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turned over her chair.
    So I knocked again. It was a tentative knock, a knock with a question mark. In thirty seconds, it came back. Knock. No mistake.
    Yet was it a communication? If so, what kind? Two chimpanzees could do as well.
    Still the question: Is that communication or imitation? Monkey see, monkey do. Perhaps the girl is lying there, a hopeless idiot, her eyes vacant, her knuckles straying against the wall, like a two-year-old child lying in bed.
    So I tried the simplest code of all: One knock = A, two = B, and so on.
    But how to propose it to her as a code? Not as easy as you might think. I spent the morning thinking it over. It became clear that the only way to avoid imitation is to ask a question and the only way to establish a code is repetition. After all, we have all the time in the world.
    It is very awkward, of course. For example, my question began with a W , which requires twenty-three knocks. But no matter. Once the idea of a code is established, once she catches on, we can simplify.
    I sent this message: 23 knocks pause 8 pause 15 double pause 1 pause 18 pause 5 double pause 25 pause 15 pause 21.
    Who are you?
    I knocked at about a one-second rhythm knowing she wouldn’t get it at first but thinking she might catch on and get a pencil and start counting.
    No reply.
    Repeat.
    No reply.
    Repeat.
    No reply.
    I tried ten times and quit.
    Ah well. Tomorrow I will try again.
    I must communicate with her. According to my theory, she may be a prototype of the New Woman. It is no longer possible to “fall in love.” But in the future and with the New Woman it will be.
    You’re curious, I see. I haven’t told you my sexual theory of history? You smile. No, I’m serious. It applies to both the individual and mankind.
    First there was a Romantic Period when one “fell in love.”
    Next follows a sexual period such as we live in now where men and women cohabit as indiscriminately as in a baboon colony—or in a soap opera.
    Next follows catastrophe of some sort. I can feel it in my bones. Perhaps it has already happened. Has it? Have you noticed anything unusual on the “outside”? I’ve noticed that the doctors and guards and attendants here who are supposed to be healthy—we’re the sick ones—seem depressed, anxious, gloomy, as if something awful had already happened. Has it?
    Catastrophe then—yes, I am sure of it—whether it has happened or not; whether by war, bomb, fire, or just decline and fall. Most people will die or exist as the living dead. Everything will go back to the desert.
    Do you believe that dreams can foretell the future? After all, your Bible speaks of it. I used not to, but I had a dream the other night and I cannot forget it. It was not about Belle Isle or my past life at all but about my future life. I’m sure of it. I was living in an abandoned house in a desert place, a ghost town which looked like one of those outlying Los Angeles neighborhoods Raymond Chandler describes.
    I was in a room and strangely immobilized. I don’t know why but I could not move. Outside there were trees and other houses and cars but nothing moved. There was perfect quiet. Yet I was not alone in the house. There was someone else in the next room. A woman. There was the unmistakable sense of her presence. How did I know it was a woman? I cannot tell you except that I knew. Perhaps it was the way she moved around the room. Do you know the way a woman moves around a room whether she is cleaning it or just passing time? It is different from the way a man moves. She is at home in a room. The room is an extension of her.
    She came out of the house. We were having a picnic, sitting on the tailgate of a truck. It was not the desert now. The land plunged almost straight down into the blue ocean. A breeze had sprung up and there was a tinkle of wind chimes. We had been working hard and were very hungry. We ate in silence, looking at each other. There