IX
A TITANIC PRODUCTION
Rufio Pagano awoke the following morning as if from a most strange dream devised by the Gods to confuse him, for he had dreamt that he was a youth again, blindfolded by his friends and being spun around on the spot. He could hear Felix and Clara’s laughter as they spun him, feel the growing dizziness in his mind as his hands groped in the dark near the edge of the field. Birds squawked above, and the voices of his friends faded away as their hands released him. He bobbed this way and that, stumbling over the plough furrows in the field, tripping at every obstacle as he called out their names. Finally, he stopped, and tore the blindfold off.
When he could see, he found that he was not in a field, but rather in a feather-stuffed bed which was, by far, of greater co
