Freunde verlassenden, Folget kein Segen, ach! his father — the lightest, sweetest, least heroic of tenors — gently lullabies. — A wave slaps Claude in the face, and sobbing the ocean he says, Yeah, I know, Pop: Who forsakes their friends no blessing follows on their way. . But Martin Evenrude can’t hear him — he’s already ten feet down and sinking fast. His worsted coat-tails have drifted up to cover his head — while his snappy hat floats up-ended on the surface and his final words are fast dying away in the velvety canyons of his hopped-up son’s head: You’re . . dead . . toooo . . — Close it up, man! Close it up! the Chaplain shouts right in Claude’s face. He has a sparse blond moustache, through the salt-encrusted strands of which Claude can admire. . the resolution of his lip. Is. That. An. Extra. Vest? the Chaplain wheezes. He himself has none, and has swum to and fro across the sea’s buckled deck plates tying the dying boys’ life-vests back together so that. . the cir-cle will be un-bro-ken, by and by, Lord, by and by . . — Give it here, man, give it here! His lustful hands paw at Claude’s waist, struggling with. . my garter belt — what’s a girl to do? Claude retaliates: shrugging out of his own now useless vest, he tears away from Gorecki’s embrace — then, propelling the murdered kid’s one before him, he kicks out for the wave crest beyond the wave crest beyond this one. . — A wave crest beyond which he can see the familiar flying-V pediment of the Fairfield State Hospital Administration Building, supported by its austerely slim white columns, as it slices through the ocean’s heaving skin. . leaving no wake. It’s crazy to think he’ll be able to catch up with the hospital — a delusion that’s laid its febrile hands on plenty of the others: Claude’s seen it help them out of their uncomfy vests and into the waves’ embrace. He’s heard their crazy babbling as they’ve swum off — foolishness concerning the creamily streamlined shapes they could see cruising along the horizon: Luxy hotels with shady patios staffed by smiling waiters serving ice-cold cocktails in glasses choked with fruit. Others of the damned — who Claude considered more inventive — waved their arms vigorously in greeting, then struck out for a passing desert island, shouting to the boys left behind that they could see Esther Williams, naked as the day she was born, frolicking in the crystalline waters of its lagoon. Yet more — the ones Claude reserved his most fulsome contempt for — broke the circle only to dive beneath the surface, because, they cried, they were twice-saved! — For what should they see rising up from the deep but the resurrecting ship, which, as she came, sucked up, through the jagged gashes the torpedoes had torn in her hull, all the dreck — the dud life-rafts, the unused ammo boxes, the matchwood furniture, the pissed-upon mattresses, the three-thousand-times triplicated telexes of never-to-be-fulfilled orders, the tar babies and the skin-fucking-angels — she’d spewed out when she went down. — This may’ve been the snafu at the end of the world, Claude thinks as he dips and rises, his legs scissoring. . but how could I know ’til it happened to me exactly how convincing it would be? — There, without question, is the Admin. Building, its white-painted clock tower a lurching crow’s nest, its wings wide open to receive him in their warm, red-brick embrace. If he were only Plastic Man he could stretch out an arm, flip his hand round a column. . and winch myself in. Ssshhh-huh, ssshhh-huh, ssshhh-huh — Claude’s breath roars in his ears — ssshhh-huh, ssshhh-huh, ssshhh-huh — and then:. . the sea’s gone! The sea, with all its multitudinous movements adding up to produce. . an absolute stasis. Claude cannot move his head, and, although his view is fish-bowled, there can be no doubt about it. . I’ve arrived: this is indisputably the association area of Canaan House. Ssshhh-huh, ssshhh-huh, ssshhh-huuuooo. . Claude’s panting clouds floorboards mellowed by decades of dirt and polish, floorboards that spread all the way to the tall twelve-paned sash windows, with here and there a scrap of carpet floating on their waxy-brown expanse. On these atolls are groups of mismatched chairs — cosy Windsor and Morris, stiffer wicker and Brewster — the habitations of the Canaanites, who, hunched and muttering, perform their ritual sacrifices: setting fire to Philip Morris and R. J. Reynolds, then watching their smoke chiffon up to a coffered sky of cracked and sepia plaster from which hang. . eight oblong fluorescent suns. — Why Fairfield? He might’ve been rescued by any of the other state institutions and VA hospitals he’s patronised over the years — or Lexington, or a drunk tank in a big city lock-up, or indeed Rikers, where he did a twenty-eight-day stretch in ’49, or — before his brother, Gertie, wrested away control of Pop’s trust and Claude hit the skids — one of the old-style convalescent homes that hung up their shingles to the south of Washington Square. — Such as that quack Doctor Herbert’s, where Claude would lie in cloistral repose, loaded on phenobarbital. . reds. . MS. . anything he wanted, in fact, so long as he hit on the good croaker in the approved roundabout way. — And why this particular day — this time? Chow time, because here comes Claude’s doppelgänger, shuffling up the line, his moulded plastic tray in his trembling hand. — Seeing himself like this: stiff creases in his charity blue jeans, his red-and-white knitted ski sweater too tight, his hospital-issue slippers pitifully flipflopping — Claude feels a compassion he’s only ever able to experience when he’s. . dissociated — yes, I’m dissociating . . Dissociating also from the other patients, two of whom, as Claude shuffles on to their chair-island, shuffle discreetly off. — Tears pricking his fixated eyes, Claude thinks, I was a tough guy then, capable of blowing the goddamn snoot off anyone who crossed me, the way I’d mine blown off at OCS. Hell, I’d still grab ass when it came near enough and kick up a ruckus if I was crossed. Things got too wiggy, and they threatened me with the jolt. . or the knife, I’d bring it right down again, sweet ’n’ low — make with the goody-lucid-two-shoes the way they wanted.The belligerent jut of Claude’s bearded jaw as he drops into a glider and begins to rock ’n’ roll, the digging of his elbow as he wields his plastic spork. . my gook-eyed stare — all of it is expressly calculated to intimidate anybody: stick-body patients, tight-ass shrinks, bullying orderlies, spectral grey ladies and callow candy-stripers. . but not this one! — As the tall young man with the long reddish curls brushed back from his bulging forehead comes striding through the swing door, Claude at last understands why here, and why now: