60
PARTISAN REVIEW
the destruction of their property. Everybody was
ill
a rush to get
whatever
kaif
there was left and to join up with us.
"You've become younger again, pal," Arabella told me.
"Where's your hairy belly? Where's your muddled look?"
Indeed, I felt a kind of strange youthful lightness. More and
more easily, happier and happier, I was jumping over the streams of
scorching lava that spread over the cobblestone road. Once, among
dozens of other faces in a piece of broken glass, my reflection flashed
out at me-this, it seems, is how I looked about twenty-five years
ago, in my student days.
Strange transformations in age kept occurring during our
entire procession: the young naturalist, for example, in his shorts
was now resembling a very boring senior lecturer, and the chief of
the secret service-a masturbating schoolboy, one of those who
always hangs about in school restrooms.
"Stop!" the secretary of the City Council suddenly shouted.
"Here's the special-supplies warehouse!"
In front of us were the smoldering ruins of quite an ordinary
house. A black Tiber limousine was ablaze next to it.
"Five minutes before the destruction of the City Council build–
ing, I gave an order to Ananaskin to do a complete inventory," the
secretary of the City Council explained worriedly. "Oh, no,
Arabella, I assure you, I, personally, don't need anything: I'm just
curious what the results were."
The gas tank in the Tiber exploded: a pastorale for the fire–
storm in the background. The door to the special-supplies ware–
house fell off and Ananaskin appeared on the porch, hunched over
from the weight of a huge smoked sturgeon that he was carrying on
his back.
"Here's all I managed to save," he wheezed.
"Dear Ananaskin!" exclaimed Arabella. "Humble secret sup–
plier! Gentle distributor with respect to labor! Are you shaking,
Ananaskin? Take heart! Kiss the yellow-belly and join us."
Moaning, Ananaskin put his mouth to the snake's lips. Some–
one immediately came to his assistance, then a second and a third;
they put their shoulders voluntarily under the beam of sturgeon, its
weighty hulk.
We were drawing near to the top of the Hill of Glory where,
