There is a rat in the wall in the back room of the library scratching out a message in Morse Code. The message warns me of danger. There may be a flood; at the least, a hard rain is going to fall.

I have been reading a book about Gershon Shofman for several days. It seems to be one of the few traces in English of Shofman, who wrote Hebrew short-stories from the early 1900s until the 1960s. I found Shofman's name in an introduction to Knut Hamsun's Hunger, where Issac Bashevis Singer lists him among about ten authors of modern fiction who Singer claims were strongly influenced by Hamsun. I have yet to find any credible evidence of this influence, but looking the authors up has introduced me to people of quite different talents, and also led me to question my abilities to tell a story. These men each told hundreds of stories about people doing everything people are capable of. Sailors play impromptu surgeon at sea and kill their patient; a man whose wife left him while on a honeymoon in Italy kills himself; victims of a plague in a small mountain village amass in a church where the impious mock them; a Russian Jew living in exile in Vienna fears violence from his fellow exiles when he roots for a Russian boxer. I'm afraid that I don't have any stories to tell, and that if I were to write, very little would happen. I have a mundane mind and a static life, where the main elements are simply boring: steady employment, books, colleges; steady employment among books in a college; frequent oversleeping; a collection of idealistic friends, among whom only Steven does anything particularly unusual. I'm not oppressed and I'm not powerful. I have few connections with the world, and I often don't believe that I understand the world. I feel like I would have to find something exciting to write about with any conviction, but nothing is ever in my mind. Mind, why are you so empty?

Today Heather, the Technical Services Librarian, showed me the end result of cataloging, where we take the records we have created and import them into Horizon, the library program used for checking books in and out and as a database for searching.

She was hesitant to come out of her office, as she doesn't like the public. I come into work earlier on Mondays specifically so that our schedules overlap and she can help me with cataloging, but either Laura or I has to get Heather and tell her that I still need instruction. Last week she didn't leave her office. Today I asked her to come.

Once she got behind the circulation desk, she carried a Johnnie chair over to my computer and showed me the steps for importing. Neither explaining nor listening were problems for her: I was able to follow everything she said, and she had relevant replies to my questions and comments. I knew by her pause as I readied a pen to take notes that she interpreted my actions appropriately. An observer might have thought that she was perfectly comfortable. Little things, though, showed that interaction itself was fearful to her. When I spoke, she sat far back in her chair and half-flinched, almost as though she wanted to escape. She continued doing small steps on the computer without any comment while I was turned to help people who came to the desk. Her eyes seemed more active, her hands surer, when she was looking at the computer screen and typing, or manipulating one of the books I had cataloged. Aside from a few small jokes said almost as though for herself, she directed all of her attention to explaining the main task; when I asked questions, she answered them directly and then picked up where she'd left off. She spoke of nothing extraneous, and filtered my presence in such a way that she would be able to respond only to my interest in cataloging. Whatever I said was stipped of color, implication, and alternate directions, and analyzed only for what related directly to cataloging. For her, my role was cataloger and nothing else.

When she was done explaining, she picked up all of her things and went back to her office, and soon after went home. I tried to import some more records after she left, and got stuck on a single point which I was unable to figure out in an hour and a half of experimentation and coaxing of the computer. I tried all the rather few options, looked over my notes, searched my memory of what Heather had said and done, and still couldn't figure out how to proceed. My actions were muddling up the Windows files, and I started to get scared. I had broken Horizon! Eventually I figured out what I had done and managed to import the records in a different way, but I still couldn't figure out what the proper way was.

Two student workers showed up when they were scheduled to, and I decided to leave the computer and move on to a non-desk job. My new task was to spot-check the students' shelf-reading, simply making sure that they had placed all the books on the shelves in the correct order. I started looking at the call numbers, and found that without transition, I felt depressed. I started wandering what the point of this work was, and couldn't see why I had been happy about life just a bit earlier, had been excited about such futile little things like the books I planned to read, the German language.

I examined myself and realized that even so small a failure as not being able to import catalog records was enough to puncture my sense of self-worth. This realization stopped my thoughts from swirling, but I still felt hollow inside and near tears; I was able to laugh at the absurdity of this condition, but I couldn't change it immediately. I wanted control over that computer! I wanted its functions and operations to accord themselves with my will! My inability to control it was like a crack in the foundation of my mind, which caused the superstructure, my priorities and my self-image, to lilt and waver. Only my self-control prevented the whole tower from collapsing. Because Heather was no longer there, I could get no resolution, and even though I tried not to think about the problem, the mood lingered. I wonder if I'll dream about this later, and I wonder what the computer will represent.

We were awoken by a phone call at 8 o'clock one morning; we let the answering machine pick up. Michael's voice said "Leave a message for Anne and Greg after the beep. If you're calling for Ted and Michael, you can reach them at . . ." Then we heard our landlady saying, "I'm calling to let you know that I'll be coming to the house on Wednesday around 9:30 with the plumber to look at the hot water heater. I don't think I'll have to come inside." In the silence that followed her voice, the pale morning sun, usually the sign that we could sleep for several more hours, was suddenly hostile and ominous. Would we have to wake up into this sunlight before she came, or could we stay in bed and hope that she didn't enter the house? The situation seemed unreal, uninterpretable, incommensurable with our lives. I fell back asleep and when I woke up, I was reminded of the call by the message that had been left on the answering machine. I still couldn't incorporate it into my expectations for the future. How could anyone come into the house at 9:30 in the morning? It was like living under a totalitarian police state. I couldn't conceive of having to get up so early, and as a result, I didn't think about it and acted as though it wasn't going to happen. I went to work as normal, and went to sleep at my usual late hour (around 5 a.m.)

The next day, Anne had set the alarm for 8:30. We sat in bed for a while listening for the landlady and waiting for her to be gone. Around 11, I asked Anne if she wanted to go to the Farmer's Market. We weren't sure that it would be safe to leave the house, but when we opened the door there was no one there. We went and got delicious food.

We got another early morning phone call the next day, on the prophesized Wednesday. The machine spoke to the silence of the hollow room at that ungodly hour of 8:30: "Hello, Anne and Greg. Actually the plumber and I will be coming into the house after we look at the hot water heater, so that we can check the gas heater, that little thing in the corner, for carbon monoxide emissions. Also, if it's not lit, we'll light the pilot, or else turn it on low. It won't take more than half an hour, I don't think. I'll be over soon. Bye." Dust began to settle over the horrible words; Anne and I strained our eyes against the sunbeams pouring in from the skylight and tried to make sense of the situation.

"Why is she coming today?"

"I think I remember now, she said Wednesday in the first message."

"What should we do? We can't be in bed. And what if she sees the cat?" We never told the landlady that we had a cat.

"We could put the cat in the car, and all of her things under the bed, and just go driving," I said.

"Why does she have to come into the house? Goddamn."

"I don't know."

For the next fifteen minutes, we descended chaotically upon the mess all around us like lazy maids a few minutes before the master was due home, sweeping up leaves and kitty liter, washing dishes, packing cat-care items and mice toys under the bed. It was 8:57. "The cat carrier!" Anne flung a chair into the bathroom and stood on it to open the storage closet that's in a wall recess above the door, and I arranged the bedclothes so that they covered what was beneath. We then persuaded Tesuji to get into the box, with the rhetoric of our pushing hands. There was still a huge pile of clothes, overflowing from the hamper. "I guess we could do this while we're waiting," I said. I lifted the hamper, Anne grabbed some snacks, and we fled with the laundry and the cat, locking the door behind us. The sun had an evil brightness so early in the morning, and the air smelled busy. We went up to campus to start washes, and on the way we noticed a little strip of a park along Old Santa Fe Trail with a long, columned wooden shelter and benches sitting among an expanse of chimisa, dust and Birch trees. I parked by the laundry room in lowers and we brought the two hampers down; then we realized that we hadn't brought the detergent. The laundry went back into the trunk, and I moved the car to my library spot. Not having anything else to do, we browsed the bookstore for about an hour and then returned to the car, where the kitten was mewing in confusion.

"I hope they're gone. It'll be 10:30 when we get back." But when we pulled up to our street, we saw an telltale white van parked in front of the mailbox. We couldn't get our detergent, because it was in the house. We decided to go buy some at Albertson's. Tesuji cried softly.

"She doesn't like it in here; she must be hungry. Poor Tesuji."

"Maybe we could get her some food and let her outside in a park."

So we did. I drove to Albertsons, where we bought detergent, two cans of wet cat food, a collar and a leash, and then we went back up to the park we had seen. In the parking lot, Anne attached the collar and the leash, and we took Tesuji for a walk over to the first bench beneath the shelter, where there is long pathway bathed in shade. We let the cat down onto the ground and watched as she shivered for a bit at the car noises, and settled in to investigating as she calmed down. She sniffed the ground, lingering over the first small plant she came to, and then started circling around chewing on beech bark that lay in the gravel. A white-haired man walked by, carefully stepping around us and smiling down at the cat. Tesuji started to get more bold, and all the leash could do was restrain her, so we sat on the bench and gave Tesuji her food. She stuck her nose in the can and greedily swallowed what was inside. As she sat licking herself, I wondered if she needed to relieve herself. "This whole place is made of kitty litter," Anne said.

I shifted the dirt beneath my foot. "Maybe she'd like something softer, though."

"You could try over there, by the weeds." I took Tesuji to a patch of more sand-like dirt by a large growth of weedgrass further back from the road. Tesuji sniffed a bit and then wandered off toward a nearby bush. I picked her back up and we went back to the car, drove to campus, and started a wash. The white van was gone by the time we got back to the house, so we let Tesuji roam free once more over the mountainous chairs and the pool of comforter and sheets.

Two days ago Anne and I were sitting on the bed reading at about 2 pm. It was a bright, warm day, one of the rare days lately without precipitation. We had woken up only a few hours before, and once we felt like it, the plan was to drive up to the Ski Basin to look at the trees turn, as Kay had suggested to me. There is fall even here, for those of you who don't know. Anne and I were both just finishing up chapters, about to shower, when we heard a woman's voice through the window shouting "Get off of me! Don't touch me! Get off!" Her voice was full and loud, but she sounded more annoyed than distressed. She was maybe two houses away. "Don't touch me. Oh my God!" She said this last almost like a valley girl, but at a full scream. Maybe she was three houses away; maybe she was the next block over. There was silence, and then she shouted, "Somebody call the police! Don't touch me! Get off me, you jerk!" Anne looked at me. I went to the window to see if I could get any more information, but the situation wasn't any clearer. Anne picked up the phone and dialed 911. She told the dispatcher what was going on as best she could, laughing nervously the whole time because of the uncertainty. What was going on, to whom, and where? Was time running out or wasn't it? What would the police even do when the got here? She didn't know what to say when the dispatcher asked for an address, so she gave them ours and said we didn't know just where the screams were coming from. While she was talking, I ran to all the windows to see if I could tell any better; I could see nothing but the neighboring houses, silent and unmoving. Anne hung up and said the distpatcher told her that someone else had called as well, but she didn't know if they were sending the police or not. We still heard a few screams, still sounding intensely annoyed, perhaps fearful, and saying the same things, with no other person's voice accompanying it. I have no explanations that make any sense. My only thought, and a pretty unlikely one, is that the neighborhood retarded kid had grabbed on to some stranger woman and wouldn't let go, but that doesn't work, as it would most likely happen in the street, where someone close to the scene would soon have come to help her; and for which she probably wouldn't have asked for the police anyway.

Since she was still shouting, if seemingly without much fear, I wondered if I should go out and try to help. I was still in my pajamas, but maybe my presence would scare off whoever was doing . . . something . . . to someone . . . somewhere. I reached for my pants and asked Anne. "What would you do if you went outside?" "I don't know." I put my pants down, but I felt paralyzed and thoguht that I was failing. I wondered if anyone else on the block was trying to help. The screaming came less often, and I didn't know where to go, so I stayed in. A few minutes later we heard police sirens, and then the sounds of an ambulance, winding around the community trying to find the woman. We no longer heard her voice. After a while, the sirens stopped and the afternoon was quiet again. Anne and I went up to the ski basin, and the trees were beautiful.