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By Root 6176 0

dominions rises into the upper air and darkens it. Is it any wonder that we invite slumber to come quickly and seal our spirits? And, said the pamphlet, the Angels, thwarted by our sleep during waking hours, have to do what they can with us in the night. But then their work cannot touch our feeling or thinking, for these are absent during sleep. Only the unconscious body and the sustaining vital principle, the ether body, lie there in bed. The great feelings and the thoughts are gone. So also in the day, sleepwalking. And if we will not awaken, if the Spiritual Soul can’t be brought to participate in the work of the Angels, we will be sunk. For me the clinching argument was that the impulses of higher love were corrupted into sexual degeneracy. That really went home. Perhaps I had more basic, ultimate reasons for going off with Renata, leaving two little girls in dangerous Chicago, than I was aware enough to produce at a moment’s notice. I might, just possibly, justify what I was doing. After all, Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress had taken off, too, and left his family to pursue salvation. Before I could do the children any real good, I had to wake up. This muddiness, this failure to focus and to concentrate, was very painful. I could see myself as I had been thirty years ago. I didn’t need to look in the picture album. That damning photograph was unforgettable. There I was, a pretty young man under a tree, holding hands with an attractive girl. But I might as well have been wearing flannel pajamas as that flapping double-breasted suit—the gift of my brother Julius —for in the flower of my youth and at the height of my powers I was out cold.

As I sat in the theater I allowed myself to imagine that there were spirits near, that they wished to reach us, that their breathing enlivened the red of the little dresses the kids were wearing, just as oxygen brightened fire.

Then the children started to scream. Rip was staggering up from the mass of leaves that had dropped on him. Knowing what he was up against, I groaned. The real question was whether he could stay awake.

During intermission I ran into Dr. Klosterman from the Downtown Club. He was the one who had urged me in the sauna to go to a plastic surgeon and do something about the bags under my eyes—a simple operation to make me look years younger. All I had for him was a cold nod when he came forward with his children. He said, “We haven’t seen you around lately.”

Well, I hadn’t been around lately. But only last night, unconscious in Renata’s arms, I had dreamed again that I was playing paddle ball like a champion. My dream-backhand skimmed the left wall of the court and dropped with deadly english into the corner. I beat Scottie the club-player, and also the unbeatable Greek chiropractor, a skinny athlete, very hairy, pigeon-toed but a fiery competitor from whom in real life I could never win a single point. But on the court of my dreams I was a tiger. So in dreams of pure wakefulness and forward intensity I overcame my inertia, my mooning and muddiness. In dreams at any rate I had no intention of quitting.

As I was thinking of all this in the lobby, Lish remembered that she had brought a note for me from her mother. I opened the envelope and read, “Charles: my life has been threatened!”

There was no end to Cantabile. Before kidnaping Thaxter and me on Michigan Boulevard, perhaps at the very moment when we were admiring the beautiful Monet Sandvika winter scene, Cantabile was on the telephone with Denise, doing what he loved best, i.e., making threats.

Once when he was speaking of Denise, George Swiebel had explained to me (although knowing his Nature System I could have provided this explanation myself), “Denise’s struggle with you is her whole sex life. Don’t talk to her, don’t argue with her, unless you still want to give her kicks.” Undoubtedly he would have interpreted Cantabile’s threats in the same way. “This is how the son of a bitch gets his nuts off.” But it was just possible that Cantabile’s death-dealing fantasy, his imaginary role as Death’s highest-ranking