The Progress of Love

the top. That is what gives the smile such a secretive yet innocent look—a look of sly, durable merriment such as an old woman’s smile might have, or a baby’s.
    Now Mary Jo thinks she has an idea about where she might have seen the man across the aisle before. A few weeks ago, she watched a television program about a tribe that lived in one of the high valleys of Afghanistan, near the Tibetan border. The film had been shot a few years ago, before the Russians came in. The people of the tribe lived in skin houses, and their wealth was in herds of sheep and goats and in fine horses. One man seemed to have cornered most of this wealth, and had become the ruler of the tribe, not through hereditary right but through force of personality and financial power. He was called “the Khan.” He had beautiful rugs in his skin house, and a radio, and several wives or concubines.
    That’s who this man reminds her of—the Khan. And isn’t it possible, isn’t it really possible, that that’s who he might be? He might have left his country, got out before the Russians came, with his rugs and women and perhaps a horde of gold, though not likely his goats and sheep and horses. If you travel the world in greatairliners, aren’t you bound to see, sooner or later, somebody you have seen on television? And it could easily be an exotic ruler, just as easily as an entertainer or a politician or a faith healer. In these days of upheaval, it could be somebody who had been photographed as a curiosity, a relic even, in a shut-off country, and is now turned loose like everybody else.
    The woman must be one of his wives. The youngest, maybe the favorite, to be taken on a trip like this. He has taken her to Canada or the United States, where he has put his sons in school. He has taken her to a dentist to get her fitted with false teeth. Perhaps she has the teeth in her handbag, is just getting used to them, doesn’t wear them yet all the time.
    Mary Jo feels cheered up by her own invention, and perhaps also by the vodka. In her head, she starts to compose a letter describing these two, and mentioning the television program. Of course the letter is to Dr. Streeter, who was sitting on the couch beside her—but had fallen asleep—while she watched it. She mentions the woman’s teeth and the possibility that they might have been removed on purpose, to comply with some strange notion of improving a female’s appearance.
    “If he asks me to join his harem, I promise I won’t agree to any such weird procedures!”
    The movie screen is being lowered. Mary Jo obediently turns out her light. She thinks of ordering another drink but decides against it. Alcohol is more potent at this altitude. She tries to watch the movie, but the images are much elongated from this angle. They seem doleful and absurd. There is murder in the first two minutes—some girl with marvellous silvery hair is being stalked through empty corridors and apparently shot, right behind the credits. Mary Jo almost immediately loses interest, and after a while takes off her headphones. When she does so, she becomes aware of some sort of argument going on across the aisle.
    The woman, or girl, seems to be trying to get up. The man pushes her down. He grumbles at her. She replies in a voice that wanders from complaint to reassurance and back to complaint. He appears to lose interest, tilts his head back to watch the figures on the screen. The girl eases her way out of the seat and stumbles overhim. He growls in earnest now, and grabs her leg. To Mary Jo’s surprise, the girl speaks to him in English.
    “I am not,” she says stubbornly. “I am not. Drunk.” She says this in the passionate, hopeless tone that drunk people will often use when arguing that they are not.
    The man releases her with a sound of disgust.
    “You can’t boss me,” she says, and there are tears now in her voice and eyes. “You’re not my father.” Instead of going down the aisle to the washroom—if that was what she had in mind—she remains standing within his reach, looking mournfully down at him. He makes a feint to grab at her again, a swift, brutal movement, as if this time, next time, he intends really to hurt her. She stumbles aside. He turns his attention back to the screen.
    Still the girl doesn’t move off down the aisle. She leans over Mary Jo.
    “Excuse me,” she says. She smiles with her eyes full of tears. Her baffled, offended face is creased with this wide, closed-mouthed