of Sarajevo people died daily, including men they called United Nations peacekeepers.
  
  In African countries, people starved as the result of civil strife and famine. It was a 
nightly sight as common as a beer commercial to see on television fresh footage of 
starving African babies, bellies swollen, faces covered with flies.
  
  Jews and Arabs fought in the streets of Jerusalem. Bombs went off; protesters were shot 
at by armies; and terrorists destroyed innocent people to strengthen their demands.
  
  In the Ukraine, remnants of a fallen Soviet Union made war on mountain folk who had 
never given in to any foreign power. People died in the snow and cold for reasons that 
were nearly impossible to explain.
  
  In sum there were dozens of places raging with suffering in which to fight, to die, to 
film, as the parliaments of the world tried in vain to find answers without bullets. The 
decade was a feast of wars.
  
  Then there was the death of Esther Belkin, followed by the scandal of the Temple of the 
Mind. Caches of assault weapons had been found in the Temple’s outposts from New Jersey 
to Libya. Explosives and poisonous gases had been stockpiled in its hospitals. The great 
mentor of this popular international church-Gregory Belkin-was insane.
  
  Before Gregory Belkin, there had been other madmen with great dreams perhaps but 
smaller resources. Jim Jones and his People’s Temple committing mass suicide in the 
jungles of Guyana; David Koresh, who believed himself the Christ, perishing by gun and 
fire in a Waco, Texas, compound.
  
  A Japanese religious leader had just recently been accused of killing innocent people 
on the country’s public subways.
  
  A church with the lovely name of the Temple Solaire had not so long ago staged a mass 
suicide coordinated at three different locations in Switzerland and Canada.
  
  A popular talk show host gave directions to his listeners as to how they might 
assassinate the President of the United States.
  
  A fatal virus had only recently broken out with stunning fury in an African country, 
then died away, leaving all thinking individuals with a renewed interest in the age-old 
obsession: that the end of the world might be at hand. Apparently there were more than 
three kinds of this virus, and numerous others equally as deadly lurking in the rain 
forests of the world.
  
  A hundred other surreal stories made up each day’s news, and each day’s inevitable 
civilized conversation.
  
  So I ran from this, as much as anything else. I ran for the solitude, the whiteness of 
snow, the brutal indifference of towering trees and tiny winter stars.
  
  It was my own jeep which had brought me up through "the leather stocking woods," as it 
is sometimes still called, in honor of James Fenimore Cooper, to barricade myself for the 
winter. There was a phone in the jeep by which one could, with perseverance if possible, 
reach the outside world. I was for tearing it out, but the truth is I’m not very handy 
and I couldn’t get the thing loose without damaging my car.
  
  So you see, I am not a fool, just a scholar. I had a plan. I was prepared for the heavy 
snow to come, and the winds to whistle in the single metal chimney above the round 
central hearth. The smell of my books, the oak fire, the snow itself whirling down at 
times in tiny specks into the flames, these things I love and need now and then. And many 
a winter before this house had given me exactly what I asked of it.
  
  The night began like any other. The fever took me completely by surprise, and I 
remember building up the fire in the round pit of a fireplace very high because I did not 
want to have to tend it. When I drank all the water nearest the bed, I don’t know. I 
couldn't have been fully conscious then. I know that I went to the door, that I myself 
unbolted it, and then could not get it closed; this much I do recall. I must have been 
trying to reach the jeep.
  
  Bolting the door was simply impossible. I lay for a long time in the snow itself before 
I crawled back inside, and away from the mouth of the winter, or so it seemed.
  
  I remember these things because I remember knowing then that I was very much in danger. 
The long journey back to the bed, the long journey back to the warmth of the fire, 
utterly exhausted me. Beneath the heap of wool blankets and quilts, I hid from the 
whirlwind that entered my house. And I knew that if I didn't clear my head, if I didn't 
recover somehow, the winter would just come inside soon and put to sleep forever the 
fire, and take me too.
  
  Lying on my back, the quilts up to my chin, I sweated and shivered. I watched the 
flakes of snow fly beneath the sloping beams of the roof. I watched the raging pyramid of 
logs as it blazed. I smelled the burnt pot when the soup boiled dry. I saw the snow 
covering my desk.
  
  I made a plan to rise, then fell asleep. I dreamed those fretful stupid dreams that 
fever makes, then woke with a start, sat up, fell back, dreamed again. The candles were 
gone out, but the fire still burned, and snow now filled the room, blanketing my desk, my 
chair, perhaps the bed itself. I licked snow from my lips once, that I do recall, and it 
tasted good, and now and then I licked the melted snow I could gather with my hand. My 
thirst was hellish. Better to dream than to feel it.
  
  It must have been midnight when Azriel came.
  
  Did he choose his hour with a sense of drama? Quite to the contrary. A long way off, 
walking through snow and wind, he had seen the fire high on the mountain above, sparks 
flying from the chimney and a light that blinkered through the open door. He had hurried 
towards these beacons.
  
  Mine was the only house on the land and he knew it. He had learnt that from the casual 
tactful remarks of those who had told him officially and gently that I could not be 
reached in the months to come, that I had gone into hiding.