During the first week of classes in January, the organizers of "Doing Your Thing" invited Wilma and some English majors to appear on the program. The pretty broadcasting major began by asking her if she had any comment on the investigation of the Foundation. "No," she replied and everybody laughed. Then the handsome one asked why ZU had lost two of its most distinguished English professors. Wilma reminded her that these professors had made the decision themselves, so she couldn't answer for them. On the other hand, the search for replacements had already begun and several highly qualified candidates had already applied. One of the English majors, who was taking his second course from Professor O'Sullivan, wondered whether there was any connection between the assault on him and the departure of his chairman. The journalism majors smiled charitably and Wilma confined her response to the brutality of the assault and Professor O'Sullivan's courage in carrying on with the work of the submarine. The term so intrigued her listeners that they forgot she hadn't answered the question. Another English major, who was taking her second course from Professor Howard and her third from Professor Charitzky, wondered whether their opposition to the Skullthorp project had anything to do with their departure. "You will have to ask them," replied Wilma. Another English major doubted insinuatingly that the incident in Murkington Hall could have any bearing on the investigation of the Foundation. This time, the broadcasting couple laughed, but the dean regretted that it was more difficult to check the appropriate expenditure of grant money, particularly in the humanities, than that of alumni contributions, even though limits on the former were stricter than those on the latter. Professor O'Sullivan not only distinguished himself by the grants he obtained, but also by the scrupulous use he made of them. The English major, who was taking courses from EH and Priss waved her hand impatiently:

"There haven't been any allegations of misappropriated funds against Professors Howard and Charitzky, have there?" 

Blushing televisually, they nodded. It was the first course required of all journalism majors. 

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EH and Priss kept out of reach and sight for twenty-four hours while their answering machines recorded dozens of inquiries about Wilma's remarks from reporters, state officials, senior administrators, allies and friends. The disinterested ones infuriated them, the faithful who sought reassurances exasperated them and the suspicious tormented them. The outrage of their third of the university exceeded the previous peak of intensity, yet, this time, it resulted in internal dissension rather than unified resistance. It split into three further thirds: those who supported EH and Priss, those who repudiated them and those who joined the fence-sitting third of the university. Soon, three assistant professors of English, including Tom Sprinkle, announced that they were seeking employment elsewhere and that they had applied to the university that had hired Professors Howard and Charitzky. This announcement didn't have the effect they had intended, however, since they encountered suspicion of collusion with the two senior professors rather than sympathy and solidarity. Kidnapping me for coffee one morning, Wilma priced PhDs in English at a dime a dozen and foresaw that the more who left, the better she could reform the department. She agreed with me on replacing indoctrination of ideology and theory by instruction in the search for esthetic and historical truth; likewise on the necessity of barring access to control by irresponsible, self-seeking cliques. She disagreed on the administrative structure that she should substitute for the existing one. Although I advocated a democracy of professors who would elect their own chairperson, she wanted to appoint one with the ability and power to reform the department. Each of us suspected that the other's solution would not prevent a return to the present situation. Aware that I wasn't going to change her mind, however, I laughed and conceded that my solution didn't pack as much punch as hers. Hadn't she so far triumphed over evil? Smiling the smile that had solved a thousand problems, she admitted that, with the power she wielded, she could have triumphed over good too. In fact, power blurred the distinction.

EH's recourse to violence may have slowed the submarine down a week, but it had no effect on the morale of the crew. Murma's study of the correspondence between Cicada and Firefly had reached the third period, which included the composition of Lovers. Her discoveries and our discussions hastened Cary's recovery. Despite his good humor, we perceived inner wounds as well as the outer ones, which were healing from day to day. A scared look lingered in his eyes and he started when one of 

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the younger guys burst into the room. They were always bursting into the room, but nobody wanted them to stop. Meanwhile, Cicada and Firefly were describing their friendship as if it were more than that and yet without seeming to recognize it as such. The grammar was clinging to the solidity of friendship even as the semantics lurched into the turbulence of love. The tension between the two intensified when Firefly mentioned that he had dreamed of Cicada the night before.

"Me? Did you just hear me singing? Or did you see me on my pine tree? I'm camouflaged, you know, I look like a piece of bark. Otherwise blue jays would eat me. They make such a shriek! Little children like my wings. They love to stroke my belly, it makes me sing. How sweet of you to dream of me. No one ever has before, except Mom and Dad years ago."

Murma: "There's an exclamation point after the blue jays' shriek. I bet there was another one after 'How sweet of you to dream of me' and she erased it."

Cary: "She's one of those writers who never finish revising."

Solomon: "It's the sexiest thing she has said so far."

Edie: "Hey! We're talking about an insect."

Laughter.

Me: "Our lovers in residence are awful quiet."

Guy chased her around the table. It made quite a bustle and had all of us laughing, especially Deanna.

Emily: "Hey! No belly stroking in public!"

Murma: "You're not kids any more."

Cary: "Innocent love involves sex too."

Me: "I agree with Deanna. It's the most beautiful sentence in the message."

Emily: "There were some others too: wasn't Jamma a camouflaged beauty?" 

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Cary: "And vulnerable to shrieking jays?"

Edie: "Maybe she was listening to The Firebird."

Emily: "I do too, and the regression from her lover's dream to her parents'. Each generation has its resurgence of love."

Murma: "More subtle and yet more powerful encouragement than 'how sweet of you!'"

Deanna: "Guy, do you have dreams about me?"

He blushed and everybody laughed including him.

The message had ignited the same thoughts in Firefly's mind, but, instead of burning, they had exploded. Stunned, he had been in a daze all day, unable to think of anything else. He imagined that he and Cicada were together, that they had endless things to tell each other, that they laughed and laughed... Since he had terminated the series without a final phrase, we supposed that he had cut it short for fear of offending her or, worse, misleading her. He had told her about his dream, he apologized, only because it involved her and not because he thought it was anything unusual or valuable. Yet her reaction to it had enthused, exhilerated, inebriated him. Almost apologetically, he admitted that the sensations he had often read in others' poetry had happened to him: the pounding of his heart in his ears, the heat of blood racing through his veins, the tingling of his skin and a giddy isolation from everything and everybody around him. Effervescence evaporated thought from his mind, floated him in the air and wafted him somewhere nowhere. Constantly perceptible, Cicada's presence induced all of these sensations, he knew not how. Was it by sight, sound, touch or some other mysterious sense? A thought finally condensed in his mind like a droplet falling from a cloud: Me? Then another: You?... Us?

His droplets had fallen one by one on the back of her hand, each radiating its tiny coolness to her nerves, which had conveyed it throughout her body. She had shivered three times. Yes, three times, she repeated, as if unable to convince herself. How could a firefly do that to a cicada? She must have 

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meant that as more than a joke, we agreed.

Guy: "This cicada is a real, live woman and this firefly is a real live man."

Cary: "A real, live, young woman and a real, live, young man."

We all looked at each other without knowing what to say.

We hadn't heard Firefly's answer yet:

"No. Attractive women have never attracted me. On the contrary, they have done me more harm than men and other women. You are the only person who has ever attracted me and I don't want to know anything about you that you can't write. I am in love with the author of your poetry and no one else. Nothing revolts me like the author cult fomented by the publishing industry. Their computers encourage them to sell millions of tons of paper to millions of foolish people by flashing thousands of authors in neon. They don't sell books, they sell authors. They are even more wasteful and destructive than other industries because they spoil and corrupt the minds of readers. You attract me because you short-circuit them. I wouldn't love you if there were anyone else between us.

"Dear Cicada,

"I erased and rewrote this outburst ten times and, each time, it reappeared on my screen nearly the same as it had before. I finally decided that it really says what I want to tell you. Despite the tone, it is sincere, profoundly sincere.

Deanna: "He was in love with a woman he knew and only wanted to know by correspondence?"

Solomon: "Doesn't love usually arouse a lover's curiosity about the woman he loves?"

"Speak for yourself!" murmured Edie, half teasingly.

Emily: "Lack of physical access... No parent, guardian or spouse denied Jamma physical access to her lover. It was her own unfortunate physique. We don't know enough about Firefly to say, but all I have heard and read so far persuades me that he has a physical handicap too. He might be a spastic, for instance."

Cary: "Homo poeticus? I think we could find a few others if we looked and even a few poetic lovers as generous as he is."

Me: "Attractive people make others unattracted by them suffer for it every day. Imagine the unpublicized harm media stars do, for instance. Celebrity is a kind of pollution and it may be the most harmful of them all."

Guy: "Telling her that he erased and rewrote his declaration ten times shows how determined he was, not only to make her understand that he loved her, but also, how he loved her."

Deanna nudged him: "You're not going to get off with poetry." 

Lately, Cicada admited, Firefly had been giving her day and night dreams, but his "No" message had given her both a nightmare and a daymare. The nightmare had recurred obsessively during the next night. She found herself walking down a dark, narrow, winding street. Flashes of light revealed, one by one, naked men standing on either side, who startled her. Each of them was staring at her and they varied from tall to short, from fat to thin, from robust to frail, from friendly to hostile. They represented all races. The second or third time, there were no flashes, but each man spoke to her as she passed and the voices ranged from tenor to bass, conveying many disturbing emotions and predatory attitudes. All of them frightened her. Both versions of the nightmare ended when she heard them running up behind her and she screamed, waking herself up. While all of these men had seemed familiar to her, she recognized none of them. The daymare consisted in desperate attempts to recall and compare them with all the men she had known. She found herself wandering off on hopeless tangents and struggling to return to the problem of identifying the naked men. Nothing came of it but frustration. She had finally exorcized her devils by playing the interpretation of Sibelius' Swan by Oistrach.

Cicada's night and day mares brought prompt, fervent and tender remorse from Firefly, who blaimed them on himself. Exonerations and self-accusations alternated then in rapid succession as each surpassed the other in endearment. They lavished subtle emotions on each other while exploring the endless refinements of their mutual affection. They saw without looking, heard without listening, felt without touching. Words nourished their insatiable joy. As Cicada wrote in one of her messages, "Continuously, the fountain sprays the sun with sparkling water, which falls splashing back into the pool only to surge upwards again, thus moistening and cooling the air we breathe." In some other incarnation, Firefly might have replied: "Renoir painted your hair. The strands shimmer with sunlight, the brown flirts with russet, the shape yields to the air, the scent delights my nostrils and the texture tickles my fingertips. If I tear my attention away, it snaps or slips back of its own accord. I live only for your hair." Might Guy not have said this to Deanna? But Firefly was admiring Cicada's poetry and not her hair, which he had never perceived and didn't even want to perceive. He was breasting with abandon the power of her poetry which broke over him like waves on a beach. We barely recognized the poems that we had already read because of the passion that throbbed in them 

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now. They drowned the miserable preconceptions of our campus grave robbers in ignominy and we forgot them more than we should have.

Having almost forgotten her other readers, Cicada had realized the dream of all writers. She was being read, understood, encouraged; there was response, commentary, discussion, mutual enthusiasm. What more could she ask? She had achieved even more than that since she and Firefly each, having resigned himself to a barren life, had met an ideal lover and here they were making intimate love despite the distance between them. The kind of perception that had drawn Deanna and Guy together and the kind of experience that had enabled Murma and me to engender a family played no part in their romance. In fact, they had relegated such things to the periphery of their consciousness. Of the arrow shot from Deanna's eyes that set Guy's face on fire, of the warmth Murma still induced in me by her presence at my side, they knew nothing more than the testimony of other people. In common with us, nonetheless, each infallibly recognized the unique identity of the other and would have rejected any attempt to make a substitution, however close the resemblance. Of physical love, they knew nothing more than ideas expressed by words they had heard or read; of spiritual love, they experienced the ideas expressed by their own words. Sharing these ideas had aroused emotions that had just as powerful an effect on them as ours had on us, even though the words that described them rode on slight impulses of energy over an unknown but apparently considerable distance. For all each knew, the other might have lived on Nantucket or Kauai, in Nome or Key West. Despite their separation, they were as united as we were and, while their passion would seem pure to some and sterile to others, nobody could have doubted its sincerity and power.

The third period in the correspondence had lasted six weeks, but we needed three months to digest it. During the last three of the four periods, Cicada and Firefly, whose mutual love of music had accelerated their friendship, often discussed the recording they were currently listening to. If one didn't have the record that the other was playing, he tried to buy or borrow it as soon as possible so he could hear it too. They discussed the music as they listened, recommending specific passages to each other despite the difficulty of identifying them in words. Neither could read music 

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well enough to find the notation in the score, copy it and send it to the other, although both had taken up the study of composition. Jamma had borrowed some books and scores from the Music Library where Edie had helped her, hence Edie's eagerness to participate in the Skullthorp project. When Murma found allusions to music, she showed them to Edie, who played the music even as we listened to Murma reading the relevant passage. Our study of the second period had revealed a common tolerance of favorites such as "The Emperor," the "Halleluja" and "Anvil Choruses," the triumphal march in Aïda and Carmen's provocation of Don José. Cicada won Firefly over to "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" and he brought her around to Gregg's concerto. Attempts to reconcile him with Bach and her with Wagner didn't succeed until the third period, when they also discovered chamber music and medieval chorale together. The more nuggets they found, the more trinkets they discarded. The younger guys had taken the favorites pretty well, especially the ones they had already heard, though usually in a popular arrangement. All of them had heard at least one jazzed up "Halleluja" at Christmas. When we told them about Napoleon, the blacksmiths, the elephants and Carmen shaking top and bottom, they were willing to listen again and Guy led the two young women to enlightenment. Murma sold Mozart on the enthusiasm of little children and I led them down the path through the pines to Gregg's cabin in the woods. A spontaneous but unspoken consensus determined that the youngers must willingly follow every step taken by the olders and in-betweeners. Although none of us had foreseen it, all of us felt that we had to keep our enthusiasm cohesive, for the success of our project depended on it. From our conversation with each other emerged the realization that we had unintentionally attained the pedagogical ideal of mutual instruction.

We olders nonetheless worried about the musical impact of the third period on the youngers. Bach? Wagner? Stravinsky? Wouldn't the subtleties of chamber music bore them and the fervor of medieval chorale irritate them, accustomed as they were to commercial voice and instrumentation? Anticipating the danger, we emphasized the exuberance of lovers discovering music together and hence each other more profoundly. I hope we weren't too dogmatic, because the precaution may have been unnecessary. Who knows? Maybe "The Yellow Submarine" had already done the trick. The third period fascinated the youngers as much as the rest of us, so the music accompanying it captivated their sensibility. We 

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embarrassed Lora wiggling and jiggling to Bach behind her computer as if she were dancing in a discotheque. Deanna teased Guy about a Wagnerian tear in his eye, which he emphatically denied. "The Ride of the Valkyrie" burst upon them like a storm and, recognizing the music of the helicopter assault in Apocalypse Now, the three of them didn't know whether to laugh or shout. "So that's where it came from!" exclaimed Guy. The enthusiasm that chamber music and medieval chorale had aroused in Cicada and Firefly had a similar effect on them. Palestrina prompted Deanna to regret that her grandmom wasn't listening with her. "Hey! I'm listening with you," said Guy faking jealousy. Lora even wondered whether Rampale's flute and Starker's cello might be useful in separating the wheat from the chaff, a problem that often preoccupied her. We olders worried about estrangement of the youngers from their contemporaries.

Doubt, dissension and despair plunged Cicada and Firefly into the fourth period of their correspondence, deepening and expanding their passion beyond critical and rational control. "The Four Seasons" parodied the four periods, while Mahler illustrated the anxiety of the fourth. Cicada objected to Sibelius' "growls and roars" and Firefly, to Prokofiev's "squeaks and honks." "The Appalachian Spring" reconciled them after a quarrel over an escalation of trivial reproaches resulting in a quarrel they could neither explain nor justify. Schubert's songs celebrated the uneasy peace that followed, but Tchaikovsky tore them apart again. They deplored Britten and Shastokovitch without agreeing on the reasons and, while they hated the monotony of "Nixon in China," this agreement dissatisfied them as if they felt more at ease in opposing each other. Tears had burned in Firefly's eyes as he listened to "The Alto Rhapsody," but Cicada had wept. To their astonishment, they found themselves cherishing their misery.

They were trying to play the same records at the same time and discuss them in chat mode, for which, on one occasion, they chose the Northwest Territories on the assumption that they would have the room to themselves. Their equipment neither facilitated isolation of the passages that interested them nor allowed them to listen together, so they dashed truncated messages off to each other trying to synchornize their records and designate the passages. As the messages accumulated on their screens, black for Cicada and red for Firefly, messages in other colors appeared 

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between theirs from time to time: blue for IceThroat, brown for Shtink3 and orange for Orago. Since nothing could be more public and democratic than a chat room, the others had the right to intervene in their discussion, but these interventions must have exasperated Cicada and Firefly as often as they amused them. The lovers were playing Horowitz' recording of the Chopin nocturnes so they could compare it with Rubenstein's:

Black: "Stop."

Red: "OK."

Brown: "Tickles?"

"Light staccato?"

Orange: "Bull Fight?"

"Yes, they are, slightly."

"I'll try."

"No... There."

Blue: "Madonna?"

"Something in-between."

Brown: "Sounds like the Holocaust."

"Like feathers better."

Blue: "You guys are crazy."

"Yes."

We were disappointed when Murma found that Cicada hadn't recorded any 

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more chat sessions. Apparently none had succeeded as well and one had frustrated Cicada so much that she violated a tacit taboo by suggesting that they could solve the problem over the phone. We had detected the taboo by what they weren't saying rather than what they were. When the limits of written communication curtailed the information they wanted to send each other, one of us would ask: "Why don't they just get on the phone?" Another would respond: "Maybe Firefly has a handicap that affects his speech or hearing." Those of us who had known Jamma in the flesh recalled her reticence, which she had only overcome with little children. But Firefly taught preadolescents: how could he do that without ease of speech? Maybe he stuttered and taught stutterers, one of us suggested. Emily reasserted her theory that he was a spastic who taught spastics. That would explain his avoidance of sensual contact with the woman he loved. His reply to Cicada's proposal to use the phone inflicted pain on both of them:

"I used to assume that I had succeeded in resigning myself to a life without the kind of love that assures the survival of our species or even the kind that merely delights the senses. Every time I open the message form on my screen, I face the agony of stifling my senses which, though made to communicate my feelings to you, would only destroy yours for me if I did so. I would love to hear your voice, but then you would hear mine and it would ruin your impression of me. You wouldn't feel the same any more. I have just reread our correspondence over the last three months and I found that we agreed on the incompatibility of pity and love several times."

This confession had evidently inspired a poem in Lovers entitled "My Senseless Passion," but the correspondence didn't indicate whether Cicada had sent a copy to Firefly or even told him about it. Emily, who had a deep voice rich in overtones, read the first stanza to us:

"I see leaves waving,

I hear rushing air;

Fragranced by flowers,

It cools face and hands;

The breeze of desire

Withers my despair."

Me: "Enough to confound feminists who dabble in the Romantics." 

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Murma: "Gus!"

Murma: "I'm glad she did."

Lora: "Mrs. South is right. I'm glad Jamma left that out."

Murma: "My name is Murma."

Me: "Yes, it's a satire of feminist romanticism."

Murma: "Gus!"

Guy: "So Jamma is torn between what she has and what she can't have."

"You never feel my breeze 

Before it dissipates

In every body's air

Between near and far, where

Even intimacy

Becomes promiscuous

And love dissolves in dreams

Of stale divinity.

No! I can't find you there."

Edie: "I just didn't expect her to strike out in that direction."

Cary: "Love breathes the same literal and figurative air." 

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Guy: "And love dissolves in dreams of divinity, but why is divinity stale?"

Deanna: "Yes, especially if people pretend to. But I'm not sure about the connection between love and divinity."

Guy: "If Jamma had said pale, divinity would be the image of humanity."

Deanna kissed him on the cheek, he blushed and we all laughed. 

Lora: "Hey! You aren't the only ones breathing the air in here."

Lora, blushing: "Thank you, sir!"

Me: "It took you a while to get around to it."
 

"How can I breathe your air?

Vicariously? Yes.

Figuratively? Yes.

I fill my lungs with it
 
And it tastes almost sweet."

Lora: "unh!"

"Yet... it makes me long

For sweeter yet. Your breath

Is sweet, isn't it? You

See? I can only ask

And you can only say."

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Murma: "How did I make chief prude?"

Solomon: "Yearning for a taste of his breath seems both modest and charming to me. If Lora asked me something like that, I don't know what I would do."

Lora: "Why don't you ask me and see what happens?"

Deanna: "What I want to know is: who is harrassing who?"

Guy: "They are harrassing each other."

Ombre wondered why we were all looking at him.

Murma: "Maybe our submarine doesn't need a chief prude."

Cary: "A waste of talent: isn't that what Jamma is saying in the last stanza?"

Guy: "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."

Edie: "I don't see any theological allusions in this stanza."

Solomon: "Who else could be responsible for such an injustice?"

Emily: "Us, perhaps, though after the fact, when 'My Senseless Passion' moved us to lap milk from the same saucer. It's my turn to be chief prude."

Cary: "1. Our frolic resulted in a profound interpretation of Jamma's poem. 2. Her poetry is generous, tolerant, forgiving. 3. She like cats."

All eyes fell on Ombre again and he flourished his tail in appreciation.

Me: "I wonder if the grave robbers noticed 'My Senseless Passion.' If they did, the irony of the double meaning escaped them. Since they ignored it at their reading, the apparent insignificance of the poem must have saved it from abuse." 

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Emily: "The poetic conversion of breeze into breath concludes Lovers and introduces Clouds."

The fourth period in the correspondence, which lasted two years, ended with Cicada's death. It revealed a persistent alternation between peace and war with accelerations and decelerations in rhythm as well as intervals of truce or reconciliation. Love drove them back and forth between praise and reproach, trust and suspicion, affection and resentment, intimacy and alienation. The conflict between spiritual communion and physical separation complicated their relations relentlessly and endlessly. Sometimes the least emphasis of the former or the slightest allusion to the latter would ignite a conflagration and sometimes it would slip by as if unnoticed. Between desperation and exasperation, a hint of suicide from one would scare the other into an elaborate campaign of dissuasion. This theme strung the poems in Clouds together like pearls in a necklace, but "Oh Blissful Dissolution!" alarmed Firefly even more than others in the collection:

"Its father raised it from the water,

And its mother formed it in the air.

It lives a random wandering life

In the company of fellow clouds,

Always re-forming, never ceasing,

Free of will, a slave to heat and wind,

Until, with neither pain nor anguish,

It dies, dissolving into water

And a little dust. It will have lived

Its moment in our circulation.

"My father and mother gave me mine

By natural generosity.

If they could have asked me my consent,

I would have said: 'Let me be a cloud.'" 

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Firefly responded a few hours later:

"Dearest Cicada,

"Don't do it! Please! You will annihilate me and my death will be no blissful dissolution into water and a little dust. It will torment me like the mirror in the mind of Hieronymous Bosch. Before I discovered your poetry, I thought of death as deliverance, I studied the philosophy of death and the methodology of suicide and I concluded that, when my life had accomplished what little promise it had, I would take it. I even made tentative plans, hoping that I would have the courage to carry them out.

"You surprised me. Hope upset my plans so that I had to insert an additional phase in the development of my life, which suddenly seemed worth living. You enriched it with a level of joy and sorrow that I had never dreamed of. Our passion has addicted me to a poetic ecstasy and a sensual deprivation that I can only live or die with. Surviving you would be a life worse than death. Please don't die without me.

"Dearest Firefly,

"Stunned by your last message, I was in a trance until I realized that Ombre was stroking my ankle. He was looking up at me, wondering what had happened. I'm not sure what I could tell him, even if he could understand. How much time had gone by? Twenty minutes? A half hour? I don't know. I couldn't live without you either, Firefly, but I sometimes wonder if my death wouldn't leave you free to live a happier life. Never mind, I promise not to die without you, indeed the idea of dying with you thrills me strangely. The problem of dying together and yet separately embroils me in an evil fascination. We had enough trouble trying to play our records simultaneously and no chat room will afford us the privacy of dying together in dignity. I don't suppose we could meet at the farthest extremity of the Northwest Territories disguised in parkas and snow masks? I have heard that freezing to death is like going to sleep, but there would be practical difficulties such as getting there. Please no gore! I couldn't take jumping off of buildings or shooting revolvers at our heads or even slashing our wrists in bathtubs full of warm water. Disgusting methods would be easier to 

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synchronize than those that ensure a measure of decency. If we swam out to sea or took an overdose of sleeping pills, we could hardly die at the same time; worse, someone might come along and save one of us. Think how awful that would be!

"I started to erase all that, but I changed my mind when I realized that I had nothing better to say, except that I would hug you even if you were a grizzly, an anaconda or an octopus.

We asked Emily to reread "Oh Blissful Dissolution" several times and, each time, we tried to find the words that had scared Firefly into pleading with Cicada not to die without him. The poem contained no such words, we finally concluded, but it did express a mood that he could recognize because he shared it. Before we put it in this context, we had only seen a description of life as a moment in the earthly circulation of water. The ironical addition of a little dust recalled the basic ingredient of human bodies according to Genesis 3.19. The poet's dust, as we had learned from Jamma's "Biology 000," consisted of carbon alternating between organic and inorganic derivatives. This poem, which also appeared in Clouds, defines life as a relentless construction destruction of cells with materials made of carbon compounds and energy produced by oxidization. The advanced development of this activity generates an immaterial power of thought and feeling, which increases with the complexity of the organism and yields a conscienceness of identity. But does this power die with the organism or revert to the mind that evidently, in the poet's opinion, controls and energizes the universe? Cicada preferred the latter hypothesis, though both, she remarked, implied the loss of personal identity. Comparing "Oh Blissful Dissolution" with "Biology 000," we understood Firefly's alarm. The torment of love fulfilled by the spirit and frustrated by the flesh had clearly driven Cicada to consider the consequences of death. Firefly's fear of her suicidal inclination had intensified her affection for him and her patience with life: "Verweile doch!" she wrote him.

Sustained by a diligent study of books they borrowed from libraries, a cheerfully macabre discussion of methods followed. Firefly and Cicada 

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rejected all kinds of suicide that would leave a spectacle behind them. Indeed they sought one that would eliminate their bodies, which, they implicitly agreed, had little value. Everywhere they turned, however, they saw the inadmissible involvement of other people. If only there were some way to bury themselves without the fanfare of Aïda and Radames. Enclosing themselves in a tomb, a crypt or a sarcophagus would require the services of people who did that sort of thing. Besides, how would they kill themselves once inside? Asphyxiation appealed to neither of them. The use of a sleeping drug would raise the problem of the right dosage, enough to kill them without making them sick... Unh! Maybe they could jump down the shaft of an abandoned mine, suggested Cicada, but Firefly objected that such mines were always sealed and found in remote places hard to reach without the knowledge of other people. Besides, didn't vermine infest them? Jumping off of a ship at sea might not escape detection by the other passengers or the crew and, even if it did, their bodies might wash up on some shore. The ocean was always throwing up on beaches. In any case, drowning seemed very unpleasant. Cremation with scattering of ashes at sea would eliminate their remains, but they would have to rely on people who did that kind of thing. Furthermore, it left the problem of how to die unsolved and neither wanted to do it in a furnace, even if he could find a convenient one. They shuddered over the naked crowds herded into the gas chambers as well as the henchmen who burned the bodies afterwards. How about a powerful bomb? There would be nothing left. They could set it off in some place where it wouldn't do any harm or hurt anyone, couldn't they? Or sleeping pills again, but this time in some subzero climate where they could doze off to death without the preliminary shuddering. 

Although neither approved of involving accomplices, both deplored the persecution of Dr. Dvorkian. They condemned religious excuses for attempts to interfere as an infringement of natural rights. Their moment in the circulation of life belonged to them and nobody else, so they had a right to put an end to it any time they liked. They would leave notes to make this point and state that they had chosen death simply because they didn't want to live any longer. If they were unable to find a kind of suicide that caused their bodies to disappear, they would make sure that the notes were discovered promptly. Letters posted on the same day? In any case, they were determined to die in different places at exactly the same time, separate in body and united in spirit. They also had to leave wills disposing 

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of their property and providing for Ombre and Murray, Firefly's bawder terrier. Cicada's downstairs neighbors, Kit and Handy, would love to have Ombre and Firefly's Aunt Amanda, who was lonely, had often coveted Murray. Thus they left no stones unturned, but neither of them seemed to think that any of these events might happen soon. They were enjoying each other's company too much to choose a method, set a date and time, take the necessary precautions and face the terror they had to overcome. 

The phone rang in the ear exposed to the air. I fumbled for it behind me in the dark. Murma sat up and looked at the clock on her side. "Hello!" I tried to say, but no sound came from my throat, so I tried again: "Hello!"

"Professor South?" It was an excited young man.

"I'm sorry to wake you up, Sir. This is Handy. Maybe you and Mrs. South should come over here."

"Our building is on fire. Kit and I barely had enough time to get dressed and get out... Here comes the fire department."

Murma grabbed my arm. She looked white even in the dark.

We saw fire trucks, flashing lights and a crowd of young people in various stages of day and night dress. The fire was already out, but it had destroyed the submarine, while leaving the other three apartments in the building intact except for water damage. Once I had explained who we were, Chief Duncan let Murma and me go upstairs to the outside landing. Nothing remained of Jamma's property but sooty debris. Two firemen were inspecting the floor and one of them pointed his flashlight at a little heap on the living room floor. I felt as if the bottom had fallen out of my stomach. "Could you pick him up gently, please," I asked, "and bring him over to me?" Swinging slightly, Ombre's head hung from the rest of his body and his tongue hung from his mouth. "Thanks!" I said taking him in my arms,

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where his fur still felt warm. Tears burned in my eyes and I saw them in Murma's too. She was stroking him as if she hoped to ressuscitate him. We went back downstairs where the rest of the crew gathered around with a chorus of pity and outrage. Everybody tried to stroke Ombre, who wouldn't have wanted to miss it.

Weeping, Deanna kept shaking her head as if to deny what had happened.

Cary: "He didn't like him stroking his ankle!"

Lora: "Like killing Jamma all over again!"

Kit brought an empty doll box: "Marianne doesn't need it."

I remember more now than I noticed then. The firemen and policemen could have passed muster, but the civilians exhibited every step in their daily progress from sleep to street. After slipping into our slippers, Muma and I had thrown bathrobes over our pajamas. Looking like Bergdorf Goodman as usual, she complained how awful it was. She received compliments from Emily and Wilma fiddling with her hair and tugging at her lapels. Nobody complimented me. All of the men in the crew needed a shave and all of the younger guys went barefoot. We had found Kit and Handy in nothing but T-shirts and jeans torn off at the knee. Kit's hair had the shape of an Aborigine's, while Deanna had brushed hers on the way over, but she had forgotten the brooch that usually held it back from her eye. Despite ample holes for their knees, she and Guy hadn't torn the bottoms off of their jeans yet and they had their underwear on. Lora had arrived in jogging pants with a sleepy boyfriend following her like a dog. Her bosom flopped around under a light blue sweatshirt with ZENIA UNIVERSITY in white letters. I couldn't tell whether Solomon didn't notice or pretended not to. Both he and Edie, whom he had given a ride, had dressed as if on the way to a tennis court. Embarrassed, Edie admitted that she had asked him what she should wear, a remark that made him smile. I had heard that he was a cunning competitor and especially dangerous for opponents more eager to slam the ball than place it. Emily, who had caught a ride with him too, wore a coral-colored denim dress that set her hair off nicely. She had knotted it behind her head as usual, but she had forgotten her glasses, hence a lot of squinting. Likewise barefoot, Carey wore 

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bermudas and a sweatshirt like Lora's except that he didn't bulge in the same place as she did.

Wilma had dressed for the occasion with designer jeans and a dark blue sweater that fit her figure. Neither did her loafers need polish nor had her hair abused the liberty she had given it. "She sleeps on her back with her clothes on," Murma murmured to Emily, who nodded. Tom Tom handed Wilma a bull horn and, with a voice that lacked nothing but cheer, she announced: "Everyone is invited to breakfast in the Mews Recreation Center, especially firemen and policemen. There will be a discussion of the fire and anyone who knows anything that might help Chief Duncan and Sergeant Thomas to find the cause will be more than welcome." As the crowd began to move towards the Center, Wilma and I approached each other. "How much data did you lose?" she asked me.

"Very little if any. Our copies of the originals, our photos of the autographs and our backup lists are practically exhaustive. We have been copying our own work continuously and storing the copies in the Mayview. All of us take our floppies home with us... But security should be reinforced in Room 27 anyway."

"Who is getting breakfast for us? Food Services?"

"You must have seen Patten."

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bedrooms including those used as studies were on the street side. I took advantage of a momentary silence to say that 327 had been equipped with burglar and fire alarms connected to ZU Security. Pat Janders reported that ZU Security had received a fire alarm signal at 2:37 AM.

"2:37!" Handy had jumped to his feet, his beard bristling. "That's when we saw the reflection in our window."

Duncan: "It was just 2:38 when we got the call. We were here by 2:44, a minute ahead of our projection."

Janders: "The burglar alarm went off too, but only at 2:42. Melting wire probably broke the circuit."

Me: "327 was full of books in cases up to the ceiling and along every available wall: would that be enough paper to burn that apartment and that apartment alone in... How many minutes?"

Duncan: "Seven. Add two more for the time it took to get started. Nine minutes if he sprayed the bottom books all around with kerosene. Paper burns fast. Once the fire spread to the frame, it reached the roof in no time. Without any wind, it burned upwards and the fire proofing between the apartments protected the other ones. Sergeant Thomas and I have already put in a request for an arson expert."

Tom Tom: "This guy was an expert himself."

"Did the Mongrels have anything to do with it?" asked one of the residents.

Another resident: "Any idea who else might have done it?"

Guy stood up, shaking with anger: "The arsonist snuck in and out late on a cloudy night with a tank of kerosene on his back. He knew how to reach 327 from the woods in the rear, how to circumvent the burglar alarm, how to break in without any noise, how to set the apartment on fire so that it would burn up fast and away from the other apartments. I bet the arson expert will find that he didn't leave any evidence behind that could be used to identify him. He even killed the only witness, a cat who had been stroking his ankle. This wasn't the first time he had done something like this." 

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Handy: "Like a surgical strike."

The arson expert confirmed Duncan's hypothesis that the arsonist had sprayed the books with kerosene. He also discovered that he had filled bowls from Jamma's cupboard with kerosene and placed them in the triangular space left by the removal of a few books from the bottom of each shelf. He had laid fuse cords from these bowls to another one in the center of the apartment, into which he had thrown a match before leaving. Leaning over the handrail at the end of the balcony, he had broken the bottom pane of the kitchen window with the end of a log covered with a piece of blanket and the glass fragments had fallen on a table covered with a cloth just inside. Since he hadn't slid the window up to open it, the elements of the magnet on its sliding and fixed sides had not separated, the magnetic field hadn't been broken and the burglar alarm hadn't gone off. He had thrown a rope with a grappling hook at the end over the handrail, he had climbed up on it and, from the balcony, pulled his equipment, tied to the other end, up behind him. The arson expert showed us some creases in the wood of the handrail, the two elements of the magnet lying close together, the fragments from the window, the hardware remains of the table, the shards of the bowls and the charred path of the fuses across the floor. The arsonist, he told us, had probably brought a portable tank of kerosene with a hand pump sprayer in a big backpack with room for the log and a piece of blanket. He found the log near a path leading back through the woods to an abandoned road spur, where the Highway Department piled gravel and sand. There was room for a car behind the piles where you couldn't see it from the road and ruts showed that many had parked there before the arsonist, probably hunters. The arsonist had chosen dry weather, so there were no footprints. Local merchants dealing in heating fuel, garden tools, climbing and hiking equipment couldn't provide them with the name of a single customer who had purchased all four suspect items within the last three months. Nor did any of them remember Elston Howard, Priscilla Charitzky, Buck Kingfisher or any of the Mongrels buying such items. Nobody in the area sold cord fuses.

EH was attending a conference on critical theory in Mammoth. Tom Tom tried to reach him as soon as the assembly broke up, but he only got a recorded message from the Mammoth Sheraton saying that Professor Howard was asleep and inviting the caller either to leave a message or call 

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back after 7 AM. According to the desk clerk, Professor Howard had read this message into the answering machine before midnight, so EH would have had the time to make the three hour drive to Concordia, set 327 on fire and return. At 7:30 AM, he called Tom Tom back and said he had flown up to Mammoth on the commuter. His Cherokee, which Tom Tom found in the airport parking lot, was empty, but the terminal had been closed from the last arrival in the evening at 10:43 until the first departure in the morning at 6:13. What would have prevented him from renting a car in Mammoth, driving it to the Concordia Airport, moving his equipment from the Cherokee to the rental car and proceeding to the road spur behind the woods next to Tree Shadow Mews? Yet none of the rental agencies in Mammoth had rented a car to Elston Howard during the last week. Tom Tom asked the Mammoth Police Department whether any cars had been stolen near the Sheraton before midnight. A guest in the Mariott, a mile away, had come down to get his Camry in the morning and found that his fuel indicator had dropped from full to empty. The motor was still warm.

The press took almost as much an interest in EH as in the fire, but he seemed to enjoy the questions they were asking him, even the ones that hinted at the possibility of his involvement. He took every opportunity to deplore the fire and hope for a prompt determination of the cause. He couldn't imagine who could have done such a thing, so he urged that no possibility be overlooked, not even negligence. The university and literature had sustained an irreparable loss and justice must be done. Reminded that he had opposed the project himself, he distinguished between his objection to backward methodology and the desire to destroy property of unique cultural value. Had subtle distinctions perhaps, he was asked, jeopardized a project that should have been pursued on a level above such quarrels? He replied with his introduction to Critical Methods 300, required of all English majors and consisting in a weekly lecture to over a hundred students followed by ten twice-weekly discussion sections supervised by his graduate assistants. Literary criticism is a science like other sciences and therefore subject to continuous progress. Ignoring this progress condemns all efforts to irrelevance. EH repeated these principles with such an icy voice over WZFM and with such an icy stare over WZTV that he converted the innocent and strengthened the faith of his followers. 

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The couple who hosted "Doing Your Thing" gave Cary and me ample opportunity to explain the precautions we had taken to prevent the kind of damage we had sustained. Assessing our losses and the means we had to overcome them, we sought to reassure the public on our ability and determination to complete our project successfully. The couple then prompted us to expose our disagreement with Professor Howard all over again, but we preferred to expose his methodology:

"Criticism is a science," I proclaimed.

Cary yawned.

Bowing his head, he stared at his belly.

"Usually concave, but [raising his forefinger] sometimes convex."

Looking at me naively expectant.

Loud sob.

Cary waved his hand frantically.

"Sir, will you give us that on the test?"

As if he hadn't heard: "Criticism is a science like:

"1. Fortunetelling?

"2. Astrology?

"3. Witchcraft?

"4. Quizz kids." [Delighted giggle]

"We would blacken circle #2 wouldn't we?"

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An infantile grimace of rage: "Aw!"

Pretty journalist: "Were Mutt and Jeff like that?"

Cary: "We are dead serious."

Handsome journalist: "So you disagree with Professor Howard: criticism is not a science?"

"But neither an exact nor an experimental science."

"Ideological doctrines predetermine and therefore falsify the search for truth."

"Philosophical, psychological and sociological speculation yield no facts, but merely hypotheses in need of verification."

Pretty: "Then the rules are the same as in historical research?"

Handsome: "Do you mean that researchers like Professor Howard rely on the smoke from their cigarettes?"

"Ha! Ha! Ha!"

Pretty: "Ha! Ha! Ha!" 

Handsome, embarrassed: "What I meant was..."

A smile and a nod.

"But we don't recomend it!"

 
Pretty: "Do you have any idea who might have set the fire?"

"I'm no animal rights activist, but he was less than an animal."

"He? Maybe it was a woman."

"Maybe it didn't even have a sex."

Handsome: "I respect your attitude towards speculation, but speculation about the arsonist and his motive has become a part of the news. Professor Howard's service with Special Forces in Vietnam is well known. In fact, print journalists, who may have had a devious motive, consulted him about the fire, the arsonist, possible motives, etc. He responded in apparently good faith expressing essentially the same opinions as you just did. Yet the public clamor is not 'who done it?' but rather 'did he do it?'"

Pretty: "Do you have any comments?"

"Yes. According to both the Advocate and the Semaphore, Professor Howard hoped that no possibility would be overlooked in the serach for the arsonist. So do I."

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A few days after the fire, a remarkable funeral took place in the old university graveyard. Sheila Wilcox had arranged for Ombre's burial at the foot of her and Jamma's plot. Several hundred mourners crowded in and around the half acre nearly full of graves, shaded by maples and surrounded by a dry wall. Dave Saunders, the university chaplain, read the passage in the Old Testament about "all creatures large and small" and the one in the New Testament where Jesus says: "Forgive them for they know not what they do." Pat Caruthers, a professor of oboe, played the cat passage in Peter and the Wolf. A few mourners had brought their own cats and a Siamese was roaming curiously through the forest of legs. Nearly everybody was trying not to smile. Sheila read "My Shadow," one of Jamma's earliest poems:

"Sometimes he doesn't follow me,

But wanders off alone, staring, 

Stopping, sniffing, starting again.

What a curious shadow I have!

He doesn't even try to mock

My movements. No, he has his own:

His stealthy body undulates,

His tale waves slowly back and forth,

His ears pivot towards every sound,

His whiskers bristle and his fur

Glistens with a furtive luster.

A silhouette of suspicion,

Glowing eyes with diamond pupils,

Sharp claws sheathed within soft paws.

"Upwards, he leaps, three times his length,

And, twitching the tip of his tale,

Stares down at me disdainfully.

He lies on the side of my bed 

At night, but leaves at my first turn

And wakes me up in the morning,

Meowing loudly in my ear

And tilting his insistant head.

He does as he pleases and not

As I please. He demands his food

When he is hungry and eats it

Without bothering to thank me.

Licking gray chops with small red tongue,

He watches me as if to ask:

'Is that all?' When, at other times,

I am thinking of other things,

I feel his fur stroking my calf

And find him looking up at me,

As if to ask: 'Don't you like that?'

What soul took refuge in my cat?"

Jake: "Maybe Jamma had taken refuge in Ombre."

Muriel: "Did she have to die twice?"