Ernst looked at her as she swayed on the sidewalk. “No,” he said. He took some more of his liquor and waved her away. She paid no attention.

“Here,” said Czerny, “try some of this. From the amusement quarter. A little stand by the Pantheon. The man makes the best stuffed crab I’ve ever had. Do you know Lisbon? The Tavares has a name for stuffed crab. Our local man should steal that honor.”

“Alfama,” said Ernst.

“What is that?” asked Ieneth.

“Alfama,” said Ernst. “Lisbon. The old quarter.”

“Yes,” said Czerny. They were all silent for a few seconds. “Oh, forgive me, M. Weinraub. You are acquainted with my companion, are you not?”

Ernst shook his head and raised his hand for M. Gargotier, forgetting that the proprietor had retired inside his bar and could not see.

“We have met before,” said the stranger in the uniform of the Jaish. “Perhaps M. Weinraub does not recall the occasion. It was at a party at the home of Safety Director Chanzir.” Ernst smiled politely but said nothing.

“Then may I present my friend?” said Czerny. “M. Weinraub, I am honored to introduce Colonel Sandor Courane.”

Czerny grinned, waiting to see how Ernst would react. Courane reached over the railing to shake hands, but Ernst pretended not to see. “Ah, yes,” he said. “Forgive me for not recognizing you. You write verses, do you not?”

Czerny’s grin vanished. “Do not be more of a fool, M. Weinraub. You see very little from your seat here, you know. You cannot understand what we have done. Tonight the city is ours!”

Ernst drained the last drop of whiskey from his glass. “To whom did it belong previously?” he said softly.

“M. Weinraub,” said Ieneth, “we’ve had some pleasant talks. I like you, you know. I don’t want you to be hurt.”

“How can I be hurt?” asked Ernst. “I’m carefully not taking sides. I’m not going to offend anyone.”

“You offend me,” said Czerny, beckoning to Ieneth and Courane. The woman and the two uniformed men tottered away down the sidewalk. Ernst got up and took his glass into the bar for more whiskey.

The lonely night passed. It was very late. Ernst drank, and his thoughts became more incoherent and his voice more strident; but there was only M. Gargotier to observe him now. He sang to himself, and thought sadly about the past, and, though he gestured energetically to the proprietor, even that patient audience remained silent. Finally, driven further into his own solitude, he drew out his most dangerous thoughts. He reviewed his life honestly, as he did every night. He took each incident in order, or at least in the special order that this particular night demanded. “The events of the day,” he thought, “considered with my customary objectivity. A trivial today, a handful of smoke.”

Only the bright, unwinking lights of the amusement quarter still pierced the darkness. The last celebrants had all straggled back up the street, past the Cafe de la Fee Blanche. Now there was only Ernst and the nervous, sleepy barkeep.

When was the last time Ernst had seen Gretchen? He recalled the characteristic thrill he got whenever he saw his wife’s comfortable shape, recognized her familiar pace. What crime had he committed, that he was left to decay alone? Had he grown old? He examined the backs of his hands, the rough, yellowed skin where the brown spots merged into a fog. He tried to focus on the knife ridges of tendon and vein. No, he decided, he wasn’t old. It wasn’t that.

Ernst listened. There were no sounds now. It had been a while since Kebap had last sauntered past with his vicious words and his degenerate notions. It was so like the city, that one as young as the boy could already possess the bankrupt moral character of a Vandal warlord. The festivals in the other quarters of the city had long ago come to an end. The pigeons in the square did not stir; there wasn’t even the amazed flutter of their sluggish wings, lifting the birds away from some imagined danger, settling them back asleep before their mottled feet touched the ground again. They wouldn’t move even if he threw his table into their sculpted flock.

There was no Kebap, no Czerny, no Ieneth. There was only Ernst, and the darkness. “This is the time for art,” he said. “There can’t be such silence anywhere else in the world, except perhaps at the frozen ends. And even there, why, you have whales and bears splashing into the black water. The sun never sinks, does it? There’s always some daylight. Or else I have it wrong, and it is dark all the time. In any event, there will be creatures of one sort or another to disturb the stillness. Here I am, the one creature, and I’ve decided that it is a grand misuse of silence just to sit here and drink. The night is this city’s single resource. Well, that and disease.”

He tried to stand, to gesture broadly and include the entire city in a momentary act of drama, but he lost his balance and sat heavily again in his chair. “This is the time for art,” he muttered. “I shall make of the city either a living statue or a very boring play. Whichever, I shall present it before the restless audiences of my former home. Then won’t I be welcomed back! I’ll let the others worry about what to do with these mean people, these most malodorous buildings, and all this sand. I’ll drop it all down in the middle of Lausanne, I think, and let the proper authorities attempt to deal with it. I shall get my praise, and they shall get another city.”

He fretted with his clothing for a few moments, fumbling in drunken incompetence with the buttons of his shirt. He gave up at last. “It is the time for art, as I said. Now I must make good on that claim, or else these gentlefolk will be right in calling me an idiot. The concept of presenting this city as a work of art, a serious offering, had a certain value as amusement, but not enough of enchantment to carry the idea beyond whimsy. So, instead I shall recite the final chapter of my fine trilogy of novels. The third volume, you may recall, is entitled The Suprina of the Maze. It concerns the suprine of Carbba, Wreylan III, who lived about the time of the Protestant Reformation, and his wife, the mysterious Suprina Without A Name. The suprina has been variously identified on many occasions by students of political history, but each such ‘authoritative account’ differs, and it is unlikely that we shall ever know her true background.”

Ernst looked up suddenly, as if he had heard a woman calling his name. He closed his eyes tightly and continued. “This enigmatic suprina,” he said, “is a very important character in the trilogy. At least I shall make her so, even though she does not appear until the final book. She has certain powers, almost supernatural. And at the same time, she is possessed of an evil nature that battles with her conscience. Frequently, the reader will stop his progress through the book to wonder at the complications of her personality.

“She is to be loved and hated. I do not wish the reader to form but a single attitude toward her. That is for Friedlos, my protagonist. He will come riding across the vast wooded miles, leaving behind in the second volume the bleak, gelid corpse of Marie, lying stiff upon the frontier marches of Breulandy. Friedlos will pass through Poland, I suppose, in order to hear from the president there a tale of the Queen Without a Name. I must consider how best to get Friedlos from Breulandy to Poland. Perhaps a rapid transition: ‘A few weeks later, still aggrieved by the death of his second love, Friedlos crossed the somber limits of Poland.’ Bien. Then off he starts for Carbba, intrigued by the president’s second-hand information. Ah, Friedlos, you are so much like your creator that I blush to put my name on the book’s spine.”

Ernst dug in his pockets, looking again for his outline. He could not find it, and shrugged carelessly. “Gretchen, will you ever learn that it is you he seeks? I have put you on a throne, Gretchen. I have made you suprina of all Carbba, but I have given you my own life.”