Well, it couldn’t have turned out better … or worse. This time, the child got burnt! We were all having tea in our fabulous house on the Rhine and I had some nice things including a big silver samovar which Peter Paul somehow managed to overturn over the child. It got her one arm from the wrist to her shoulder.… The howling child was very badly burned. Thay jumped on her right away … slapping her face to get her attention. “Good!” he shouted at her to get her into communication: “Does it hurt here?” The surprised and suffering child shook her ringlets: “No.” Then Thay slapped her hand … passing right over the burn. “Good! Does it hurt here?” Again, she had to say “No.” Thay went on like that with her relentlessly … passing back and forth over the burn; making her, each time, negate the pain, you see. I hope you won’t ever have the occasion to try it but … I swear to you I’ve seen Thay do it … and it works! In the end, we sent the little girl home quite exhausted but with only a little redness on her arm.… Faith Healing! … It took Thay nearly an hour of utterly intense work to do it … but we’d all thought that poor child was going to be disfigured for life!
After that, Thay could do anything with Peter Paul that he liked. We were all driving to Freiburg im Breisgau one day, I remember, with PP at the wheel of our Mercedes-Benz. “Where do I turn?” PP asked vaguely and Thay, who meant a perfectly visible crossroads a few yards ahead, said: “Right here.” Instinctively and without one second’s reflection, Peter Paul swung over the wheel, turning us all over into a ditch. Luckily, we weren’t going very fast so no one was hurt but … it just goes to show you how blindly PP was following Thay. That night, Thay brought out of his luggage a Ouija Board which he and I had picked up at Hammacher Schlemmer’s in New York as we tore through buying silly Christmas presents on the way to the airport. I knew how it worked so … when Thay and I both put our forefingers on the planchette, the first thing it spelled out was SCRAM! “Do you mean we should all leave Basel, dear Ouija Board?” That was Thay talking to it. The planchette shot off under my reluctant forefinger to “YES.” “And where should we go, dear Ouija?” asked Thay. TAMANRASSET. The board painfully and laboriously spelled it out — and that’s your “Tam,” isn’t it? We all were ready to swear that none of us, Thay included, had ever even heard of the place. “And when, dear Ouija Board, when?” Thay insisted. ANTEXMAS, the ouija board said. That happened just three days before Christmas and … in three hours … we were off! Thay found where the place was on the atlas and Thay it was who simply dragged us out to the airport in Basel where he simply made PP Strangleblood write out a check for our own private plane.… We were off!
Just before leaving the house, I grabbed up a handful of mail to go through in the plane.… I had things to sign so, luckily, I took along my Swiss lawyer, Rolf Ritterolf, with the idea of sending him back from Algut. He carries around a dispatch case like a cabinet minister with a portfolio of all my affairs. Among other things was a letter from you to the Fundamental Foundation saying you were on your way to Algut. I had really … excuse me, it was true … I had picked you because of your photograph. It and your project: “The Future of Slavery,” both pleased me … but nothing was official, yet, nor had the Foundation informed you of anything. I happen to know! As I say … I laughed. I remember, Thay looked up from a crossword puzzle and remarked: “Laughter is refusal.” But I shook my head.… “Not in this case,” I said, and told Rolf to meet you in the Hotel Saint Georges and give you the money for your trip. He and the American Vice-Consul Knoblock met you, I know, or we wouldn’t … would we? … be here.
I’ve heard poor Thay tell such a different version … at times … of everything that went on after that! I won’t bore you with my version … except, perhaps, to insist that it was no fault of mine that your mission failed. Thay … he’s a darling but most unreliable, really, and at times an absolute liar … he’ll admit as much to you himself. Except … I forgot … Thay is not going to talk any more! I wonder how long that’s going to last? He’s gone through dozens of other self-imposed disciplines before. Well, Thay … who is quite capable of telling you that his Amos Africanus … and mine, too, don’t get me wrong … but Amos was never in Algut in his life as far as I know. We didn’t even meet him until much later on in our trip. We had hoped to meet you somewhere along the way but you took so long crawling across the Sahara just to get to Tam … that our plane had long ago left. What did happen … most unfortunate, really, for you … is that Thay interfered when he had really no right to … telling the captains in Tam to look out for you. As you saw, it had quite the opposite effect from what was intended … at least, so I hope … by Thay.
So.… really to make this up to you … we would both be happy if you would accept to come with us to “Malamut” … where we have some great plans under way … for Africa … for the world … for you. We feel you fit in. Thay … always excessive … says that you were heaven-sent. I always go along with his games. Besides, we’re a team and together we hold … as they say … a handful of trumps. When we get down there … let’s say we get down there tomorrow afternoon for a late Spanish lunch … I’ll have Rolf Ritterolf run through the whole portfolio with you and explain all the things we are up to. Hassan, you’ll come, won’t you? You have only to say it … you know … the word!
8
Man, what a wild change of scene: last night in Tanja town and here we are back in the Sahara again! I guess I must have said: “Hello,” all right, to the lady; how could I resist? “Hello Yes Hello,” in fact. Here I have in my hand a big green carved stone, obviously ancient and said to be an emerald unless it’s jadite or glass. I have, also, a gold chain of linked letter H’s, presumably for Hapsburg, but it could be for Hassan, why not? The man whose name is not Hassan, I certainly am. So, what should I have said to the lady: “Good-by No Good-by”? Hamid says he always knows how to take a prize when he sees one but I never do. This time, we’ll see. I’m writing this painfully by candlelight in the big electronic library of “Malamut”—“my brain,” she calls it — surrounded by the consoles of the computers and the wired stacks of the communications system through which she intends to run this whole African scene of hers. Tonight, the generators are out of order, they tell me: for the moment, none of this works. The flickering light of my candle is lost in the shadows which race around this round room whose dome, high above me, represents Mya’s head on the top of the bulk of this building when you see this whole block of rocks on Cape Noon from a distance. As big as the Capitol building, Mya sits on the immense sweep of the Saharan coast of the Atlantic on the big bulge of Africa; massive, unique and alone.