The typewriter was a gift from my mother. Must have been from her alone, after the divorce, because I have no memory of a typewriter back in the junior high day of writing dialogue about Caesar on Ides Eve. And I know there was no typewriter with me in Europe in 1952. I would definitely remember typing on the freighter during that three-week voyage to Le Havre, would probably have sat ostentatiously at the mess table during the typhoon, strapped myself in, and typed. There was no typewriter in my boarding school room at the Ecole Internationale de Geneve, nor during the summer travels to Scandanavia in England and France, nor during the winter term in the rented apartment. There was, however, a piano there for me to practice on. Several Mozart sonatas still come at me with steam heat and the strong smell of dead, wet, brown leaves.