Being in Dreaming: Chapter 06.

Being in Dreaming ©1991 by Florinda Donner.

Chapter 06.

Dumbfounded, I stared at the guest speaker. In his three-piece suit, short, curly hair, and clean-shaven face, Joe Cortez looked like someone from another time amidst the long-haired, bearded and beaded, casually dressed students in one of the large lecture auditoriums at the University of California in Los Angeles.

Hastily, I slipped into the empty seat in the back row of the packed auditorium; a seat saved for me by the same friend I had gone hiking with in the Santa Susana Mountains.

"Who is he?" I asked her.

Shaking her head in disbelief, she regarded me impatiently, then scribbled Carlos Castaneda on a piece of paper.

"Who in the dickens is Carlos Castaneda?" I asked and giggled involuntarily.

"I gave you his book," she hissed, then added that he was a well-known anthropologist who had done extensive fieldwork in Mexico.

I was about to confide to my friend that the guest speaker was the same man I had met in the mountains the day I had gotten lost.

However, for a very good reason, I did not say anything to her. This man was responsible for almost destroying our friendship; a friendship which I treasured immensely.

My friend had been adamant that day in her opinion that the story about Evans-Pritchard's son was hogwash.

I had insisted that the two men I had just met had nothing to gain by telling me a tall tale. I just knew that they had candidly spoken the truth.

My friend, mad at me for believing them, had called me a gullible fool.

Since neither of us had been willing to yield, our argument had become quite heated.

My friend's husband, hoping to bring us out of our frenzy, had suggested that perhaps I had been told the truth.

Irked by his lack of solidarity with her, my friend had yelled at him to shut up.

We had driven home in a morose state with our friendship strained.

It took a couple of weeks to wash away the bad feeling.

In the meantime, I had tried my information about Evans-Pritchard's son on several people more versed in in anthropologists and anthropological matters than I or my friend were. Needless to say, I was made to feel like an idiot.

Out of stubbornness, I held on to my blind belief that I alone knew the truth.

I had been reared to be practical. If someone lied, it was to gain something that could not be gained otherwise. And I was at a loss to figure out what those men could have had to gain.

I paid little attention to Carlos Castaneda's lecture. I was too absorbed with wondering about his reason for lying to me about his name. Given as I was to deducing other people's motives from a simple statement or an observation, I had a field day trying to search for a clue to his.

But then I remembered that I, too, had given him a false name. And I could not determine why I had done so.

After long mental deliberation, I decided that I had lied because automatically I had not trusted him. He was too self-confident and too cocky to inspire my trust.

My mother had reared me to distrust Latin men, especially if they were not somewhat subservient. She used to say that Latin machos were like bantam cocks, interested only in fighting, eating, and having sex, in that order. And I suppose I had believed her without even thinking about it.

I finally looked at Carlos Castaneda. I could not make heads or tails of what he was talking about. But I became fascinated by his movements.

He seemed to speak with his whole body, and his words, rather than emerging from his mouth, seemed to flow from his hands, which he moved with the gracefulness and agility of a magician.

Boldly, I walked up to him after the lecture.

He was surrounded by students. He was so solicitous and engaging with the women that I automatically despised him.

I said in Spanish, "You have lied to me about your name, Joe Cortez," and I pointed an accusing finger at him.

Holding his hand over his stomach, as if he had received a blow, he gazed at me with the same hesitant and disbelieving expression he had had when he first saw me in the mountains.

Before he recovered from his surprise at seeing me, I added, "It is also a lie that your friend Gumersindo is the son of Evans-Pritchard. Is it not?"

He made a pleading gesture for me not to say any more.

He did not seem to be in the least embarrassed.

There was such plain and simple wonder in his eyes that my righteous wrath was stopped short.

Gently, he held me by the wrist, as if afraid I would leave.

After he finished talking with the students, he silently led me to a secluded bench shaded by a gigantic pine tree in the north campus.

"All this is so strange that I am truthfully speechless," he said in English as we sat down.

He gazed at me as if he still could not believe I was sitting beside him.

He mused, "I never thought I would find you again.

"After we left, my friend- his name, by the way, is Nestor- and I discussed you at great length.

"We concluded that you were a semi-apparition."

He abruptly changed to Spanish and said that they even went back to the place where they had left me in the hope of finding me.

"Why did you want to find me?" I asked in English; confident that he would respond in English that he went there because he liked me.

In Spanish, there is no way to say that one just likes someone else. The response has to be more florid, and at the same time more precise. In Spanish, a person can either happen to evoke a good feeling, or arouse total passion.

My candid question plunged him into a long silence. He seemed to be fighting whether he ought to speak or not.

At last, he said that finding me in the fog that afternoon had caused him a profound upheaval.

His face was enraptured as he revealed all this, and his voice betrayed the deepest awe as he added that finding me in the lecture room had been nearly the end of him.

"Why?" I asked, my vanity pricked.

I instantly regretted it because I was convinced he was going to tell me he was head over heels in love with me, and that would have been too disturbing. I would not have known how to respond.

"It is a very long story," he said, still in a pensive mood.

He puckered his lips, as if he were talking to himself, rehearsing what he was going to say next.

I knew the signs of a man who is preparing to make his pitch. In order to head him off in a different direction, I said, "I have not read your work. What is it about?"

"I have written a couple of books about sorcery," he replied.

I asked, "What kind of sorcery? Voodoo, spiritualism, or what?"

With a note expectation in his voice, he asked, "Do you know anything about sorcery?"

I responded, "Of course I do. I grew up with it.

"I spent a great deal of time in the coastal region of Venezuela. It is an area that is famous for its sorcerers.

"Most summers of my childhood were spent with a family of witches."

Carlos asked, "Witches?"

"Yes," I said, pleased with his reaction. "I had a nanny who is a witch.

"She was a black woman from Puerto Cabello. She took care of me until I was an adolescent. Both my parents worked, and when I was a child, they were quite happy to leave me in her care.

"She could handle me much better than either of my parents. She would let me do as I pleased.

"My parents, of course, let her take me everywhere. During the school holidays she would take me with her to visit her family.

"It was not her biological family but her witch family. Although I was not allowed to participate in any of their rituals and trance sessions, I did manage to see a great deal."

He regarded me curiously, as if he did not believe me.

Then he asked with a bemused smile, "What made her a witch?"

"All sorts of things. She killed chickens and offered them to the Gods in exchange for favors. She and her fellow witches- men and women- would dance until they would go into a trance. She recited secret incantations that had the power to heal her friends and injure her enemies. Her specialty was love potions. She prepared them with medicinal plants and all sorts of bodily refuse, such as menstrual blood, nail clippings, and hair, preferably pubic hair. She made amulets for good luck in gambling or in matters of love."

"And your parents allowed all this?" he asked in disbelief.

"At home, no one knew about it, except myself and my nanny's clients, of course," I explained. "She made house calls, as any doctor would.

"All she ever did at home was to burn candles behind the toilet bowl whenever I had nightmares. Since it seemed to help me and there was no danger of anything catching fire amidst the tiles, my mother openly allowed her to do this."

He suddenly stood up and began to laugh.

"What is so funny?" I asked, wondering whether he thought I had made it all up. "It is the truth, I assure you."

Carlos said, with a serious face, "You assert something to yourself, and as far as you are concerned, once you make the assertion it turns into the truth."

"But I told you the truth," I insisted, certain that he was referring to my nanny.

"I can see through people," he said calmly. "For instance, I see you are convinced that I am going to make a pass at you. You have convinced yourself about it and now it is the truth. That is what I am talking about."

I tried to say something, but indignation took my breath away. I would have liked to run away. But that would have been too humiliating.

He frowned slightly, and I had the unpleasant impression that he knew what I was feeling.

My face got red. I trembled with suppressed anger.

Nonetheless, within moments I felt extraordinarily calm. It was not due to any conscious effort on my part; yet I had the distinct sensation that something in me had shifted.

I had the vague recollection that I had gone through a similar experience before, but my memory faded away as fast as it came.

"What are you doing to me?" I muttered.

"I just happen to see through people," he said in a contrite tone. "Not all the time and certainly not with everybody, but only with the people I am intimately associated with.

"I do not know why I can see through you."

His sincerity was apparent. He seemed much more baffled than I was.

He sat down again and moved closer to me on the bench.

We remained in total silence for a while. It was a most pleasant experience to be able to drop all effort at making conversation and not feel that I was being stupid.

I looked up at the sky. It was cloudless and transparent like blue glass.

A soft breeze blew through the pine branches, and the needles fell on us like a gentle rain.

Then the breeze turned into a wind, and the dry, yellow, fallen leaves of the nearby sycamore blew toward us.

They swirled around us with a soft, rhythmic sound. In one abrupt swoop, the wind carried the leaves high up into the air.

"That was a fine display of the spirit," he murmured. "And it was for you; the wind, and the leaves spinning in the air in front of us.

"The sorcerer I work with would say that that was an omen. Something pointed you out to me, at the precise moment I was thinking that I had better leave. I cannot leave now."

Thinking only about his last statement, I felt inexplicably happy. It was not a triumphant happiness like the kind of glee one feels when getting one's way. It was rather a feeling of profound well-being but it did not last long.

My ponderous self took over suddenly, and demanded that I be rid of those thoughts and feelings. I had no business being there. I had cut a class, missed lunch with my real friends, and missed my daily laps at the pool in the women's gym.

I said, "Perhaps it will be better if I leave."

I intended it as a statement of relief, but when I said it, it sounded as if I were feeling sorry for myself- which somehow I was. But instead of leaving, I asked him, as casually as I could, whether he had always been able to see through people.

His kind tone clearly betrayed that he was conscious of my inner turmoil as he said, "No, not always. The old sorcerer I work with has recently taught me how."

I asked, "Do you think that he could teach me, too?"

He replied, "Yes, I think he would."

He seemed amazed at his own statement, and said, "If he feels about you the way I do, he will certainly try to."

Slowly coming out of my agitation, I timidly asked, "Did you know about sorcery before?"

Carlos said, "In Latin America everybody thinks that they know, and I believed I did. In that sense, you remind me of myself. Like you, I was convinced that I knew what sorcery was. But then, when I really encountered it, it was not like I thought it was."

I asked, "How was it?"

He confided, "Simple. So simple that it is scary.

"We think that sorcery is scary because of its malignancy. The sorcery I encountered is not malignant at all, and because of that, it is the scariest thing there is."

I interrupted him, and commented that he must be referring to white as opposed to black sorcery.

He impatiently snapped at me, saying, "Do not talk nonsense, damn it!"

The shock of hearing him speak to me in that manner was so great that I gasped for breath. I was instantly thrown back into turmoil.

He turned his face to avoid my gaze.

He had dared to yell at me. I became so angry I thought I was going to have a fit. My ears were buzzing. I saw dark spots in front of my eyes.

I would have hit him, if he had not jumped out of my reach so swiftly.

As he sat down again, Carlos said, "You are very undisciplined. And quite violent. Your nanny must have indulged your every whim, and treated you as if you were made of precious glass."

Seeing my scowling frown, he went on to say that he had not really yelled at me out of impatience or anger.

Then to explain, he added, "It does not matter to me personally whether you listen or not. But it matters to someone else on whose behalf I shouted at you. Someone who is watching us."

I was perplexed at first, then uneasy. I looked all around me, wondering whether his sorcerer teacher might be watching us.

He ignored me, and went on, saying, "My father never mentioned to me that we have a constant witness. And he never mentioned it because he did not know it. Just as you, yourself, do not know it."

My raspy, angry voice reflected my feelings at the moment as I asked, "What kind of nonsense are you talking about?"

He had yelled at me, and he had insulted me. I resented that he was talking his head off as if nothing had happened. If he believed that I was going to overlook his actions, he was in for a surprise. Smiling at him maliciously, I thought to myself, "You will not get away with it. Not with me, buddy."

Carlos explained with an angelic smile, "I am talking about a force, an entity, or a presence which is neither a force, nor an entity, nor a presence.

He seemed totally oblivious to my belligerent mood. "Sounds like gibberish, but it is not.

"I am referring to something that only sorcerers know about. They call it the spirit; our personal watcher, our perennial witness."

I do not know exactly how or what precise word triggered it, but suddenly he had my full attention.

He went on talking about this force, which he said was not God or anything to do with religion or morality, but an impersonal force, a power that was there for us to use if we only learned to reduce ourselves to nothing.

He even held my hand, and I did not mind it. In fact, I liked the feel of his strong, soft touch. I became morbidly fascinated with the strange power he had over me. I was aghast that I longed to sit with him on that bench indefinitely with my hand in his.

He went on talking. And I went on listening to every word he said. But at the same time I perversely wondered when he was going to grab my leg, for I knew that he was not going to have enough with my hand, and I could not do anything to stop him. Or was it that I did not want to do anything to stop him?

He explained that he had been as careless and undisciplined as one could be, but that he never knew the difference because he was imprisoned by the mood of the time.

"What is the mood of the time?" I asked in a rough, unfriendly voice, lest he think I was enjoying being with him.

"Sorcerers call it the modality of the time," he said. "In our day, it is the concern of the middle class. I am a middle-class man, just like you are a middle-class woman."

I interrupted him rudely by yanking my hand out of his, and saying, "Classifications of that nature do not hold any validity. They are simply generalizations."

I scowled at him suspiciously. There was something startlingly familiar about his words, but I could not think where I had heard them before, or what significance I was attaching to them.

Yet I was sure those words had a very vital significance for me if I could only recall what I already knew about them.

He said jovially, "Do not give me this social scientist gaff. I am as aware of it as you are."

Giving in to a wave of total frustration, I took his hand and bit it.

Before he recovered from his surprise, I instantly mumbled, "I am truly sorry about that. I do not know why I did it. I have not bitten anyone since I was a child."

I sidled to the far edge of the bench, in readiness for his retaliation. It did not come.

He rubbed his hand in a dazed sort of way, but all he said was, "You are absolutely primitive."

I let out a deep sigh of relief. His power over me was shattered.

And then I remembered that I had an old score to settle with him. He had turned me into the laughingstock of my anthropology student friends.

I tried to arouse my anger as I said, "Let us go back to our original problem. Why did you tell me all that nonsense about Evans-Pritchard's son? You must have realized that I was going to make a fool of myself."

I watched him carefully. I was certain that confronting him like this after the bite would finally break his self-control, or at least rattle him. I expected him to yell, and to lose his confidence and impudence.

But he remained unperturbed. He took a deep breath and adopted a serious expression.

He began in a light, casual tone, saying, "I know that it looks like a simple case of people telling tall tales for their amusement, but it is more complex than that."

He chuckled softly, then reminded me that he had not known at that time that I was a student of anthropology, or that I would make a fool of myself.

He paused for a moment, as if searching for the proper words, then he shrugged helplessly and added, "I really can not explain to you now why I introduced my friend to you as Evans-Pritchard's son, unless I tell you much more about myself and my aims; and that is not practical."

I asked, "Why not?"

He answered, "Because the more you know about me, the more entangled you will become."

He regarded me thoughtfully, and I could see in his eyes that he was sincere. He added, "And I do not mean a mental entanglement. I mean you will become personally entangled with me."

This was such a blatant display of gall that I regained all my confidence.

I fell back on my well-tried sarcastic laughter, and said in a cutting tone, "You are perfectly disgusting. I know your kind. You are the typical example of the conceited Latin macho I have battled with all my life."

Seeing the expression of surprise on his face, I pressed on in my most haughty tone, "How dare you to think that I will be entangled with you?"

He did not become red in the face as I expected. He slapped his knee, and laughed uproariously as if that was the funniest thing he had ever heard. And to my utter dismay, he began to tickle me in the ribs as if I were a child.

I was ticklish, and afraid to laugh, so with indignation I screeched, "How dare you to touch me!"

I stood up to leave. I was shaking. And then I shocked myself even further by sitting down again.

Seeing that he was about to tickle me again, I curled my hands into fists, and held them before me. I warned him, saying, "I will smash your nose if you touch me again."

Thoroughly unconcerned by my threat, he reclined his head against the back of the bench, and closed his eyes.

He laughed gaily, a deep chortling laugh that made him shiver all over, and turning sideways toward me he said, "You are a typical German girl who grew up surrounded by brown people."

"How do you know I am German? I never told you that," I said in a faltering voice that I had intended to be softly menacing.

He said, "I knew that you were German when I first met you. You confirmed it the moment you lied that you were Swedish. Only Germans born in the New World after the Second World War lie like that. That is, of course, if they live in the United States."

Although I was not going to admit this to him, he was right.

I often felt people's hostility as soon as they learned that my parents were Germans; in their eyes it automatically made us Nazis.

It did not make any difference when I told them that my parents were idealists.

Of course, I had to admit to myself that, like good Germans, they believed that their kind were inherently better; but basically they were gentle souls who had been apolitical all lives.

I pointed out acidly, "All I did was to agree with you. You saw blond hair, blue eyes, high cheekbones, and all you could think of was a Swede. You are not very imaginative, are you?"

I pushed my advantage. "You had no business lying yourself, unless you are a frigging liar by nature," I went on, my voice rising against my will. Tapping his chest with my index finger I added derisively, "Joe Cortez, eh?"

Is your name really Cristina Gebauer?" he shot back, imitating my odious, loud voice.

"Carmen Gebauer!" I shouted, offended that he had not remembered the name correctly.

Then, suddenly ashamed of my outburst, I went into a chaotic defense of myself.

After a few moments, realizing that I did not know what I was saying, I abruptly stopped and confessed that I was indeed German, and that Carmen Gebauer was the name of a childhood friend.

"I like that," he said softly, a barely suppressed grin on his lips. Whether he was referring to my lying or to my confession I could not tell.

His eyes were brimming with kindness and with amusement. In a tender, wistful voice he proceeded to tell me the story of his childhood girlfriend, Fabiola Kunze.

Confused by his reaction, I turned away and gazed at the nearby sycamore and the pine trees beyond.

Then, eager to hide my interest in his story, I began to play with my fingernails. I pushed back the cuticles and peeled off the nail polish, methodically and thoughtfully.

The story of Fabiola Kunze resembled my own life so closely that after a few moments I forgot all about my pretense at indifference and listened to him attentively.

I suspected that he was fabricating the story, and yet I had to give him credit for coming up with details that only a daughter of a German family in the New World would know.

Fabiola allegedly was mortally afraid of dark Latin boys, but she was equally afraid of the Germans. The Latins scared her because of their irresponsibility; the Germans, because they were so predictable.

I had to restrain myself from laughing out loud when he described the scene of Fabiola's home on a Sunday afternoon when two dozen Germans would sit around a table beautifully set with the best china, silver, and crystal, and Fabiola would have to listen to two dozen monologues that passed for conversation.

As he went on giving specific details of those Sunday afternoons, I began to feel more and more uncomfortable.

There was Fabiola's father prohibiting political debates in his house but compulsively aiming at starting one, and his seeking devious ways to tell dirty jokes about Catholic priests.

And her mother's mortal dread; her fine china was in the hands of these clumsy oafs.

His words were cues to which I unconsciously responded. I began to see scenes of my Sunday afternoons like pictures flashed on the wall for my observation.

I was a veritable bundle of nerves. I wanted to stomp and carry on as only I knew how. I wanted to hate this man, but I could not. I wanted vindication, or apologies, but I could not get any from him. I wanted to dominate him. I wanted him to fall in love with me so I could reject him.

Ashamed of my immature feelings, I made a great effort to pull myself together. Pretending to be bored, I leaned toward him and asked, "Why did you lie about your name?"

"I did not lie," he pronounced. "That is my name. I have several names. Sorcerers have different names for different occasions."

"How convenient!" I exclaimed sarcastically.

"Very convenient," he echoed and gave a slight wink, which infuriated me beyond measure.

And then he did something completely outlandish and unexpected. He put his arms around me.

There was no sexual overtone in his embrace. It was the spontaneous, sweet, and simple gesture of a child who wants to comfort a friend. His touch soothed me instantly and so completely that I began to sob uncontrollably.

"I am such a shit," I confessed. "I want to beat you, and look at me. I am in your arms." I was about to add that I was enjoying it when a surge of energy rushed through me.

As if I had awakened From a dream, I pushed him away. "Let go of me," I hissed and stomped away.

I heard him choking with laughter. My outburst had dissipated instantly, so I was not in the least concerned about his chuckles.

I stood rooted to the spot, trembling all over, unable to walk away. And then, as if I had a giant rubber band attached to me, I returned to the bench.

"Do not feel bad," he said kindly.

He seemed to know exactly what it was that was pulling me back to the bench. He patted my back as one does a baby's after a meal.

"It is not what you or I do," he continued. "It is something outside the two of us which is acting upon us.

"It has been acting upon me for a long time. Now I am accustomed to it.

"But I ca not understand why it acts upon you.

"Do not ask me what it is," he said, anticipating my question. "I ca not yet explain it to you."

I was not going to ask him anything anyway. My mind had stopped functioning.

I felt exactly as if I were asleep, dreaming that I was talking.

Moments later, my numbness passed. I felt more animated yet not quite like my usual self. "What is happening to me?" I asked.

He said, "You are being focused and pushed by something that does not come from you. Something is pushing you, using me as a tool. Something is superimposing another criterion on your middle-class convictions."

I said feebly, "Do not start on that middle-class idiocy." It was more like I was pleading with him.

I smiled helplessly, thinking that I had lost my usual gall.

He said, "These, by the way, are not my own opinions or ideas.

"I am like you, strictly a product of middle-class ideology.

"Imagine my horror when I came face to face with a different and more prevailing ideology. It ripped me apart."

I asked meekly with a voice so low it as barely audible, "What ideology is that?"

"A man brought that ideology to me," he explained. "Or rather, the spirit spoke and acted on me through him.

"That man is a sorcerer. I have written about him. His name is Juan Matus. He is the one who made me face my middle-class mentality.

"Juan Matus once asked me the grand question, 'What do you think university is?'

"I, of course, answered him like a social scientist and said, 'A center of higher learning.'

"He corrected me and declared that a university should be called a 'Middle-Class Institute' because it is the institution we attend to further perfect our middle-class values.

"He said we attend the institute to become professionists. The ideology of our social class tells us that we must prepare ourselves for occupying managerial positions.

"Juan Matus said that men go to the middle-class institute to become engineers, lawyers, doctors, etc., and women go there to get a suitable husband, provider, and father of their children. Suitable is naturally defined by middle-class values."

I wanted to contradict him. I wanted to shout at him that I knew people who were not necessarily interested in a career or looking for a spouse, and that I knew people who were interested in ideas and in learning for its own sake.

But I did not know such people.

I felt a terrible pressure in my chest and had an attack of dry coughing.

It was not the cough or the physical discomfort that made me wriggle in my seat and prevented me from arguing with him. It was the certainty that he was speaking about me. I was going to a university precisely to find a suitable man.

Again I stood up, ready to leave. I had even extended my hand to shake his in farewell when I felt a powerful tug on my back.

It was so strong I had to sit down, lest I fall. I knew he had not touched me. I had been looking at him all the time.

Thoughts of people I did not quite remember; of dreams I had not quite forgotten came crowding into my mind forming an intricate pattern from which I could not extricate myself.

Unknown faces, half-heard sentences, dark images of places, and blurred images of people threw me momentarily into some kind of limbo.

I was close to remembering something about all this kaleidoscope of visualizations and sounds; but the knowledge flittered away, and a feeling of calm and ease overtook me; a tranquility so deep that it screened out all my desire to assert myself.

I stretched my legs in front of me as if I did not have a care in the world, and at the moment I did not. I began to talk.

I could not remember ever talking about myself so frankly before, and I could not fathom why I was suddenly so unguarded with him.

I told him about Venezuela, my parents, my childhood, my restlessness, and my meaningless life. I told him things I would not even admit to myself.

I said, "I have been studying anthropology since last year, and I really do not know why."

I was beginning to feel slightly uncomfortable by my own revelations.

I shifted restlessly on the bench, but I could not stop myself from adding, "Two subjects that interest me more are Spanish and German literature. To be in the anthropology department defies all I know about myself."

Carlos said, "That detail intrigues me to no end. I can not get into it now, but it seems as if I had been placed here for you to find me, or vice versa."

I asked, "What does all this mean?"

Then I realized that I was interpreting and centering everything on my womanhood. I blushed.

He seemed to be thoroughly aware of my state of mind.

He reached for my hand, and pressed it against his heart. He exclaimed dramatically, "Me_gustas, nibelunga."

For good measure, he translated the words into English, saying, "I am passionately attracted to you, Nibelunga."

He looked at me with the eyes of a Latin lover, and then burst into raucous laughter.

He said, "You are convinced that I had to say that to you sooner or later, so it might as well be now."

Instead of getting angry at being teased, I laughed. His humor gave me great pleasure.

The only Nibelungen I knew were from my father's German mythology books. Siegfried and the Nibelungen. As far as I could remember, they were underground, magical, dwarfish beings.

I asked in jest, "Are you calling me a dwarf?"

He protested, "God forbid! I am calling you a German mythical being."

Shortly afterwards, as if it were the only thing we could have done, we drove to the Santa Susana Mountains, to the place we had met.

Neither of us said a single word as we sat on the cliff overlooking the Indian burial ground.

Moved by a pure impulse of companionship, we sat there in silence; oblivious to the afternoon turning into night.