard duty, still armed with his M-16, when suddenly he's thrust mentally into another world. He's inside the enemy's camp. The barracks building across the road is the Viet Cong's headquarters. He sprays the side of the barracks with three bursts from his M-16. Someone clubs him from behind. That's all he remembers.

He spends four months in a psychiatric ward. The army discharges him after he signs some papers. He doesn't remember what he signed, but it has something to do with returning twice a year for electric shock treatments and receiving seventy thousand dollars. He quits going to the military hospital after three years of treatments. The pain is too much. He knows he's losing his mind.

Tommy remembers only bits and pieces of those three years. He doesn't know what happened to the seventy thousand dollars. When he first returns home, he goes into the wooded swamps outside his hometown and lives in seclusion for six months with his two dogs. That's all he remembers. He says he now moves every four or five months because the government is after him. He can't write or telephone his mama. The government has her phone tapped and checks her mail. He says if they ever catch up with him, there'll be hell to pay. And more shock treatments. His speech is already impaired. They'll have to kill him before he lets them drag him back to that hospital.

Gary Minch, a friend of Tommy who also works as a heavy equipment operator at the same job site, moves into the bungalow in December. He's a short, muscular, embittered Vietnam vet who was wounded in the war, returned to his home in New Jersey, married his high school sweetheart, had two daughters, started his own trucking business, found his grip on life gradually slipping away, and now hates the America he's returned to. He began selling drugs, was busted, and lost his business and family while he went to jail for a year. He has drifted from job to job down the eastern seaboard until finally coming to Florida.

The three of us share an inability to cope in an America indifferent to the death visions of our subterranean lives. Confessions of our brushes with death fill our nocturnal explorations of one another's soul. The beer we drink and the five-dollar bags of pot (bought in the black ghetto of West Palm Beach when we pile into my five-hundred-dollar, rusted-out Ford van, me at the wheel, Tommy on the passenger side to do the bargaining, and Gary in the back with a baseball bat in case there is trouble) we smoke loosens our tongues and strengthens our memories. Gary and I are the voluble ones. Gary speaks with bitter, morbid pride of the times he's killed, the patrols in the jungle he's survived, the smell, taste, and sound of the horrors of war, the fights in prison, the drugs taken, the cold burn of the shrapnel still embedded in his back, the nightmares that haunt his sleep. I counter with my own vital Asian and road tales.

In the beginning, our discussions contain elements of competitiveness and animosity. Philosophically, we're poles apart. Gary is given to violence and believes completely in its use to protect oneself, to establish one's moral and physical boundaries and rights, to inflict punishment upon one's enemies. Everything is black and white to him. There are your friends, those who stand beside you. There are your enemies, those who oppose you. Nothing in between. There can be nothing in between. His experiences have taught him that.

I still cling to a philosophy of pacifism, or at least a pacifism that recognizes force only as a last resort. I have the advantage of my years of literary pursuit and often assail Gary with the words of some literary giant who expounded on the virtues of love, compassion, peace, patience, and a humble spirit. Gary's helpless against this kind of polemic. Invariably, he returns to the kind of attack he's most confident in. He'll challenge me to a physical contest. One night it's a hundred-yard dash, another a wrestling match, another an arm-wrestling contest, another a push-up competition. These contests are hard-fought, as if our lives and beliefs are on the line. Neither of us dominates the other.

Over the next few weeks the distance and competitiveness between us disappears. Gary has always thought of pacifists and conscientious objectors as "wimps and faggots, through and through." He has never met anyone who expresses a distaste for violence, yet doesn't back down from a challenge. He asks me for books to read. He begins to listen more intently to my words, to show the softer side of his nature. The manner in which he talks about his experiences in Vietnam and prison changes from boastfulness to confession.

Sometimes Gary pours over my manuscripts, finds a paragraph that strikes a vein of truth in his heart, and exclaims, "That's it! That's just the way I think about things! It's great you can use language like that. If only I could speak this way. If only I could use words instead of my fists to get my point across!"

The relationship turns strange. Gary begins to relate to me as if I'm some kind of a pseudo-teacher, a pseudo-guru, as if he has been searching for a personal Christ and has stumbled upon me. Overwhelmed by such unwarranted veneration, I become drunk with the sound of my own eloquence in comparison to this poor fellow's ignorance of the world of books. I take to my Christ-role eagerly, as if knowing I've shirked facing death in Vietnam and then exorcised my guilt by purposely plunging headfirst into the deathworld of Turkey, of Iran, of Afghanistan, and above all of India in order to taste it, smell it, touch, it, know it as the thousands of child-soldiers like Gary did in Nam, and now, having survived all that, I'm in the process of being reinstated in the eyes of my persecutors. Yes, the balance of the relationship between Gary and me has shifted heavily in my favor. I lord it over Gary with a sense of self-righteous superiority. I'm a sick motherfucker myself!

Gary and I begin to ignore Tommy, who often sits at a distance during our discussions, brooding and giving off a look of incomprehensibility, as if he's listening to a foreign language. Sometimes he turns on the TV and stares vacantly at it, waiting for commercial breaks when he can mock the announcers and the products they're selling.

One night he turns away from the TV, stares intently at Gary, and says, "You're not as tough as you think you are."

They begin wrestling on the sofa. Suddenly, Tommy's eyes roll back. He falls to the floor, muscles cramping, mouth frothing, face quivering, and screaming, "No more! Please, no more!"

I jump out of my chair, shout to Gary, "He's having a flashback!" and vigorously massage Tommy's back and neck.

Gary slaps Tommy's face, presses Tommy's body against his own, and shouts, "You're with us, Tommy. You're OK. We love you, man. It's not real. You're with us."

Tommy finally relaxes. He's breathing hard. His face is pale. Tears are in his eyes. Three days later when I return from work, Tommy is gone.

Winter passes. Neither Gary nor I are making much money. We're fed up with our jobs and with Florida. We decide to head back toward Texas and try to find jobs on the oilrigs.

In April we load our belongings into my van and head across the Everglades, up the Florida panhandle, pass through Alabama into Mississippi, then on to Louisiana. All along the Gulf Coast we look for jobs, but Gary can't pass the physical exams because of the shrapnel in his back. Our money is nearly gone, only fifty dollars left between us.

We pitch camp outside of Houma, Louisiana. We smoke a couple of joints and Gary wants to explore the forest. We enter the forest and it's as if Gary is transported back to the time he was a point man on patrols in Vietnam. We paint our faces with mud and get down on our bellies and crawl through the thick, black brush. Gary seems more alive than at any time since we've met. The game goes on for an intolerably long time. We come upon a snake. Gary kills it with his hands. He begins making animal sounds and shouting hysterically, "We killed the Cong! We killed the Cong!"

Two days later we're in Galveston, Texas. After checking several job possibilities, we find Gary a job as a galley hand aboard a tug that will be out to sea for two months at a time servicing oil barges along the Gulf Coast. I give Gary an old backpack to stuff a few sets of clothes in. We part with a handshake. I then hook on with a catering company and spend the next few months working as a steward on the oilrigs.

WAR -- IT AIN'T NOTHIN' BUT A HEARTBREAKER \-- WAR -- FRIEND ONLY TO THE UNDERTAKER

I opened my eyes, sucked in a deep breath, and swallowed to try to get rid of the lump in my throat. One of the other stoners drew a hit off the hookah. I watched the trail of blue smoke rise as he exhaled slowly and leaned back into the sofa. The Chambers Brothers' voices wafted over me: TIME HAS COME TODAY.

The brain was off and running with a new stream.

THE RULES HAVE CHANGED TODAY -- I HAVE NO PLACE TO STAY -- OH MY LORD, I HAVE TO ROAM -- I HAVE NO HOME -- I HAVE NO HOME -- and that's exactly how I felt then when I knew Harrison and Tommy and Gary, and God knows that's how they and all the lost children of my generation felt -- that Vietnam War generation, all the many Davids and the character actors who filled his life -- and what about the 200,000 vets who somehow survived the war and returned to a country that couldn't've cared less and they ended up offing themselves? Four times the number who died in the war, and yeah all those who ended up in prison or homeless \-- what are those statistics now? -- those stats that say something like by 1980 around a third of America's prisoners were Vietnam vets and more recently more than a third of America's homeless were vets and \-- NOW THE TIME HAS COME -- THERE IS NO PLACE TO RUN -- I'VE BEEN LOVED AND PUT ASIDE \-- I'VE BEEN CRUSHED BY THE TUMBLING TIDE -- MY SOUL'S BEEN PSYCHEDLICIZED -- and that's no shit, bro, my soul has been forever psychedelicized and there's no return for the psychedelicized \-- NOW THE TIME HAS COME -- THERE ARE THINGS TO REALIZE -- which are what? What have I realized in all these years of living? That all is as it was meant to be? That's good enough for me. This is what I've come to see. That all men are not meant to be free. Every generation returns to the sea. Whatever. Maybe Thomas Knorr'll have something to say about all this. \-- TIME HAS COME TODAY

Grand Funk Railroad now blared through the speakers. The madness of my thoughts disappeared and Mark Farner's guitar on "Inside Lookin' Out" carried me to distant places in my mystic, altered state. The sound of the sea in "Closer to Home" soothed me and I floated on a serene, secure feeling while waves of colors filled my head. I'M GETTING CLOSER TO MY HOME -- yes I am, yes I am \-- I'M GETTING CLOSER TO MY HOME -- yes I am, yes I am \-- I'M GETTING CLOSER TO MY HOOOOOMME -- I'm home \-- When the song finished, I opened my eyes slowly. The other stoners were gone. I got up, reacquainted myself with the outer world, stretched and worked out a few mushroom kinks, put one foot in front of the other, descended the stairs, and headed back into the crowded Amsterdam streets.

I returned to the room, took off my shoes, and stretched out on the bed. I took the chess game with all the extra pieces I'd accumulated over the last few hours out of my pocket and played a few more variations of my life. When I finished playing, I put the game away and lay back on the bed. I still had a stony feeling, but the intensity was fading. I looked out the window and watched the tree in front of the Oude Kerk sway in the breeze. Then, as if to provide a musical climax to the entire journey, the church bells rang out a concert of classical songs, each meant, I smiled and thought, to ease the final transition and fix in my mind that this had, indeed, been a worthwhile journey. I closed my eyes and the bells took me into a void, each note vibrating delightfully in my mind, and I floated gently with the stream, lost in less difficult and detailed thoughts than before. The last note lingered, then lapsed into silence. I opened my eyes and looked around the room. I felt as if I had completed a long meditation session.

I went into the bathroom and turned on the water. I did a few more stretches, then climbed into the tub. There was still a light yellow glow to everything, including the water in the tub, but as my muscles relaxed, the glow lessened. When I emerged from the tub, I felt thoroughly cleansed inside and out. I looked at the radio clock on the dresser. It was four-thirty in the afternoon. The trip had lasted about six hours.

Chapter 6

The next morning, our last in Amsterdam, we got up at eight o'clock, went downstairs for breakfast, and returned to our room to finish our packing. I tried phoning Undine at nine, but there was still no answer. There was a light drizzle outside, but here and there a few breaks in the gray clouds signaled a better day ahead. It was unusually quiet with no voices rising up from the streets, only the occasional swish of tires on the wet pavement.

At ten o'clock I phoned the Knorr's shop again. A woman named Marian, who spoke some English and was a friend of Undine, answered.

"Oh yes, Mr. Thompson. Undine told me about you. I'm afraid something terrible has happened," she said, her voice suddenly choking up. "Thomas is dead."

"Oh my God. My dear God." I didn't know what else to say. Kaori was watching me, her hand covering her mouth. "Wha...what happened? When did he die?" I asked.

"He died on Friday...three days ago." Marian started crying. A moment later she said, "He died of mind and heart, not of the body. Now Undine must look for the...the...I don't know the English...the place for the body."

"A casket? A grave?"

"Yes, maybe. A box for the body and a place in the ground."

"My God, this is terrible. Marian, can you tell Undine we phoned and tell her how sorry we are? We're leaving Amsterdam today and will go to Basel. We'll be staying at the Alexander Hotel. We should arrive around five or six o'clock. We'll be there for three days. Now probably isn't a good time to see her, but we would like to see her before we leave Basel. Would you tell her that?"

"Yes, I will tell her. Maybe you should call Undine at her home. I think she will like to hear you. It is very difficult for her now and friends are important."

I hung up the phone after Marian told me Undine's home phone number. I looked at Kaori, who also had tears in her eyes. We both sat down and stared at the floor. "I can't believe it. I just can't believe it," I said.

Kaori put her hand on my shoulder and asked, "What should we do?"

"Go to Basel as planned. And see Undine when we can. I'm sure she's busy arranging the funeral and everything, but I think it would be good to see her. This is too eerie. I just can't believe it. After all these years, then making contact with Undine before we left Japan and coming all the way to Germany just to see Thomas and now three days before we see him, he dies." I slumped further into the chair. "I had no idea. Back in Japan when Undine told me he was not in good condition, I thought she meant financially, not this. I just can't believe it."

Yes, time has come today, I thought. The journey had, in essence, become one with Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid. I was living a version of Lowry's trip to Mexico in 1946. How could I not have seen it? How could I not have seen that all those omens, premonitions, forewarnings, had not been for me and Kaori, but for Thomas and all that he had symbolized? And what now did his death mean? Was there something significant in this? Was this a sign that I was now being separated from my past? Is that what Pablo had been telling me?

I looked into Kaori's eyes for a long time. They were full of sorrow. I wanted to explain my thoughts to her, but no words came, so I smoked a final Amsterdam joint and lifted it to heaven in tribute to Thomas. "Here's to you ol' buddy. You were a hero to me. Like Juan Fernando, you too threw away your mind, you old maker of tragedies. I hope you're where you belong, in a world of peace and contentment."

Later Kaori and I took a final walk before heading to the airport. It had stopped raining and some patches of blue were appearing. We sat on a bench beside the Singel. Bicyclists in dark, earthy colors sped by on the bicycle path in back of us. Scores of pigeons and sea gulls waddled about in front of us. An old wino was sprawled on the bench to our right. A younger man stood behind the bench as if looking over the wino. The attendant looked at me, smiled, and motioned me over. Pablo? I blinked my eyes to refocus, but the attendant was gone. I closed my eyes once more and in my mind I get up and approach the bench to get a better look at the wino. It's the ghost of Malcolm Lowry. I suddenly want to talk to him, ask him about his life and hallucinations and obsessions and paranoias, Juan Fernando, Thomas, the whole nine yards.

I tap him on the shoulder and ask, "So, Mr. Lowry, how did you really die?"

"By misadventure," he says, slobbering and rising slowly to get a look at me.

"No, really, I mean how did you really die?"

"Choked on my own puke." He gives a derisive snort and some spit lands on my shoulder.

I wipe the spit off with my right hand and sit down next to him. "What should I do in Lorrach? What does Thomas's death mean? Is he my Juan Fernando?"

Lowry peers at me, then waves his trembling hands in the air and shrugs. "Do what you want. That man's death is just death, that's all. And how should I know what he is? Who gives a fuck? It's your problem. You got anything to drink?"

I pull two warm beers out of my pocket, pull the tab off the first one, and hand it to him. He downs half the can in one gulp, burps loudly, and pats his stomach. "Now, that's much better." He peers at me again and says, "Now what was it you wanted?"

"I wanted to talk about your life, your writing, your experiences, the influence you've had on me, stuff like that."

"That's a tall order." He drains the rest of the beer, tosses the can over his shoulder, grabs the second one, opens it, and asks, "Have you ever been so thirsty you'd drink your own piss?"

"No, I can't say that I have."

"Well, you should try it sometime. It'll put hair on your chest and make a man out of you," he says and breaks into a convulsion of laughter, spittle running down his chin. "How about drugs? Do you have any phenobarbitol? It's a benign and helpful drug, you know."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Lowry, all I have is some marijuana."

"Ordinarily, I don't care for the stuff, but if it's all you have I'll have a go, I suppose."

I produce a joint from my pocket, light it, take a drag, and hand it to him. He looks at it for a moment, takes a hit, and says, "Hmm, doesn't taste like the stuff they had in Mexico. Not bad, though." He takes another hit and hands it back to me.

We both stare at the river. Then Lowry takes another drink, clears his throat, and says, "About my writing, well, I have to confess that I'm going steadily and even beautifully downhill. My memory misses beats at every moment and in the mornings, as you can see, I'm usually on all fours. I'm only sober or merry in a whiskey bottle." He pauses for a moment, then says, "I've now reached a stage where every night I have total recall and write five novels in imagination, but, dreary me, I am unable to write a word."

For a moment he gazes in the distance, then continues. "It was the success I had that was the ruin of me. Success is like some horrible disaster. It may be the worst possible thing that could happen to any serious author. Christ, the celebrity visited on me by the New York literati was embarrassingly awful."

A grin spreads slowly across his face. Suddenly he shouts, "All is vanity, saith the preacher, all is vanity" and glances at me to see what effect he is having. I smile weakly.

"After my success I wanted to give up writing because half of what I want to say is unbearable and the rest is inexplicable. Do you follow me?" He lifts the beer can to his mouth.

"Yes, I think so."

"Good. Say, do you want to see my varicose veins and leg ulcers?"

"Why not?"

He bends down painfully and pulls up his pants legs to expose his pasty, swollen limbs. Blue veins stretch from groin to ankle on both legs. "It's the same illness that struck the king of England, you know."

"Check these out." I show him first the scar running down half the length of my right arm, then my own swollen ankles. "Not as bad as yours, but almost in the same league. I understand what it is to grit your teeth with each step you take."

Lowry takes a close inspection and seems impressed. "All suffering improves the writer and the work. I can see there must be some merit in your own work." He looks me straight in the eye and says, "Life is a fearful and deathly nightmare, a vaudeville show with horrors of every kind, a vagina with teeth that snap tight on any penis that enters."

He breaks into another convulsion of laughter, then coughs up a large ball of phlegm, spits it out, takes another drink of the beer, and with a smug expression says, "I once broke my back falling off one of my own erections. They trussed me up in a straightjacket in a padded cell in the psychiatric ward in Vancouver General, where they fed me drugs that gave me psychic visions. In Paris I was admitted to the psychiatric ward of the American hospital for ten days. In Haiti I became a voodoo priest. Jung was so impressed by Under the Volcano that he offered to treat me for nothing. I am Canada's Dostoevski and there's not a drop of mescal that I haven't turned into pure gold, not a drink I haven't made sing."

I hold his gaze and say, "I've taken seventy-five hits of acid and lived to tell it. I've traveled with nomads in Afghanistan. I've been pronounced insane by military prison psychiatrists and sniffed at dead babies in piles of garbage on the streets of Calcutta. I've vomited my words on hundreds of pages in three books. I am America's rotten son and proud of it."

Lowry leans back and rocks with laughter. He claps my back and shakes my hand. "Excellent! Excellent! You make me laugh. What was your name again? Where did you say you're going?"

"David Thompson. I'm on my way to Lorrach, Germany to see Thomas's wife. Thomas was an old friend who just died, a friend who was perhaps like your Juan Fernando. After that, my wife and I will head to Italy, to Florence and Rome."

"Ah, Italy. I envy you. It's a wonderful place. Rome is the happiest and loveliest city I've ever seen, full of lovers, motor scooters, and monks. Do you know that Gogol wrote part of Dead Souls in Rome? Mann, Ibsen, Merimee, and Schiller all lived there at one time or another, too. I myself was taken to a Roman sanatorium and gained much inspiration from the experience.

"Oh yes, Italy. Italy. In Naples I sought out the old medieval part of the city and found a nice, little Dostoevskian scene: a maze of filthy, foul-smelling slums swarming with ragged children, diseased beggars, women nursing babies, and men playing cards. You, of all people, should appreciate that image." Lowry smiles gently at me.

"Yes, I do."

"On that same journey in -- what was it, '48 if I remember correctly, yes, 1948 -- Margerie and I climbed Vesuvius and what do you think the guide told us at the summit?"

"I have no idea."

"He said, 'Last week she geeva the big shake.'" Lowry grins and continues, "And then in Capri we stayed at the Hotel Belvedere e Tre Re. Isn't that a lovely name? It was on the beach at Maria Grande. There was this Lithuanian artist who ran the place and he told us his father had been a great friend of Dostoevski."

"Really?"

"Yes. And do you know what he said about Dostoevski?" Another mad grin is growing on Lowry's face.

"What did he say?"

"Feodor was an awfully nice fellow," Lowry says very slowly, then points a finger at his right temple, "but sicka in the head."

We both laugh for a long time. Lowry has another coughing spasm, then polishes off the rest of the beer. I relight the joint and we pass it back and forth in silence.

After a while, I notice Kaori is motioning to me from the other bench. I turn back to Lowry and say, "I'm afraid I must be going soon, Mr. Lowry. Thank you very much for sharing some time with me. I've enjoyed visiting with you."

Lowry takes my hand and grips it firmly. "Thank you for bringing an old drunk some cheer. You asked me about my writing. I should tell you that I've always written out of despair. I always feel desperate, so then I always try to write, except when I'm too despairing. I write because I'm a humorist. I believe it's necessary for the artist to descend to hell and return to testify in the form of his work. We must forever strive towards the better thing, for the hope of salvation for sinful mankind. Juan Fernando was my Better Thing. Perhaps your Thomas will be yours. Remember: Whosoever unceasingly strives upward, him can we save."

"I'll remember."

"And one more thing." Lowry is still gripping my hand, smiling sadly, and looking deeply into my eyes. His look is full of amusement, irony, roguishness, and fellow feeling.

"Yes?"

"I have a gift for you." He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a battered copy of Hesse's Steppenwolf, and hands it to me. "Here. I want you to take this and read it. Pablo told me to give it to you. On your trip so far you've visited both The Black Eagle and The Magic Theater. Those experiences and the contents of this book are closely connected. You should reflect on all of this before moving on to the next stage of your life. Whether you know it or not, you're going through your own mid-life crisis, like Harry Haller himself. We'll talk about all of this at a later time and laugh about it. Now be off with you. And whatever you do, wherever you go, make notes, my man, make notes."

The rush of flapping wings and the sound of Kaori sucking in her breath snapped me out of my reverie. We watched the birds taking off and noticed the clouds were also on the move and more blue was appearing. "They have wonderful skies to watch here," Kaori said, then was silent again. A few minutes later she sighed heavily and murmured "Amsterdam" as if trying to find the correct word to explain the overall depth of emotion her experiences were giving her.

"Amsterdam," I repeated.

We returned to the hotel to pick up our bags. Then we walked to the central station and took a train to the airport. On the way we passed a beautifully kept Little League baseball diamond with colored billboards for sponsors as the outfield fence. My thoughts took me back momentarily to my early days in Japan when I'd bonded with the people in my neighborhood through the medium of softball.

That neighborhood softball team became my Japanese family over the next four years. They in effect raised me from my first baby utterances of Japanese until the time I could stand on my own two feet. They accepted me as one of their own, allowed me to participate in all their family dramas, rituals, and celebrations. Through them I made my deepest connection with Japan and came to feel as if, finally after fifteen years of wandering and searching, I'd found a place to call home, a place where I could wipe away the final traces of psychological doubt that remained from being branded an "undesirable" American -- this before Kaori and I became involved. I felt a deep gratitude to them.

Indeed, baseball itself was my textbook for years. Every night for at least those first four years in Japan I'd religiously watched the one-hour evening baseball news program at eleven o'clock, furiously copying down new vocabulary, question forms, grammatical patterns, idiomatic expressions in my notebook. I memorized all the professional Japanese players' names and their kanji characters. Always the next day I tried to use the new vocabulary in baseball conversations with my buddies and their friends. It seemed most Japanese men loved baseball, so it was easy to engage in baseball conversation anyone I met and in so doing activate the new knowledge I'd gained and get a lot of listening practice and repetition in the process.

It didn't take long to extend my conversational ability beyond the topic of baseball. By using different verbs and nouns and fitting them into the many sentence and grammatical patterns I was learning through my baseball studies, I could make the switch easily enough. Eventually, I was able to converse on a number of topics, and the liquor store became my main classroom for the language. It was the hangout joint for all the players and I spent countless hours there practicing Japanese conversation.

Another wave of nostalgia for the days when my legs were still fully functional passed through me. Sports were a big part of my life then, and I'd been a pretty good athlete. Kaori, too, had been an excellent volleyball player in high school, captaining her team to the semi-finals of her prefecture's championships. In the early days of our relationship we often talked about our athletic exploits. She saw me play in a couple of softball games and a basketball game in Osaka, too, as I played for three years in a city league in a suburb of Osaka during the winters. What she saw of my athleticism was only the waning portion of what it had once been, but there were a few moments in those games when flashes of the earlier grace and fluidity came through. So it was for me watching her during the year in Fukuoka she played mama-san volleyball with women in their thirties. Her reactions had diminished, but her court sense, concentration, and leadership were apparent. Yeah, sports were but one of the many things we shared, one of the many things we had in common, and like all things in life it had been a temporary greatness now reduced to mere memory.

The plane ride to Basel took an hour and twenty minutes. A light rain was falling when we arrived. The customs and passport control passed us through with just a cursory glance. There were two exits at the airport: one to France and the other to Switzerland. We went through the Switzerland exit and Kaori got us tickets for a bus that took us to the Basel downtown train station. From there we took a taxi to the Alexander Hotel. We arrived just before six o'clock, checked in, and just as we started to get in the elevator there was a call from Undine.

"Undine, I'm just so very, very sorry for you and your family," I said.

"Yes, thank you very much. You came just three days late, but I still want to see you," Undine said.

"We'll be here tomorrow and the next day, and leave on Thursday. We can come to your shop if that's the easiest way."

"That's a good idea. The shop is very close to the Lorrach station."

"OK, that's good. I expect you'll be very busy tomorrow. How about if we visit on Wednesday?"

"Yah, that's better for me."

"OK, can I call you at your home tomorrow to set a time and see if everything is OK?"

"You have my telephone number?"

"Yeah, Marian gave it to me."

"OK, then please call me tomorrow. In the night is best I think. Thank you very much, David."

"Thank you. We're looking forward to seeing you, Undine. You take care."

We were now officially checked into Basel, home of the Sandoz Company's pharmaceutical-chemical research laboratory, where the fascinating, complex, and dramatic history of LSD had its birth. This was where Albert Hofmann, a Swiss chemist working at Sandoz, first synthesized LSD in 1938 and five years later accidentally intoxicated himself and had the world's first acid trip. A couple days later he intentionally took the drug and soon after provided samples to Walter Stoll, son of Hofmann's superior and a psychiatrist at the Psychiatric Clinic in Zurich. Stoll conducted the first scientific study of LSD in volunteers and psychiatric patients and his observations were published in Swiss Archives of Neurology in 1947. His report became a sensation in the scientific world and stimulated a flurry of laboratory and clinical research in many countries. Hundreds of papers were published over the next decade, setting the stage for the consciousness-expansion rage of the Psychedelic Sixties. By 1970 somewhere between one and five million people had turned on.

Names and places ran through my head: Aldous Huxley on his death bed asking his wife to administer a hundred mmg of acid; Allen Dulles, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, and the CIA during the MK-ULTRA days when CIA spooks secretly observed prisoners and prostitutes' clients wiped out unwittingly on acid and reported their findings to their bosses, who were trying to gain a mind-control advantage over the Russians; Timothy Leary, Michael Hollingshead, Allen Ginsberg, and others tripping out at Leary's LSD commune in Millbrook, New York; Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters flying across the U.S. in their magic bus Further; Al "Captain Trips" Hubbard, the "Johnny Appleseed of LSD," spanning the globe and introducing LSD and psilocybin to thousands of people, including scientists, politicians, intelligence officers, diplomats, and church figures in a grand attempt to turn on the world; Hofmann the LSD father and Leary the apostle meeting once in Lausanne and once more here in Basel when Leary came to Switzerland to petition for political asylum after escaping from prison; and Pittsburg Pirate pitcher Doc Ellis tossing a no-hit, no-run game on acid (he walked eight batters and hit two more), laser beams of multicolored light flashing into the catcher's mitt and remaining visible to him after each pitch left his fingertips.

Kaori was more interested in the artistic than the psychedelic history of Basel. She wanted to see as many museums as she could. After we returned from a stroll and supper at a restaurant on the Claraplatz, she began making preparations for the next day's sightseeing.

The following morning at ten-thirty we joined four other tourists for an hour-and-a-half bus tour of the city. At noon I rested on a train station bench while Kaori bought advance tickets to Florence. Among the paintings of the Alps on the walls, there was one of the Matterhorn. I thought back to my 1973 journey when I camped out near Zermatt, began walking the climbing road the next morning, stopped across from an old stone farmhouse, and a plump, rosy woman invited me into the house for coffee and breakfast.

I returned to the hotel for a nap while Kaori explored the city further on bicycle. It was raining lightly outside when I woke up, so I spent much of the afternoon reading the Herald Tribune. The front-page story was about a huge earthquake near Izmit, Turkey. Thousands of people were feared dead. Hasan and I had passed through that area on our journey after leaving Thomas's place. My gut tightened as I read the story. Another omen. All the coincidences began to weigh on me again.

The weather finally cleared. I decided to do some exploring myself. If I sat in the hotel room thinking about Thomas and now the thousands of dead in Turkey, I'd work myself into a morbid depression. I walked to the Rhine, crossed the Mittlere bridge, and came to the Marktplatz. There were many shoppers out. A small crowd had gathered at one spot to listen to a street performer playing a concertina. I stopped to watch the man. He was a German, about forty, with a receding hairline, a large pair of glasses perched on the tip of his nose, and dressed in raggedy clothes. Set out in front of him was his battered concertina case and a handwritten sign advertising private lessons. He reminded me of Peter, the German drifter I'd met in Sicily the first time I'd left the States.

The concertina player threw his head about vigorously and grimaced while playing a succession of wonderful pieces. Sweat ran down his forehead. Some of the bystanders tossed coins into his case.

I returned across the bridge and walked back up the Griefengasse. Roadwork was being done on the tram tracks. The street was partially dug up and blocked off to traffic, but some people were walking dogs and pushing baby carts on the sidewalks. Workmen in yellow shirts and bright orange pants shoveled and smoothed out the concrete pouring through long hydraulic hoses attached to two huge concrete mixers. Farther up the street beyond the roadwork, a group of Hare Krishnas chanted and banged their tambourines. I stopped at an outdoor cafe to rest my legs and drink a beer before heading back to the hotel. I couldn't get the German concertina player's image out of my head.

His image merged with Peter's and the journey that led me to him. My thoughts returned to the moment of the red balloon in the Nevada desert. I could visualize it clearly: 1973, two years out of military prison, knowing I have to leave the U.S. if I'm ever to find my niche in life. I'm hitchhiking across California and one driver drops me off maybe twenty miles outside of Reno before turning off the main highway to head toward a town called Fernly. I stand there watching the last of the car's dust trail settle behind it, then turn back to head east again.

The Nevada desert stretches in all directions, a mixture of auburn wasteland, rolling tumbleweeds, and splotches of unmelted snow. In the far distance are the Rockies, their snow-topped peaks forming a jagged spine barely discernable on the horizon. I look at the expanse of sky and there out of the largest cloud a tiny red dot appears. As it drifts in my direction it becomes increasingly larger until finally distinguishable: a child's red balloon with a long white string attached to it. I stand transfixed, staring at it, watching it come closer and touch down just opposite me on the other side of the highway. A gust of wind picks it up, carries it directly to the base of my feet, and lays it there to rest. I bend down and pick it up. It's impossible, yet entirely natural that it should settle right there in the mere square foot of space I'm occupying in that entire open desert.

A car horn breaks the silence. I whirl around and there, about a hundred yards up the highway, a new VW van has stopped. I grab my pack and bota bag and, still holding on to the balloon, race to the van. A woman and her two children are inside. Between gasps of breath, I try to explain to her about the balloon and what's just happened. She stares at me for a moment, then motions for me to get in.

"We're on our way to Denver," she says.

I drop the balloon, watch it bound away into the desert waste, and hop in the van.

From that moment I become like the drifting balloon, or perhaps the balloon imparts some mysterious protective force to guide me and give me faith that all will be fine and work out in some preordained way, provided I have the faith to follow where it leads. Over the next few months nearly every person I encounter does guide me. I follow them blindly, naively, innocently, even devoutly like a determined pilgrim whose faith cannot be shaken. The paths lead to the Gare du Nord in Paris, where I meet Peggy Fluerty, the American art student with whom I travel for three days, stopping in Dijon, where she explains about the artist Claus Sluter and how he changed the architecture of his time, the end of the fourteenth century, by bringing new innovations of emotional gestures, expressions, and models to Gothic statuary. We camp out in the fields outside Dijon and make love in the warmth of my sleeping bag. Our separation in Valence is painful, but Peggy plants something in my mind when she says, "You have an artistic soul. You should express that part of you."

I've never thought of art as an avenue to explore, a means by which to rid myself of the perplexity that possesses me so strongly, a battleground on which to confront what the military psychiatrists at the prison have so successfully convinced me of, namely, my own derangement. After Peggy's train disappears, I slump on a platform bench at the Valence train station, consumed by self-pity, weeping openly, the tears of a deep longing running freely. I relive each precious moment from the Gare du Nord and again it's wondrous, fulfilling love, the first true emotion I've felt in years. A part of me has disappeared on that train. All that remains is the map I hold in my hands, the map drawn by Peggy outlining all the places I should see in Europe.

Four days later I wander through Florence, barely conscious of the history surrounding me. I pass through the Uffizi, as Peggy has recommended, and am attracted to Botticelli's paintings. I look for a long time at The Birth of Venus and in it see Peggy's same melancholy beauty. At the Michelangelo Academy, David holds me in awe and in that moment I know that art is the road to my own salvation.

I leave Florence and live for two days on the trains, getting off only to buy bread and wine. I take the train ferry that crosses the strait between the Italian mainland and Sicily. Only a few peasants ride the train from Messina. About half the distance across the northern coast of Sicily the train stops at the fishing village of Cefalu. On an impulse I get off.

The sun is high in a cloudless sky. It's very warm. The village lies at the base of a large headland. The adobe buildings are all old. The smell of salt and fish and sea fills the air. Long lines of laundry on many rooftops flap in the breeze. Copper-skinned children run laughing and shouting through the narrow, meandering streets. Many small skiffs are docked in the harbor, where weather-beaten men patiently mend their nets. A castle rests on a hill overlooking the village. Nearby is an old cathedral.

I walk along the long stretch of beach outside the village for about a mile until I find a comfortable, isolated spot. The white sand shimmers under the hot sun. I wash my clothes and hang them to dry on a nearby tree. For most of the next two days I lie on the beach and occasionally wade in the surf. As the sun goes down on the second day, I watch two fishermen in a dinghy gather in their nets, silhouettes against a sinking red background. I watch them for a long time while poking at my fire with a piece of driftwood. It's a peaceful evening. I'm content listening to the pounding of the surf.

I hear the sound of feet trudging in the sand. I squint to see who's coming. As the figure approaches, I can make out that it's a small man who walks with a tired gait. The man stops by the fire and looks down at me. I motion the man to sit down. He has a small pack that he tosses by the fire. He sits down and crosses his legs. In the firelight I can see him better. He has a ruddy complexion with a deep scar on his left cheek. His hair's sandy-colored and runs down the back of his neck. His clothes are tattered with many patches. He looks like a drifter whose skin is continually exposed to sun and wind. Deep wrinkles furrow his forehead. His eyes are those of a tired dog.

"Do you speak English?" I ask.

"A little," the man says with a heavy accent.

A silence follows while he stares at the fire.

"Care for some cheese?"

The man nods. I slice some cheese and break off some bread. The man nibbles slowly on the food.

"Some wine?"

The man smiles gratefully and accepts. He holds my bota out at arm's length, tilts his head back, squeezes a long swig without spilling a drop, hands the bota back, and nods a thin smile. I take a drink. We watch the fire and listen to the surf. We continue to share the wine.

"What's your name?" I ask.

"Peter," the man says, still gazing at the fire. Then he shifts his gaze to me. "And you? How are you called?"

"David Thompson." I pick up a piece of driftwood and poke the fire. "Do you have a home?"

"No."

"You must be from somewhere. Where were you born?"

Peter looks in the distance for a moment, then looks intently into my eyes. "Yes. I come from Germany, but I cannot return."

"May I ask why not?"

Peter reaches for the bota and takes another drink, swishing it around in his mouth before swallowing. "This is good wine, my friend," he says, then changes his position to lie beside the fire with his head propped up with his right hand. He appears to be thinking about my question. The fire begins to die. Peter gets up, shakes sand off his clothes. "I will bring more wood."

I lie back down, my hands folded and supporting the back of my head. I watch the stars. It's a clear night. The moon is in the quarter phase.

Peter returns with an armload of driftwood and throws two pieces on the fire before sitting down again. He looks at me briefly, then says, "A long time ago I put a knife in a man. It was a stupid fight about a woman. I am lucky I did not kill the man because the woman was not worth the price of the trouble. I went to prison, but I escaped. I cannot go back."

We stare at the fire.

"I've been to prison," I say.

"I know."

"How do you know?"

"You are quiet. You are alone."

"How long have you traveled like this?"

"I don't know. A long time."

"Through many countries?"

"Yes."

"Do you have some destination?"

"In winter I am in the south. In summer I am in the north."

"It must get lonely."

"Yes, very lonely. But it is the way I choose."

I throw some more wood on the fire. It responds with a loud crackle. The new warmth feels good as the night is cooling. I crawl into my sleeping bag. Peter brings out a tattered blanket from his pack and wraps it around his shoulders. We watch the red-yellow flames of the fire jump and disappear into the night air.

"Some more wine?" I offer the bota to Peter.

"No. You must save it for yourself. My head is good."

"Where did you come from today?"

"From the church in the village." Peter points toward the village. "The priest is very kind. He gave me food and drink as you did, my friend. If you have hunger, you can always go to the church."

"It's not always that way in America."

"I do not know about America."

"Neither do I, really." I sigh.

"You did a crime against the great America?" Peter stirs the fire coals with a stick.

I prop my head with my right hand and think for a moment. "I refused to fight in Vietnam. I didn't think the war was a just one. There were many like me who didn't want to fight. It's been an ugly thing, something that divided my country's people. There were many who were put in prison for their convictions."

"Politics are evil. Are you now running from America?"

"I'm not sure what I'm running from. It's just that I don't feel a part of America anymore, and now I'm searching for something better. I'm very confused right now."

"Have you a woman?" Peter looks directly at me.

"There was one not too long ago that I felt strongly about, but it was only temporary. We were traveling different paths."

Peter leans forward and says, "Go back to her. This is not a good life. You will only find what you seek in a good woman. Do not become like me. It is not good for one who is young."

When I wake the next morning, the coals from the fire are dead. Peter is gone. I pack my things and walk back into the village. I board the first train to Messina, settling in an empty compartment, not knowing where to go next, thinking only of Peggy as the poverty-stricken countryside flashes by the window.

My head came back to the present. On the table in front of me were two more chess pieces. I picked them up and stared at them. What should I name these players? The Two Alienated Wanderers? I wondered for a moment if my life had not actually become what Peter warned me against. Like him, I'd wandered the world for years, but in the end I did heed his words. I found my woman.

I heard Pablo's voice behind me. "Go ahead, play another game. It might be interesting."

I turned around, but saw only the back of a waiter darting inside the shop. I pulled the chessboard out of my tote bag and placed it on the table. I put my new pieces into action and watched them go in a variety of other life directions for a while, but soon grew bored. I drained the rest of the beer, paid the bill, and went back to the hotel room. I felt a little sad, so I stretched out on the bed until Kaori returned about six-thirty.

"How are you doing, honey-chan? How're the legs?" She put the two bags she was holding on a chair and sat down next to me on the bed.

"I had a good nap, then went out for a while. The legs are hanging in there OK. How was your day?"

"Great! I rented a bicycle and went to three museums. I looked at a lot of paintings and I learned about Hans Holbein the Younger today at the Kunst Museum. All the other painters' paintings seemed like two-dimensional cartoons until I saw Hans Holbein's. His portraits were so detailed that it was like they were alive. Really fascinating." She had a happy, satisfied look on her face.

"Did you hear about the earthquake in Turkey?"

"Yes, it makes me very sad. I told some Swiss people today that I really admired them because when Kobe had the earthquake, the Swiss were the first ones to help. They sent us sniffer dogs faster than the Japanese government responded. They're probably already sending dogs to Turkey, too."

"Yeah, I remember that."

"Basel is really a beautiful city. I would never have thought of visiting Basel if I hadn't come here with you." Kaori rested her hand on my foot. "Are you looking forward to seeing Undine tomorrow?"

"Yes, I am. We'll call her later tonight to make sure of what time to meet. I just wish our timing had been better. There are too many strange things happening on this trip. Thomas's death. The earthquake. All those signs like the one at the Taipei airport that said our plane left at 13:13 from gate thirteen. It seems almost like someone or something is constantly trying to warn us about something."

"Oh, don't be so superstitious," Kaori said in mock amusement. "Are you hungry? Let's go eat."

We went downstairs and had supper in the hotel restaurant. Later I called Undine. We agreed to meet at her shop at two o'clock the next day.

Chapter 7

Tram number six took us to the German border, which we passed through without having to show our passports. For a moment I flashed back to 1977 when Hasan met me at the same place and we later met Thomas at a downtown bar, had a few beers, then went to Thomas's place in the hills. I remembered how energetic, vital, and youthful Thomas had been, and those sparkling eyes.

Kaori and I caught a bus that took us to the Lorrach station. It was easy to find Undine's carpet shop. There was a big poster of an Afghan on the window. We were early for the appointment, so Marian prepared a couple of seats and some tea for us. The shop was small with a lot of trinkets and pictures on the walls and shelves. There were a few carpets on display, but most were stored in a back storage room.

A few minutes later Undine showed up. She was bigger than I remembered and her long blond hair was changing color. Her face lit up when she saw us. Undine and I hugged each other tightly, laughing and crying simultaneously, and I introduced her to Kaori, who stuck her hand out to shake, but was suddenly engulfed in an embrace that left her breathless. It seemed as if we had stayed in touch for all these years.

We sat down around the office desk. Undine reached into a drawer, pulled out an old picture of Thomas, and gave it to me. He was sitting cross-legged in an Afghan teashop, holding a cup of tea, and smiling. He looked exactly as I remembered him. I told her some of the stories of my adventures. I took up a good hour or so recounting the meeting of Hasan and Ataullah in Paris, my memories of the time at Thomas's, the subsequent journey with Hasan to Iran, the month with Ataullah in Afghanistan, and the horrors of my time in India.

The stories seemed to touch a spark in Undine that took her back to better times with Thomas. As she listened, she became increasingly more animated in her responses and eager to tell her own stories. I was also anxious to know what happened to Thomas. At one point I asked, "So how did you and Thomas meet in the beginning?"

I was seventeen," Undine said. "Just there was a day after my -- how do you say? -- I was a decorator, and after you finish learning this, you make a...what do you make...qualification. But you have to do this, and then this is finished and you say, 'let's make a party.' So we went down to a little discotheque we had here in town and I met Thomas on this day."

Undine closed her eyes for a moment, opened them, and leaned forward, her arms resting on the desk. "I met Thomas. And I was dancing with him. He took me in my arm from the first moment. I was normally..." Undine made a gesture for being shy. "But I let it. He could do it with me." A smile spread across Undine's face. "It was OK. And from this moment I loved this boy."

Kaori and I looked at each other and smiled.

"I was not living with him then. I was seventeen and it was January '66. Yes, January '66 I met him. And then I lived together with him after our first trip to the East. I was twenty-one then. That was 1969, I think. "

"Were you interested in the East before you met Thomas?" I asked.

"No," Undine said, her eyes growing wide. "And him also not. No. No."

"How did he become so interested? I remember vaguely he told some stories about going to San Francisco," I said.

"He was in San Francisco."

"And he was around the Jefferson Airplane?"

"Yes. Yes. He got two cats from the Jefferson Airplane. From the group. Two cats, kitties." Undine held her hands apart to show the size of the kittens.

"Was he working for them?"

"No. Wait a minute." Undine waved her arm in the air. "When was this? When was this? In 1969 maybe, in '69 we went to the East. We went to the East. It was '71 when he was in California because I met him there. It was after our trip to the East where we bought these first carpets." Undine motioned toward the carpets surrounding us. "And we were in a carpet shop in Kabul, and there was a French guy talking to them French...friends...and he said 'This carpet is this and this. And this and this and this is in the carpet' and, you know, he could read carpets, this French guy. Because he was a long time in the East, he could read carpets. And Thomas's ears got like this." Undine put her hands over her ears and pretended her ears were growing bigger. "It was interesting somehow and Thomas's ears got like this because he was wanting to know things all the time. What does it mean when you want to know everything? What's the meaning in English?"

"Curious, I suppose," I said.

The telephone rang. It seemed there were many people calling to give their condolences. Undine finally put the phone down and turned once again to us.

"So look. Our story, it started, going to the East it was 1969. In 1969 we were with some friends and we heard a lot of Goa, India, a lot of people went there, so Thomas was always, yeah, you know." Undine put her hands by her ears and smiled.

"Listening with big ears," Kaori said and laughed.

"Going on, you know. Going on. So we planned to go. Two cars and seven people. We planned. In the end it turned out one car and four people. There was Thomas, me, and two friends. And one of the friends was auto mechanic, so he could manage the car all the time. So we bought for some thousand, three thousand marks or something, an old Mercedes 190, and, uh, this Mercedes, the guy who sold us the Mercedes, he said, 'It's about this and this kind of kilometers.' But in the end it turned out it were more than 200,000 kilometers more on the machine. But we still went on. We still went on.

"So we drove down from Germany and all through Turkey, Bulgaria, the same road, same road as you. Through Turkey, then Iran. In those times the streets were not with...not flat. They were like...." Undine bent over to touch the floor and make more gestures showing potholes and rising hills. "So in Iran we had hundreds and hundreds of kilometer. We were sitting in this car. It was hot outside. And we were covered...with...dust," she said dramatically, enunciating each syllable. "Full...of...dust."

Undine paused for a moment, closed her eyes again, seemingly reliving the memory, then continued. "Full of dust. Kilometer for kilometer. We were sleeping on the road. We were sleeping when somebody said, 'Come here. You can stay in the home' for somewhere, you know. And, um, we went to Afghanistan. Came to Kandahar. And in Kandahar it was like, wow, a different feeling than Iran. It was the first town after the border."

"Do you mean Herat?" I asked.

"Oh, Herat, Herat. Oh, I'm sorry. Herat. Herat. Not Kandahar. Kandahar is going to Pakistan. In Herat it was hot. And all the flies and all this, you know. And I remember we were sitting in a restaurant, first floor somewhere and we ordered Coca Cola and they brought us Coca Cola in the original Coca Cola bottle, but it was just water colored. Colored water. And we...all...got...so...sick."

Some customers came in. Undine excused herself and got up to help them. When they left the shop, she sat down again and continued.

"And we all got sick. There were a lot of flies and so on. And we went on to Kabul. In Kabul we were all lying down. Just giving up and giving up and stomach problems," she said, putting special emphasis on the first syllable of 'stomach.' "And we said 'let's go away from this Afghanistan.' So when we got a bit better, we went to Pakistan. From Pakistan we went to India. Delhi. We drove a lot of times at night because it was too hot in the daytime."

"You didn't know Ataullah at that time?" I asked.

"No, no, no, no. It was our first trip. We didn't know Ataullah. And, uh, in Delhi I remember coming into Delhi in middle of the night. We thought, 'Oh, let's sleep outside' because we don't know where to find hotel and so on. And we went on a little hill. We went on a little hill and we always changed. Two were always sleeping in the car and two outside. It was Thomas and my turn to sleep in the car, luckily. And in the early morning when the sun came up, when the light came up a bit, these two others knocked on the windows." Undine was getting excited again, her voice rising. "'Hey, let's go away.' We we we, you know, and we were standing in the middle of a shitting place from Delhi people, you know, on a hill. Everybody was there shitting, sitting, no, no, no sitting with a little uh uh uh little cube of metal? Water. And they were sitting shitting, talking to each other and we stood in the middle of this. I woke up and these two were sleeping outside. We were so tired and this was the first impression of Delhi." Undine let loose with an infectious and deep belly laugh. It took a minute or so for us to recover.

"Oh my God," Undine said, wiping tears from her eyes. "But from Delhi we went up north and went up to Katmandu. And in Katmandu was a nice festival going on. In the middle of the city. What was it called? I always had it in my head, but now I forgot the name. Incru-something festival. There was a little girl was just making like a little god, you know, they drove her to town and she was pretty and well-dressed and in a big car."

"I've seen a documentary on this," Kaori said.

"Yah, and you know, and we just came in when it was just happening, you know, so we came in to a place that was full of thousands and thousands of Nepalese people -- women and man and children and nicely dressed and we just came there."

"That must have been something to see," Kaori said, leaning forward in her chair.

"Indrajatra Festival, Indrajatra Festival. And we made a lot of pictures. We have beautiful pictures from there. Yah, um, and we stayed some days in Kabul, in in in Katmandu and out in the valley...wanted to go to the Chinese border and we drove there. I got really sick because of the high, you know...and sick outside. We were lying down a long time again, I don't remember, you know. And then we drove back to Calcutta, back from Nepal after what I don't know how long."

"You went to Nepal by car?" I asked.

"By car. Everything by car. But this was the nice experience because you came together with the people when you go by car. I remember on the road somewhere we asked people if we could sleep somewhere inside and they said yes and we had to go up this little tiny, um, stick with legs."

"A ladder?" I said, making a motion of climbing.

"A ladder. You know, wood ladder. And they had chicken up there and they got their broom and made the dust just like this." Undine made a vigorous gesture for sweeping. "The dust was like this going everywhere and and and you couldn't see anything, the chicken went away, and they said 'You can sleep here.'"

We had to hold our sides with laughter.

"Something like this, you know. And they were cooking with tea and with little lamps in the night and things like this, you know. Nice, you know." Undine paused for a moment, a wide smile on her face. "This first trip was one of the best trip we made. We were on the road about eight months. Coming back from Nepal we went then to Calcutta and Calcutta is a really heavy city." Undine shook her head slowly.

"Yeah," I said. "You have to be ready for Calcutta. Delhi is pretty bad, but -- "

"Oh God yes. And we were not in our heads ready for nothing. We just went on, you know. We didn't know about India. Maybe Thomas, but not me. I had no ideas about as a religion at this time. I was twenty years old. Hinduism was so far away and Buddhism was so far away and all this, you know."

"But those things kind of stimulate your interest after you return to study and to read about the places you experienced," I said.

Undine lowered her voice, reached over, touched my arm, and said, "But I tell you something. For me, it was like I was somewhere out of...everything."

"Yeah, out of this world. I know. I know," I said excitedly.

Kaori was wide-eyed and, in a sense, out of her conversational league now as she watched Undine and me go deeper and deeper into our Asian memories.

"Just the the the smell and the dust and this many many many people in India." Undine flailed her arms about. "And you never be alone. All these people around you, you know. It's a new experience for Europeans, you know."

"And you walk around like this all day long." I got up and walked around the room with my jaw wide open.

"Yah, yes, somehow. India. The first time in India is like this. And also many many experience of being, um, afraid, you know. After not knowing things that goes on."

"Fear of the unknown, maybe," I said.

"Yeah, fear of the unknown. Right. We saw a funeral outside Benares where they burn people. I didn't know much about it. I was standing there like this." Undine made the same face I'd made. "And we met a Buddhist guy, a monk. He was an old guy and he said he met...he met Gandhi or something or I don't remember.

"Anyway, some important man he met and he told us about it. And then he took us to...in Benares he took us to his monastery and we could sleep there. We could sleep there in a little room with two wooden table and there was the beds, you know, so we got our sleeping bags on the wooden table and I could sleep all night. And early morning we went out down to the Ganges and took a boat early morning and saw all the...all the burnings outside." Undine looked away for a moment, her lips pursed.

"The cremations?" I asked.

"Cremations. And this city Benares. Calcutta and Benares. If you have seen this two cities," she said in a low, respectful whisper, "it's just too much. It's just too much. You just smell the dead. In Benares. And then you see after burning them they get into..."

"The river?" I said, Boschian imagery raging in my head.

"Into the Ganges. They put everything into the Ganges. And even if it's not gone you see, you know, you see everything. It's too much." The pace of Undine's narrative picked up again. "And just coming out of here, you have no idea about the East and see all this...."

"I was the same way in Delhi." I was on the edge of my seat now, too.

"You know what it is? After coming home after this trip, you had to to to go on thinking, thinking, thinking all the time about it. Because when you when you were there, it was just too much. This I cannot tell you in English. You understand?" Undine looked deeply into my eyes.

"Yes, I do. I do. The same thing happened to me. When I went back to the United States, it took me maybe...three years."

"Uh huh. I understand. Yah, yah, yah. Right, right, right."

"It was a reverse culture shock. People were living their lives and I'd been to hell. And back. And I wanted to explain every single detail of what I'd seen and experienced to every single person I met."

"You cannot tell because nobody understands. Nobody understands," Undine said sadly.

"And I started drinking heavily after that."

"Yah, nobody understands. It was like when people were in Vietnam and they come back and want to talk. I think it's the same, you know. It's the same thing. The other people cannot know."

We paused for a long time, ruminating the memories and images of India. Undine was the first to speak again.

"I started telling you one hour ago about our trip by car from Kabul. It was in springtime and all the roads...the normal road going to Afghanistan, it was made from the, built from the Americans and the Russians. Because the Russians, for them, was road important going down to the Caspian Sea. And Americans it was oil or whatever, I don't know what, to build the roads. So the Americans and the Russians built the roads. They had beautiful roads. And they had not much cars and not many people in Afghanistan, but the roads the main roads were beautiful, you know.

"And, uh, going away from the main road you came on the mud road, and in springtime the mud road you couldn't drive. This is normal cars. You had to go into big trucks or something. We drove into the north in springtime. Somewhere in some village we had to leave our car, go on in a big truck, and going to Andkhui I think we drove twelve hours for a hundred kilometers. From Charikar to Andkhui.

"But it was so beautiful, I never get this out of my head." Undine picked up a pencil and started tapping it on the desk at the end of each sentence, as if marking a rhythmical beat on a drum. "We stopped for tea. We stopped for praying. We stopped for eating. And the the truck was full of people, and sacks full of, uh, corn, and sheeps were there and goats were on the top. And a lot of Afghan people and a lot of women. And we were singing German songs, then they were singing Afghan songs. Then they went down praying. Then we went down pushing the car through the mud, you know. This took us so many many many hours. And there was one guy, there was a mullah also along. And in Andkhui...I don't know how...somebody...our money got stolen in one shop because Thomas was always the guy who left his bag down."

"Spaced out, no doubt," I said, pointing to my head and making a circle in the air.

"Yah, yah. The money was five hundred dollars or something like this."

"That was a lot of money then."

"A lot of money. And because of this trouble we got together with this mullah again. He was helping us, you know. I don't know exactly how it went out."

"Was Thomas speaking any Pashto?" I asked.

"A little bit, not really, no. It was the first trip. No, it was when we lived in Kabul, yah." Undine strained to remember. "Before in my pregnancy because I had my pregnancy, the whole pregnancy was in Kabul living, you know. And so we got together because of this problem. We got together with the mullah and then driving home together with the mullah.

"There was north, really up north to the Russian border, the Russian border where the Amu Darya was, the river who was between Afghanistan and Russia. And there was a stripe of land you couldn't go. You needed a special permit because of the Russian people, you know. You could not come close to the border. But because of the mullah, we go through. We got into this, to this important region. He brought us in.

"And there we had the experience. Here was a yurt." Undine moved her arms about and her voice rose. "And here was a tent. And it was a free, um, how you say, free, um, region. You know, you was staying there. It was open region, you know. And this one evening this sun was like a fireball going down, and the moon was on the other side. Same thing! Coming up!" Undine suddenly stood up, extended her arms, and looked from side to side with bulging eyes.

"Ahhhh!" Kaori said, her eyes fixed on Undine, captivated by the emotional power pouring out of Undine's massive frame.

"I was standing there. I have pictures. I was standing there. I was singing. You know, I was fifty-eight kilos at this time. And had a kuchi dress on, a red kuchi dress. And Thomas took a picture of me in this light, you now. I never forget this. We were staying there...I think...my tears went down. I got so touched emotionally. That was one of the nicest experiences I have with the nature."

"In that land where few people can --"

"In this land! I tell you something." Undine looked at me intently. "I lived one year in Kabul. And I went there sometimes, I don't know how many times, not too long, say, altogether is maybe one and a half year. But this country is so familiar to me. It's like my home country. I don't know Germany, but I know most all of the cities of Afghanistan because there were not so many and not so many people."

Undine sat down again and a short silence ensued. Then she leaned toward us with another smile and said, "Ohhh, this story I have to tell you. I have to tell you this story. In Kabul when I was pregnant...Thomas had an accident, a short time before we want to go home. He drove the Mercedes on a road to the museum. I don't know if you know where the museum was, but it was a big road, you know. Wide. And was a bus station and we drove. And two of these people they came. Two old men. And they run into our car!

"And this one old man break his leg. We took him to hospital. We did everything, you know. But the police took Thomas and the car away because a foreigner in those times was always guilty. You know? So they took him from this moment on. The old man, we brought him to hospital. And then they took Thomas, but they never let him go. And they didn't put him in jail. They put him in Traffic Office where all these people made to stay. So I had to bring him things...they had nothing to sleep on...I had to bring him mattress. I had to bring him food and everything, money and everything." Undine sank back in her chair a moment, then rose up quickly.

"They took him for weeks. I was pregnant." Undine held her hands in front of her stomach. "I wanted to leave the country, you know. I went to the German Embassy and talk with them and they couldn't help much because they had one man also from there. They had nearly the same problem, you know. So it was on for weeks and weeks and weeks.

"I had to go to this man in the hospital and find out what happened and so forth. The family was rich. There was one in the Radio Kabul, I remember. They wanted money. They ask for a thousand U.S. dollar. It was not our fault, but anyway it was our fault from their side.

"So they had him for a long time, you know. Then he came out, but he had no passport. A short time before this happened, two Americans were coming. Moved in in our street opposite house. So we came together, cooked together. There was this guy, Steve Sugar. He was a small one with glasses. They came in our house. Thomas had his pictures along from California because this time was so important for him. It was an important time. Jefferson Airplane. I don't know how many groups he met and, uh, making music in the parks in this time and being in California, you know. All the hippies and nice people, everybody friendly. This was something so new for him, you know?

"This short...I don't know was some months he was in the States...this was so important he took the pictures he had...he made in those times...he took along to Afghanistan. Then this guy came. They looked at the pictures. And then he said, 'Man! That's me! That's me in the picture! That's me!'" Undine mimicked the man, pointing her finger excitedly at an imaginary picture.

"So it was Steve Sugar, not only in one place. It was first Jefferson Airplane because Thomas knew them through who I don't know. He went on stage. He went from stage making pictures down into the people and Steve Sugar was there. He went to other festivals like Hare Krishna festivals. Steve Sugar was there. He had them on the picture.

"And I'll tell you something." Undine paused briefly, holding Kaori and me in her eyes. "When Thomas could not leave Afghanistan because of his passport problem...and I had to fly home because I didn't want to...I know the situation of the hospitals in Kabul because I always went to one friend who was there. He was in jail, but then he had hepatitis and had to go to hospital. I went there every day even with my friends...we brought him just vegetables and things to eat. I went into this place where about twelve people had hepatitis. So I got hepatitis. But I wasn't afraid because it was my friend so I had to go there. Mike, who comes from Holland. He was in hospital and I visited him every day, so I got hepatitis, too, but I didn't know.

"So I had to fly home. Thomas couldn't go, couldn't leave Afghanistan. After Traffic Office he was in the house again. And then I flew home with a German girl. We had to go over Jordan. Stayed there for some days. Then I came here and Natasha's birthday date was normally the twenty-eighth of January, but she got born one week after I came from Afghanistan. On the sixth of December. Thomas was still there in Afghanistan and I wrote him a telegram." Undine stopped to take a deep breath, then continued, enunciating slowly and clearly each word. "'Please...come...home.... Natasha...born.... I'm...sick...in...hospital.... Hepatitis.... Natasha...in...hospital...in...Basel.... Pray...for...her!'"

Undine took another breath, then spoke rapidly again, "Because she was only three pounds and some grams, you know. Because she came too early. So Thomas, he said, 'I have to go home! Doesn't matter how. I have to go.' Steve Sugar --"

"Was still there?" I said, trying to give Undine a chance to breathe.

"Was still there," she said, not missing a beat. "Steve Sugar gave him his glasses. Steve Sugar gave him his passport. Steve Sugar then went to the American Embassy and said, 'I lost my passport.' Thomas Knorr was going overnight home. Over Pakistan, over Holland, as Steve Sugar and arrived here. And got me out of hospital some days before Christmas. And I was already 'I don't want to be here this Christmas'...all the people buying things and stuff. I saw it from far away because the normal hospital...when Natasha got born...on the same day Natasha got born I got from the doctor the news that I have hepatitis. So they couldn't let me go into the normal where they get the children. What's the place?"

"You were quarantined?" I asked.

"I had to go to quarantine, right. And you know what the quarantine place was here?" Undine said, frowning. "It was like a dog hut. So they took me down from the big hospital in the morning, in the early morning. It was foggy and dark. And I came from Afghanistan where there's every day nice weather. It's every day blue sky, even in the winter, you know. And dry. Nice, nice." Undine looked upward and raised her hands as if trying to touch the Afghan sky once more.

"So in the morning Natasha got by ambulance to Basel because they had no incubator here in Lorrach. And this I never forget because when she had to go away I was so afraid, you know, of losing her. And then the next day they took me, in the morning, six o'clock they took me in the bed and drove me over the street to a wooden place where the quarantine is."

"Amazing!" Kaori said, her voice choked.

"I got too emotional to tell you." Undine put a tissue to her eyes. "I feel it, you know."

"We feel it, too," I said. "I can visualize being there. The situation. But when Thomas came back, he entered Germany on an American passport? "

"On an American passport. And even somewhere on the border they talked to him and he was talking in English."

"His English was very good."

"Yah, but not as an American. And this Steve Sugar visited us when Natasha was about six months in summertime. He was once more here because he was once in summertime here and he was once in wintertime here."

"Thomas could have been put in prison in many countries for carrying a false passport," I said.

"Oh yes. And then I tell you. And then he wanted to go back to Afghanistan, but he was afraid. So he didn't go back for something years and I went back in this time, you know. I went then with the photographicker who made this picture of young Thomas I gave you."

I still had the picture in my hand. We looked at it again, feeling as if Thomas was there with us. "Was that the time you met Ataullah?" I asked.

"Thomas met Ataullah in Afghanistan. Not me. And then he came here once, but I don't remember."

"Probably that time when I met them in Paris because -- "

"That was the first time Ataullah came to our house. It's possible. Yes, yes, yes."

"That was the first time out of his country and it was very difficult for him to get a visa," I said.

"Yes, yes. And he was long time here because I have pictures with him in snow. So you were here when? Summertime?"

"I was here in late February."

"Ah, late February. Then it's yeah, yeah. That was his first time. And he was so good with the baby. Baby was crying. Ataullah took it. He was quiet. He was running around with Boris, I remember." Undine smiled broadly.

"He was a handsome man, in his way."

"Yeah, a crazy one."

We laughed.

"Short, stocky. Big chest. He had stomach problems," I said.

"Because of eating here after Afghanistan."

"I remember he was kind of overwhelmed by all the buildings and machines and everything. He missed Afghanistan."

"Yeah, because Afghanistan...." Undine paused and sighed. "That was what turns me on so much. I felt like in the Middle Ages. Out of everything. You know? Out of everything. And just being, just being, nothing was really terrible. No machine and no big buildings and not...you were...how can I say? I don't know how can I say."

"I remember Afghanistan as one of the most peaceful countries I'd ever been," I said.

"Peaceful, peaceful. I was never afraid to be in Afghanistan. I never would go alone to Pakistan, never in my life. Never like to go alone to India. But Afghanistan, yeah. And oh oh...I must tell you this. I was never afraid in my life like the time we were going through the Khyber Pass, you know. You know the Khyber Pass?"

"Oh, yes," I said. "I passed through there, too, on the way to India."

Undine rolled her eyes and sucked in a deep breath. "Yah, yah, that place. We were going and everywhere Thomas is making pictures and we're waiting in the car for our passports. And it's taking a long time, so Thomas and I are getting out of the car and he is making more pictures. You cannot do this, you know, at the border. Oh, I never forget this. Thomas is out of the car and making pictures and...and suddenly all the men...many Pakistani men with beards and turbans and dark skin...these men are coming around us and pointing their guns and shouting in big voices and shaking their fists like this." Undine shook her right fist in the air. "And I'm thinking, 'Oh, my God, this is the end. We're going to die. They're going to kill us like spies.'"

Kaori's eyes were bulging. "Why did they think you were spies?" she asked excitedly.

Undine laughed, then reached over to touch Kaori's arm. "Because we are foreigners and that part of Pakistan is not for tourists. Many strange people. They're selling guns and drugs and many things. You cannot make pictures."

"But didn't Thomas know about that?" Kaori asked.

"Oh yah. He knows about that. But he's a crazy boy." Undine winked at me. "And we were very very lucky because at that time a policeman is suddenly appearing and he said to Thomas, 'Give me a new film and the camera.' So Thomas gave him the film and the camera, and the policeman is doing this." Undine stretched her hands far apart as if exposing a roll of film before the angry crowd. "And he throw the film on the ground and acting like he is angry. Then he gave the camera back to Thomas -- it still had the first film inside -- and he told the people, 'Go away. Go away. There is no problem.' And, you know, I still have those pictures."

Undine threw her head back and laughed and rocked in glee.

"You were lucky the policeman helped you," Kaori said.

"Oh, yah, lucky. Thomas was many times lucky. And me, too. But that was Pakistan. Like I said, I never feel afraid in Afghanistan. You know what it was, Afghanistan? It was so arch, archai...how you say it in English?"

"Something peaceful?" I guessed.

"Strong. Strong. Nature strong. Archaish, archaish, I don't know English name. You felt the past. You felt the past because there were no factories and no this...I don't know how you say."

"Archaic?" Kaori said.

"Yeah, archaic. That's what it means. Archaic. And that you felt."

"I felt the same thing," I said. "It was a little bit like going back into the pages of the Bible. The Old Testament."

"Uh huh. Uh huh. And the beautiful air, you know. I remember situations when we had no...first time when we drove there...we had no petrol anymore. And we saw all these cities, so we thought no problem. We push and we get there." Undine pushed her arms out several times. "But we push forever and we never came to the city. You know why? We saw the lights, but it was far away. The air was so clean that you saw it so close.

"Then we got petrol from a driver, just few liters. And it was to end and we had to look again. So you saw it's there." Undine snapped her fingers. "But it was not there. It was far away."

"Like an oasis almost. Yeah, I took a bus from Herat to Kabul," I said.

"I hope you prayed before," Undine said, grinning.

"I got out and watched them pray. In those days I gave up my life to the wind. The wind carried me, carried me to Japan." I winked at Kaori, who smiled back.

"That's a good experience, a good experience," Undine said.

"But in the media, the television, newspapers, everything you hear about Afghanistan is war, war, war. But my only experience was peaceful."

Undine leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes for a moment, then said with emotion, "They suffer. They have nothing. There is nothing, you know. And it is forgotten country. It's a forgotten country. Because nothing to get anymore. And now inside they don't get freedom, you know."

The three of us shook our heads knowingly, sadly, and sat in silence once more, listening to the rain and traffic outside the shop. Later, at my request, Undine took us to the top of the hill where Thomas and I had taken psilocybin and connected so strongly. There had been seven trees there back in 1977 and Thomas had pointed them out to me as symbols of man, each reaching out as if groping for love, and I had seen it that way too under the influence of the psilocybin.

The rain had stopped. We used an old towel to wipe off the bench at the base of the trees, sat down, and stared out beyond to the valley and river below.

"You know," Undine started slowly, her hands folded in her lap. "Thomas changed very much after you knew him. In that time of Afghanistan he was happy, but later he became dark and angry. It was the first prison time, I think, that changed him. After he came out, he didn't want to work, only drink whiskey and take heroin."

"What did he go to prison for?" I asked.

"Always drugs. Three times and seven years in prison." Undine wrung her hands. Her voice wavered. "Three times and every time he was coming home he was a stranger. Not at first, but becoming more and more a stranger to me and the children." Tears formed in Undine's eyes.

"Why do you think he changed?" I asked.

"I don't know. Maybe he was angry at society. But in my heart it was his family. His father, you know, he was died when Thomas was twelve."

"I didn't know that." I put my hand on Undine's.

"Yah, died when Thomas was twelve...and his mother put more love to him and not his older brother after that. Thomas and his brother were not friends, you know, not like real brothers. His brother became a banker and had much money, but Thomas was more for people and love and did not care about money. Not like his brother, anyway. And his brother was a cold man and and used other people. He was a big company man and Thomas hated big companies and and and they were always fighting. Always fighting. It was sad and I think Thomas had a big hole in his heart and the whiskey and drugs made him forget the big hole."

Undine looked in the distance for a moment, then, with her voice cracking, said, "And the day Thomas died I called his brother and he said with bitter taste in his mouth, 'So, he finally killed himself' and he cut the telephone."

Kaori was crying now, too. I put my arm around Undine and held her close. She leaned into me limply, her large body quivering, muffled sobs escaping her mouth.

"Did he ever write to you from prison?" I asked.

Undine wiped her eyes with a handkerchief pulled from her pocket. She forced a thin smile and said, "Oh yah. Beautiful, long letters. One time he wrote me a sixty-page letter. It's my treasure."

Undine took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "You know, I sometimes think he found a quiet place in prison. His letters were, what, had bright pictures and hope. Like poems. Lots of nature pictures in his words."

"Did he ever think about writing a book? I mean, he had a lot of adventures and experiences and had a lot of material to write about. I remember he told great stories. He always had a twinkle in his eyes when he told me stories about Afghanistan and Iran and India. I strongly remember that."

"Yah, he sometimes said, 'I should write a book,' and he always was writing and writing on a notebook, but, no, he never did. He lived his story."

We were quiet for a while before Undine spoke again. "Thomas loved this place. It's not so beautiful now. They cut down some trees and put a parking space over there for the cars. Teenagers come here to drink and party. Thomas didn't like that. He thought this was a...a...how can I say...special, maybe spiritual place. You know, a special nature place."

"Perhaps a sacred place that's been desecrated," I said.

"Maybe, yes." Undine pointed farther out and below us to the city of Basel, the river flowing through it, and the smoke stacks poking up here and there. "You see all those chemical company tanks? Making the air and water dirty? Thomas hated them. All his life he hated them."

I rose from the bench and stretched. The wind was picking up and there was a chill in the air. Undine and Kaori remained seated.

"You know, Boris and Natasha and me came to here the day Thomas died. It was his favorite place. We sat here and listened to a Van Morrison tape. He was Thomas's favorite singer."

"I remember listening to Van Morrison's album Moondance over and over at your place. It has special memories for me, too," I said.

We said little after that. Undine drove us back to the border. Kaori and I embraced her in a long hug. There were no more words to say. We got on the tram and watched Undine's forlorn figure fade until we rounded a corner and she was gone.

Chapter 8

We were on the train from Basel to Milan. Kaori was seated across from me reading a book. Fields of corn flanked us on both sides. Farther ahead green hills rolled into the distant Alps. I stared at the picture of Thomas that Undine had given me.

Kaori looked up from her book and said, "Are you thinking about Thomas?"

"Yes." I sighed. "It's really sad how he spent his final years. The memories I have of him are so different from how he died. I feel sorry for Undine and her children. It's all so different from how I imagined it would be. I had no idea he'd had to go to jail -- three times for a total of seven years. He was so full of idealism, energy, and a zest for life when I knew him. I just can't imagine him as an angry man, strung out on heroin, cocaine, and whiskey. It must have been hell on Undine."

Kaori reached over and touched me. "Try to think of the positive, honey-chan. There was something at work here. I've probably said this a hundred times, but it seems that Thomas was pulling us. You really surprised me before this trip when you said suddenly, 'Let's go to Europe.' That wasn't like you. I think Thomas's spirit was calling to you and it was important for you to see Undine. You did a wonderful thing for her. You gave her a chance yesterday to go back beyond the bad times and remember the good times she had with Thomas. She was able to smile, laugh, tell stories, remember her youth, and relive the good days. She had a beautiful laugh and smile. Her eyes were very bright when she looked at you."

"Yeah, I guess you're right. There was just so much for both of us to tell and so little time to do it."

"Do you remember what she said about his time in jail? She said he found a quiet place for his soul there. He wrote her sixty-page letters and she waited every week for his beautiful letters. Maybe it was better for him then to be in jail because when he was out, he was trying to make money and couldn't, and the anger against society began again."

We were quiet for a while. Scattered images and random thoughts about Thomas continued to fill my head as the train wheels clattered on the tracks. The story Undine told of their passing through the Khyber Pass and nearly being assaulted for taking pictures came to me. Undine had laughed when telling the story, saying she still had the pictures, and it seemed that she was proud of his fearlessness, his stubbornness, his lust for adventure, even his recklessness.

I remembered my own bus journey through the Khyber Pass and thought of the plump Pakistani who befriended me on the bus. There had been an uprising against the Bhutto regime for supposedly rigging recent elections. There were soldiers everywhere and the people had to be off the streets at night. The Pakistani was the owner of a small motel and insisted I stay with him and his wife once we got to Lahore. I did and while he provided me with a simple, nutritious meal and stories of Lahore's history, muffled sounds of gunshots came from the streets. It seemed that all through that journey complete strangers had watched over me and given me refuge from danger.

Kaori spoke again. "Undine is really a strong and beautiful woman, don't you think?"

"Yes, I do."

"Do you remember what she said when I told her I thought she was a powerful woman?"

"Yeah, she said that some people were afraid of her because of her size, but she just wants to put her head on someone's shoulder and rest it there most of the time."

"Doesn't it seem to you that the gentlest people are often the most powerful looking?"

I smiled and said, "And sometimes the most powerful are the smallest, like you."

We laughed together and I felt better. Kaori had a knack for snapping me out of foul moods. I was probably dwelling too much on trying to figure out why Thomas had died just as we were about to arrive in Lorrach. There had to be a reason for the strength of the call to see him and his death just before arriving. I wanted badly to know, and to put things together as to what it all had to do with my life now. It was too mysterious and confusing. Why now? What did it portend for the future? What had been the connection between Thomas and me?

I thought again of Malcolm Lowry and Juan Fernando. Lowry had turned Juan Fernando's death into something symbolically positive. Lowry had peppered the manuscript of Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid with Juan Fernando quotes like "Are you making tragedies?" and "Throw away your mind" and indeed now Thomas rather than I was the true "maker of tragedies." Like Juan Fernando, Thomas had died from drinking too much, although in Juan Fernando's case it was from too much mescal. In a sense, both had gone loco crazy.

I knew I was stretching things too far, but the more my mind dwelled on it, the more it was impossible to escape the conviction that there was tremendous meaning in all the coincidences contained both in this trip and in Lowry's return trip to Mexico. Because like Juan Fernando to Lowry, Thomas was to me the symbol of everything connected to the past. Lowry had written about Juan Fernando that "no one could be more alive and life-giving in spite of all than he was" and so Thomas was to me now. I had felt something deep like the converging of the past, present, and future into one when Undine drove us to the top of the hill. I thought again about the night on the hill when Thomas had explained all his ideals about setting up communities for like-minded international groups to live in and exchange every few years and talked about the importance of family and friends and love and also told me everything he'd known about the politics, histories, and cultures of Iran and Afghanistan. Yes, that hill had remained afterward in my mind a symbol of the past, a place where my own sermon on the mount had been delivered by the maker of tragedies who had passed on to me some important guideposts to the rest of my life that, if you stretched it far enough, had guided me to Kaori, who had been passed the torch and taken care of me these last fifteen years.

Perhaps it was best Thomas had died before we had a chance to meet and talk again. I might have been disappointed had he lived instead and presented himself as an embittered old man filled with frustration, anger, hatred, and darkness. We had certainly "thrown our minds away" that special night on top of the hill and I'd never forget it. A new sadness gripped me.

"I'm glad we took the train instead of a plane," Kaori said.

I looked out the window to see we were now climbing into the Alps. Long shadows ran down the sides of jagged mountains to a placid lake that was a deep green and reflected perfectly the surrounding scenery. Farmhouses speckled the lower portions along the lake. The colors were subdued and blended well with the landscape. White clouds perched on top of the higher peaks.

"It is truly beautiful, isn't it?" I said.

"You know, I've seen more paintings in the last week than I've seen in all my life. I'm so glad I got to see the Van Gogh museum, the Rembrandt museum, and all the small museums in Basel. I think I'm learning more and more about color and nuance."

"In what way?"

"Well, for example, if I were trying to paint the trees and this scenery here, I'd definitely have to add streaks of white." Kaori said, a marked look of satisfaction on her face.

"I'm glad to hear that you're learning, absorbing, and feeling things. I'd hoped this trip might do something like that for you."

"Oh yes, honey-chan." Kaori reached over and held my right hand with both her hands. "This is a wonderful trip. I'm so glad we're here, right now at this moment. You know how I love mountains, and I'm really looking forward to everything in Florence. Especially Florence."

"Me, too. Like I told you, Florence has some special memories for me, very different from the memories of the journey that brought Thomas and me together."

"How different?" Kaori rubbed my arm and looked directly at me.

"Well, I was twenty-two years old and at the beginning of that first journey in Europe. Peggy, the American art student I met in Paris, is the one who mapped out an itinerary for me to follow and she strongly recommended Florence because it was the birthplace of the Renaissance and has hundreds of years of art history. I spent quite a bit of time just wandering the streets and walking through the different galleries. I was in complete awe of the works of art I saw, especially Michelangelo's David. It was really in Florence that the idea first hit me that I, too, might be able to create something of lasting value, express myself in some art form. I didn't know at the time that writing would become my means of expression, but somehow I was soaking in the atmosphere and feeling that art could help me find my way out of the confusion of my life. I was older and more experienced, more sure of myself on my second journey when I met Thomas. Maybe by the time I met him, I had more faith in the winds of fate."

"Maybe my life will change, too, when we get to Florence." Kaori smiled broadly.

"You never know, it just might. Anyway, more than any other place on this trip, Florence is the one spot I wanted to show you. It won't be long now."

We were now high up in the mountains and the view of the gorge below was spectacular. Our conversation stopped except for exclamations of "Oooh" and "Ahhh" when we saw a beautiful waterfall, a massive bridge spanning the gorge, or a particularly large boulder rising out of the river far below. Then we passed through a series of tunnels interrupted by short, open stretches. We felt we were getting closer to Italy as the names of the small villages we passed through changed from German-sounding and consonant-dominated names like Amsteg-Silenan, Wassen, and Goschenen to Italian-sounding and vowel-ending names like Faido, Lavorgo, Pollegio, and Bellinzona. The slate rooftops of the houses we passed became more colorful -- pink, blue, and orange. Finally, we arrived at the Swiss-Italian border.

My gut tightened when I saw four border policemen and a German shepherd dog board the coach next to ours. We heard the sounds of passengers moving about, baggage being pulled down from upper shelves, and the policemen speaking roughly in Italian.

Kaori looked at me and asked anxiously, "What's going on?"

"They're checking for drugs."

One of the policemen entered our coach and walked down the center aisle motioning for people to have their bags ready for inspection. Kaori and I pulled our backpacks down from the storage shelf above the seats and put them on the seats next to us. A moment later another policeman leading the dog on a leash entered the coach. The dog was in a high state of excitement. The policeman roughly patted the bags of the passengers ahead of us while the dog pulled at the leash and sniffed the bags.

They came to us. Kaori's bags were ignored, but the dog lingered over my bag for an extended moment. My heart stopped. The dog handler stared at me, probably checking for signs of panic on my face, then moved on. A bead of sweat slid down my ear. I exhaled slowly and looked over at Kaori, whose eyes were wide as she watched the procession continue down the aisle.

"My God, I can't believe this," she said excitedly. "It's just like in the movie Julia when Lillian Hellman was at the French-German border with the dogs and everything. This is some kind of experience for me. I've got to take a picture of this."

"Are you crazy?" I whispered as urgently as I could. "I don't think you should."

She didn't hear me and pulled the camera out of her bag just as the dog began barking and sniffing heatedly several seats down from us. She snapped a picture, then started to stand to try to take a better picture. I tugged her shirt and said forcefully, "Don't Kaori. It might be illegal."

"Oh, sorry." She hurriedly put the camera back in her bag.

A group of policemen was now gathered at the rear of our coach and rummaging through the backpacks of some young travelers. Two of the travelers -- a young man and woman, both around nineteen or twenty years old -- were taken off the train, backpacks in tow. They put up no resistance and looked forlorn. The dog and two of the policemen continued on to the next coach. Ten minutes later the train slowly pulled out of the station. Two policemen and the two backpackers, their faces downcast, were still standing on the platform. I felt a deep sorrow for them.

"That was incredible," Kaori said. "I've never experienced anything like that. This is a good experience for me."

"Not so good, I think. Those poor kids were probably just college kids on vacation trying to bring back a little pot from Amsterdam and now their futures are possibly ruined. I'll bet they're shitting their pants right now."

"What do you think will happen to them?"

"I have no idea, but I'm sure being busted for any kind of drug in Italy is no petty thing. Amsterdam may be liberal, but the rest of Europe doesn't take a kind view of possession. There'll probably be some jail time."

"It feels like we're in some kind of international espionage movie."

"I can assure you this was no movie."

"Were you nervous?"

"You bet I was. I was worried there for a moment that I might have some pot residue in my bag."

"But you threw away the rest of your marijuana in Amsterdam."

"I know," I said. "Anyway, I feel sorry for those kids. I don't imagine jail in Italy would be a whole lot of fun."

The border scene got me thinking back to my own jail experiences. I had been about the same age as the backpackers. The day of my court martial returned, the sentencing by the judge, the feel of handcuffs placed around my wrists, the guards shoving me into a concrete cubicle, the sound of the door slamming behind me and the guard turning the key in the lock. In all my life the future had never appeared as bleak and hopeless as in that solitary moment.

Border crossings. Jesus, what nerve-wracking experiences. In the dozens of borders I had crossed in my journeys, there had been moments of anxiety, even fear and paranoia, but I had been lucky and passed through every border successfully. Undine's stories of Thomas hit me again, especially the one about his using Steve Sugar's American passport to get out of Afghanistan and back to Germany after Undine had given birth to their first child. He had been lucky, too, at least in that instance.

My mind started playing the "what if" game. What if the border police had nabbed me and taken me away from Kaori? In my weakened condition, would the prison experience and the certainty of the ruination of our future have been the end of me? How dark and Dostoevskian would the remainder of my life have become? Would I have died an ignominious death in prison? Would Kaori have been able to carry on without me? How badly would the shame of my actions have affected her life, and how badly would she have been ostracized in Japan as the wife of a respectable university professor turned drug addict? In that sense, wasn't the entire life I had worked so hard to create in Japan nothing more than a sham? Wasn't half of my life a coverup anyway? Oh boy, here we were going again, the long-delayed result of the thought processes the military had tried to inculcate into my brain thirty years before: "Boy, if you continue on the path you're pursuing, you'll be marked as a coward, a traitor, a worthless piece of shit in the greatest country in the world, and the stigma you carry for the rest of your life will prevent you from ever getting a decent job and mark you as a parasitic worm in a society that will shun you, spit on you, kick you continuously in the balls as you crawl from place to place until finding your grave at the end."

There was that word "grave" again, which brought back the title Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid and both the connection with Thomas, now in the grave, and Malcolm Lowry. Hadn't Lowry spent the entirety of his life in such paranoid thinking? What must it have been like for him in his humiliations at the hands of the Mexican immigration authorities, particularly the sinister Inspector "Fatty," who accompanied Lowry and his wife Marjerie on the train from Mexico City to the U.S. border and forced Lowry at gunpoint to sign a confession to breaking Mexican laws before Lowry was deported the next day. Surely, Lowry had thought several times in his life that he would die homeless, forgotten, and buried in a foreign land.

Lowry had at one point written to Juan Fernando asking why the Mexican authorities prosecuted a man who only wanted to write poetry. He believed it was another example of his fate continually casting him into a dark pit. Lowry's suffering endured at that time, words saved him, and writing was, more than any other time of his life, his form of therapy, the thing that enabled him to keep a grip on his sanity. Which was also true of me, at least in my twenties when the effect of the prison psychiatrists was such that doubts and paranoias about my own existence had caused me to feel that, like Lowry, my own life had become "a wasted voyage." Writing had to a large extent saved me from myself.

It was a pity, too, that Thomas hadn't found the same outlet, the same release outside prison. Kaori had picked up on Undine's story concerning the respite writing had given Thomas -- those sixty-page letters -- but it was the return to society after prison that concerned me. I myself had had more difficulty there than during the actual prison experience itself. Undine had said that Thomas often thought of writing a book about his adventures in Afghanistan and other parts of the world, his smuggling experiences, his living for short periods of time with some of the nomads in the desert, his prison days. But he had never followed up on the idea and instead turned to whiskey and hard drugs, not just hallucinogens and hashish, to escape from the paranoias, darknesses, and demons associated with that thinking process that, once started, will not release you. Rather, you have to release it, control it, let it out piece by piece. I thanked the Lord I was able to find it. Poor Thomas.

Could it be that Lowry's guiding angels -- "the Virgin for those that have nobody with" and his Saint of Dangerous and Desperate Causes -- had also guided me to the therapy of writing and the means to keep a grip on my own sanity? I wondered. Whether or not Lowry's angels had led me there, the writing had indeed saved my ass. Ha, the great pacifist here who killed thousands on paper in order to let them and him live in real life. For a moment I believed that I was on the track of an important truth that I had somehow overlooked and yet was somehow bound up with a fundamental law of human destiny. I felt a little excited, as if I could share these thoughts with Kaori, who was the only one capable of understanding, but the excitement dissipated with this thought: How on earth can you communicate the extraordinary drama of your interpretation of your life, your thought process, your imaginings of Thomas, Malcolm Lowry, and yourself to anyone other than yourself? Haven't the doors opened by and the revelations gained in your LSD and mushroom trips taught you anything? There's no need to communicate these thoughts to others. Why bother? One thing was for sure. I couldn't shake the feeling that Thomas's death, coming after those other bad omens (and now this drug bust at the border) was not the end of something, but a stark warning that something even more terrible was about to happen to Kaori and me.

The train was nearing Milan. Kaori was engrossed in a book about Florence. She took notice of the train slowing down, closed her book, and said, "What have you been thinking about?"

"Nothing important, really."

Chapter 9

We changed trains in Milan. It was muggy and an overcast sky accented a cheerless atmosphere at the station. I had had a bad feeling about Milan when I spent a night in the station waiting room in 1973 and watched young punks harass old men who wanted only to spend a quiet night out of the rain and cold. I was glad when the train to Florence departed.

Two teenage Italian girls sat across from us and watched intently as Kaori flipped through her book about Florence, periodically consulted her electronic dictionary, and jotted down notes in her notebook. The girls got off the train at Lodi and we had the compartment to ourselves. Credence Clearwater Revival's "Oh Lord, stuck in Lodi again" ran through my head. It felt good to take off my shoes, stretch my legs, and elevate my ankles on the opposite seats. I dozed much of the rest of the way. After we arrived at the Florence station, we walked a couple of blocks to our hotel. It took about an hour to unpack and set up the room. Kaori ran a bath.

Late in the afternoon we decided to see the Duomo, which was right around the corner off Via dei Panzani. The street was bustling with tourists. Kaori moved in front of me. We came around the corner, headed up Via dei Cerretani, and there it was in front of us, its pink, white, and green marble facade rising up indomitably to the massive orange dome, which seemed to touch the sky. The enormous building dwarfed everything surrounding it. Both of us stopped in our tracks and drew in our breath.

"Ohhhh! Ohhhh! David! Look at it! Oh, David, look at it! It's so big. It's so beautiful. Look how big it is."

I had never seen such wonder on her face. She staggered slowly toward it as if in great reverence. "I've never seen anything like this," she said and just stared at the imposing baroque structure for a long time. Then she reached into her bag and pulled out her camera.

We spent the next hour viewing the Duomo from all angles. Kaori took many pictures while emitting exclamations of joy and wonderment. The massive stones, intricate sculptures, and unbelievable scale of it transfixed her. She hardly noticed the hordes of tourists milling around.

When her wonder subsided a bit, we strolled along some of the side streets, found an interesting restaurant, went inside, and ordered a dinner of mushroom, tomato, and cheese pizza and beans stewed in a tomato sauce with rosemary.

"Oh, honey-chan," Kaori said between mouthfuls, "this is unbelievable. I just couldn't imagine the first place we see in Florence would affect me like this. I know you told me a lot of things, but I just couldn't imagine it being like this. I mean, Van Gogh gave me the shivers in Amsterdam, but not like this. I saw the Grand Canyon years ago when I was in Arizona teaching and that made me feel the same way. But that was made by nature. This was made by human beings."

"Do you feel perhaps a bit humbled?"

"More than that. It feels like I've discovered something beyond myself, something far greater than myself, but yet, as a human being, I feel suddenly inspired in some way. Like at the same time there's no meaning and great meaning to my little life. Now I think I finally understand what you must have felt when you were twenty-two and in Europe for the first time. This is so wonderful." Kaori's face beamed as she put a spoonful of beans into her mouth.

"I know what you mean. I've been trying for decades to find the words that can express what I felt the first time I came to Florence. And I've failed. Words just don't measure up to the depth of personal feeling when you confront a great work of art, especially on the scale of the Duomo. I guess you just have to experience it in the flesh yourself to understand. And there's a lot more to Florence than just the Duomo."

"I think I'm going to love our time here. I'm loving it already. And this Italian food is so delicious. Look at how much I'm able to eat and my stomach is somehow able to handle it." Kaori pointed proudly to the empty plate in front of her.

"I'm happy that you're happy. Cheers." We raised our glasses and toasted each other.

We walked back to the Duomo once more. Kaori took more pictures while the sun set. The colors reflecting off the stone walls had changed. My ankles were sore, so on the way back to the motel Kaori supported my weight as I limped along. The stairs to our third floor room were difficult to ascend, but I managed with the help of the banister. It was still warm, so we both stripped down to our underwear when we got to our room. I plopped on the bed. Kaori picked up my left ankle and began rubbing it.

"You know, honey-chan, I've been thinking a lot about my life since we met Undine."

"Oh yeah?"

"I don't know what I would do if I lost you." Kaori stopped massaging my feet momentarily and gave me a look full of seriousness and passion.

"You're very special to me, too."

"We were fated to come together. I really believe that. I think we were both traveling many different paths, and those paths were fated from the beginning to come together. I know I say this all the time, but don't you think so?"

"Yes, it sure seems that way. I've believed for a long time that someone or something has been guiding me throughout my life. And it seems that for a long time Thomas was somehow connected to that belief."

Kaori finished rubbing the left ankle, shifted on the bed, and started on the right ankle. She was quiet for a moment, then said, "I'm glad I got cancer."

"How's that?"

"If I hadn't got cancer when I did, I'd probably be dead now. I believe that. The doctors told me that my cancer was the fast-spreading type and I know that if I'd gotten that secretarial job for the United Nations Habitat job in Fukuoka, I'd have ignored the pain in my stomach and kept working and it would have been too late by the time I finally went to a doctor. Do you remember all that?"

"Oh yes, I remember everything."

"Do you remember what a bitch I was all the time? I really was a bitch when I was interpreting. I hated all those people in the Fukuoka International Interpreting Company. They were always trying to put me down." A frown marked Kaori's face.

"I remember the pressures you were under all the time, the way your company kept giving you all the most difficult jobs. And the way every job was for a totally unrelated group or company -- one week for a Malaysian political group, the next for a California avocado grower, the next a Canadian lumber company, every time something different without enough time to prepare, to learn the new specialized vocabulary."

"And I started getting pains in my stomach and for a while stomach medicine would relieve the pain temporarily, but it got to be too much and finally I went to the internist. I had to swallow that stomach camera and they found an ulcer, but just to make sure he took a biopsy and a week later the lab report came back with a diagnosis of cancer. The ulcer and the cancer were in the exact same spot. Isn't that amazing?" Kaori rubbed her stomach with both hands for a few seconds.

"Unusual, to be sure. I guess in that sense we were lucky," I said. "If it hadn't been for the pain of the ulcer, you would never have found the cancer."

Kaori smiled at me and said, "Honey-chan, you're the only one who understands me."

"I try my best." I smiled back at her.

"Do you understand why I'm glad I got cancer?"

"I think so."

"Cancer gave me a new life. God was telling me to stop my old life. God was telling me that I was killing myself. Cancer is now my great teacher. Just think. If I hadn't got cancer, I wouldn't know about hiking in the mountains. I wouldn't know about taking pictures of nature in the mountains. I wouldn't know the enjoyment of playing the piano and the shamisen. I wouldn't know the joy of teaching English. I wouldn't be learning about Van Gogh and Rembrandt and Michelangelo and the Renaissance. I just feel so alive now."

"Well, you're certainly a lot happier than you were when you were interpreting and working yourself too hard."

"That's exactly the point. I didn't know how to relax, how to enjoy myself. All I knew was work. And the frustration of human relations. I felt like I had to fight all the time to protect myself. And I didn't like myself. I think it's a defect in my genes, in my DNA. I was born with the demons of my father and mother, and I created the cancer myself." Kaori pointed at herself, then looked down at her scar for a moment. "That's the thing that makes cancer different from other diseases. It's the one disease that people create for themselves. It comes from inside. Most other diseases come from outside, like viruses. There, that's enough. My hands are tired."

Kaori put my right foot gently back on the bed, then crawled up to lie beside me. We looked at each other and smiled. I reached over to touch the six-inch scar that ran in a straight line up from her belly button. I traced the line two times up and down, then slowly began rubbing in circles.

"Do you like my scar?" she asked.

"Oh yes."

"Do I look old to you?"

"No," I laughed. "Not at all. You look great."

"I want to be fatter. I'm just so skinny now. I never have gained all my weight back after my operation. It's difficult with only a third of a stomach. I look like a cancer patient, like a skeleton." Another frown marked Kaori's face.

"No you don't. You look just fine."

"Do you really think so?"

"Yes, I do. Has your stomach bothered you much with all this different food we've eaten?" I asked.

"A couple times I ate too fast and didn't chew enough and the bile came up again." Kaori clenched her teeth in mock pain. "You know how I feel when that happens. It's terrible, but I think I'm doing OK. I just have to be careful to eat slowly. I have a sensitive tongue now. Whenever my stomach has to work too hard, I get a funny taste on my tongue. If I walk around a bit, then I usually feel better. I do love this real Italian food."

"Me, too."

"Are you happy with me?" Kaori asked suddenly.

"Of course I am. We're life partners, you know. I wouldn't change anything we've had together. I think we've had a pretty darn good marriage. We laugh a lot. We like a lot of the same things. We've always talked a lot. We hardly ever fight. How many couples can say that?"

"I know, but sometimes I wonder if you're really happy with me. I'm not the easiest person in the world to live with." Kaori leaned against me.

"Do you have any regrets about anything?"

"No. I love you very much, honey-chan. Maybe you're the only man I could have ever married."

She drew my head to her mouth. We kissed deeply and sensuously. We made love like two self-conscious teenagers. We cuddled afterward, not speaking, breathing lightly, then fell asleep. It was the deepest sleep I had had in a long time.

When I woke the next morning, Kaori was already washing our clothes by hand in the bathroom sink and hanging them in various places in the room. She smiled and said, "Just like at home, honey-chan. Did you sleep well?"

"Like a log."

"So where should we go today?" she asked.

"There's so much to see. Why don't we start with the Uffizi Gallery and take it from there. We have six days and there's no rush to see everything at once. Just walking the streets should be fun if my ankles hold up."

The next three days were grueling tourist days touring the main sites together -- the Uffizi, the Campanile, the Gallery of the Academia, and Ponte Vecchio. The walking and climbing of many stairs was hard on me, so each day I returned to the hotel early and took a nap while Kaori continued with her exploring.

In the evenings, my ankles revived by a hot bath, we strolled the narrow side streets near our hotel until we found a trattoria that suited our taste and dined on a variety of local dishes. Kaori was in particularly high spirits, flirting with the waiters and bantering with other tourists.

On the fourth day we went to the Pitti Palace and the Boboli Gardens. We got separated and I decided to return to the Piazzale Michelangelo to see the spectacular panorama of the city, the sun shimmering on the Arno River below, and the Duomo bulging up from the middle of the city. The sun was hot at mid-day. The sky was a light blue with thick, blue-gray clouds encircling the lower horizon. As I stared in wonder at the feast of colors spread out before me -- the profusion of yellow ochres and umbers, burnt siennas and terracottas, and orange roofs and domes \-- I felt once again, briefly as I remembered the day I'd been here twenty-six years before, a surge of the power of youth, of possibility, of hope, of a true love for mankind. This feeling swept over me and I was filled with it, and longed for my own youth. I was a little sad Kaori was not with me now to share the feeling, but I could bring her here later.

I descended the hill, walked to a farther bridge, crossed it, and found a shaded park with benches where I could sit and rest my ankles. It felt wonderful to sit down in the shade and watch the world go by. I took a towel out of my bag, wiped the sweat off my brow, then took a long swig off my water bottle. I bent over, took off my shoes and socks, and stretched out on the park bench, my hands folded and supporting the back of my head, and looked up at the tree branches and sky.

I thought about how great this trip, our first long trip together since our honeymoon, was turning out and how happy Kaori seemed. God knew we deserved this break. The last few years had passed quickly with both of us consumed by our workaday lives and we had not stopped to appreciate what we had. Now each day, each individual moment, was a precious experience to be savored.

I thought back to the beginning of our relationship. There were those roads converging again. I had been in Japan only a few months, working illegally for a conversation school at first before starting work for an American and his Japanese wife's private school, and managed, through the kindness of others, to find a cheap room and settle in. The visa problem was solved when the school volunteered to be my sponsor for a student visa. After filling out a mountain of paperwork, I applied for permission to work part-time on the student visa. The immigration authorities granted the permission and I could extend the six-month visa three times before having to apply for a new type of visa or else leave the country.

I was in the beginning of that first visa, feeling somewhat secure and gaining confidence in my teaching, when Kaori joined the school. My initial impression of her was that of a highly motivated student who was spending her own hard-earned money and knew what she wanted. The school was the cheapest and closest one to where she lived, and her main purpose was to improve her speaking and listening skills enough to pass the highest level of the Eiken test, the nationally recognized test of English proficiency. Having that qualification would be a big advantage in realizing her dream of working for a foreign company.

Kaori was placed in the highest level class, which met on Saturdays in the late afternoon. It was a lively class with one middle-aged businessman and four women in their twenties. Often after class I would go out with the group for drinks, food, and more conversation. At the time I was entering into a tumultuous relationship with a Japanese woman that would go on for another two years, so I had no romantic interests in any of the students. Kaori, however, stood out to me as an independent woman who knew her own mind. She was fun to be around, intelligent, and interested in many things. We laughed a lot during those classes and the parties afterward.

About a year after she entered the school, she passed the Eiken test, soon got a job with a foreign company as a secretary to the president, and quit the school. Her responsibilities included a lot of translation and interpretation work. The company would also pay for her to attend an interpreting school two nights a week.

At that time, many changes occurred in my life. The relationship with my girlfriend hit a stormy climax and withered. My studies had brought me to the point of understanding just enough Japanese to misread and misinterpret too much. I had reached an age where if I didn't make something of my life soon, there would be no future to think about. I was in my mid-thirties, had not sold a single manuscript, had no qualifications, and was caught in the dilemma of whether to return to the States and fulfill the prophecy of the military prison psychiatrists or commit to the life of an expatriate. If I chose the latter course, I would have to get serious about finding a more stable job than teaching at a conversation school for a mediocre salary. Having a family was something I had avoided, but started to think about for the first time. I was probably more confused than I had been in my twenties, and I was drinking a lot.

A short trip back to the States convinced me I was still an outsider there and would never belong. Upon returning to Japan, I set my sights on becoming a university teacher. I found a correspondence course offered at a Tokyo branch of an American university. They offered credits for life experience if one could document it, which I did. Thus started my return to university studies and the long struggle to obtain first a bachelor's degree in English education, then a master's degree.

One night I was out drinking with the businessman who had been in Kaori's class. We were reminiscing about the members of that class and he said that he'd kept in touch with Kaori, who had recently done some translation work for him. He gave me her phone number and I rang her up a few nights later and asked her out.

Everything clicked from that point on as if it had been meant to be. Within a few weeks, we were living together. I quit the previous school after Kaori helped me find a copywriting job through a job agency that sponsored a work visa and hired me out to large companies. I found another part-time teaching job at a vocational school. I was making a little more money than before, but the important thing was I was making progress on my degree. Kaori was a huge help in giving me encouragement. The example she set with her own interpretation studies was tremendous. I had never seen anyone study with such dedication. Every night after work, the two of us would sit opposite each other at the big table in her apartment, surrounded by papers, tapes, textbooks, scattered notes, and dictionaries. I was always the first to call it quits.

Things went on this way for a year and a half. Kaori hinted at our getting married quite often, but I the confirmed bachelor with itchy feet wouldn't give in. Kaori resigned herself to my resistance and started making plans for continuing her own career. There were problems at her company and the future there didn't look good, so she looked into the possibility of teaching Japanese overseas. A position for teaching one year at a university in Arizona came up and she decided to grab it. I realized I would never find a better life companion and didn't want to lose her, so I popped the question a few months before she was scheduled to start her contract. She accepted and two months later we were married.

I finished my bachelor's degree about the same time. Armed with that precious little piece of paper, I started sending out applications for a full-time teaching position to several vocational schools around the country. An offer came back from one school in Fukuoka that offered a salary that was a lot better than the money I had been making during the previous four years. I grabbed it.

Within a few months of getting married, Kaori and I took our honeymoon and went our separate ways for a year: she to teach Japanese in the U.S. and I to teach English in another part of Japan. I also had a three-year marriage visa.

The job at the Fukuoka school turned out to be a dead-end street. The owner was a minor league yakuza type who exploited both students and teachers. I bid my time waiting for a better job opportunity to come and Kaori to return to Japan. A year later when she did return, I landed part-time teaching jobs at a women's junior college and two companies. Kaori found work for a local businessmen's group organizing an international homestay event. We both kept up our studies. I was getting closer to completing my master's degree and Kaori wanted to pass Japan's highest interpreters' test.

We both peaked about the same time. I was forty when I got the degree and was hired full-time at the junior college. Kaori, then thirty-five, got the second-highest ranking interpreter's qualification. We spent the next few years nearly working ourselves to death. Maybe we felt we had to make up for late starts and as late-bloomers we were obligated to catch up, but both of us eventually produced resumes that put us on a par with almost anyone in our fields.

Those were good years for us, but I wondered now about the fixation with which we pursued our goals and dreams. It nearly killed both of us. By the time we'd achieved our dreams \-- Kaori becoming a simultaneous interpreter for a short while and I a university associate professor -- our bodies had broken down under the strain. We had become the very thing I had feared and raged against all those anti-American, idyllic-hippie-dreamland, leftist-behavior years ago: complacent, middle-class consumers sucked into a rat-race life.

I bent down to rub my ankles and wondered if my current chronic pain and illness was worth my achievements on paper. What did it all amount to? In my rush to hack out a comfortable niche in the world of English education in Japan, I had surely sacrificed a good amount of any commitment to a literary life, the one ideal that had kept me going during my twenties, those now distant years of real passion and hope.

Here again was another connection with Malcolm Lowry. One of the disadvantages of the expatriate writer's life is that, in living abroad, he no longer has the proper viewpoint or means of existence to use in criticizing the society of his birth and time. At any rate, he is stuck in a time warp as to the type of political criticism he can produce. Isn't the responsibility of any artist worth his weight who seeks to have his work remembered that of providing a critical analysis of the time and country he lives in?

In my case, I could write truthfully about the American experience only up to the end of the 1970s. Beyond that I was limited to exploring just one theme: the struggle of the expatriate to find his niche, to find a place to call home, which, necessarily eliminates any possibility of a wider, political analysis in the structure of whatever body of work he attempts (other than the pseudo-criticism of an outsider viewing the manipulations of a foreign government and society he will never understand simply because he didn't grow up there, didn't absorb the language as a youngster, didn't suffer the same brainwashing and indignities as the natives) and, again, limits it to an analysis of his own, personal struggle.

What did any of this matter? I laughed sardonically at the sudden seriousness of my thinking. Fuck it, man, I thought, go have a beer. I was forty-nine years old, sick with hepatitis and a rotting liver, had worn-out ankles and knees from too many sports injuries, the best years were behind me, and already I was feeling as if all I had left was only memories. Well, I wouldn't allow myself to fall too far into the abyss of fatalism. I could still share some joy and laughter with Kaori each day. That was enough anymore. There was no need to write the great (expatriate) American novel. No need to pump out more academic papers aimed at uplifting Japan's outdated and mainly ineffective English education system. No need to point out to the world that politics was a useless medium for real change in the world. There was nothing new to add. There was only one thing to do: accept, and get on with the slow process of dying.

I got up, headed back to the hotel, and took a cold shower. Later on Kaori and I went out to dinner.

"You look a little less spirited today," Kaori said after we ordered. "Are you all right? Are you tired?"

"I don't know. A combination of things really. My hep fatigue has been catching up with me recently. Maybe I'm down a little, too, because of the frustration of not being able to get around like I used to in my twenties. I used to be able to walk and walk and walk, but now I'm like an old cripple hobbling around. And like you've done often on this trip, I've been thinking a bit about my life. Kind of questioning the value of what I've done. And these days it seems like a dream, like all the experiences I've had really happened to somebody else."

"I think I understand that." Kaori's elbows were on the table, her palms supporting her head as she looked at me.

"It just seems that the sum total of everything I've done doesn't really amount to that much." I pushed the food on the plate around with my fork and avoided Kaori's gaze.

"What are you talking about, honey-chan? Of course it amounts to something. If nothing else, you've brought great happiness to me. I love you for just you. You don't have to prove anything to me."

"Well, thank you. I know that." I looked up at Kaori and laid the fork on the plate. "But I just wonder sometimes what it was all worth. All the rambling and studying and writing and searching, and now here I am a middle-aged, broken-down old fart with all the energy and passion I used to have disappearing minute by minute."

Kaori looked at me for a moment, then reached over and held my hand. "This is unlike you. I don't see you down very often."

"I'm not used to it, either." I shrugged. "Maybe it's just a passing phase, but I can't help but see myself differently right now. Maybe as we pass all these old familiar places and sights, I'm a little jealous of my youthful self and can't help comparing the two me's. Actually, the many me's," I said, remembering my chess games.

"Well, you might be getting a little older, but you're still the man I've always loved and respected." Kaori leaned closer. "You shouldn't get down on yourself. My God, you've helped a lot of people. Your job is very important. Think about all the students you've taught and who've been affected by your life, your classes, your wisdom, and your humor. You've made a lot of people smile and your students love you and respect you, too. I know that. You were a great teacher when I first met you, too. Think about the value and importance of standing up to the system when you were a conscientious objector. And what about the mail you've had from other researchers who've read your teaching articles and wanted to cite passages from them? What about the high school kids from England and America who've seen your home page and written you about their research on conscientious objection? I'd say you've helped a lot of people and your life and work have been very important. Especially to me." Kaori leaned back in her chair and pointed emphatically to herself.

I paused a moment, took a drink of water, and considered her words. "I appreciate your thoughts. I've always tried to help people. And I still take my teaching seriously, too. I think it was good that I came to the education game a little later than most. It took me a little time to find my niche, but I think the experiences I accumulated before becoming a teacher have helped me tremendously. Probably the same goes for you, too."

Kaori thought for a moment, then said, "Yes, that's true. And being a life-long student also helps. I haven't had any real formal training to be a teacher, but my experiences as an interpreter and as a language student help me understand my own students' difficulties better. Do you think your master's degree training helped you become a better teacher in the classroom?"

"Not really. All it did was help me rationalize why what had worked well actually worked well. In the end, I think I learned everything I know about teaching from reading Hesse's The Glass Bead Game."

"What do you mean by that?" Kaori asked.

"The main character of the story is the most enlightened, revered, intellectual man in an ideal society that strives toward the perfection of the intellect, but at the end of the story he faces the biggest challenge of his life. He finds himself in a situation where he must teach a colleague's rebellious teenage son, to whom the master's intelligence and intellectualism mean nothing. The boy challenges the master to a swimming race in an icy lake in the mountains. The master accepts the challenge, but in so doing drowns and teaches the boy the greatest lesson the boy will ever receive."

Kaori raised her eyes and said, "Which is?"

"Well, different readers will probably have different interpretations, but mine is that humility and effort are utmost if one is to make something of one's life. The master was humble enough to accept the boy's challenge to a physical competition, knowing that he would lose. The master chose to communicate on the boy's level of understanding rather than insisting the boy rise to his, which he knew the boy, in his arrogant and youthful pride, would not."

Kaori frowned. "But that was foolish of the master. His humility caused his death. That seems a bit stupid to me."

"I think you have to think about the symbolism. The master was sick and dying anyway. He could not teach the boy anything from a purely intellectual point of view. Only by sacrificing himself could he communicate anything of worth to the boy. The boy's guilt would consume him, change him, and make him go on to do better things than he thought himself capable of. At least, that's how I see it."

Kaori thought for a second, then asked, "What does that have to do with what you've learned about teaching?"

"Just that the teacher has to communicate on the students' level if he wants to inspire them. Each new student is entirely different from the rest and requires a completely new effort from the teacher. It's not how much you know or how great your academic record is. That may be important in terms of how your colleagues view you, but the students could care less. It's the sincerity and genuine interest you have in them as individuals that serves to stimulate them, to guide them toward self-discovery."

"I knew you would start to cheer up if I got you thinking about teaching," Kaori said and reached across the table to give me a playful nudge.

I laughed and we clinked our glasses in a toast.

The next day, Kaori accompanied me to the Piazzale Michelangelo. My ankles were functioning pretty well and I set a fast pace as we walked along the road running parallel to the Arno River. I was hell-bent on making it to the summit and sharing with Kaori the great view of all of Florence. My strides were long and I wanted to cover as much distance as possible before the effect of the aspirin wore off. I stopped for a moment and looked back to see Kaori was perhaps twenty meters behind me. There was a bench shaded by two trees up the street a short way. I walked up to it and sat down to wait for Kaori to catch up. I took off my shoes and socks and stretched out my legs.

When she caught up, she sat down on the bench and looked at me with an intense eye. "I know you're challenging yourself," she said. "You're pushing yourself, walking so many kilometers and climbing high places. I can see that. I can't believe your ankles aren't swollen more. You're like those monks who do sennichi kugyou."

"What's that?"

"I'm not sure what you say in English. Sennichi kugyou translates into something like 'a thousand days of doing strenuous exercises' or 'a thousand days of punishing the body.' Something like that."

"What kind of body punishment do you mean? And what monks do that?"

"The monks who do that are members of Mikyou, which is a strange kind of Buddhist cult. The monks in Mikyou really have to do ijimeru to their bodies, punish their bodies. It's really a kind of interesting group."

"So how do you know about these monks?"

"Shiba Ryotaro wrote about them in one of his books. You remember who Shiba is, don't you?"

"Yeah, the guy who wrote historical novels, and also wrote the book on the history of Japanese-Dutch relations that you brought with you." I leaned over and started putting my socks and shoes back on.

"That's right. Anyway, he wrote a story about these two famous monks who lived over a thousand years ago. One was called Kuukai and one was called Saichou. Kuukai was born is Shikoku and he had this vision of the world. He was entirely different from other Japanese of the time, and he went to China to study Buddhism and learn the Chinese language, which he supposedly mastered in a very short time. When he came back to Japan, he opened his own temple. Shiba's story was about his adventures and discoveries. I don't really know that much about Saichou."

Kaori thought for a moment, then continued. "If my memory is correct, about three or four years ago this monk from Saichou's temple finished his thousand days of punishment and his picture was in the paper. He looked really thin and he had a pretty long beard."

"Maybe that punishment is some kind of penance," I said.

"Yes, honey-chan, penance is the word I was looking for."

"Yeah." I laughed. "It's not exactly the type of word you use in everyday conversation. So what kind of penance do these guys have to do?"

"They have to fast and walk for maybe a week at a time without sleeping. Probably just from doing that they see a kind of hell. They have to walk over mountains and through valleys. And their walking speed is incredibly fast. There are still monks like that one a few years ago who do that in Japan."

"And you think I'm like those crazy monks?"

"Yeah, the way you insist on pushing yourself." Kaori gave me a sudden, serious look. "I know it's painful for you to walk. I was watching you from behind and I suddenly thought of Saichou and Kuukai. Kuukai's temple is in my home prefecture. I've seen it a couple of times myself."

"Well, I suppose you're right about me pushing myself. I appreciate your concern, but I don't think I'm going to the extreme those monks do. I know when I've reached my limit, and I try to rest my legs as much as possible. It's just we have so little time, and I do want to see as much as possible. We may never have another chance to do this again. Besides, I think you'll see how worthwhile the walk and climb to the top where we can see all of Florence is once we get there. It's a kind of heaven that makes my little hell of pain seem small in comparison. You'll see."

"OK, honey-chan, but just try not to overdo it," Kaori said and gave me a light punch to the arm.

We proceeded to the Piazzale Michelangelo. It was a clear day with a light breeze and the view was even better than the day before. Kaori was speechless as she looked out upon the stretch and sweep of the city below and the velvet hills in the distance rising gently to meet the pure turquoise sky.

We continued up the hill to the church of San Miniato al Monte and its huge cemetery. As we entered the church grounds there was a sign that read YOU ARE IN A CHURCH. YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO BEHAVE INDECENTLY. It stunned me with its inference of an omnipotent presence judging our every action, invading our every thought, much in the same way Lowry was haunted by the sign he had seen in a small Oaxacan garden -- LE GUSTA ESTE JARDIN? QUE ES SUYO? EVITE QUE SUS HIJOS LO DESTRYAN! -- which he mistakenly interpreted as "You like this garden? Why is it yours? We evict those who destroy!"

We spent nearly an hour looking at the frescoes, paintings, and mosaics, then rested on the steps above the cemetery.

"We're making more good memories, aren't we?" Kaori said.

"Yeah. This place is every bit as beautiful as it was in 1973."

"You know, I think I've seen more paintings since we came to Europe than I have in my entire life. It's given me a new perspective. Do you remember when I translated that article you wrote about Lillian Hellman's story Julia and you told me about the title of her book Pentimento?"

"Yeah, I remember." I picked up a pebble and tossed it in the distance.

"Well, after studying so many paintings in all these museums and churches, I think I finally understand the connection Hellman made with how a painting changes by the layers of paint applied to older layers of paint, and how a person's memory of the past changes what that person's view of reality is as time goes by. Do you understand what I mean?"

"I think so," I said. "I'm certainly seeing my past differently these days."

"Maybe it was like that for Undine. I mean, your visiting her was like a fresh covering of paint and helped her look through the surface of recent years and see the reality of her life with Thomas when their business was prosperous and he was in his good time. I said this before, but I think your coming helped her and she needed to talk with someone who remembered about those times. You helped her see the painting of her life through fresh eyes."

I looked at Kaori and laughed. "You're becoming quite the philosopher. I guess Florence has a tendency to do that to people."

"And you know what else I've noticed here?"

"No, but I have a feeling you're going to tell me."

"They don't have street musicians in Florence like they do in other European cities. They have painters. Have you noticed that?"

"Not really, but I guess you're right now that I think of it."

We smiled at each other. I was happy that Kaori was fascinated by everything she was experiencing on this trip. Each of us in a separate way was exploring themes of color and form and thoughts of life and death -- Kaori in her discoveries of art and art history, I in my reborn psychedelic musings.

Chapter 10

Two days later we were on a crowded and noisy Eurostar bound for Rome. We passed through numerous tunnels and rolling farmland dotted with buildings bleached by the Mediterranean sun. When we arrived at the central train station in Rome, there was a bit of confusion figuring out how to get to the American Anglo Hotel, but we managed to find the Metro and get off at the Barberini stop, which was a short walk from the hotel.

Kaori wasted no time in finding out from the front desk clerk what tours were available. There was one that evening and the bus would stop near the hotel. We opted for it.

The tour guide struck my interest from the moment we got on the bus. He was short and immensely sad-looking with deep eyes, lines of weariness etched on his face, and a goatee. He was wearing shabby clothes. He was in his mid-forties and looked quite fragile, like an alter boy. He spoke four languages -- English, German, French, and Italian -- and kept up his narrative in all four for the thirty or so other tourists who joined us. He said his main job was teaching literature and during summer breaks he worked as a tour guide.

Our first stop was at the Trevi Fountain. The crowd towered above our tour guide, but he held our attention thoroughly with his ironic speaking manner, patience, and kindness. We placed our faith in him and followed him obediently. At the fountain, he held his hands together like a priest at prayer and said, "If you toss one coin in the fountain, you will have one wish come true. Two coins and you will get married. Three coins and you will be divorced."

It was a clear night with a near full moon. All the monuments we passed were well illuminated. At one point after the bus crossed the Tiber and was cruising along the road parallel to the river, the tour guide said, "Here on the right you can see the Justice Building. It is being cleaned right now. The building is always half clean, half dirty -- like Justice itself."

Everyone laughed.

When we stopped at the Piazza Navona for a thirty-minute break, I lingered behind the others in our group so I could talk to this man. He seemed to possess an artistic soul.

"Are you teaching at a university?" I asked.

"No, at a high school."

"It must be difficult working two jobs."

"There is no school in summer, but yes it is difficult." The tour guide put his hands in his pants pockets, shuffled his feet, and looked mournfully at the ground for a moment.

"I also teach. At a university in Japan."

The tour guide's eyes rose to meet mine. "Do they pay you well?" he asked tentatively.

"It's a good salary, I think. I worked for many years with terrible salaries, so compared to that time it's more than sufficient for me."

"They pay very little here in Italy. I must work this job to help feed my four children."

"Do you also write?"

His eyes lit up. "Oh yes, yes, it is my one passion, the thing that keeps me alive. Oh yes, literature is my great love."

I seemed to have gained his trust, so I asked, "What have you written?"

"I have published one novel and a book of poetry. Unfortunately, there is no money in writing, particularly in writing literature or poetry. But that is the way life is for all artists. They must suffer to produce their work. I know this. What I really want to write, though, is my life story."

"Is that so? If you don't mind, I'd like to hear a little of your life story."

He looked at me pensively for a moment, then said slowly, "Well, I hope I do not offend your sensibilities, for my life story contains a good amount of criticism of my country and religion."

"That's no problem for me. I was a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War and spent time in prison for refusing my country's orders. I also have many disagreements with politics and religion the way they are practiced in the U.S. I think any good artist has a responsibility to criticize the society he or she lives in. I'm probably about the last person in the world you need to worry about."

"Thank you for your understanding. You see, I was taken away from my family at the age of eleven to serve in a monastery and become a missionary. My dear friend, you cannot imagine the power the Catholic Church possesses and how it can ruin people's lives. I was made to suffer greatly. Some of the elders at the monastery did unspeakable acts to me."

A look of deep anguish passed over his face. He looked down at the ground for a moment. Then he looked up and directly into my eyes and said, "You have no idea what they did to me, how they made me suffer. I suffer still because of those experiences. And it was not I alone who suffered these things. It is endemic within the system itself. These dark secrets of the church and state must be told. I must be brave. I must write my life story to tell people about the terrible things the church does to young boys, but it is very difficult. And I must work to feed my family."

"It must also be difficult in your job here when so many tourists are asking questions and taking pictures and gasping in awe at the symbolism of Rome's power and its religious history," I said.

"Yes, it is difficult, but sometimes I can criticize without fear."

"I've also done some writing, nothing on any magnificent scale, but I've had two novels and a novella published. One of the books was quite critical of the American government and the Vietnam War."

"I have done some study of psychology and I knew you were different," he said.

"Really? You took notice of me when I got on the bus?"

"Oh yes, I notice something about most of my guests. I thought perhaps you had suffered sometime in your life, too. There's a certain aura about you."

One of the other tourists had returned and now interrupted with a question. The tour guide gave me an apologetic look, excused himself, and turned his attention to the other man. I wandered off to join Kaori.

At the end of the tour as the tour guide departed the bus, he looked at the group with a sad smile and said, "Thank you all for listening to my humble stories. Good night and enjoy your holiday in Rome."

I felt a sudden desire to shake his hand and say good-bye personally, but I hesitated too long. I had to wait for a few other tourists to get off the bus ahead of Kaori and me. I looked around, but all I could see was a man in the distance walking down the street. I closed my eyes hard and willed him to stop.

In my head, I hobble after him and shout, "Hold on a second."

He stops and turns around. As I draw closer to him, I notice he looks slightly different from a few minutes before.

"Fooled you, didn't I?" he says and flashes me a large grin.

For a moment I am stunned. "Mr. Lowry? Is it you?"

He grabs his sides and lets loose with a boisterous laugh, followed by another of his coughing spasms. He has to hold his hands out and brace himself against me to keep from collapsing.

I hold him up firmly. "Are you OK?"

His coughing subsides and he draws in several deep breaths. "Dreary me," he says. "That was nearly my last breath. I'm OK now." He steps back, then strokes his goatee, looks at me impishly, and says, "This was a nice touch, don't you think?"

I laugh and say, "Yes it was. You really had me going. I believed everything you said. You had all my sympathy and fellow feeling. I was convinced of the whole story."

"Well, it's all true, at least cosmically. I'm like Feodor, sicka in the head." He points to his head and grins. "I can take on the persona of any artist who has suffered, you see. The tour guide is just one of many. I was raised among Methodists and Anglicans, but from my Mexican experiences I have a special feeling for the Catholics and their own forms of suffering."

"So what have you been doing since Amsterdam?"

Lowry hitches up his pants, shrugs, and puts a shaking hand on my shoulder. "I've been to Sicily and am now on my way to England. For Marjerie, you see. She can get free treatment for her strep throat. She also wants me to see a psychiatrist." Lowry breaks into a mock Southern accent and says, "Ah can stand anything. Ain't nothin' wrong with me that a good bour-bon won't cure." He winks at me, then says in a normal voice, "That's a line from Faulkner, you know. Perhaps you and your wife can come and we can live near one another and discuss work in progress."

"That would be nice, but I don't know. We'll be going back to Japan soon."

"It's a pity," he says, withdrawing his hand and wobbling for a moment. "Have you been to Sicily?"

"Yes, back in 1973, but just for a few days on the beach at Cefalu."

Lowry straightens up and with an air of mock seriousness says, "Well, in my humble opinion, sir, it is the worst and most hypocritical place in the world. And the most hopeless. They know neither how to live nor how to die. Bloody hypocrites who deliver endless lectures about drinking their bloody wine even while overcharging you for it. I agree completely with D. H. Lawrence, who put a malediction upon the whole place." He pauses for a second, then says, "Granted, there is a stern beauty in their culture."

We stand awkwardly for a moment. I don't know what to say. Then Lowry hacks up a ball of phlegm, spits it out, and with an air of grave seriousness says, "So did you read the book I gave you?"

"Yes, I did."

"And did you see any similarities between yourself and Harry Haller?" Lowry peers at me as if my life depends on my answer.

I think for a moment. "Well, some, I suppose. I don't see myself like Harry in the early parts of the story when he is the ultimate loner, aloof and scornful of bourgeois culture and contemplating suicide. I don't believe I've ever been as misanthropic as he was." I shift my weight and scratch my head. "I have, however, been questioning the validity and meaning of my life, but I don't feel isolated from humanity. Maybe intellectually and emotionally isolated from America, but not humanity."

"Yes, I see, go on." A different, more gentle and compassionate expression marks Lowry's face.

"I connected more strongly with Harry after he went to The Black Eagle and met Pablo the saxophone player. It's strange that that head shop in Alkmaar was called The Black Eagle and the owner's name was Pablo, too. He gave me some mushrooms and a chess game to play variations of my life with."

"Yes, yes. I know all that. Don't you remember?" Lowry slaps my side. "Pablo gave me the book to give to you. It's all part of the cosmic connection, my man. I thought you would find a connection in that part of the story."

"Yes, well, I could relate to Pablo's giving Harry hallucinogens that push him onto the road to building alternatives to his life, especially the idea that there isn't just one reality to embrace, but rather there are many possible realities, each approaching something, but never quite escaping the self."

"And what precisely does this realization mean to you?"

"If I can say anything, I suppose it's that Hesse's writing challenges me to face myself more honestly, to recognize the distortions in the reality I've created for myself. He challenges me not to take myself so seriously and to learn to even laugh at what I often perceive as suffering and frustration. When I can laugh, I somehow come into a closer reality to the world in which I'm actually living. That makes that life much more possible and positive even in a world that ultimately doesn't matter. But these thoughts and realizations have always surfaced whenever I've taken hallucinogens. I just haven't taken any for a long, long time. I can't say that reading Steppenwolf alone has caused me to experience a sudden epiphany. At any rate, my old self now seems more like a distant fragment of memory. Thank you anyway for turning me on to the story again."

"That's good enough for me. The main point is that you can laugh at life and not take yourself too seriously. Have some fun." Lowry grins widely. "And now it's time for me to find the next drink. You know, I will start aversion therapy soon and must be prepared. And I must get back to Marjerie. She's no doubt worried sick about my latest disappearance. She always wanted a child and I suppose that's what I've become."

Lowry sticks his trembling hand out and we shake hands. He looks suddenly very old and for a brief moment his eyes roll back in their sockets. He takes a deep breath, refocuses, and says, "Keep laughing, my friend. To suffer is to be alive. And life is the voyage that never ends."

He abruptly turns around and, walking in a zigzag line, heads down the street. I watch him until he disappears.

.

Kaori and I returned to our room. I stretched out on the bed and watched her write down in her own notebook everything we had done and seen all day. Books, maps, and various notes written on scraps of paper were spread out on the table in front of her.

Kaori looked up for a moment and said, "We covered a lot of ground today, didn't we?"

"That's for sure. I was very impressed by our tour guide." Thoughts of both the man and my vision of Malcolm Lowry crossed my mind.

"Me, too."

"He was great at his job. He listened intently to everyone's questions. He obviously cared about the group. I really liked his gentle manner. You know, it would take years to cover all of Rome in order to know it well, but I feel I learned more about Rome in these past few hours than if I could actually spend years living here."

Kaori smiled at me and went back to her work.

Early the next morning, we confirmed our plane tickets back to Japan, went to the central train station and bought train tickets to the airport for the following day, and headed to the Vatican for a tour of the Vatican Museum. It was another cloudless hot day. After the tour we walked to Saint Peter's Square, sat down in a shaded area, and stared at all the statues atop the massive pillars.

"It's been an amazing trip, hasn't it?" Kaori said.

"It sure has, but Rome is a bit too much for me."

"A bit too much?"

"Yeah. Maybe that tour guide's story last night is still stuck in my head, but I get a bad feeling about the overwhelmingly huge scale of everything, the ostentation of it all, the way the Catholic Church glorifies itself. It's just too much. Buddhist humility is much more attractive to me. At any rate, at least we can now say that we've seen the Sistine Chapel and the greatest of Michelangelo's works."

"That we can. But I'm a little sad, too, that our trip is coming to an end. I've learned a lot of things on this trip."

"What kind of things?" I asked.

"Oh, things about art and history and life and death. And myself, too. I've even learned a little about people's prejudices." Kaori sighed, looked in the distance, and returned her gaze to me. "Living in Japan, I never think of it so much, but here in Europe I'm often the only one with an Asian face, and I've sometimes felt people looking at me in a condescending way. Sometimes some of the clerks in shops have looked down at me, and sometimes they tried to cheat me on prices. I've heard their prejudice in the words and tone of voice." A sad look appeared on Kaori's face.

"Really? When?"

"Oh, for example, in Amsterdam a few times on the street someone said to me 'Hey China' like I was a prostitute or something. Once on the phone in Basel when I was trying to get some information, the clerk said very impatiently 'I can't understand you.' At some of the shops in Florence and Rome I felt people looking down at me and I wanted to say something harsh to them in English, but I couldn't think what to say." Kaori took a deep breath and sighed again, this time more audibly.

"I feel a little sad, too, like the past is falling away from me and I'm losing something." I patted Kaori on the back and squeezed her shoulder. "I do think you've done a tremendous job communicating in English."

"I don't mean to sound like everything has been negative. Almost everything has been positive, in fact. I just get frustrated sometimes because I can't speak like a native speaker. I've felt more deeply than ever how important my English study is. I'm so happy I've been able to make friends with people like Undine. If I hadn't studied English so hard for all these years, I could never have known them. Many people have been kind to me. I'm always asking them a hundred questions and they do their best to help me."

Kaori took my hands in hers. "Most of all, though, is I've learned how important you are to me and how much I love you, honey-chan. I think I understand you better now and have a better idea of what you were like when you were young and how you came to me after all your many experiences." She looked me straight in the eyes for a moment, smiled, and said, "Are you happy with me? Do you really love me?"

"Of course I do. I've realized more deeply on this trip how important you are to me, too. I've enjoyed watching you and your excitement more than anything else."

We squeezed hands, then Kaori laughed and said, "Really? You've been watching me? We do make a great team, don't we?"

"That we do."

"You know, maybe the most important thing I've learned is that we have to live life right now, every moment. Each moment is too precious to take for granted. We can't worry about yesterday or tomorrow. All we have is right now and we should appreciate it fully and give everything to it we can because it can all disappear so quickly."

"Amen to that," I said. "I'm really happy to be right here right now with you."

We both looked wistfully into the distance. In a sense, this journey had been an attempt to reenter my past, understand it fully, then at least distance if not completely separate myself from it. Now that separation seemed nearly complete. So what was there to look forward to in the future? Kaori was right. The important thing was to hang on to each moment as if it were our last. Still, there was that persistent, nagging feeling that the remaining moments would soon be gone. Our shadows were stretching longer right in front of us. Emotion thickened my throat. I felt a sudden, urgent need for Kaori's forgiveness.

"You know, Kaori."

"Yes?"

"I'm sorry for all the bad things that have happened to us."

"I am too, but you don't have to say that."

"I know, but I just want to let you know that I wish I could have made things better in some ways. I'm sorry we couldn't have children."

"It wasn't your fault." Kaori reached over and stroked my cheek.

"But you had to suffer for that. Much more than I ever did. I'm sorry you had to go through the pain of cancer. I'm sorry for not always being a warm husband."

Tears ran down Kaori's face. She put her arms around me and we hugged tightly. Muffled sobs broke from both our mouths. We choked them down and pulled back to look at each other.

"I'm sorry you have hepatitis and I'm sorry for all the pain in your life, too."

"I love you very much, Kaori. I want to spend the rest of eternity with you."

"You make me so happy."

We embraced again and the dams burst.

The following morning, our last of the trip, we took a walk along the ritzy Via Vittorio Veneta and looked at the window displays of the many leather, jewelry, and fashion shops. We took a side street and found ourselves on the Via Lucullo. We passed by a large Italian labor union building. In front of the building was a massive sculpted bronze plaque poignantly depicting a laborer bound with rope around his waist and wrists, and a yoke around his neck. The laborer was lying in agony on the floor, silently and tragically suffering for the cause of liberty. Next to the man was a small bowl containing a meager portion of gruel.

We stopped and stared silently at the suffering laborer. I turned to Kaori and said, "There's some powerful symbolism in this sculpture, don't you think?"

"Yeah."

"In a strange way it even reminds me of our own lives."

"What do you mean?"

"The way this man is struggling to break free is like us trying to break free from the bonds of our own illnesses."

"I think I've already broken free." Kaori took my arm in hers. "That's all I thought about for a long time after my operation. I couldn't move -- mentally, physically, or emotionally. I couldn't think of anything else except my cancer and death. But I've graduated from that and I love every minute of my life now. And I love every part of our relationship."

We headed slowly back toward the Via Vittorio Veneta. My ankles were sore again, so we stopped at one of the glass-enclosed outdoor restaurants and had an expensive cup of coffee. Across the street was the church of Santa Maria della Concezione. I'd heard about the Capuchin Crypt, which was inside the church and contained the bones of four thousand Capuchin monks. I wanted to see the place.

We crossed the street and knocked on the church door. We had to wait a few minutes before an elderly monk in a brown frock came to the door. His skin was pale, but his eyes were a bright blue. With a stiff wave, he directed us to a winding stairwell that led to a small, dark chamber. Near the entrance was a small wooden table on which was placed a box with some candles. I picked up one, put it in my pocket, and entered the chamber.

As our eyes gradually grew accustomed to the dim light, we saw two robed skeletons reclining in an archway made of neatly arranged skulls. Smaller bones were arranged on the walls and vaulted ceiling in intricate patterns and piles. Even the small fluorescent lamps casting eerie shadows were made from bones.

I sucked in my breath. We continued along a narrow hallway to the other chambers. I was in Malcolm Lowry's realm once again, and a continuous thought ran through my brain: Dark as the grave wherein my friend Thomas and the Capuchin Monks are laid. Bones were everywhere. They covered everything, every surface, and in every design imaginable.

We came to the final chamber. Two severed arms hung on the far wall. Plastered into the ceiling and done in meticulous detail, a carefully crafted figure of the Grim Reaper stared down at us. Its face was a human skull. In one hand it held a scythe, the blade made out of a descending column of bones that tapered into a sharpened edge. In the other hand it held a set of scales, also made out of bones. Nearby was the face of an ancient clock with Roman numerals, formed from more bones, that seemed to tick away man's time on earth. A sign on one wall read: WHAT YOU ARE NOW, WE USED TO BE. WHAT WE ARE NOW, YOU WILL BE.

A multitude of thoughts and images clamored for my attention. Was this what all those various omens and signs on the trip had been leading me to? A stark, morbid reminder of the vanity of my own ego, of my own imminent demise and that of every soul who had ever crossed my path? No. I rejected that thought. There was more to it than that. I thought back to my Amsterdam mushroom journey and tried to recapture the connection I'd felt with the cosmos. The images of the characters in those vignettes, the many characters in my chess games, paraded again in a flash across my mind.

I thought suddenly of Malcolm Lowry in Oaxaca finding out at the Banco Ejidal about Juan Fernando's murder and saying, "He gave me his friendship and advice I will use the rest of my life. And he is dead like that." Just like I felt about Thomas in Amsterdam when I learned of his death. Later that day Lowry and his wife entered a small, dirt-floored, Oazacan church, where they knelt and he prayed that the Virgin Mary would hear his prayer and in some obscure way protect Juan Fernando's soul. Lowry had also seen in the church a man in supplication, a woman and her child with their hands outstretched, and a drunk huddled asleep in a dark pew. At the church door on the way out, Lowry paused once more in front of his personal saint, the Saint of Desperate and Dangerous Causes, and said another prayer, this time for the man in supplication, the woman and child, the drunk, the bank manager who had told him about Juan Fernando's death, his wife, himself, and, indeed, the entire world.

I got down on my knees and prayed, too. I uttered silently the names of Kaori, Thomas \-- You were my Better Thing, man \-- Undine, Pablo, the concertina player in Basel, the busted teenagers at the Swiss-Italian border, the sad tour guide, Damian Riley, all the military prisoners I'd known, Peter the German drifter in Cefalu, Harrison Gant and Tommy Edwards and Gary Minch and all the lost Vietnam vets including those 200,000 who had returned from the war and committed suicide, Hasan and Ataullah, the Untouchables of India, the plump Pakistani hotel owner, the Japanese softball team members and all the local residents who had been so kind to me, the Kobe earthquake victims and their families, all the laborers of history represented by that sculpture Kaori and I had just seen, and, yes, the entire world.

I felt Kaori's hand on my shoulder.

"Are you OK?" she asked. "You have a strange look on your face."

I stood up gingerly. "Yeah, I'm OK. I just felt the need to say a little prayer."

"This place is too creepy for me. Shall we get out of here?"

Kaori put her arm in mine and slowly we began to ascend the steps out of the subterranean chamber. Midway I stopped and told Kaori, "Hold on. There's one more thing I have to do. I'll be back in a minute."

Kaori looked at me strangely and said, "OK. I'll wait here."

I returned to the Grim Reaper. I reached in my bag, pulled out the chessboard and all the pieces, and arranged them carefully next to some of the bones on the floor. I then took the candle out of my pocket, lit it, dripped some of the wax on the chessboard, stood the candle in the wax, and lingered for a moment, thinking: For you Thomas, one candle burning in my own Temple of the Virgin for those who have nobody them with.

On the way out of the church I dropped some money into a donation tray. Outside, I took a deep breath of fresh air -- fresh air, new life \-- and put my arm around Kaori. She snuggled closer, looked up at me, and asked, "What were you doing back there?"

"Oh, nothing much. Just burying some old baggage from the past."

###

About the Author

Robert W. Norris was born and raised in Humboldt County, California, where he played basketball in high school and junior college. In 1969, he entered the Air Force, subsequently became a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War, and served time in a military prison for refusing to fight in the war. In his twenties, he roamed across the United States, went to Europe twice, and made one journey around the world. During that time, he worked as a millhand, construction laborer, stevedore, mailman, baker, saute cook, and oilrig steward.

Norris has lived and taught English in Japan since 1983. He has an M.A. in Teaching English as a Foreign Language from Newport University in Newport Beach, California. He is the author of Toraware, a novel about the obsessive relationship of three misfits from different cultural backgrounds in 1980s Kobe, Japan; Looking for the Summer, the story of a Vietnam War conscientious objector's adventures and search for identity on the road from Paris to Calcutta in 1977; and The Many Roads to Japan, a novella used as an English textbook in Japanese universities. He has also written several articles on teaching English as a foreign language. He and his wife live near Fukuoka, Japan, where he is a professor at Fukuoka International University. Check his home page.

If you liked this story, read these other novels by Robert W. Norris.

Toraware

The year is 1983. The place is the Kobe-Osaka area. A 33-year-old American drifter and Vietnam War veteran has just arrived in Japan seeking one more adventure and an escape from his past. A promiscuous, rebellious, 23-year-old Japanese woman has just returned from a two-year homestay in a Canadian mission, where she was sent by her parents to cure her suicidal behavior. A snobbish, upper-class, 22-year-old Japanese woman who cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality is about to graduate from university and enter the frightening world of adulthood. Three people searching for a place to belong. Three people dancing on a psychological highwire. Three people about to become enmeshed in a relationship that will change each of their lives forever. Toraware is a special novel that takes a penetrating look at the obsessions, suspense, grief, misunderstandings, and joys of people from very different cultures and backgrounds who are brought together by fate to find the separate life paths they must follow.

"Crafted in excellent style and patiently honed.... The Japanese characters are wholly convincing....The ambivalence and spiritual guilt of Yoshiko, one of the tragic heroines of Toraware, about an abortion she underwent years ago, is perfectly captured.... [Norris has] captured the unassuagable melancholy at the deepest core of the Japanese soul [and] succeeded in convincing us of the reality of [his] vision." -- Kansai Time Out Magazine

"A wonderful novel about that last love/lust journey some of us take before we segue into middle age, acceptance and stability. It is a dangerous journey, not for the weak of heart. Along the way are demons lying in ambush, and false trails which can lead to madness, suicide and even murder. Robert W. Norris has created characters we will grow to love, despite their many flaws, characters who, we hope and pray, will make it through, characters we will always remember. Be prepared to stay up nights as you follow their progress. A number one read!" -- Paul Clayton, author of Calling Crow

"Intriguing...absorbing...holds the reader from the opening page.... The line between eccentricity and losing your marbles is a fine one. As Norris tellingly shows, often it is just a matter of luck as to which side of the line you exist on." \-- Mainichi Daily News

"Toraware goes beyond the gaijin experience.... [Norris] manages to evoke the rootlessness felt by young Japanese uncertain about their future." -- The Japan Times

"Human emotions, dark pasts, trials and tribulation, and complicated relationships are nothing new in literature. These are all common themes in countless novels, and we've seen the same scenario play out time and time again. Every now and then, an author comes along and makes these themes special, though, and strikes the right notes with his or her readers. Robert W. Norris has done this with his novel Toraware." -- Chris Howard, Curledup.com

"Norris has crafted a work filled with passions, ambivalence and spiritual angst all wrought in believable and readable manner. Characters are nicely fleshed; the Japanese characters are completely convincing. Norris captures the inner cravings of the two women in a true to life manner.... Toraware is a compelling account focused upon a collective human need for acceptance...an intriguing tale sure to please." -- Molly Martin, Epinions.com

Toraware is available at Smashwords.com and other online bookstores. Click here.

Looking for the Summer

David Thompson is a former Vietnam War conscientious objector in Paris on a quest to find himself in the early days of 1977. When he befriends an Iranian and an Afghan and is invited to return with them to their countries, his quest slowly becomes a descent into his own private hell.

On the road from Europe to the East, he encounters Kurdish bandits in the eastern mountains of Turkey, becomes involved with an underground group opposed to the Shah in Iran, escapes to Afghanistan, passes through Pakistan during the uprising against the Bhutto regime, and suffers extreme sickness on the streets of Delhi and Calcutta. Although continually searching for the happiness and identity he could not find in the U.S., he cannot easily shed his American past. Throughout the journey he is hounded by the demons of memory, particularly that of his father, a World War II hero who disowned David and died while David was still in prison. The journey itself becomes a physical manifestation of his struggle to achieve reconciliation with his own conscience.

"Looking for the Summer is a stunning novel of a metaphorical and physical journey across the Middle East. Though set during the 1970s, this story of war and pacifism and redemption is as pertinent to today's global struggles as tomorrow's news. Fashioned in exquisite language and bolstered with some of the most beautiful descriptive passages I've ever read, Looking for the Summer takes us on a voyage over deserts and mountains and through cities as the protagonist pursues spiritual, intellectual, political, and psychological enlightenment. This is a remarkable book and a must read for anyone seeking insight into the historical precedents for our post September 11 world." -- Marnie Mueller, author of Green Fires, The Climate of the Country, and My Mother's Island

"A graceful autobiographical novel that breathes life into a perennial genre: the spiritual bildungsroman. The theme of a questing expatriate who renounces Western materialism in favor of an exotic pilgrimage to the East will be familiar to anyone who has fallen under the spell of W. Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge or Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums....

"Although published prior to the events of 9/11, it is impossible to pick up Norris's novel without a heightened interest in its vividly depicted locales in a part of the world where our attentions are now so intensely focused. Several fascinating chapters are devoted to [the protagonist's] stay in Afghanistan. Written with a novelist's eye for characterization and a reporter's skill for observation, Looking for the Summer is the kind of small press gem that is often overlooked but is well worth seeking out." -- Bob Wake, CultureVulture.net

"Looking for the Summer brings to light the turmoil going through the mind of a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War...a powerfully written novel.... Highly important in its message about standing up for what one believes and about the personal growth one experiences while on a soul-searching journey as a result of taking such action...certain to have a profound impact on the reader. It is a must-read, unforgettable novel." -- Knowbetter.com

"During the waning years of the Ford administration, a rather unlikely alliance was struck up between an American, an Iranian, and an Afghani.... Within weeks of this chance meeting, the American protagonist would find himself traveling overland to Iran, and then on to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and eventually India, where the tale reaches a hopeful conclusion amid the squalor and depravity of Calcutta....

"In the hands of any author, Looking for the Summer would probably be a compelling read due to the inherent intrigue in the story's setting. But Norris is a masterful writer and storyteller, and he uses his craft to elevate this tale above mere 'compelling' or 'interesting' to the realm of uplifting and insightful. He deftly paints a portrait of his locations using a visual poetry that is neither self-conscious nor affected.... This is a fascinating novel, told in spellbinding English. I can't recommend it enough." -- Christine Hall, editor at Alternative Approaches Magazine

Looking for the Summer is available at Smashwords.com and other online bookstores. Click here.

The Many Roads to Japan

A Search for Identity

Originally developed as a textbook for Japanese EFL university students, The Many Roads to Japan tells the story of the adventures of a Vietnam War conscientious objector who had to follow many twists and turns in his life journey before finding his niche in Japan. The exercises at the end of each chapter are designed both to provide a review of the most important information contained in the chapter and to give practice in skimming for main ideas and scanning for specific kinds of information. The discussion/essay questions are meant to involve the students personally by asking them to respond to events in the main character's life and relate them to their own experiences. Suitable for low intermediate ESL level and above students, The Many Roads to Japan is also a good story for native speakers of English. An excellent resource for peace studies, too.

"Mr. Norris's description of the world of adventure as well as that of misery reminds me of Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March, Henderson the Rain King, or Herzog.... Norris's story of a symbolic life is a gift from his own experience, and it gives us something good, meaningful, and inspiring.... The comprehension questions, exercises, and discussion/essay questions are quite useful in helping Japanese students to think in English and in encouraging them to express themselves in English as well. This is the ideal textbook I have been looking for, and while using it, I am happy to say that I can steer clear of the traditional grammar-translation method, which I find so time-consuming and ineffective." -- Professor Kazushige Sagawa, Aoyama Gakuin University

"Excellent! I was mesmerized by the visual descriptions of all the places seen by the narrator and the struggle he went through to find the meaning of his life, and what he really wanted to do with the rest of it. I think it's a great learning tool for any student, and it was certainly well written. I'm putting it in my keeper file. There's a lot of information in there you'd never find anywhere else. Once I started reading, I couldn't put it down." -- Beth Anderson, author of Night Sounds, Murder Online,and Second Generation

"The Many Roads to Japan influenced my students a lot, not only in studying English but also in searching for their own identities and thinking about how to live their lives." -- Kazuyo Yamane, Peace Studies lecturer at Kochi University

The Many Roads to Japan is available at Smashwords.com and other online bookstores. Click here.
