V.

"Stand in front of the radar antenna," said Hiroshima, "while it is radiating, and what it will do is, it will make you temporarily sterile."

"Indeed," said Pig. Indeed. Hiroshima showed him a book which said so.

"I am scared of heights?" said Pig.

"It is the only way out," Hiroshima told him. "What you do is, you climb up the mast and I will go light off the old SPA 4 Able."

Already tottering, Pig made his way topside and prepared to climb the mast. Howie Surd had come along and solicitously offered a shot of something murky in an unlabeled bottle. On the way up, Pig passed Profane swinging like a bird in a boatswain's chair hooked to the spar. Profane was painting the mast. "Dum de dum, de dum," sang Profane. "Good afternoon, Pig." My old buddy, thought Pig. His are probably the last words I will ever hear.

Hiroshima appeared below. "Yo, Pig," he yelled. Pig made the mistake of looking down. Hiroshima gave him the thumb-and-index-finger-in-a-circle sign. Pig felt like vomiting.

"What are you doing in this neck of the woods," Profane said.

"Oh, just out for a stroll," said Pig. "I see you are painting the mast, there."

"Right," said Profane, "deck gray." They examined at length the subject of the Scaffold's color scheme, as well as the long-standing jurisdictional dispute which had Profane, a deck ape, painting the mast when it was really the radar gang's responsibility.

Hiroshima and Surd impatient, started yelling. "Well," said Pig, "good-bye old buddy."

"Be careful walking around on that platform," Profane said. "I robbed some more hamburger out of the galley and stowed it up there. I figure on sneaking it off over the 01 deck." Pig, nodding, creaked slowly up the ladder.

At the top be latched his nose over the platform like Kilroy and cased the situation. There was Profane's hamburger all right. Pig started to climb on the platform when his ultra-sensitive nose detected something. He lifted it off the deck.

"How remarkable," said Pig out loud, "it smells like hamburger frying." He looked a little closer at Profane's cache. "Guess what," he said, and started backing quickly down the ladder. When he got level with Profane he yelled over: "Buddy, you just saved my life. You got a piece of line?"

"What are you going to do," said Profane, tossing him a piece of line: "hang yourself?"

Pig made a noose on one end and headed up the ladder again. After a couple-three tries he managed to snare the hamburger, pulled it over, dragged off his white hat and dumped the hamburger in it, being careful all the time to stay as much as he could out of any line-of-sight with the radar antenna. Down at Profane again he showed him the hamburger.

"Amazing," Profane said. "How did you do it?"

"Someday," Pig said, "I will have to tell you about the biological effects of r-f energy." And so saying inverted the white hat in the direction of Hiroshima and Howie Surd, showering them both with cooked hamburger.

"Anything you want," Pig said then, "just ask, buddy. I have a code and I don't forget."

"OK," Profane said a few years later, standing by Paola's bed in an apartment on Nueva York's 112th Street and twisting Pig's collar a little "I'm collecting that one now."

"A code is a code," Pig choked. Off he got, and fled sadly.

When he was gone, Paola reached out for Profane, drew him down and in against her.

"No," said Profane, "I'm always saying no, but no."

"You have been gone so long. So long since our bus ride:"

"Who says I'm back."

"Rachel?" She held his head, nothing but maternal.

"There is her, yes, but . . ."

She waited.

"Anyway I say it is nasty. But I'm not looking for any dependents, is all."

"You have them," she whispered.

No, he thought, she's out of her head. Not me. Not a schlemiel.

"Then why did you make Pig go away?"

He thought about that one for a few weeks.

II

All things gathered to farewell.

One afternoon, close to the time Profane was to embark for Malta, he happened to be down around Houston Street, his old neighborhood. It was cooler, fall: dark came earlier and little kids out playing stoop ball were about to call it a day. For no special reason, Profane decided to look in on his parents.

Around two corners and up the stairs, past apartments of Basilisco the cop whose wife left garbage in the hallway, past Miss Angevine who was in business in a small way, past the Venusbergs whose fat daughter had always tried to lure young Profane into the bathroom, past Maxixe the drunk and Flake the sculptor and his girl, and old Min De Costa who kept orphan mice and was a practicing witch; past his past though who knew it? Not Profane.