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PARTISAN REVIEW
not come into play. I also mentioned that there was no love lost on his father,
otherwise the attachment to his memory would have disappeared. What
then? I often racked my brain over it. Perhaps a single meager clue might
explain the mystery. Sir Harold had found the engraving and bought it
shortly before his wife's tragic death. That might have been what tied Mal–
cohn to the Eye of Providence and filled him - as I said earlier - with a su–
perstitious dread. I wondered ifhe actually remembered his mother or re–
membered her only very indistinctly, and if he thought the enormous and
constantly changing Eye might be her glance from beyond the grave. Some–
how full of recrimination and grievance, and yet at the same time protective
like a talisman? But I am digressing and indulging in literary divagations, so
you have every right to cut me off without mercy. I am a writer by trade,
however, so I cannot think about your beloved "(acts only" apart (i-om their
deeper and mostly secret context. Each of us has his own professional de–
formation, I as well as you."
"My professional deformation must now take over, I am afraid. I don't
imagine that you have much to add about Malcolm 's honeymoon years, al–
though you might like to amuse yourself with the proliferation or rather the
repetition of reasons for their domestic bliss. I think I am ready , however, to
go on to the next chapter."
''The next chapter means jumping ahead to last year, 1970. The only
way I can tell you about it is by lumping together what 1 actually witnessed
and what I gathered from Malcolm only in bits and pieces right after Tom
Patano disappeared. But I will stick to the chronology of the events. I can't
see any other way to give any kind of clear and coherent account. At the
end ofJuly they called a meeting of Magna Grecia in Sicily. It was to take
place in Erice, that splendid medieval town outside Trapani. It was a special
meeting, because it seems there were plans to amalgamate the Neapolitan
and the Sicilian Lodges. They did not count on a large turnout of members at
the peak of the summer holidays, but Malcolm let himselfbe persuaded and
went. He took Tom with him, and they stayed in a hotel in Trapani. On the
day ofthe meeting he left his companion in the hotel and went to Erice early
in the morning. The meeting was held in the crypt of an abandoned Francis–
can monastery three kilometers outside Erice, where an extremely intelligent
old priest did the honors of the house. A masonic gathering in a holy albeit
deconsecrated sanctuary with a cleric playing host? That was actually the
case. And the setting was rather out of the ordinary. There was a long re–
fectory table, the skulls oflong-dead monks were piled up in a pyramid in one
corner of the chamber, and the ceiling was speckled with drowsing bats
hanging from it. There was a tall heavy-set man with a gloomy face in the
Sicilian contingent who was treated with particular respect. They called him
