chapter 52 no pain once Angela had opened her plastic accordion she was reluctant to close it until someone had looked at every photograph there are the people I love she declared so I looked at the people she loved what she had trapped in plexiglass what she had trapped like fossil beetles in Amber were the images of a large part of our Charis there wasn't a grandfuluner in the collection there were many photographs of Dr Honaker father of a bomb father of three children father of Ice Nine he was a little person The purported Sire of a and a giantess my favorite picture of the old man in Angelo's fossil collection showed him all bundled up for winter in an Overcoat scarf galoshes and a wool knit cap with a big pom pom on the crown this picture Angela told me with a catch in her throat had been taken in Hyannis just about three hours before the Old Man Died a newspaper photographer had recognized the seeming Christmas elf for the great man he was did your father die in the hospital oh no he died in our Cottage in a big white wicker chair facing the sea Newton Frank had gone walking down the beach in the snow it was a very warm snow said new it was almost like walking through orange blossoms it was very strange nobody was in any of the other cottages ours was the only one with heat said Angela nobody within miles recalled Newt wondering Lee and Frank and I came across this big black dog out on the beach a Labrador Retriever we threw sticks into the ocean and he brought them back I'd gone back into the village for more Christmas tree bulbs said Angela we always had a tree did your father enjoy having a Christmas tree he never said said Newt I think he liked it said Angela he just wasn't very demonstrative some people aren't and some people are said Newt he gave a small shrug Anyway said Angela when we got back home we found him in the chair she shook her head I don't think he suffered any he just looked asleep he couldn't have looked like that if there had been the least bit of pain she left out an interesting part of the story she left out the fact that it was on that same Christmas Eve that she and Frank and little Newt had divided up the old man's Ice Nine chapter 53 the president of fabritech Angela encouraged me to go on looking at snapshots that's me if you can believe it she showed me an adolescent girl six feet tall she was holding a clarinet in the picture wearing the marching uniform of the ilium High School band her hair was tucked up under a band's man's head she was smiling with shy good cheer and then Angela a woman to whom God had given virtually nothing with which to catch a man showed me a picture of her husband so that's Harrison C Connors I was stunned her husband was a strikingly handsome man and looked as though he knew it he was a snappy dresser and had the lazy Rapture of a Don Juan about the eyes what what does he do I asked he's president of fabritech electronics I couldn't tell you even if I knew it's all very secret government work weapons well War anyway how did you happen to me he used to work as a laboratory assistant to father said Angela then he went out to Indianapolis and started fabritech so your marriage to him was a happy ending to a long Romance no I didn't even know he knew I was alive I used to think he was nice but he never paid any attention to me until after father died one day he came through ilium I was sitting around that big old house thinking my life was over she spoke of the awful days and weeks that followed her father's death just me and little Newt in that big old house Frank had disappeared and the ghosts were making ten times as much noise as new and I were I'd be given my whole life to taking care of Father driving him to and from work bundling him up when it was cold unbundling him when it was hot making him eat paying his bills suddenly there wasn't anything for me to do I've never had any close friends didn't have a soul to turn to but new and then she continued there was a knock on the door and there stood Harrison Connors he was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen he came in and we talked about father's last days and about old times in general Angela almost cried now two weeks later we were married chapter 54 Communists Nazis royalists parachutists and draft Dodgers returning to my own seat in the plane feeling far shabbier for having lost Mona amon's Manzano to Frank I've resumed my reading of Philip Castle's manuscript I looked up monzano Mona amons in the index and was told by the index to see amen's Mona so I saw amon's Mona and found almost as many page references as I'd found after the name of Papa monzano himself and after amon's Mona came amon's Nestor so I turned to the few pages that had to do with Nestor and learned that he was Mona's father a native Finn an architect Nestor a moans was captured by the Russians then liberated by the Germans during the second world war he was not returned home by his liberators but was forced to serve in a wormot engineer unit that was sent to fight the Yugoslav partisans he was captured by chechnyx royalist Serbian partisans and then by communist partisans who attacked the chechnyx he was liberated by Italian parachutists who surprised the Communists and he was shipped to Italy the Italians put him to work designing fortifications for Sicily he stole a fishing boat in Sicily and reached neutral Portugal while there he met an American draft Dodger named Julian Castle upon learning that amones was an architect invited him to come with him to the island of San Lorenzo and to design for him a hospital to be called The House of Hope and mercy in the jungle a moans accepted he designed the hospital married a native woman named Celia fathered a perfect daughter and died chapter 55 never index your own book as for the life of amon's Mona the index itself gave a jangling surrealistic picture of the many conflicting forces that had been brought to bear on her and of her dismayed reactions to them amon's Mona the index said adopted by Manzano in order to boost Manzano's popularity 194 to 199 216 n semicolon childhood and compound of House of Hope and mercy 63-81 childhood romance with P Castle 72f death of Father 89 FF death of mother 92F embarrassed by role as National erotic symbol 80 95 F 166n 209 247 n 400 to 406 566 n 678 engaged to P Castle 193 essential naivete 67-71 80 95 F 116 N 209 274 n 400 to 406 566 n 678 lives with Boca 92 to 98 196 to 197 poems about 2N 26 114 119 311 316 477 n 501 507 555 n 689 718 FF 799 FF 800 and 841 846 FF 908 n 971 974 poems by 89 92 193 returns to monzano 199 returns to boconon 197 runs away from bokanon 199 runs away from monzano 197 tries to make self ugly in order to stop being erotic symbol to Islanders 80 95 F 116 N 209 247 n 400-406 566 and 678 tutored by bocanine 63-80 writes letter to United 200 xylophone virtuoso 71. I showed this index entry to the mintons asked them if they didn't think it was an enchanting biography in itself a biography of a reluctant goddess of love I got an unexpectedly expert answer as one does in life sometimes it appeared that Claire minson in her time had been a professional indexer I had never heard of such a profession before she told me that she had put her husband through college years before with her earnings as an indexer that the earnings had been good and that few people could index well she said that indexing was a thing that only the most amateurish author undertook to do for his own book I asked her what she thought of Philip Castle's job flattering to the author insulting to the reader she said in a hyphenated word she observed with the shrewd immobility of an expert self-indulgent I'm always embarrassed when I see an index an author has made of his own work embarrassed it's a revealing thing in author's index of his own work she informed me it's a Shameless exhibition to the trained eye she can read character from an index said her husband oh I said what can you tell about Philip Castle she smiled faintly things I'd better not tell strangers sorry he's obviously in love with this Mona amon's Manzano she said that's true of every man in San Lorenzo I gather he has mixed feelings about his father she said that's true of every man on earth I egged her on gently he's insecure What Mortal isn't I demanded I didn't know it then but that was a very broken honest thing to demand he'll never marry her why not I've said all I'm going to say she said I'm gratified to meet an indexer who respects the privacy of others never index your own book she stated a Dupris bokeh non tells us is a valuable instrument for gaining and developing in the privacy of an interminable love affair insights that are queer but true the minton's cunning exploration of indexes was surely a case in point a Dupris boken on tells us is also a sweetly conceited establishment The minton's Establishment was no exception sometime later Ambassador Minton and I met in the Isle of the airplane away from his wife and he showed that it was important to him that I respect what his wife could find out from indexes you know why Castle will never marry the girl even though he loves her even though she loves him even though they grew up together he whispered no sir I don't because he's a homosexual whispered minson she can tell that from an index too chapter 56 a self-supporting squirrel cage when Lionel Boyd Johnson and Corporal Earl McCabe were washed up naked onto the shore of San Lorenzo I read they were greeted by persons far worse off than they the people of San Lorenzo had nothing but diseases which they were at a lobster treat or even name by contrast Johnson and McCabe had the glittering Treasures of literacy ambition curiosity Gall irreverence Health humor and considerable information about the outside world from the calypsos again oh a very sorry people yes did I find here oh they had no music and they had no beer and oh everywhere where they tried to perch belong to Castle sugar incorporated or the Catholic Church this statement of the property situation in San Lorenzo in 1922 is entirely accurate according to Philip Castle Castle sugar was founded as it happened by Philip Castle's great-grandfather in 1922 it owned every piece of arable land on the island Castle sugars San Lorenzo operations wrote young Castle never showed a prophet but by paying laborers nothing for their labor the company managed to break even year after year making just enough money to pay the salaries of the workers tour mentors the form of government was Anarchy safe and limited situations wherein Castle sugar wanted to own something or to get something done in such situations the form of government was feudalism the nobility was composed of Castle sugars Plantation bosses who were heavily armed white men from the outside world the Knighthood was composed of big natives who for small gifts and silly privileges would kill or wound or torture on command the spiritual needs of the people caught in this demonical squirrel cage were taken care of by a handful of Butterball priests the San Lorenzo cathedral dynamited in 1923 was generally regarded as one of the man-made wonders of the new world wrote Castle chapter 57 the queasy dream that Corporal McCabe and Johnson were able to take command of San Lorenzo was not a miracle in any sense many people had taken over San Lorenzo had invariably found it lightly held the reason was simple God In His Infinite Wisdom had made the island worthless Hernando Cortez was the first man to have his sterile conquest of San Lorenzo recorded on paper Cortez and his men came ashore for fresh water in 1519 named the island claimed it for Emperor Charles V and never returned subsequent Expeditions came for gold and diamonds and rubies and spices found none burned a few natives for entertainment and heresy and sailed on when France claimed San Lorenzo in 1682 wrote Castle no Spaniards complained when Denmark claimed San Lorenzo in 1699 no Frenchman complained when the Dutch claimed San Lorenzo in 1704 no Danes complained when England claimed San Lorenzo in 1706 no Dutchman complained when Spain reclaimed San Lorenzo in 1720 no Englishman complained when in 1786 African Negroes took command of when in 1786 African Negroes took command of a British slave ship ran it ashore on San Lorenzo and proclaimed San Lorenzo an independent nation an Empire with an emperor in fact no Spaniards complained the emperor was Tom boomwa the only person who ever regarded the island as being worth defending a maniac Tom bunwa calls to be erected the San Lorenzo cathedral in the Fantastic fortifications on the North Shore of the island fortifications within which the private residents of the so-called president of the Republic now stands the fortifications have never been attacked nor has any sane man ever proposed any reason why they should be attacked they have never defended anything fourteen hundred persons are said to have died while building them of these 1400 about half are said to have been executed in public for substandard zeal Castle sugar came into San Lorenzo in 1916 during the sugar boom of the first world war there was no government at all the company imagined that even the clay and gravel fields of San Lorenzo could be tilled profitably with the price of sugar so high no one complained when McCabe and Johnson arrived in 1922 and announced that they were placing themselves in charge Castle sugar withdrew flaccidly as though from a queasy dream Chapter 58 tyranny with a difference there was at least one quality of the new conquerors of San Lorenzo that was really new wrote young Castle McCabe and Johnson dreamed of making San Lorenzo a Utopia to this end McCabe overhauled the economy and the laws Johnson designed a new religion Castle quoted the calypsos again I wanted all things to seem to make some sense so we all could be happy yes instead of tense and I made up lies so that they all fit nice and I made this sad World a paradise there was a tug at my coat sleeve as I read I looked up little new Honaker was standing in the aisle next to me I thought maybe you'd like to go back to the bar he said and hoist a few so we did hoist and topple a few and newt's tongue was loosened enough to tell me some things about zinka his Russian dancer friend their love nest he told me had been in his father's Cottage on Cape Cod I may not ever have a marriage but at least I've had a honeymoon he told me of idyllic hours he and his zinka had spent in each other's arms cradled and Felix honecker's old white wicker chair the chair that faced the sea and zinka would dance for him imagine a woman dancing just for me I can see you have no regrets she broke my heart I didn't like that much but that was the price in this world you get what you pay for he proposed a gallant toast sweethearts and wives he cried