i put on my dark glasses, composed my face and walked into the room. there were twenty-five or thirty young menand women, many in fall colors, seated in armchairs and sofas and on the beige broadloom. murray walked amongthem, speaking, his right hand trembling in a stylized way. when he saw me, he smiled sheepishly. i stood againstthe wall, attempting to loom, my arms folded under the black gown.

murray was in the midst of a thoughtful monologue.

"did his mother know that elvis would die young? she talked about assassins. she talked about the life. the life of astar of this type and magnitude. isn't the life structured to cut you down early? this is the point, isn't it? there arerules, guidelines. if you don't have the grace and wit to die early, you are forced to vanish, to hide as if in shame andapology. she worried about his sleepwalking. she thought he might go out a window. i have a feeling about mothers.

mothers really do know. the folklore is correct.""hitler adored his mother," i said.

a surge of attention, unspoken, identifiable only in a certain convergence of stillness, an inward tensing. murraykept moving, of course, but a bit more deliberately, picking his way between the chairs, the people seated on the floor.

i stood against the wall, arms folded.

"elvis and gladys liked to nuzzle and pet," he said. "they slept in the same bed until he began to approach physicalmaturity. they talked baby talk to each other all the time.""hitler was a lazy kid. his report card was full of unsatisfactorys. but klara loved him, spoiled him, gave him theattention his father failed to give him. she was a quiet woman, modest and religious, and a good cook andhousekeeper.""gladys walked elvis to school and back every day. she defended him in little street rumbles, lashed out at any kidwho tried to bully him.""hitler fantasized. he took piano lessons, made sketches of museums and villas. he sat around the house a lot. klaratolerated this. he was the first of her children to survive infancy. three others had died.""elvis confided in gladys. he brought his girlfriends around to meet her.""hitler wrote a poem to his mother. his mother and his niece were the women with the greatest hold on his mind.""when elvis went into the army, gladys became ill and depressed. she sensed something, maybe as much aboutherself as about him. her psychic apparatus was flashing all the wrong signals. foreboding and gloom.""there's not much doubt that hitler was what we call a mama's boy."a note-taking young man murmured absently, "mutter-s.hnchen." i regarded him warily. then, on an impulse, iabandoned my stance at the wall and began to pace the room like murray, occasionally pausing to gesture, to listen,to gaze out a window or up at the ceiling.

"elvis could hardly bear to let gladys out of his sight when her condition grew worse. he kept a vigil -at thehospital.""when his mother became severely ill, hitler put a bed in the kitchen to be closer to her. he cooked and cleaned.""elvis fell apart with grief when gladys died. he fondled and petted her in the casket. he talked baby talk to her untilshe was in the ground.""klara's funeral cost three hundred and seventy kronen. hitler wept at the grave and fell into a period of depressionand self-pity. he felt an intense loneliness. he'd lost not only his beloved mother but also his sense of home andhearth.""it seems fairly certain that gladys's death caused a fundamental shift at the center of the king's world view. she'dbeen his anchor, his sense of security. he began to withdraw from the real world, to enter the state of his own dying.""for the rest of his life, hitler could not bear to be anywhere near christmas decorations because his mother had diednear a christmas tree.""elvis made death threats, received death threats. he took mortuary tours and became interested in ufos. he beganto study the bardo th.dol, commonly known as the tibetan book of the dead. this is a guide to dying and beingreborn.""years later, in the grip of self-myth and deep remoteness, hitler kept a portrait of his mother in his spartan quartersat obersalzberg. he began to hear a buzzing in his left ear."murray and i passed each other near the center of the room, almost colliding. alfonse stompanato entered, followedby several students, drawn perhaps by some magnetic wave of excitation, some frenzy in the air. he settled his surlybulk in a chair as murray and i circled each other and headed off in opposite directions, avoiding an exchange oflooks.

"elvis fulfilled the terms of the contract. excess, deterioration, self-destructiveness, grotesque behavior, a physicalbloating and a series of insults to the brain, self-delivered. his place in legend is secure. he bought off the skeptics bydying early, horribly, unnecessarily. no one could deny him now. his mother probably saw it all, as on anineteen-inch screen, years before her own death."murray, happily deferring to me, went to a corner of the room and sat on the floor, leaving me to pace and gesturealone, secure in my professional aura of power, madness and death.

"hitler called himself the lonely wanderer out of nothingness. he sucked on lozenges, spoke to people in endlessmonologues, free-associating, as if the language came from some vastness beyond the world and he was simply themedium of revelation. it's interesting to wonder if he looked back from the führerbunker, beneath the burning city, tothe early days of his power. did he think of the small groups of tourists who visited the little settlement where hismother was born and where he'd spent summers with his cousins, riding in ox carts and making kites? they came tohonor the site, klara's birthplace. they entered the farmhouse, poked around tentatively. adolescent boys climbedon the roof. in time the numbers began to increase. they took pictures, slipped small items into their pockets. thencrowds came, mobs of people overrunning the courtyard and singing patriotic songs, painting swastikas on the walls,on the flanks of farm animals. crowds came to his mountain villa, so many people he had to stay indoors. theypicked up pebbles where he'd walked and took them home as souvenirs. crowds came to hear him speak, crowdserotically charged, the masses he once called his only bride. he closed his eyes, clenched his fists as he spoke,twisted his sweat-drenched body, remade his voice as a thrilling weapon. 'sex murders,' someone called thesespeeches. crowds came to be hypnotized by the voice, the party anthems, the torchlight parades."i stared at the carpet and counted silently to seven.

"but wait. how familiar this all seems, how close to ordinary. crowds come, get worked up, touch andpress—people eager to be transported. isn't this ordinary? we know all this. there must have been somethingdifferent about those crowds. what was it? let me whisper the terrible word, from the old english, from the oldgerman, from the old norse. death. many of those crowds were assembled in the name of death. they were there toattend tributes to the dead. processions, songs, speeches, dialogues with the dead, recitations of the names of thedead. they were there to see pyres and flaming wheels, thousands of flags dipped in salute, thousands of uniformedmourners. there were ranks and squadrons, elaborate backdrops, blood banners and black dress uniforms. crowdscame to form a shield against their own dying. to become a crowd is to keep out death. to break off from the crowdis to risk death as an individual, to face dying alone. crowds came for this reason above all others. they were there tobe a crowd."murray sat across the room. his eyes showed a deep gratitude. i had been generous with the power and madness atmy disposal, allowing my subject to be associated with an infinitely lesser figure, a fellow who sat in la-z-boychairs and shot out tvs. it was not a small matter. we all had an aura to maintain, and in sharing mine with a friendi was risking the very things that made me untouchable.

people gathered round, students and staff, and in the mild din of half heard remarks and orbiting voices i realized wewere now a crowd. not that i needed a crowd around me now. least of all now. death was strictly a professionalmatter here. i was comfortable with it, i was on top of it. murray made his way to my side and escorted me from theroom, parting the crowd with his fluttering hand.