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............