Now he had found out about that. He had come first to my room in Adams House, where he was told that I was most likely at The Progressive. He had gone to The Progressive and had ascertained what sort of publication it was and that I was its coeditor. Now he was outside the door with a copy folded under his arm. I remained calm. Such was the magic of having emptied my seminal vesicles so recently. Mary Kathleen, obeying my silent arm signals, hid herself in the bathroom. I slipped on a robe belonging to von Strelitz. He had brought it home from the Solomon Islands. It appeared to be made of shingles, with wreaths of feathers at its collar and cuffs. Thus was I clad when I opened the door and said to old Mr. McCone, who was in his early sixties then, “Come in, come in.” He was so angry with me that he could only continue to make those motor sounds: “bup-bup-bup-bup-bup …” But he meanwhile did a grotesque pantomime of how repulsed he was by the paper, whose front-page cartoon showed a bloated capitalist who looked just like him; by my costume; by the unmade bed; by the picture of Karl Marx on von Strelitz’s wall.
