I was in terrible shape, mind you, for the next couple of months, really beat to shit, out of it, just out of it. I would wake at seven and leap out of the sack. I suffered energy attacks. Right off my food, I craved thick meat and thick wine. I couldn't watch any Therapy. After barely a half-hour of some home-carpentry show or marathon dance contest I'd be pacing the room with frenzy in my bitten fingertips. I put Danuta at risk too, on several occasions. I even threw a pass in on little Sunny Farraday, who moved in here for a time after the cremation. Danuta divorced me. She even moved out. But she's back now. She's a good kid, Danuta-she helped me through. The whole thing is behind me now, and I think (knock on wood) that I'm more or less my old self again.

Pretty soon I'll rap on the window with my cane and have Danuta fetch me another blanket. Later, she'll help me inside for my broth. Then a nap, and an hour of TV maybe. The Therapy Channel. I'm happy here for the time being, and willingly face the vivid torment, the boiling acne of the dying sky. When this sky is dead, will they give us a new one? Today my answering service left a strange message: I have to call a number in Sydney, over in Australia there. I'll do it tomorrow. Or the next day. Yeah. I can't make the effort right now. To reach for my stick, to lift it, to rap the glass, to say Danuta-even that takes steep ascents of time. All things happen so slowly now. I have a new feature with my back. I broke a tooth last week on a piece of toast. Jesus, how I hate bending and stairs. The sky hangs above me in shredded webs, in bloody tatters. It's a big relief, and I'm grateful. I'm okay. I'm good, good. For the time being, at any rate, I show no signs of coming down with time.

THE LITTLE PUPPY THAT COULD

The little puppy came bounding and tumbling over the fallow fields. Here he comes, bounding, tumbling. Like all the most adorable little puppies, this little puppy had large pleading brown eyes, wobbly half-cocked ears, and loose folds of flesh on the join of his neck. His coat was a subtle gray (like silver in shadow), with a triangle of white on his chest, like a shirtfront, and white tufts on each paw, like socks, like shoes, like little spats! He was a bit plump, this little puppy, it had to be said-but adorably so. Puppy fat, not doggy fat. He had been running and running for days and days. Where had the little puppy come from? Where was the little puppy heading, and so eagerly? His proud tail high, his front paws gaily outthrust, his-whoops! Over he goes again. Then he's up, undismayed, bounding, tumbling, toward huge discoveries, toward wonderful transformations. Of course, the little puppy had no idea where he had come from or where he was heading. But he was going to get there.

Now, the puppy probably sniffed or sensed the village before he saw it-the fires, the crescents, the human place. In truth, his eyesight was not all that reliable, floppy, tousled, subject to passionate distortions of fear and desire. But he saw something new out there, shape and pattern, evidence, a great manifestation pressed or carved upon the random world through which he bounded. The little puppy tumbled to a halt, then wriggled himself upright. He knew at once that he had found the place that his heart sought- his destination. Down in the round valley he could descry moving figures, and circles within circles, and, at their crux, a flaming parabola shaped like a scythe: a swan neck, a query of fire! The little puppy stood there, anxiously snapping his jaws. His head craned forward, urging the little puppy on, but his paws just jostled and danced. His tail started wagging, hesitantly at first, then with such reckless vigor that he almost pulled a muscle in his plump little rump. On he bounded, nearer, nearer, down through the dawn shadows, almost flying, his young blood aflame- until he saw a human group moving stolidly from a gateway in the low palisade. Now the little puppy really turned on the speed. He hurtled toward them, then leapt into the air and swiveled, skidlanding back-first at their feet-the four paws limply raised, the shivering tail, his soft belly exposed in reflexive surrender and trust.

And nothing happened… The puppy awoke in a pool of bafflement and hurt. He hadn't been asleep or anything, but life was like that for the little puppy, it all being so much more fervent down there, so pressing, so sudden. The people just stood there in a stoical arc, six or seven of them; some faces wore fear, some disgust; none showed kindness. At last the puppy climbed sadly to his feet and looked up at them with beseeching eyes, his worked jaw forming a question. His question was your question. Why should they want to act this way toward a little puppy, his puzzled heart full of bruised love, a puppy made for cuddles and romps? And the people had no answer. They too (the puppy seemed to sense) were full of confusion, full of pain. Wishing to comfort them, and hoping there had simply been some sort of misunderstanding, the little puppy crept forward again, in trembling supplication. But now the people began to turn away. The men mumbled and sneered. One woman wept; another woman spat-spat at the little puppy. Blinking, he watched them go through the gate. It was strange. The little puppy didn't know much but he did know this: that the people were not unkind. No, they were not. They were not unkind.

And so, keeping his distance, foraging for food (grubs, roots, a special kind of flower, certain intoxicating though regrettable substances that his nose liked but his tongue loathed), and with many an exhausted sigh, the little puppy padded around the human place, until the day began to turn. As he searched for the tongue-tickling ants and the fairy toast of butterflies among the rocks and hollows, he kept glancing hopefully toward the ringed settlement- itself a termitary, full of erratic yet significant motion. His hunger appeased, propitiated, the puppy waited, there on the hillside, watching, sighing. Despite his wretchedness he nursed an intense presentiment of great things, of marvelous revelations-a feeling that may well have been delusive, since he always had it. Later in the day he encountered a damp and steaming hillock whose very interesting smells he investigated busily. Moments later he found himself lying on his side, being helplessly sick. The little puppy kept away from that hillock and all others with the same smell, a smell he came to think of as meaning danger. As night fell in folds over the disquieted landscape, he heard from across the valley the frazzled snarling of a beast, tireless and incarnadine, a sound that chimed in his head with the jeopardy of the special smell. All the little puppy could see or hear of the village now was the dreadful fire, the long flaming curve at the heart of the human place.

It was love, unquestionably love, and with classic symptoms. Each morning the little girl came with her basket, over the hills and far away, to gather flowers, and to swim in the varnished creek. Her wandering gait brought her there, punctually (the day was always exactly the same color when she came), barefoot, in her white dress. The flowers themselves all swooned and pouted at her approach. They wanted to be picked. Pick me. The flowers, the fantastic flowers-watch them as they hobnob and canoodle in the haze! Imagine too the little puppy, staring out from the shadows of the secretive tree, his nose on his paws, his tail lazily swishing, the brown eyes all gooey and gummed.

Now he raised his head (the neck suddenly erect and astonished) as the young girl slipped out of her dress, tiptoed naked into the shallow pool-and sang as she bathed her breasts! The little puppy sighed. He loved her from his distance, a love instant and wordless and full of hunger. He would exchange the pigments and pain of life-and all its great presentiments-for a single caress of her hand, a pat, a smack. It was a love he would never show. People didn't like him: he knew that by now. In the fields above the valley he had approached at least a couple of dozen of them, singly and in groups, assuming various styles and postures (crawling, strolling, skipping); in every case he had been thoroughly jeered and gestured-at for his pains-and they were pains, and there were many of them now. So while every cell in the little puppy's body desperately urged him to join the young girl and her flowers, to declare himself, to gambol and prance and snuggle and spoon, he stayed in his shadows and loved from his distance. It was love, at any rate. And of this the little puppy was sure: he would never settle for anything less than love.