This morning Her Ladyship moved into Hotel de France, which stands next door to the guesthouse. The head rickshaw driver, whom she and Tom have named "Green Beret," was allowed into the patio to take her baggage. His brief, dark presence. On this side of the wall one could see he was only a cringing servant, not a "boss." Deborah and Tom followed him into the hot street as into a kind of hell. I also must move out. My room is reserved from today onwards by two international youths who will arrive this evening.

Her Ladyship's suitcase was heavier going than when she arrived, also there were many extras on her arm. Tom has given her gifts: shawl, tablecloth, books, etc. He is always buying things and then giving them away, keeping nothing for himself. He says the money goes to good causes: the ashram businesses, the Indian economy. Possibly. But I think it would more profit his host country if he changed his dollars at the State Bank instead of on the black market.

Tom returned alone to find me sitting in the back garden. He was upset at losing Deborah, talkative and social, ordering tea in the kitchen and then making it himself. In the next hour he told much of his personal history to me. He is fascinated, it is clear, of having English and Italian nobility in his family, of being raised in the Catholic Church. He has rejected this religion, but gives the impression that a Catholic upbringing is necessary to become an honest and sensitive man. The only kind of mother to have, he also seems to say, is a virgin. The only valid father, a saint. People's mothers should be of delicate but fading beauty and dipsomaniacal. Fathers should be V.I.P.s.

It is not difficult for an experienced psychologist to draw conclusions about this young man. He would be a saint, would that all women (including Deborah) be pure like his mother. He feels himself inadequate, abandoned, worthless. His grades in university were "B's" (only English literature, and in that only "B's!"). His father and sister had received all "A's." He is his mother's child. I am surprised he does not drink more than he does (like her) or take drugs. Instead he seeks to find himself (or lose himself) in mystical studies. He plans to begin seriously practicing yoga after the hectic holiday season.

Before coming here he spent a year in Scientology. To these sailors he contributed ten thousand dollars, then found certain "inconsistencies" in their philosophy. They told him he was free to go. Next he was "turned on" to Eastern thought while reading Thoreau. But the American Transcendentalists, he felt, were not adequately mystical. (It is typical of Catholics to seek until they find utter obscurity, then pray for light.)

Twice in his life, he told me after learning I had been a practicing psychologist, he had suffered profound nervous depression, each time after a love affair.

"Then this is why you will not accept Deborah?"

"Accept Chickie? Good grief! That would be the end of Tommy, were he to accept. It'd blow my mind. Permanently."

"Does Deborah know this?"

"I've told her a dozen times."

"Yet she insists?"

"Insists? She plots. Look, Chickie has her own problems. She has to blow a mind a month just to keep happy and fulfilled. Right now she's working on a double feature: Pete and me. She plans to blow our minds both at once."

"She's purposely trying to destroy you?" This seemed difficult to believe but I was willing to try.

"She thinks it'll be beneficial. But she just never saw anyone sitting for months and years in front of a television set on Cape Cod, his mind blown for good."

To me what appalls is that Tom's life is one with all the advantages mine has lacked. Family with nobility and connections near the seat of power. Wealth. Birth in a country with such far borders and influence. Opportunity to study anything anywhere, with no thought to profession and "gainful employment." And yet none of this can he use. He has become, in spite of all, a refugee. So odd. A weak boy. Deborah would use him like an object to satisfy her sexual appetite. (One morning her eyes and mine happened to fall at the same instant upon one of Tom's candlesticks, which had somehow crossed the room and dropped to the floor from her bed. She hurried to replace it on the altar, looking very embarrassed.)

Another day we three were together and Tom was talking in endless flow about his family. I had already become bored, was thinking of other things. Then I listened. More family. To me, this is one of the most important subjects, but for Tom it was only compulsion.

"For God's sake," said Deborah, "will you please stop talking about your family? You're driving me up the wall."

"But Chickie, I'm doing it so you'll be terribly impressed and have greater respect for me."

"Fine. But that's not what's happening."

"That's not what's happening!" He jumped down beside her. He gripped her arms between his long, bony hands. "Chickie," he begged, shaking her gently back and forth, "can't you just once be soft and feminine?"

Indignation. "Me? Feminine? Can't you just once be," she tried to break his grasp with a wild pull, "be a nice chap and get your meathooks out of my flesh?"

He let her go and drew back, his face twisted. "I know why I don't sleep with you. I'm scared to death of you, witch."

She smoothed her hair, smiling with chin high. She closed her cat eyes. "I'll accept that reason."

Tom laughed. "Did-I-ever-tell-you-about-my-cousin-who-lives-in-Sussex-and-is-an-earl-and-is-married-to-an-Italian-baroness-and-has-taken-up-growing-roses-professionally?

"I think you just did."

"And I must say, I feel a lot better for it."

His problem, I believe, is having no motive for his life. He feels he must succeed very high, like his father, but is afraid of failure. I would say that this is a realistic fear for Tom.

And my own motives? There are three main ones in my life: thirst for wisdom and knowledge, thirst for might and power, thirst for giving and receiving love. Yes, I am a very ambitious man, more than normally ambitious, not satisfied before I can put a Fürst oder Reichsgraf von before my name. As a result of my mad and megalomaniac ambitions, I am for the time being living in exile.

Today, knowing that I must move again, even if it is only next door, I have felt a little sad and depressed. The truth is, Flaminio de Conningsfield, Soldier of the Fortune, like anyone else has lonely moments. Exile ist einsam. He has tried correspondence, but the lazy people reply once, twice, never more. So he writes sometimes, in these notes, to an older, wiser Flaminio, sometimes to a dumb, old Flaminio, sometimes to his imaginary son or daughter, or his imaginary wife, formerly La Duchessa di Villabella.

After our conversation, so intimate on his side, I showed my sarees to Tom. He has bought (cash from the pocket) two for an even higher price than I dared hope — half again the original retail price (and I had bought them "on credit" paying only a small deposit, therefore much profit). One he will send to his mother, the other give to Deborah for Christmas or send to an aunt. Also for Christmas he has bought from the ashram handmade paper factory sheets of paper with coloured water design, enough to wrap a hundred gifts. In one drawer are rolls of ribbons and rosettes. As Christmas is coming so soon, I wondered whether he could use it all.

"I'm not going anywhere," he told me. "Christmas comes every year."

Whistling in the dark? Does he think he will remain here safe and sound year after year?

We looked at each other one moment, each perhaps wondering whether the other would be giving him a Christmas present. In my heart I do not expect one from Tom, or only a small gift, nothing valuable. My own financial position makes it extremely unlikely I will give any gifts at all. Exception: Under the sarees I have one miniature painting, two hundred years old, for which I paid very dear — 140 rupees. I will give this to Her Ladyship if she will come away with me. It depicts Rajput warriors on horseback making battle. One man has lost his head, which is flying out of the picture to the left. I have pricked my finger and touched a little of my own blood on the places of disconnection, but have only succeeded in making an ugly smear in the shape of a cravat. Fortunately, the poor fellow is dead with his eyes closed.

Her Ladyship returned to the guesthouse before lunch to take away the last of her possessions.

"The guy that runs Hotel de France is around the twist," she told Tom and me. "I asked him the price of the room, and he asked me whether I wanted to pay thirty rupees or forty-five."

"So naturally you told him you were a rich American and preferred to pay forty-five."

"But he hadn't even said yet what the prices included. It took me twenty minutes to get it straight and I'm still confused. For thirty you get the same room and bath and full pension. So why pay forty-five?"

"It's a matter of principle," Tom explained. "Some people prefer to pay more."

"You're as crazy as he is," she laughed. "And hey, you know that Christmas tree they have over there? I told you there was something wrong with it. Well, it finally hit me what it was."

"There's absolutely nothing wrong with that tree.

"But it's upside down." She began to giggle.

"Christmas tree branches go downward. Those go downward. It's perfectly correct."

"But the tip, the point of the tree, is supposed to be up, not down. The tip of this tree points downward. The wide part is on top."

"It's perfectly correct. The branches go downward, heavy with snow."

"Sweetie," laughed Deborah, "the tree is upside down. That's Christmas in Hindus-ville for you."

"As a matter of fact," Tom said stiffly, "they had it the other way around and I told them to put it like that."

"You?" She stared at him, bewildered. "You're actually quite weird," she told him, her face now full of interest. "And you'd really rather pay forty-five?"

"Every time."

"Well, lots of luck." She put on her shoulder bag and stood up.

"Where are you going?"

"Home to eat."

"Home! You can call Hotel de France home?"

"Bye-bye."

Suddenly it was like she was going away to prison, far from us. Tom cried damn the pension system, he would eat next door with her. It would only mean seven rupees extra, not even a dollar. Deborah was unenthusiastic. Lunch, she pointed out, had to be ordered in advance.

"Bull shit. After all the bread I've laid on around that place they'll come up with something for me to eat."

She was silent a moment. "Maybe I'd just like to eat alone. And think."

"About C.I.A.?"

"No, no. That was only joking. He's no agent."

"How do you know? Did you do some counterintelligence?" But Deborah was walking across the patio toward the gate and didn't reply. "Hey, Chickie," Tom called. She stopped and turned. "Don't order any afternoon tea in that place."

"Why not?"

"It costs fifteen rupees,"

Laughing, Deborah disappeared out the gate into the street.

Then our lunch was served at the large table in the diningroom. Then Pete wasn't at lunch and we learned he was not eating there. Tom left the table and went into the street to question the rickshaw drivers. He didn't return.

After lunch the guesthouse manager accepted my postdated cheque rather coldly. I handed it to him wearing full embassy dress, white gloves, plastic chrysanthemum in buttonhole, gold watch and chain, etc. Still, there was a certain stiffness, showing that these ashram people are quite coldhearted at the moment when compassion is needed. "Aspire to the Mother," "Open your being to the Mother," "Call the Mother's power into your heart," etc. Words of the Founder. I make no comment. On one wall I have seen a sign: Money is Power; Give your Money to the Mother. Some too-enthusiastic disciple? Perhaps.

The Hotel de France is, like the rest of non-ashram, non-Tamil Villefranche-sur-Mére, a French place run by aborigines. There are no pictures of the Mother on the walls. None of the Founder. No ashram symbols. There are no dancing Sivas, temple carvings or batiks either. In one corner of the dining verandah some very old French journals containing nothing of interest. One Christmas tree. The hotel owner-manager, a black "Frenchman" (who I think has never seen Europe except in travel posters), was standing with his hands on his hips regarding it. His head lay on one shoulder. He wore Bermuda shorts and white knee socks out of tennis shoes. His hair is long, black and fluffy at the ends. Sitting behind him around a table were Deborah, Pete and Tom. They were silent, not sitting straight up in their chairs, also looking at the tree. Tom was smoking two cigarettes, so a very bad ambience prevailed.

"You do not mind," the owner said in French when he saw Conningsfield arriving in such beautiful dress, "living in a hotel where the Christmas tree is under suspicion?"

For once I was speechless, could only laugh. I signaled to the bearers to set down my bags, then removed my gloves and wiped my front with a handkerchief.

"There is one room free until December 26," he told me. "You will pay either thirty or forty-five rupees, just as you wish."

Deborah was hiding her face in her napkin, having another case of hysterical giggles. "Thirty rupees will be fine," I told him gravely. He looked rather disappointed.

"Thirty rupees is next year's special rate, normally beginning on January first. But because you are a friend of Monsieur ... uh ...," he indicated Tom, whose name he had forgotten, "I will allow you that price from today."

"Merci."

"Before I show you to your room, may I have your opinion on the tree?"

I looked around. Everyone was hanging on my face. I looked at the wretched pine which resembled a dirty green cube. Grey cotton wadding on the branches. Unspeakable. Tiny coloured lights went on and off. "The lights are not steady," I told him perversely.

"They are not supposed to be. Is there anything else? About the position of the tree?"

"Too far to the left?"

"Ha," said Tom. "You see? Turn it the other way and the branches go up."

"The star wouldn't go on," cried Deborah, indignant. "The trunk is too thick on top. They had to glue it on."

"Non-Christians know nothing about it."

"Nonsense," said Her Ladyship as I was starting up the stairs. "We had Christmas trees all my childhood."

"Imported ones."

"Right from the north of California, my very state."

"Those were surf boards," said Tom. I heard Deborah's laugh.

The bearers following, we were soon at the top of the stairs, standing on the broad terrace while the manager unlocked the padlock on the door of my room. Suddenly Tom bounded up. He took me aside. "I'll pay your bill," he told me to my astonishment.

The offer was very interesting. I blushed in confusion. "What is the meaning of this?"

"Your room is right next door to Chickie's. I'd like to keep an eye on her now and then."

"An eye on her?"

"Her now — I-wonder-who's-kissing-her-now — and her then. For her own good."

"You're worried about Pete?"

"Aren't you?"

Have we the right to be jealous, either of us? Are either of us prepared to give her the happiness she is seeking to find with Pete? The answer to both these questions is, yes, I am. Had it been a matter of espionage, I would have preferred to listen at the wall myself. But Americans are better when it is instead this sort of detective work. I was always therefore to leave the key at the desk before going out, taking only the normal precaution to lock my suitcase containing the sarees, watches and tape recorder, which are to be sold later in Ceylon.

Suddenly an idea occurred to me. "Would you care to buy a tape recorder?" He could give me dollars, I was thinking, much better than rupees. Then I only had to bring it out of the suitcase before he was racing down the stairs to fetch his traveler cheques.

This evening I walked alone on the sea wall. The sun had set, the water looked cold and restless. Oceans after sunset will make me nervous and apprehensive. I feel they may jump up suddenly and smother me.

Approximately 100 meters away Deborah and Tom were arguing. It was clear from her movements that she wanted to be left alone. For nearly twenty-four hours Tom has not let her out of sight, except after ten o'clock at night. He has decorated her room with flowers and Christmas streamers and has hidden the microphone of the tape recorder in some coloured ribbons near the top of the bed. After ten o'clock the gates of both hotel and guesthouse are locked until dawn. Therefore no danger. Tom has anyway given the gatekeepers their orders. Also the rickshaw drivers, who sleep in their vehicles or on the sidewalks, are all paid informers.

The only problem is that Romeo and Juliet seem to show no interest whatever in one another.

"They're cooling it until the right moment comes," explained Tom.

"I sometimes think — forgive me — that you are almost wishing they will compromise themselves. I wonder why."

"It's a shame to waste this set-up. The tape recorder was a beautiful idea. I've never gone so deeply into anything before."

"Then you must leave her alone. Give them a chance."

"Never."

"Then when can they get together?"

"Nap time," he replied grimly.

Deborah drove him away and walked down the promenade in my direction, then turned without seeing me and sat down on the edge of the wall. I hesitated to approach her and in that moment was beset by child beggars led by the most obnoxious of the lot who this evening appeared with a shaved head. Bald as a krone. I had to laugh. Whether some religious rite or stinking lice, I didn't know. The shape of his head resembled the carved top of a walking stick I had once owned.

This evening I did not have to threaten them with my umbrella — my ridicule drove them off. The child tried to hide his head under his arms, then led his friends away. I straightened my shoulders. Beggars always unsettle me internally. Coming up behind Her Ladyship I cleared my throat softly.

She turned. "Hi." She smiled, her face looking all the same very sad. I told her this. She turned her eyes back toward the sea. "This place is like an island. I hate islands," she said.

"Then sail away."

"I will. I'm just waiting to see the Mother so I can finish this article I'm writing. If I can't see her soon I'll go anyway.

"Where will you go?"

She sighed. "I don't know. I'll think of something. I've been traveling about three years (!) now, and I still haven't run out of places."

"I'm going to Ceylon the day after Christmas."

"That's nice."

"I have found some people traveling to Madurai who will take me as far as Tiruchirapalli in their car. From there I will take the plane."

"That sounds lovely." She kept her face toward the sea.

"I think there is room in their car for you."

She chuckled, said something; her voice had an emptiness in it such as I have never heard. A thousand questions came into my mind. How can such emptiness exist in a so intelligent, healthy young woman? Emptiness is perhaps a wrong and too easy word. Rather her problem is a sort of untouchable despair.

Had she again consulted the I Ching? No, she had no more questions. "Anyway, it tells you what you want it to tell you."

Perhaps she had approached it in the wrong spirit.

Laughing, she agreed, then let her lovely head drop back, was looking up at the colourless sky.

I asked her what she was thinking. She replied that she had been earlier walking along reciting poems of John Donne, that she often had poetry in her head when she was walking or sitting in beautiful places. Would she recite one poem for me? Of course. So, nodding, she began with no hesitation:

"Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the Devil’s foot;
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind."

She asked me then if I wanted her to continue and I begged her to do so. How seldom lately have I heard a poem recited for me. My brain was swimming in sheer pleasure. She recited the next stanza and the last. Then we were both chuckling at this very cynical poem which concerns the infidelity of beautiful women.

I asked her if she had recited it for Tom, that it would only give him more worries. She said she had, in an attempt to make him feel better — that a personal problem seems less important when it is universalized. The inconstancy of beautiful women, she pointed out, is eternal, the same as that of men. (I personally do not share this view.) Then she would know if I had ever heard about someone having a twin in his or her head. She looked at me very oblique.

"The other day at lunch," I replied.

"Never otherwise?"

"I have read of someone having their twin in the hip."

"No kidding." She looked interested. "And anyone might have one and never even know until it started to ... grow?"

"I think it occurs very seldom," I told her. "Otherwise you would hear of such things every day."

Then she rose to her feet and we walked along the sea wall. After a minute we came upon Tom, tall, stiff, staring at the sea with wide, unblinking eyes like a dead man.

Deborah was suddenly very angry, her eyes evil. "Why do you stand like that?" she must at once know.

Tom released his breath and collapsed at the stomach. "To discourage beggars, Chickie. If they think you're practicing yoga they won't bother you, unlike certain dumb broads."

"Were you practicing yoga?"

"Ask them, baby. Ask the fucking beggars."

She turned toward Flaminio, indicating Tom with her pointing finger. "And this I wanted to sleep with." Her eyes were making lightning.

"This stiff."

Then she saw the effect of her so cruel words. Tom had turned pale. Taking his hand she tried to pull it up to her lips, but he snapped it away. Then he was walking away, very long steps, only not too fast. She was running at his side like a beggar.

"It wasn't me talking, it was my twin. My twin. Sweetie, listen." She was pulling at his shirtsleeve. "Wait for Chickie. Please."

Tom stopped walking and put his arm around her shoulder. He was looking very sad. They waited for me and we walked home together, nobody talking.