VI

"Quiet I'm the chamber, please!"

The hustle in the courtroom was terrible. I knew that the affair had aroused great interest, that everyone was burning with impatience for my trial to begin, but yet I couldn't imagine that it would arouse such interest in everyone, not only in Texas, where I was caught and sentenced, but all over the country. There was such a large number of bystanders that day that at the end of the room a special partition had to be put up, behind which all these bystanders were admitted, and they thought themselves lucky to have standing room there, for all chairs had been removed for the sake of space, and the crowd behind the partition stood throughout the case closely packed, shoulder to shoulder. Here the city sheriff could be at once recognized by his characteristic shock of hair; here the telegraph chief's uniform flashed with golden medals; a multitude of reporters with repulsive faces, the judge, with his large swarthy nose with enlarge pores, from one of which sprung out a lone but long hair. And, in patent-leather shoes, my father, sitting in place of the defense. The solicitous sunshine of public concern penetrated everywhere, and the defendant's bench was placed in such a way that there was not a single part of my body that the observer in the room could not pierce with his gaze. In the middle of the court, near the chief prosecutor, was a table which held the "material proofs." On it lay the fatal unloaded pistol, my shirt, with a blood-stained sleeve; my waistcoat, stained with blood in patches, and a stolen truck key. 

"Your Honor," my father said, loudly and distinctly. "I have the misfortune to be a father of a transvestite and a homosexual, and you may be sure I know what I'm talking about."

His words immediately caused a great deal of rumbling. I leapt up from the bench and threw myself at the bars, like a man who shuts his eyes and throws himself from the roof.

"Dad!" I yelled desperately. "Enough! Be quiet!" 

The accusation was unmistakable, though perhaps it was a surprise to himself. 

"Steven, enough!" father said sternly. "Gentlemen of the jury, to see you prosecuting a mental patient," (he pointed in my direction) "is unseemly; Look at him! I make bold to inquire, have most of you heard of the incident which got him expelled from the Academy of Law in New York?"

"Do remind us, Mr. Keyle," interposed the judge. 

From an inside breast pocket father then produced a sheet of ruled paper, obviously torn from a school notebook. 

"I present to you the note which my son left for his roommate on the night of June 22nd, 1919. I beg you, I beseech you, to hear me: he hated me at that time, because I refused to send him any more money. I knew what he needed the money for; it's no secret that at the time he gave himself to drinking and gambling, and all that illegal abolitionist nonsense. He was renting a room from some friend of his; I must note that most of his friends were, as the French sometimes put it, of le milieu. Anyway, in the end my son could not pay rent, and on the morning of the evening that the incident happened he had been turned out of his room. That's when the note was written. Read it, read it attentively—more attentively, please—and you will see the way he describes himself. This was the night he went to an illegal demonstration wearing a woman's dress." 

The paper was handed to the persecutor. 

"My dear Jacques," read the persecutor. "I have thought about your suggestion. I do not owe as much, only fifteen dollars or so, but we both know that Mrs. Stink has a way of smelling poverty and then does what anybody does who is aware of a bad smell. I'm leaving this note with the concierge in hopes of you seeing it. I'll take the dare. Find me tonight at the Main Square. I'll be dressed as your favorite jessabelle, as per your request, so it's going to be hard to miss me. Don't forget the money. Also, bring your boys; I'm in desperate need of cash, and if they have any more dares for me, I'll gladly take them on. Now, I am not suggesting that you jeopardize, even for a moment, my manhood. I only suggested that you let them know that I am, in effect, for sale. Yours, Stevenny." 

The audience was thrown into utter shock. Fragments of whispers, in which the word "shame" rose and burst like bubbles, now sounded in my ears, and the rush of blood suddenly became tears.

"Oh, for heaven's sake, it was a dare! A dare, goddammit!" I threw myself at the bars once again. "Can't you understand?"

"One more word, and the defendant will be escorted out!" cried the judge. The warden hit me with a stick. The judge, with his obscene nose, turned to my father. "The Jury will consider. But is that all? I must tell you, Mr. Keyle, being a sexual deviant hardly has anything to do with being a traitor."

"That's not all, your Honor," unhurriedly, diligently and intently, father stood up from his place. "Allow me to take a bit of your precious time. For reasons that may appear more obvious than they really are, I am in favor of capital punishment; I stand in full support of the Slave Theory– an attitude which, I trust, is shared by this court. Gentlemen of the jury, the majority of sexual deviants that hanker for some throbbing relation with another man, are innocuous, passive, and pathetic. My son isn't right in the head, that's true; he must have inherited it from his mother, may God rest her soul. She was a paranoid schizophrenic– used to have delusions, almost always about men going to attack her, men she knew or men in the street, anybody. She was crazy. Ever since she died, I've sort of been father and mother both to Steven, but the damage must have already been done."

Father produced something else from his pocket. 

"Soon after his return to South Carolina he had another bout with insanity, if to alcoholism and a sense of insufferable oppression that cruel term must be applied. I sent him away to be treated in a particular expensive sanatorium. Nothing came out if this, as you can see– but, by bribing a nurse I won access to some files and discovered some cards calling him "potentially homosexual", "totally impotent," and, above all–" he straightened out a much folded piece of paper, "–why, see for yourself."

The paper was handed to the court and read aloud. "Diagnosis: Divided Personality. Acute and down-hill phase of the illness. Second personality must be a woman, which explains transvestism, erratic behavior and homosexuality. Not at all constitutional... The diagnosis must be revised."

"Because you bribed him, you ass! You bribed the goddamn doctor!" I roared. "I'm not crazy!"

At a signal from the judge a doctor appeared on the scene. He announced to the court that the defendant was suffering from a dangerous attack of brain fever, and that he must be at once removed. The documents produced by father were added to the material proofs, and, after some deliberation, the judge decided to proceed with the trial. I think the onlookers who came to see the spectacle must have been satisfied—the show had been a varied one. In accordance with tradition the sentence was to be announced to me in person. I was brought back. All rose, exchanging smiles.

"Steven Henry Keyle," the judge pronounced in a moist undertone. "For your crimes of grand theft, property destruction and treason, with the gracious consent of the jury, I sentence you to death by hanging. However, your case of split personality does serve as an extenuating circumstance. As such, while you await your sentence, you shall get the opportunity to be sold into servitude, in which case you shall be pardoned. May God set you on the path of resurrection."

Suddenly I wake up. I breathe heavily; the morning cold is eating away at my toes. The face of my father remains in my field of vision. Belcher snores. The clock strikes a half, pertaining to some unknown hour. 

***

The yard was wet and gray from fog. Crispness folded down upon Long Island a day before, bringing October and death to flowers and a great fluttering of wings, marking the impending migration of birds. In the morning half-light, the pines were black against the pastel sky, an impenetrable row of giants preventing me from seeing beyond their stature. The icy balminess of fall encompassed me sweetly, mixing with the sickening smell of daffodil-scented laundry detergent. Soggy clothes hung limp from the clothesline – a generation of shirts and neckties sufficient, I am sure, for three men or more. Each time I dug into the slimy depths of the laundry basket, my hands seemed to grow colder, and the damp weeds seemed to strengthen their grip around my ankles. I never much enjoyed sniffing around people's dirty laundry; I preferred to keep my nose clean. Now my face was practically buried in it, perfectly of my own will, too. Fishing out a pair of underwear from the basket, I suddenly felt a despairing sense of doom. It smelled of daffodils, like all of Hamilton's clothes, which seemed indeed to be the preservative against the dangers and exigencies of any more intimate odor. But the very lack of odor testified to vileness, only the vileness was concealed. I stared at the underwear like a dumb man, searching for something more personal yet than this smell, almost wishing to somehow discover some innermost secret of their owner's identity. He was too old to search for it in his walk, or the way he held his hands, or his voice. It was something else and I would never see it. I would never dare to see it. It would be like looking at the naked sun. 

I always wondered about the origins of sodomy. It was my conviction that vile thoughts attack a man like a disease, develop gradually and reach the highest point at the moment of aberration or impairment of will, after which they pass off like any other ailment. I began mentally leafing through the pages of medical textbooks I once read, obtusely trying to remember whether there really did exist any visible symptoms. I heard from a preacher that the mouth of a sodomite gets distorted (when used for vile purposes), and that the penis becomes thin and pointed like a dog's. Thumbing through that battered book that is my memory, I dimly evoke certain ill-lit places with their dim patrons: the usual paunchy, bespectacled gentlemen with despairing eyes, the usual, knife-blade lean, tight-trousered boys, transvestites with Guinea-pig faces, dressed in the most improbable combinations. Hamilton was nothing like this. But perhaps the book was proof enough. The vile book! The shine of its polluting perversion was a thousand times more dazzling than all the adultery I or the most talented impotent might imagine. My world was split. I was repulsed and terrified. For weeks I had mistaken Hamilton's oddities for senseless cruelty. I was wide of the mark. 

"Why are you up so early?"

I returned to my senses and quickly hung up the underwear. 

"Couldn't sleep. It seems as though the cold were damper inside—it seems to eat into my bones."

"Cold as the devil—Good Lord, I've been working like the deuce all day yesterday till it got so cold I thought I'd get pneumonia."

It was a cold day indeed, the first definitely cold day, and Charles had on one of those knee-length, sheep-lined coats long worn by the working men of the Middle West. I was immediately jealous of him.

"The house is pretty warm. Your guys have done a great job with the boiler."

"Then why aren't you in there?" 

"Don't want to see Hamilton," I said indefinitely, hanging up a set of bed linen. "It's almost like he never sleeps. Doesn't he ever give you the creeps?" 

"No, why? You know, I was chopping up fire logs the other day and cut myself pretty badly. He insisted on applying some sort of witch's brew and even sent me inside." 

With one hand on the clothesline he rolled down his sleeve and exposed a long cut on his forearm. 

"Really, you're the only one who's got a problem with him." 

I was staring at Charles, though I did not realize it, and for some reason wishing I were him. He seemed—somehow—more handsome than I could ever be, and he wore his masculinity as unequivocally as he wore his skin, beneath which I could see his toned muscles working. His shirt, open to the chest, revealed thick dark hairs and a crucifix. I had lost mine years ago. The grasp of his fingers seemed strong and steady, compared to my own fingers, clammy and limp as a bit of rag. I knew how he drank and how he was with his friends and how women desired him. I wondered if my father had ever been like that, and if he had, why I never inherited any of it. I felt my heart harden, and had to look away. 

"You must know him very well," I said dryly, and then added with unexpected weariness: "Does it upset you particularly that I don't like him?"

Charled shrugged his shoulders. 

"Practically not at all. He's not my friend. But he's a fellow veteran—anyhow, that's what Town Tattle said."

"You've been to war too?"

"Yes.The Seventh infantry. I never believed in war, but I enlisted and fought and stayed out till we lost. Why, I'd go to war now, If I could."

"What war?"

"What war?" He echoed pensively. "Any war. I haven't seen a paper lately but I suppose there's a war–there always is. Just talk to anyone who's been in it and see if they think the Germans are all in. They don't. Nobody does. I've read that there'll be, anyways, another war. They don't think it's over."

"Don't you care what you fight for?"

"Not at all. So long as I'm well treated." 

I thought of the photographs from the Western Front that were emerging in newspapers in 1914. I was a just boy back then, so I didn't really understand it. I remember the quality of the pictures, the way everything in them seemed to be coated with a mixture of sunlight and mud, and how dark the shadows were under people's eyebrows and along their cheekbones. To me it was a made up story from a picture book (I suppose all children think that), and yet I remember being scared of the mythical place they called "war".

"If you didn't believe in it," I began carefully. "Why did you enlist in the first place?" 

Charles grunted and removed his hand from the clothesline, a curious falling in his whole countenance. 

"It's not important," he said, as if that should answer my question. "What matters is that after the war I was left without a pot to piss in. Our economy was in shambles, the State couldn't care less about some private not receiving his due pension. Anyway, I lost my job in a factory around the time convicts started floating in; and, I mean, I understand why. That place was a hotbed of disease. No one in their right mind would work there without proper compensation. With slaves it's another matter. You can beat them, starve them, kill them. But most importantly, you don't have to pay them. The folks that get the slaves, all they want is to feed them cheap and get all the work they can out of them."

I nodded. I had heard about the industrial plague which took over our cities along with the coming of the Theory. 

"How did you get yourself arrested?"

Charles sighed, looking out into the morning. 

"I stole something. Left traces on purpose. Pleaded guilty. I just didn't want to beg no more. I was hoping that some Wall-Street dandy would pick me as a chimney cleaner, but instead the same factory that kicked me out put out an offer for my head. If I went there, I'd be dead by now; that place is a living hell. But then, one day. Hamilton shows up and snatches me last minute..."

"I'm sorry," I interrupted, suddenly. "I'm sorry." 

Charles looked at me questioningly.

"Why are you sorry? 

I did not know how to explain what it was I was sorry for. 

"That your life is over. It's an unhappy life you're living now."

He smiled, but it was a sort of turned down smile. 

"Don't be sorry. Here I am, twenty-seven. Suppose I did start in at some idiotic business, sweeping the streets or cleaning windows. Perhaps in two years I might rise to twenty dollars a week—with luck. That's if I could get a job at all; Well, suppose I made twenty a week. Do you think I'd be any happier? I have a roof over my head, I'm fed and well-treated. That's all that matters to me."

"I suppose," I answered dryly. There was a sudden bitterness within me which I could not escape from. And then, again, I began undergoing with Charles what I once underwent with my father: I was beginning to judge him. "I just can't believe you sold yourself on purpose. I'd rather die."

"That's because you're young," Charles said. "You are–how old? Twenty? Let me tell you, you are lucky. You are lucky that what happened to you has happened now and not when you are thirty, or something like that, when you've lived long enough to have things you don't wish to let go of."

"Like what?" I asked. I had meant to sound sardonic, but I did not sound sardonic at all.

He did not answer this, but sighed, looking briefly in the direction of the pines. His profile was gray from the light of the sky above us. 

"Another winter. We're getting older." 

Somewhat mollified, but happy to change the topic, I rejoined:

"Yes. It is my birthday soon. October the 28th."

Charles was silent for a moment; then he turned to me, as though he was driven, and put his hands on my shoulders.

"Henry," he said, changing his tone. "I want to beg your pardon." 

I shivered and really felt at that moment that Judas and the Savior had met in me.

"For what?"

"For not believing you," he said, very earnestly. "There are many ways in which a man can be despicable. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people's pain, and he isn't. I ought to have some respect for someone who saved my life, you must agree." 

I knew, had this lasted, that is, had this hands remained on my body, there would erupt into speech, out of all that light and closeness, some brutal variation of Look, I know what you mean, but I think he's a homosexual. 

"Good morning, gentlemen."

I knew he was there before I saw him, before my eyes focused and I carefully turned my head. 

"Your Excellency, good morning!" Charles withdrew his hands. "A bit chilly today, isn't it?"

Hamilton was standing two paces away from us, his cheeks redder by a stroke of the wind's brush, the chest pocket of his fur coat bulging, as though from contamination, with a weighty cigar case. I felt ill as soon as he looked at me. 

"I don't wish to interrupt the conversation," Hamilton said, "But I need a word with my maid."

I swallowed a lump in my throat. I had been making resolutions for the last twelve hours and now I made another one: to forget about this whole thing, to pretend as though I didn't see anything. But I could not be certain, really, that it might not be I who was making a mistake, misreading everything— a judgment too shameful to be uttered.

I said my goodbyes to Charles and followed Hamilton upstairs to his room. I scarcely know how to describe his room. It remained in the same perpetual state of disorder, and it seemed to grow worse each time I came in. A single withered daffodil stuck out from a vase on the dresser like a diseased and undefinable sex. One of the walls was never to be uncovered because of the fantastic accumulations of things, things teetering on top of each other, so that I dreaded even having to touch them. At first I tried cleaning; I would open the heavy curtains, throw out the paper, the bottles, the trash; but quite soon I realized that my efforts were futile. It was not the room's disorder which I was trying to fight, after all, for the key to this disorder was not to be found in any of the usual places. It had to do with the unfixable character of the owner. I do not know how I knew this, but I knew it at once; perhaps I knew it because my need to clean Hamilton's mess was nourished by the same roots. 

So I stared around the room nervously, as if some mortal and unavoidable danger was lurking under the bed or in the closet. I couldn't look at Hamilton. A smashed flower of light from the window lay on the floor beneath his feet, and I stared at it, hoping that it could somehow shield me from whatever perversion he was trying to infect me with. 

"I'm going to have a party in two days," Hamilton said, standing in front of the mirror and fiddling with his tie. "Until then I need you to make yourself look presentable. Could you do that for me? I will allow you to wear your butler's outfit, just this once." 

As I stood behind him, I could see my own reflection in the mirror. All the distress that I had known in this house reflected on my face, and of my resemblance to my proud father nothing remained. Behind Hamilton's back stood Eleanor, with the brown shade of her round head, with freckles, with large protruding ears and small eyes, and her stooped and flabby figure (a result of eight failed pregnancies) in a ridiculous dress. Eleanor would be a good fit for Hamilton, as wife. 

"Yes, Your Excellency." 

"Do you like parties?"

As he turned to look at me, there was a mysterious sparkle in his eyes. 

"I don't know, Your Excellency."

"All right, then. In any case, I expect you to be there and wait on people. I must warn you, there will be a hell of a lot of bloodhounds sniffing around the place. Remember, you are just another garçon. That's it." 

I nodded slowly. I used to love parties, back when I was allowed to be part of them. Hamilton took out a waistcoat from the closet and began dressing.

"You know," he said, leaning forward to tie his shoes, "I am fairly certain that I've seen you before. In person, that is." 

"Really? When?"

"In 1918, I got an invitation to one of your father's dinner parties, as Mr. Crawford was invited. I think I saw you from a distance; you were wearing a marvelous velveteen suit. And I thought to myself, "What a beautiful young man." 

My spleen rose within me; an inexplicable, almost physical, repulsion. 

"Thank you, Your Excellency. But I don't think I ever met you." 

"That's because you seemed very unhappy, and left the party early," Hamilton said, putting on his hat. "What a shame, not to have a quick talk with so honored a personage." 

I couldn't tell if he was taunting me. Perhaps he wanted to look mild and friendly, but the light in his eyes was as it were twofold, and together with the mild friendly radiance there were flashes that were cruel and spiteful. I answered with a somewhat piteous smile.

"Yes, well... Ever since I got expelled, my father didn't want to have much to do with me. He would force me to go to his parties just so that people could point their fingers." 

"Did he hate you?"

"I don't know if he did. But I always liked the same things my mother did, and he didn't like my mother. So, as far as I'm concerned, he never liked me." 

"What was it that she liked?" Hamilton asked suddenly. 

I tried to remember. 

"She liked wearing ballet slippers around the house, because she wanted to be a dancer when she was young. She wrote stories about animals. She painted. She could drink any strong liquor in any amount. She read. She read a lot, actually."

Hamilton nodded pensively. He was silent for a long time. 

"I'm going to town," he said, putting on his hat. "Those invitations won't send themselves. If someone calls, tell them I'm not home." 

As he walked past me, the exhale of his breath seemed to ruffle my brow like the very wind of madness, and as his hand brushed against my shoulder, almost paternally, my mind became one enormous, necrotic wound. I thought only, one of these days I'll rot away completely. 

I stayed in his bedroom long after he left, pacing up and down, struggling with nameless thoughts, trying to plan some way of tackling his duplicity. I feared him no less than before; perhaps, indeed, my feeling was even stronger, more poignant than ever. A nasty disease lived in the walls of this room, venereal and highly contagious. It had been a great feat to come, for I already felt all hollowed out by the infection that was at work on me since I opened that book. I could only hope that I misread him. None will know what a strain it was to carry his secret while I had so many secrets of my own. 

Gradually my sense of hearing came back to me, and I became aware of the telephone ringing in the study. It had been ringing for quite a while, with brief pauses to catch its breath. The suspense was so great and so straining that I couldn't hold myself back any longer. I wanted to talk to someone; I wanted to be talked to. It seemed like such an impossible thing, now. I entered the study and picked up the telephone.

"Hello? Mr. Hamilton is not–"

"Eugene, I don't know what you think you're doing, but let me tell you, it won't work. Under no circumstances do I wish to see you in private, let alone in this house. That one time was an exception. And if you seriously think you can lure me in with some pathetic excuse of a party– Hello?" 

Loudly, so that it even tickled my middle ear, an extraordinarily nimble and distinct voice, and with that suave intonation often affected by men of the South. I was so startled I nearly knocked the humidor off the table; I tried to catch it, and it was then that I did knock it off; then I bumped my hip against the comer of the table and cried out in pain.

"Mr. Keyle? Is that you?" 

Absolute terror began to steal over me. The whole vision of two weeks ago came back to me – especially that peculiar radiance of red wine, as if touched by phosphorus, on the tips of my fingers. The curtains blew suddenly into the room, the papers whispered on the desk, and my heart cringed faintly at the intense reality of the person on the other end of the line. For a moment I thought I would have a fainting fit. I faltered impulsively in a half-whisper: 

"I'm awfully sorry, Mr, Crawford, but Mr. Hamilton isn't home. May I take a message?" 

Crawford was silent for a long while, as though he could not answer. 

"Yes. Do you mind telling him that I won't be coming to the party? Mr. Hamilton sent me a telegram. It seems he thought–" 

"Absolutely. Goodbye." 

"Wait– Don't hang up. I wanted to talk to you."

"Oh, I'm afraid I'm not ought to. I'm awfully sorry."

"You can be sure Hamilton will not know about this conversation." 

I felt like throwing up. This was, perhaps, a trap. There was certainly something that I did not know about— some objective prepared long ago. 

"What do you need, Sir?" 

"I expected to speak with you in person," he began with haste. "In regards to my last visit. I did not want any of this to happen. And it would not have happened if– Listen, I'm quite a different type from Mr. Hamilton. Perhaps one day you will understand. But for now, I would like to offer every possible apology."

"Alright," I muttered, utterly disconcerted. Crawford was quiet for some time. 

"How is your back, by the way?"

"It's alright." 

"I'm glad. Well, I shall delay you no further. Goodbye."

There was a crack followed by a tinkle on the other end, and then everything went still. I put the receiver back and fell into the chair. It was as though an abscess that had been forming for two weeks past in my heart had suddenly broken. But why, I asked myself, why had such an important, such a decisive and at the same time such an absolutely chance conversation happened so late? 

I wanted him to keep talking. It was a message, and it was intended for me, forbidden by that very fact. It pleased me to ponder this message, to try and figure out why the planter's son would ever want to apologize to me. In my mind he was apologizing not for what Hamilton did to me, but for one thing that changed me forever when I was a child. Even now, more than a decade later, with a terrible illness looming over my brain, I shut my eyes and I'm back in West Virginia, hiding behind my father's back, watching a dark and handsome young man approach us, white shirt, circles of sweat around his armpits, wide-open collar, straw hat, a knout in his hand. Suddenly he's kneeling to my level, asking if he has scared me. It pleased me to think I was communing with him, that young man with a knout. It pleased me that he finally apologized for what he did to me; for that day, many years ago in West Virginia, for the first time I found another man beautiful.

***

Carolinians, while willing, even eager, to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry. I drew as much consciousness of social security from being the son of Henry Keyle as I would have had from tracing my line to the Huguenots; most of what my father taught me boiled down to shrewd. He himself had acquired with luck and shrewdness a quarter-interest in a booming circus somewhere in Virginia. All of his parties were concerned with something he elusively referred to as 'networking' — men in tall hats with flat brims (as if this shape distinguished them from the rest of mankind), their shoulders stiff from superfluous cheerfulness, shaking hands with other, more senior men, in hopes of securing, amid the fuss, fume, and home-brewed moonshine, a share of some abstract Wall-Street stock. 

Although Hamilton was honestly apathetic to organized fashion, he was nevertheless too important (or rather, a secretary of someone too important) to abandon its contemporaneous rhythm and beat; I had always appreciated how different his parties were from any of my father's parties, no matter how splendid in scale. As far as I could see, Hamilton was concerned with nothing but senseless fun. 

A day before the party, a corps of caterers came down with dozens of boxes of fresh meat, fruits, and enough liquor to wipe out the entire population of Northport, both East and West. On the next day, the surrounding territory bloomed with illumination, in the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and on newly erected buffet tables spiced baked hams crowded against varied salads and pastry pigs. By five o'clock the jazz orchestra had arrived—no thin five-piece affair but a whole pitful, with three tubas, four saxophones and a harp. The host, for his part, had been once to his pharmacist, twice to his barber's, and three times to his tailor's, all in the span of two days—and in the final hour before the first guests arrived he had managed to yell at Charles, who was forced to play the role of chief decorator, three separate times. Charles, wiping his brow, would then dismiss it as nothing but "party pressure."

At seven o'clock, shaved and bathed, I left the dressing room and observed the steady setting of the sun as it lay glinting for a moment on the silk ends of the runner. As soon as it went out, two dozen virtuous females flooded the parlor with their undaunted ambition toward the three dozen young men, who were to arrive a little later. By seven-thirty cars from Manhattan were parked two deep in the drive, and, to continue, there was a third layer from the Bronx, from Newark and the Jersey suburbs up to bitter Connecticut and the ineligible sections of Long Island—and layers down to the city's shoes. Before I knew it, the air was alive with music and the smell of hair gel and enthusiastic flirting between people who'd never see each other again. The bar was in full swing, stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials of such varied kind that even I did not know one from another. 

Throughout the course of the night Hamilton appeared only once. An hour or so into the party I saw him come into the half-light at the top of the steps and stand there with hands in the pockets of his white flannel suit, looking around. The sneak preview must have disappointed him, because immediately he turned around and left. Without his immediate supervision, I wasn't quite sure what I was supposed to be doing. It became quite clear to me that the guests weren't there for the host; I'm certain that many came and went without having met him at all. What attracted them was the vast amount of free drinks at the bar, and perhaps the possible presence of someone christened Steven Henry Keyle. I spent most of the evening in the kitchen—away from any searching eyes. I was glad that none of the other servants, including Charles, were allowed at the party; otherwise my secret would burst like a balloon. 

From scraps and bits of chance conversations I overheard from my hiding spot, I made the conclusion that the world had been tremendously engrossed during the past year in the business of moving toward some indeterminate goal. The groups changed swiftly, swelled with new arrivals– first I could hear a chorus of confident girls discussing suffrage, then adultery, then theater. Then a man's voice joined in, throwing in the topic of an upcoming election, and the group dissolved. Thus removed, the conversation acquired an especially keen charm that made me wish to race with all might toward it, to keep it alive, keep it going; only then did I realize how terribly isolated I was. I wanted to get roaring drunk and dance, keep dancing, pick up some girl, kiss her at the stroke of midnight (which, now that I think of it, would be nothing but a kind of pretentious form of masturbation); but someone must have taken my place already. I stood up, thinking: I cannot bear it. I wanted to be away from this party, from its voices that made me feel so alone. It never occurred to me that I was a passive thing, acted upon by an influence above and beyond those voices, that I was merely a piece of film onto which a photograph is projected. As I rushed outside of the kitchen, some gargantuan photographer had focussed his camera on me and 'snap!'—this is how my poor fleeing image was probably immortalized on the front page of Town Tattle. 

I left the loud parlor and stood outside on the cold veranda. One could say that this was where an accidental wind blew me, but I don't think so. Suddenly I was aware that in the darkness next to me there was somebody smoking. I was about to move away when his voice addressed me:

"Say, Mr. Keyle; if you had something, something dear to your heart, to hide inside this house, where would you hide it?" 

"I beg your pardon?"

"Just what I said. That dreadful crowd really gets in the way." 

He struck a light to revive his dying pipe. For a second the flame illumed an unpleasant-looking man in his middle thirties with thick flaxen hair.

"I'm sorry, but I really ought to go." 

"Haven't you time for a short interview? Also, how is your back doing?" '

I froze. The man screwed up his eyes and smiled slyly, which made his smudgy little mustache twitch. 

"What are you?" I asked, covering my face in case of a sudden flash photograph. Although something told me that there would be no more pictures taken tonight.

"I see you are suspicious of me," the man said. "It's perfectly natural in your position. My profession taught me that suspiciousness develops like a muscle, it's hard to put anything over a man when it gets stiff. My name is S-y (the name shall remain censored), I am a journalist. You know, you don't look like your father. I mean, the resemblance is not particularly striking."

"Where did you hear about my back? Do you know Hamilton?"

"Never met him."

"Then how the hell do you know? And who else knows?" 

"You need not roar at me," S-y complained in a strange feminine manner. "Mr. Keyle, you urge me to frankness, and yet at my first question you refuse to answer. This is unfair. Now, let us go to the bar room, and have a–"

But I left him without an answer. A twittering group of girls had gathered at the door. 

"Have you seen the host?" I asked, trying to out yell the music. "I have to speak to him."

The group stared at me in such an amazed way and denied any knowledge of Hamilton's movements. 

"Do you know him?" asked a girl with yellow feathers in her hair. "We haven't the faintest idea what he looks like."

"Didn't he send out personal invitations?"

The girl shook her head. 

"There were no invitations. There was an advert in the paper saying there will be a grand party at this address to-night."

I was confused.

"Do you— Does anyone know him? Do you know who I am?"

"I don't, but I sure would love to," said the girl, extending her golden arm and touching my hair unceremoniously. "Are you this curly everywhere?"

"Martha, quit being such a tramp!" another girl interfered. "You know, there's something funny about a fellow that'll do a thing like this for perfect strangers. He must be some sort of benefactor."

"Or a government spy," suggested Martha. "Oh, what if he's a German spy? I heard—" 

After ten wasteful and somewhat inappropriate minutes, I decided to search for him in his usual hiding place. I had too many questions to let him slip this time. Little did I know that as soon as I opened the door of the study (I really should've knocked), I would be treated to the greatest burlesque performance I have ever seen. 

And did the young man fully understand, (my metaphorical reader will ask, producing metaphorically some notes from his metaphorical pocket) what he walked in on? Frankly, (I say, my eyes swimming from embarrassment), frankly no, I did not — indeed, could not — because none of the erotic prints my friends would pass around in the dark damp corners of the school bathroom ever depicted anything one couldn't observe by closely inspecting male and female insects in the garden. By the soaring age of twenty-one, I had still been rather hazy about the way human beings mated. The hot wet topic of so-called sexual deviancy, or attraction towards things usually unconnected with any idea or possibility of sexual function, was well above my grade level and had rarely come to my notice. Stockings. Armpit hair. Fig-picking. My sentimental education now went on fast.

As soon as I went in, I was treated to the sight of Hamilton curved unnaturally on the floor, his legs hoisted like a Tarentine sail, his joined ankles tacking, his left shoe gone from his foot. His cheeks and lips moved as if he were chewing on something, more specifically some unidentifiable glossy black fruit clutched in his hand. Eyes shut, nostrils distended, red mouth perilously disclosing his tongue and teeth in a preparatory half-open skew, he kept licking this fruit, kissing it, sucking on it so intensely that I thought that perhaps even lovemaking didn't go as far. It took me some time to realize that what he was feasting upon was none other than his own shoe, the same shoe that I stepped on a week ago, and as the vivid bulging of his trousers became apparent to me, the scene quickly turned from curious to sickening. Despite its utter ridiculousness, the act upset me somehow– I can't explain it, but I felt there was something dreadful, brutal, dark, and, yes, dreadful, about the whole thing. I felt as though while licking my sweat off the dark leather, he was licking my flesh, and when his raggedy teeth lacquered with saliva bit into the tip of the shoe, I almost felt the increased pressure of his caress on my skin. I couldn't move, couldn't make a sound, enamored completely by his depravement. And depravement it was — because of his pale, impermissible skin, his odor, his angular movements, his physical excitement visible despite being swathed in layers of cotton and wool, exasperation — because between me, a wonder-eyed virgin schoolboy, and that filthy, miserable, impenetrable hairy toad of a man there extended a bridge, leading to a misty summit beyond the fierce mountain pass, which promised the aurora, who knows (he knew), of our shared perverted future.

He would have lingered forever in this erotic trance, had I not made a loud attempt to retreat. When Hamilton opened his eyes and finally noticed me, he somehow detached all his organs of locomotion from the ground, and seemed actually to clap his feet in midair, in a miraculous parody of a ballet jump. 

"Steven! Oh, I wasn't expecting you..." he croaked. His chin was thoroughly wet with saliva. 

"I'm so sorry!" I covered my face with my hands. "Jesus Christ, I'm sorry– I'm leaving."

Mouth twitching with some kind of nervous resolution, Hamilton swiftly put the violated shoe on, knocking over a half-empty bottle of Cognac in the process. It became clear to me that he was drunk as a monkey. 

"Why? Are you busy with something?" 

I was despondent, petrified and utterly embarrassed. I didn't know what to do. I had never expected that I would ever find myself in such an awkward position. My sensations were terribly like the moment when I had broken into the study for the first time. The only difference was that now Hamilton was in my shoes, and he was enjoying it. 

"No, but you seemed... occupied."

"Oh, no!" He objected. "No, not at all. In fact I was going to send for you."

Not a faintest blush appeared on his face or neck as he sat down on the sofa and poured himself another glass of cognac.

"What's the matter?" I asked carefully, expecting that at any moment the natural shock of shame would finally get to him. 

"Nothing... It's nonsense. It really is nonsense, if you think of it," he muttered, like a man in delirium. "I really have no idea why I keep torturing myself." 

In the time passed I had developed a morbid sensitivity to his voice— it was a rapid and characteristic voice, and very individual or very foreign phrasal intonations (a detail which eluded me for the time being), but now I'm starting to forget it. Sometimes, in the days which are coming—God grant methe grace to live them: in the glare of the grey morning, I will hear it again, so vivid, so winning, a liquid soliloquy in a tedious play:

"Stay awhile."