The park was long and narrow, squeezed between the cliffs and the river. Over the years Amos had beaten a track through the remnant forest along the Hudson, had, walking or running, evolved a recurrent trail around the park into which, as into a well-worn groove, he could fall mechanically, almost unconsciously, and which seemed to propel him of itself.

To the north the terminus was Grant's Tomb, an immense stone stupa.

To the south stood theSoldiers and Sailors monument. In the east was the enormous bronze statue of

Shinran, the medieval Japanese saint, standing ponderously in broad, conical hat before the Buddhist Academy and gazing into the west at the baleful cliffs of New Jersey and, on evenings of spectacular sunset, at the Western Pure Land beyond.

Around and around this course Amos would plod or gallop, and when he was lucky an ecstasy would begin to surge within him, and on particularly auspicious evenings he would burst from his regular circuit as if hurled by a cyclotron, and race to the north along Riverside Drive, transfixed by the sight of Washington Heights like a city set on a hill, illuminated by the sunset and electricity in the gathering twilight - the Holy City let down from heaven, Holy Mount Zion.

* * *

In the winter bits of the river froze, and the noise of the miniature ice floes rushing past each other, colliding, scraping, was like the sound of ice cubes tinkling in a million mixed drinks. Now, in early April, the ice was gone. Amos sniffed the air as they ambled along beside the water and tasted the salt of the incoming tide, the promise of the beyond washed in by the ocean.

Aihwa, beside him, concluded sourly: "Anyway, I think you should have the decency to leave my friends alone, even when you're drunk."

"You know I'm not interested in your American friends," said Amos. "Not seriously."

"Sometimes," replied Aihwa, "that worries me. To you I'm an exotic bird. You're just attracted to the strange and extraordinary."

"Well, you are somewhat extraordinary," Amos rejoined. They walked on along the river to where the seagulls circled and wheeled down to fish for sewage in the water.

She was in fact an exotic bird, Amos reflected, although her personal exoticism had little to do with his own esoteric and mystical quest. Her grandfather had made his way to Manila from Swatow in the twenties and with her father had built up a modest commercial empire. They traded in an assortment of commodities of which Amos was only dimly cognizant. Actually he knew very little of the family, other than it was prosperous enough to have dispatched Aihwa, a sister, and two brothers to university in America. Aihwa herself was far from a mystic, applying herself with great vigor to the study of feminist anthropology and struggling to come to terms with her class background, whatever precisely it was.

He had met her in April two years before while she was still an undergrad, when her art history class was on a tour of the Metropolitan Museum's Asian collection. She was standing in front of a lacquer screen with four panels depicting the seasons, and with uncharacteristic bravado Amos had stepped up and recited from the Pillow Book: "In spring it is the dawn that is most beautiful."

She had at first just stared at him with her round, wide-eyed gaze. But Amos thought he detected some encouragement beneath the Oriental mask, and in the following weeks he began to pursue her with an almost obsessive energy. This she found quite amusing and, she later revealed to him, was fodder for a good deal of merriment among her Barnard friends. He supposed he had finally worn her out with his importunity. He judged she had become fairly fondly attached to him since.

Yet at times he felt she was so distant in temperament that she might as well have been on the moon. And he felt himself cocooned in a sort of permeable bubble, detached, close, and yet millions of miles away. Not only Aihwa, but the rest of the human specimens who hove into view or swam past his bubble appeared often as insubstantial caricatures. Some of them were pleasant enough, but none of them seemed to possess the capacity to penetrate into his heart of hearts where his private and mystic desire for transcendence, escape, ascent, a glimpse of the flower burning in the day, throbbed and ached relentlessly.

Painting 70 Morningside