And have you called my darling? Does he come? Say that he does. How came I by him? Does this have to do with my child? It does not. I will tell you what you want to know.

All children seek their masters in time.

Another child, of Greece, came to me in the Hercynian, and drew me out, and I went with him to a great city. Which? Does it matter? For some time I lived there, in an apartment, another one, and he would bring me children to care for, and kissed my forehead, as if I had lost my mind. I would stroke his hair, so like mine, and whisper his name, "Kallines," and he would say "You are no different," and I would ache a little. I do not care about it.

And then in the evening, long after this child had left, I heard my door softly open, and when I opened my eyes, it was my pale steward. "I have come to care for you, Faya," he whispered, and came to me, sitting in my chair, where I had been dozing in the cool breeze of evening. He knelt on the floor at my knees, and pressed his hands to my hands. He took a breath in to speak, and I touched his pale hair, which was just the same.

"Vivi," I told him. "I have not wished for you."

"I know that, and I have no news, but if you will have me I would stay," his voice steady though earnest, and I knew that he was grown, and well.

He sat up then, waiting, and I took his hair in my hand, because he did not seem real to me, and twisted it, pinned it with one of my pins. He made a sound as if he were choking, and remained very still, looking up into my face.

"Are you well put by?" he asked me. "Do you have all that you need?"

When I didn't speak, he went on.

"Vasvius and I, we traveled long. We lived in the north. We parted on good terms. He never wanted to speak of you, sir, but I must. I must come. Do you see that? Do you understand my words? What language should I speak that you will understand best?"

When I didn't speak at that, he sat quietly, cheek pressed to my knee, to the cotton fabric of my robe. I twined my fingers with his, and he held onto them tightly.

"Say so many words," I whispered, at length. "If you will stay, keep peace. Quiet."

"Do you hurt, sir?"

"I do. My head. Peace," I told him. Because my head did hurt me in those days. I had been without knowledge of the world for a long time, and without its flesh, or its comfort.

"Do you know the year?" he asked me, voice much quieted.

"I do not."

"Who pays for this place, sir? Is he a danger to me?"

"I do not know. Where am I living?" I asked him.

"Where, sir? This is Vienna."

"Vienna? Where is this?"

He kissed the back of my hand gently, and touched the mark his lips left. "You may know it as Vindobona. But it is a powerful city now, these many centuries, no frontier place." He kissed my hand again, touched where my ring had been, which I had always worn when he was living. "Your ring. You've lost it?"

"I did not lose it. I gave it to Escha."

He rubbed my hand between his, as if it were cold.

"The year," I said to him.

"1740," he said. "So they call it."

At the expression on my face he rose, and went behind my chair to help me up. I gave him a wondering look, stricken. My breath came to me suddenly in a rush and I could not keep it inside of me.

"To bed," he whispered, "to bed. I am here now, Faya."

When he had me down, he climbed into bed with me, and many mornings I woke to the sound of him washing bed linen, and curtains, and scrubbing the baseboards. Sometimes when I woke he would be sitting by the bed, on the clean floor, head tipped back, breathing in the morning breeze from the window, and I knew that he was awake but half-gone.

"Are you afraid?" he asked me once, and when I shook my head, no, he asked me why.

"I am not afraid because I am not afraid," I said.

"I am not either," he said.

"Of what?" I asked him, coming to him where he was on the floor, at the foot of my bed.

"Anything. What's gone past. What's to come. I don't wonder that I feel that most of what might happen has already happened to me. I see that you are lost, but you are as ever, the same. I suppose that in any event, I will also be the same. I have found that the same things happen to me over and over, and so their being no different, I am not different."

"A fool."

"Educate me."

"This life is Charybdis," I said. "It is rows and rows of teeth and you are caught in her spin. Beneath her waters her teeth will catch you and catch you, and they are all the same teeth but they will grind you and grind you the more you swim, so that when you are swallowed finally, you will no longer have strength or body or mind left to resist her. This life is a great sucking mouth, and if you are not feeling any pain, you are already far gone. Do not give into numbness. It is a short slide to death."

"Faya."

"They call me 'Leechtin' now."

"I do not believe in this comparison," he said, looking toward the ceiling.

"To your peril. There may be some comfort in forgetting, but there is no true comfort. Comfort is always temporary. Comfort will rip you apart the same as any teeth."

"You are wanting Escha."

I whispered to him that he didn't know my mind, that I was speaking of memory, of the ambulation of memory. But he did know my mind, and it was Vivacio who brought me out into the world of Vienna, and into its quiet churches, and tall cathedrals, to hear its music and sit in the grass under its sun. And it was Vivi who came again many years later, and sat on the other side of a confessional, and whispered to me through its grate that my child was in Paris, but that there were others with him, and my being weak, to be careful of them, because one of them was a vicious creature which ravaged old ones for their blood. That was 1870.

But that is not what I wish to talk about. I went to Paris, but I kept away from my Escha a long while, and he dreamed of me, and many years later, he told me that he saw me once, but he did not see me because I did not haunt him. He saw Kallines, who had followed me there, and had a mind to protect me, which also I learned many years later. Kallines, who had paid for my flat in Vienna, and kept watch on me from time to time, even as he ranged farther than any others I have known, stayed in Paris until he saw me strong enough in mind to bear it on my own.

But now understand me, Escha begged me to take him away from his children in 1921. I did not suggest it to him. He said, "Come shadow, there is a boat. Come shadow, take me away from this place." He had been asking it for many years. He said, "And I will be Escha awhile. Take me, take me," and I did. We lived in New York for a short time, and then his child came, in 1929, and perhaps he will tell you about that, about Escha's suffering. I cannot pretend that I was lucid then, or not suffering myself, or not hurting him.

Mini, I am so scattered. Shall I talk to you about darling now? My beauty. My heart. My care. He is all that I want now, as this long fog approaches, and my time runs from me. This world is bleeding, dripping away through holes in my head. So often, I have imagined that things happened a certain way. Other times, I wonder if I recall anything correctly at all. I give you all I know to be true, but things are shifting for me even now. Some seventy years gone, your Dasius put me in my house in California, and told me that it was mine, and that I might stay there as long as I wished. It is a fine place to sleep. I do not mind it all, and it is a place where others might sleep, and I do not mind that either.

In the middle of this past century, and even now, I liked most to sit in the flower garden on the western side, where, from far off, I can hear the waves. That day, I had been sitting there long. I rose from where I lay, and went back onto the porch of my house, overwarm, and peaceful. But that door there was open, and I had not done it. And that is when I heard someone inside, and knew that this person had seen me come up, because I heard lungs take breath. I waited there awhile, on the porch, behind the shut screen door. He came to me at length, and stood on the other side, and I drew in my own breath, of dying, of not being able to see, of complete rapture, and at this he turned and fled.

There was little I could do but pursue him, going around the house to catch him before he could get into his car and get away. When I had him in my arms, he said, in our Latin, "Let go of me, let go of me," and shook, and clawed at me, and cried, but I did not let go of him.

I said, "Orpheus," without breath, because there was nothing in my mind.

And he said, "I did not expect you to know me," and wept.

But Mini, it is him above all others that I know, and I have not let go of him, and so now he comes.

And I expect there are other stories to be told, and I hope that you will leave me now in peace, and be satisfied, dear heart. Now for me comes a long evening.

For giving me these moments to speak with you, and touch you, and know you, I thank you, young darling. But now leave me, and find those others from whom you would have account. You know now that with me there is nothing but a want of comfort, and long hurts, which memory serves ill. And for whom, in the present there is so much pain, and yet such beauty.