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table than at ours. She often sat enthralled by the company and the conversation, overheard tables away. It was as if these Punjabis, with their shared heritage, language, and culture, were surprised to suddenly find themselves on opposite sides of an international border and needed to talk about it … loudly. This proved more gripping to Helen than our prolonged arguments over the virtues of hypocrisy (it’s better to believe and betray than not to believe at all), or the vice of mediocrity and ways to avoid it at all costs. Not even the presence amongst us of a couple of ex-Resistance fighters, recently arrived from France and high on the new existentialist writers whose books and articles they had brought with them, was enough to hold her interest.
    As we sat there in the coffee shop that morning, it was obvious Helen didn’t want to talk about herself and Tej. “ Tej rhymes with rage , not wedge ,” I remembered her saying once, correcting my pronunciation of his name. “You could also say it rhymes with sage , which is more like it,” she added with a laugh. “He’s more wise than angry.” Now she didn’t even want to mention him. For a moment his image came to mind. It was easy to picture him. He had a way, though slight of build, of filling up a space, enclosing everything around him in his aura. It had something to do with his musicianship, with the affair with his sitar that he celebrated, inviting all who listened to share his passion. But I’m making him larger than life. In any case I guessed from the way Helen looked around the crowded room searching for something else to talk about that she did not want to discuss him. We sat there without saying anything, I attending to my Spanish omelette and noting that the onions in the sauce were underdone; Helen lighting another cigarette.
    â€œAre you really going away forever with your Sikh friend?” I asked, bringing up the subject again. If Tej had been just another enthusiasm in her store of enthusiasms, she would have been open and frank and amusing. As it was, mention of him caused her to withdraw behind a show of vagueness and inattention.
    â€œIs that what people are saying?” she said without answering me.
    â€œWhat about your folks?” I went on. If she had been someone else I would have said “family”; but Helen’s people (like mine) were definitely folks. I hoped mention of them would provoke some response beyond her evasive counterquestions. I knew her mother, especially, was bound to lie at the bottom of a coil of any uncertainties she might have.
    My remembering this now, after so many years have passed, is hard to explain. Why in such detail? Why this occasion? Why, even in those early days in Michigan did I keep going over it in my mind, at all odd hours, in strange places, amidst my own crises? She was, it is true, a good friend, and like a sister, even taken for granted. But what did her fate have to do with mine, or mine with hers, to make me obsessed with it? What happened to her? Why did she suddenly go silent after that last puzzling letter?
    In particular, I need to know why this brief scene in the International House coffee shop that late morning has so taken hold. Sometimes I think the details I claim to remember are only my elaborations, variations on a theme recalled in old age. I wonder, for example, if I actually did ask her about her family on that occasion or if it was later, when it appeared she was determined to go away after all.
    I can hear her voice now, the way it went faint as though she had wilfully turned down the volume: “What about my folks?” she said.
    I had her at last! It was, then, not the first time she had considered her mother, her father, her three sisters, and all those Italian relatives. The fact was not lost on me that she had parried yet another question of mine with a question of hers.
    â€œHow do they feel about your going