"Oh, lost!" he reflected amidst the Neos, surveying the
kingdom he had once staked out as his own. He wept over the
statue of Achilles Fallen as though it were his own. It was.
As in a mirror, he regarded himself in a handy collage of
bolts and nutshells. "If you had not sold out," he accused, "if
_you_ had hung on a little longer--like these, the simplest of
Art's creatures...But no! It could not be!
"Could it?" he addressed a particularly symmetrical mobile
overhead. "_Could_ it?"
"Perhaps," came an answer from nowhere, which sent him
flying back to his pedestal.
But little came of it. The watchman had been taking guilty
delight in a buxom Rubens on the other side of the building and
had not overheard the colloquy. Smith decided that the reply
signified his accidental nearing of Dharana. He returned to the
Path, redoubling his efforts toward negation and looking
Beaten.
In the days that followed he heard occasional chuckling and
whispering, which he at first dismissed as the chortlings of the
children of Mara and Maya, intent upon his distractions. Later, he
was less certain, but by then he had decided upon a classical attitude
of passive inquisitiveness.
And one spring day, as green and golden as a poem by Dylan
Thomas, a girl entered the Greek Period and looked about,
furtively. He found it difficult to maintain his marbly
placidity, for lo! she began to disrobe!
And a square parcel on the floor, in a plain wrapper. It
could only mean...
Competition!
He coughed politely, softly, classically...
She jerked to an amazing attention, reminding him of a
women's underwear ad having to do with Thermopylae. Her hair
was the correct color for the undertaking--that palest shade of
Parian manageable--and her gray eyes glittered with the
icy-orbed intentness of Athene.
She surveyed the room minutely, guiltily, attractively...
"Surely stone is not susceptible to virus infections," she
decided. "'Tis but my guilty conscience that cleared its
throat. Conscience, thus do I cast thee off!"
And she proceeded to become Hecuba Lamenting, diagonally
across from the Beaten Gladiator and fortunately, not facing in
his direction. She handled it pretty well, too, he grudgingly
admitted. Soon she achieved an esthetic immobility. After a
period of appraisal he decided that Athens was indeed mother of
all the arts; she simply could not have carried it as
Renaissance nor Romanesque. This made him feel rather good.
When the great doors finally swung shut and the alarms had
been set she heaved a sigh and sprang to the floor.
"Not yet," he cautioned, "the watchman will pass through
in ninety-three seconds."
She had presence of mind sufficient to stifle her scream,
a delicate hand with which to do it, and eighty-seven seconds
in which to become Hecuba Lamenting once more. This she did,
and he admired her delicate hand and her presence of mind for
the next eighty-seven seconds.
The watch man came, was nigh, was gone, flashlight and beard bobbing
in musty will o' the-wispfulness through the gloom.
"Goodness!" she expelled her breath. "I had thought I was
alone!"
"And correctly so," he replied. "'Naked and alone we come
into exile...Among bright stars on this most weary unbright
cinder, lost...Oh, lost--'"
"Thomas Wolfe," she stated.
"Yes," he sulked. "Let's go have supper."
"Supper?" she inquired, arching her eyebrows. "Where? I
had brought some K-Rations, which I purchased at an Army
Surplus Store--"
"Obviously," he retorted, "you have a short-timer's
attitude. I believe that chicken figured prominently on the
menu for today. Follow me!"
They made their way through the Tang Dynasty, to the
stairs.
"Others might find it chilly in here after hours," he
began, "but I daresay you have thoroughly mastered the
techniques of breath control?"
"Indeed," she replied, "my fiancee was no mere Zen
faddist. He followed the more rugged path of Lhasa. Once he
wrote a modern version of the Ramayana, full of topical
allusions and advice to modern society."
"And what did modern society think of it?"
"Alas! Modern society never saw it. My parents bought him
a one-way ticket to Rome, first-class, and several hundred
dollars worth of Travelers' Checks. He has been gone ever
since. That is why I have retired from the world."
"I take it your parents do not approve of Art?"
"No, and I believe they must have threatened him also."
He nodded.
"Such is the way of society with genius. I, too, in my
small way, have worked for its betterment and received but
scorn for my labors."
"Really?"