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good-sized city block, and in its own blighted way it was beautiful.
    He said soberly: “It’s as if the secret of perpetual motion that my Grandmother Mitchell was always talking about had been discovered at last, and nobody cared.”
    But somebody did care, somebody was enjoying himself—a little French boy, wide awake and on his own at an hour when, in America at least, it is generally agreed that children should be asleep in their beds. Since he did not have to pay for his pleasure, they assumed that he was the child of one of the concessionaires. They tried to make friends with him and failed: he had no need of friends. Liberty was what he cared about—Liberty and Vertigo. He climbed on the merry-go-round and in a moment or two the baroque animals began to move with a slow, dreamlike, plunging gait. The little boy sat astride a unicorn. He rose in the stirrups and reached out with a long pole for the stuffed rabbit that dangled just out of reach. Time after time, trying valiantly, he was swept by it.
    â€œI’d take
him,”
Barbara said wistfully.
    â€œSo would I, but he’s not to be had, for love or money.”
    The merry-go-round went faster and faster, the calliopeshowed to what extremes music can go, and eventually, in accordance with the mysterious law that says:
Whatever you want with your whole heart and soul you can have
, the stuffed rabbit was swept from its hook (the little boy received a prize—a genuine ruby ring—and ran off in search of something new) and the Americans turned away, still childless.
    She asked for a five-franc piece to put in the fortunetelling machine. The machine whirred initially and produced through a slot a small piece of cardboard that read: “En apparence tout va bien pour vous, mais ne soyez pas trop confiant; l’adversité est en train de venir. Les morts, les séparations, sont indiqués. Dans les procès vous seriez en perte. La maladie est sérieuse.” She turned and discovered the little French boy at her elbow. Curiosity had fetched him. She showed him the fortune and he read it. His brown eyes looked up at her seriously, as if trying to decide what effect these deaths, separations, and lawsuits would have on her character. She asked him if he would like to keep it and he shook his head. She tucked the cardboard in her purse.
    â€œC’est votre frère?” the little boy asked, indicating Harold.
    â€œNon,” she said, smiling, “il est mon mari.”
    His glance shifted to the bag of candy. When she put it into his hands, he said politely that he couldn’t accept it. But he did, with urging. He took it and thanked her and then ran off. They stood watching while a bearded man, the keeper of a roulette wheel, detained him. The little boy listened intently (to what? a joke? a riddle?) and then he suddenly realized what was happening to him and escaped.
    â€œI think he all but fell in love with you,” Harold said. “If he’d been a little older or a little younger, he would have.”
    â€œHe fell in love with the candy,” Barbara said.
    They made one more circuit of the fair. The carnival people had lost the look of wickedness. Their talent for not putting down roots anywhere, and for not giving the right change, andfor sleeping with one eye open, their sexual promiscuity, their tattooed hearts, flowers, mermaids, anchors, and mottoes, their devout belief that all life is meaningless—all this had not been enough to sustain them in the face of too much history. They were discouraged and ill-fed and worried, like everybody else.
    He bought some cotton candy. Barbara took two or three licks and then handed it to him. Pink, oversweet, and hairy,
it
hadn’t changed; it was just the way he remembered it from his childhood. Wisps clung to his cheeks. He couldn’t finish it. He got out his handkerchief and wiped his chin. “Shall we go?” he asked.
    They