Georgia would pursue her, panting, having sensed in Lilith the response—and not the ultimate non-response. Throughout the multitude of identical rooms Lilith could see men and women embracing convulsively. The same images—but resonances of all kinds, as varied in power as this music now swelling and dying in plaits of sand combed with silver combs. All the little rooms alike and Djuna lying swathed in the fumes of her dreams from which she would never awaken, wanting only the scenes which resembled the dream and skipping the vast deserts and infernos of daily living.
Lilith had skipped no part of the voyage, yet remained unsatisfied—plunging nowhere for a permanent place in which to erect her illusion, like this music passing and vanishing, leaving no signs of its passage.
Mischa is falling asleep. The room looks the same as the Voice’s room, or Djuna’s room, or Lilith’s room. Mischa is asleep in the same kind of bed, with the same radio over his head, and the furniture stands around him in the same mathematical order. Where the desk ends, with its little glass top, covering a laundry list, a telephone list, a card from the drugstore, the dressing table begins. And where the dressing table ends there is space for the lamp. The armchair is placed against the window. The room looks like the inside of a chestnut. The furniture is made of chestnut, the rug has the color of new chestnuts, the lamp has the color of old chestnut. In the same sized drawer in which Djuna folds her lace nightgowns Mischa keeps his faded shirts, Lilith her boyish scarfs, the Voice his notes of what he has heard during the day for future conferences. All the letters are written on the same paper. Mischa feels a shiver of horror, feels the madness of sameness. He thinks of all the rooms at once, and what may be happening in them. They are all washing at the same moment, quarreling, writing letters, or twisting themselves with desire or pretense of desire. Mischa thinks that if everyone died to-night and the great city were left abandoned for a hundred years, the tall, empty structures left to mold and rust… those who would come with their geological passions, their instruments, their research maps, they would be convinced that these people were all absolutely identical. Not alike as twins, but a million beings soldered together, forced into the same motions.
While he looked at his room he could not sleep. It seemed to him that the room was made to efface Mischa. Mischa’s moods, his differences, his disharmony with everyone. In the corner stood his ‘cello in its black sarcophagus.
He wanted to sleep. He wanted to sleep.
The room did become smaller and smaller, and darker, as if he were being placed in a real chestnut which closed around him. And as soon as it became smaller, he saw windows flung open and flames bursting from them. Behind the flames the faces of madmen shrieking and grimacing. The walls crumbled. The bars were twisted open. The madmen crawled out between them, then ran in all directions, with their hair standing on end. Some of them still wore their straight-jackets. They fell on their backs and could not pick themselves up. They lay there like scarabs and the crowd ran over them. Bells. Whistles. Dust raised. Stones rolling. Hands twisted trying to rend the air. When the people crashed into each other they looked at each other. They saw the same face. It was the face of a madman. The eyes protruded and the mouth hung lower on the right side. They touched each other. It was a mirror they were touching. Another mirror. Another mirror. A thousand faces all alike. They ran, they bowed, they kneeled, they fell on their faces, they wept, and all of them were doing exactly the same thing… They rushed into a house. A tall man was sitting in an armchair. He was looking down at his insides which were exposed. He was watching how the blood moved, how the liver functioned. Intestinal functioning, like the wheels, chains, canals, labyrinths of a factory. Microbes climbing through the arteries in military order. Food deteriorating. Canals like inside a coal mine; little wagons travelling up and down, carrying food. Bridges. Canals. Plants growing. Seeds falling. It was the Voice who was oiling the mechanism with an eye-dropper. The Voice who picked up a few drops and placed them in a bottle. He examined it with a microscope. Enlarged it showed the inside of an egg. Inside of this egg there were clouds, and resting on the clouds two eyes shedding tears, with their roots dangling behind. The tears fell into an oyster opening and closing. A woman slipped her tongue into the oyster.
The inside of the Voice was now like a printing press shaped like a liver, a heart, the entrails. Words fell into separate letters inside a small drawer. Words and letters were running through the intestines like the words in a printing press. The pages came out in neat piles. The Voice read them. The pages were dripping blood on the rugs. The Voice closed the little door of his insides and leaned over towipe the stains away. The mad crowd surrounded him. He pointed to the sky. The sky was the roof of his room. The stars and moon were made of cardboard and moved with strings like puppets. The Voice pressed a button. The motions of the planets were reproduced, but shakingly, hesitatingly, as if the machine were not working very well. The madmen looked on, bewildered. The Voice opened the little door to his brain. The brain like the skeins of tangled wool. The ribbon of a movie film, a travelogue picture passing very fast. Monuments, streets, churches, but appearing upside down. A little boy was buying a newspaper from another little boy in the street. In his room he spread the newspaper on the floor and made a paper boat and a bird. He wrote in big letters: “Dear Papa and Mamma, please return Pinocchio to the library or you will be fined for it.” He sat on the paper boat and immediately it sank. Then the paper boat floated up again, half open, lying on its side, floating down the river.
The Voice closed the little door to his brain. He turned the X-ray machine on the crowd. He turned it upon the women standing there. On the stomach of one of the women. One could see inside her womb a dead child. Inside another woman twins lying entangled. One twin is dead and the other is writhing, seeking to escape. Inside another woman there is a child asleep, covered with fur. Inside another woman lies a coiled snake, asleep.
A woman is following Mischa stealthily. He falls. She leans over with a heavy stick and beats his legs until they break. She leans over to look at them. They are the knotted roots of trees; mushrooms are growing all over them. The woman runs to the village to get a coffin. They try to place Mischa in the coffin, but he is too long for it. They begin to saw off his legs, and then the body is placed in the coffin. The woman picks up the legs. They stand alone like a pair of boots. The boots begin to sink into the sand.