the same time the other message, the one that had appeared inexplicably in his coat pocket: Join with us your brothers. But he could not find any brothers, on Urras.
He went into the nearest shop. It was a sweet shop, all golden scrolls and pink plaster, with rows of glass cases full of boxes and tins and baskets of candies and confections, pink, brown, cream, gold. He asked the woman behind the cases if she would help him find a telephone number. He was now subdued, after his fit of bad temper in the art dealer’s, and so humbly ignorant and foreign that the woman was won over. She not only helped him look up the name in the ponderous directory of telephone numbers, but placed the call for him on the shop phone.
“Hello?”
He said, “Shevek.” Then he stopped. The telephone to him was a vehicle of urgent needs, notifications of deaths, births, and earthquakes. He had no idea what to say.
“Who? Shevek? Is it really? How dear of you to call! I don’t mind waking up at all if it’s you.”
“You were sleeping?”
“Sound asleep, and I’m still in bed. It’s lovely and warm. Where on earth are you?”
“On Kae Sekae Street, I think.”
“Whatever for? Come on out. What time is it? Good Lord, nearly noon. I know, I’ll meet you halfway. By the boat pool in the Old Palace gardens. Can you find it? Listen, you must stay, I’m having an absolutely paradisial party tonight.” She rattled on awhile; he agreed to all she said. As he came out past the counter the shopwoman smiled at him. “Better take her a box of sweets, hadn’t you, sir?”
He stopped. “Should I?”
“Never does any harm, sir.”
There was something impudent and genial in her voice. The air of the shop was sweet and warm, as if all the perfumes of spring were crowded into it. Shevek stood there amidst the cases of pretty little luxuries, tall, heavy, dreamy, like the heavy animals in their pens, the rams and bulls stupefied by the yearning warmth of spring.
“I’ll make you up just the thing,” the woman said, and she filled a little metal box, exquisitely enameled, with miniature leaves of chocolate and roses of spun sugar. She wrapped the tin in tissue paper, put the packet in a silver cardboard box, wrapped the box in heavy rosecolored paper, and tied it with green velvet ribbon. In all her deft movements a humorous and sympathetic complicity could be sensed, and when she handed Shevek the completed package, and he took it with muttered thanks and turned to go, there was no sharpness in her voice as she reminded him, “That’s ten sixty, sir.” She might even have let him go, pitying him, as women will pity strength; but he came back obediently and counted out the money.
He found his way by subway train to the gardens of the Old Palace, and to the boat pool, where charmingly dressed children sailed toy ships, marvelous little craft with silken cordage and brasswork like jewelry. He saw Vea across the broad, bright circle of the water and went around the pool to her, aware of the sunlight, and the spring wind, and the dark trees of the park putting forth their early, pale-green leaves.
They ate lunch at a restaurant in the park, on a terrace covered with a high glass dome. In the sunlight inside the dome the trees were in full leaf, willows, hanging over a pool where fat white birds paddled, watching the diners with indolent greed, awaiting scraps. Vea did not take charge of the ordering, making it clear that Shevek was in charge of her, but skillful waiters advised him so smoothly that he thought he had managed it all himself; and fortunately he had plenty of money in his pocket. The food was extraordinary. He had never tasted such subtleties of flavor. Used to two meals a day, he usually skipped the lunch the Urrasti ate, but today he ate right through it, while Vea delicately picked and pecked. He had to stop at last, and she laughed at his rueful look.
“I ate too much.”
“A little walk might help.”
It was a very little walk: a slow ten-minute stroll over the grass, and then Vea collapsed gracefully in the shade of a high bank of shrubs, all bright with golden flowers. He sat down by her. A phrase Takver used came into his mind as he looked at Vea’s slender feet, decorated with little