He smiled for the first time. I suppose, if I wanted, I could recall each occasion over the years when, in my presence at least, John Cave smiled. His usual expression was one of calm resolve, of that authority which feels secure in itself, a fortunate expression which lent dignity even to his casual conversation: the fact that this serene mask hid a nearly total intellectual vacuity, I suspected as early in my dealings with him as this first meeting; yet I did not mind for I had experienced his unique magic and already I saw the possibilities of channeling that power, of using that force, or turning it like a flame here, there, creating and destroying, shaping and shattering ... so much for the spontaneous nature of my ambition at its least responsible, and at its most exquisite! I could have set the one-half world aflame for the sheer splendor and glory of the deed. For this my expiation has been long and my once exuberant pride is now only an ashen phoenix consumed by flames but not yet tumbled to dust, not yet recreated in the millennial egg ... only a gray shadow in the heart which the touch of a finger of windy fear will turn to air and dust. Yet the creature was aborning that day: one seed had touched another and a monster began to live. “The first day? The first time?” The smile faded. “Sure, I remember it. I’d just finished painting the face of a big dead fellow killed in an automobile accident. I didn’t usually do make-up but I like to help out and I used to do odd jobs when somebody had too much to do and asked me to help; the painting isn’t hard either and I always like it, though the faces are cold like ... like....” He thought of no simile; he went on: “Anyway I looked at this guy’s face and I remembered I’d seen him play basketball in high school. He was in a class or two behind me. Big athlete. Ringer, we called them ... full of life ... and here he was, with me powdering his face and combing his eyebrows. Usually you don’t think much about the stiff (that’s our professional word) one way or the other: it’s just a job. But I thought about this one suddenly. I started to feel sorry for him, dead like that, so sudden, so young, so good-looking with all sorts of prospects; then I felt it.” The voice grew low and precise. Iris and I listened intently, even the sun froze in the wild sky above the sea; the young night stumbled in the darkening east. His eyes on the sun, he described his sudden knowledge that it was the dead man who was right, who was a part of the whole, that the living were the sufferers from whom, temporarily, the beautiful darkness and nonbeing had been withdrawn and, in his crude way, Cave struck chord after chord of meaning and, though the notes were not in themselves new, the effect was all its own ... and not entirely because of the voice, the cogency of this magician. No, the effect was achieved only in part through his ability to make one experience with him an occasion of light, of absolute knowing.