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"It still seems hard to believe," the young man said from the chair next to mine. "Saul Kessler ... the author of Letters from Miriam ... after all these years." Doubt flickered across his glowing features. "You don't think he'll mind? Your bringing me along?"

"No," I said. "I don't think he'll mind."

The young man's name was Joel Carson, a summer student at NYU whom I'd met the week before at Rienzi's, in the Village. He'd been looking for a chess opponent, and I'd obliged him with a couple of games, turning back his enthusiastic king's gambits without much difficulty. He had spoken fluently, between moves, of "the death of the novel," and of the great literary figures, past and present. I'd found his optimism both refreshing and contagious, and when our conversation had chanced upon the name of Kessler, I'd admitted (for the first time in how long?) that Saul had been my friend.

"I don't think he'll mind," I said. "In fact, he likes company. I should get up to the sanatorium more often myself to see him."

It was true: guilt was part of my motive. The long ride and the inevitable postvisit depression made me reluctant to see Saul more than about once a year. I was overdue this time and, when Joel had proved such an ardent admirer (as most young people seem to be of Kessler), it had occurred to me to suggest that he come along. We were seated in the train now, headed north along the Hudson on an overly warm Sunday afternoon, and I still wasn't certain I'd done the right thing.

Joel said: "I wasn't even sure he was still alive I mean, I read his book years and years ago. He must be at least---" He broke off and looked at me, flushing.

"Only thirty-seven," I said, smiling at the tide of red rising toward my friend's close-cut blond hair. "However, that may seem more advanced to you than it does to me."

"Oh, no, I didn't mean---" But then he, too, grinned and said: "Well, I guess it does. I was only about fifteen when I first read him, and the book had already been out several years."

"It was published in 1952 ... the year after Miriam died."

He nodded solemnly. "I know. Tragic. To think of his talent, and then a thing like that happening. It was what ruined him, wasn't it? I read about it."

"Yes," I said, "Miriam destroyed him."

Beyond the window, the wide sweep of river moved past. It looked more like a lake at this point, its current so deep and slow that it left the surface untroubled--like the lives of "normal" people. Across the sun-silvered expanse, West Point rose high against the green hills, threatening as fate, commanding the passage below. I found myself feeling strangely disassociated and remote; standing at a distance from life, an observer instead of a participant. "What you may not have read," I went on, "--because so few people knew it--was that she destroyed him after she died."

I sensed his eyes on me (rather shocked, I imagined) and knew, then, why I really had invited him. I meant to tell him the story that had been caged inside me so long--the story that had been rising, slowly, like a cake of soap, to the surface of my mind for 12 years. Images ... voices ... characters from the past were crowded in the wings, waiting to perform for my audience of one ...

• • •

Miriam was, in many ways, the most remarkable woman I've ever known. She and Saul had met (had been introduced by friends) in 1950, while she was still attending the university, and Saul had already begun the struggle to write. It had been the sort of meeting where "the heavens open and the earth moves," and everyone could see it. They left together that first night, and a week later Miriam moved in with him. After that, they were virtually never apart. I confess that I envied Saul a little--all his friends did--but only a little, because they were obviously meant for each other.

She was a beautiful girl. Not the Broadway type, perhaps, but with darkly arresting features and a fine body, rather full-figured for one so small. She was excellent at any kind of sport or game, hating to lose as much as she loved to win. But it was her eyes, and the mind that looked out from them, that I remember best: She had one of the keenest minds I've ever known, and Saul was forever saying how much brighter she was than he--though I don't think anyone believed that.

Still, she conquered just about everything she set out to do. She had studied languages in school, and spoke several--Greek, French and German that I know of; she was a talented artist (with a leaning toward caricature), and played guitar and sang folk music so well that we spent many evenings at Saul's just listening to her. I heard that she won rave reviews once, for her performance as Nora in A Doll's House, while she was at college, but I never saw her act. Then, in her mercurial way, she decided to take up dancing, and she left Saul for the first time--and the last--to attend a school on (continued on page 216)Side by Side(continued from page 105) the West Coast. Remember, now, she was in her early 20s, and so far as anyone knows she'd never given ballet a thought up till then. But that's what she wanted to do, and it didn't make a damn she knew nothing about it, or that most ballerinas begin study about the same time they learn to walk; she had decided to dance, and that was it. We all knew that when she came back she'd be able to do it, and she could. I only saw her the one time, of course. At the party Saul gave to celebrate her return. The night she died.

The whole scene returned to mind, like the curtain lifting on a play. Not that I'd forgotten, or ever could, but the curtain had been there, and tightly drawn. Now, I saw the tar-paper roof, the yellowish light bulb strung on a cord from Saul and Miriam's loft apartment below. I heard the music from the battered phonograph we'd borrowed from someone and smelled the warm wind, wet from the summer shower that had fallen that afternoon. I saw the people ...

Everyone came in good clothes, though for many of the men that meant only the cleanest pair of Levis and a white shirt. Some of the girls wore faded cocktail dresses, usually a size too small for them (holdovers from high school or college, parent-bought). It was a double-barreled occasion: Miriam had come back and, even more exciting, Saul had just sold his novel to E. V. Reinwald Company with a $500 advance. (He'd worked feverishly on it all the time Miriam was away.) It was the first important sale he'd made, and he didn't have much of the advance left after paying overdue bills and sending Miriam bus fare. But what there was, he went out and spent on food and liquor for the celebration.

It was a fine party. Everyone we knew was invited, plus a dozen couples who'd heard the noise and come up off the street (that's the way parties were in Greenwich Village back then ... there doesn't seem to be much of it anymore). About halfway through the evening, we came /across a record of excerpts from Swan Lake, and Miriam agreed to dance for us. I remember standing there, listening to the tinny, scratchy sounds from that old record player, softened by the dim rustle of the city noises in the background. Watching her spin and glide, her face and arms visible only when she came under the tiny circle of light from the bulb, then disappearing as she left it; a disembodied swirl of white dress, white shoes. The music ended, and she did a little series of pirouettes that made us all catch our breaths. She did one more, and touched the cement coping, which was only about 18 inches high on one side, and went over it, 75 feet to the brick pavement.

For what seemed a long while, no one moved, and I think no one believed it had happened. It was as though Miriam had merely exited, with the same flair for drama she'd always had. As though she might reappear in an instant or two, to take her bows. Then, of course, we all ran to the edge and looked. She was lying down there--quite visible, even in the dark, because of her white dress. She was not at all sprawled or awkward, the way people like that are supposed to look. Some of the girls began to cry, some to scream, and one of the men yelled, "Get an ambulance, for God's sake!" but none of us moved. We all knew she was dead.

I thought of Saul, and turned to see him standing at the edge, too, just standing there, with a funny twisted expression on his face. I went over and pulled him back, holding his arms tightly; I think I was afraid he was going to jump after her. Gary March (a bit-part actor, and Saul's best friend other than myself) came over, and between the two of us we got him downstairs. By the time we reached the room, he was vibrating like a high wire and cursing steadily: "Damn her," he kept saying, "goddamn her!" I made him sit down, and Gary ran back to get a bottle. When he returned, we forced several stiff ones down Saul. He kept fighting us (though in an odd way, he didn't seem conscious we were there), and after a while he started crying and finally passed out.

A little later, Renatta, Gary's girl, came in. She told us that the ambulance had taken Miriam away, and that someone had gone along to take care of the details. "Do you think one of us ought to stay here?" I asked Gary.

"I don't know," he said. "Kind of gives me the creeps, the way he's acting. Stay if you want to." I didn't, but I thought somebody should. So I sat up most of the night in a chair (Saul had gone to sleep on the couch) and read some, and drank the rest of the bottle of whiskey. It was the longest night I'd ever spent. Saul kept muttering in his sleep--a sort of half-laughing, half-crying sound--and I was horribly afraid he was going to wake up. He didn't, though, until about ten o'clock the next morning.

At first, he seemed to have forgotten what had happened, and then, abruptly, he said, "I'd better try to work, you know? That way, maybe I won't have to think about it." He went over to the table where his beat-up old Remington stood, and rolled a piece of paper into it. He sat down, looked at the typewriter a minute, and began to grin. He began to chuckle, then to laugh. "It's funny when you think about it," he said. "I mean--the way it happened--it's comical." He grabbed the table and bent to one side, laughing harder, uncontrollably, jumping around in his chair and making the table rattle, and the window next to it. Suddenly, he coughed and began to retch. He got up and staggered into the bathroom, and I could hear him throwing up.

I started to go after him, then changed my mind. I made some coffee instead, and some toast, and when he came out he was trembling terribly, but he managed to eat a little nonetheless. He seemed to have got hold of himself and apologized for acting like a fool. He asked if he could be alone, and since I was almost dead anyway, I left him and went home. I fell into bed and slept the rest of the day and late into the night.

It surprised everyone, but for the next day or two it seemed as though Saul was going to be all right. He began coming down to Macdougal Street, to the coffeehouses where the gang had always met. He looked miserable, of course, didn't talk much, but he'd smile when we tried to cheer him up, and for a while he appeared to be taking it well--better than we'd hoped. And then something happened that none of us could have foreseen; something that should never have happened. Miriam came back.

No, the problem wasn't supernatural; it was financial. It costs money to die, you know, and we didn't have any. None of us had made a go of it at that time (most of us never would), and the cost of taking care of Miriam was too much. Fortunately, she had always said she wanted to be cremated, which proved the cheapest way of handling the body. We had it done at Scarfiotta's Funeral Parlor, but raising the necessary $50 about bankrupted all of us. There was nothing left to pay for a burial plot, or even a vault. (Of course, the city will take care of that if you want it to, but Saul flatly refused to put her in a pauper's grave.) So, when the mortician started raising hell, we went over and picked up the box with her ashes in it, and Saul took it home with him. He put it on the mantel, over the fake fireplace with the electric heater inside. I didn't like the idea, but there didn't seem any alternative until one of us came up with some money.

Things were rough for everyone that summer. I was making a few bucks every now and again, adapting some public-domain stories for a small recording company that produced spoken records. The last batch had been paid for about a week earlier, though. I'd spent the money, and wouldn't get any more for a month or two. Saul had used up his advance, and had no other source of income. I urged him to take a job for a while, if only so he could draw some unemployment, but he didn't want to, or couldn't find one. The utility companies finally turned off his gas and lights, and he had to borrow candles to use at night. He put them on the mantel, on either side of that small black box. The effect was ghastly.

After that, the change in Saul really became apparent. He wasn't eating, and he refused the offers of friends to feed him. There had been a lot of liquor left from the party, but he'd drunk it all and was finding more, some way. He grew thinner, and since he'd been thin to start with, he became increasingly skeletal. He claimed to be working (everything would be all right, if he could get the book in, and get the rest of his advance from the publisher), but I noticed that the pile of pages on the table was not rising. We tried to keep him company, in the evenings at least, as much as possible, but the setting of his room was so weird it was oppressive and his friends started staying away. He had always referred to the box as "Miriam," rather than "it," or even "her," but when he took to addressing some of his remarks--on the evenings when we were at his place--to the box on the mantel ("Isn't that right, Darling?" or, "It's getting late, and Miriam's tired, aren't you, Dear?"), I knew something had to be done. All of the shock he'd felt--and survived--when she was killed had returned to prey on him, and he was breaking under it.

I stayed one night, after the others had gone, and begged him to let me--or someone--take care of the box until we could afford a burial. He acted as though I were joking: "You know I can't work unless Miriam's here," he said. "You know I can't do anything without her, she's always helped with my stories, and now the book---"

The next day I called his publisher. I talked to the editor who'd accepted Letters from Miriam, and asked for more money. He was sympathetic, but said there was no way he could help; the book was overdue, and the publisher felt, anyway, it was only a prestige item. (He had no way of knowing the popular appeal it would turn out to have.) He turned me down, so the next thing to do was to go see Saul's parents. They lived in Jersey, so I hitchhiked over that afternoon and arrived in time for dinner. The old man, Saul's father, must have figured I planned it that way. He watched every bite I ate, like I was picking his pocket, and finally I lost my appetite even though I hadn't eaten anything else that day. The mother seemed a little better, but she knew to keep quiet and at last I felt I had to get to the point and get it over with.

They knew what had happened, and I told them that, in my opinion, that damned black box was killing Saul. "I've found a place," I said, "that'll take her for seventy-five dollars. I'll personally guarantee to pay you back if you'll lend Saul the money."

The old gentleman just laughed at me. "Seventy-five dollars that vandal will never see from me," he said. "Never."

I said, "It isn't for Saul, it's for his wife."

"No!" he cried, "not his wife--he's not married." That was so, though oddly enough I'd forgotten about it. I guess, to him, they'd been living in sin, though no one who knew them looked at it that way. Saul and Miriam were as married as anyone can be, though they'd never had (or wanted to spare) the money for a license and the rest. I tried to explain this, but Mr. Kessler was adamant: "She wasn't even Jewish!" were his last words on the subject, and he was getting so angry I thought I'd better leave.

Mrs. Kessler saw me to the door. She slipped me a five as I went out. I tried to refuse, but she said, "See that Saul eats," so I had to take it. The door was closed, and it was already dark and I still had to catch a ride back across the river. I finally got one, and on the way home I examined the whole affair very carefully in my mind. By the time my benefactor dropped me off in the Village, I'd decided I had to get the box away from Saul. And the only way to do that was to steal it from him ...

• • •

My story was interrupted by the slowing of the train as it approached our stop. My friend and I got our coats and hats from the rack above the seat and, a few minutes later, stepped off onto the small station platform. Behind us, the train lurched, heaved itself ahead, and clattered away. I measured the sun as it settled behind the pine trees, and hoped I'd timed our visit right: We should arrive a few minutes after five. Past experience had taught me that an hour with Saul was about all I could take. We began to walk up the winding, crushed-brick path, toward the complex of white buildings. We strolled slowly, my companion waiting in silence for me to resume ...

• • •

Perhaps I was wrong to have done it, I don't know. I've thought about it often, wondering if I was in any way responsible for what happened. But it seemed right at the time, and I believe, at worst, I only hastened the end a little. I went over to his place and let myself in (he never locked his door) and found him asleep in his room. I took the box from the mantel, carried it home and hid it. Then I went down to The Bagel shop, found Gary, and told him what I'd done. We were still sitting there, sipping coffee, when Gary glanced toward the door. His face went as white as any man's I've ever seen, and when I looked around, there was Saul.

He must have waked up for some reason, soon after I'd left, gone into the front room and seen that she--I mean, it--was gone. Now, he stood in the doorway, sort of hanging onto the frame on both sides, his gaunt head with its mane of long, uncut hair swaying back and forth. He reminded me of the Western-movie character--drunk, or half dead--who comes to warn the town that the Indians are rising. He spotted us, let go of the doorjamb, and lurched toward our table. We might have been all right, if Gary hadn't panicked and leaped out of his chair to back away. Hell, I would have done the same, only I was sitting between the table and wall and couldn't move in time.

"Where is she!" Saul croaked, his normally high, smooth voice deep with menace. He stumbled as he reached the table, came up against its edge and seized it with bony, white hands. His eyes were absolutely stark, and they would have held me even if the table hadn't been jammed against my chest. "Where is she, goddamn it--I've got to find her--you know where she is!" It was as though Miriam--the live Miriam--had left him, and he was going to kill the man who took her. Which was me.

I should have lied, of course, but my mind wasn't functioning: There is something about insanity (and I knew, then, that's what it was) that paralyzes the senses. I blurted out something about not meaning any harm; about her being bad for him, and---

I didn't get any further; he came straight across the table, and I felt his hands reach my throat. I tried to scream, "I'll bring her back!" but I couldn't get the sounds past the pressure of his fingers.

I guess I fainted then, because the next thing I knew I was sitting on the floor, against the wall, watching this god-awful scramble of bodies in front of me--all seen through a blood haze. Tables and chairs were being knocked every which way, and I saw a figure, torn and disheveled, Saul's figure, rise up out of the pile and come for me. There was a scream--his or mine--and I found I couldn't move to get away. He had almost reached me when two cops burst through the door and caught him from behind. If they hadn't, he'd have killed me, I'm sure.

• • •

My friend and I had reached the steps of the main building, and we paused there. Joel gave me a cigarette and took one for himself. We leaned against the railing to smoke them, and the sun hid itself behind the hill. A cool breeze began to come up off the Hudson.

"That was the end of him," I went on after a moment. "They took him over to St. Vincent's for the night, and the next day he was transferred to Bellevue, to the psychiatric ward. During the next few weeks, I managed to put the rest of his book together for him, and when it was published, and became a best seller, the royalties allowed him to be moved here, where he's been since."

We finished our cigarettes, stubbed them out, and entered the wide, cool, antiseptic-smelling foyer. I said, "He might have survived her death, but that little box of ashes was too much. It finally overpowered him. That's why I say she destroyed him after she died."

Joel shook his head in sadness. "She must have been an amazing person," he said. "I can understand why he loved her so much."

"Loved her? He didn't love her--he hated her."

My young friend stared at me in disbelief.

"He hated her because he depended on her so much--and knew that he did. She had helped him with his stories, given him ideas, even rewritten them for him. He knew he couldn't make it without her, and he hated her for dying and leaving him. Most of all, he hated her for being able to do everything--while he could do nothing."

Joel said: "I don't understand! After writing the book he did?"

"Surely you see he didn't write it. Letters from Miriam was just that: the letters Miriam had written while she was out West. It was all there: the magnificent descriptions of the countryside, the sensitive portraits of the people she met, the yearning for home and the loneliness; all of it. Saul simply edited them and put them together for publication. When they sold, he hated her even more."

I gave my name to the nurse on duty, and we started down the corridor to Saul's room. "There's one thing I should warn you about," I said. "Saul is quite rational and I think you'll enjoy talking to him. But the doctors discovered fairly soon that the only way to handle him was to indulge his fantasy; you mustn't be surprised at what he keeps on the shelf above his bed. It's not the original ... it's a duplicate, made specially for him. He's happy, as long as he thinks she hasn't left him. That they're still 'together.' "

We stopped in front of Saul's door, and I knocked. A smooth, rather high-pitched voice answered, "Come in," and then, more faintly, as though he had turned to address someone else: "Darling--we have visitors ..."