OUR LAST POET
dictive. At the same time, he must always avoid the appearance of
neglect or unconcern, for this is how Monte de la Roche (J.F.'s keen–
est rival) had lost
his
last poet not two weeks before. The fellow had
pined, and then had gone off to face the virtual certainty of starv.ation
in the Chinese army. J.F. knew that he would one day be forced to
endure the temporary defection of De Parter, and only hoped that
something good would come of it.
3.
On the fourth day, at noon, De Parter reached the foot of the
nameless chain of mountains tow.ard which he had been walking.
It
was nothing more than a heap of gravel, by our standards of beauty,
but there must have been something attractive about it, for he started
to climb without stopping, looking back only once to locate the
pursuers.
They later reported that they were very tired, but m.anaged to
keep up with the poet quite easily, for he didn't seem to have any
intention of losing them. It was almost as if he had accepted their
company by now.
At two o'clock, working his way up a dry canyon, and now a
good seven or eight hundred feet above the valley floor, he came upon
a small spring and drank while they waited below him. Then he con–
tinued a short distance and waited for them, but they could hardly
have lost him anyway, because the canyon walls were sheer at that
point, and the climb ahead was steeper. After they had drunk, all three
continued to climb in silence, and this went on for two more hours
while the canyon became enveloped in shadow. The reflection of
another sunset w.as creeping up the eastern wall when De Parter,
after crawling around a rock that was at least fifty feet high, dis–
covered that he was in a cul-de-sac, and faced around toward his
pursuers. They stopped at once, and prepared for .another conver–
sation.
"Look," said De Parter, standing calmly before them, "Back in
there, it's a trap. I can't go forward, and I'll be goddamned if I'll
go
back, so here I stay. I want to tell you to leave me alone, .and if
you try to take me out, I'll fight."
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