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sensation—No help in sight, the utter helpless-ness up, down, around—The stars, rooftops, dusty swirls, streetlamps, cold storefronts, vistas at street-ends where you know the earthflat just continues on and on into a round February the roundness of which and warm ball of which wont be vouchsafed us Slav-level fools as but flat—Flat as a tin pan—So for winds to swail across, a man oughta lie down on his back on a cold night and miss those winds—No thought, no hope of the mind can dispel, nay no millions in the bank, can break, the truth of the Winter night and that we are not made for this world—Stones yes, grass and trees for all their green return I’d say no to judge from their dead brownness tonight—A million may buy a hearth, but a hearth wont buy rich safety—
    Gerard divines that all of this is pure division, a grief of separation, the cold is cold because there are two to know it, the cold and he who is en-colded—“If it wasnt for that, like in Heaven, . . .”
    â€œAnd Mama has a headache, aw God why’d you do all this this suffering?”
    En route back with the aspirins he hears a forlorn rumble in Ennell Street, it’s the old junkman coming back from some over extended work somewhere in windswept junkslopes, his horse is steaming, his steel-on-wood-wheels are grinding grit on grit and stone on stone and wind swirls dust about his burlaps, as he smiles that tooth-smile of the cold between embittered lips, you see the suffering of his mitts and the weeping in his beard, the woe—Going home to some leaky rafter—To count his rusty corsets and by-your-leaves and tornpaper accounts and pile-alls—To die on his heap of mistakes, finally, and what was gained in emptiness you’ll never find debited or credited in any account—What the preachers say not excepted—“Poor old man, he hasnt got a nice warm kitchen, he hasnt got a mother, he hasnt got a little sister and little brother and Papa, he’s alone under the hole under the open stars—If it was all together in one ball of wool—!—” The horse’s hooves strike sparks, the wheels labor to turn into West Sixth, the whole shebang sorrows out of sight—Gerard approaches our house, our golden kitchen lights and pauses on the cold porch for one last look up—The stars have nothing to do with anything.
    In some other way, he hopes.
    â€œThere, your little hands are cold—thank you my child—bring me a glass of water—I’ll be all right—Mama’s sick tonight—”
    â€œMama—why is it so cold?”
    â€œDont ask me.”
    â€œWhy did God leave us sick and cold? Why didnt he leave us in Heaven.”
    â€œYou ‘re sure we were there?”
    â€œYes, I’m sure.”
    â€œHow are you sure?”
    â€œBecause it cant be like it is.”
    â€œ Oui ”—Ma in her rare moments when thinking seriously she doesnt admit anything that doesnt ring all the way her bell of mind—“but it is.”
    â€œI dont like it. I wanta go to Heaven. I wish we were all in Heaven.”
    â€œMe too I wish.”
    â€œWhy cant we have what we want?” but as soon as he says that the tears appear in his eyes, as he knows the selfish demand—
    â€œAw Mama, I dont understand.”
    â€œCome come we’ll make some nice hot chocolate!—”
    â€œHot chocolate! ( Du coco !)” cries Ti Nin, and I echo it:
    â€œKlo Klo!”
    The big cocoa deal boils and bubbles chocolating on the stove and soon Gerard forgets—
    If his mortality be the witness of Gerard’s sin, as Augustine Page One immediately announced, then his sin must have been a great deal greater than the sin of mortals who enjoy, millionaires in yachts a-sailing in the South Seas with blondes and secretaries and flasks and engineers and endless hormone pills and Tom Collins Moons and peaceful deaths—The