in the darkness I listened to Bloomberg tapping the wall next to his bed. I turned the other way, toward my own wall, and tried to fall asleep. I reviewed the entire day. I reviewed the week just past. I tried to remember the precise meaning of a certain phrase: interval recognition bombing. Nothing helped. I remained wide awake. Seven feet away the tapping continued, the thin steady click of fingernails, of penitentiary teaspoons. In time he switched to knuckles.

"Anatole."

"What is it?"

"This isn't Devil's Island. If you want to communicate with the people next door, you're free to walk right in."

"What do you mean?"

"You were tapping," I said.

"Was I tapping? Was I hitting the wall? I'm sorry, Gary. I didn't know."

"It's all right."

"Was I keeping you awake? I'm really sorry. I didn't know I was doing it."

"It's all right, Anatole. Really. I just thought I'd mention it. In fact, if you want to keep tapping, if it helps you fall asleep or even if it just reduces tension, go right ahead. It doesn't bother me all that much."

"What was I tapping with?" he said.

"Your hand."

"What part?"

"I think it was fingernails first, then knuckles."

"That reverses the pattern," he said. "I used to tap all the time when I was a child. But I always started out with knuckles. This reverses the pattern."

Although it was too dark to see anything, I rolled over in order to be facing him while we spoke.

"Why did you tap as a child, Anatole?"

"Children do that sort of thing. Probe everywhere for magic. There was always the chance somebody might answer."

"Did anybody ever answer?"

"There was a warehouse on the other side of the wall. Nobody ever answered. But one night, as I was just getting into bed, I heard a sound from the wall. I started tapping. I tapped for at least half an hour. I tried to improvise codes. I tried to convey urgency by using both hands to tap. There was no reply. It was probably a rat."

"Did this have some kind of effect on you, do you think?"

"It had no effect at all. What kind of effect would it have? It had a ridiculous effect. I was tapping at rats. That's the only effect."

"But why were you tapping so urgently, do you think?"

"I wanted to be sure the sound knew I was there. I didn't know what kind of hearing the sound possessed. It occurred to me that the sound might possess a very primitive hearing apparatus. I wanted to impress on it the fact that there was somebody on the other side of the wall. The sound might have been anything. I felt this was not the time to be subtle. I wanted to be sure the sound heard me."

"Why were you tapping a few minutes ago?" I said. "Had you heard a sound?"

"I didn't know I was tapping. I have only your word for it. I guess it was some kind of locomotor memory retrogression. As you know, I also wet the bed."

"But not nearly as much as you used to."

"Just as much but not as often," he said. "The improvement, obviously, is due to my recent efforts to forge a new consciousness."

"Right," I said. "A sort of new man kind of thing. The new man. The nonethnic superrational man. That kind of thing, right?"

"That's about right, Gary."

"Your phrasing gets more precise every day. I've been noticing that."

"............