Artemis, the Honest Well Digger

Artemis Loved the healing sound of rain--the sound of all running water--brooks, gutters, spouts, falls and taps. In the spring he would drive 100 miles to hear the cataract at the Wakusha Reservoir. This was not so surprising, since he was a well driller and water was his profession, his livelihood as well as his passion. Water, he thought, was at the root of civilizations. He had seen photographs of a city in Umbria that had been abandoned when the wells went dry. Cathedrals, palaces, farmhouses had all been evacuated by drought--a greater power than pestilence, famine or war. Men sought water as water sought its level. The pursuit of water accounted for epochal migrations. Man was largely water. Water was man. Water was love. Water was water.

To get the facts out of the way: Artemis drilled with an old Smith & Mathewson chain-concussion rig that struck the planet 60 blows a minute. It made a terrible racket and there had been two complaints. One was from a very nervous housewife and the other from a homosexual poet who said that the concussion was ruining his meter. Artemis rather liked the noise. He lived with his widowed mother at the edge of town in one of those little conclaves of white houses that are distinguished by their displays of the American flag. You find them on outlying roads--six or seven small houses gathered together for no particular reason. There is no store, no church, nothing central. The lawns on which dogs sleep are well trimmed and everything is neat, but every house flies its Old Glory. This patriotic zeal cannot be traced back to the fact that these people have received an abundance of their country's riches. They haven't. These are hard-working people who lead frugal lives and worry about money. People who have profited splendidly from our economy seem to have no such passion for the Stars and Stripes. Artemis' mother, for example--a hard-working woman--had a flagpole, five little flags stuck into a window box and a seventh flag hanging from the porch.

His father had chosen his name, thinking that it referred to artesian wells. It wasn't until Artemis was a grown man that he discovered he had been named for the chaste goddess of the hunt. He didn't seem to mind and, anyhow, everybody called him Art. He wore work clothes and in the winter a seaman's knitted cap. His manner with strangers was rustic and shy and something of an affectation, since he read a good deal and had an alert and inquisitive intelligence. His father had learned his trade as an apprentice and had not graduated from high school. He regretted not having an education and was very anxious that his son should go to college. Artemis went to a small college called Laketon in the north of the state and got an engineering degree. He was also exposed to literature through an unusually inspiring professor named Lytle. Physically, there was nothing remarkable about Lytle, but he was the sort of teacher in whose presence students had for many years felt an irresistible desire to read books, write themes and discuss their most intimate feelings about the history of mankind. Lytle singled out Artemis and encouraged him to read Swift, Donne and Conrad. He wrote four themes for this course, which Lytle charitably graded A. His ear for prose was damaged by an incurable fascination for words like cacophony, percussion, throbbingly and thumpingly. This may have had something to do with his profession.

Lytle suggested that he get an editorial job on an engineering journal and he seriously thought about this, but he chose instead to be a well driller. He made his decision one Saturday when he and his father took their rig to the south of the county, where a large house--an estate--had been built. There was a swimming pool and seven baths and the well produced three gallons a minute. Artemis contracted to go down another 100 feet, but even then the take was only six gallons a minute. The enormous, costly and useless house impressed him with the importance of his trade. Water, water. (What happened in the end was that the owner demolished six upstairs bedrooms to make room for a storage tank, which the local fire department filled twice a week.)

Artemis' knowledge of ecology was confined to water. Going fishing on the first of April, he found the falls of the South Branch foaming with soapsuds. Some of this was bound to leach down to where he worked. Later in the month, he caught a five-pound trout in the stream at Lakeside. This was a phenomenal fish for that part of the world and he stopped to show his catch to the game warden and ask him how it should be cooked. "Don't bother to cook that fish," said the warden. "It's got enough DDT to put you in the hospital. You can't eat these fish anymore. The Government sprayed the banks with DDT about four years ago and the stuff all washed into the brook." Artemis had once dug a well and found DDT, and another had traces of fuel oil. His sense of a declining environment was keen and intensely practical. He contracted to find potable water and if he failed, he lost his shirt. A polluted environment meant for him both sadness at human stupidity and rapaciousness and also a hole in his pocket. He had failed only twice, but the odds were running against him and everybody else.

Another thing: Artemis distrusted dowsers. A few men and two women in the county made their living by divining the presence of subterranean water with forked fruit twigs. The fruit had to have a pit. An apple twig, for example, was no good. When the fruit twig and the diviner's psyche had settled on a site, Artemis would be hired to drill a well. In his experience, the dowsers' average was low and they seldom divined an adequate supply of water, but the fact that some magic was involved seemed to make them irresistible. In the search for water, some people preferred a magician to an engineer. If magic bested knowledge, how simple everything would be: water, water.

Artemis was the sort of man who frequently proposed marriage, but at 30 he still had no wife. He went around for a year or so with the Macklin girl. They were lovers, but when he proposed marriage, she ditched him to marry Jack Bascomb because he was rich. That's what she said. Artemis was melancholy for a month or so, and then he began going around with a divorcee named Maria Petroni who lived on Maple Avenue and was a bank teller. He didn't know, but he had the feeling that Maria was older than he. His ideas about marriage were romantic and a little puerile and he expected his wife to be a fresh-faced virgin. Maria was not. She was a lusty, hard-drinking woman and they spent most of their time together in bed. One night or early morning, he woke at her side and thought over his life. He was 30 and he still had no bride. He had been dating Maria for nearly two years. Before he moved toward her to wake her, he thought of how humorous, kind, passionate and yielding she had always been. He thought, while he stroked her backside, that he loved her. Her backside seemed almost too good to be true. The image of a pure, fresh girl like the girl on the oleomargarine package still lingered in some part of his head, but where was she and when would she appear? Was he kidding himself? Was he making a mistake to downgrade Maria for someone he had never seen? When she woke, he asked her to marry him.

"I can't marry you, darling," she said.

"Why not? Do you want a younger man?"

"Yes, darling, but not one. I want seven, one right after the other."

"Oh," he said.

"I must tell you. I've done it. This was before I met you. I asked seven of the best-looking men around to come for dinner. None of them were married. Two of them were divorced. I cooked veal scaloppine. There was a lot to drink and then we all got undressed. It was what I wanted. When they were finished, I didn't feel dirty or depraved or shameful. I didn't feel anything bad at all. Does that disgust you?"

"Not really. You're one of the cleanest people I've ever known. That's the way I think of you."

"You're crazy, darling," she said.

He got up and dressed and kissed her good night, but that was about it. He went on seeing her for a while, but her period of faithfulness seemed to have passed and he guessed that she was seeing other men. He went on looking for a girl as pure and fresh as the girl on the oleomargarine package.

This was in the early fall and he was digging a well for an old house on Olmstead Road. The first well was running dry. The people were named Filler and they were paying him $30 a foot, which was the rate at that time. He was confident of finding water from what he knew of the lay of the land. When he got the rig going, he settled down in the cab of his truck to read a book. Mrs. Filler came out to the truck and asked if he didn't want a cup of coffee. He refused as politely as he could. She wasn't bad looking at all, but he had decided, early in the game, to keep his hands off the housewives. He wanted to marry the girl on the oleomargarine package. At noon he opened his lunch pail and was halfway through a sandwich when Mrs. Filler came back to the cab. "I've just cooked a nice hamburger for you," she said.

"Oh, no, thank you, ma'am," he said.

"I've got three sandwiches here." He actually said ma'am and he sometimes said shucks, although the book he (continued on page 230)Artemis(continued from page 86) was reading, and reading with interest, was Aldous Huxley.

"You've got to come in now," she said. "I won't take no for an answer." She opened the cab door and he climbed down and followed at her side to the back door.

She had a big butt and a big front and a jolly face and hair that must have been dyed, because it was a mixture of grays and blues. She had set a place for him at the kitchen table and she sat opposite him while he ate his hamburger. She told him directly the story of her life, as was the custom in the United States at that time. She was born in Evansville, Indiana, had graduated from the Evansville North High School and had been elected apple-blossom queen in her senior year. She then went on to the university in Bloomington, where Mr. Filler, who was older than she, had been a professor. They moved from Bloomington to Syracuse and then to Paris, where he became famous.

"What's he famous for?" asked Artemis.

"You mean you've never heard of my husband?" she said. "J. P. Filler. He's a famous author."

"What did he write?" asked Artemis.

"Well, he wrote a lot of things," she said, "but he's best known for Shit."

Artemis laughed, Artemis blushed. "What's the name of the book?" he asked.

"Shit," she said. "That's the name of it. I'm surprised you never heard of it. It sold about half-a-million copies."

"You're kidding," Artemis said.

"No I'm not," she said. "Come with me. I'll show you."

He followed her out of the kitchen through several rooms, much richer and more comfortable than anything he was familiar with. She look from a shelf a, book whose title was Shit. "My God," said Artemis, "how did he come to write a book like that?"

"Well," she said, "when he was at Syracuse, he got a foundation grant to investigate literary anarchy. He took a year off. That's when we went to Paris. He wanted to write a book about something that concerned everybody, like sex, only by the time he got his grant, everything you could write about sex had been written. Then he got this other idea. After all, it was universal. That's what he said. It concerned everybody. Kings and presidents and sailors at sea. It was just as important as fire, water, earth and air. Some people might think it was not a very delicate subject to write about, but he hates delicacy, and anyhow, considering the books you can buy these days, Shit is practically pure. I'm surprised you never heard about it. It was translated into twelve languages. See." She gestured toward a bookcase, where Artemis read Merde, Kaka, and Tobho. "I can give you a paperback, if you'd like."

"I'd like to read it," said Artemis.

She got a paperback from a closet. "It's too bad he isn't here. He would be glad to autograph it for you, but he's in England. He travels a lot."

"Well, thank you, ma'am," said Artemis. "Thank you for the lunch and the book. I have to get back to work."

He checked the rig, climbed into the cab and put down Huxley for J. P. Filler. He read the book with a certain amount of interest, but his incredulity was stubborn. Except to go to and from college, Artemis had never traveled, and yet he often felt himself to be a traveler, to be among strangers. Walking down a street in China, he would have felt no more alien than he felt at that moment, trying to comprehend the fact that he lived in a world where a man was wealthy and esteemed for having written a book about turds.

That's what it was about: turds. There were all shapes, sizes and colors, along with a great many descriptions of toilets. Filler had traveled widely. There were the toilets of New Delhi and the toilets of Cairo and he had either imagined or visited the Pope's chambers in the Vatican and the facilities of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. There were quite a few lyrical descriptions of nature --loose bowels in a lemon grove in Spain, constipation in a mountain pass in Nepal, dysentery on the Greek islands. It was not really a dull book and it had, as she had said, a distinct universality, although Artemis continued to feel that he had strayed into some country like China. He was not a prude, but he used a prudent vocabulary. When a well came too close to a septic tank, he referred to the danger as "fecal matter." He had been "down on" (his vocabulary) Maria many times, but to count these performances and to recall in detail the techniques seemed to diminish the experience. There was, he thought, a height of sexual ecstasy that by its immensity and profoundness seemed to transcend observation. He finished the book a little after five. It looked like rain. He killed the rig, covered it with a tarpaulin and drove home. Passing a bog, he tossed away his copy of Shit. He didn't want to hide it and he would have had trouble describing it to his mother and, anyhow, he didn't want to read it again.

The next day it rained and Artemis got very wet. The rig worked loose and he spent most of the morning making it secure. Mrs. Filler was worried about his health. First she brought him a towel. "You'll catch your death of cold, you darling boy," she said. "Oh, look how curly your hair is." Later, carrying an umbrella, she brought him a cup of tea. She urged him to come into the house and change into dry clothes. He said that he couldn't leave the rig.

"Anyhow," he said, "I never catch cold." As soon as he said this, he began to sneeze. Mrs. Filler insisted that he either come into her house or go home. He was uncomfortable and he gave up around two. Mrs. Filler had been right. By suppertime, his throat was sore. His head was unclear. the took two aspirins and went to bed around nine. He woke after midnight in the hot-and-cold spasms of a high fever. The effect of this was strangely to reduce him to the emotional attitudes of a child. He curled up in an embryonic position, his hands between his knees, alternately sweating and shivering. He felt himself lonely but well protected, irresponsible and cozy. His father seemed to live again and would bring him, when he came home from work, a new switch for his electric train or a lure for his tackle box. His mother brought him some breakfast and took his temperature. He had a fever of 103 and dozed for most of the morning.

At noon his mother came in to say that there was a lady downstairs to see him. She had brought some soup. He said that he didn't want to see anyone, but his mother seemed doubtful. The lady was a customer. her intentions were kind. It would be rude to turn her away. He felt too feeble to show any resistance and a few minutes later, Mrs. Filler stood in the doorway with a preserve jar full of broth. "I told him he'd be sick, I told him that yesterday."

"I'll go next door and see if they have any aspirin," said his mother. "We've used ours all up." She left the room and Mrs. Filler closed the door.

"Oh, you poor boy," she said. "You poor boy."

"It's only a cold," he said. "I never get sick."

"But you are sick," she said. "You are sick and I told you you would be sick, you silly boy." Her voice was tremulous and she sat on the edge of his bed and began to stroke his brow. "If you'd only come into my house, you'd be out there today, swinging your sledge hammer." She extended her caresses to his chest and shoulders and then, reaching under the bedclothes, hit, since Artemis never wore pajamas, pay dirt. "Oh, you lovely boy," said Mrs. Filler. "Do you always get hard this quickly? It's so hard." Artemis groaned and Mrs. Filler went to work. Then he arched his back and let out a muffled yell. The trajectory of his discharge was a little like the fireballs from a Roman candle and may explain our fascination with these pyrotechnics. Then they heard the front door open and Mrs. Filler left his bed for a chair by the window. Her face was very red and she was breathing heavily.

"All the aspirin they have is baby aspirin," said his mother. "It's pink, but I guess if you take enough of it, it works all right."

"Why don't you go to the drugstore and buy some aspirin?" said Mrs. Filler. "I'll stay with him while you're gone."

"I don't know how to drive," said Artemis' mother. "Isn't that funny? In this day and age. I've never learned how to drive a car." Mrs. Filler was about to suggest that she walk to the drugstore, but she realized that this might expose her position. "I'll telephone the drugstore and see if they deliver," his mother said and left the room with the door open. The telephone was in the hallway and Mrs. Filler remained in her chair. She stayed a few minutes longer and parted on a note of false cheerfulness.

"Now, you get better," she said, "and come back and dig me a nice well."

He was back at work three days later. Mrs. Filler was not there, but she returned around 11 with a load of groceries. At noon, when he was opening his lunch pail, she came out of the house carrying a small tray on which there were two brown, steaming drinks. "I've brought you a toddy," she said. He opened the cab door and she climbed in and sat beside him.

"Is there whiskey in it?" asked Artemis.

"Just a drop," she said. "It's mostly tea and lemon. It will help you get better." Artemis tasted his toddy and thought he had never tasted anything so strong. "Did you read my husband's book?" she asked.

"I looked at it," Artemis said slyly. "I didn't understand it. I mean, I didn't understand why he had to write about that. I don't read very much, but I suppose it's better than some books. The kind of books I really hate are the kind of books where people just walk around and light cigarettes and say things like good morning. They just walk around. When I read a book, I want to read about earthquakes and exploring and tidal waves. I don't want to read about people walking around and opening doors."

"Oh, you silly boy," she said. "You don't know anything."

"I'm thirty years old," said Artemis, "and I know how to drill a well."

"But you don't know what I want," she said.

"You want a well, I guess," he said. "A hundred gallons a minute. Good drinking water."

"I don't mean that. I mean what I want now."

He slumped a little in the seat and unfastened his trousers. She dipped her head, a singular gesture rather like a bird going after seed or water. "Hey, that's great," said Artemis, "that's really great. You want me to tell you when I'm going to come?" She simply shook her head. "Big load's on its way," said Artemis. "Big load's coming down the line. You want me to hold it?" She shook her head. "Ouch," yelled Artemis. "Ouch." One of his limitations as a lover was that at the most sublime moment, he usually shouted "Ouch, ouch, ouch." Maria had often complained about this. "Ouch," roared Artemis. "Ouch, ouch, ouch," as he was racked by a large orgasm. "Hey, that was great," he said, "that was really great, but I'll bet it's unhealthy. I mean, I'll bet if you do that all the time, you'd get to be round-shouldered."

She kissed him tenderly and said, "You're crazy." That made two. He gave her one of his sandwiches.

The rig was then down to 300 feet. The next day, Artemis hauled up the hammer and lowered the cylinder that measured water. The water was muddy but not soapy and he guessed the take to be about 20 gallons a minute. When Mrs. Filler came out of the house, he told her the news. She didn't seem pleased. Her face was swollen and her eyes were red. "I'll go down another fifteen or twenty feet," Artemis said. "I think you'll have a nice well."

"And then you'll go away," she said, "and never come back." She began to cry.

"Don't cry," said Artemis. "Please don't cry, Mrs. Filler. I hate to see women crying."

"I'm in love," she sobbed loudly.

"Well, I guess a nice woman like you must fall in love pretty often," Artemis said.

"I'm in love with you," she sobbed. "It's never happened to me before. I wake up at five in the morning and start waiting for you to come. Six o'clock, seven o'clock, eight o'clock. It's agony. I can't live without you."

"What about your husband?" asked Artemis cheerfully.

"He knows," she sobbed. "He's in London. I called him last night. I told him. It didn't seem fair to have him come home expecting a loving wife when his wife is in love with someone else."

"What did he say?"

"He didn't say anything. He hung up. He's scheduled to come back tonight. I have to meet the plane at five. I love you, I love you, I love you."

"Well, I have to get back to work, ma'am," said Artemis at his most rustic. "You go back to the house now and get some rest." She turned and started for the house. He would have liked to console her--sorrow of any sort distressed him--but he knew that any gesture on his part would be hazardous. He reset the rig and went down another 20 feet, where he estimated the take to be about 30 gallons a minute. At 3:30, Mrs. Filler left. She scowled at him as she drove past. As soon as she had gone, he moved hastily. He capped the well, got his rig onto the truck and drove home. About nine that night, the phone rang. He thought of not answering or of asking his mother to take it, but his mother was watching television and he had his responsibilities as a well driller. "You've got around thirty-five gallons a minute," he said. "Haversham will install the pump. I don't know whether or not you'll need another storage tank. Ask Haversham. Goodbye."

The next day, he took his shotgun and a package of sandwiches and walked the woods north of the town. He was not much of a wing shot and there weren't many birds, but it pleased him to walk through the woods and pastures and climb the stone walls. When he got home, his mother said, "She was here. That lady. She brought you a present." She passed him a box in which there were three silk shirts and a love letter. Later that evening, when the telephone rang, he asked his mother to say that he was out. It was, of course, Mrs. Filler. Artemis had not taken a vacation in several years and he could see that the time to travel had arrived. In the morning, he went to a travel agency in the village.

The agency was in a dark, narrow room on a dark street, its walls blazing with posters of beaches, cathedrals and couples in love. The agent was a gray-haired woman. Above her desk was a sign that said, You have to be crazy to be a travel agent. She seemed harassed and her voice was cracked with age, whiskey or tobacco. She chain-smoked. She twice lighted cigarettes when there was a cigarette smoking in the ashtray. Artemis said that he had $500 to spend and would like to be away for about two weeks. "Well, I suppose you've seen Paris, London and Disneyland," she said. "Everyone has. There's Tokyo, of course, but they tell me it's a very tiring flight. Seventeen hours in a 707, with a utility stop in Fairbanks. My most satisfied customers these days are the ones who go to Russia. There's a package." She flashed a folder at him. "For three hundred and twenty-eight dollars, you get economy-round-trip air fare to Moscow, twelve days in a first-class hotel with all your meals, free tickets to hockey, ballet, opera, theater and a pass to the public swimming pool. Side trips to Leningrad and Kiev are optional." He asked what else she might suggest. "Well, there's Ireland," she said, "but it's rainy now. A plane hasn't landed in London for nearly ten days. They stack up at Liverpool and then you take a train down. Rome is cold. So is Paris. It takes three days to get to Egypt. For a two-week trip, the Pacific is out, but you could go to the Caribbean, although reservations are very hard to get. I suppose you'll want to buy souvenirs and there isn't much to buy in Russia."

"I don't want to buy anything," Artemis said. "I just want to travel."

"Take my advice," she said, "and go to Russia."

It seemed the maximum distance that he could place between himself and Mr. and Mrs. Filler. His mother was imperturbable. Most women who owned seven American flags would have protested, but she said nothing but "Go where you want, Sonny. You deserve a change." His visa and passport took a week and one pleasant evening, he boarded the eight-o'clock Aeroflot from Kennedy to Moscow. Most of the other passengers were Japanese and couldn't speak English and it was a long and a lonely trip.

It was raining in Moscow, so Artemis heard what he liked--the sound of rain. The Japanese spoke Russian and he trailed along behind them across the tarmac to the main building, where they formed a line. The line moved slowly and he had been waiting for an hour or longer when a good-looking young woman approached him and asked, "Are you Mr. Artemis Bucklin? I have very good news for you. Come with me." She found his bag and bucked the lines for customs and immigration. A large black car was waiting for them. "We will go first to your hotel," she said. She had a marked English accent. "Then we will go to the Bolshoi theater, where our great premier, Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, wants to welcome you as a member of the American proletariat. People of many occupations come to visit our beautiful country, but you are the first well driller." Her voice was lilting and she seemed very happy with her news. Artemis was confused, tired and dirty. Looking out of the car window, he saw an enormous portrait of the premier nailed to a tree. He was frightened.

Why should he be frightened? He had dug wells for rich and powerful people and had met them without fear or shyness. Khrushchev was merely a peasant who, through cunning, vitality and luck, had made himself the master of a population of over 200,000,000. That was the rub; and as the car approached the city, portraits of Khrushchev looked in at Artemis from bakeries, department stores and lampposts. Khrushchev banners flapped in the wind on a bridge across the Moskva River. In Mayakovsky Square, a large, lighted portrait of Khrushchev beamed down upon his children as they rushed for the subway entrance.

Artemis was taken to a hotel called the Ukraine. "We are already late," the young woman said.

"I can't go anywhere until I've taken a bath and shaved," said Artemis. "I can't go anywhere looking like this. And I would like something to eat."

"You go up and change," she said, "and I'll meet you in the dining room. Do you like chicken?"

Artemis went up to his room and turned on the hot water in his tub. As anyone could guess, nothing happened. He shaved in cold water and was beginning to dress when the hot-water spout made a Vesuvian racket and began to ejaculate rusty and scalding water. He bathed in this, dressed and went down. She was sitting at a table in the dining room, where his dinner had been served. She had kindly ordered a carafe of vodka, which he drank off before he ate his chicken. "I do not want to hasten you," she said, "but we will be late. I will try to explain. Today is the jubilee of the Battle of Stavitsky. We will go to the Bolshoi theater and you will sit on the presidium. I won't be able to sit with you, so you will understand very little of what is said. There will be speeches. Then, after the speeches are over, there will be a reception at the rear of the stage, where our great premier, Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, will welcome you as a member of the American proletariat to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. I think we should go."

The same car and driver waited for them and. on the trip from the Ukraine to the Bolshoi, Artemis counted 70 portraits of the man he was about to meet. They entered the Bolshoi by a back door. He was taken onto the stage, where the speeches had begun. The jubilee was being televised and the lights for this made the stage as hot as a desert, an illusion that was extended by the fact that the stage was flanked with plastic palm trees. Artemis could understand nothing that was said, but he looked around for the premier. He was not in the principal box. This was occupied by two very old women. At the end of an hour of speeches, his anguish turned to boredom and the unease of a full bladder. At the end of another hour, he was merely sleepy. Then the ceremony ended. There was a buffet backstage and he went there as he had been directed, expecting Khrushchev to make his terrifying appearance, but the premier was not around and when Artemis asked if he was expected, he was given no answer. He ate a sandwich and drank a glass of wine. No one spoke to him. He decided to walk home from the Bolshoi in order to stretch his legs. As soon as he left the theater, a policeman stopped him. He kept repeating the name of his hotel and pointing to his shoes, and when the policeman understood, he gave him directions. Off went Artemis. It seemed to be the same route he had taken in the car, but all the portraits of Khrushchev had vanished. All those pictures that had beamed down on him from bakeries, lampposts and walls were gone. He thought he was lost, until he crossed a bridge over the Moskva River that he remembered for its banners. They no longer flew. When he reached the hotel, he looked for a large portrait of Khrushchev that had hung in the lobby. Gone. So, like many other travelers before him, he went upstairs to a strange room in a strange country humming the unreality blues. How could he have guessed that Khrushchev had been deposed?

He had breakfast in the dining room with an Englishman who told him the facts. He also suggested that if Artemis needed an interpreter, he should go to the Central Government Agency and not Intourist. He wrote, in the Cyrillic alphabet, an address on a card. He ordered the waiters around officiously in Russian and Artemis was impressed with his fluency; but he was, in fact, one of those travelers who can order fried eggs and hard liquor in seven languages but who can't count to ten in more than one.

There were cabs in front of the hotel and Artemis gave the address to a driver. They took the same route they had taken to the Bolshoi and Artemis was able to recheck the fact that all the portraits of Khrushchev had been removed in two hours or three at the most. It must have taken hundreds of men. The address was a dingy office building with a sign in English as well as Russian. Artemis climbed some shabby stairs to a door that was padded. Why padded? Silence? Madness? He opened the door onto a brightly lighted office and told a striking young woman that he wanted an interpreter to take him around Moscow.

The Russians don't seem to have gotten the bugs out of illumination. There is either too much light or too little and the light the young woman stood in was seedy. She had, however, or so he thought, enough beauty to conquer the situation. If a thousand portraits of Khrushchev could vanish in three hours, couldn't he fall in love in three minutes? He seemed to. She was about five feet, five. He was six feet, which meant that she was the right size, a consideration he had learned to respect. Her brow and the shape of her head were splendid and she stood with her head raised a little, as if she were accustomed to speaking to people taller than herself. She wore a tight sweater that showed her fine breasts and her skirt was also tight. She seemed to be in charge of the office, but in spite of her manifest executive responsibilities, there was not a trace of aggressiveness in her manner. Her femininity was intense. Her essence seemed to lie in two things: a sense of girlishness and the quickness with which she moved her head. She seemed capable of the changeableness, the moodiness of someone much younger. (She was, he discovered later, 32.) She moved her head as if her vision were narrow, as if it moved from object to object, rather than to take in the panorama. Her vision was not narrow, but that was the impression he got. There was some nostalgia in her appearance, some charming feminine sense of the past. "Mrs. Kosiev will take you around," she said. "Without taxi fares, that will be twenty-three rubles." She spoke with exactly the same accent as the woman who had met him at the airport. (He would never know, but they had both learned their English off a tape made at the university in Leningrad by an English governess turned Communist.)

He knew none of the customs of this strange country, but he decided to take a chance. "Will you have dinner with me?" he asked.

She gave him an appraising and pleasant look. "I'm going to a poetry reading," she said.

"Can I come with you?" he asked.

"Why, yes," she said. "Of course. Meet me here at six." Then she called for Mrs. Kosiev. This was a broad-shouldered woman who gave him a manly handshake but no smile. "Will you please give our guest from the United States the twenty-three-ruble tour of Moscow?" He counted out 23 rubles and put them on the desk of the woman with whom he had just fallen in love.

Going down the stairs, Mrs. Kosiev said, "That was Natasha Funaroff. She is the daughter of Marshal Funaroff. They have lived in Siberia...."

After this piece of information, Mrs. Kosiev began to praise the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and continued this for the rest of the day. They walked a short distance from the office to the Kremlin, where she first took him to the Armory. A long line was waiting at the door, but they bucked this. Inside, they put felt bags over their shoes and Artemis was shown the crown jewels, the royal horse tack and some of the royal wardrobe. Artemis was bored and had begun to feel terribly tired. They toured three churches in the Kremlin. These seemed to him rich, lofty and completely mysterious. They then took a cab to the Tretyakov Gallery. Artemis had begun to notice that the smell of Moscow--so far from any tilled land--was the smell of soil, sour curds, sour whey and earth-stained overalls. It lingered in the massive lobby of the Ukraine. The golden churches of the Kremlin, scoured of their incense, smelled like barns, and in the gallery, the smell of curds and whey was augmented by a mysterious but distinct smell of cow manure. At one, Artemis said he was hungry and they had some lunch. They then went to the Lenin Library and, after that, to a deconsecrated monastery that had been turned into a folk museum. Artemis had seen more than enough and after the monastery, he said that he wanted to return to the hotel. Mrs. Kosiev said that the tour was not completed and that there would be no rebate. He said he didn't care and took a cab back to the Ukraine.

He returned to the office at six. She was waiting in the street, waiting by the door. "Did you have a nice tour?" she asked.

"Oh, yes," said Artemis. "Oh, yes. I don't seem to like museums, but then, I've never been in any and perhaps it's something I could learn."

"I detest museums," she said. She took his arm lightly, lightly touched his shoulder with hers. Her hair was a very light brown--not really blonde--but it shone in the streetlights. It was straight and dressed simply with a short queue in the back, secured with an elastic band. The air was damp and cold and smelled of diesel exhaust. "We are going to hear Luncharvsky," she said. "It isn't far. We can walk."

Oh, Moscow, Moscow, that most anonymous of all anonymous cities! There were some dead flowers on the bust of Chaliapin, but they seemed to be the only flowers in town. Part of the clash of a truly great city on an autumn night is the smell of roasting coffee and (in Rome) wine and new bread and men and women carrying flowers home to a lover, a spouse or nobody in particular, nobody at all. As it grew darker and the lights went on, Artemis seemed to find none of the excitement of a day's ending. Through a window he saw a child reading a book, a woman frying potatoes. Was it because with all the princes gone and all the palaces still standing one felt, for better or for worse, that a critical spectrum of the city's life had been extinguished? They passed a man carrying three loaves of new bread in a string basket. The man was singing. This made Artemis happy. "I love you, Natasha Funaroff," he said.

"How did you know my name?"

"Mrs. Kosiev told me all about you." They saw ahead of them the statue of Mayakovsky, although Artemis didn't (doesn't today) know anything about the poet. It was gigantic and tasteless, a relic of the Stalin era that reshaped the whole pantheon of Russian literature to resemble the sons of Lenin. (Even poor Chekhov was given posthumously heroic shoulders and a massive brow.) It grew darker and darker and more lights went on. Then, as they saw the crowd, Artemis saw that the smoke from their cigarettes had formed, 30 or 40 feet in the air, a flat, substantial and unnatural cloud. He supposed this was some process of inversion. Before they reached the square, he could hear Luncharvsky's voice. Russian is a more percussive language than English, less musical but more diverse, and this may account for its carrying power. The voice was powerful, not only in volume but in its emotional force. It seemed melancholy and exalted. Artemis understood nothing beyond the noise. Luncharvsky stood on a platform below the statue of Mayakovsky, declaiming love lyrics to an audience of 1000 or 2000, who stood under their bizarre cloud or canopy of smoke. He was not singing, but the force of his voice was the force of singing. Natasha made a gesture as if she had brought him to see one of the wonders of the world and he thought that perhaps she had.

He was a traveler, a stranger, and he had traveled this far to see strange things. The dusk was cold, but Luncharvsky was in his shirt sleeves. His shoulders were broad--broad-boned, that is. His arms were long. His hands were large and when he closed them into a fist, as he did every few minutes, the fist seemed massive. He was a tall man. His hair was yellow, not cut and not combed. His eyes had the startling and compelling cast of a man unremittently on the up and up. Artemis had the feeling that not only did he command the attention of the crowd but had anyone there been momentarily inattentive, he would have known it. At the end of the recitation, someone passed him a bouquet of dying chrysanthemums and his suit coat. "I'm hungry," said Artemis.

"We will go to a Georgian restaurant," she said. "A Georgian kitchen is our best kitchen."

They went to a very noisy place where Artemis had chicken for the third time. Leaving the restaurant, she took his arm again, pressed her shoulder against his and led him down a street. He wondered if she would take him home and if she did. what would he find? Old parents, brothers, sisters or perhaps a roommate? "Where are we going?" he asked.

"To the park. Is that all right?"

"That's fine," said Artemis. The park, when they reached it, was like any other. There were trees, losing their leaves at that time of year, benches and concrete walks. There was a concrete statue of a man holding a child on his shoulders. The child held a bird. Artemis supposed they were meant to represent progress or hope. They sat on a bench, he put an arm around her and kissed her. She responded tenderly and expertly and for the next half hour they kissed each other. Artemis felt relaxed, loving, close to sappy. When he stood to straighten the protuberance in his trousers, she took his hand and led him to an apartment house a block or so away. An armed policeman stood by the door. She took what Artemis guessed was an identity card out of her purse. The policeman scrutinized this in a way that was meant to be offensive. He seemed openly bellicose. He sneered, glowered, pointed several times to Artemis and spoke to her as if she were contemptible. In different circumstances--in a different country--Artemis would have hit him. Finally, they were allowed to pass and they took an elevator--a sort of cage--to another floor. Even the apartment house smelled to Artemis like a farm. She unlocked a door with two keys and led him into a dingy room. There was a bed in one corner. Clothes hung to dry from a string. On a table, there was half a loaf of bread and some scraps of meat. Artemis quickly got out of his clothes, as did she, and they (his choice of words) made love. She cleaned up the mess with a cloth, put a lighted cigarette between his lips and poured him a glass of vodka. "I don't ever want this to end," Artemis said. "I don't ever want this to end." Lying with her in his arms, he felt a thrilling and galvanic sense of their indivisibility, although they were utter strangers. He was thinking idly about a well he had drilled two years ago and God knows what she was thinking about. "What was it like in Siberia?" he asked.

"Wonderful," she said.

"What was your father like?"

"He liked cucumbers," she said. "He was a marshal until we were sent to Siberia. When we came back, they gave him an office in the Ministry of Defense. It was a little office. There was no chair, no table, no desk, no telephone, nothing. He used to go there in the morning and sit on the floor. Then he died. Now you'll have to go."

"Why?"

"Because it's late and I'll worry about you."

"Can I see you tomorrow?"

"Of course."

"Can you come to my hotel?"

"No, I couldn't do that. It wouldn't be safe for me to be seen in a tourist hotel and, anyhow, I hate them. We can meet in the park. I'll write the address." She left the bed and walked across the room. Her figure was astonishing--it seemed in its perfection to be almost freakish. Her breasts were large, her waist was very slender and her backside was voluminous. She carried it with a little swag, as if it were filled with buckshot. Artemis dressed, kissed her good night and went down. The policeman stopped him but finally let him go, since neither understood anything the other said. When Artemis asked for his key at the hotel, there was some delay. Then a man in uniform appeared, holding Artemis' passport, and extracted the visa.

"You will leave Moscow tomorrow morning," he said. "You will take SAS flight 769 to Copenhagen and change for New York."

"But I want to see your great country," Artemis said. "I want to see Leningrad and Kiev."

"The airport bus leaves at half past nine."

In the morning, Artemis had the In-tourist agent in the lobby telephone the interpreters' bureau. When he asked for Natasha Funaroff, he was told there was no such person there; there never had been. Forty-eight hours after his arrival, he was winging his way home. The other passengers on the plane were American tourists and he was able to talk and make friends and pass the time.

• • •

Artemis went to work a few days later drilling in hardpan outside the village of Brewster. The site had been chosen by a dowser and he was dubious, but he was wrong. At 400 feet he hit limestone and a stream of sweet water that came in at 100 gallons a minute. It was 16 days after his return from Moscow that he got his first letter from Natasha. His address on the envelope was in English, but there was a lot of Cyrillic writing and the stamps were brilliantly colored. The letter disconcerted his mother and had, she told him, alarmed the postman. To go to Russia was one thing, but to receive letters from that strange and distant country was something else. "My darling," Natasha had written. "I dreamed last night that you and I were a wave on the Black Sea at Yalta. I know you haven't seen that part of my country, but if one were a wave, moving toward shore, one would be able to see the Crimean Mountains covered with snow. In Yalta sometimes when there are roses in bloom, you can see snow falling on the mountains. When I woke from the dream, I felt elevated and relaxed and I definitely had the taste of salt in my mouth. I must sign this letter Fifi, since nothing so irrational could have been written by your loving Natasha."

He answered her letter that night. "Dearest Natasha, I love you. If you will come to this country, I will marry you. I think of you all the time and I would like to show you how we live--the roads and trees and the lights of the cities. It is very different from the way you live. I am serious about all of this, and if you need money for the plane trip, I will send it. If you decided that you didn't want to marry me, you could go home again. Tonight is Halloween. I don't suppose you have that in Russia. It is the night when the dead are supposed to arise, although they don't, of course, but children wander around the streets disguised as ghosts and skeletons and devils and you give them candy and pennies. Please come to my country and marry me."

This much was simple, but to copy her address in the Russian alphabet took him much longer. He went through ten envelopes before he had what he thought was a satisfactory copy. In the morning, before he went to work, he took his letter to the post office. The clerk was a friend. "What in hell are you doing, Art, writing this scribble-scrabble to Communists?"

Artemis got rustic. "Well, you see, Sam, I was there for a day or so and there was this girl." The letter took a 25-cent stamp, a dismal gray engraving of Abraham Lincoln. When Artemis, thinking of the brilliant stamps on her letter, asked if there weren't something livelier, his friend said no.

He got her reply in ten days. "I like to think that our letters cross and I like to think of them flapping their wings at each other somewhere over the Atlantic. I would love to come to your country and marry you or have you marry me here, but we cannot do this until there is peace in the world. I wish we didn't have to depend upon peace for love. I went to the country on Saturday and the birds and the birches and the pines were soothing. I wish you had been with me. A Unitarian doctor of divinity came to the office yesterday looking for an interpreter. He seemed intelligent and I took him around Moscow myself. He told me I didn't have to believe in God to be a Unitarian. God, he told me, is the progress from chaos to order to human responsibility. I always thought God sat on the clouds, surrounded by troops of angels, but perhaps He lives in a submarine, surrounded by divisions of mermaids. Please send me a snapshot and write again. Your letters make me very happy."

"I'm enclosing a snapshot," he wrote. "It's three years old. It was taken at the Wakusha Reservoir. This is the center of the Northeast watershed. I think of you all the time. I woke at three this morning thinking of you. It was a nice feeling. I like the dark. The dark seems to me like a house with many rooms. Sixty or 70. At night now after work I go skating. I suppose everybody in Russia must know how to skate. I know that Russians play hockey, because they usually beat the Americans in the Olympics. Three to two, seven to two, eight to one. It is beginning to snow. Love, Artemis." He had another struggle with the address.

"Your last letter took 18 days," she wrote. "I find myself answering your letters before they come, but there's nothing mystical about this, really, for there's an immense clock at the post office with one side black and the other white showing what time it is in different parts of the world. By the time dawn breaks where you are, we are halfway through the day. They have just painted my stairs. The colors are the colors favored by all municipal painters--light brown with a dark-brown border. While they were about it, they splashed a little white paint on the bottom of my mailbox. Now when the lift carries me down, the white paint gives me the illusion that there is a letter from you. I cannot cure myself of this. My heart beats and I run to the box, only to find white paint. Now I ride the lift with my back turned, the drop of paint is so painful."

As he returned from work one night, his mother told him that someone had called from the county seat and said that the call was urgent. Artemis guessed that it must be the Internal Revenue Service. He had had difficulty trying to describe to them the profit and loss in looking for water. He was a conscientious citizen and he called the number. A stranger identified himself as Mr. Cooper and he didn't sound like the Internal Revenue Service. Cooper wanted to see Artemis at once. "Well, you see," Artemis said, "it's my bowling night. Our team is tied for first place and I'd hate to miss the games if we could meet some other time." Cooper was agreeable and Artemis told him where he was working and how to get there. Cooper said he would be there at ten and Artemis went bowling.

In the morning, it began to snow. It looked like a heavy storm. Cooper showed up at ten. He did not get out of his car, but he was so very pleasant that Artemis guessed he was a salesman. Insurance.

"I understand that you've been in Russia."

"Well, I was only there for forty-eight hours. They canceled my visa. I don't know why."

"But you've been corresponding with Russia."

"Yes, there's this girl. I went out with her once. We write each other."

"The State Department is very much interested in your experience. Undersecretary Hurlow would like to talk with you."

"But I didn't really have any experience. I saw some churches and had three chicken dinners and then they sent me home."

"Well, the Undersecretary is interested. He called yesterday and again this morning. Would you mind going to Washington?"

"I'm working."

"It would only take a day. You can take the shuttle in the morning and come back in the afternoon. It won't take long. I think they'll pay your expenses, although this hasn't been decided. I have the information here." He handed the well digger a State Department letterhead that requested the presence of Artemis Bucklin at the new State Department building at nine a.m. on the following day. "If you can make it," Cooper said, "your Government will be very grateful. I wouldn't worry too much about the nine a.m. Nobody much gets to work before ten. It was nice to have met you. If you have any questions, call me at this number." Then he was gone and gone very quickly, because the snow was dense. The well site was in some backwoods where the roads wouldn't be plowed and Artemis drove home before lunch.

Some provincialism--some attachment to the not unpleasant routines of his life --made Artemis feel resistant to the trip to Washington. He didn't want to go, but could he be forced to? The only force involved was in the phrase that his Government would be grateful. With the exception of the Internal Revenue Service, he had no particular quarrel with his Government and he would have liked--childishly, perhaps--to deserve its gratitude. That night he packed a bag and checked the airline schedules and he was at the new State Department building at nine the next morning.

Cooper had been right about time. Artemis cooled his heels in a waiting room until after ten. He was then taken up two floors, not to see the Undersecretary but to see a man named Serge Belinsky. Belinsky's office was small and bare and his secretary was a peevish Southern woman who wore bedroom slippers. Belinsky asked Artemis to fill out some simple bureaucratic forms. When had he arrived in Moscow?; when had he left Moscow?; where had he stayed?; etc. When these were finished, Belinsky had them duplicated and took Artemis up another floor to the office of a man named Moss. Here things were very different. The secretary was pretty and flirtatious and wore shoes. The furniture was not luxurious, but it was a cut above Belinsky's. There were flowers on the desk and a painting on the wall. Artemis repeated the little he remembered, the little there was to remember. When he described the arrangements for his meeting with Khrushchev, Moss laughed; Moss whooped. He was a very elegant young man, so beautifully dressed and polished that Artemis felt himself uncouth, unwashed and shabby. He was clean enough and mannerly, but his clothes bound at the shoulders and the crotch. "I think the Undersecretary would like to see us now," said Moss, and they went up another flight.

This was an altogether different creation. The floors were carpeted, the walls were paneled and the secretary wore boots that were buckled with brass and reached up past her skirts, ending God knows where. How far they had come, in such a short distance, from the peevish secretary in bedroom slippers. How Artemis longed for his rig, his work clothes and his lunch pail. They were served coffee and then the secretary--the one with the boots--dismissed Moss and took him in to the Undersecretary.

Except for a very small desk, there was nothing businesslike about the office. There were colored rugs, sofas, pictures and flowers. Mr. Hurlow was a very tall man who seemed tired or perhaps unwell. "It was good of you to come, Mr. Bucklin. I'll go straight to the point. I have to go to the Hill at eleven. You know Natasha Funaroff."

"I took her out once. We had dinner and sat in a park."

"You correspond with her."

"Yes."

"Of course, we've monitored your letters. Their government does the same. Our intelligence feels that your letters contain some sort of information. She, as the daughter of a marshal, is close to the government. The rest of her family were shot. She wrote that God might sit in a submarine, surrounded by divisions of mermaids. That same day was the date of our last submarine crisis. I understand that she is an intelligent woman and I can't believe that she would write anything so foolish without its having a second meaning. Earlier she wrote that you and she were a wave on the Black Sea. The date corresponds precisely to the Black Sea maneuvers. You sent her a photograph of yourself beside the Wakusha Reservoir, pointing out that this was the center of the Northeast watershed. This, of course, is not classified information, but it all helps. Later you write that the dark seems to you like a house divided into seventy rooms. This was written ten days before we activated the Seventieth Division. Would you care to explain any of this?"

"There's nothing to explain. I love her."

"That's absurd. You said yourself that you only saw her once. How can you fall in love with a woman you've only seen once? I can't at the moment threaten you, Mr. Bucklin. I can bring you before a committee, but unless you're willing to be more cooperative, this would be a waste of our time. We feel quite sure that you and your friend have worked out a cipher. I can't forbid you to write, of course, but we can stop your letters. What I would like is your patriotic cooperation. Mr. Cooper, whom I believe you've met, will call on you once a week or so and give you the information or, rather, the misinformation that we would like you to send to Russia, couched, of course, in your cipher, your descriptions of the dark as a house."

"I couldn't do that, Mr. Hurlow. It would be dishonest to you and to Natasha."

The Undersecretary laughed and gave a little girlish tilt to his shoulders. "Well, think it over and call Cooper when you've made up your mind. Of course, the destiny of the nation doesn't depend on your decision. I'm late." He didn't rise, he didn't offer his hand. Artemis, feeling worse than he had felt in Moscow and singing the unreality blues, went past the secretary with the boots and took an elevator clown past the secretary with the shoes and the one in bedroom slippers. He got home in time for supper.

He never heard again from the State Department. Had they made a mistake? Were they fools or idle? He would never know. He wrote Natasha four very circumspect letters, omitting his hockey and his bowling scores. There was no reply. He looked for letters from her for a month or so. He thought often of the spot of paint on her mailbox. When it got warmer, there was the healing sound of rain to hear, at least there was that. Water, water.