“The nights were drawing in,” he sighed, “another sad winter coming on. Those womb places, it was all new to me. I liked the new womb places you took me to, their darkness and smallness as much as the youth and the excitement and the clutter. I reached for the truth in those places and it seemed I could see a little in the dark sitting in those places and thinking, at last I can see a little in the dark. And then, stronger—but I can see it in the dark! At last I can see it in the dark.” His voice died away.

“What? See what?”

“My end,” he said gently, suffering no longer. “In a dark night-club with sad music and enough to drink. Watching my girl, so beautiful, so graceful, so contemporary—dancing—knowing she’ll come back with me at the end of the evening. One gets tired of the coldness of life, of the darkness of winter, of the jagged edges of everything. That’s an old man’s tale, tired and baffled. What was it I once wanted? I forget. It’s an awful thing to reach the age of fifty-six and still not know who you are.” He lifted himself up and began coughing, turning red. After a while he subsided. “And there you were trying to do me in,” he went on almost cheerfully, “and I just went along with it. You don’t know how it touched me seeing you want that money, need the money that I had once needed and never would again. It is divine justice,” he said more gravely, “fair payment for Pauly’s poor death. My life for poor Pauly’s. Odd, the guilt only began with having you around; feeling your hungry desperate claim. I didn’t want to live. I wanted you to destroy me.”