The silence—
— A dollar and a quarter. And ten.
— Thank you, sir.
— Don’t mention.
That probably surprised him.
The club was empty and still, opened before him spaciously and with marble echoes, followed him downstairs with subdued lights and sounds, with portraits of philosophers and a bison’s head, with shells from the Somme and a Chinese dragon on scarlet silk. The chessmen too. The Hoboken gambit? I’ll pawn my queen. The bar closed for the night, but water would do. A Lily-cup of waxed paper, cold water on greased skin.
At the locker, he refilled the silver flask, took a long burning drink, filled again, then placed six Lily-cups in a white row on the table in the bombproof, two of them filled with water: supplies for the night. Within reach of his hand, as he lay on the red divan. Better have a night-cap. Jitter might have been here, often was. You know, Andy, I think there’s something yellow about you. Close the eyes, to shut out swimming. Rest the chin on papa’s hairy chest. Not very comfortable. Screwed his head from left to right against the hard leather. Sleep drunkenly, tomato juice in morning, cold clam juice, ice water, cold shower set you right. Wake up, Andy, it’s time to get up: you have an appointment to tutor at eleven. That little Jew. Weisskopf. The long swift darkness swept over from left to right, here and there a streaked star, a dark pouring sound, the subdued roar of all blood. Bumwad, bumwad, bumwad, bumwad. Oh, bumwad. Now nausea plucking at the corners of the arid mouth, the twitch of sickness, the race between sickness and unconsciousness, the interstellar skid. The hands nerveless and placeless, now on the belly, now at the side, now hanging towards the floor, touching the cold leather, stubbornly conscious, waiting for something, afraid of sleep. Wake up, Andy, it’s time to get up. That was a footstep, near, menacing.
— Mr. Cather, sir.
— Hello.
An attendant, deprecatory.
— Pardon me, sir, Mr. Cather, but would you like to be found here?
— Found and left.
— Yes, sir.
The long darkness swept superbly from left to right, the blood began its universal pouring over the small tossed body of the world, hurled it and whirled it, swung it obliquely through a screaming abyss, hoisted it again to a toppling pinnacle. Good evening, madam. This is my drowned hat that I am eating. We signed the contract. I am successful. When he saw the sparrow in the road, he got off his horse. It had a broken wing, the bones were sticking out. Of course, what did I tell you. More calmly now. More darkly now. Smoothly, on even keel, into the dark station, the tunnel, the banked lights stately and still on stone columns, birds of brightness, cold and light. I saw you before you saw me, yes, I did. Why didn’t you tell me, and, besides. I was walking there.
In pure light came the remote flight, the little flight of a flock, coming nearer and larger and brighter, the flight of little winged bones, winging through heaven, little wrist-bones and delicate ankle-bones and even figulas and femurs and scapulas, and each with as neat a pair of wings as you’d see on a bleeding sparrow, and every one of them on its way to a star, far off; or was it God himself? He watched them with one eye, while he picked up the skeleton and began to eat it; first the feet, then working slowly up the legs; and dry going it was, what with no sauce, no mustard, no Worcestershire, and the bones getting bitterer as he crawled right up through the pelvis, devouring all, and crunched the ribs. The spine tasted like the Dead Sea, like ashes in the mouth, getting worse as he crawled nearer to the skull; and the skull itself was a black mouthful of charcoal, which he spat out. And in mid-space then he saw behemoth in the act of biting off the conning tower of an interstellar submarine, one of these ether-going craft with one eye, a little way off to the southwest of a pink star, which was wearing white drawers, like a woman. And in a canoe then, in a canoe, a birchbark canoe, up the marsh channel, above the red bridge, in amongst the hosts of seething reeds in the hot salt sunlight — the bright drops on the paddles, the bare arms freckled and wet — is this the way to the Gurnett? — Oh, no, that’s the other way — you’ll have to turn round — yes, it’s the other way. The other way, to the Gurnett.
The other way, a long way.
And when he came, they gave him an oval reception.
II
(—particularly the smell of the pine-wood walls, soaked in sea fog, but pine-smelling also in the strong sea sunlight, smooth to the touch, golden-eyed with knotholes, and the wind singing through the rusty wire screens, fine-meshed and dusty, or clogged brightly with drops of dew, or drops of rain, or drops of fog — the morning outlook seaward, over the humped grass beyond the puddled tennis court, over the wild sea grass windblown, beyond the new house of bright shingles, where the new boy and girl lived, and then across the bay to Clark’s Island, and the long yellow outer beach, with its deserted and mysterious shacks of houses, and then the Gurnett — the small white twin lighthouses of the Gurnett — I was looking out of the window at this, at all of this, feeling the cool east wind from Provincetown, but with no mirage to show precisely where Province-town lay, and the voices came then over the low partition between the bedrooms. I was dressing, and as I put on my khaki shirt I looked at the fly-trap, which I had made out of fragments of window-screen wire, to see if my flies were all still alive after the night. What would they be saying now. The voices were low and secret, early morning voices, Uncle Tom and Aunt Norah. I removed the screw in the wall beside the washstand and peeped through into the maids’ room, saw a pink chemise very close to me, so close that I was frightened, and walked softly away, back to the window. Did Molly know I was there, that I was watching her day after day? I had seen them putting on their bathing suits. Afterward, when I met them on the porch, they were embarrassed, tried to pull down the short skirts over their knees, ran down the road giggling and looking back. Molly’s skin was very white, Margaret’s was brown.