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Everything was fine until the last scene of the opera, during which the hero and heroine were placed in an airtight chamber to suffocate. As the doomed pair filled their lungs, Eliot called out to them, "You will last a lot longer, if you don't try to sing." Eliot stood, leaned far out of his box, told the singers, "Maybe you don't know anything about oxygen, but I do. Believe me, you must not sing."

Eliot's face went white and blank. Sylvia plucked at his sleeve. He looked at her dazedly, then permitted her to lead him away as easily as she might have led a toy balloon.

3

NORMAN MUSHARI learned that, on the night of Aïda, Eliot disappeared again, jumped out of his homeward-bound cab at Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue.

Ten days later, Sylvia got this letter, which was written on the stationery of the Elsinore Volunteer Fire Department, Elsinore, California. The name of the place set him off on a new line of speculation about himself, to the effect that he was a lot like Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Dear Ophelia—

Elsinore isn't quite what I expected, or maybe there's more than one, and I've come to the wrong one. The high school football players here call themselves "The Fighting Danes." In the surrounding towns they're known as "The Melancholy Danes." In the past three years they have won one game, tied two, and lost twenty-four. That's what happens, I guess, when Hamlet goes in as quarterback.

The last thing you said to me before I got out of the taxicab was that maybe we should get a divorce. I did not realize that life had become that uncomfortable for you. I do realize that I am a very slow realizer. I still find it hard to realize that I am an alcoholic, though even strangers know this right away.

Maybe I flatter myself when I think that I have things in common with Hamlet, that I have an important mission, that I'm temporarily mixed up about how it should be done. Hamlet had one big edge on me. His father's ghost told him exactly what he had to do, while I am operating without instructions. But from somewhere something is trying to tell me where to go, what to do there, and why to do it. Don't worry, I don't hear voices. But there is this feeling that I have a destiny far away from the shallow and preposterous posing that is our life in New York. And I roam.

And I roam.

Young Mushari was disappointed to read that Eliot did not hear voices. But the letter did end on a definitely cracked note. Eliot described the fire apparatus of Elsinore, as though Sylvia would be avid for such details.

They paint their fire engines here with orange and black stripes, like tigers. Very striking! They use detergent in their water, so that the water will soak right through wallboard to get at a fire. That certainly makes good sense, provided it doesn't harm the pumps and hoses. They haven't been using it long enough to really know. I told them they should write the pump manufacturer and tell him what they're doing, and they said they would. They think I am a very big volunteer fireman from back East. They are wonderful people. They aren't like the sparrowfarts and dancing masters who come tapping at the Rosewater Foundation's door. They're like the Americans I knew in the war.

Be patient, Ophelia.

Love,

Hamlet.

Eliot went from Elsinore to Vashti, Texas, and was soon arrested. He wandered up to the Vashti firehouse, covered with dust, needing a shave. He started talking to some idlers there about how the government ought to divide up the wealth of the country equally, instead of some people having more than they could ever use, and others having nothing.

He rambled on, said such things as, "You know, I think the main purpose of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps is to get poor Americans into clean, pressed, unpatched clothes, so rich Americans can stand to look at them." He mentioned a revolution, too. He thought there might be one in about twenty years, and he thought it would be a good one, provided infantry veterans and volunteer firemen led it.

He was thrown in jail as a suspicious