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do you live, little boy?"
        "On Napoleon Street."
        Where the Jews live.
        "What does your father do?"
        My father is a bootlegger. He has a still in Point-St. Charles. The spotters are after him.
        He has no money.
        Only of course Moses would never have told her any of this. Even at five he would have known better.
        His mother had instructed him. "You must never say."
        There was a certain wisdom in it, he thought, as if by staggering he could recover his balance, or by admitting a bit of madness come to his senses. And he enjoyed a joke on himself. Now, for instance, he had packed the summer clothes he couldn't afford and was making his getaway from Ramona. He knew how things would turn out if he went to Montauk with her. She would lead him like a tame bear in Easthampton, from cocktail party to cocktail party. He could imagine that-Ramona laughing, talking, her shoulders bare in one of her peasant blouses (they were marvelous, feminine shoulders, he had to admit that), her hair in black curls, her face, her mouth painted; he could smell the perfume. In the depths of a man's being there was something that responded with a quack to such perfume.
        Quack! A sexual reflex that had nothing to do with age or subtlety, wisdom, experience, history, Wissenschaft, Bildung, Wahrheit.
        In sickness or health there came the old quack-quack at the fragrance of perfumed, feminine skin. Yes, Ramona would lead him in his new pants and striped jacket, sipping a martini.... Martinis were poison to Herzog and he couldn't bear small talk. And so he would suck in his belly and stand on aching feet-he, the captive professor, she the mature, successful, laughing, sexual woman. Quack, quack!
        His bag was packed, and he locked the windows and pulled the shades. He knew the apartment would smell mustier than ever when he came back from his bachelor holiday. Two marriages, two children, and he was setting off for a week of carefree rest. It was painful to his instincts, his Jewish family feelings, that his children should be growing up without him. But what could he do about that? To the sea! To the sea!-What sea? It was the bay-between East Chop and West Chop it wasn't sea; the water was quiet.
        He went out, fighting his sadness over this solitary life. His chest expanded, and he caught his breath.
        "For Christ's sake, don't cry, you idiot!
        Live or die, but don't poison everything."
        Why this door should need a police lock he didn't know. Crime was on the increase, but he had nothing worth stealing. Only some excited kid might think he had, and lie in wait, hopped-up, to hit him on the head. Herzog led the metal foot of the lock into its slot in the floor and turned the key. He then checked to be sure he hadn't forgotten his glasses. No, they were in his breast pocket. He had his pens, notebook, checkbook, a piece of kitchen towel he had torn off for his handkerchief, and the plastic container of Furadantin tablets. The tablets were for the infection he had caught in Poland.
        He was cured of it now, but he took an occasional pill just to be on the safe side. That was a frightening moment in Cracow, in the hotel room, when the symptom appeared. He thought, The clap-at last!
        After all these years. At my time of life! His heart sank.
        He went to a British doctor, who scolded him sharply. "What have you been up to?
        Are you married?"
        "No."
        "Well, it isn't a clap. Pull up your trousers. You'll want a shot of penicillin, I suppose. All Americans do. Well, I shan't give it. Take this sulfa. No booze, mind you. Drink tea."
        They are unforgiving about sexual offenses. The fellow was angry, biting, a snotty Limey doctor. And I so vulnerable, heavy with guilt.
        I should have known that a woman like Wanda would not infect me with gonorrhea. She is sincere, loyal, devout toward the