It was a few days before I saw Bekrao again, passing him in the street outside his house. He was no longer drunk, fortunately, but he might as well have been, the way he was calling out for alms. In fact, I assumed at first that he was drunk, and approached him to chastise him. “What are you doing, Bekrao?” I asked. Better to begin one’s chastisement with soft words.

“I am looking for Ripāti. What else does it look like I’m doing?” was his answer. I had to admit it was a good one, but there remained problems with his method, and I pointed these out to him.

“How exactly are you doing that by begging on the street? You haven’t lost all your fortune in the past two days, have you?”

He sighed and shook his head, and only then did I notice that he was wearing the simple garments of a laborer. “I am in disguise,” he explained slowly, as if I were a foolish child.

“Why?”

“Listen. Yaretzamu informed me that Lord Phumalluo is hosting a great feast to celebrate the festival of Madopolōī. Ripāti is sure to be there, but unfortunately, if any invitation was sent to me, the messenger fell into difficulties on the way.”

“But if Bekrao can’t go to the feast, why would the guards permit some random beggar to pass?”

“Yaretzamu suggested it, and his advice has never steered me wrong. Except for that incident with the, you will recall this, the theomachy.”

I did recall it, and the memory made me somber for moment. How poor Bekrao had ended up fleeing from those crazed dancers is a thing that will always puzzle me and distress me at the same time. Still, the affair had had a comic side to it, if one thinks about it in those terms. So long as one is not being chased by them oneself, there is not much more comic than a mob of Anu’s dancers all running in one direction with their arms flailing, like a stampede of cattle who happen to overhear someone insult their god while dressed in the outfit of some rival order of cows. I do not know if this happens with cattle much, but it certainly happens with Anu’s dancers.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t understand what exactly Yaretzamu had been thinking with this particular suggestion. “You’re sure you heard him correctly?” I asked.

“I’m not deaf,” he told me. “Go ask him yourself, if you don’t trust me. He’s inside doing something, Adāī only knows what.”

So I went inside and found Yaretzamu bent over a tablet, pressing his pen into the clay carefully, pausing between characters to consider. I cleared my throat, which had the unfortunate effect of him marring his writing as he jerked in surprise. “Ah,” he said. “I should have known it would be you who did this.”

This comment did not seem entirely fair, since I am hardly the only man who could have startled him, but I let it pass. “Is there a particular reason,” I wondered out loud, “why Bekrao is begging for alms outside?”

Yaretzamu sighed. From various hints he has dropped in the past, I believe him to have an erroneously low view of my intelligence, placing it somewhat below even Bekrao’s. “What did he tell you?”

“He said it was your scheme to get him into Phumalluo’s feast.”

“He is mistaken. I suggested that he should disguise himself as a servant, but it would appear that my master has very little idea of the distinctions between the classes. What I am doing here is, as usual, much more useful. I’m preparing the pass that will actually let him into the feast to help with the food.”

“Oh. Should I tell Bekrao he’s wasting his time and spoiling his dignity?”

“No, it’s better that he stay there and not bother me, or go looking for a drink either.”

I put my head around the gate and saw that Bekrao was missing. “I believe he has gone looking.”

“I suppose I should bring him back, then,” said Yaretzamu with another sigh. But I told him that I would go find Bekrao instead, so Yaretzamu could finish his current task. I thought I had a good idea of where to find Bekrao, and I set out right away.

As it happened, my first idea of where to find Bekrao was not such a good one, and I found my steps taking me down towards the unsavory parts of Edazzo that I believe I have mentioned in an earlier account. Fortunately, before I had gone too far, I heard Bekrao singing the infamous song about Madopolōī and the farmer. I ducked into the side alley from where his voice came, and found him leaning against a wall, still dressed like a beggar, waving one arm as he entertained an audience of other beggars. They all gave me unfriendly looks when they saw me, even Bekrao, and I began to feel quite nervous. “Excuse me,” I said with an inoffensive smile. “I was wondering if I might speak with my friend here a moment?”

“Once the song is over,” a member of the audience said, or rather grunted.

So I was forced to stand and listen to Bekrao’s not especially pleasant voice for some time. Finally he reached the conclusion of the song, to cheers and applause. Then Bekrao turned my way and asked me if I wanted to hear another song. Politely I refused and added that Yaretzamu had something to tell him. “About Ripāti,” I added, which was perhaps true only in the broadest sense. I had the feeling a certain amount of broad interpretation was called for at the moment.

“Ripāti!” exclaimed Bekrao, his eyes lighting up. “You will pardon me, gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen. I have somewhere that I must be.”

There was grumbling, but to my relief it remained as grumbling and did not take fire. As I led Bekrao back to his home, he lectured me about whatever came into his head, from the nature of the clouds above to some ridiculous story about a hunter running through the sky. He said more loudly once this story had trailed off into incoherent mumbling, “This is the end for me.”

“What?” I said, confused.

“It is my last chance. If I do not escape myself through Ripāti, I will die. It is the only way out.” He laughed and asked me if I had ever been in love.

It was a question that caused me to think the matter over for some minutes, not entirely happily. Certainly there have been many woman in my life I have admired greatly, but before I came to this part of the world I was prevented by my duties from ever truly pursuing one or another of them. My readers will perhaps recall that there is one woman in this part of the world I have described in terms that could be viewed as somewhat lovestruck, but at the time I thought I had little hope of meeting her again.

In any case, Bekrao had by this time forgotten that he asked the question. “It’s like I’m trapped in here,” he said. His voice was quiet enough that I wasn’t sure if he was addressing me or not, but I answered anyway.

“In this world?” I am, you will understand, familiar with some of the more esoteric schools of philosophy.

“In myself,” he replied, which was a bit beyond the limits of my aforementioned familiarity. So I simply made a noise of understanding while Bekrao continued to speak. “When I saw Ripāti, I was allowed out of my prison for a brief time, and I would give anything to be let out again. It is not like the madness of drink. Lagulai is a kinder deity than Anu: she at least gives me the pleasure of enjoying my freedom.”

By this time we had returned to his house, and I delivered him to Yaretzamu. I was about to leave when Yaretzamu raised his arm and said, rather rudely, “Wait here a moment.”

So I did, exchanging meaningful glances with Bekrao. What I meant by my glances was roughly, “Are you sober enough for whatever Yaretzamu has planned?” What he meant was, I believe, “Where am I?”

There is no need for me to go into great detail about Yaretzamu’s plan to get Bekrao into the feast. I myself would be there on my own accord, and Yaretzamu wanted to make sure that I did not inadvertently reveal him, as if I would be such a fool. With that settled, I left at last.