A simian crowd turns the corner on a country lane. Vampire-eaters all, they clutch glowing crosses and sharpened pens and pencils, running after a redmouthed monster who has abandoned his fear of daylight for a headlong rush out of his coffin and down the road to attempted safety, somewhere.     He told me that these bees had come to Basra through a cave that led to the center of the earth, where there was a planet that someday I would visit.