Part 3 (2/2)

On August 6, 1902, the world produced its usual crop of new humans, all programmed to act more or less alike, all containing minor variations of the same basic DNA blueprint; of these, approximately 51,000 were female and 50,000 were male; and two of the males, born at the same second, were to play a large role in our story, and to pursue somewhat similar and anabatic careers. The first, born over a cheap livery stable in the Bronx, New York, was named Arthur Flegenheimer and, at the other end of his life, spoke very movingly about his mother (as well as about bears and sidewalks and French Canadian Bean Soup); the second, born in one of the finest old homes on Beacon Hill in Boston, was named Robert Putney Drake and, at the other end of his life, thought rather harshly of his mother ... but when the paths of Mr. Flegenheimer and Mr. Drake crossed, in 1935, one of the links was formed which led to the Fernando Poo Incident.

And, in present time, more or less, 00005 was summoned to meet W. in the headquarters of a certain branch of British Intelligence. The date was March 17, but being English, neither 00005 nor W. gave a thought to blessed Saint Patrick; instead, they spoke of Fernando Poo.

”The Yanks,” W. said crisply, ”are developing evidence that the Russians or the Chinese, or both of them, are behind this Tequilla y Moto swine. Of course, even if that were true, it wouldn't matter a d.a.m.n to Her Majesty's government; what do we care if a speck speck of an island that size turns Red? But you know the Yanks, 00005-they're ready to go to war over it, although they haven't announced that publicly yet.” of an island that size turns Red? But you know the Yanks, 00005-they're ready to go to war over it, although they haven't announced that publicly yet.”

”My mission,” 00005 asked, the faint lines of cruelty about his mouth turning into a most engaging smile, ”is to hop down to Fernando Poo and find out the real politics of this Tequilla y Mota bloke and if he is Red overthrow him before the Yanks blow up the world?”

”That's the a.s.signment. We can't have a b.l.o.o.d.y nuclear war just when the balance of payments is almost straightened out and the Common Market is finally starting to work. So, hop to it, straightaway. Naturally, if you're captured, Her Majesty's government will have to disavow any knowledge of your actions.”

”It always seems to work out that way,” 00005 said ironically. ”I wish for once you'd give me a mission where Her Majesty's bleeding government would stand behind me in a tight spot.”

But 00005, of course, was merely being witty; as a loyal subject, he would follow orders under any circ.u.mstances, even if it required the death of every soul on Fernando Poo and himself as well. He rose, in his characteristic debonair fas.h.i.+on, and headed for his own office, where he began his preparations for the Fernando Poo mission. His first step was to check his personal worldwide travel notebook, seeking the bar in Santa Isobel which came closest to serving a suitable martini and the restaurant most likely to prepare an endurable lobster Newburg. To his horror, there was no such bar and no such restaurant. Santa Isobel was bereft of social graces.

”I say,” 00005 muttered, ”this is going to be a bit thick.” thick.”

But he cheered up quickly, for he knew that Fernando Poo would be equipped at least with a bevy of tawny-skinned or coffee-colored females, and such women were the Holy Grail to him. Besides, he had already formed his own theory about Fernando Poo: he was convinced that b.u.g.g.e.r-Blowhard's Unreformed Gangsters, Goons, and Espionage Renegades, an international conspiracy of criminals and double agents, led by the infamous and mysterious Eric ”the Red” Blowhard-was behind it all. 00005 had never heard of the Illuminati.

In fact, 00005, despite his dark hair combed straight back, his piercing eyes, his cruel and handsome face, his trim athlete's body, and his capacity to penetrate any number of females and defenestrate any number of males in the course of duty, was not really an ideal intelligence agent. He had grown up reading Ian Fleming novels and one day, at the age of twenty-one, looked in the mirror, decided he was everything a Fleming hero should be, and started a campaign to get into the spy game. After fourteen years in bureaucratic burrowing, he finally arrived in one of the intelligence services, but it was much more the kind of squalid and b.u.mbling organization in which Harry Palmer had toiled his cynical days away than it was a berth of Bondage. Nevertheless, 00005 did his best to refurbish and glamorize the scene and, perhaps because G.o.d looks after fools, he hadn't managed to get himself killed in any of the increasingly bizarre missions to which he was a.s.signed. The missions were all weird, at first, because n.o.body took them seriously-they were all based on wild rumors that had to be checked out just in case there be some truth in them-but later it was realized that 00005's peculiar schizophrenia was well suited to certain real problems, just as the schizoid of the more withdrawn type is ideal for a ”sleeper” agent since he could easily forget what was conventionally considered his real self. Of course, n.o.body at any time ever took b.u.g.g.e.r seriously, and, behind his back, 00005's obsession with this organization was a subject of much interdepartmental humor.

”Wonderful as it was,” Mary Lou said, ”some of it was scary.”

”Why?” Simon asked.

”All those hallucinations. I thought I might be losing my mind.”

Simon lit another joint and pa.s.sed it over to her. ”What makes you think, even now, that it was just hallucinations?” he asked.

ROCK ROCK ROCK TILL BROAD DAYLIGHT.

”If that was real” Mary Lou said firmly, ”everything else in my life has been a hallucination”

Simon grinned. ”Now,” he said calmly, ”you're getting the point.”

THE SECOND TRIP, OR CHOKMAH.

Hopalong Horus Rides Again Hang on for some metaphysics. The Aneristic Principle is that of order, the Eristic Principle is that of disorder. On the surface, the Universe seems (to the ignorant) to be ordered; this is the aneristic illusion. Actually, what order is ”there” is imposed on primal chaos in the same sense that a person's name is draped over his actual self. It is the job of the scientist, for example, to implement this principle in a practical manner and some are quite brilliant at it. But on closer examination, order disolves into disorder, which is the ERISTIC ILLUSION.-Malaclypse the Younger, K.S.C., Principia Discordia And s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p Earth, that glorious and b.l.o.o.d.y circus, continued its four-billion-year-long spiral orbit about the Sun; the engineering, I must admit, was so exquisite that none of the pa.s.sengers felt any motion at all. Those on the dark side of the s.h.i.+p mostly slept and voyaged into worlds of freedom and fantasy; those on the light side moved about the tasks appointed for them by their rulers, or idled waiting for the next order from above. In Las Vegas, Dr. Charles Mocenigo woke from another nightmare and went to the toilet to wash his hands. He thought of his date the next night with Sherri Brandi and, quite mercifully, had no inkling that it would be his last contact with a woman. Still seeking calm, he went to the window and looked at the stars-being a specialist, with no interest beyond his own field, he imagined he was looking up rather than out at them. In New Delhi aboard the afternoon TWA flight for Hong Kong, Honolulu, and Los Angeles, R. Buckminster Fuller, one of the few people to be aware that he lived on a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p, glanced at his three watches, showing local time (5:30 p.m.), time at Honolulu, his point of destination (2:30 a.m. the next morning) and present time in his home at Carbondale, Illinois (3:30 a.m. the previous morning.) In Paris, the noon crowds were jostled by hordes of young people distributing leaflets glowingly describing the world's greatest Rock Festival and Cosmic Love Feast to be celebrated on the sh.o.r.es of Lake Totenkopf near Ingolstadt at the end of the month. At Sunderland, England, a young psychiatrist left his lunch to rush to the chronic ward and listen to weird babble proceeding from a patient who had been decade-silent: ”On Walpurgasnacht Walpurgasnacht it's coming. That's when His power is strongest. That's when you'll see Him. Right at the very stroke of midnight.” In the middle of the Atlantic, Howard the porpoise, swimming with friends in the mid-morning sun, encountered some sharks and had a nasty fight. Saul Goodman rubbed tired eyes in New York City as dawn crept over the windowsill, and read a memo about Charlemagne and the Courts of the Illuminated; Rebecca Goodman, meanwhile, read how the jealous priests of Bel-Marduk betrayed Babylon to the invading army of Cyrus because their young king, Belshazzar, had embraced the love-cult of the G.o.ddess Ishtar. In Chicago, Simon Moon was listening to the birds begin to sing and waiting for the first cinnamon rays of dawn, as Mary Lou Servix slept beside him; his mind was active, thinking about pyramids and rain-G.o.ds and s.e.xual yoga and fifth-dimensional geometries, but thinking mostly about the Ingolstadt Rock Festival and wondering if it would all happen as Hagbard Celine had predicted. it's coming. That's when His power is strongest. That's when you'll see Him. Right at the very stroke of midnight.” In the middle of the Atlantic, Howard the porpoise, swimming with friends in the mid-morning sun, encountered some sharks and had a nasty fight. Saul Goodman rubbed tired eyes in New York City as dawn crept over the windowsill, and read a memo about Charlemagne and the Courts of the Illuminated; Rebecca Goodman, meanwhile, read how the jealous priests of Bel-Marduk betrayed Babylon to the invading army of Cyrus because their young king, Belshazzar, had embraced the love-cult of the G.o.ddess Ishtar. In Chicago, Simon Moon was listening to the birds begin to sing and waiting for the first cinnamon rays of dawn, as Mary Lou Servix slept beside him; his mind was active, thinking about pyramids and rain-G.o.ds and s.e.xual yoga and fifth-dimensional geometries, but thinking mostly about the Ingolstadt Rock Festival and wondering if it would all happen as Hagbard Celine had predicted.

(Two blocks north in s.p.a.ce and over forty years back in time, Simon's mother heard pistol shots as she left Wobbly Hall-Simon was a second-generation anarchist-and followed the crowd to gather in front of the Biograph Theatre where a man lay bleeding to death in the alley. And the next morning-July 23, 1934-Billie Freschette, in her cell at Cook County Jail, got the news from a matron. In this White Man's Country, I am the lowliest of the lowly, subjugated because I am not white, and subjugated again because I am not male. I am the embodiment of all that is rejected and scorned-the female, the colored, the tribe, the earth-all that has no place in this world of white male technology. I am the tree that is cut down to make room for the factory that poisons the air. I am the river filled with sewage. I am the Body that the Mind despises. I am the lowliest of the lowly, the mud beneath your feet. And yet of all the world John Dillinger picked me to be his bride. He plunged within me, into the very depths of me. I was his bride, not as your Wise Men and Churches and Governments know marriage, but we were truly wed. As the tree is wed to the earth, the mountain to the sky, the sun to the moon. I held his head to my breast, and tousled his hair as if it were sweet as fresh gra.s.s, and I called him ”Johnnie.” He was more than a man. He was mad but not mad, not as a man may go mad when he leaves his tribe and lives among hostile strangers and is mistreated and scorned. He was not mad as all other white men are mad because they have never known a tribe. He was mad as a G.o.d might be mad. And now they tell me he is dead. ”Well” the matron asked finally, ”aren't you going to say anything? Aren't you Indians human?” She had a real evil s.h.i.+ne in her eye, like the eye of the rattlesnake ”Well” the matron asked finally, ”aren't you going to say anything? Aren't you Indians human?” She had a real evil s.h.i.+ne in her eye, like the eye of the rattlesnake. She wants to see me cry. She stands there and waits, watching me through the bars. ”Don't you have any feelings at all? Are you some kind of animal?” ”Don't you have any feelings at all? Are you some kind of animal?” I say nothing. I keep my face immobile. No white shall ever see the tears of a Menominee. I say nothing. I keep my face immobile. No white shall ever see the tears of a Menominee. At the Biograph Theatre, Molly Moon turns away in disgust as souvenir hunters dip their handkerchiefs in the blood At the Biograph Theatre, Molly Moon turns away in disgust as souvenir hunters dip their handkerchiefs in the blood. I turn away from the matron and look up, out the barred window, to the stars, and the s.p.a.ces between them seem bigger than ever. Bigger and emptier. Inside me there is a s.p.a.ce like that now, big and empty, and it will never be filled again. When the tree is torn out by its roots, the earth must feel that way. The earth must scream silently, as I screamed silently.) But she understood the sacramental meaning of the handkerchiefs dipped in blood; as Simon understands it But she understood the sacramental meaning of the handkerchiefs dipped in blood; as Simon understands it.

Simon, in fact, had what can only be called a funky education. I mean, man, when your parents are both anarchists the Chicago public school system is going to do your head absolutely no good at all. Feature me in a 1956 cla.s.sroom with Eisenhower's Moby d.i.c.k face on one wall and Nixon's Captain Ahab glare on the other, and in between, standing in front of the inevitable American rag, Miss Doris Day or her older sister telling the cla.s.s to take home a leaflet explaining to their parents why it's important for them to vote.

”My parents don't vote,” I say.

”Well, this leaflet will explain to them why they should,” she tells me with the real authentic Doris Day suns.h.i.+ne and Kansas cornball smile. It's early in the term and she hasn't heard about me from the last-semester teacher.

”I really don't think so,” I say politely. ”They don't think it makes any difference whether Eisenhower or Stevenson is in the White House. They say the orders will still come from Wall Street.”

It's like a thundercloud. All the suns.h.i.+ne goes away. They never prepared her for this in the school where they turn out all these Doris Day replicas. The wisdom of the Fathers is being questioned. She opens her mouth and closes it and opens and closes it and finally takes such a deep breath that every boy in the room (we're all on the cusp of p.u.b.erty) gets a hard-on from watching her b.r.e.a.s.t.s heave up and slide down again. I mean, they're all praying (except me, I'm an atheist, of course) that they won't get called on to stand up; if it wouldn't attract attention, they'd be clubbing their d.i.c.ks down with their geography books. ”That's the wonderful thing about this country,” she finally gets out, ”even people with opinions like that can say what they want without going to jail.”

”You must be nuts,” I say. ”My dad's been in and out of jail so many times they should put in a special revolving door just for him. My mom, too. You You oughta go out with subversive leaflets in this town and see what happens.” oughta go out with subversive leaflets in this town and see what happens.”

Then, of course, after school, a gang of patriots, with the odds around seven-to-one, beat the s.h.i.+t out of me and make me kiss their red-white-and-blue totem. It's no better at home. Mom's an anarcho-pacifist, Tolstoy and all that, and she wants me to say I didn't fight back. Dad's a Wobbly and wants to be sure that I hurt some of them at least as bad as they hurt me. After they yell at me for a half hour, they yell at each other for two. Bakunin said this and Kropotkin said that and Gandhi said the other and Martin Luther King is the savior of America and Martin Luther King is a b.l.o.o.d.y fool who's selling his people an opium Utopia and all that jive. Go down to Wobbly Hall or Solidarity Bookstore and you'll still hear the same debate, doubled, redoubled, in spades, and vulnerable.

So naturally I start hanging out on Wall Street and smoking dope and pretty soon I'm the youngest living member of what they called the Beat Generation. Which does not improve my relations with school authorities, but at least it's a relief from all that patriotism and anarchism. By the time I'm seventeen and they shot Kennedy and the country starts coming apart at the seams, we're not beatniks anymore, we're hippies, and the thing to do is go to Mississippi. Did Did you ever go to Mississippi? You know what Dr. Johnson said about Scotland-”The best thing you can say for it is that G.o.d created it for some purpose, but the same is true of h.e.l.l.” Blot Mississippi; it's not part of this story anyway. The next stop was Antioch in dear old Yellow Springs where I majored in mathematics for reasons you will soon guess. The pot there grows wild in acres and acres of beautiful nature preserve kept up by the college. You can go out there at night, pick your own gra.s.s for the week from the female of the hemp species and sleep under the stars with a female of your own species, then wake up in the morning with birds and rabbits and the whole lost Thomas Wolfe America scene, a stone, a leaf, and unfound door and all of it, then make it to cla.s.s really feeling good and ready for an education. Once I woke up with a spider running across my face, and I thought, ”So a spider is running across my face,” and brushed him off gently, ”it's his world, too.” In the city, I would have killed him. What I mean is Antioch is a stone groove but that life is no preparation for coming back to Chicago and Chemical Warfare. Not that I ever got maced before '68, but I could read the signs; don't let anybody tell you it's pollution, brothers and sisters. It's Chemical Warfare. They'll kill us all to make a buck. you ever go to Mississippi? You know what Dr. Johnson said about Scotland-”The best thing you can say for it is that G.o.d created it for some purpose, but the same is true of h.e.l.l.” Blot Mississippi; it's not part of this story anyway. The next stop was Antioch in dear old Yellow Springs where I majored in mathematics for reasons you will soon guess. The pot there grows wild in acres and acres of beautiful nature preserve kept up by the college. You can go out there at night, pick your own gra.s.s for the week from the female of the hemp species and sleep under the stars with a female of your own species, then wake up in the morning with birds and rabbits and the whole lost Thomas Wolfe America scene, a stone, a leaf, and unfound door and all of it, then make it to cla.s.s really feeling good and ready for an education. Once I woke up with a spider running across my face, and I thought, ”So a spider is running across my face,” and brushed him off gently, ”it's his world, too.” In the city, I would have killed him. What I mean is Antioch is a stone groove but that life is no preparation for coming back to Chicago and Chemical Warfare. Not that I ever got maced before '68, but I could read the signs; don't let anybody tell you it's pollution, brothers and sisters. It's Chemical Warfare. They'll kill us all to make a buck.

I got stoned one night and went home to see what it would be like relating to Mom and Dad in that condition. It was the same but different. Tolstoy coming out of her mouth, Bakunin out of his. And it was suddenly all weird and super-freaky, like G.o.ddard shooting a Kafka scene: two dead Russians debating with each other, long after they were dead and buried, out of the mouths of a pair of Chicago Irish radicals. The young frontal-lobe-type anarchists in the city were in their first surrealist revival just then and I had been reading some of their stuff and it clicked.

”You're both wrong,” I said. ”Freedom won't come through Love, and it won't come through Force. It will come through the Imagination.” I put in all the capital letters and I was so stoned that they got contact-high and heard them, too. Their mouths dropped open and I felt like William Blake telling Tom Paine where it was really at. A Knight of Magic waving my wand and dispersing the shadows of Maya.

Dad was the first to recover. ”Imagination,” he said, his big red face crinkling in that grin that always drove the cops crazy when they were arresting him. ”That's what comes of sending good working-cla.s.s boys to rich people's colleges. Words and books get all mixed up with reality in their heads. When you were in that jail in Mississippi you imagined yourself through the walls, didn't you? How many times an hour did you imagine yourself through the walls? I can guess. The first time I was arrested, during the GE strike of thirty-three, I walked through those walls a million times. But every time I opened my eyes, the walls and the bars were still there. What got me out finally? What got you out of Biloxi finally? Organization Organization. If you want big words to talk to intellectuals with, that's a fine big word, son, just as many syllables as imagination imagination, and it has a lot more realism in it.”

That's what I remember best about him, that one speech, and the strange clear blue of his eyes. He died that year, and I found out that there was more to the Imagination than I had known, for he didn't die at all. He's still around, in the back of my skull somewhere, arguing with me, and that's the truth. It's also the truth that he's dead, really dead, and part of me was buried with him. It's uncool to love your father these days, so I didn't even know that I loved him until they closed the coffin and I heard myself sobbing, and it comes back again, that same emptiness, whenever I hear ”Joe Hill”: ”The copper bosses killed you, Joe.”

”I never died,” said he.

Both lines are true, and mourning never ends. They didn't shoot Dad the clean way, like Joe Hill, but they ground him down, year after year, burning out his Wob fires (and he was Aries, a real fire sign) with their cops, their courts, their jails, and their taxes, their corporations, their cages for the spirit and cemeteries for the soul, their plastic liberalism and murderous Marxism, and even as I say that I have to pay a debt to Lenin for he gave me the words to express how I felt when Dad was gone. ”Revolutionaries,” he said, ”are dead men on furlough.” The Democratic Convention of '68 was coming and I knew that my own furlough might be much shorter than Dad's because I was ready to fight them in the streets. All spring Mom was busy at the Women for Peace center and I was busy conspiring with surrealists and Yippies. Then I met Mao Tsu-hsi.

It was April 30, Walpurgasnacht Walpurgasnacht (pause for thunder on the soundtrack), and I was rapping with some of the crowd at the Friendly Stranger. H.P. Lovecraft (the rock group, not the writer) was conducting services in the back room, pounding away at the door to Acid Land in the gallant effort, new and striking that year, to break in on waves of sound without any chemical skeleton key at all and I am in no position to evaluate their success objectively since I was, as is often the case with me, 99 and 44/100ths percent stoned out of my gourd before they began operations. I kept catching this uniquely pensive Oriental face at the next table, but my own gang, including the weird f.a.ggot-priest we nicknamed Padre Pederastia, had most of my attention. I was laying it on them heavy. It was my Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade period. (pause for thunder on the soundtrack), and I was rapping with some of the crowd at the Friendly Stranger. H.P. Lovecraft (the rock group, not the writer) was conducting services in the back room, pounding away at the door to Acid Land in the gallant effort, new and striking that year, to break in on waves of sound without any chemical skeleton key at all and I am in no position to evaluate their success objectively since I was, as is often the case with me, 99 and 44/100ths percent stoned out of my gourd before they began operations. I kept catching this uniquely pensive Oriental face at the next table, but my own gang, including the weird f.a.ggot-priest we nicknamed Padre Pederastia, had most of my attention. I was laying it on them heavy. It was my Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade period.

”The head-trip anarchists are as constipated as the Marxists,” I was giving forth; you recognize the style by now. ”Who speaks for the thalamus, the glands, the cells of the organism? Who sees sees the organism? We cover it with clothes to hide its apehood. We won't have liberated ourselves from servitude until people throw all their clothes in the closet in spring and don't take them out again until winter. We won't be human beings, the way apes the organism? We cover it with clothes to hide its apehood. We won't have liberated ourselves from servitude until people throw all their clothes in the closet in spring and don't take them out again until winter. We won't be human beings, the way apes are are apes and dogs apes and dogs are are dogs, until we f.u.c.k where and when we want to, like any other mammal. f.u.c.king in the streets isn't just a tactic to blow minds; it's recapturing our own bodies. Anything less and we're still robots possessing the wisdom of the straight line but not the understanding of the organic curve.” And so on. And so forth. I think I found a few good arguments for rape and murder while I was at it. dogs, until we f.u.c.k where and when we want to, like any other mammal. f.u.c.king in the streets isn't just a tactic to blow minds; it's recapturing our own bodies. Anything less and we're still robots possessing the wisdom of the straight line but not the understanding of the organic curve.” And so on. And so forth. I think I found a few good arguments for rape and murder while I was at it.

”The next step beyond anarchy,” somebody said cynically. ”Real ”Real chaos.” chaos.”

”Why not?” I demanded. ”Who works at a straight job here?” None of them did, of course; I deal dope myself. ”Will you work at a straight job for something that calls itself an anarchist syndicate? Will you run an engine lathe eight unf.u.c.king hours a day because the syndicate tells you the people need what the lathe produces? If you will, the people the people just becomes a new tyrant.” just becomes a new tyrant.”

”To h.e.l.l with machines,” Kevin McCool, the poet, said enthusiastically. ”Back to the caves!” He was as stoned as me.

The Oriental face leaned over: she was wearing a strange headband with a golden apple inside a pentagon. Her black eyes somehow reminded me of my father's blue eyes. ”What you want is an organization of the imagination?” she asked politely.

I flipped. It was too much, hearing those words just then.

”A man at the Vedanta Society told me that John Dillinger walked through the walls when he made his escape from Crown Point Jail,” Miss Mao went on in a level tone. ”Do you think that is possible?”

You know how dark coffee houses are. The Friendly Stranger was murkier than most. I had to get out. Blake talked to the Archangel Gabriel every morning at breakfast, but I wasn't that heavy yet.

”Hey, where you going, Simon?” somebody called. Miss Mao didn't say anything, and I didn't look back at that polite and pensive face-it would have been much easier if she looked sinister and inscrutable. But when I hit Lincoln and started toward Fullerton, I heard steps behind me. I turned and Padre Pederastia touched my arm gently.

”I asked her to come and listen to you,” he said. ”She was to give a signal if she thought you were ready. The signal was more dramatic than I expected, it seems. A conversation out of your past that had some heavy emotional meaning to you?”

”She's a medium?” I asked numbly, ”You can name it that.” I looked at him in the light from the Biograph marquee and I remembered Mom's story about the people dipping their handkerchiefs in Dillinger's blood and I heard the old hymn start in my head are you washed are you washed are you washed in the blood of the Lamb and I remembered how we all thought he hung out with us freaks in the hope of leading us back to the church holy Roman Catholic and apostolic as Dad called it when he was drunk and bitter. It was obvious that whatever the Padre was recruiting for had little to do with that particular theological trade union.

”What is this?” I asked. ”And who is that woman?”

”She's the daughter of Fu Manchu,” he said. Suddenly, he threw his head back and laughed like a rooster crowing. Just as suddenly, he stopped and looked at me. Just looked at me.

”Somehow,” I said slowly, ”I've qualified for a small demonstration of whatever you and she are selling. But I don't qualify for any more until I make the right move?” He gave the faintest hint of a nod and went on watching me.

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