I joined David, running in the woods. Rains had turned the high grass solid green. We ran along paths on different levels of the hill, moving in and out of sight of each other. His bright clothes flashed through the spindly pines.Mrs. Helen was patient with my attempts to conjugate difficult verbs. She lectured on the niceties of pronunciation and stress, the correctness of this or that form in a given situation. We sat with our cups of tea, our embossed paper napkins. It seemed to me that the language as she taught it existed mainly as a medium of politeness between people, with odd allowances made for the communication of ideas and feelings. We ate English biscuits and talked about her family. Across the room the telex clattered numbers from Amman.I found myself scanning the English-language newspapers for stories of assault, suicide and murder. I did the same thing when I went on a ten-day trip, checking the local papers, wherever I happened to be, for items from the daily files of the police. I found myself trying to match the name of the victim with the name of the place where the crime was committed. Initials. The victim's initials, the first letter of the word or words in the place-name. I don't know why I did this. I wasn't looking for the cult, I wasn't even looking for murder victims especially. Any crime would do, any act that tended to isolate a person in a particular place, just so the letters matched.Again I stopped drinking, this time in Istanbul. In Athens I went running every day.

The Desert

11

In this vast space, which seems like nothing so much as a container for emptiness, we sit with our documents always ready, wondering if someone will appear and demand to know who we are, someone in authority, and to be unprepared is to risk serious things.The terminal at each end is full of categories of inspection to which we must submit, impelling us toward a sense of inwardness, a sense of smallness, a self-exposure we are never prepared for no matter how often we take this journey, the buried journey through categories and definitions and foreign languages, not the other, the sunlit trip to the east which we thought we'd decided to make. The decision we'd unwittingly arrived at is the one that brings us through passport control, through the security check and customs, the one that presents to us the magnetic metal detector, the baggage x-ray machine, the currency declaration, the customs declaration, the cards for embarkation and disembarkation, the flight number, the seat number, the times of departure and arrival.It does no good to say, as I've done a hundred times, it's just another plane trip, I've made a hundred. It's just another terminal, another country, the same floating seats, the documents of admission, the proofs and identifications.Air travel reminds us who we are. It's the means by which we recognize ourselves as modern. The process removes us from the world and sets us apart from each other. We wander in the ambient noise, checking one more time for the flight coupon, the boarding pass, the visa. The process convinces us that at any moment we may have to submit to the force that is implied in all this, the unknown authority behind it, behind the categories, the languages we don't understand. This vast terminal has been erected to examine souls.It is not surprising, therefore, to see men with submachine guns, to see vultures squatting on the baggage vehicles set at the end of the tarmac in the airport in Bombay when one arrives after a night flight from Athens.All of this we choose to forget. We devise a counter-system of elaborate forgetfulness. We agree on this together. And out in the street we see how easy it is, once we're immersed in the thick crowded paint of things, the bright clothes and massed brown faces. But the experience is no less deep because we've agreed to forget it.Late in the day I walked with Anand Dass in the streets near my hotel. He looked heavier, moving through the soft air in a Michigan State t-shirt and faded jeans. He kept taking my arm as we crossed streets and I wondered why this seemed so curiously apt. Could these drivers be worse than Greeks? I was woozy from lack of sleep, that was all, and it probably showed."Seeing to details. Mainly interviewing people. My boss has already set things in motion.”"So this is new territory," he said."South Asia and so on. This will be a regional headquarters, separate from Athens once we get it going.”"But you're not coming out permanently.”"Do you need a listener? Someone to talk to about the life and travels of Owen Brademas?”"This is precisely the fact." Clutching my forearm and laughing. "The man inspires comment, you know.”"How many times did you see him?”"He stayed with us. Three days. And three letters since. I didn't know I cared for the man. But I read his letters again and again. My wife was fascinated by him. The worst field director in my experience. This is Owen. He digs like an amateur.”Under a movie billboard we passed a group of North Americans in saffron robes and running shoes, their heads shaved. They stood by a sound truck handing out booklets. What could I say? They looked deeply surprised in their baldness and blotched skin, amazed to be who they were, to be real and here. The loudspeaker carried flute music and chanting voices through the noise and fumes of the yellow-top taxis."What are you teaching?”"I am teaching the Greeks. I am looking at Hellenistic and Roman influences on Indian sculpture. Not a large subject but interesting. Figures of Buddha. I am getting very interested in figures of Buddha. I want to go to Kabul to see the Buddha of the Great Miracle.”"You don't want to go to Kabul, Anand.”"It's a transitional Buddha.”"You know who you sound like.”"Owen is in Lahore now. I sound just like him, don't I? Do you go there at all?”"I go everywhere twice. Once to get the wrong impression, once to strengthen it.”"Do you want to see him? I'll give you an address.”"No. It will only depress me.”"Let me give you an address. He went to Lahore to learn Kharoshthi script.”I tried to think of something funny to say. Anand laughed and grabbed my arm and we hurried across the street toward the Gateway of India, where people were gathering as night fell, street musicians, beggars, vendors of fruit drinks and sweets."Do you have plans then?”"I find I'm ready to go almost anywhere and just as ready to stay where I am.”"This is a strange profession. Risk analysis. Your local man will be kept very busy. Believe it.”"I like the idea of someone saying to me, West Africa.' Not that I'd necessarily accept. But I like the immensity of it. The immensity of landscape, of possibility. It's bizarre, how opened up my life has become. 'Think about it,' they'll say. But there's nothing to think about. That's what's odd.”We walked through one of the archways and stood above the sea steps. A small girl followed with a baby in her arms. The crowd slowly grew."You should spend more time in India.”"No. Four days. That's enough.”"Tomorrow you'll come to dinner. Rajiv will want to hear about Tap. He received a letter, you know. Written in Ob.”The soft air made me sad."And we'll talk, you and I, about Owen.”Soft and moist, a hanging heat. People still came, talking, looking out to sea. They stood around the horn player, the man with the hand drums. There were sellers of invisible commodities, names whispered in the dark. Children kept appearing from the edges, silently crossing some margin or dividing line, cradling the shriveled infants. People drifted toward the Gateway from the street along the sea wall, from the inner streets, the edges, to stand in the warm night together and wait for a breeze. The sound of bicycle bells stuck briefly to the air.Everything clings.

She came at me with the potato peeler, wearing my L.L. Bean chamois cloth shirt, forest green, with long tuck-in tails. I stood there half embarrassed. It was in her face, absolutely, that she would kill me. A rage that will astonish me forever. I evaded the lunge, then stood thoughtfully against the cabinet, my hands tucked into my pants, thumbs showing, like a quarterback on a cold day, waiting to rehuddle.