EDFRANK CUSTOM JEWELERS 3 page

The older truck driver said to him, “Joe, you’re a snob.”

“You could live in Denver,” Juliana said. “It’s nicer up there.” I know you East Americans, she thought. You like the big time. Dreaming your big schemes. This is just the sticks to you, the Rockies. Nothing has happened here since before the war. Retired old people, farmers, the stupid, slow, poor… and all the smart boys have flocked east to New York, crossed the border legally or illegally. Because, she thought, that’s where the money is, the big industrial money. The expansion. German investment has done a lot… it didn’t take long for them to build the U.S. back up.

The fry cook said in a hoarse angry voice, “Buddy, I’m not a Jew-lover, but I seen some of those Jew refugees fleeing your U.S. in ‘49, and you can have your U.S. If there’s a lot of building back there and a lot of loose easy money it’s because they stole it from those Jews when they kicked them out of New York, that goddam Nazi Nuremberg Law. I lived in Boston when I was a kid, and I got no special use for Jews, but I never thought I’d see that Nazi racial law get passed in the U.S., even if we did lose the war. I’m surprised you aren’t in the U.S. Armed Forces, getting ready to invade some little South American republic as a front for the Germans, so they can push the Japanese back a little bit more—”

Both truck drivers were on their feet, their faces stark. The older man picked up a ketchup bottle from the counter and held it upright by the neck. The fry cook without turning his back to the two men reached behind him until his fingers touched one of his meat forks. He brought the fork out and held it.

Juliana said, “Denver is getting one of those heat-resistant runways so that Lufthansa rockets can land there.”

None of the three men moved or spoke. The other customers sat silently.

Finally the fry cook said, “One flew over around sundown.”

“It wasn’t going to Denver,” Juliana said. “It was going west, to the Coast.”

By degrees, the two truck drivers reseated themselves. The older man mumbled, “I always forget; they’re a little yellow out here.”

The fry cook said. “No Japs killed Jews, in the war or after. No Japs built ovens.”

“Too bad they didn’t,” the older truck driver said. But, picking up his coffee cup, he resumed eating.

Yellow, Juliana thought. Yes, I suppose it’s true. We love the Japs out here.

“Where are you staying?” she asked, speaking to the young truck driver, Joe. “Overnight.”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “I just got out of the truck to come in here. I don’t like this whole state. Maybe I’ll sleep in the truck.”

“The Honey Bee Motel isn’t too bad,” the fry cook said.

“Okay,” the young truck driver said. “Maybe I’ll stay there. If they don’t mind me being Italian.” He had a definite accent, although he tried to hide it.

Watching him, Juliana thought, it’s idealism that makes him that bitter. Asking too much out of life. Always moving on, restless and griped. I’m the same way; I couldn’t stay on the West Coast and eventually I won’t be able to stand it here. Weren’t the old-timers like that? But, she thought, now the frontier isn’t here; it’s the other planets.

She thought: He and I could sign up for one of those colonizing rocket ships. But the Germans would disbar him because of his skin and me because of my dark hair. Those pale skinny Nordic SS fairies in those training castles in Bavaria. This guy—Joe whatever—hasn’t even got the right expression on his face; he should have that cold but somehow enthusiastic look, as if he believed in nothing and yet somehow had absolute faith. Yes, that’s how they are. They’re not idealists like Joe and me; they’re cynics with utter faith. It’s a sort of brain defect, like a lobotomy—that maiming those German psychiatrists do as a poor substitute for psychotherapy.

Their trouble, she decided, is with sex; they did something foul with it back in the ‘thirties, and it has gotten worse. Hitler started it with his—what was she? His sister? Aunt? Niece? And his family was inbred already; his mother and father were cousins. They’re all committing incest, going back to the original sin of lusting for their own mothers. That’s why they, those elite SS fairies, have that angelic simper, that blond babylike innocence; they’re saving themselves for Mama. Or for each other.

And who is Mama for them? she wondered. The leader, Herr Bormann, who is supposed to be dying? Or—the Sick One.

Old Adolf, supposed to be in a sanitarium somewhere, living out his life of senile paresis. Syphilis of the brain, dating back to his poor days as a bum in Vienna… long black coat, dirty underwear, flophouses.

Obviously, it was God’s sardonic vengeance, right out of some silent movie. That awful man struck down by an internal filth, the historic plague for man’s wickedness.

And the horrible part was that the present-day German Empire was a product of that brain. First a political party, then a nation, then half the world. And the Nazis themselves had diagnosed it, identified it; that quack herbal medicine man who had treated Hitler, that Dr. Morell who had dosed Hitler with a patent medicine called Dr. Koester’s Antigas Pills—he had originally been a specialist in venereal disease. The entire world knew it, and yet the Leader’s gabble was still sacred, still Holy Writ. The views had infected a civilization by now, and, like evil spores, the blind blond Nazi queens were swishing out from Earth to the other planets, spreading the contamination.

What you get for incest: madness, blindness, death.

Brrr. She shook herself.

“Charley,” she called to the fry cook. “You about ready with my order?” She felt absolutely alone; getting to her feet she walked to the counter and seated herself by the register.

No one noticed her except the young Italian truck driver; his dark eyes were fixed on her. Joe, his name was. Joe what? she wondered.

Closer to him, now, she saw that he was not as young as she had thought. Hard to tell; the intensity all around him disturbed her judgment. Continually he drew his hand through his hair, combing it back with crooked, rigid fingers. There’s something special about this man, she thought. He breathes—death. It upset her, and yet attracted her. Now the older truck driver inclined his head and whispered to him. Then they both scrutinized her, this time with a look that was not the ordinary male interest.

“Miss,” the older one said. Both men were quite tense, now. “Do you know what this is?” He held up a flat white box, not too large.

“Yes,” Juliana said. “Nylon stockings. Synthetic fiber made only by the great cartel in New York, I. G. Farben. Very rare and expensive.”

“You got to hand it to the Germans; monopoly’s not a bad idea.” The older truck driver passed the box to his companion, who pushed it with his elbow along the counter toward her.

“You have a car?” the young Italian asked her, sipping his coffee.

From the kitchen, Charley appeared; he had her plate.

“You could drive me to this place.” The wild, strong eyes still studied her, and she became increasingly nervous, and yet increasingly transfixed. “This motel, or wherever I’m supposed to stay tonight. Isn’t that so?”

“Yes,” she said. “I have a car. An old Studebaker.”

The fry cook glanced from her to the young truck driver, and then set her plate before her at the counter.

The loudspeaker at the end of the aisle said, “Achtung, meine Damen und Herren .” In his seat, Mr. Baynes started, opened his eyes. Through the window to his right he could see, far below, the brown and green of land, and then blue. The Pacific. The rocket, he realized, had begun its long slow descent.

In German first, then Japanese, and at last English, the loudspeaker explained that no one was to smoke or to untie himself from his padded seat. The descent, it explained, would take eight minutes.

The retro-jets started then, so suddenly and loudly, shaking the ship so violently, that a number of passengers gasped. Mr. Baynes smiled, and in the aisle seat across from him, another passenger, a younger man with close-cropped blond hair, also smiled.

“Sie furchten dass—” the young man began, but Mr. Baynes said at once, in English:

“I’m sorry; I don’t speak German.” The young German gazed at him questioningly, and so he said the same thing in German.

“No German?” the young German said, amazed, in accented English.

“I am Swedish,” Baynes said.

“You embarked at Tempelhof.”

“Yes, I was in Germany on business. My business carries me to a number of countries.”

Clearly, the young German could not believe that anyone in the modern world, anyone who had international business dealings and rode—could afford to ride—on the latest Lufthansa rocket, could or would not speak German. To Baynes he said, “What line are you in, mein Herr?”

“Plastics. Polyesters. Resins. Ersatz—industrial uses. Do you see? No consumers’ commodities.”

“Sweden has a plastics industry?” Disbelief.

“Yes, a very good one. If you will give me your name I will have a firm brochure mailed to you.” Mr. Baynes brought out his pen and pad.

“Never mind. It would be wasted on me. I am an artist, not a commercial man. No offense. Possibly you have seen my work while on the Continent. Alex Lotze.” He waited.

“Afraid I do not care for modern art,” Mr. Baynes said. “I like the old prewar cubists and abstractionists. I like a picture to mean something, not merely to represent the ideal.” He turned away.

“But that’s the task of art,” Lotze said. “To advance the spirituality of man, over the sensual. Your abstract art represented a period of spiritual decadence, of spiritual chaos, due to the disintegration of society, the old plutocracy. The Jewish and capitalist millionaires, the international set that supported the decadent art. Those times are over; art has to—go on—it can’t stay still.”

Baynes nodded, gazing out the window.

“Have you been to the Pacific before?” Lotze asked.

“Several times.”

“Not I. There is an exhibition in San Francisco of my work, arranged by Dr. Goebbels’ office, with the Japanese authorities. A cultural exchange to promote understanding and goodwill. We must ease tensions between the East and West, don’t you think? We must have more communication, and art can do that.”

Baynes nodded. Below, beyond the ring of fire from the rocket, the city of San Francisco and the Bay could now be seen.

“Where does one eat in San Francisco?” Lotze was saying. “I have reservations at the Palace Hotel, but my understanding is that one can find good food in the international section, such as the Chinatown.”

“True,” Baynes said.

“Are prices high in San Francisco? I am out of pocket for this trip. The Ministry is very frugal.” Lotze laughed.

“Depends on the exchange rate you can manage. I presume you’re carrying Reichsbank drafts. I suggest you go to the Bank of Tokyo on Samson Street and exchange there.”

“Danke sehr ,” Lotze said. “I would have done it at the hotel.”

The rocket had almost reached the ground. Now Baynes could see the airfield itself, hangars, parking lots, the autobahn from the city, the houses… very lovely view, he thought. Mountains and water, and a few bits of fog drifting in at the Golden Gate.

“What is that enormous structure below?” Lotze asked. “It is half-finished, open at one side. A spaceport? The Nipponese have no spacecraft, I thought.”

With a smile, Baynes said, “That’s Golden Poppy Stadium. The baseball park.”

Lotze laughed. “Yes, they love baseball. Incredible. They have begun work on that great structure for a pastime, an idle time-wasting sport—”

Interrupting, Baynes said, “It is finished. That’s its permanent shape. Open on one side. A new architectural design. They are very proud of it.”

“It looks,” Lotze said, gazing down, “as if it was designed by a Jew.”

Baynes regarded the man for a time. He felt, strongly for a moment, the unbalanced quality, the psychotic streak, in the German mind. Did Lotze actually mean what he said? Was it a truly spontaneous remark?

“I hope we will see one another later on in San Francisco,” Lotze said as the rocket touched the ground. “I will be at loose ends without a countryman to talk to.”

“I’m not a countryman of yours,” Baynes said.

“Oh, yes; that’s so. But racially, you’re quite close. For all intents and purposes the same.” Lotze began to stir around in his seat, getting ready to unfasten the elaborate belts.

Am I racially kin to this man? Baynes wondered. So closely so that for all intents and purposes it is the same? Then it is in me, too, the psychotic streak. A psychotic world we live in. The madmen are in power. How long have we known this? Faced this? And—how many of us do know it? Not Lotze. Perhaps if you know you are insane then you are not insane. Or you are becoming sane, finally. Waking up. I suppose only a few are aware of all this. Isolated persons here and there. But the broad masses… what do they think? All these hundreds of thousands in this city, here. Do they imagine that they live in a sane world? Or do they guess, glimpse, the truth… ?

But, he thought, what does it mean, insane ? A legal definition. What do I mean? I feel it, see it, but what is it?

He thought, It is something they do, something they are. It is—their unconsciousness. Their lack of knowledge about others. Their not being aware of what they do to others, the destruction they have caused and are causing. No, he thought. That isn’t it, I don’t know; I sense it, intuit it. But—they are purposely cruel … is that it? No. God, he thought. I can’t find it, make it clear. Do they ignore parts of reality? Yes. But it is more. It is their plans. Yes, their plans. The conquering of the planets. Something frenzied and demented, as was their conquering of Africa, and before that, Europe and Asia.

Their view; it is cosmic. Not of a man here, a child there, but air abstraction: race, land. Volk. Land. Blut. Ehre. Not of honorable men but of Ehre itself, honor; the abstract is real, the actual is invisible to them. Die Güte , but not good men, this good man. It is their sense of space and time. They see through the here, the now, into the vast black deep beyond, the unchanging. And that is fatal to life. Because eventually there will be no life; there was once only the dust particles in space, the hot hydrogen gases, nothing more, and it will come again. This is an interval, ein Augenblick . The cosmic process is hurrying on, crushing life back into the granite and methane; the wheel turns for all life. It is all temporary. And they—these madmen—respond to the granite, the dust, the longing of the inanimate; they want to aid Natur .

And, he thought, I know why. They want to be the agents, not the victims, of history. They identify with God’s power and believe they are godlike. That is their basic madness. They are overcome by some archetype; their egos have expanded psychotically so that they cannot tell where they begin and the godhead leaves off. It is not hubris, not pride; it is inflation of the ego to its ultimate confusion between him who worships and that which is worshiped. Man has not eaten God; God has eaten man.

What they do not comprehend is man’s helplessness . I am weak, small, of no consequence to the universe. It does not notice me; I live on unseen. But why is that bad? Isn’t it better that way? Whom the gods notice they destroy. Be small… and you will escape the jealousy of the great.

As he unfastened his own belt, Baynes said, “Mr. Lotze, I have never told anyone this. I am a Jew. Do you understand?”

Lotze stared at him piteously.

“You would not have known,” Baynes said, “because I do not in any physical way appear Jewish; I have had my nose altered, my large greasy pores made smaller, my skin chemically lightened, the shape of my skull changed. In short, physically I cannot be detected. I can and have often walked in the highest circles of Nazi society. No one will ever discover me. And—” He paused, standing close, very close to Lotze and speaking in a low voice which only Lotze could hear. “And there are others of us. Do you hear? We did not die. We still exist. We live on unseen.”

After a moment Lotze stuttered, “The Security Police—”

“The SD can go over my record,” Baynes said. “You can report me. But I have very high connections. Some of them are Aryan, some are other Jews in top positions in Berlin. Your report will be discounted, and then, presently, I will report you. And through these same connections, you will find yourself in Protective Custody.” He smiled, nodded and walked up the aisle of the ship, away from Lotze, to join the other passengers.

Everyone descended the ramp, onto the cold, windy field. At the bottom, Baynes found himself once more momentarily near Lotze.

“In fact,” Baynes said, walking beside Lotze, “I do not like your looks, Mr. Lotze, so I think I will report you anyhow.” He strode on, then, leaving Lotze behind.

At the far end of the field, at the concourse entrance, a large number of people were waiting. Relatives, friends of passengers, some of them waving, peering, smiling, looking anxious, scanning faces. A heavyset middle-aged Japanese man, well-dressed in a British overcoat, pointed Oxfords, bowler, stood a little ahead of the others, with a younger Japanese beside him. On his coat lapel he wore the badge of the ranking Pacific Trade Mission of the Imperial Government. There he is, Baynes realized. Mr. N. Tagomi, come personally to meet me.

Starting forward, the Japanese called, “Herr Baynes—good evening.” His head tilted hesitantly.

“Good evening, Mr. Tagomi,” Baynes said, holding out his hand. They shook, then bowed. The younger Japanese also bowed, beaming.

“Bit cold, sir; on this exposed field,” Mr. Tagomi said. “We shall begin return trip to downtown city by Mission helicopter. Is that so? Or do you need to use the facilities, and so forth?” He scrutinized Mr. Baynes’ face anxiously.

“We can start right now,” Baynes said. “I want to check in at my hotel. My baggage, however—”

“Mr. Kotomichi will attend to that,” Mr. Tagomi said. “He will follow. You see, sir, at this terminal it takes almost an hour waiting in line to claim baggage. Longer than your trip.”

Mr. Kotomichi smiled agreeably.

“All right,” Baynes said.

Mr. Tagomi said, “Sir, I have a gift to graft.”

“I beg your pardon?” Baynes said.

“To invite your favorable attitude.” Mr. Tagomi reached into his overcoat pocket and brought out a small box. “Selected from among the finest objects d’art of America available.” He held out the box.

“Well,” Baynes said. “Thanks.” He accepted the box.

“All afternoon assorted officials examined the alternatives,” Mr. Tagomi said. “This is most authentic of dying old U.S. culture, a rare retained artifact carrying flavor of bygone halcyon day.”

Mr. Baynes opened the box. In it lay a Mickey Mouse wristwatch on a pad of black velvet.

Was Mr. Tagomi playing a joke on him? He raised his eyes, saw Mr. Tagomi’s tense, concerned face. No, it was not a joke. “Thank you very much,” Baynes said. “This is indeed incredible.”

“Only few, perhaps ten, authentic 1938 Mickey Mouse watches in all world today,” Mr. Tagomi said, studying him, drinking in his reaction, his appreciation. “No collector known to me has one, sir.”

They entered the air terminal and together ascended the ramp.

Behind them Mr. Kotomichi said, “Harusame ni nuretsutsu yane no temari kana…”

“What is that?” Mr. Baynes said to Mr. Tagomi.

“Old poem,” Mr. Tagomi said. “Middle Tokugawa Period.”

Mr. Kotomichi said, “As the spring rains fall, soaking in them, on the roof, is a child’s rag ball.”

As Frank Frink watched his ex-employer waddle down the corridor and into the main work area of W-M Corporation he thought to himself, The strange thing about Wyndam-Matson is that he does not look like a man who owns a factory. He looks like a Tenderloin bum, a wino, who has been given a bath, new clothes, a shave, haircut, shot of vitamins, and set out into the world with five dollars to find a new life. The old man had a weak, shifty, nervous, even ingratiating manner, as if he regarded everyone as a potential enemy stronger than he, whom he had to fawn on and pacify. “They’re going to get me,” his manner seemed to say.

And yet old W-M was really very powerful. He owned controlling interests in a variety of enterprises, speculations, real estate. As well as the W-M Corporation factory.

Following after the old man, Frink pushed open the big metal door to the main work area. The rumble of machinery, which he had heard around him every day for so long—sight of men at the machines, air filled with flash of light, waste dust, movement. There went the old man. Frink increased his pace.

“Hey, Mr. W-M!” he called.

The old man had stopped by the hairy-armed shop foreman, Ed McCarthy. Both of them glanced up as Frink came toward them.

Moistening his lips nervously, Wyndam-Matson said, “I’m sorry, Frank; I can’t do anything about taking you back. I’ve already gone ahead and hired someone to take your place, thinking you weren’t coming back. After what you said.” His small round eyes flickered with what Frink knew to be an almost hereditary evasiveness. It was in the old man’s blood.

Frink said, “I came for my tools. Nothing else.” His own voice, he was glad to hear, was firm, even harsh.

“Well, let’s see,” W-M mumbled, obviously hazy in his own mind as to the status of Frink’s tools. To Ed McCarthy he said, “I think that would be in your department, Ed. Maybe you can fix Frank here up. I have other business.” He glanced at his pocket watch. “Listen, Ed. I’ll discuss that invoice later; I have to run along.” He patted Ed McCarthy on the arm and then trotted off, not looking back.

Ed McCarthy and Frink stood together.

“You came to get your job back,” McCarthy said after a time.

“Yes,” Frink said.

“I was proud of what you said yesterday.”

“So was I,” Frink said. “But—Christ, I can’t work it out anywhere else.” He felt defeated and hopeless. “You know that.” The two of them had, in the past, often talked over their problems.

McCarthy said, “I don’t know that. You”re as good with that flex-cable machine as anybody on the Coast. I’ve seen you whip out a piece in five minutes, including the rouge polishing. All the way from the rough Cratex. And except for the welding—”

“I never said I could weld,” Frink said.

“Did you ever think of going into business on your own?”

Frink, taken by surprise, stammered, “What doing?”

“Jewelry.”

“Aw, for Christ’s sake!”

“Custom, original pieces, not commercial.” McCarthy beckoned him over to a corner of the shop, away from the noise. “For about two thousand bucks you could set up a little basement or garage shop. One time I drew up designs for women’s earrings and pendants. You remember—real modern contemporary.” Taking scratch paper, he began to draw, slowly, grimly.

Peering over his shoulder, Frink saw a bracelet design, an abstract with flowing lines. “Is there a market?” All he had ever seen were the traditional—even antique—objects from the past. “Nobody wants contemporary American; there isn’t any such thing, not since the war.”

“Create a market,” McCarthy said, with an angry grimace.

“You mean sell it myself?”

“Take it into retail shops. Like that—what’s it called? On Montgomery Street, that big ritzy art object place.”

“American Artistic Handcrafts,” Frink said. He never went into fashionable, expensive stores such as that. Few Americans did; it was the Japanese who had the money to buy from such places.

“You know what retailers like that are selling?” McCarthy said. “And getting a fortune for? Those goddam silver belt buckles from New Mexico that the Indians make. Those goddam tourist trash pieces, all alike. Supposedly native art.”

For a long time Frink regarded McCarthy. “I know what else they sell,” he said finally. “And so do you.”

“Yes,” McCarthy said.

They both knew—because they had both been directly involved, and for a long time.

W-M Corporation’s stated legal business consisted in turning out wrought-iron staircases, railings, fireplaces, and ornaments for new apartment buildings, all on a mass basis, from standard designs. For a new forty-unit building the same piece would be executed forty times in a row. Ostensibly, W-M Corporation was an iron foundry. But in addition, it maintained another business from which its real profits were derived.

Using an elaborate variety of tools, materials, and machines, W-M Corporation turned out a constant flow of forgeries of pre-war American artifacts. These forgeries were cautiously but expertly fed into the wholesale art object market, to join the genuine objects collected throughout the continent. As in the stamp and coin business, no one could possibly estimate the percentage of forgeries in circulation. And no one—especially the dealers and the collectors themselves—wanted to.

When Frink had quit, there lay half-finished on his bench a Colt revolver of the Frontier period; he had made the molds himself, done the casting, and had been busy handsmoothing the pieces. There was an unlimited market for small arms of the American Civil War and Frontier period; W-M Corporation could sell all that Frink could turn out. It was his specialty.

Walking slowly over to his bench, Frink picked up the still-rough and burred ramrod of the revolver. Another three days and the gun would be finished. Yes, he thought, it was good work. An expert could have told the difference… but the Japanese collectors weren’t authorities in the proper sense, had no standards or tests by which to judge.

In fact, as far as he knew, it had never occurred to them to ask themselves if the so-called historic art objects for sale in West Coast shops were genuine. Perhaps someday they would… and then the bubble would burst, the market would collapse even for the authentic pieces. A Gresham’s Law: the fakes would undermine the value of the real. And that no doubt was the motive for the failure to investigate; after all, everyone was happy. The factories, here and there in the various cities, which turned out the pieces, they made their profits. The wholesalers passed them on, and the dealers displayed and advertised them. The collectors shelled out their money and carried their purchases happily home, to impress their associates, friends, and mistresses.

Like postwar boodle paper money, it was fine until questioned. Nobody was hurt—until the day of reckoning. And then everyone, equally, would be ruined. But meanwhile, nobody talked about it, even the men who earned their living turning out the forgeries; they shut their own minds to what they made, kept their attention on the mere technical problems.

“How long since you tried to do original designing?” McCarthy asked.

Frink shrugged. “Years. I can copy accurately as hell. But—”

“You know what I think? I think you’ve picked up the Nazi idea that Jews can’t create. That they can only imitate and sell. Middlemen.” He fixed his merciless scrutiny on Frink.

“Maybe so,” Frink said.

“Try it. Do some original designs. Or work directly on the metal. Play around. Like a kid plays.”

“No,” Frink said.

“You have no faith,” McCarthy said. “You’ve completely lost faith in yourself—right? Too bad. Because I know you could do it.” He walked away from the workbench.

It is too bad, Frink thought. But nevertheless it’s the truth. It’s a fact. I can’t get faith or enthusiasm by willing it. Deciding to.

That McCarthy, he thought, is a damn good shop foreman. He has the knack of needling a man, getting him to put out his best efforts, to do his utmost in spite of himself. He’s a natural leader; he almost inspired me, for a moment, there. But—McCarthy had gone off, now; the effort had failed.

Too bad I don’t have my copy of the oracle here, Frink thought. I could consult it on this; take the issue to it for its five thousand years of wisdom. And then he recalled that there was copy of the I Ching in the lounge of the business office of W-M Corporation. So he made his way from the work area, along the corridor, hurriedly through the business office to the lounge.

Seated in one of the chrome and plastic lounge chairs, he wrote his question out on the back of an envelope: “Should I attempt to go into the creative private business outlined to me just now?” And then he began throwing the coins.

The bottom line was a Seven, and so was the second and then the third. The bottom trigam in Ch’ien, he realized. That sounded good; Ch’ien was the creative. Then line Four, an eight. Yin. And line Five, also eight, a yin line. Good lord, he thought excitedly; one more yin line and I’ve got Hexagram Eleven, T’ai, Peace. Very favorable judgment. Or—his hands trembled as he rattled the coins. A yang line and hence Hexagram Twenty-six, Ta Ch’u, the Taming Power of the Great. Both have favorable judgments, and it has to be one or the other. He threw the three coins.

Date: 2016-01-14; view: 553