The great éclair.
They had brought it with them — so festive, so very festive — a pastry, the pastry — in celebration of this very festivity — a celebration of love — oh, love, love.
Dango-dango, a dango-dango.
It was called this, the pastry was actually called this — called, good God, a dango-dango — did you ever? But how grand, how so very grand — that such a way of speaking of a thing could possibly exist in a world where people had to speak of things — well, a dango-dango indeed and not just a giant éclair.
The girl in love leaned her head away from the man in order that the girl in love might bring her head to rest against the head of the large woman sitting to the other side of the girl in love, her eyes glistening, their eyes glistening, everyone's eyes glistening — the strange light making everything it fell upon — if the man cared to look at what the light fell upon, if only the man cared to get a good close look at it all — glisten.
Something was heating on the stove.
There was a pot of something heating on the stove.
The pot, the pot, wasn't it as well, didn't it too, wasn't it also glistening ever so strangely? — as if a radiance had been conceived in the very idea of its being a pot in which something was heating gently heating on a stove.
Well, a phosphor, then.
Chairs had been moved to the table. A bench had been brought up from a wall and positioned to one side of the table. This was where the girl in love sat with the large-bodied friend whose head it was the girl in love was resting her head against — on the bench drawn up to the table and positioned to the one side of the table — the man seated there at the table in the position, the post, the post, of importance. There was music, wasn't there? — voices, the voices of men, men's voices, as in a solemn chanting from somewhere elsewhere, audible to the man in this room but believed by him to issue from some other room, the source, the man concluded, not here but elsewhere, somewhere elsewhere. But where elsewhere was there? How many rooms in all would there be here, how many? Oh, there was so much the man did not know — could not know, could not have imagined it would have mattered for him to know, would never, when it came to that, ever come, come ever to know. Well, the man was not exactly a dolt, was he? I mean, he understood the one word meant wine, didn't it? — because, after all, it was a bottle of wine, wasn't it? — but the other word, what about this other word, what on earth did this other word mean? — holy or health-giving, sacred, sacrosanct, sacerdotal, not unclean?
They sat at the table, those who were just now sitting. And who were these who were just now sitting? Why, the man, of course. The man was sitting. The girl in love, she was sitting at the table. And to the girl in love's other side, to the other side of the girl in love there was sitting another girl, another young lady, another large-, even larger-bodied, woman — the heads of the two very large women touching in such a manner as to tear at the man's heart, such as the man's heart was present in him to be torn at. And the foil, what about the foil, what had happened to the foil? Had the foil been torn? It was difficult for anyone to see, wasn't it? Or was seeing, was seeing anything, was really seeing any of these things, was it just a difficulty only for the man? The light in here — well, it was like a phosphor, wasn't it? The light was phosphorous, phosphorescent — a weak pulsing, a kind of throbbing pulsing, a pulsation that was deeply luminescent.
Ah, luminescent, luminescence.
The man understood he would one day tell of all this eventfulness, tell of the details constituting the eventfulness, grouping them together for the entertainment of all comers, and if no one came, if no one in the world ever came to hear the man say luminescent, then no matter, no matter, then the man would group together what he would group together only for himself, so that, yes, of course, of course — this long-ago eventfulness would prove to be an entertainment if only for himself — luminescent, a luminescence — I tell you, these words, the very abundance of them, how superb. Dim? No, not dim, never dim, but phosphorescent perhaps, luminescent perhaps — like a glimmering, yes, a glimmering. The light, it was like a glimmering, wasn't it? The light — ah, it fairly glinted, didn't it? It made things glint. It gave things to glint. So that things — glinted. So that everything — well, it glinted. So that there was this bounty of glintings in this domestic vastness — so that in the very vastation of the amazed space there was a definite, well, an indefinite distribution of hazy glintings — the pot, the forks and spoons, the spoons and forks, the bottle of wine, the wine bottle, the water tumblers for the wine, the knife, the immense the ridiculous, the ridiculously too severe — but quaint, yes, quaint — kitchen knife. For example, for further example, the patina of the table, for even further example — another glinting, such a glinting — the man would say the table, that the table had been a patinated table, this, uh, well, this refectory table, it had shone, by Jupiter, had it not? — with a glinting — the lovely young ladies having seated him at it in such a manner as to situate the man in the one important position at the table — honoring the man, yes, for was not the man being honored? — while the two of them, while two of the large women, while these were the large women who were the ones who were sitting side by side on the side of the table where the bench had been placed, the bench having been drawn up to the table from the wall where the bench was kept, the heads of the large women touching ever so, well, so touchingly — while wasn't there yet another woman, a third woman? — while this largest-bodied woman of the three large-bodied women, while this other one, that one, while she bustled all about in the amazed space, fussing all about with this sort of magisterially fussy bustling largest-bodied womanly air of hers — ah, seeing to things — seeing to the wine and to the water tumblers the wine would be poured into, seeing to the pastry and to the queer knife that would cut the pastry, that would slice the pastry, that would be stuck point-first down into the heart of the pastry to divide the wounded pastry into certain unimprovable portions of pastry, seeing to the forks and to the dishes and to the spoons and to the marvelously crude napkins and to the heavy Tuscan cups, was it, or to the heavy Norman cups, was it, that had been distributed to various sites on the table to accept into them whatever it was, the man decided, that was heating gently gently heating on the stove.
No, vastation didn't mean that. What in the world did vastation mean? And why three of them, these mugs, these cups, why only three of them, when weren't there four people present? Oh, so many present — so many.
These superbly heavy Bavarian mugs.
Or cups, were they? Were they instead to be called not mugs but cups? Very well, call them cups, then.
Ah, yes, but wouldn't the man have some of it?
"But of course he will have some of it! My precious will have all he desires of it!" the girl in love answered for the man in the wonderful way these wonderful people had, confections all of them, weren't they?
Ah, the man — a delicate fellow, a fellow nowhere near the size of these oversized women and, since delicate, a man not unrespectful of things — a careful man, an aware man, a fellow not uninformed, for example, in a not very reliable way, of what style of table a refectory table would in fact be and rightly guessing that this wretched thing the three of them were sitting at, that it was no refectory table at all, not at all, but that it was just an ordinary sort of kitcheny thing made of some kind of ordinary kitcheny material meant to furnish durable service for the hard business kitchen work sometimes, in certain extreme cases — call them solemn, call them solemn — called for — but the word, the word refectory, refectory, would it not go far toward abetting the impression the man would want his tale to get across to all when all would want to hear of this mad murmuring romance of the man's when this mad murmuring romance of the man's had come at last to its mad murmuring annihilation and the man would stand restored to the country of his beginnings and to those to whom the man would then seek to address himself in order that the products of his travel might be enjoyed by all the stay-at-homes back home, those who would never themselves hear the mad murmurings in the earth?