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tell him sadly, “The thoughts of an old man, Bruno, of an alter kopf, not a child, and may you come through them safely, look what happened to your poor father, Yacob.”

And what did happen to him? My wavelings tell strange tales, tales I haven’t heard since I first saw the Argonauts aboard their ship holding storytelling contests. According to my wavelings’ report, Bruno’s father was a sort of escapee, like him, only not in the usual sense of the word, ah … where did I write that down?

His father, who well-nigh learned how to fly raising tropical birds in the loft, peacocks and pheasants and condors and giant cocks, his father, whom Bruno called the fencing master of the imagination, parrying the mighty forces of boredom, a great man, dead and resurrected times without number in myriad shapes, till everyone in the house became accustomed to his frequent demise—so writes my Bruno—only the portrait of his long-departed visage grew, as it were, to fill the room he had once occupied, and created the peculiar focal point of his wonderfully clear countenance, the wallpaper repeating here and there a nervous quiver, the arabesques taking on the painful anatomy of his smile …

In the end Bruno’s father was transformed into a giant crab. He would enter the room through a slit under the door, embarrassing everyone, till one day he was caught. Just like that: Bruno’s mothercould stand it no longer, it seems, and she caught him and boiled him for dinner, and served him at the table, big and bloated after the cooking, on a lovely platter, but of course, they didn’t cat him, cultured family that they were, but only set him prominently on the parlor table next to the musical cigar box, though he escaped from there as well, fancy that, because neither Bruno nor Yacob was one to surrender when things looked grim, so after a couple of weeks on the platter, he made his escape, Bruno’s father, leaving one leg flung across the dried tomato sauce, while he himself, boiled, almost defeated, dragged onward, onward, ever onward, wandering homeless, like his obstinate son, so dear and earnest, who makes me feel frivolous when he chars me black with a furrow of despair, like the backwash of a battleship, which in this case I don’t erase but cover with a fine sheet of water as a keepsake, like the other crumbs he leaves me, because what else can I do …

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AND THERE IN THE WAITER BRUNO to and fro in the big, slow cradle of the sea marking water time translated into mist that blows itself softly over the water in the bright dawn. Bruno afloat on the waves plunked to the endless flow he learned that water has a smell you know this water has a smell pulling you on and on lulling you adrift in the cradle of the sea you learned that you can sail to eternity infinity because you are drawn by the sinewy motion, suckled by the quiet flow you float among them drawn through the water and the immanence of long nights a dim moon an orange moon a shining moon the itinerant clouds on the night sky you float and pass alone through Creation the power of fish alone in motion the smell of fish alone bedazzling the nares before you the gills throbbing to the measure the chill of the waves nuzzling by you stealing into shore a wavy water-negative of the image of you shattered into a thousand fragments in the checkered eye of a rock crab stowed away among the stony hieroglyphs inscribed in manifold coral brains flowing onward only the prickly fins chafed your tender skin in the beginning and the hundreds of scratches that manifested then and the drops of your blood in the sea set the shoal aquiver and soon you felt no pain no salt you saw their shiny backs their glossy green bellies and the throbbing of finsand the pungent smell and the shrieking vastness gasping for joy and your ears were filled with the roaring and the pulsing and the tumult of the watery fair with cries of higgler gulls and reels of blue furled under you and the coins your thoughts dropping into the sea and slinky money changers bartering in the silent alleyways of sunken cities and floating bazaars hushed and trapped in sheer enormous bubbles and the sea full of whispers and rustlings and echoes and frothy words gently strumming the waves on the harp of the shore water strings running through the beach comb on and on you are pulled and plunged into the streams of potency you pressed your arms to your sides your shoulder blades sprouted wings and oh the bliss of their solemn silence the gravity of their silence the somberness when you wondered is this what death is this bliss recording the beating sea-heart on a colossal cardiograph rolling on forever below and when you were borne to the city pier you drifted together in splay formation into the navy port destroyers there were frigates full of sailors and the smell of diesel fuel fanfares and a young sailor welding a machine gun to the deck shooting red sparks that cascaded into the water fizzling and the sailor suddenly saw the vastness of the shoal and stared and stared but did not did not notice you and for a moment you were afraid for one moment of perfidious self-reproach you were overcome and you floundered in the water howling screaming in fear that diffracted like lightning through the heart of the shoal because the sea is a courier whispering because the sea is a fisherman and behold the billowy waist the mighty shoulders casting a network of nerves that are thick and clear and suddenly there was a dangerous torag and you foundered bobbing and gasping you didn’t know you never guessed your role in the torag and a thousand