The cunning man.

He was going out of Paris as he had come in.

Did he feel the same in life?

And, if he could last, no doubt he had time for one last defense of his integrity, his virtue, should that be what he sought.

I caught another fragmentary glimpse of him through the transport window as it drove past. He did not turn to look out the milky back portal, but sat, shoulders sagging, head down, chin resting on his thin-ribbed chest, perhaps staring at the floor or his hands folded together in his lap, lost in visions of his own.

I think I know what he wanted to ask me on le pont de la Tournelle:

— Did we have a part in it?

Perhaps I would have replied, after a time:

— I suppose it depends on how you understand things.

He would have waited, choosing silence.

— Did crapping on a table, finger-painting with your own shit, lead — however infinitesimally — to that? The color and guts of a vowel? A narrow skull, pale blue eyes, lank hair, a bestial nature? All part or particle?

I believe, by then, that I might have had his full attention.

Friday, March 2, Harar, Abyssinia

The next time I saw him, it was years earlier. He had, of all things, invited me to tea. Can you imagine! Tea! Did he mean it, could he possibly, actually, mean to give me tea, and to sit, perhaps have a cigarette or two and some quiet conversation in a cool sitting room, shaded from the outside by a giant palm and two mulberries just beyond the French doors leading to a little, enclosed patio?

No leaps, no catapults of the mind? No cursing? No complaining of boredom?

No talk of bowels, vowels, or visions?

Astonishing.

Perhaps, I imagined as I strolled over to his squarish, comfortable home, two dogs, an ostrich, and somebody’s runny-nosed child running around in the front yard, we would discuss the weather or the places we knew in Paris.

Perhaps we would sit in an uncomfortable silence, saying nothing.

In fact, it was a party of sorts. A tea party.

Among the handful of guests were de Gaspary, the French merchant and négrier, or slave trader; Charest, the Belgian coffee merchant; Dejaz, the agent of King Menelik; Lucardio, the Corsican gun runner (what else would a Corsican do?); and the ubiquitous Agib, caravanier and seeker of opportunity and advantage. They spoke six languages at once — French, Flemish, Italian, Arabic, Amharic, Somali — and argued pleasantly over the best trade routes, the worst villages, the depredations of the English, the corruptions and duplicities of the French governor in Obock. They talked about who they knew to be spies for one country or another and good-naturedly (and rightly, I imagine) assumed that they all had been or were or would be again — and disputed the price of coffee, cartridges, olives, and more. They argued over who had knifed so-and-so, or who had ordered it and who had paid for it, or whether so-and-so had really cut himself from ear-to-ear while shaving.