212
DAVID JACKSON
Walter was little more than bored with her and her rapt con–
centration on Nicolas. When he discovered that her husband was
the tall, husky, frequently drunk man he had stayed clear of
in
several bars, the matter took on another light.
This
was
all
brought to a head one long night Mary Jane and Nicolas spent
in Walter's
salone
drinking Walter's last bottle of
gin
and smok–
ing two marijuana cigarettes. Walter heard it all from his bed–
room where Nicolas had locked him, and they heard Walter
crying to himself, "A scandal! Throw them out! Her husband
is
over six teet taUf"
"Listen, Norman," Nicolas called back, "you're not beauti–
· ful enough for us out here!" And then he went on to tell
Mary
.. Jane she must stop nursing her husband in his drinking and
go
forth with the saints and angels. Mary Jane, who had somehow
.supplied the cigarettes as the price of admission to an evening
with her hero sighed, agreed, and listened. Walter sighed and
listened, too, and as far as he could tell Nicolas's attentions were
limited to advice and the improvisations of several long poems,
but would Mary Jane's husband believe it?
"Poco probabile,"
·he muttered before, near dawn, he fell into a troubled sleep.
When he awoke he found his door unlocked and without hesitat–
ing rushed out, bought a train ticket to Munich and returned.
Mter much shouting and threatening, Nicolas was put on the
late afternoon train North. Walter also provided three ten dollar
traveler's checks, an amount which happened to be all his ready
·cash as well as three dollars short of return fare.
You arrive in Munich on that train in the early morning.
You have passed the mountains and towns of Austria in the
night- although later Nicolas liked to say, "Man, there they were,
those
Alps,
lookin like ]
ederman
in
Lederhosen
and
I
yelled
'Guten
Tag!'
out the window and they all looked at me on that
train."
Actually, he spent the time dozing and fli pping idly through
the pages of a book on Greek myths, the margins of which he
had used for memorandums of addresses and other useful in-
