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I stood back under the trees, wet with snow and uncaring. Davidreached out for the young man's shoulder, brought him gentlyaround and embraced him. Classic. As David bent to drink, theyoung man began to laugh and talk simultaneously. And then wentquiet, transfixed, until at last the body was gently laid to rest at thefoot of a leafless tree.
The skyscrapers of New York glowed to the south of us, thewarmer, smaller lights of the East and the West Side hemmed us in.
David stood very still, thinking what, I wondered?
It seemed he'd lost the ability to move. I went towards him. Hewas no calm, diligent archivest at the moment. He looked to besuffering.
"What?" I asked.
"You know what," he whispered. "I won't survive that long.""You serious? With the gifts I gave you?
"Shhhh, we're too much in the habit of saying things to eachother which we know are unacceptable to each other. We shouldstop.""And speak only the truth? All right. This is the truth. Now, youfeel as if you can't survive. Now. When his blood is hot and swirlingthrough you. Of course. But you won't feel that way forever. That'sthe key. I don't want to talk anymore about survival. I took a goodcrack at ending my life; it didn't work, and besides, I have somethingelse to think about梩his thing that's following me, and how I canhelp Dora before it closes in on me."That shut him up.
We started walking, mortal fashion, through the dark parktogether, my feet crunching deep into the snow. We wandered in andout of the leafless groves, pushing aside the wet black branches, thelooming buildings of midtown never quite out of sight.
I was on edge for the sound of the footsteps. I was on edge and adreary thought had come to me梩hat the monstrous thing that hadbeen revealed, the Devil himself or whoever it was, had merely beenafter Roger. . . .
But then what of the man, the anonymous and perfectly ordinaryman? That is what he had become in my mind, the man I'd glimpsedbefore dawn.
We drew near to the lights of Central Park South, the buildingsrising higher, with an arrogance that Babylon could not have thrownin the face of heaven. But there were the comforting sounds of thewell-heeled, and the committed, coming and going, and theneverending push and shove of taxis adding to the din.
David was brooding, stricken.
Finally I said, "If you'd seen the thing that I saw, you wouldn't beso eager to jump to the next stage." I gave a sigh. I wasn't going todescribe the winged thing to either one of us again.
"I'm quite inspired by it," he confessed. "You can't imagine.""Going to Hell? With a Devil like that?""Did you feel it was hellish? Did you sense evil? I asked you thatbefore. Did you feel evil when the thing took Roger? Did Roger giveany indication of pain?"Those questions seemed to me a bit hairsplitting.
"Don't get overly optimistic about death," I said. "I'm warningyou. My views are changing. The atheism and nihilism of my earlieryears now seems shallow, and even a bit cocky."He smiled, dismissively, as he used to do when he was mortal andvisibly wore the laurels of venerable age.
"Have you ever read the stories of Hawthorne?" he asked mesoftly. We had reached the street, crossed, and were slowly skirtingthe fountain before the Plaza.
"Yes," I said. "At some time or other.""And you remember Ethan Brand's search for the unpardonablesin?""I think so. He went off to search for it and left his fellow manbehind.""Recall this paragraph," he said gently. We made our way downFifth, a street that is never empty, or dark. He quoted the lines to me:
" 'He had lost his hold of the magnetic chain of humanity. He wasno longer a brother-man, opening the chambers or the dungeons ofour common nature by the key of holy sympathy, which gave him aright to share in all its secrets; he was now a cold observer, looking onmankind as the subject of his experiment, and, at length, convertingman and woman to be his puppets, and pulling the wires that movedthem to such degrees of crime as were demanded for his study.' "I said nothing. I wanted to protest, but it was not an honest thingto do. I wanted to say that I would never, never treat humans likepuppets. All I had done was watch Roger, damn it all, and Gretchenin the jungles, I had pulled no strings. Honesty had undone her andme together. But then he wasn't speaking of me with these words. Hewas talking about himself, the distance he felt now from the human.
He had only begun to be Ethan Brand.
"Let me continue a little farther," he asked respectfully, thenbegan to quote again. " 'Thus Ethan Brand became a fiend. Hebegan to be so from the moment that his moral nature had ceased tokeep the pace of improvement with his intellect? " He broke off.
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