our heart rush upward to greet the miracle secreted in this symmetry! And the color, what is the color? The color is that strip of the heavens closest to the dunes before the green flash amwunces the arrival of night." For such a song, which the singer elaborated through many variations-evoking in some versions the navel and the crusty button at the poles of the orange, dwelling rhapsodically in others upon the tasteless mossy inside of the skin that holds the drops of nectar like jewels in a felt-lined case, and in still others upon the joys of spitting out the seeds-coins or cowries would be cast from the windows, appearing in his path like a sudden spatter of the rains that had failed to come, or paper notes would be thrust at him by servants sent out by the wealthy; forwiththe drying-up of merchandise to buy, lu had become plentiful, and many were in a cash sense wealthy. People would attempt to bribe him to sing a song of bananas, or couscous, or spring lamb turned on a spit with peppers and onions, but he would say No, he was a seller of oranges, and could conjure up only their image amply enough to banish the reality of hunger. Kutunda was finding her quarters above the basket shop insufficient. Her new possessions-billowing clothes, bulky jewelry, inlaid tables, throw pillows, cuddly stuffed Steiff animals, mechanical beauty aids, a hair-blower and a Water-Pik comwere overwhelming the little pise-walled room which a month ago had seemed such a grateful improvement over the exiguous spaces of a tent or a ditch. Ellellou, removing the stained robes and net yoke of an orange-seller, noticed on her wrist a watch with a blank black face. "A gift," she admitted. "Look, you press here, and the numbers come up! It is what they call electronic wizardry." "In exchange for what service to Ezana?" "For my services to the state; my wisdom and counsel." "In urging the murder of the helpless old king?" "I merely urged what your heart had already decreed but lacked the courage to execute." "Lacked the madness, I now think. What good has come of it? The sky is as blank as your watch-face, and horror clouds my heart. Since the day, Ezana is formal and correct with me; I feel he is standing clear of my ruin." "Ezana will dodge as you turn. There is no leader left in Kush but my colonel. Let me show you the clothes I bought; the shopgirl said they were designed by a Tutsi princess." As she walked back and forth to her bulging cedar wardrobe, her heels thumped in the manner specifically enjoined by the twenty-fourth sura, And let them not stamp their feet in walking so as to reveal their hidden trinkets, the same sura that says consolingly, Unclean women are for unclean men, and unclean men for unclean women. She hurled one width of rainbow-dyed cloth over her head, wriggled it smooth, gazed at herself in the mirror with pursed lips, held a bloodstone earring against the lobe of one ear, and rejected the outfit by baring her tiny teeth, bowing her head, swinging her hands to the nape of her neck, giving the garment a sharp forward pull, and becoming naked again, her stout legs first. Her buttocks in the seriousness of this ritual had a tightened tuck, a flattening of their outward curve that touched me with its sign of pliant aging. Yet, in bed, in darkness, my manhood recoiled from her familiar maneuvers of hands and mouth, grown since our desert courtship to fit my predilections as closely as a worn saddle fits its camel's humps. Now her mouth, moist as it was, burned; whenever my stalk verged upon response, upon enlargement and erection, the picture entered my mind of the king's severed neck, its pulsing plumbing suddenly sliced across and emptying itself, by spurts that seemed sluggish, into the crystalline vacancy of that moment before the Tuareg, too late, galloped into the square. The blood of mine that had been flowing to produce the engorgement of potency fell back, alarmed. "You are angry with me," Kutunda at last observed, weary
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