Jack spotted her before she sat down. So he measured her in this small place, as he was fifty paces behind. The woman's stature, and then her quick turn as if in evidence her humanity opposing her almost devout stride. Perhaps she should have continued on, instead of sitting down at the cafe, for her stance was as large as the Brandenburger Tor.

      Jack crossed the cold paving stones to her table as she crossed her legs. He did this before understanding that he had. He stood a metre from where she had been standing and asked if he could join her. The other outdoor tables were nearly full – the one vacant was next to hers. She had noticed this. Hers was closest to the doors of the café, so blasts of warmed air hit this spot first. Consenting, she smiled, even gesturing towards the chair Jack was about to place his hand upon.

      That's when lightning struck him on the right ear. Jack Thomas lurched forward, hit the metal chair which hit the metal table, shocking Miriam as well, as her forearm rested on it. Just a jolt, the electricity was sucked back up into the dark slate-blue clouds passing before the full moon. Patrons within and outside the café in face-frozen surprise, having witnessed the white current, held their breath, waiting to see if the man and the woman would fall down dead.

      They did not. Jack thought he saw the bones in her hand and arm; Miriam was certain she had seen his jaw and skull. Their hearts had stopped, and then began beating again at the same instant. The head-waiter was at his side saying something. The manager was picking up the phone receiver to ring for an ambulance. But Jack raised his palm; shook his head. His ear seemed to still glow. Finally, he pulled the chair out and sat; his eyes wide as hers. A bottle of brandy and a carafe of water were gingerly placed on the table, the covering-cloth's threads stood up imperceptibly. The waiter was careful not to touch any metal. Glasses were brought, four.

      Miriam spoke first. "You needn't impress me anymore."

      "Thank goodness. I don't believe I could ever be a lightning rod again." He smiled. The voltage was replaced by minor shock and greater fascination.

      She held out her hand, firmly grasping and shaking his, after another very real spark coursed between them. "Miriam."

      "Jack. Thomas." Concerned that he was still shaking –she had felt it in his grip- she poured brandy and water for both of them. The quiet about them wore off. Staff and customers began to speak excitedly about the event and the pair. Miriam handed him the brandy, and taking up her own glass, saluted their futures. Later, Jack would recall that they had received the brandy gratis. Struck by lightning on an early March night in Berlin.

      For both had wanted this very mark, to at least watch the bow strung; this twilight was the fulfilment of all time funnelled into the electrical charge. Miriam bowed down in the blood to come. And Jack succumbed to his rain book of trade.

      She had noted the buds already set on some of the trees as she walked to the café. 'The hardest hue to hold', she thought. Conjuring up this night she ran her finger along a maple leaf curled tightly into a spade-shaped tip. The sun had run in and out of the quickening sky, and the unpurchased warmth of a too early spring reminded her of her own predestined span. Miriam hurried on. It was to be this man.

      "Jack. Thomas. What do you do?" Her courage was planted as the sower's in the parable.

      His remembrance gave him an unshakeable conscience. He did not want her, least of all another stranger.  She was an insertion, an unwelcome addition to his common romanticism, common that is, not to the golden mean, a just mean in a grandiose scheme intact. Nevertheless she became the insert, the addition, the enslavement, and he became glad of it –the crack in the rock.-

      "I'm an architect." The brandy was effective. Jack had eaten some breakfast; but nothing else today. "And what of yourself?"

      "Account executive. For Fortrams. Do you know it?"

      "Office suppliers from the US. Yes of course. You do have an accent."

      "I'm from the southern part of America, a small town in Virginia. Have you been to the States? No? I was thinking as I walked here that Berlin feels less political than it is; yet we're encircled by it. Odd, isn't it?"

      "Yes, yes; that is true," Jack said quietly to her and the engulfing twilight. Then they peered into their brandy, as though the liquid was a prognosticating tool. Absinthe would have been a better choice.

      "I always try to come to this place when I'm in Berlin. It's the first café I found on my own. "'Café Novalis'." She slipped in and out of her thoughts, wondering at him – why him. A reasonable ironic reason would account for it.

      He reached into the inner pocket of his brushed camel's hair coat to find his cigarette case. "Your café even has the blue flower," indicating the small vase with a single flower.  Jack offered her a cigarette; she declined. As he struck a match, she noticed his wedding band. She felt he was not attempting to 'pick her up' though. When he stepped through the twilight towards her his jaws were grinding and his melancholia paced fast ahead of him, providing him with a trail to follow. Thus he spied the warm lights and the gay sign, then her, his countenance reclaimed most of its own light, and she was glad for it. Miriam could smell someone's cologne in the changing air, by the Wall.

     Jack leaned on the arm of the chair, suddenly disconcerted by the square electrical burn mark of his cuff-link upon it and thought he had an identical mark on his wrist. Then his thoughts ran to the ghosts of the burned, who were scattered everywhere: in between the no-man's land of splinty barbed wire, synagogues of Kristalnächt buried beneath the new streets together with the persecuted Jews and ordinary German children who had only died months after the war ended. And now he had left his own insignificant mark. 'What did she leave? Perhaps the sign of the claddagh ring, crown up, on the tablecloth (her hands were folded over it), or seared into the wooden 'O' of the tabletop.' Miriam, for an unblinking, half-mocking moment, felt a bit petulant at his silence, so she uncrossed, then re-crossed her legs, bouncing her left foot. Jack felt the vibration. He awoke from his half-dreamt idea, his easy charm flowing to her.

      Meticulously moving and chess-setting the glasses so that he could place his folded arms like hers on the table, he leaned in slightly, and said, "I've just recalled I'm to sit in on a meeting of the upper shopkeepers to select appropriate office furniture for their back rooms Tuesday next."

      Miriam grinned. "Of course! You're the famous architect who helped a soldier defect. It was all over the news. And you 'declined to be interviewed!' By the way, your design is marvellous. But why ever a cruciform? I just saw the rose window up close. What a master-stroke! Vitruvius Man! My father used to say 'serendipity is the stuff and surprise of life'.  Oh, I'm sorry, have I made you uncomfortable?"

      Jack was called to his individuality; his creativity made it so. The act of leading the soldier Valentine into his creation verified this; but only this. He was a man used to concealing his knotted inner life, had been unbalanced by Miriam's enthusiasms and her charm, so much like his own. They were the people, so it appeared to others, who emerged to take control of conversations, situations, to rekindle bungled, awkward gatherings. In short, Jack and Miriam were the type of people one invited. Like does attract like: the sunken shyness coated by the bourgeois, wheeling charm; moreover, neither Miriam nor Jack could have survived to adulthood without it. How would each have known this about the other though? Scent or coincidence? They had found each other –bruises hardened- and that was what mattered.

      Especially to Jack's tablemate. When she was cast back against the Wall in shadow, her tall form was seen by Jack. Shredding herself from her restored self, Miriam McCann was yet almost 13, about to reach her 23^rd birthday and prevailed upon to accomplish much. It was vital to her to now meet her doppelgänger in this strange place.

      "Ah, the window! What else did you notice about it?" His eyebrows fairly jumped when he queried her. "The man?"

      "Well he's you." The waiter returned with a small pad and pencil that barely covered the palm of his hand. "I'm hungry! Steak, baked potato, a small salad." Jack nodded and held up his fingers, two. "Wine? A house wine, red." Again, he assented.

      A table was set, food and drink brought and consumed. The night grew colder with the buds fading from memory, replaced by recollections of lumpy snow. Yet there were hints in smell, in rising humidity that could not be denied.

     To be the person who genuinely affects others – the outsider, seen strange, grotesque, and glorious in mounting - just those qualities, the features grow familiar, yes, the outsider who becomes the hero. Woe to them if or when fall; dashed upon splinty human perception and then! failure is justified and glorified, my rogue prince and princess. But they know they're not fully human (in the novel sense of the world), yet their radiance will fall down on all of human existence –the radiant will be drunk with the supplication of the moon and that is their due.

      The tables were changed many times during their stay at Café Novalis. Most of the staff and patrons who had witnessed the curious strike were gone. The pair sat oblivious to the March twilight that contained them like a glass jar – their waiter was unable to simply slip the cheque on the table. The cold drew them together, balanced on their crossed arms, speaking of art, the baroque. Each afraid of himself, herself, of his, her mission – the temptation was fearful.

      Jack, prolonging their time together, walked Miriam back to the Art'otel on Wallstrade under the first arch of the hotel. She suddenly faced him. Miriam seemed to concentrate on an invisible place on his face, her eyes darker and darker blue, until she sprang forward and kissed him on the cheek. With the same sudden determination, she left him. He stared after her for nearly five minutes, then walked back to his own bed, in the Tiergarten. He listened to the trams. Individually and collectively, they lay down: awake under their eyelids, each had a resolve better than before.

     Miriam, after her revelation, began the process of divesting herself of all not directly related to her instruction.

     Jack had wanted to do this also; however, his wife and child had deterred him from total commitment – hence the building with its cruciform shape and stained glass windows, albeit not apprehending its significance at the time.

      And so, radiant in disaster, they slept in their respective cells. Thomas had his recurrent dream: a single piece of cloth flapping in a cross breeze which covered a sign. Sometimes the cloth was a clean white, sometimes dirty, but his perspective was always the same. He was gazing upwards. The cumulus clouds were built up like Jacob's ladder above him, making his sight and desire climb. This nocturnal deliverance replaced his nightmare about ravens. This in its turn had been relieved by a dream of wings.

     Miriam and Jack's night in Berlin bled on with large spring snow-flakes. They curled up in circles of wind, which let go of them at the end/beginning of the circle, making it reappear like an eye, and appear that the snow itself was weeping. My beloved stains the wind, water, and earth. 'Thank goodness it isn't the razor-sleet of late January', thought Jack as he opened the drapes the next morning. He heard someone in the hall trundling down the steps for breakfast saying "Wo weilist du?" It conjured sails and love potions, tack and treasure. This innocent reference to Tristan und Isolde made Jack smile as he shaved.

     For Miriam, her series of events culminated while still home, entangled in the past and thinking to herself 'Would that I could keep salt from my wounds'; something so surprising she ceased to suck breath: light from the back of her brain shaped her into an envelopment of white-yellow glare as she stood in queue at a coffee shop to get a large chicory coffee before going to her job in Richmond. Her posture did not change; the inside of her arms rotated outwards; however as though to receive hypodermic needles. Light had already stolen her into a trance – she was in no need of a further spike. Voices wept, sighed in her inner ear. Under sawing wings, fast alternating in arched or closed position, a translucent figure balled its fists to its chest, then flung the hands back out at her as Miriam continued in her hypnagogic state. Her mind repeated 'Body of Christ, save me!' The light disintegrated as did the figure and voices, and she faced the brown eyes across the counter regarding her patiently; heard distinct words that belonged to the eyes say, "Will you have your usual, Miss? We have crullers today." Miriam nodded, automatically took out her wallet, then money, collected her purchases and left the shop. The clerk dumped the large tip remaining from the cash into a jar, happily.

     Hypnogogia cast its line for Miriam again, reeling in her last moments of sleep. She could see herself, could hear herself thinking. 'He summoned me and I could actually hear him swallow, I was that close. It was the blood in his throat, washed down by rosewater. And I awakened in a lake of light, an entire constellation over my sternum.' Police sirens called her to things of this world. Constant bleating formed into cars ringing the Victory Column, rushing and swinging and stopping before the Brandenburg Gate. 'Checkpoint? Escape? Was it successful?'

      Monday's snow melted quickly under foot and sunshine. In the hotel dining-room Miriam breakfasted on a pot of chocolate and a plate-sized waffle. She was still harnessed to the vision; nevertheless knew of the veins that bulged out of her wrists and hands, felt morning sun's warmth as she steadily studied the passers-by through the glass, imagined another free man surrounded by police and citizens, the Capitalist cathedral opened, Jack in stained glass. Did she anticipate what was to happen? Was she prepared? After sitting for an unusually long period of time, Miriam caught herself as the crowds dissipated and the room emptied itself of guests. She tried, in vain, to dab the chocolate moustache away again. Returning to her room to do the job properly, she then filled her case with catalogues, facts, and figures, and hurried to her appointment with Herr Dunkel, purveyor of fine carpets, who required desks and chairs with which to conduct transactions.

      The saints crowded her heart – though not last evening- when she was on her business. Sebastian- "My mortality runs deep," he seemed to be saying, though he was heavy and full of arrows. Or was it the Maid of Orléans who survived a single bolt through the breast? They survived to die. Miriam had seen them in books and glass, their telling martyrdom a sober reminder stamped upon her memory and perception. She combed her hair through her fingers, as she had done since she was a teenager while meditating on a consuming thought or project, and then filed out onto the streets of a bright Berlin morning. "Love calls us to things of this world", while duty partitions our lives. How intricate the balance! Today, Miriam strode towards her duty; portfolio arranged for maximum delivery, a man, not God, as its inspiration albeit she dared not admit Jack on a conscious level. 'Could he be a part?'  She wanted it so. Henceforth, she was set forth out of ordinary time, her grief no longer replenished over and again as a match struck; she had stepped out of the linear. God and a man at once left her to enjoy this work.

      Jack stood inside the nave/arcade of the Capitalist cathedral, hands thrust inside his coat pockets. He looked down to the end of the building where an altar would have been and sighed audibly. He then ran his left hand over his face, producing a drawing pencil with his right from inside his inner pocket. Gazing down, one would have thought he was about to conduct some unseen orchestra, as he raised pencil to shoulder level, stretching his arm all the way out. As he performed this action, he heard their boots on the marble floor, knew they wondered about him. Perhaps an eccentric genius? Or someone clinging to the root of sanity?  (They should have known something of him, having worked with him already.) In that case, they should grab him before his mind gutted itself.

      "Herr Thomas?" a plaintive baritone asked in the echoes.

      Lowering his pencil, he turned to greet the last of the construction workers who were completing various interiors jobs, specialized, actual craftsman. Jack grinned at them, a rare sight. They stopped walking towards him en masse, not sure of what was about to happen. "Herr Keith! Guten Morgen! I've been looking around. Those doors on the left apse, marvellous! I can imagine priests and monks coming in for Matins. The iron-work with the arrows, such detail!"

      "Herr Thomas, I must protest. You designed it." Keith said, though not vehemently.

      "Ah, yes, but your man executed the work! Send him my compliments and regards. Wait, is he here?"

      Keith motioned for a man at the rearguard and spoke quietly to his comrade, who in turn signed to the ex-blacksmith. "Herr Thomas, Wilhelm is deaf from a bomb that exploded near his house, so it is his son who tells him of your compliments." Wilhelm stepped forward when Jack extended his hand and they shook. Wilhelm smiled, as did his son.

      "Of course, you did the ironwork for the window." Keith repeated this in German as Thomas had forgot to, then apologized. "Danke." The son was lean and blond; the father heavier and grey blended with his blond hair. Thomas thought that they were rural folk, with horses mingling with autos, where one night the bombs dropped, only the one night.

      They fell to business – estimates of how much longer, Jack sketching some additional details. The landscapers would come soon, the outside front and right apse spaces still needed to be cleared. Joyful Jack in the bright air of the chilly cathedral, speaking in new buoyant tones. Keith and his crew were bemused by this side of Jack, the driven Englishman still intense, but something akin to Spring fever had taken hold of him.

      His dream had been replaced: the wings were jumbled in his mind with Valentine and Miriam. The sun grew steadily in the sky, melting the morning snow and further enlivening his spirit.

     Stricken as Jack had been before because his boyhood was impugned by a dog-collared indiscretion that narrowed his relationships; his field of vision today beheld body and soul, work and worker, heaven and earth. How the priestly father would have marvelled at the boy who drew churches and found himself reflecting his own shadow, plus the fiery birth of stars. "Is this not glory?" the orphan's father would have asked.

     Recusant families of England were still worthy of suspicion, 300 years after the Virgin Queen. Roman Catholic John Springfield was in his element though at Christ Church, Oxford. The Oxford Movement was 50 years past but still as present as when Henry the VIII seized the Island Church and all its worldly goods. At the onslaught of the Great War, John with Firsts in all courses and himself a newly minted graduate was sketching in Brussels. He had to dash for England, just making it across the Channel. He joined up as an officer and was sent to the storied poppy fields, only to watch the flowers desiccated, the fields obliterated by shell fire in three days.

     Springfield told his parish priest that's when he received his call. "'Three days'" he kept repeating, then added: "My temple was rebuilt. Naturally, I had to stay with my men, duty and honour. Leaving them would have been a sin."

     The priest agreed, writing a spiritually artful letter recommending John Springfield for Holy Orders. That was what he wanted, or so thought, for many years. Who could blame him? Four years of unmitigated agony, Captain Springfield clung to the peace of a noiseless clean church, intact beautiful windows, holding high the Host, justified in bestowing life eternal upon each soul. Saving instead of killing.

     But at the end, he couldn't digest his lonely sin – the abandonment of his child.

     His 'call' was a plea to be relieved of the death and misery around him; he was exactly like all the men in all the trenches and battlefields.  "Just get me through this one night," he prayed to himself, an oath to serve the Lord. Then Springfield uttered it aloud, his voice voided by the war machines. At two in the morning he shouted the same. A smoky dawn arrived with two-thirds of his regiment dead. The Captain did not receive one scrape. So he kept his promise to God to become a priest. When the Second World War blew in, he had kept his vows, tended his flock. And then a new front, the home-front, all of Britain in peril. Selflessness gave way to selfishness; Father Springfield took the news personally. Had he not kept his part of the bargain? What was God up to? Were the Germans meant to win after all in the First Clash? Was this the punishment of the arrogant Allies? Was everyone to suffer - women, children, and old men - because of some? Where was the God of Covenant? Yes, he was alive but only half a man, he secretly seethed.

     It didn't fall away at once. The subtle shift processing into his heart and mind came on gradually. Finally, Springfield thought, "What's the use? I can still comfort but I want what I've missed." His lover was an English rose; her family barely making ends meet with two brothers fighting where he had been once. So he offered to help bring in the harvest, though he had never worked in the fields a day in his life. (How his family would have laughed!) Springfield could be known for his words as well as his deeds. John was in love with her already as he strode through the tall grass, dew soaking his pant legs, making his way to the barn with neighbours. Father and daughter waited, the lamplight was behind her head, giving her an artificial halo, though Springfield pretended for part of the morning it was another sign from God.

     Lunch was brought by older mothers – pails of hearty food and home-brewed ale. Rosemary's mum was one of them, a frail pretty woman, given to migraines and fainting. Other women worked side by side with their men-folk who were either too old or too young to fight. Small children brought cool water in the afternoon. He was invigorated by his love, so unable to sense how tired he was, unused to this work. But this was what he dreamt of now; instead of the silent and erudite books in the church anteroom, he conjured home, neighbours, wife, children, and a family of his own. He returned home heartsick but came again eagerly (muscles stiff) the next day, a rural hymn to be sung. 

     Sweet the sin that pulls you in! The sun rising was golden and orange behind a cloud as Father Springfield briskly walked the 5 kilometres to the farm, praying earnestly as he did so. He was first there of the makeshift crew, arriving before his meditations had ended, fraught with praise and thanksgiving. And she was there, lovelier than ever before, the streak of violently dark skies revolving towards the blue and yellow of morning, binding her to a chiaroscuro catharsis – only for him.

     The harvest season saw the sun play mightily, then sink down like a child, tired with its cheery labours. Rosemary, her parents, Springfield, and the small community all helped, and in turn, the other farmers brought in their crops. There was usually a Harvest Dance, but not these past four years since Buckshire was scant of male family faces. Albeit Mercy had spared many so far, the mood was one of relief, not buoyancy. Rosemary waited only for her brothers – no sweetheart.

     She knew even in her relative innocence that lovesick look Springfield tried to hide. Her protective brothers had taught her – when their own friends lurked about too long, pestering her with queer looks and silly questions, the pair would walk the transgressor out behind an old outdoor privy and took turns beating him. Rosemary deserved much better than the lot Buckshire had to offer, they told her when she discovered their ways with offenders. When they joined the Army, they each wrote to her of prospective husbands they had met and approved of, but nothing about the body parts that some men became.

     On All Souls' Day, a clean-shaven Father Springfield claimed his reward. In his mind, Rosemary would be his forever. This was not to be. The revelation of her pregnancy on New Year's Eve, after a solemn Mass, found the two sober brothers walking the surprised man out to their farm. A child would be given up to the Catholic orphanage in the next village. The moon was full and close to the earth, close to the ground upon which Springfield now lay, not comprehending, not sensing he should pray for mercy or to Mercy – the blows had ceased to hurt though they continued. His neck about to be snapped, he realized he would never have his dream, never see his child. This, he reasoned, was his sin. His new razor fell out of his knapsack, which contained his galoshes, presents of an illuminated Psalter plus a string of holiday crackers for Rosemary.

     The bright morning curved along for Miriam. Long past were the hours of despair when she actually yearned for her childhood captor's mad touch or felt grateful as a woman for his non-stinting attention. Notwithstanding, it sickened her unto her very soul to realize her confidence had grown due to his perforced adventure, yet this had seasoned her for overbearing men with their exhibitions of machismo. But Jack was different.

     That this was sacramental work –confessional or not- was of little concern. Her soft leather case swung out widely as she hastened along. She felt herself to be literally on two planes – the slushy sidewalk plus a moving intellect to complete the task at hand. Miriam entered the Capitalist cathedral as one of Jack's crews stepped out to fetch a smaller chisel for a more detailed piece of work. Thomas was on the far side of the apse, crouching over a plan with Wilhelm and his son Jürgen. She spied them, for even in the shadow his hands were huge, his fingers spread as if to enhance the slivers of sun shooting out between them. Herr Dunkel's footsteps tapped loudly on one of the ironwork staircases, many steps above the atrium; one of the four that could have easily ascended to an organ, choir loft or belfry.

     "Fräulein McCann? I was sure it was you!" His enthusiasm brought a broad smile to her face. Her second plane remained high above her, loitering near Jack's Vitruvius Man, a heart pressing to escape a bony enclosure, a soul terrifically roomed with an uncharacteristic singular clarity within. She circled the staircase after the modern burgher. Facing the north transept, she beheld the disc-shaped window, the twin of the south window. It was transparent with a simple wrought-iron frame divided into a pie-cut.

     The morning sun still spoke in mirrors as it touched the floor, illuminating the marble, glinting upwards to reflect the men working below, bouncing off their chins onto their tools shiny with light. Herr Dunkel opened the door to his shop with a linen napkin, careful not to smudge the golden handle. She saw inside mounds of carpets and fixtures with which to display them, and a card table with a couple of folding chairs. Miriam opened her case immediately, moved a chair close to him, and began helping him choose proper show-room furniture.

     Occasionally, she peeked downstairs, seeing Jack criss-cross the marble floor. She thought, almost said out loud, 'the ritual glorifies the romance; the romance glorifies the ritual.' Whilst working, she could communicate to her messenger. She caught sight of Jack's window, the still-born god. Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus.      Stung again by this quarter of Jack! Miriam turned again; the Vitruvius Man animate below, with the stillness was in the middle distance. Perhaps the god wasn't stillborn, for the only sense either of them could feel fleetingly was the veined beauty of their revived hearts. She quieted, letting the buyer rattle on.

     Jack had felt this only once before, his breath freed. His first thought was his madness descending again, an ocean in one ear to blot out human love and on the same side of his face, a black calm theatre – all around him his fellows perceiving and responding to the riveting being he had become through the years. A handsome visage as fleeting as last year's disaster. The pride in his work, especially the rose window of himself, setting himself as a vision of himself before Creation - even in desperation it was an immense vanity. And he knew it.

     A different stillness for him now, one that he had seen in a cleaner reality than he could conceive of, from a blessing wrestled. In a bitter snowstorm he landed at Heathrow Airport and took the tube into London. Jack was on his way to the taxi stand outside Paddington Station Christmas morning when he was hit by a cab that had spun round on a patch of ice and up onto the kerb as he queued up. The bumper hit his right knee, its force launching him atop the bonnet. He thought 'if it doesn't stop, I'll be pulled under the wheels'. Then immediately it happened, he saw the stretch of white before him. Beyond the concrete, beyond the faces, just under the tunnel exit, a milky whiteness hovered, which eased his fear completely. And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved. When next alive to the London world, he was instinctively crawling to the opposite kerb, to get out of traffic. Somewhere in the back of his mind, there was an ironic laugh for and from the man who day-dreamed about killing himself.

     He sat up, in the way babies attempt to, in imitation of their parents to right themselves. Making sure his body worked, with a distant pain soon to overtake him, for he was in shock, Jack moved his hands and fingers. Red drops fell weeping on his black coat and the white snow. Someone ordered him to tilt his head back, pressing a cold, snowy cloth against it, and rather painfully at that. A horrified young man was trembling and running his hand over his face and head. Jack asked him if he was hurt, fearing another injury. The answer came from far away, "No mate, he's the one that hit you." He heard himself say, "Oh."

     The ambulance and police arrived. Jack, with his family summoned, spent half the day in hospital. He scolded himself silently for ruining the holiday for them. But they were grateful and happy to have him back.

     Never would he recant what he had seen that morning: that measure of peace. It had spread before him; Jack could see it. In between the curling up street, touches of green, slashes of buildings. For it seemed much longer than the two or three second count he had been splayed on top of the taxi's cold metal. Indeed, he could reconnoitre in his mind the breadth of the area; the scene was burned into the back of his retinas.

     On New Year's Eve, 33 years exactly after the murder of his father, he succumbed to the rain book of trade. The trade should have been his father's vocation, indeed, his very life. The rain of that cold evening in Berlin would green the king and the land; the experience of the demanding vision could fill a book. The Year rang in and Jack kissed his wife Angel as he hadn't in a good long while. The air was full of strangers rejoicing, and, for some, as they jostled past him, Jack heard their thought processes, or so he believed. Foreheads popped occasionally with the despair he had known well, and he grieved for them, holding his wife tightly about the waist.

     High above the dense alcohol smell, perfume, and human sweat, was the delectable odour of snow, sweet as though slightly sugared. Angel was aware of it too as she lifted her face skywards, breathing in an upper atmosphere. The Thomases, arms about each other's waists located the cabbie stand outside Barbican and rode home to St John's Wood in smiling silence. Through the front glass of the bay window, they saw Angel's mother and their son asleep on the sofa, wearing crumpled party hats with two glasses of sparkling apple cider untouched on their coffee table, strewn with noise-makers and streamers. It was as though there were magic in the window itself.    

     Two months later, Thomas was back in the divided capital.

     'I fear it is my own; I despair it is yours too, entrenched, entranced and instilled.' Jack had thought this the evening before, his prickly heart and mind confessed all before sleep came. He continued, analyzing his life. 'Perhaps I am closing in on my own demise, that is, that my mind will eat itself. How long I have trembled before this state! That is why I doubt –my dreams, my senses, my abilities. Yet they seem so real; no they are genuine, at the very least for the affect produced in me. Please Miriam, don't be just another engaging lunatic like me!' Out of his briefcase, in and under a flap that snapped shut at the bottom, he pulled out his journal, a document meant for occasions like the one last experienced in Berlin, accompanied by the self-portrait of his suicide. He wrote first: How I crawled in those days with his narcissism, a dog on its belly, whimpering my sadness for small sin, something or somehow I had no idea how I had wronged or who I had wronged. Nights walking around the wet, running trees in their black trunks held portents. My despair came to the top like separated cream that curdled itself after the first velvety glow.  I was Thomas, the melancholy, the dangerous. My habits were conducive to my weighted soul. Only wind can dry the soaked trees, restore their native colour of dovecote grey or reddish brown; only wind can wrest the promised blessing to the dream-drenched servant. Take him out of night into morning. The crack of Light was given to me in offering, exchange for imperfections. This expunged my egregious self-pity. Having read and reread this to make sure it said all honestly, his eyes blinked at the horror of the stiff words that were the Viking torture of spread-eagle to him. All of the anxious and invidious moments of that first time joined hands to besiege the calm temples and migrate to his forehead.

     It began when I was eighteen in the fall of my gap year. I was a clerk for Edward Richardson and Company, Architects, located on Great Russell Street in the chest of London. My job was to run errands, in the offices and out. Lunch breaks were for drawing in Russell Square. With sketch book and various thicknesses of leads I fled to this open space and drew whatever I fancied: people, clusters of leaves, windows of buildings, imaginary sculpture. I once scooped up a handful of dirt and insects, quickly rendering the scrambling ants and their packs of treasures. In the palm of my hand I could foresee the end of my halcyon days. It took my breath away. Dread chased me that afternoon, dissipating with the clerical work I finished at my position. I was easy in mind once more, returning to habit and my spare moments of creativity. One habit was guessing the identity of my biological father. A man would pass me in the park and I would think, 'Is it you". Was he still with my mother? Stupid and pointless this exercise, I knew. I was still curious. I have no complaints about my adoptive parents, John and Anne Thomas. They were kind to the point of overly solicitous. My mum was already bed-ridden, having been that way since I was teen-ager. The last time she left our home was for my graduation from Stonyhurst. Her chronic lung ailments left her exhausted from living. My da was a banker. His father left him a tidy sum of money. In consequence, his hours at the bank grew shorter as my mum's needs grew larger. Evenings at home weren't quite toil for us; we divided chores like cooking and cleaning. Meals were strictly from her recipes as we had no experience. We urged nourishment down her gullet whilst reading Tennyson and the Brownings. I held her thinning hands each night. When she finally drifted towards fitful slumber after a long day of coughing, I'd pull her shawl tighter around her bones; rearrange the woollen blankets so to be just under chin. One night, my da stood in the half open door way, two whiskies in his hand. He crooked his finger towards me. I got up and kissed my mum lightly and stealthily walked over to him in my stockinged feet. We moved out of the bedroom into the hall. I believe he meant to give me a whiskey; instead, he flung himself around me, noiselessly weeping. I held him, thinking 'this is too little'.

     After examining these events, trying as they were, I have concluded that they did not precipitate my mental break. Something organic, some person related to me passed this on, something carefully concealed from myself before my adoptive parents rescued me from the orphanage. What then? What of my childhood unremembered? What of my child? God curse me if I pass this on to him!

     Despite how one might romanticize true madness, there is not one romantic aspect to it. One moment, you are working, laughing, talking, thinking, and organizing your thoughts. The next moment, you feel that you have been electrocuted: your mind doesn't work properly -thoughts begin and get stuck in a horror film merry-go-round, your bodily nerves jump so often you feel singed. Everything hurts you. The crunch of leaves underfoot, naked switched-on bulbs, conversations within your head, conversations of others. The most awful part is somewhere inside you, you know it's you. I know. I could observe the insane man I had become. I simply broke one day. The precious toy didn't function any longer. It was broken; I was broken. And I couldn't tell anyone. My mum slipped away, unaware of what had become of me. I was grateful for that. Nevertheless, I shut the whole matter out the weekend we buried her. A respite of a few days occurred and I was Jack again, doing what needed to be done. I was left to grieve in peace. Then it came back in full force. My impotent anger warped into despair on top of grief. During this time, my da screwed up inside himself. When we spoke he assumed it was my grief that prevented his naturally garrulous son from being himself. So did my friends, as did those I worked for, I was mechanically operated by the tiny portion of me still functioning. I was prevented again from lamenting for the woman who so graciously took me in and raised me.

     I morphed into the over-compensating imposter of Jack Thomas. Those very few who suspected anything else was amiss spoke so gingerly about it to me I wanted to grin from my small untouched inner mind, wink at them, some sign to let them know I was a captive kept alive by fear of myself. The old adage 'it's darkest just before the dawn' is true! I vouch for it. During two dire winter months I felt compelled by some voice (maybe the inner voice of my true self or the lunatic Jack) to top myself. Finally, I sought psychiatric help. I saw him during my lunch breaks. He wasn't convinced of my collapse; he saw what everyone else saw. That was the man I invented, Jack of the uncorrupted skin. Perhaps it wasn't his fault in that case. No medication was prescribed. The treatment consisted of questioning why I didn't masturbate more. That I was thrown free of the mooring of my mother and therefore, understandably anxious, as an orphan especially. I retorted several times to both lines. Mum could have lived several more years or died last year. I had been prepared (as much as one could be) for this. As for sex, I would have preferred its other masque, death. My honesty compels me to state without prevarication that I kept an old fashioned straight razor well-stropped for just such a purpose. (The razor was the only possession that accompanied me to the orphanage. It was in an envelope with a note that had some scribbling on it.) The power of that simple instrument awed me. I could, at any time, end the fiendish take-over of my mind; conversely, it might be the key to the unrecollected, at least the scribbling on the envelope it was placed in might be some clue. To this day, I carry it with me, using it daily to shave off that Jack.

     As the spring slowly set in, my mind also thawed. I was riding a bus home. It was crowded so I stood. The familiar cityscape sharpened and suddenly I was thinking clearly again! Over the next three weeks, the madness ceased. Why it happened in the first place or why I began healing at that moment I cannot fathom. I only knew I was; I had wrestled some malefactor and had won! I would love to say it never came back; however, that would be categorically false. Its spectre would break in periodically and I would beat it back with all my will. This madness, or threat of it, has driven me to this day. In Berlin after the East German soldier Valentine heroically crossed the border into the West and I led him into my creation, my building, the grip of it loosened to a degree I had never felt. And the accident! My fear was literally knocked out of me. And all my dreams and notions made sense.

     The sense became the prayer; the prayer was simple. 'God, let me see my fellow man as You do.' Not in my limited, egotistical fashions (me, the ever-judging Jack) always focused on my tiny turmoil; but see and feel others in all their nuances, gestures, worries, love, and triumphs. If I can experience this, I can carry empathy always. How You must suffer seeing us do or be complicit in evil; how we shy away from the hurt others bear or ignore the sacrifice made for us, envy what we lack, covet what we do not possess. So it happened, in the midst of their circular pain, I actually saw fear and distress in my family that Christmas Day I was hit by the taxi. My physical pain was outside of me and I knew it was there;  nevertheless, it was agony to watch my young son continually run his hand over his face in imitation of me and to feel the grip and kiss of my Angel upon my hand. My God is love. I will attempt this too. Not in His way, I would die of grief! These glimpses, few but powerful enough, squeeze my soul.'

     Nine months before Miriam McCann went back to Berlin, she accompanied her supervisor, Joseph Scanlan, to his apartment overlooking Central Park following a meeting with several of Fortram's Account Executives. He had promised relaxation after the seemingly endless landslide of talks, sales figures, and intensive pep-talks.  Now Scanlan unwound, much to his guest's astonishment. That his speech was languid was not a surprise.

     "And what is the memory of a man's soul? Is it a crossing? Can it be contained in between the time and space before the addict hits the vein and when he keels over in an artificial ecstasy?" asked Scanlan, after releasing his belt from his arm. Miriam forced a smile and thought 'Why did I agree to come here? I hate it. These are the craziest people I've ever met.'

     Scanlan was whispering now. 'This must be the interval,' she replied in her mind. She watched him hit the arm of his sofa, simultaneously speaking words as though rehearsed and learnt by heart for this very act, just for her, "A soul, yes. Ready to be exploded. And experienced, like all people want." Miriam stayed focused on his body. He slipped down the side of his furniture, his head bumped on the floor, his body akimbo. A thunderstorm started as if heroin and rain were the same substance. "Not artificial; real, like you and me."

     Miriam regarded him quizzically, then responded, "Not like me. At all."

     His smile took shape as his words, quietly noble, slid onto the floor with the rest of him, Joseph Scanlan, chief operations manager for Fortram's Office Furniture. His shirt collar flipped up on one side of his cheek. His tie, running silk, inched out of his breast pocket as if to attempt a daring escape. There were more things to say to this lovely, lonely woman. Scanlan always remembered the first glimmer before the first rush:  I wish for revelation in the contraction of the universe… growth will become the pupils of my eyes; the dark light refractions of my two nailed holes, the grey, green, yellow tongue flicked by stick figures in a convex of hazel blue. But Scanlan sagged, his short, burnt-out life fell away from his body, leaving a fully dressed mannequin in its stead. All trouble snatched away and this tall woman stood over him like God Almighty, with an apocalyptic gaze.

     "So what am I to do now?" she said aloud, annoyed. "Do I really have to watch this?"

     This came at him from a distance. He wanted to say, "Stay. Stay with me."

     "If I am not [(in the state of grace)], may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me." Heavier the rains poured. Thunder made the building seem lopsided as she peered at her sales mentor sprawled on the floor. She had no umbrella, for the summer morning had been glorious and cool for the time of year. She had simply caught a taxi to go to Fortram's headquarters earlier that day. Who knew it would wind up in the apartment of a junkie in the late afternoon rain? On the living-room table was a bowl of pears. She picked one out, took it to the kitchen sink and washed it. Miriam surveyed the place after she had taken a bite. Excepting the heroin accoutrements and Scanlan lying on the floor, it was actually, well, nice. 'Shouldn't he be living in squalor?' "'The curse is come upon me cried the lady of...'" 

     With her suppressed cry, Scanlan's eyes opened as a newborn's would. "Want some?"

     "Lord, no!" She thought 'How impermanent the world!' She followed his eyes up to the plaster mouldings of the ceiling. One small cobweb shook in time to the falling rain as the storm slackened, then rang out full again.

     "Just wanted you to know we're hospitable, like Southerners."

     "Guess I was expecting, oh, something like seeing the sights, dinner, a show."

     "Really? But this is so much more. Original." Scanlan sank back. Miriam returned to gazing at his ceiling, where his eyes rested, unblinking as though there was to be treasure had if only one concentrated. A spider scrambled to the cobweb, where it's now dusty secreted silk could be repaired. 'Should I stay to make sure he doesn't die?' She cocked her head at him, and he finally blinked. Curiously, she didn't feel cheated by her host. Finishing her pear, she tossed the core in the trash and washed her hands. She retrieved her purse and then walked over to the man and knelt down over him. He was living, somewhere. She made for the door, noting its many locks. None were turned or bolted; this was worrisome to her. She didn't want to leave Scanlan unprotected. They didn't lock doors where she was from, which was why she hadn't paid attention before.

     It then occurred to her why she shouldn't leave. Scanlan could support her in her bid to return to Berlin. She hadn't discerned why she had been sent before. A more experienced person should have done the job. She understood she had been there to get "the lay of the land.' There had been a discussion of returning only this morning. Scanlan was tapped to go back. Miriam would go in his place, but with his knowledge and full support.

     A new client! The brilliant English architect whose joint venture utilizing Germany and her workers and craftsmen, American-style furnishings, and an imposing German Gothic building, replete with French rose window readied itself to be born. The massive structure would stare down the Berlin Wall and its Godless keepers. This was but part of the whole lie Miriam mused. In Berlin, the Wall epitomized one type of rationalization. Its equal and opposite was a sunless sprint away, where God was kept in small houses and deep pockets.

     Suddenly, to her right side, a shape of gold consumed half of her eye; its flecks moved over her entire field of vision. It darkened and melted. Miriam was still standing at the door when the vision passed and she was aware of the thunder and rain moving off. An unsought grace collided with her predicament.

     Behind her, Joseph Scanlan stirred. His limbs were brick and mortar to be moved out of his way he reasoned, yet he was able to prop himself up against the sofa. As a child he asked, "Are you leaving?"            

     "I was, but I've changed my mind." She smiled as she turned; placing her purse on the coffee table Scanlan had narrowly missed when he sank down. There were art and design books neatly arranged upon it (obviously read), and the latest Fortram's corporate newsletter was given pride of prominence. Except for his eyes and his trousers askew, Scanlan maintained a lucid, calm demeanour. Traffic outside sped up after the storm. The windows facing the sun gleaned with rain drops.

     "You missed the storm," she said, debating whether to sit on the sofa or a chair further away from him. He continued his upward climb.

     "No, I didn't. It sounded fantastic. A thousand percussionists."

     Miriam was flooded with tenderness for him when she heard this, an individual reaching for another place, albeit provided his material means. She sat on his sofa and imagined herself stroking his hair to comfort him. Scanlan was beyond her comfort. 'Wounded, you plead with man; healed, you live with God.' "Where are you from, Joseph?"

     Her query caught him off-guard. "Um, small town, in Ohio." His eyes hardened inwardly, thinking of that plot and time, his family. "I couldn't wait to get out. As soon as I could. Went to college after 'Nam. My school is a few blocks from here; got a job at Fortram's and stayed. I never went back, never looked back, maybe in anger."

     "What about your family?"

     "You're spoiling it. Let's talk about something else." And with a gigantic heave, Scanlan hoisted himself up on his sofa, sitting on a tiny drop of blood from his vein. Miriam noted the needle-marks previously, but saw his wrist had been cut, and a whitish scar blanched and braided his forearm running almost to his hand. His own quarter century burned behind him. What could she do for him? He was within himself once more.

     On the table was also a new volume, something produced by the company. Ad copy, photographs of new and refurbished buildings, the appropriate Fortram's furniture to match the interiors, and a page book-marked. She thumbed through to this indication, coming to the last completed structure of Jack Thomas: a Greco-Roman building with a large portico, like a temple. There was a frieze near the top, with smaller photos of some of the details –exquisite profiles of men and women in masks facing the centre, larger mask, which was a full portrait looking out of an abbreviated face, the pupils carved out, the neck and shoulders visible. Who was it? Which god? Why masks? As she puzzled over it, Joseph came to her again, waking her out of her concentration. He swivelled his head, laying a finger on the photograph. "That's the new client."

     Startled, Miriam placed her hand next to his finger. Did he mean the actual head relief or the building personified? Scanlan's was a conspiratorial grin. "It's both." As if he could read her mind! "I met him, Thomas, he's crazy intense. They say in every building there's a self-portrait lurking somewhere. And that my dear, is front and centre. Art and life, art and life."

     She responded coolly after a moment, "I'd like to meet him. Can I go back to Berlin?"

     "Sure. You can come with me."

     She thought, 'Not a chance. I feel sorry for you, but I need to go alone. I can't conceive of you in our plan. And I'll bet you're surprised that I'm not attracted to you even though you're handsome. But your habits clearly make you the crazier candidate between you and this architect.'

     He regarded her uneasily; her manner; he couldn't fit this Miriam into his opiated blood brain. As he tried, he nodded off, leaning towards her. Catching him first with her left hand and shoulder, she put the book back on the table, and addressed the falling body of Scanlan, who was apparently slipping towards the floor again.  As she rose, she cradled his torso, pulling his legs up with her other hand. His head lolled. He directly resembled a man sleeping on his sofa when she was finished.

     Not knowing how long he would be in this blissful state -Miriam assumed it was blissful from his expression – she picked up the volume, taking it to the living-room table to study this particular content. Actually Miriam wanted to scrutinize the pictures and copy of the creation and the architect. 'Was it him?' She had had intimations that she, Miriam McCann, was indeed His instrument. However, she couldn't manage all facets necessary to carry forward. Her hopes were sky high. Plus she was troubled and fascinated by the images she beheld.

     What of these masks? Was there really a self-portrait of this architect in every building? Was it pride or covetousness that would drive someone to such extremes? The centre bas relief sculpture, even partially hidden, was beautiful. (It is the heartbreak of every sentient being that has dedicated itself to something higher than itself that it is often tempted or bewildered by others. It is part of the process; one deals with it as best one can. But who cannot be the least tempted by beauty? Is not beauty part of the good? Whilst evil engages in pleasing forms and robs us of our sense, is there not some level we can attain to that we may tell good from its evil counterpart? Call it gut-level. To whit, if we cannot tell them apart, it is because we have chosen to ignore our deepest sense of selfhood, i.e., the 'felt sense, the one we have relied on since infancy.) Miriam's thoughts and scruples carried her far. It remained an unsettled issue for her as she continued to look with her bodily eyes.

     Yet the radiance of the art was inescapable and excoriating. "Pulchra enim dicuntur quae visa placent." The Will, her will bound to God, said yes. She could begin to construct the plan to propel her to her mission.

     As she explored the book, Miriam continually turned back to the short section on Jack Thomas. The temple/building was located in Dublin, near Trinity College. The Greek motif of Poseidon's waves became designs from the Book of Kells on the right side of the building to reflect where the volume was kept. The designs looped around in circles squared until they rested at the front of the building with the intricate frieze of masked heads. Inside, it was a bank with burgundy chairs, black cherry desks and teller fronts appointed with brass fittings and Kelly green lamps. The long windows on three sides made perfect use of daylight. She imagined the vault door with the head of Apollo. It was not the didactic, but the side where the soul tends, the nascent.  Every so often Scanlan stirred, as the thick, slick paper folded over in between her fingertips. He was mystified by her. He thought he understood her. He was mistaken. So Scanlan wandered back to his euphoria, unabashed.

     Preparing to enjoy the Zeitgeist of Berlin again would be an easy task for Miriam McCann. She would glean the married fields of East and West Germany as Ruth for hunger and love. Another storm was in the offing. Adorned with the prickly gold that she so welcomed, her psyche rose to greet her new Master readily, wherever she was, no matter what she occupied with, the garnered angel brought news.

     When she was almost thirteen, her instinct was proven, for she encountered an inward stigma, the disavowal of her surroundings at large, the appetite for the sublime and sorrow: acting. There was more: besides piercing her conscious, Miriam beheld a course to move in the unroyal realm of society. She suffered sweetly the haze of calling. Something had attempted to catch her down in its faith banquet immediately following Headmaster Ken Calgary's death. But her whole being shut out heaven and earth. Miriam dutifully continued her excellent schoolwork. Her parents attended "Antony and Cleopatra" and she shone as Iras. Her mother seemed not to notice Calgary's absence. Perhaps she was concentrating on her daughter's new-found gift; or, perhaps her vanity prevented her from noticing anything not directly connected to her at the moment.

     Arriving home in Virginia from her hated Northern prep school, Miriam wanted to see her friends as quickly as possible. She assumed that she would find normality and peace once more and she had missed them terribly. Yet something incessantly knocked in her ears as she unpacked in her seemingly large and over-decorated room. The next afternoon she went to visit Pierce Clark, who had grown taller than her in the intervening months. Things were not quite the same. He was comfortable to be with, yes; but they were both growing up, and Miriam was stunned at how boyish he was still. They walked out of his backdoor across a fallow field and turned onto a reddish-brown path that led to the large pond, as lambs across fields to the still water. Oh my Deathless Rider you spoke to Him and He restoreth my soul. And now I will fear no evil. As young teenagers, they leaned in towards one another, voices in low tones, grappling with understanding – though not events, trials endured while walking into heat and through the flames. Their seriousness of nature still bound them together. Today it deepened, for in the afternoon each would begin to discern a vocation. They were not culpable; they were the sacrifice: she the victim, he the slaughter-stone.  Pierce left her in a haze of sun-shadows. Her heart quieted in the ripples of the pond where he had tossed a rock. The steadfast yearning, undefined, indefinable where the soul tends toward the Divine and winds its way up Jacob's ladder, yet weightless and papery and prepared for the Enchantment of the Heart. Summon if you will, those genuine moments of enchantment – when you stood as if in a tableau of lovers. But you are to one side, yet can gaze upon all that a human can, and you can, if quiet, hear all their mouths to others, to all, to every part of their veined souls. So it came, a blissful voice, discovering Miriam with her knees drawn up and her arms wrapped about them. She immediately became as alert as any human can. She heard her name called. It was as if the voice was but ten feet behind her. She said nothing as her breath caught. It called again; she looked around. There was nothing or no one in the willow leaves, simply the cast up light from the pond and the sun bouncing to and fro in the leaves and branches. Miriam wanted to say 'Here I am' and wanted to run. Her breathing was shallow and quick; her heart connived at ripping through her chest cavity, stopping at her thigh muscles. Someone gently laid a hand on her right shoulder. She felt its slight pressure. The Voice was the Light and the invisible body. Miriam calmed; her tears flowed. She thought 'Thank you, thank you'. Her acting dissolved into a child's peace. 'Dominie non sum dignus.' The Voice assured her she was, more. She wept again. Next she was alone, crying harder. Miriam's arms let go of her knees. Her legs slid out in front of her. Her upper arms and hands were sore. Waiting some minutes, she stood up carefully, and began the walk back to the path. The willow leaves sang in the early summer breeze off the water. She slowly wandered back to the house of her parents.

     All through the summer, Pierce observed her decidedly trod past his home, out of sight and kin. He followed her thrice to the pond, spying on her. Miriam would sit quietly by the pond in the shade of the willow. She was still, as if meditating on a great mystery; her face enkindled, responsive, and she did not see him. Then she would cry longingly. He was upset for her. He attempted to wheedle out the matter when he caught her coming back from the pond the third time. Miriam smiled at his concern, telling him not to be.

     Peirce confessed his spying to her. "Miriam, we're friends, right? When I see you cryin' it gets me tore up inside. Did something happen at school? I can help."

      She blushed; held out her hand to him. "Yes, something has happened. I need time, Pierce. I know you'll always look out for me. That's a comfort in this world." She squeezed his hand. They stayed this way for several minutes. Though he still didn't understand, he let her go.

     Jim McCann thought she has a boyfriend. Nathalie McCann told her not to get into any trouble. They were amazed at how rapidly her self-confidence grew. "No, no boyfriend," she said finally when asked, "My friends are giving me advice for my future." For the Voice had tripled, and charged her with certain tasks. She would need to control herself to inspire others.

     The next school year descended rapidly with Miriam becoming studiously piquant, for she was informed she needed this trick to survive. She did as she was commanded and began to dominate the most popular clique, despite her being the junior member. Miriam moved effortlessly and mysteriously through the pack as though she was the one who held the leashes. She successfully acted the part thoroughly in every respect at the school; people and events revolved around her. And the stain of her rape was removed from her by her obedience to her Voices; the girl was made whole, as when she was a child.

     When she graduated from prep, she was more beautiful than even Calgary could have foretold. She was energetic yet calm, whispers from Beyond came through her. Her parents plotted the next time-slot of their daughter's life; moreover her mother was choosing her husband. None of that, heavenly words caressed her inner ears and brought her an easeful pain (for Miriam had not been told what was yet to come) in the night, during the day she mustered all her charms. "My soul doth magnify the Lord," was her as a pattern, reading and re-reading the Gospel, rifling down the words to her soul so as to be at the ready.

     This continued through her college years, from which she graduated early, as she was becoming frantic at being in one place too long. 'What is it, Lord? What time shall it be?' With her restlessness came a spiritual dryness. For months Miriam thought she was forsaken. She began to imagine she had imagined it all, a reflex, a shield against her rape, her daily dose of pain. She vacillated between thinking this way and believing her own impetuousness had brought on the acute absence of her Company.

     Miriam recorded her twisting emotions only once; perhaps believing to write them out as a play she would act in. But it was no bit of theatre. 'Shadows, shadows I say, are the entertainment and cause of our short pretty play. I endured a trial by an evil man who languishes and babbles silently within. That's what I was; that's all I was! A head full of notions and the outward manifestation of Venus! I strangled the child Miriam's torment; nonetheless I am her, handcuffed to the shaming, defined days of my girlhood. When I replay the events my diaphragm tightens; I can't get any air. I flail in mind so must desist before it shows.  I have tried, God in heaven, to resign myself to what has happened. I live and hope! My college days were festooned with boyfriends at bay, lusty pals, and theatre, and of course, hard studying with the ever-deepening resolve to wait and be patient.  I continued to attend Mass regularly but often my prayer choked my mouth and lay lifeless in my hands.

     No man touched me intimately again. I know what they thought: frigid, aloof. My solace waxed into my job. I majored in marketing and minored in literature. I was so shiny out of college; I reflected back to potential employers exactly what they wanted to see. I came in at Fortram's Office Suppliers as a Junior Marketing person, working accounts and people like dough. After a year, I was promoted and left for my first overseas trip. Fortram's was as proud of me as if they had birthed me themselves. I contented myself with this. When I returned from West Germany where I had visited Pierce at his Army posting there, I went to see his parents to give them news of him. They thanked me. Leaving, I gazed over down the path, ambling down as when as I was a girl. The pond was strewn with October leaves and that is the entire natural world that I recollect. My Voices called, and this time I obeyed and waited for Them to direct me.'

     Where once there was a trick of humanity, there became the smell of the Saints. They were longed for, but unbidden and she ran through the woods to the smell of roses and water, unaware at first that she was crying. The odour and the proof not for mathematicians or the faint of heart but for those who wear the blue and golden crown. How heavy the march shall be; how calmly she assented, she was dying for the dispensing of the His Blood.

     Miriam was once more rendered in the pain and glory of her inner life. She knew she was called to act, yet did not know what she was to do. Her taught patience won the day; she would be informed. So back and forth to her job she went and waited, until the Warrior Angel summoned her in the coffee shop next to Fortram's in Richmond where the land slopes to the river bottom and the remnants of old battles: arrowheads, musket balls, and bullets could still found in between the rocks and bricks. The smell of the Saints again and she was lost; fortune at its best.

     Joseph Scanlan was a marred soldier, someone who had wandered back from the War with more psychic wounds than when he left. This of itself was not surprising; it was the retreat from life before and after that stamped him. The mark was heroin addiction. This human being would succumb to his pronounced fate. Miriam reached out and her hand hovered over his face, wanting to wake him, trip time up, and with this came the instantaneous fore-knowledge that his self-immolation was her ticket to Berlin, and her message. "Deliver it back to God."

     'Desire; what shapes it creates! It is truth behind every fact and every lie. It is beauty and lust for what is beautiful. It is how one waits upon the pleasure of God; it is how He waits upon our pleasure in Love. This is in turn both Him and His Creation. It is a multitude of passions that fold in upon each other, thence to spring up as Desire once more. Such is creation for humanity: from our first glimpse of the Divine, right up until our attempts to turn away from it to form our own feeble worlds. When we return, it is out of our hunger for Desire.'

     This artist Jack Thomas philosophized in his journal whilst being transfixed by his rose window. Quite like the blood to drain into his shoes when he recalled his last visit, when he was the genius of despair. 'I thought I was a lone cipher, up above in my window, drying in sunlight. Today, I can walk away from that Thomas, peer over my shoulder at his husk. Before me is my stained glass, a newly created new body and soul.'

     And Jack Thomas turned away from the window. With designs in hand for the metal work, a desire for God, and a desire for Miriam to stop by and see his work, he waited. As the afternoon wore on, he realized she had already gone. The workers were tired and dusk was upon the city. Bidding each other Auf Wiedersehen, they filed out, Jack leaving last. Next, with august deliberation and speed, he was drawing on the cocktail napkins at his Stammlokal, drinking a whiskey. With her mercurial poise, Miriam stood several paces away, watching him. Her heels clicked on the floor, but he did not hear her. This quiet pub was a favourite amongst the older men; it had survived the Nazis, the Soviets, and the push of the younger Germans - all the Faustian promises of fortune had missed their target. Jack could stay here for hours, drawing and thinking.

     "Hello. What are you drawing?" Miriam asked in a pleasant, low voice. She was once again framed in light, this time from a street-lamp outside, with the shadow of another soul homeward bound.

     He was startled; he had been awakened from his draughtsman's dream. "Scrollwork." He was at a bow in the bar. She motioned and ordered, "Wein, Riesling. Bitte." She stood over him. "May I see? What's it…oh, it's railings."

     The barkeep sat the glass in front of her. No emotion registered on his face; nevertheless, Jack knew the unspoken rules of such an establishment. "Let's move to the back booth," he said very quietly, gathering his napkin drawings. Miriam was unfazed by the stares, all the same she understood. She had invaded male domain. As she was still dressed in her business attire, Jack hoped they viewed her as someone he worked with, meaning she would leave soon. The booth was high-backed with a small lamp of its own. Miriam gave him her napkin, suppressing a smile.

     "I pray I haven't gotten you into any trouble. From the looks of things, there hasn't been a female presence in here for, oh, fifty years," she said, leaning over the table-top.

     "Ah! You are wrong, Fräulein! I saw the owner's wife, at least I think it was his wife, behind the bar taking money from the cash till a few months ago."

     "I'll bet the men collectively sighed relief when she left, in sympathy of course."

     "How ever did you guess?"

     "I don't guess. I know." For a moment Jack believed she did really know. "Can I see the entire drawing?" She spoke softly yet forcefully.

     Thomas assembled the napkins end to end, facing her side of the table. She was visibly delighted. Inside each section of railing was the scrollwork which contained an object motif: an apple, a tree, an apple again, and a sapling in each recurrent section. Miriam joined her hands together, pressing her mouth to them, then spoke, "This is marvellous! You could have been, well, you are a great artist. An artist, an architect, and an engineer, like da Vinci."

     For a second, there was a crack in his mind, recalling the drawing of himself as a suicide. He collected himself, for he knew she had seen it; so few did see his palpable pain, or cared to. "What have I said Jack?" She reached across the table and rested her hand on his arm.

     "I had to choose. I like order, lines, and angles. Easily measured. I didn't have rich patrons. So I chose architecture and it pays well. Besides, I still draw, as you can see." His jaw relaxed, satisfied at his answer. "Let's… hmm." He leaned out of the booth to look.

     "Let's take a walk," she offered, taking up the napkins for him. "Here you go."

     Thomas tucked it away in his large leather notebook, zipping it shut. He had forgotten what day it was; he realized he needed to call home. "Miriam, can we meet later tonight for dinner? I must ring my family."

     "Certainly. Where and when?"

     "There's a lovely French café near my hotel in the Tiergarten called 'Cecile'. They serve Breton dishes. At half eight? Would that be all right? Fine, here's the address." He wrote it with his mechanical pencil on another napkin at the end of the bar. Miriam still had her wine; she took a sip holding it gently by its stem and moved it back to the barkeep.  "Until then." Checking his watch, he slipped by her, moving rapidly through the crowd.

     Miriam McCann was touched and amused. The traffic light turned, and she crossed the street, humming back to her suite. 'How to begin' she wondered. She shook her head. Her Voices would tell her, so she was easeful in her mind. They had told her it was to be him. She dropped her portfolio in a chair, and changed her shoes to a pair of lower heels. Miriam walked back to the Capitalist cathedral. The Brandenburg Gate drew her close. A large sign proclaimed: 'Achtung Sie ver lassen jetzt West – Berlin'. ("Attention: You are leaving West Berlin".) She walked the half-circle of Ebertstraβe.

     The Brandenburger Tor is a neoclassical complex modelled on the gate to the Acropolis, and Miriam admired it afresh, knowing an architect. She had toured Berlin on the last trip with her long-time friend now an army officer, Lieutenant Pierce Clark, and read about it before seeing it. Recalling the description, she strained to see the Quadriga, a large sculpture atop the Gate, of a woman charioteer pulled by four horses. The first debut of the Quadriga was as Peace; shortly thereafter as Victoria (after routing the French) with the addition of the Prussian eagle and iron cross. The unfortunate third incarnation was to be the start of Nazi parades marching east down Straβe unter der Linden. Pierce had told her this, along with its reclaiming as the symbol it had originally been before he Second World War. President Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech  in front of the Tor, with the Soviets hanging great curtains on the East side to prevent 'spying' by that half of the citizens of Berlin and the West in general into the lopped off section of the city as their Wall continued to be built up. What struck Miriam now as she stood before the ugly warning sign, underneath the mini-sun arc lamps designed to catch the fleeing and provide unflattering lighting, was that she was peering up at the back of the Quadriga with its stone wings visible only, the bulk of the piece driving off into the totalitarian side of night. 'I see the back of the wings, like an especially angled angel, like Jack! Is it Peace or Victory that drives the chariot?' She turned away; immediately she sensed time and distance flowing back from her and the din of traffic muffled, as though she had conch shells clapped to either ear. "Here," said her known pair of wings. Assenting, she managed the few paces to a taxi she hailed to the restaurant Cecile.

     So upon arriving at the appointed time of their second dinner together, Miriam noted that the place was located just on the border between the English section where Jack stayed and the French section named Wedding. Jack stepped smartly behind her, appearing happy and relaxed.  They were seated at a table near a small bar. Upon ordering wine and stuffed potatoes, Jack began to speak of his family. He seemed so content; it was difficult to reconcile this man with the high-strung architect Herr Dunkel and Scanlan had spoken of, and yet she saw both men in one. What engaged her interest were both men Jack appeared to be. After the first glass of wine, Thomas talked freely of the car accident. Indeed, he confessed, he hadn't told anyone about what he had experienced. She quietly listened to every detail, tears stood in her eyes, eventually falling. Jack stopped talking, ashamed of his candour, and of making her cry.

     "God, I'm sorry. I'm OK; fine actually. It was a great moment in my life. Please do believe me!"

     "Yes, yes! I'm moved; sometimes I'm very emotional." The dinner was cleared away, and once again, they drank brandy together.

     "Jesus still gives thanks to His Father. Did you know that Jack?" Her posture was straight; her hands were folded, resting on the table-cloth. "I have been sent here by the King of Heaven. I am here to deliver His message; I have been instructed to do so soon." She slid her brandy over to him, as he had finished his own.

     "By whom again?' His spine, where his cranium attached at the back of his neck, tingled unpleasantly. 'Please, please, don't be crazy! It makes me feel crazy.'

     This time it was Miriam who spoke candidly and liberally. Miriam remained in the same position throughout her soliloquy. She never faltered; her calm at her tale never lowered or lifted her voice. She relayed to him her past, and how, a mere half hour ago she was instructed where her mission was to take place. She finished and her eyes welled with more tears, but this time stopped quickly.  "The Voices and the Light are the same. And to answer your question, it is God, speaking through his saints and Angel."

     Thomas came to himself thinking about a short note he had written in his journal, about what he had been and done, what he would do if confronted again.

     -A Treatise on the Disordered Life. You Jack Thomas with your interior mysterious knowledge: angles and angles, the right and Euclidian dotted lines with one pointing towards the horizon and one up to the Staircase! This blank horizon made of milk seen by you was one of the infinitesimal faces of God. Your white stretch is Our White made of all colours, be it rapture of flower or rupture of snow, the brightest star in God's shoulder in His gentle, serene black space. It was your charm that decimated you: the inspired rendering, to envision things that have not been before. Your affections became disordered: professio super vita. What will you do for Him, now that you have seen Peniel and met His messenger? What will you render right here? Or will you continue to work only for Jack? Worry about your heart instead of your mind.-

     "My skin, my bones, my mortal body are in the service of His Body, which I consume as my Bread, and therefore, my life," remarked the vision-soaked messenger, here in the night, with a course as plain as day, contemplation into action.

     They walked out into the street bustling with traffic, which the waxing crescent moon made swift shades of, concentrating the murky elements into sudden streaks of light. Jack apprehended that she was resigned to her fate. She loved and lived in God, recalling, "His ways are not our ways."  She was as a child as she spoke this.

     They parted with his promise of help. As she strode off, Jack knew she would be hard to miss; it was not as though she could simply wander across as she wanted to do (it occurred to him that that was probably the point). Miriam was big and bold. Nearly six feet tall and well-proportioned plus thick, long chestnut hair and slate stained eyes under a high forehead, perfectly set over prominent cheekbones, a slightly aquiline nose, with a mouth that needed no artificial colour, with her jaw alive when not neatly squared, much as his own. He smiled to himself for he recognized this same aspect in himself: he was her blond opposite.

     Thomas walked home. His blond hair fell in disarray over his equally light eyebrows and grey eyes. His skin, normally pale, was a faded gold colour from his sunny Baltic holiday a time ago. The aquiline nose seemed to violently pull away from the face and thence down. The mouth was bow shaped, in contrast with the square chin. His cheekbones and jaw muscles were what made his face so extra-ordinary. They possessed a life of their own; animated, flexing and readjusting themselves, independent of the speaker. March snow began to dust his great coat, and he wondered vaguely if she had beckoned him that night in Café Novalis because of this doppelgänger effect. No, it was something else. The girl/woman knew all about his adventure, his architecture, yet had never seen a photograph of him….but, the self-portraits in his buildings! This wasn't it either; the only one visible was the masked relief on the Dublin bank. Jack Thomas was hidden to the known world.

     "We thought we were alone."

     The architect's detailed drawing would provide Miriam with a plan, a route to take. "Et venio in campos et lata praetorian memoriae." His soul-house was yet laden with past grief; he could easily cave in. He descended and ascended daily, nay keeping the liturgical hours. 'Who calls her?  Domine non sum dingus! ' This steadfast yearning, undefined, indefinable; the soul tending towards God. Then Jack thought: 'My plans might as well be paper airplanes for all the good they will do her.'

     Richard Krenckel washed his hands. He pulled several sheets of rough hand-towels out of the shiny box to dry them. He wiped his mouth with the wettest one, then began to button the remaining three on his shirt. His uniform jacket proclaimed his rank of Captain in the National People's Army, although he was also in the Staatssicherheit, State Security. He wasn't sure why he had been transferred to the new core unit of the division guarding the Wall, although he had certainly heard the rumours of one of their own defecting. The humiliation lay with the CO who had chosen such poor men for this important task. But Captain Krenckel was up to the task of replacing the criminally indolent and discovering Western sympathizers. He shot the prostitute, who was an older woman, a stern glance still leisurely getting dressed in the mirror. She sped up while he finished adjusting his belt and holster, and set his cap at a slightly rakish angle. When he turned round, she too was finished. He gave her a kiss on the cheek. "Fräulein," he said slyly, cruelly to assure her of just where she ranked in his world. Krenckel did not hear her flop back down of the bed. 'So much for lunch. They'll have food at the briefing.'

     Captain Krenckel was shiny and swift, the rising star of the Stasi. He walked everywhere he could, especially in his Berlin. Yes, it kept him fit. Each street and building not flattened made him proud. Hilda, his mother, was giving birth to him when the Soviets ran up the steps of his home, searching for snipers. His father was caught red-handed catching his son in his own undershirt. The soldiers screamed at Georg Krenckel, pointed their rifles at his head. He calmly ignored them, exhorting his wife to give one last push. She did, and Richard was born. Georg showed off his son, still seated on the floor. His left leg had been blown off above the knee by the Resistance a year ago, and his wife's kerchief covered the socket where his eye had been.

     They lowered their weapons upon a command from their Sergeant. "Sick of death," he said in broken German. He sang out for something behind and away from him. His mottled face softened as he beheld Georg scoot along the floor with his child to his wife. Richard was tenderly laid on his mother's breast. The couple looked up surprised. A medic and the Sergeant motioned for the baby. He was cleaned up, so was Hilda, then she was stitched. The company of men, including Georg, drank some vodka and took turns puffing on the stub of a cigar. Georg finally understood. The Sergeant took a grimy letter out of his great coat breast pocket, explained that he too, had a new son. Then they left, leaving behind a woollen blanket. The Krenckel home was restored after the War and the Soviets came to power, thanks to their neighbours. Richard's parents were just as proud of him as the day he was born. In fact he lived in the room where his birth had taken place. He was expected to live there, with his spouse.

     The neighbours' house also was restored when the original owners reclaimed it. Their baby girl named Ute was born under an Austrian railroad bridge, high up under the embankment where the damaged supports yet held high the span across the mountains. The girl's father, Matthias von Schumann, also assisted in the birth, in much the same manner as Georg Krenckel. The von Schumanns had been hiding there since their miraculous escape from Auschwitz in 1943. The tattooed numbers on their bodies were the least humiliation they suffered. They were Communists, and Ruth's grandmother was Jewish. She vehemently disavowed her parents and family when they refuted her beliefs. She never saw any of them again. Ruth and Matthias evaded capture; the Soviets liberated parts of Germany and Berlin, and they wept and went home. The von Schumanns had been professors and propaganda writers in the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich; they were restored to their former positions in the new German Democratic Republic as exemplary citizens. Later, not even Captain Krenckel would know they were under constant surveillance.

     The parents of each child had been friendly for years. Georg was a mechanic and Hilda a hausfräu. They loved reading and music and occasionally, attended concerts with their neighbours. The Krenckels studiously avoided politics so were never in conflict with the von Schumanns and never swept up in Hitler's fury.  However, in due time, the von Schumanns were shoved out of their front door early one morning as George was adjusting his suspenders. He didn't tell Hilda until after the SS had questioned them about those disloyal to the Reich. Ruth had mentioned once her Jewish roots. Hilda cried when she learned of the von Schumanns fate. Georg joined the army that day, knowing of his and his wife's fate if he didn't. So when the von Schumanns came back the Krenckels were happy to see them again. They shared what little they had, rejoiced over their infants, and in return, Matthias parted the miasma to get Georg an artificial limb plus proper treatment for his festering socket wound. This prompted Hilda to baby-sit Ute for Ruth when she got a job. Ute and Richard grew up together. They were inseparable. Life was good never speaking of the past.

     As the children grew up, their curiosity about things not spoken about bubbled up. Hilda, exasperated by questions, got the other three together. They radically decided to talk to the children, but in a personal manner. They showed off some their wounds. Georg took off his prosthetic leg and Ute gingerly touched the stump. 'Did it hurt?' Richard saw the bayonet wound in Matthias's side, then the tattooed numbers on he and Ruth.  He was impressed. But it was a sanitized version. For Richard and Ute, their parents were heroes, struggling against Hitler and the West. Such bravery!

     As young teenagers, Ute and Richard began to hold hands, aware of each other's inner and outer beauty. It was only natural that they should as they did towards one another. After, school and homework, they walked through the city, observed the city blocks of rubble cleared away for new buildings. These did not shoot up as rapidly as the two young people. Late on Sunday afternoon, absorbed in each other, they failed to notice two shabby men following them. They were returning home, passing a new building site.

     "Juden, Juden!" The men shouted. The pair quizzically turned around, craning their necks and bodies. They sneered and pointed at Ute. Their lungs and throats couldn't expel their ugliness fast enough. "Juden, Juden!"

     Richard held her hand tightly and yanked her. They ran through back through the building site, for this was a short cut home. But positioned inside a dump truck was the leader, a former guard from Auschwitz. He had recognized Matthias and Ruth on a streetcar weeks ago. He trailed them back to their home, to their places of work, peered through their windows, then had seen the dark-haired daughter undressing through slightly parted curtains in the suburban home. He lived in a concrete apartment building, sharing it with young socialist workmen. That was it. Since no one else seemed to know about the mother, a prominent party member, the guard would take her daughter. A random rape and killing in the perfect proletariat state. Hatred of how the subhuman Ruskies ruled him from afar when he was a specimen of the master race. His revenge on the girl would not expose him or his secret meetings of former low level Nazis. The guard and his minions, from the Hitler youth, would inspire his fellows.

     The guard swung the door of the dump truck open, hitting Richard's sternum violently. His face was stuck on the rubber of the open window frame momentarily, then the guard kicked it, and Krenckel fell backwards on some crushed rock and concrete. He was unconscious for several minutes. He awoke to sounds: crushing, screaming, cackling. "Take that Jew, better your mama should have died in the camp, eh?" With the last human sound, Richard was on his feet, sledgehammer in his hands. He would always remember the blood and brains spread over the concrete, truck, and clothes, and the pure white of the bones clawing their way out of the flesh of the men; not much else. Soldiers patrolling the building sites where at the next one, heading towards where Richard and Ute ran partially through. They heard screams. Both men ran and saw the rape occurring. The private radioed for his comrades patrolling in their Jeep. The corporal rested his rifle on a lone slab of a retaining wall and sited a man standing up, buttoning his trousers. Richard saw the bullet pass cleanly through the guard's head. When he fell, Richard swung down on his genitals, then let the hammer drop. When the soldiers arrived, they found Richard cradling Ute. He rode in the ambulance, speaking to her quietly. She nodded once and seemed to be at peace; she died an hour later.

     Within a year, the von Schumanns left Germany for Israel. Richard Krenckel and the two soldiers were hailed as heroes for uncovering a small cell of Nazis -just the three men; the others were caught and executed but never mentioned in the news- and punishing them justly. The rape of Ute was proof once again of the decadent West. After the small ceremony, the young man and his parents rode home in a beautiful new car, owned by the GDR, for the people. He went up to his room and didn't leave it for a week. Hilda left food and drinks for him, and found only the water gone. When he came downstairs at last, his bearing was straight. His face was as taut as a stretched animal skin his as apprehension grew. Society turned over and its onion skin was peeled away. Lies were what were worshipped in his world. Only a clean shot was the genuine article.

     His personality became bland and dulled to most other beings as an adult. If he had a conscience now it certainly did not appear to prick him – even as he considered himself superior to officers who out-ranked him. Why he had been chosen for a new assignment was simply a matter of confidence in himself. So he stepped into the nondescript headquarters to be filled-in on his job, his boots smartly echoing in the corridors down to where the lift was, down to the basement. At the end of yet another tunnelled maze was Colonel Lubek's office. This seemed fitting to Krenckel, as the man looked like a mole: desperately small eyes with thick spectacles, a snout instead of a nose, weak chin. How Lubek even got into the army was the speculation of all those who knew him. Krenckel knocked, greeted from behind the door and crossed the threshold. The Captain saluted Lubek, towering over him like a crane placing blocks. He sat where indicated, and was offered coffee and sandwiches by Lubek's pretty assistant, as he expected. What he did not anticipate was the magnitude of his assignment.

     "You've heard of the English architect Thomas, the one who blatantly tempted, no encouraged a good soldier to desert his post and defect? Lubek asked, biting every word with his squeaky voice.

     "I didn't know his name, sir," Krenckel answered, wiping the corners of his mouth with a tiny square of napkin.

     "No reason you should have." He gave him a dossier on Thomas, newly typed. "Ivana, close the door as you leave and take care that I'm not to be disturbed." Krenckel discretely eyed her as she left. His hands placed on his knees, his back straight, he waited patiently for Lubek to direct him. "Read this tonight. Come back here at o-nine hundred hours tomorrow, giving me a detailed plan on how you will be ridding us of this man. I understand you're an excellent marksman. Captain, you are dismissed."

     A kill! Krenckel was ecstatic.

     How is it with the life of a saint?

     Just after dawn the next morning, the conversation and promise of Thomas dangling in her mind, Miriam sat in the back of a church, still pock-marked from the Second War, long behind when others departed, save one woman at Adoration. She waited always in case of further instruction or reflection. About to leave, she was halted by His light touch on her shoulder. A chorus of voices floated above her, and she heard one say distinctly 'searching' then became murmurs. 'For what?' She remained in this stalwart position until the reverie left her, seeming to rise to the vaulted ceiling. Miriam stood up, swaying slightly. It was now 10 am. Miriam hurried on to an appointment with another customer in the Capitalist cathedral, as her own fashion dictated, early to every event, aroused by time itself and the shadow of the sun.

     As Miriam stepped lively to her appointment, Krenckel was leaving Lubek's office. He walked outside, allowing a full Cheshire-cat grin to spread over his handsome face.

     Jack was finishing his drawing for Miriam. Actually, it was the third "finished" drawing. He could see more details of the space with each rendering. The determined quest was to provide her with some measure of safety, not merely a "paper airplane," as he had thought hours before. 'This isn't a treasure map, after all.'   When he thought this, a tingle began at the back of his neck, becoming terror in moments, travelling train-like up and down his spine. His felt that his brain was presenting her as cannon-fodder; he was giving her a map of no-man's land, and that was her certain sacrifice. Did she not know immolation was so sure, perhaps so sure she had not, and yet?. 'Ipse dixit.' Black and white, then red. This plan was a pale shield for Miriam McCann.

     What task is this? Three lives advancing as if they are the movements of a symphony; they dive in and out of refrains and keys and joints, to declare they are aware, without even playing all the music. Sent really or bent towards mental and emotional instability in curious or cruel circumstance? Only one knew, and he wasn't talking.

     Captain Krenckel stopped at Checkpoint Charlie in an old Mercedes Benz the following day.  Unbeknownst to him, there was someone much more dangerous than Thomas; for so long a contemplative, now all processes churning with force. There were many spaces to secret items he needed hidden for his task. Despite his concentration, as an American soldier checked his papers, he couldn't help gaping at Thomas's creation. He craned his neck up, hands stuck on the steering wheel.

     "Sir? Herr?"

     "Ja?" He answered automatically, curiously held by the building.

     "You may proceed." The gate opened and the Captain returned to his earthly destination. His lodgings were booked in the same place as Jack's and his room was catty-corner from the architect's. After signing in, he stuck the key in his breast pocket and, with a suitcase in either hand, took the steps two at a time to his floor. Krenckel kept his weapons case in one hand, digging for the key with the other. A door suddenly swung open, startling him. The key fell out, on to the floor. Jack scooped it up, facing Richard Krenckel fully. The metal and ring plopped into the other man's hand. An appreciative nod and his quarry vanished like a grin. The hunter was betrayed by his own ill-timed readiness.

     The Captain pretended to be his imperious, purposeful self, even in the luxury of his room. But he wasn't, indeed, if he was to be honest with himself, he felt unmanned. He had stared into the eyes of his enemy, and had done nothing. Now he sat on his bed, suitcases on either side of his legs still holding his door-key, only he was using it to trace lines into the palm of his hand. "Idiot!" he spoke aloud, squaring his shoulders to the mirror opposite. Krenckel had peered into state enemy eyes before. Each was a block in his way; no mystery before. The singular suspense was the execution of his orders. 'What was the word for this enemy?' He was putting away his toiletries after his interlude of shock. He hung his clothes in the armoire. 'Charisma!' He triumphed. That's what Thomas had; that's what hit him; he could see why some weak soldier had fallen so easily. So it would be a new challenge to kill someone who wasn't as empty as the others. Schooled in the inequality of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the Stasi hit-man nevertheless instantly recognized the talents that imbued certain individuals and made them leaders. Zipping up his jacket, the Captain marched to Thomas's building.

     Striding briskly, he was astonished to see Jack outside on the pavement; handing a rolled-up paper to the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She was as tall as himself and the architect. They were not shy of the cold sun and the people streaming around them. When the woman took the paper, her head nodded, and then remained close to her breast. She seemed pleased and shy; her hand lingering for a moment on his fingers, then reluctantly withdrew the paper to herself. Jack in his shirtsleeves was equally slow to leave her. He blew out the freezing air and took his leave of her. Her eyes travelled upward from him to the large window above which was suddenly buffeted by the gusts and seemed to want to take flight of its own accord. A deluge of freedom surpassing everything and everyone was coming, yet no one heeded it except her.

     Miriam said, "My heart's grounded in wind." Krenckel saw her mouth the words. He had slowed to study his quarry. Now he was a metre away from her. Stepping forward, he said, "Fräulein?" A pirouette, she gazed from inside her wakeful blue eyes.

     "Yes? Um, Ja?" She corrected herself, fingers touching her forehead.

     "I speak English. Are you intimate with the man who went," and he broke off, for she looked alarmed. "No, that is not correct. Do you know the architect Thomas?'

     "Yes. Why?" She betrayed none of the wariness in her heart.

     "I was hoping you might introduce us, Fräulein. I am an admirer of his work." The lie fell from his tongue as an over-ripe fruit even as he gestured to the window. Vitruvius Man deliberately ignored him.

     "Do you know Café Novalis?" She smiled as she took him by the arm, leading him away. Krenckel looked back, then at her face in profile. She continued, "It was the first café I found on my own in Berlin." Miriam was not above a simple subterfuge herself. Instinct told her to protect Jack. This queer man raised the hair on the nape of her neck. 'Why did he not introduce himself?'Then the idea occurred to her. 'Spy.'

     "But Fräulein…"

     "Oh, it's just a few blocks away. I'll tell you all about Jack Thomas. My name is Miriam McCann." She unlocked his arm and held out her hand. "What is your name?"

     "Johann von Kissler. I am a salesman." 'What luck! A conversation about the target and sex with her; how fortunate! Naturally, I must kill her too. She looks like Ute, grown up...'

     "So am I! I hope we're not in competition." She noted his backward glances. "How well do you know this section of Berlin?"

     "Not so very good. I sell text books, usually in Hamburg, in the north. Not exciting, Hamburg."

     "Really? Still, it's a job. What kind of text books?" Miriam continued to steer him out of sight of Jack, as Krenckel locked step with her.

     "University books. My company is Rhineland; sells just these." He recited his script so well he envisioned stacks of slick, heavy books. An idea came to him. "Engineering, building."

     "That certainly explains your interest in Jack Thomas.  Nothing like the real thing, eh? Look, there's the café. Have you read Novalis?" The waited at a crosswalk. He shook his head. "No? I thought that would have been standard-course work. Maybe not. But on your own?"

     "No. I do not read poetry or novels." He was sure this was the appropriate answer. She smiled, not bothering to correct him. "You like this, then? Western novels?"  They went inside; Krenckel unaware he had been unmasked. His pronouncement stuck on his lips. 'Spot what I am.'

     As they were seated, Miriam cocked her head and beheld herself in the glass-front windows: the child by the pond and the willow, knees drawn up, tears flowing. So soon, so very soon she was informed by her Voices in the Light. An unheeded sigh vanished. She would disobey them just this once, to allow Vitruvius Man and the building completion. She would leave on her mission to conquer the Communists with Christ tomorrow, or order them to leave in the name of God. "What do you believe we could see,' she started and paused as the child left, "if we could step out of ourselves, just for moment?"

     Krenckel gave a thin smile, pretending to understand. Saved by the man in white. "Tsvie Kaffee." As an afterthought, he tugged the escaping waiter's jacket, who questioned, "Soust nach etwas?" "Bitte, Tsvie Apfelschapps." When Krenckel turned back to Miriam, she was still staring out the windows. Actually, she was staring in the window. "Miriam, is this OK?"

     "Oh, yes. Forgive me, I saw someone I know…pass by. Ah, you want to hear about Jack Thomas. Where you here when the soldier Valentine crossed the border? I was."

     "No!" The Captain was intrigued.

     "Yes. I'll tell you something else. He was in love with me."

     "Herr Thomas?"

     "No, certainly not. He's married and in love with his wife. But that soldier, Peter Valentine. Mind you, I did not encourage him."

     Captain Krenckel was crestfallen. Not the English capitalist? He had seen the tape of Thomas frantically waving his arms, of Valentine being led into the building. He wanted to kill Valentine right now with his bare hands, snap his neck. But he was undoubtedly in the arms of the Authorities. A soldier forsaking his duty, his country in a time of war, and was there a family also? It did not matter; Corporal Valentine left his post for this woman. When the drinks arrived, Krenckel drank his schnapps off and ordered another round.

     "Johann? Johann? Herr von Kissler? You seem upset. Would you like my schnapps?" She pushed it to him. He spontaneously reached over to grab her wrist, and then seized himself, brushing her fingertips at the stem of the glass.

     "Have you been allowed to see your soldier yet?" Recovered, reserved, he sipped the second drink whilst she stirred her coffee.

     "Why no. And he's certainly not my soldier. He's with, oh I don't know."

     "Do you not find him attractive?"

     "I thought you wanted to talk about Jack Thomas," she smiled pleasantly, verve taking over. "As I said, I'm in sales and that's how we met. I was contacting potential shop owners when Peter took a fancy to me. I would pass him every morning on my way. He kept waving to me. I finally waved back. It was innocent on my part. He looked so bored." Miriam mimed Krenckel as he sipped his drink, she her coffee. She looked off deliberately; settling back on Krenckel's spent face. "Thomas is of course the architect of the century. Would you not agree?"

     It was a woman, not a Western conspiracy. Just like his superiors to get it wrong. Had they not watched all the tapes before Valentine defected? They would have seen her; she was hard to miss. Thomas was as he seemed to be: an architect. 'I read the file; no political affiliations. He's probably another English homosexual, hiding behind his phallic buildings and the skirts of women. He did let this woman go after all.' As Krenckel reasoned, he relaxed, only to become aware that she had been talking about angels. 'No, angles.' "Herr Thomas is a great builder," he finally replied. 'She looks so much like Ute!'

     Miriam finished her drink and said, "Thank you for the coffee and schnapps. I really must be going for I need to telephone my company in America. So, how about you? Have I answered your questions about Jack's marvel?"

     "Yes, yes. May we meet for dinner later? I leave tomorrow afternoon."

     "No, I'm sorry. I have work to attend to this evening. Maybe I'll see you at Jack's building in the morning. I must be there early."

     "Maybe. Thank you for your conversation. Auf Wiedersehen."

     The dawn light struck at the crosses; the crosses inside the Capitalist cathedral, some hidden, some not. Light came from the spider web of coloured panes; light struck the spider web of wires outside. A riot of concrete, razor wire, and blaring horns greeted Miriam. Krenckel was moored in his sniper's position. Jack was mired in his disbelief of Miriam's actions, though he had given her a map of Checkpoint Charlie. He thought he could talk her out of her plan today; it seemed so sketchy, so dreamy. The actual was happening as he sprinted out of his creation into her reality. She was crossing No Man's Land. Miriam was celebrating, imitating, indicating that her golden grief of the rape ten years ago was cured by her faith. Etched in their minds, she rushed to her awakening fate.

     Hunting for God and mortality, what life! Jack called to her in a constricted voice, "Miriam, Miriam! Are you going to die for all of us?" Her holocaust horrified and shamed him. Jack had been captured by her singular state. Now he curled inward; unable to break free of his own spell, set to behold her bravery and blood. In attempting to assist her; Jack thought he had quietly betrayed her when his voice sank. He acquiesced to her; she was beyond the American soldiers. All that remained was her conviction and the silence soon to surround her.

     Krenckel did not lower his rifle when the guards began to shoot, there was no need. He observed and waited for his shot. His job was to eradicate the person who was tempting his people to defect.

     Miriam walked on beneath the still visible vernal equinox morning moon, confidant. The Captain fired a single shot, slipping back behind the doorway. Her vision pivoted inwards as the outside world fled away. She could partially see out, a thick grey mist curtained her goal. Someone was yelling as a choke of blood invaded her mouth. 'To whom shall I confess? My advocate? My killer? The spring buds? Perhaps my Lord will know.' Her shadow had made it through the wire. More weapons fired on it; blasts of fire like in a hot air balloon singed it. It stood framed on the back of the building. Miriam thought she saw it bow, then kneel. 'Jesus remember me when you come into your Kingdom.'  eHhhhhh