A rumble such as might herald a natural catastrophe, a tidal-wave or an earthquake, comes from the onlookers who are all together murmuring the same fatal indictment, as, with obvious intent now, they draw in their constricting circle. B is like a mouse in a trap. She spins round, first one way and then the other, hardly knowing what she is doing. In one place the ranks of bodies seem less compact, she imagines that it might be possible to force a way through at this point, and dashes towards it. At the same moment she feels herself falling, the whole vast stairway collapses disastrously beneath her. With a great rush of wind the pigeons whirl down and beat all about her with their strong wings, bearing her along between them
into a small room with no windows or doors visible. The walls are scrawled over with dimly seen occult symbols, pentacles, wands, swords, etc. There are shelves of books; and a few phantom-glimmering shapes of vases, or urns. B sits on what might or might not be a narrow bed, reading by the light of four candles in a cross-shaped holder. It’s very dark. The candles shed a flickering, limited ring of light over B and the open book and a part of the dusty stone floor, leaving everything else in shadow deepening to blackness in the comers. Here and there round the walls faint traceries of signs or letters come and go as the four flames waver. Absolute stillness. Hush. At approximately regular intervals B’s hand moves to turn over a page.
After a time a vague stirring, thickening, in one of the dark comers: nothing so definite as movement at first: it’s more a sort of concentration of tension in that comer. From which tenuous chrysalis presently emerges a second B, B’s doppelgänger, materializing out of the shadows; coming nearer the light although very similar, with similar fair curled hair, discernibly older, wearier, more assured, more disillusioned; in fact, of course, A. Who, standing behind B, looking over her shoulder (B is unaware), remains for a while apparently reading what she is reading. Then, moving across the room, gradually departs from the scene in a reversal of the procedure by which she lately arrived.
Simultaneously with her dissolution, a faint sibi-lance starting, not from any special point, but emanating from all over the room, very subdued, seeming as if it might be voiced by the four walls or by the ceiling and floor. A rustling, a susurration, like blown leaves, in which now and then some reference to danger becomes incompletely distinguishable. This sound continues from now on, principally as an indeterminate rustle as of water, leaves, wind, occasionally clarifying itself into the actual word Danger or one of its synonyms. B, without actually hearing, is not oblivious, because whenever the word becomes recognizable, she looks up or makes an unquiet movement. Finally she jumps up, glancing nervously round the room, pushing her book away so that it strikes the candle-holder, rocking the candles and sending waves of light alternating with shadow in confusing sequence, like pages turned rapidly back and forth.
At the same time the whispering loudens to ordinary speaking pitch, to clamour, to shouting, to utmost volume, as near deafening as possible, of voices chaotically shrieking, together, separately, interrupting, competing, with increasing speed and intensity, such phrases as: Danger, Keep Out; It is Dangerous To Open The Window; Danger de Mort. And So on.
The earsplitting pandemonium is suddenly shattered; into long dry grumble and growl and intermittent snapping and cracking of bursting timbers, crumbling masonry, as the whole structure of the room collapses inwards, obliterating B in a heap of amorphous wreckage, rubble, from which thick clouds of dust are seen blowing upwards like spray. This, under blank moon as before, the celestial eye transiently takes stock of, passes on.
WAS my mother afraid of the tigers? Was that the theme of the music she danced to with death in our quiet house?
When I went home between the school terms I was still alone in those rooms where nothing had altered. It was the same then as if I’d never been away. My mother’s sadness and boredom still lived in the house with the shadows and the grey rain on the windows. Their presence accompanied me as I took my unspoken questions from room to room.
Sometimes I had an impulse to ask my father about the things which perplexed me: I watched him and waited for the right time which never came. My father always seemed to be in a hurry. He was like an important stranger with no time to spare. He made decisions for me about practical things, he directed my life, and when he had done what was suitable he forgot me.
At school and at home it was the same; I was alone. This I accepted and knew it would always be so, wherever I went, and whatever happened to me. There was no place for me in the day world. My home was in darkness and my companions were shadows beckoning from a glass.
THIS TIME it’s not just the voice but the visible presence of the Liaison Officer which opens the dreaming eye. He’s reading again from what looks like the same book (although one can’t see the title), but the details of his appearance havealtered, he is bareheaded and wears a white garment — a smock or an overall — on top of his uniform. The chief alteration is in his manner. He’s no longer sure of himself, his voice sounds uneasy, his expression is puzzled, and he keeps glancing anxiously out of the window where there’s a distant view of a castle floating mirage-like in the mists. Except for the window and the major himself, there’s nothing much to be seen in this great gloomy old hall. Everything’s ghostly and grim and dark, and though there are people present, they seem to be in another dimension. All that’s perceptible is a continuous vague stir, as if a crowd of transparent onlookers were seated in thin air, fidgeting and whispering, rustling their spectral papers and shuffling their unseen feet.
It’s enough to make anyone reading aloud feel nervous: especially as the atmosphere generated by these invisible spectators is far from friendly. There’s a sort of malicious tittering in the background: a nightmare Alice-in-Wonderland inconsequence, which is most disturbing. The inconsequential element is manifest too in certain architectural caprices and light shifts, whereby the building is given a fluctuating resemblance to a church, a law court, a prison, an operating theatre, a torture chamber, a vault. That the major is more and more affected by these metaphysical stresses, is evident from the increasing tension of his manner and voice as he reads:
An instance of how misunderstandings and estrangements can occur between relatives:
B wants to talk over some obscure point with her father. She has probably made several efforts to approach him already, but without success. Her attempts have up to now been always inopportune; perhaps made at a time when he was on the point of leaving for his office and, already a few minutes late, could not possibly delay his departure any longer. Or perhaps she spoke to him when he had just come home after a hard day’s work on some specially intricate and abstruse official problem and was too tired for talk. Or else, when other circumstances were propitious, an important message to which he was obliged to attend may have been telephoned through from the department by one of the under-secretaries.
Today she makes up her mind to ask him at breakfast to fix a time for the conversation. At the regular hour she goes into the dining-room only to be told that her father ordered his breakfast earlier than usual and has left the house.
B decides to follow him to his office, a journey which, travelling on the suburban train, normally takes about forty minutes. This morning, although no warning is given of any alteration in schedule, the train not only takes over two hours on the way, but finally deposits its passengers at a terminus in quite a different part of the city, from which she is obliged to make a complicated bus trip, involving several changes, to reach her destination.