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he heard the story with his mother's ears.
    'There was a king,' Harry said, 'a long time ago in a country full of tall mountains. The winter was full of ice and the summers were so hot that children and old people died. There were many beggars in the country,' Harry said, repeating, thirty years later, the exact words of the story, 'and the king felt sorry for them. At night he could not sleep. He lay awake thinking of the beggars. Like all kings,' Harry said, forever ignoring the political implications of what he said, 'it did not occur to him to give away his wealth, but rather he wished to punish himself for being rich.' (Don't you remember, Harry, the lovely ice-thin malice in your father's voice, or were you too young to hear it?)
    'One day he decided to dress as a beggar and go out amongst the people.'
    At this stage of the story it was necessary to pull a coat or a woollen sweater around the head, to cover the face, to wander dolefully around the room. (But don't you remember how your father did it, how he managed to get that unbeggarly strut into his walk so that beneath that old brown sweater you knew there was a king pretending to be a beggar?)
    'He had a dark cloak made and wandered the streets. He didn't fool anyone. They all knew he was the king, even the little children knew it was the king. When he came down the street in his dark robe calling piteously for alms they rushed from their houses and gave him gold.
    'Each day the king returned to his palace laden with wealth. When he counted his gold and saw how much one beggar could make in a day, he became very angry. He felt that the beggars had tricked him and so he made a law forbidding them: anyone found begging would be put to death, by the sword.
    'All that winter,' Harry said in his father's doleful voice, 'the beggars slowly starved to death and when the spring came there were no more beggars to be seen.'
    And that was the story, in Harry's hands a poor directionless thing, left to bump around by itself and mean what you wanted it to, although it was not without effect and young David Joy sat silently before its sword-sharp edges.
    'But why?'
    Harry felt uncomfortable before such questions. 'It's just a story.'
    'I will be rich,' his son said, 'and have jewels.'
    Can we blame this story for David’s avarice? Hardly. He was already stealing from his father's bedside table when he was six (To young, you say? Not a bit of it.) and one should not think him lacking in sympathy for the beggars, quite the opposite: he brimmed full of emotion and saw that sharp-edged sword come down on the pitiful skin of their blue, cold necks.
    As he became older, people came to think of him as cold, yet he was so full of emotions he could not speak. He dared not reveal his destiny.
    He read books and hoarded their contents. He chose South America as his special domain. He knew Paraguay and Patagonia, Chile and Brazil. He dreamed of wealth and adventure, and yet he was frightened of almost everything. On the football field he cowered and cringed. Confronted with fist fights he ran away and hid. In dark comers he rehearsed his triumphal return from South America when he would make presents to his family (his enemies too) and tell them stories of his adventures.
    He hoarded money and counted his bank balance. He sold newspapers in the evenings (a long-legged boy fearfully dodging peak-hour traffic) and saved everything he made. When he was fifteen he began selling marihuana to his class-mates. It brought him money and prestige, yet he dealt with damp hands, fearful of discovery and punishment. He told his father he wished to study medicine because his father indicated it would please him. His business broadened to tabs of acid, speed, and lignococaine which he sold as cocaine. He never took drugs. He was frightened of going mad. And yet the cocaine entranced him because it (if it had been real cocaine and not lignocaine) had come from South America.
    This then is Harry's son, who