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brought from Europe, which could occasionally be heard creaking under the table—up until then they had been occupied only by shoe trees. He had snipped the hairs in his nostrils and was sitting up straight, never throwing cards but always setting them down gently. He took an innocent pleasure in winning, and lost with grim dignity. He seemed perfect, with his inner composure and outward splendor.
    Though they were sitting at a table without beginning or end, their circle seemed to start with the Indian woman. She was not to the left or right of the men; no, they were at her sides; the initiative was with her. Her movements in playing resembled those with which she distributed medicines when at work; a deft, nonchalant, continuous, many-handed giving (while the gathering-in of what was coming to her was always done in guise of thanks). The way she had made up and decked herself
out (a jade amulet hanging from her neck), she was no longer an Indian but a dark, dangerous machine in radiant human form; as soon as she lowered her human eyes to a card, the eye of the machine stared from the black-rimmed vault of her eyelid and held the room in its gaze.
    â€œYes” (with this one word Sorger finally accepted as an obligation what for so long he had only mused about). At times Lauffer had really been his friend, and recently he had been one with the woman in their true, screaming, and clutching bodies—but what presumption in him, the “Stranger” (the name of an emetic fungus), to importune these two with the claims of a “friend” or “lover.”
    Sorger did not foresee that these two would come together, he saw their union before him in the present: the perfect couple, the consummate student of earth forms and the divine beast.
    No one asked why he was laughing—they knew. And the next moment placed Sorger, who mechanically went on playing, in the midst of a prehistoric event that was just taking place. In the river there was a narrow, gently sloping island with a small, rounded hollow in the middle, where the conifers, which were sparse and stunted everywhere else, grew dark and dense. This hollow had probably resulted from an underground cavern, into which Sorger—while his fellow players, who at that very moment were on a level with his eyes, rose to the upper edge of his field of vision—sank all at once, as slowly as in a dream. Already moss was growing in the pit and dark bears rose up between the trees.
    As though in triumph, Sorger went out into the open. He moved in the glow of the windows; outside, there was no other light, not even the dot of a star. At first he saw the two of them sitting at the table; then the
bushes merged with the receding bright rectangle, as though the panes had been smeared with dirt. “Please forget me.” He saw so little ahead of him—now and then, a lighter-colored stone silhouette—that he had to feel his way with his feet and elbows. Not even a splashing; only a soft scraping from time to time.
    Then nothing more stood out from the darkness; at last, no more images. A short while before, all distinct surfaces, regardless of color (wasn’t there such a thing as a wedding color?), had reminded him of dead people, as though he were staring at those who had died there. Then he saw the river flowing in the darkness: thick anthracite against thinner black; and these forms, as a painter he admired had said, were now his “performers”; able to “perform” in his place because they were unabashed, free of his embarrassment.
    Once all recognized techniques had been applied to the description of a phenomenon, Sorger’s science called for one additional, ultimate technique, which he called “comprehensive vision”; here, in the face of the black-on-black Arctic night, such comprehensive vision was achieved, though it had not been planned and the requisite composure was lacking; a different sort of calm took