I was even more charitable. He was my father, the author with some collaboration of my heart, vitals, lights and mind, and how far could a man go with such a creator? I could kill him, I could abuse him and I could forgive him but I had to do something so I settled on an uneasy brand of forgiveness and went away. My next stop was Kitzbühel. If my father wouldn't buy me a beer maybe I could get a cup of tea out of Mother.

We speak of travel-world travel-as if it were the most natural human condition. "Mr. X," we read, "then traveled from Boston to Kitzbühel." How far this is from the truth! I got an evening plane for London at Logan Airport. The plane was delayed and I drank five martinis at the airport bar and crossed the Atlantic in a drunken stupor. We got to London at daybreak, where I discovered that my bag had been lost. I wandered around the airport until three that afternoon when my bag was found and took a cab to the Dorchester. I tried, unsuccessfully, to get some sleep and then went out to a movie and got stoned at a pub. I had tickets for an early-morning flight to Frankfurt-am-Main but there was a thick fog over London that morning and when I got to the airport everything was grounded. It was announced at half-hour intervals that the fog was expected to lift. I ate my complimentary breakfast. Then I ate my complimentary lunch. At three o'clock the airport was declared closed for the day. I went back to the Dorchester but there were no rooms and after trying four other hotels I ended up in a rooming house in Parkman Square where I was kept awake most of the night by noises that I do not choose to describe. In the morning it was still foggy but it seemed to be lifting and I returned to the airport. I drank a cup of abominable coffee and a glass of orange-colored water. The effect of this on my digestion was galvanic and I quick-stepped to the men's room. I had been there about fifteen minutes when I heard my flight announced. I pulled up my pants, ran the length of the airport and just caught the Frankfurt plane. My digestive troubles were not over and I spent the flight from London to Frankfurt in the toilet. Lighted signs in three languages commanded me to return to my seat but how could I? In Frankfurt, where I got a plane for Innsbruck, it was very cold. In Innsbruck I got the Transalpini to Kitzbühel, arriving at my destination at four in the afternoon, but I did not, in fact, seem to have arrived anywhere. I seemed merely to have scattered my guts and vitals a third of the way around the world.

Mother's address was the Pension Bellevue. The facade of the wooden building was decked with horns and I wondered if the Tyrolese had failed to make the connection with cuckoldry or was it that kind of a pension? When I asked to see my mother they seemed astonished. She was a Fraulein. A maid went upstairs and brought Mother down. She cried with delight when she saw me and I took her in my arms. Her hair had begun to turn gray but she was not heavy. The color of her eyes remained a brilliant blue.

"Have you come for Christmas, Paul," she asked. "Have you come to spend Christmas with your mother? I usually go to the Estoril long before this but there hasn't been any snow this year and so I'm simply hanging on until the first flakes fall."

They gave me a room next to hers and we went upstairs together. She made some tea on a spirit lamp and poured me a cup. Then the door flew open and a bony woman flew in, exclaiming: "You've taken our sugarbowl! You borrowed our sugarbowl yesterday at teatime and you neglected to return it."

"But I did return your sugarbowl," my mother said politely. "I put it on your bookshelf. You'll find it there." When the stranger had left Mother turned to me and asked: "How is your horrid country?"

"It's not horrid, Mother," I said, "and it's your country."

"It's true that I travel on an American passport," she said, "but that's merely the sort of compromise one has to strike in dealing with a bureaucracy. It is, however, a horrid place. When I was in the Socialist Party with your father I said again and again that if American capitalism continued to exalt mercenary and dishonest men the economy would degenerate into the manufacture of drugs and ways of life that would make reflection-any sort of thoughtfulness or emotional depth-impossible. I was right." She poked a finger at me. "I see American magazines in the cafe and the bulk of their text is advertising for tobacco, alcohol and absurd motor cars that promise-quite literally promise-to enable you to forget the squalor, spiritual poverty and monotony of selfishness. Never, in the history of civilization, has one seen a great nation singlemindedly bent on drugging itself. I went out to California last year…"

"I didn't know you'd been home," I said.

"Well I was," she said. "I didn't call you."

"It doesn't matter," I said.

"I knew it wouldn't," she said harshly. "Well, to make a long story short, I went out to see some friends in Los Angeles and they took me for a ride on the freeway and here I saw another example of forgetfulness, suicide, municipal corruption and the debauchery of natural resources. I won't go back again because if I did do you know what I'd do?"

"No, Mother."

"I would settle in some place like Bullet Park. I would buy a house. I would be very inconspicuous. I would play bridge. I would engage in charities. I would entertain in order to conceal my purpose."

"What would that be?"

"I would single out as an example some young man, preferably an advertising executive, married with two or three children, a good example of a life lived without any genuine emotion or value."

"What would you do to him?"

"I would crucify him on the door of Christ's Church," she said passionately. "Nothing less than a crucifixion will wake that world."

"How would you crucify him," I asked.

"Oh, I haven't worked out the details," she said. Suddenly she was a gentle, gray-haired old lady again. I suppose I'd drug him or poison him at some cocktail party. I wouldn't want him to suffer."

I went into my room to unpack. The plaster wall was thin and I could hear my mother talking through the partition. At first I thought someone had joined her after I'd left but then I could tell by the level of her voice that she was talking to herself. I could hear her clearly. "My father was a common quarry worker, often unemployed. I had read somewhere that the trajectory of a person's career could be plotted from their beginnings and given such humble beginnings I thought that if I accepted them I would end up as a waitress in a diner or at best a small-town librarian. I kept trying to tamper with my origins so that I would have more latitude for a career. Having been raised in a small town I was terrified of being confined to one…"

I went down the hall and opened her door. She had taken off her shoes and was lying on her bed, fully dressed, talking to the ceiling or the air.

"What in the world are you doing, Mother?"

"Oh, I'm analyzing myself," she said cheerfully. "I thought I might benefit from psychoanalysis. I went to a doctor in the village. He charged a hundred schillings an hour. I simply couldn't afford this and when I said so he suggested that I get rid of my car and cut down on my meals. Imagine. Then I decided to analyze myself. Now, three times a week, I lie down on my bed and talk to myself for an hour. Tm very frank. I don't spare myself any unpleasantness. The therapy seems to be quite effective and, of course, it doesn't cost me a cent. I still have three quarters of an hour to go and if you don't mind leaving me alone…"

I went out and closed the door but I stood in the hall long enough to hear her say: "When I sleep flat on my back my dreams are very linear, composed and seemly. I often dream, on my back, of a Palladian villa. I mean an English house built along the lines of Palladio. When I sleep in a prenatal position my dreams are orotund, unsavory and sometimes erotic. When I sleep on my abdomen…"