"I stayed, as I always do, at the Bristol, and I dreamed about a sable coat. As you know I detest furs but I saw this coat in great detail-the cut of the collar, the honey-colored skins, the yellow silk with which it was lined and in one of the silk pockets a pair of ticket stubs for the opera. In the morning I asked the maid who brought me coffee if the previous occupant of the room had owned a fur coat. The maid clasped her hands together, rolled her eyes and said yes, yes, it was a Russian sable coat and the most beautiful coat that she, the maid, had ever seen. The woman had loved her coat. It was like a lover to her. And did the woman who owned the coat, I asked, stirring my coffee and trying to seem unexceptional, ever go to the opera? Oh yes, yes, said the maid, she came for the Mozart festival and went to the opera every night for two weeks, wearing her sable coat.

"I was not deeply perplexed-I have always known life to be overwhelmingly mysterious-but wouldn't you say that I possess indisputable proof of the fact that we leave fragments of ourselves, our dreams and our spirits in the rooms where we sleep? But what could I do with this information. If I confided my discovery to a friend I would likely be thought mad and was there, after all, any usefulness in my ability to divine that my bed had been occupied by a spinster or a prostitute or by no one at all? Was I gifted or were these facts known to all travelers and wouldn't giftedness be a misnomer for a faculty that could not be exploited? I have finally concluded that the universality of our dreams includes everything-articles of clothing and theater ticket stubs-and if we truly know one another so intimately mightn't we be closer than we imagine to a peaceable world?"

XII

I grew up in Grandmother's house in Ashburnham and went to a country day school. I took my meals in the pantry until I was ten or eleven, when I was elevated to the big dinner table. There were usually guests. It was a time of life when the conversation of adults seemed painfully tiresome. I guess I was sulky. Anyhow Grandmother lectured me. "Now that you're old enough to dine at my table," she said, "I expect you to make some contribution to the conversation. When people gather in the evening they gather to dine but they also gather to exchange opinions, experiences and information. We learn something every day, don't we? We see something interesting every day. Surely during your day you learn or observe something that will be interesting to me and my guests and I want you to take a more active part in the conversation." I asked to be returned to the pantry but Grandmother didn't seem to hear me and I was nervous when I went to the table that night. The talk rattled on and then Grandmother smiled at me to signify that my turn had come. All I could remember was that walking home from school I saw a lady in the public park stealing marigolds. When she heard my footstep she hid the marigolds under her coat. As soon as I passed she went on picking flowers.

"I saw a lady in the park," I said, "stealing marigolds."

"Is that all you saw," asked Grandmother. "I saw the basketball game." The adults picked up the talk again but I knew I had failed and would have to prepare myself. I was taking a course in ancient history and I began each night to memorize the gist of two pages from my textbook. "Of all the Greek states," I said, "that stretched from the Black Sea to the western shores of the Mediterranean, none approached Athens, and the man responsible for this achievement was Pericles…" The next night we had Solon in Sardis and the night after that we had the Athenian constitution. At the end of the week Grandmother said kindly: "I guess perhaps it would be better if you listened to the conversation."

Grandmother was rich, and I won't go into this. She was a stout woman with a plain face but the fact that she happened never to have worried about money had left her, even as an old woman, with an uncommon freshness. She seemed through luck and money to have missed one of the principal sources of anxiety. We were great friends although I sometimes teased her. When I was about twelve-I hadn't gone away to school-she was expecting for dinner an English earl named Penwright. Titles excited her and for some reason her excitement about the arrival of Lord Penwright put me in a bad humor. I was expected to attend the dinner. I learned that we were going to have oysters and I walked into the village and bought a large phony pearl at Woolworth's. I had Olga, the waitress, put this into one of the oysters on Lord Penwright's plate. There were maybe twelve people at the table and we were all chatting when Lord Penwright exclaimed, "Oh, my word," or "I say," and held up his pearl. It was the biggest pearl that Woolworth's had and it looked, in the candlelight, priceless. "What a charming favor," said his lordship.

"Hmmm," said Grandmother. Her face, usually quite bright, was troubled.

"I shall have it set and give it to my wife," said the lord.

"But it's my pearl," Grandmother said. "This is my house. These are my oysters. The pearl is mine."

"I hadn't quite thought of it that way," said the lord. He sighed and gave the pearl to Grandmother.

As soon as she had it in her hands she saw that it was Woolworth's and, turning to me at the end of the table, she said, "Go to your room." I went to the kitchen, had dinner and then went to my room. She never mentioned the pearl again but things between us were never the same. I was sent away to school in September.

XIII

Grandmother died in my last year at school nd I had no place to go for Christmas. I had plenty of friends, as I recall, but I either didn't receive any Christmas invitations or I didn't accept any. I was left alone in the dormitory when school closed for the holidays. I was terribly lonely in the empty building and felt that my illegitimacy was a cruel injustice. Everyone else in school had at least one parent while I had none. It seemed that my father could at least buy me a beer on the Christmas holidays. That's all I wanted from him. I knew that he was married and living in Boston and I flew to Boston that night. I found his name in one of the suburban telephone directories and drove out to Dedham, where he lived. I was just going to ask him to buy me a beer. That's really all I had in mind. I rang the bell and when his wife opened the door I was surprised to see a very homely white-haired woman. Her face was sallow and her teeth were long but having so little or nothing at all to do with physical charm she seemed to have mustered another kind of charm. She seemed kindly and intelligent. Her mouth was large and thin-lipped but her smile was beautiful. I said that I was Paul Hammer and that I wanted to see Mr.

Taylor. I think she knew who I was. She said he was in the city.

"He went in for a party on Wednesday," she said, "and when he goes to a party it's usually several days before he returns. He stays at the Ritz."

There was nothing long-suffering in her tone. Maybe she was happy to have him out of the house. I thanked her and drove to the Ritz. He was registered but he didn't answer the house phone and I took the elevator up to his floor. He didn't answer the doorbell either, but the door was unlocked and I went in.

There had been a party all right. The living room was full of the usual empty bottles and dirty glasses without which you can't, after all, have a party. He was in the bedroom. There were two unmade beds, both of which had seen some venereal mileage. He lay on one in a poleaxed, drunken sleep, naked. Around his neck he wore a chain of champagne corks-seventeen-which I guessed some friend had put there after he had stoned out. He was over fifty then but weight-lifting had paid off and if you couldn't see very well you might think he was a much younger man. He was lithe, really lithe, but this unseasonable litheness seemed to be obscene. He looked, hurled onto his bed by liquor, like the faded figure of some Icarus or Ganymede that you might find painted on the wall of some old-fashioned, second-rate Italian restaurant, flyspecked and badly drawn. I don't think he would have waked if I'd shouted in his ears, and anyhow he needed the sleep. I was that charitable.