Of the various young men in the upstairs flat, the chief character was the last to report to the others how he hoped to amuse himself on uneventful mornings and afternoons in the building of several storeys. He supposed that the other young men were expecting to hear that he would furnish an upper-storey room with bookshelves and a writing-desk, that he would fill the shelves with classic works of literature, and that he would spend most of each day in his room, reading in a comfortable armchair or writing prose fiction or poetry at his desk, and when he was finally asked about his plans he tried to fulfil these supposed expectations. He would keep mostly to his room, he said, and the walls of the room would be covered with books and the desk in the room with pages of typing and handwriting. He knew from experience that the others would not be curious about the subject-matter of the pages on the table. However, for the sake of the few young men who seemed to be occasional readers of books he offered the information that his library would be missing many of the so-called classics of literature, given that he often struggled to read more than a few pages of one or another so-called classic. His library, he said, would contain many of the sort of book called by literary historians or critics a minor classic or a neglected masterpiece or a work that defied classification.
The chief character hoped that his brief account of his way of life in his upstairs quarters would dissuade the other young men from seeking him out if ever they became bored with the goings-on in the more frequented parts of the building of several storeys. Perhaps after he and the other young men had been together in the building for a year and more, so the chief character supposed, and after they had been present together at many a Black Mass and after he had watched them taking part in many a sex-orgy and after they had looked up many a time from their cushions in the sanctuary and had seen him masturbating quietly in the side-chapel — perhaps then he would be more comfortable with them and would not object to their opening the doors of the further rooms of his remote upstairs suite and learning how he spent most of the time while he was assumed to be reading or writing. Perhaps then also, so the chief character supposed, he would not shrink from having one or another of the more friendly high-class call-girls look into his further rooms. During his first months in the building, however, the chief character would prefer to be taken for a reclusive reader of books and a writer of poetry and prose fiction.
During those first months, the chief character would hope that the craftsmen climbing the stairs each day towards his suite would be supposed by the other residents to be building bookshelves and that the boxes delivered to his suite would be supposed to contain books. The craftsmen, however, would be skilled model-makers, and the boxes would contain the many thousands of components of the models to be installed in one or more of the chief character’s rooms in the building of several storeys.
Once having got from the owner of the building a sum of money equal to the cost of several thousand books, including many rare first editions, the chief character would have employed a team of highly skilled model-makers to work under his direction in an upper room with a dormer window. The team would have begun by covering most of the floor with a taut, green-coloured fabric. The team would then have driven through this fabric and into the floor hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny white pegs. These pegs would then have served as supports for hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny white railings. The whole structure would have formed the inside running-rail, so called, of a miniature racecourse with long straights and gradual turnings. Beside the racecourse would have been numerous miniature buildings and car-parks set among miniature trees and flower-beds. In the area enclosed by the course proper, so called, would have been at least one miniature lake.
Sometimes, when the chief character had got thus far in his plans and when he had foreseen himself lying for the first time on the floor beside the newly completed racecourse and looking along an expanse of green fabric bordered with tiny white pegs, he would be tempted to abandon his project. At such times, he would seem to have made only a toy-landscape, a place more suitable for recalling certain days in his childhood than for enabling him to see further across his mind than he had yet seen. But then he would foresee himself fitting a brownish Holland blind to the dormer window and then drawing the blind against the sunlight and then, perhaps, stepping back into a corner of the room and looking at the lines of pegs through half-closed eyes and even through a pair of binoculars held back-to-front to his eyes; and then some or another glimpse in his mind of something not previously seen in his mind would persuade him to go on.
The other persons in the upstairs flat, if ever they cared to imagine the chief character in his suite of rooms in the building of several storeys, could have seen him only as writing at a desk with shelves of books around him. Soon after he had talked to the others about his way of life in the non-existent building, they had begun to lose interest in the orgy-house, as it came to be called. The poker games and the other diversions and even the Black Masses were seldom mentioned again, although sometimes an image on the television screen of some or another young woman would prompt one or more of the young men to reminisce as it were, about the good looks of the high-class call girls. It began to seem to the chief character as though he had been left in charge of the house; the less the others talked about it, the more clearly and substantially it began to appear in his own mind. Sometimes, when the house had first been talked about, he had given much thought to protecting his privacy; and he had seen himself often in his mind as being alone in his rooms in the late afternoon or the early evening and trying not to be distracted by some or another drunken shout or playful squeal from far below. As the others in the upstairs flat talked less about the building of several storeys, it seemed in his mind sometimes so quiet that he might have felt urged to go downstairs and to stroll around the deserted chapel until he had recalled a few hectic moments from some or another orgy that he had watched long before.
The chief character had often sustained himself with daydreams about his future, but his wandering around a disused convent in his mind seemed unconnected with any life that he had previously wanted for himself. The empty upstairs rooms seemed more solid than any scenery from daydreams; the rooms seemed to be on the same level of existence as things that he would have called his faculties or his qualities; the rooms even caused him to feel a more ample person and a more worthy.
He was no mere observer of mental scenery. He was not long in learning that he could alter certain details and have them stay as he preferred them to be. He had wanted for some time to extend the part of the building that he thought of as his own. His particular wish was for more dormer windows, each with an attic-like room behind it. Then, after no effort that he could recall, he seemed to be strolling past doorway after doorway in a corridor that he did not recognise. When next he looked upwards towards his quarters from the grounds around the building, an entire wing seemed to have been added. His desk and his bookshelves, not to mention his rooms filled with models, were now even further away from the main living area. Even if the other young men and the high-class call-girls were to settle in the building after all, he would hear scarcely a sound from them.