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delighting in her reaction. 'I thought you still wanted me.'

At this, she whirled around and walked hurriedly off toward the house.

'Bitch!' he yelled, venting his rage. 'I'd rather shack up with barnyard animals than make it with you again!'

The people by the grave were staring at him; some were edging back. Still boiling with anger, he gestured at them in disgust and stormed off along one of the paths leading away from the house. He continued to fume as he walked, knocking branches aside, kicking beer cans and bottles out of his way. The thicket was festooned with litter. Charred mattresses, ripped underwear, food wrappers. Scraps of cellophane clung to the twigs, so profuse in places they seemed floral productions of the shrubs. His anger subsided, and he began to worry about his loss of control, not only its possible repercussions, but its relevance to his stability. He had been losing his temper more and more frequently since arriving at Maravillosa, and he did not think it was solely due to Otille's aggravation. Certainly she was not responsible for the feeling of possession. The path jogged to the right, widened, and he saw the sternwheeler between the last of the bushes. Against the glittering water and bright blue sky, it had the unreal look of a superimposed image, a black stage flat propped up from behind. Something snapped in back of him.

'Mornin,' brother,' said Simpkins.

Donnell looked around for an escape route, knowing himself in danger, but there was none.

'You just don't understand how to handle Otille,' Simpkins said, advancing on him. 'She's like a fisherman who's been havin' a good day, got herself a string of big cats coolin' in the stream. Every once in a while she hauls one up and thinks about fryin' him. And that's your situation, brother. Just floppin' on the dock.'

Donnell started back up the path, but Simpkins put out a restraining hand.

'You gotta just hang there and let the water flow through your gills,' said Simpkins. 'You struggle too much and you bound to catch her eye.'

'What do you want?' asked Donnell.

'A little talk,' said Simpkins. 'See, brother. Since you arrived, things been goin' downhill for the rest of us, and we'd like to know what it is you got. Maybe we can get some of it for ourselves. And then' - he chucked Donnell under the chin in good buddy fashion - 'once that's done, the one and only Papa Salvatino is goin' to cure your ills.'

Jocundra ran into the Baron on the path to the graveyard. He was standing lost in thought, twirling a yellow parasol. When he saw her, he spat.

'That monkey of yours put on some kind of show at the funeral,' he said. 'Used a trick voice or somethin.' Like to flip Otille out.'

'Where's Donnell now?'

'You ain't seen him?'

'I saw him coming this way about a half hour ago.'

'Ah, damn!' said the Baron. 'Let's head on back up there.'

Bodies were strewn among the tombstones, most unmoving, and most never stirred when the Baron prodded them. Others moaned or frowned groggily. The only person not lying down was a thin-armed, pot-bellied man wearing a bathing suit, who was sitting on top of a tombstone, his stringy brown hair blowing about his face. Static fizzed from a radio on his lap.

'Look like we gonna have to talk to ol' Captain Tomorrow,' said the Baron. 'Dude's been here so long he's fuckin' ossified. The light's on but nobody's home.' He tapped his forehead. 'Let me do the talkin'. He liable to think you an alien or somethin'.'

He sauntered up casually to the tombstone and said, 'Hey, what you know, Captain?'

'What I know,' said the man, staring off at the roof of the main house emerging like a black pyramid above the treeline.

'I say, "What you know, Captain?'" said the Baron, 'and then you say back, "What I know..." What you mean by that?'

'It's not ordered knowledge,' said Captain Tomorrow. 'It doesn't come in Aristotelian sequence. I'm trying to give it form, but I don't expect you to understand.'

Despite the pomposity of his words, the man's manner was pathetic. His skin showed the effects of bad diet, his eyes were watery and blinking, and when he lifted his hand to scratch his neck, he did not complete the action and left his hand suspended in the air.

'I've been dreaming about flying lately,' he said to Jocundra.

She remembered looking into Magnusson's eyes, feeling sucked in, but looking at this man produced a totally opposite