THE ENGLISH GARDENS
239
realized he had missed an opportunity. He still wanted company,
he had not been lying to Mary Jane when he told her he had
had
the company of Munich bars. Besides, there was the ques–
tion of where to sleep. Nicolas convinced himself he had felt only
a tentative rejection in Meredith's departure. An eternal optim–
ism gripped him on days when things went well. This was cer–
tainly one of them. He believed in wringing such days dry. Seize
the moment! he might have said (and he would be saying when
he read and approved of Emerson). He stood there ignoring
several people and reasoning that, yes, for her treatment of him
he had been paid back by Mary Jane, but for this poem about
Beatniks Meredith still owed him something. Next, he was out–
side the door of the bar and inside a crowded Volkswagen about
to leave those parts and willing enough to have him along. He
fell into the back seat and cried, "Let me off up there around
Pfy-fey-fee-lish, how-the-hell-you-say-it Platz." That got a laugh.
He got another laugh when he lay back on three sets of knees
and said, "Keep your hands off Nicolas's
lunch!"
(One of them
who had had a scholarship out in Wisconsin translated for the
others.)
Twelve minutes later he was unlatching the bars at Mere–
dith's window. Then he was in the dark room.
There was a vast silence in and around the Grafin's pension,
the past midnight silence of a house of the genteel poor. Some
silences, such as this one, reduce even burglars to a nervous
fumbling state. Hardened types, old timers, have complained that
the worst feature of the trade is the darkness and silence-there
is no way to train for it. Nicolas whispered, "Hey, man, hey,
Meredith!" and nothing but the dark responded. He tried again,
the same ominous silence replied. He panicked. He felt out for
things. He touched a chair. He found the pleated paper lamp–
shade but he failed to remember that European lamps have the
switch on the cord. And then his hands, as once before, groped
along the narrow coldnesses of books---this time he cursed them.
He came to a corner, more books. The smooth forearm of a
