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On the Thursday before Christmas a great wind came from nowhere and sent people flying into the streets and into each other, forcing some to crawl, utterly humbled, on hands and knees to find safe corners from the ungodly tempest. Telephone poles fell, their lines humming with cryptic infor- mation, no longer important if it ever was. Men and women otherwise afraid to touch one another in the long hours at the office found themselves falling into one another's arms to find strength in their combined weight. Some mumbled darkly about the Russians screwing up the weather again; others referred to the Russian satellite which had recently fallen, a modern Lucifer, onto Kanadian soil.

There were white-outs all over the country; pedestrians and motorists moved through worlds of snow with the bleached, bone-white vision of the dead. The storm, some said, held all the terror of a waking dream, its muffled and only partial reality. Visions of bleached caribou, antlers pointing skyward, pointing northward and westward, filled the wild eyes of children. White dreams moved into Moose Jaw and Flin Flon; everyone forgot about colours.

The wind was fearsome, and stuff was flying all along King Street - bits of ancient birds or pterodactyls, stationery, a faded bra, ticker tape, Wintario Tickets, paper tigers, rubber cheques, dental floss - or so it all appeared to Noman. Office papers fluttered on tree branches - important papers maybe: birth certificates, marriage licenses, records of being, all impaled on the tree by the wind, all bizarre advertisements. The wind stripped everything and everyone of its identity, and no man knew who he was or where he belonged.

Outside of Loblaws a figure moved in the dark white street. It wore a golden hood with fishlike slits for mouth and eyes and it stared at Noman for a very long time. Then the mysterious hooded man made his way down King Street, leaning westward into the wind. Noman followed him through the driving snow to Roncesvalles Avenue. He got colder and colder, and wondered if winter meant only the weird anonymity attained by people wearing hoods. Even the chestnut vendor from Naples was a triumph of disguise with his ear muffs and iced eyebrows and the old coat made from a hun dred Italian rabbits which had died when Mussolini was still in power.

The mysterious hooded man turned left at a place where everyone was disappearing around corners, muffled and mute, in pursuit of elusive personal histories, lost in private visions of cold. Winter was a country of phantoms, of shy, elusive ghosts.

The mysterious hooded man proceeded with alarming sureness of foot and presence of mind across the bridge that spanned the ancient railway tracks and Lakeshore Boulevard, towards the lake. Now and again he looked back to make sure he was still being followed. The white of the snow in the air merged with the white of the shoreline, so when Noman got to the bottom of the curved bridge there was no more horizon. The sky and the lake were one; it was awful.

'Hey you, hey you!' he cried. 'Listen, I just want to ...'

The mysterious hooded man turned to him and removed his golden hood and his coat to reveal a dark brown suit. At that moment a small dog, berking hysterically, ran along the blurred shoreline and joined him.

'So,' said King, 'it seems that you have found me.'

'What do you have to tell me?' Noman asked, and the white clouds of their breath began to take on the shapes of tiny animals. 'How do I survive here?'

'By embracing the loneliness,' said King. 'You already have survived. And by being an explorer. The exploration of this country hasn't ended; it never will. Each time you go further into the interior, you find another country.' Then he stepped onto an ice floe, neatly and carefully, as though it were an escalator.

'You cheat! Come back! What other country?' Noman cried.

'I have not cheated you. I have given you something to look for. That's more than enough. Goodbye.' The ice floe moved away from shore. He put the golden hood back on and stood holding the little dog, straight and poised, noble and tragic, the captain of a sinking ship.

'You've got to tell me more, you bastard!'

'Don't insult me, I'm old enough to be your father,' said King, his words turning to crystals of ice in the white air. 'It will all be clear to you,' he added as the ice floe moved farther away, 'tomorrow at noon. Have patience. Time waits for Noman, remember. Just a joke.'

Now the figure glided straight out onto the ice and vanished altogether. For all Noman knew, he might be proceeding in a southerly direction towards America. But if the ice was thin in certain places, he'd be sinking slowly, slowly, until the terrible waters lapped against his golden hood, seeping into the slit of the mouth and the slit of the eyes. Then the hood and the person inside the hood would slide slowly into the lake, dragging down their pasts, their birth certificates and drivers' licences and address books, their diplomas and calendars and secret dreams and diaries and everything they ever owned down with them.

This figure, this gold death had led him to the lake. Sooner or later everything led to the lake. He would remember.

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