This room the professor enters in his black gown; with light short tripping steps advances across the neutral carpet; pirouettes; simpers and postures. He stands holding the pose, feet in the fifth position, skirts of his gown extended to fullest width and held between thumbs and forefingers, both little fingers curled and archly pointing.
In their alcoves the dangling glass lobes of the lustres begin to swing and oscillate gently, set up a faint tinkling applause.
Now a quick circling view of the whole rather phony prosperous enclosed room dithering faintly appreciative: into this circle, very complacent, the professor relaxes coyly from his pose: acknowledging the slight rustle of handclapping from the mahjong players he sits down in the exact centre of the couch.
The players rise from the table, group themselves round him. The visitors (always in profile) take positions on each side of him on the couch, the third sits on the floor at his feet. From attitudes of admiration their flat snake eyes are upon him in bitter malice, contempt or envy. His own woman is standing behind him, her face tiger-possessive, triumphant; she sets her fingers proprietorially on his head, absently twists his thin hair into kewpie tuft.
This tableau abruptly shattered by sudden rude surge of clamouring, knocking, at outer door of the house. With utmost possible effect of shock, enormous figures, in dark uniforms, bursting into the room, crowding in one after the other, surrounding the couch, brandishing, with threatening gestures, some document (Demand? Indictment?) under the professor’s nose.
He jumps up, astounded and outraged, thrusting the three visitors aside in rising (they collapse stiffly with metallic jingle and disappear); the woman behind the sofa gestures imperiously; calls out an unidentifiable order: she is at once submerged by the uniforms; seen struggling for a moment; disappears.
The professor is ringed, pressed on all sides by the massed uniforms, fear now coming out on his face like sweat. He glances round quickly, his face more and more afraid. He clutches his gown, pulls it higher and higher up round his shoulders, hunches his neck in it, muffles his head in its folds; and out of this hiding-place yells shrilly some protest or appeal, indignation in the start of the sounds, panic towards the end.
Two huge uniformed arms are extended from each side simultaneously.
They take hold of the gown, twitch at it derisively, contemptuously snatch it away.
The manikin cowers on the floor, grovels between them, his head with bald spot lolling limp on dummy stalk-neck to the floor.
As the arms grapple him every ornament in the room sets up a thin mad screeching.
A china dog leaps frantically from its shelf and dives under the couch with reversed curlicue tail between its legs.
A glass goblet falls; heavy boots tramp it to dust.
The boots and the forest of dark legs close in, amalgamate into black blob-blot. The blob bulges, spreads steadfastly up to and over everything; blots out the room with a bulging and bursting of black bubble, inky cuttlefish ejaculation; and the brittle death trills still bleating. Blotchout.
LONG ago I had embraced the night and given myself to darkness. The gentle whispers of rain had consoled me; kind quiet shadows had been my friends.
Why was I led astray by a tiger brightness? Why did a false sun lure me so far from home?
True, I had not actually surrendered to daylight. But I had looked too long into dazzling and sunbright faces and stayed too long within the gates of day. My eyes had looked at something forbidden, and seen what they should never have seen, and now sight itself had gone out of them.
Now from the dark and solitary place where I belonged I would not stir again. When voices called to me I refused to answer. I stopped my ears with the black robe of night and pulled the folds of darkness about my head. Never again would I see the blinding glare of enemy eyes or hear the thudding of disastrous feet.
IS IT or is it not the Liaison Officer who sits at a desk in the middle of this dream? The face looks the same and so does the little neat beard — can it be turning grey? — but why is he wearing an elegant dark suit instead of a uniform? Perhaps not his almost too elegant clothes, but his surroundings, including the big glossy desk where he sits writing, suggest the prosperous professional man, without precisely indicating which profession. On the whole, the room looks more like a doctor’s consulting-room than anything else; and yet that doesn’t seem quite the right label. The divan and the massive, costly, dead-looking furniture could belong to any successful practitioner. But there are some rather queer mystical pictures and ornaments which don’t seem to fit in. Is it a crucifix or a primitive negro priapus hanging there on the wall? It’s hard to make anything out in the dim light. A row of books under the desk-lamp can be distinguished as medical textbooks mixed up with books on magic, mythology, philosophy, metaphysics, religion.
The man sitting behind the books has finished his writing. He screws the cap on to his fountain-pen, looks up, and as he moves the gold lettering gleams on the epaulets which he is now seen to be wearing with the insignia of his rank. He leans back comfortably in his chair, gathering together the written sheets, which he holds in one hand (keeping the other free for an occasional restrained gesture) while he reads aloud from them in the smooth nicely-modulated voice of a trained actor.
Who are the authorities and where are they to be found? Do they operate from one central focus or from various scattered bureaux with, possibly, a main headquarters in supreme control of the whole organization? These are questions which everyone asks but to which no satisfactory replies are forthcoming. Admittedly, there are so-called initiates who claim to possess information, and one has heard of people whose minds have been set at rest by these individuals. And yet if you or I decide to go into the matter for ourselves our investigations never seem to lead anywhere. Supposing that certain persons have, as they assert, obtained enlightenment from some unknown source, it would seem that they are unable, or perhaps not allowed, to illuminate others, except in rare and selected instances. What happens when you approach such a person with a genuine wish for communication? He will most likely start off by talking to you in a straightforward easy way that at once gives a favourable impression of frankness. Make yourself at home, my friend, he says, by implication if not in so many words. Relax, and listen while I explain everything to you in simple language.
This ingenious technique is, in fact, so convincing that anyone may well be taken in by it, lulled into an uncritical state of mind merely by the soothing quality of manner and words. Quite probably it is not until one has been ushered out of the warm room and is walking home through the frosty air that one really begins to reflect on the interview in an objective way, and to realize that one is absolutely no wiser than before.
At this stage I imagine the average inquirer is apt to abandon the whole affair, considering that he has made an effort adequate to preserve his integrity. Besides, he may think, matters so deep and so hard to approach are certainly dangerous and forbidden and I had better not dabble in them or I shall get into trouble.