I remember being told it would happen so fast people would think it took place overnight.

In the brief moment I had to talk to them before I took my post on the ring of defenses, I indicated I was sickened by the methods men employed to live and trade on the river.

At once my ears were drowned by a flow of what I took to be Spanish, but -- the driver's white teeth flashing at me, the road wildly veering beyond his glistening hair, beyond his gesticulating bottle -- it could have been the purest Oxford English I was half hearing ; ;

When we `` forced '' individuals to assume the corporate structure by means of taxes and other legal statutes, we adopted what I would term `` pseudo-capitalism '' and so took a major step toward socialism.

I took one step eastward.

Seeing their hesitation, I said, `` Well, until I have permission to enter Germany, or a visa to re-enter France, I shall be obliged to remain here on the line between two countries '', whereupon I moved to the side of the road, parked my backpack against the small guardhouse on the sidewalk, sat down, took out my typewriter, and began typing the above conversation.

All this remembering took place the other night when I had supper with the Ziegfeld Girls at the Beverly Hills Club.

I took the pail and shovel and went out on the porch.

I guess fooling Hans and me took doing.

In my letters I took on a personality that differed from the self I knew in real life.

The letters took their source from a stream of my imagination in which I was transformed into a young man not unlike my bunkmate Eliot Sands -- he of the porch steps anecdotes -- who smoked cigarettes, performed the tango, wore fifty dollar suits, and sneaked off into the dark with girls to do unimaginable things with them.

I asked him if he took seeds from his own plants.

I really loved that boy, and, in a feverish attempt to preserve our marriage and to try to revive the wonderful, wonderful person Letch had once been, I took my troubles to Momma, hoping that her earthy advice would help me.

I took a deep breath and an even deeper swallow of my drink, and said, `` I admit that going back to Ralph Waldo Emerson for humor is like going to a modern musical comedy for music and comedy ''.

I believed him.

Next to him was a young boy I was sure had sat near me at one of the trading sessions.

In my sights I watched him looming bigger and bigger.

Now under me I could see him for what he really was, a boy dressed up in streaks of paint.

`` I know him.

Once, pressing him, I learned that his job was only part-time, in the afternoons when nothing went on in the hall.

With distaste I saw him assume a pompous air.

At last, when I put it to him directly, the clerk was forced to admit that the delay in my case was unusual.

When I asked him what, if anything, I could do about it, he surprised me by referring me to the director of the hall.

I was at once disappointed, although just what I had expected him to look like I could not have explained.

`` I never saw him.

`` I can't leave him there.

Donald Kruger would like nothing better than to hold him as hostage, and I wouldn't entrust a snake to his tender care.

But, by gosh, I want him and I'm going to have him!!

I meant him no harm.

I've got to take Danny away from Clayton before I lose him altogether.

I heard o' Texas cattlemen wrappin' a cow thief up in green hides and lettin' the sun shrink 'em and squeeze him to death.

`` I don't know nothin' about him ''.

`` So help me, Crouch, I'd like to kill you where you stand, but, before I do, I'm going to hear you admit killing him.

`` I ain't ragging him ''!!

I didn't get a good look at him at all, his back was to me, and I was so scared It was just somebody in a man's suit.

I saw the clergyman kneel for a moment by the twitching body of the man he had shot, then run back to his position.

They, and the two large fans which I could dimly see as daylight filtered through their vents, down at the far end of the hall, could be turned on by a master switch situated inside the office.

This light did not penetrate very far back into the hall, and my eyes were hindered rather than aided by the dim daylight entering through the fan vents when I tried to pick out whatever might be lying, or squatting, on the floor below.

I stopped by the counter.

I sat by her on the divan.

I worked for my Uncle ( an Uncle by marriage so you will not think this has a mild undercurrent of incest ) who ran one of those antique shops in New Orleans' Vieux Carre, the old French Quarter.

Sometimes I wondered vaguely what he did about women for my Aunt, by blood, had died some years ago, but neither of us said anything.

True, she was my Aunt, married to an Uncle related to me only by marriage, but why she had married a man twice her age, and more, perhaps, I did not know or much care.

I was puzzled by the remark, then I recalled the voice of mild Professor Howard Griggs three years ago in a university lecture on primitive societies.

Our lifeboat was filling rapidly and despite what I had heard of the inhabitants of Eromonga, I was glad to see a long and graceful outrigger manned by three bronzed girls glide out of a lagoon into the open sea and toward our craft.

My friends and I come from a ship which was destroyed by fire.

In the hut to which I was assigned -- Max had his own quarters -- my food was brought to me by a wrinkled crone with bare drooping breasts who seemed to enjoy conversing with me in rudimentary phrases.

`` I got Margaret Rider in one of them old box cars down there by the quarry ''.

When I question them as to what they mean by concepts like liberty and democracy, I find that they fall into two categories: the simpler ones who have simply accepted the shibboleths of their faith without analysis ; ;