Three days later an actual noxious odor drifted across the river. A pause, a careful thoughtfulness, seemed to settle on the town. Traffic moved more slowly, drivers were exceedingly polite. There was no sign of official action, no jitneys or ambulettes painted in primary colors. People avoided looking at each other directly. An irritating sting in the nostrils, a taste of copper on the tongue. As time passed, the will to do nothing seemed to deepen, to fix itself firmly. There were those who denied they smelled anything at all. It is always that way with odors. There were those who professed not to see the irony of their inaction. They'd taken part in the SIMUVAC exercise but were reluctant to flee now. There were those who wondered what caused the odor, those who looked worried, those who said the absence of technical personnel meant there was nothing to worry about. Our eyes began to water.

About three hours after we'd first become aware of it, the vapor suddenly lifted, saving us from our formal deliberations.

36

Now and then I thought of the Zumwalt automatic hidden in the bedroom.

The time of dangling insects arrived. White houses with caterpillars dangling from the eaves. White stones in driveways. You can walk at night down the middle of the street and hear women talking on the telephone. Wanner weather produces voices in the dark. They are talking about their adolescent sons. How big, how fast. The sons are almost frightening. The quantities they eat. The way they loom in doorways. These are the days that are full of wormy bugs. They are in the grass, stuck to the siding, hanging in the air, hanging from the trees and eaves, stuck to the window screens. The women talk long-distance to the grandparents of the growing boys. They share the Trimline phone, beamish old folks in hand-knit sweaters on fixed incomes.

What happens to them when the commercial ends?

I got a call myself one night. The operator said, 'There's a Mother Devi that wishes to talk collect to a Jack Gladney. Do you accept?"

"Hello, Janet. What do you want?"

"Just to say hello. To ask how you are. We haven't talked in ages."

"Talked?"

"Swami wants to know if our son is coming to the ashram this summer."

"Our son?"

"Yours, mine and his. Swami regards the children of his followers as his children."

"I sent a daughter to Mexico last week. When she gets back, I'll be ready to talk about the son."

"Swami says Montana will be good for the boy. He will grow out, fill out. These are his touchy years."

"Why are you calling? Seriously."

"Just to greet you, Jack. We greet each other here."

"Is he one of those whimsical swamis with a snow-white beard? Sort of fun to look at?"

"We're serious people here. The cycle of history has but four ages. We happen to be in the last of these. There is little time for whimsy."

Her tiny piping voice bounced down to me from a hollow ball in geosynchronous orbit.

"If Heinrich wants to visit you this summer, it's all right with me. Let him ride horses, fish for trout. But í don't want him getting involved in something personal and intense, like religion. There's already been some kidnap talk around here. People are edgy."

"The last age is the Age of Darkness."

"Fine. Now tell me what you want."

"Nothing. I have everything. Peace of mind, purpose, true fellowship. I only wish to greet you. I greet you, Jack. I miss you. I miss your voice. I only wish to talk a while, pass a moment or two in friendly reminiscence."

I hung up and went for a walk. The women were in their lighted homes, talking on the phone. Did swami have twinkling eyes? Would he be able to answer the boy's questions where I had failed, provide assurances where I had incited bickering and debate? How final is the Age of Darkness? Does it mean supreme destruction, a night that swallows existence so completely that I am cured of my own lonely dying? I listened to the women talk. All sound, all souls.

When I got home I found Babette in her sweatsuit by the bedroom window, staring into the night.

Delegates to the Hitler conference began arriving. About ninety Hitler scholars would spend the three days of the conference attending lectures, appearing on panels, going to movies. They would wander the campus with their names lettered in gothic type on laminated tags pinned to their lapels. They would exchange Hitler gossip, spread the usual sensational rumors about the last days in the führerbunker.

It was interesting to see how closely they resembled each other despite the wide diversity of national and regional backgrounds. They were cheerful and eager, given to spitting when they laughed, given to outdated dress, homeliness, punctuality. They seemed to have a taste for sweets.

I welcomed them in the starkly modern chapel. I spoke in German, from notes, for five minutes. I talked mainly about Hitler's mother, brother and dog. His dog's name was Wolf. This word is the same in English and German. Most of the words I used in my address were the same or nearly the same in both languages. I'd spent days with the dictionary, compiling lists of such words. My remarks were necessarily disjointed and odd. I made many references to Wolf, many more to the mother and the brother, a few to shoes and socks, a few to jazz, beer and baseball. Of course there was Hitler himself. I spoke the name often, hoping it would overpower my insecure sentence structure.

The rest of the time I tried to avoid the Germans in the group. Even in my black gown and dark glasses, with my name in Nazi typeface over my heart, I felt feeble in their presence, death-prone, listening to them produce their guttural sounds, their words, their heavy metal. They told Hitler jokes and played pinochle. All I could do was mutter a random monosyllable, rock with empty laughter. I spent a lot of time in my office, hiding.

Whenever I remembered the gun, lurking in a stack of undershirts like a tropical insect, I felt a small intense sensation pass through me. Whether pleasurable or fearful I wasn't sure. I knew it mainly as a childhood moment, the profound stir of secret-keeping.

What a sly device a handgun is. One so small in particular. An intimate and cunning thing, a secret history of the man who owns it. I recalled how I'd felt some days earlier, trying to find the Dylar. Like someone spying on the family garbage. Was I immersing myself, little by little, in a secret life? Did I think it was my last defense against the ruin worked out for me so casually by the force or nonforce, the principle or power or chaos that determines such things? Perhaps I was beginning to understand my ex-wives and their ties to intelligence.

The Hitler scholars assembled, wandered, ate voraciously, laughed through oversized teeth. I sat at my desk in the dark, thinking of secrets. Are secrets a tunnel to a dreamworld where you control events?

In the evening I sped out to the airport to meet my daughter's plane. She was excited and happy, wore Mexican things. She said the people who sent her mother books to review wouldn't leave her alone. Dana was getting big thick novels every day, writing reviews which she microfilmed and sent to a secret archive. She complained of jangled nerves, periods of deep spiritual fatigue. She told Steffie she was thinking of coming in from the cold.

In the morning I sped out to Glassboro to take the further tests my doctor had advised, at Autumn Harvest Farms. The seriousness of such an occasion is directly proportionate to the number of bodily emissions you are asked to cull for analysis. I carried with me several specimen bottles, each containing some melancholy waste or secretion. Alone in the glove compartment rode an ominous plastic locket, which I'd reverently enclosed in three interlocking Baggies, successively twist-tied. Here was a daub of the most solemn waste of all, certain to be looked upon by the technicians on duty with the mingled deference, awe and dread we have come to associate with exotic religions of the world.