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flowers seemed overwhelmingly strong.
"You may sit here if you wish," almost in a
whisper.
I sat down, not because I was tired, but because it was the
easiest way to unwind myself.
"What is your verdict?"' she asked.
So they were sticking to the bargain, whoever they were..
"I can say nothing about the end, my last piece.
You asked for it to be my own. Nobody can give a
fair judgement of his own music. Of the other three
parts, I do not think I lost."
"Do you wish to claim victory, even
apart from the fourth and last section?"'
I thought for a long time. All my instinct told
me that nothing could equal Bach or the finest of
Beethoven. Yet the mere fact I hesitated
showed it would be wrong to claim too much.. I knew
the works of Bach and Beethoven as I knew the back
of my own hand, so I was familiar with their tremendous
merits. I had' heard this new music but once.
It was inconceivable I could have distilled out of a single
hearing all that was in it.
"No, I do not'wish to claim victory. But
you, what is your Opinion?"' I asked.
In a soft voice, the girl replied, "I am
content to take the same: view."
The load lifted instantly from my mind. It was the
proper
verdict. The styles were too different for a
judgement of better @u or worse to be made.
Only similar things can be compared in a
direct fashion, only when they set out to obey
the same rules and restrictions.
"So we end as we began. Except I hope
you will no longer think of me as an uncontrolled
madman."
"I never did, I simply wanted
to hear you play."
The cool effrontery of this reply shattered my
growing complacency. The girl went on. "Because you
make no claims for your'own work, I will give you that
which you asked for."
She took me a few steps further into the little
side garden, to where I could see a flat couch. I
was rather surprised she paid no heed to the crowds
outside. I suppose she thought the people would be so
frightened at what they had heard that there could be no
danger of them entering the temple. She laughed quite
openly as I began to kiss her.
The night was a subtle compound of many ingredients.
Moments of high passion, of whispered conversation and
laughter bubbling along like a stream in the woods, of the
scent of the flowers, of snatches of sleep, and of long
intervals lying quiet -- the girl in my arms --
looking up at the sky above our heads. Time was
measured not on my watch but by the changing positions
of the stars. It was not until the glow of morning was
spreading upward from the eastern horizon that at last
I fell into a deep sleep.
I awoke with the instant conviction of having slept
long and wonderfully well. With
languorous disappointment I realized the girl had
gone. It was not until I heaved myself into a sitting
posture that the first shock came. I was inside some
building. It was obviously not the temple. For a
flash I thought I had been carried away
to prison. Then I saw this could be no prison, it
was far too comfortable.
Not only that but I was dressed in a queer garment.
It could be said to be a pair of pyjamas, or more
accurately pyjamas, because as far as I could see
I was completely fastened up in the damn thing. It was
all in one piece and there seemed to be no
possibility of getting it either on or off. The
material too was strange. It was coloured in a
multitudinous and expensive manner. It somehow
suggested Joseph's coat, yet the colours were
delicate rather than garish.
Quickly I jumped out of bed. Then I saw it
wasn't a bed. It was simply a flat piece of the
floor of the room itself, but raised two or three
feet above the rest of the floor. The carpeting, or
whatever it was, was extremely soft to the tread. I
didn't bother to examine it but moved quickly to the
opening out of the room -- there was no door. I came
into a very large room indeed, a room which was
odd in the extreme. To begin with, there vasn't a
single chair, not a single item of furniture, in
the usual sense. The floor was in the same deep
blue material as the bedroom. It was everywhere
uneven. It had raised and lowered portions in no
particular pattern that I could discern. The wails and the
ceiling were coloured in a fashion both gay and
restrained. The dominant colours were different on the
different walls, one had green and yellows, another
was tinged largely with gold, another red. The overall
shape was rectangular. Generally speaking the wails
were vertical. Like the floor, however, there were few
strictly plain surfaces. The effect was pleasing
and soothing. One side of the room was
and I could see sunshine beyond a curtaining
material. I to get through the curtain but I could find
no means of conPU-LLING the material aside. It
took some minutes before I got trick of it. I
noticed that one could simply put one's hand . ii
through it, as if the whole fabric were rotten. Then I
walked bethrough it. Instead of the tear being permanent the
material : i10sed up behind me.
conI was out on a large balcony. The house was
built on the side of a hill. A smooth
path came towards it from a near-by clump of
trees. This was the only sign of a road I could
see anywhere. Apart from the hum of insects it was quite
silent. Everywhere i OV-ER the hillside,
running for miles in all directions, were banks Of
flowers and trees. I saw an occasional glimpse
of some other : behouse. Below me in the distance lay
green fields. In the very conccfar distance the mountains
rising high into the sky were snow coniCapped.
Allegretto e Sempre Cantabile
My first thought was that I had awakened at last from a
long nightmare, or more likely from some fever. It was
in Hawaii everything had started to go wrong. At a
first glance here I was back again in Hawaii. The
quality of the light, the high mountains, were
superficially similar. Could this strange building be
some kind of isolation hospital?
The pyjamas I was wearing might also at first
glance have been taken for some exotic Hawaiian
garment. But the material wasn't right, it was much too
expensive in its weave and colouring. Then nobody
Ihad ever known had conceived of a house like this, not even
in the wildest dreams. Besides it couldn't be
Hawaii. ^thccmountains must be at least
fifty miles away. The visibility was
tremendous. At such a range on Hawaii I
would have "been lookingeaou over the sea but there was no
sign of an ocean. There had been many flowers on
Hawaii but nothing to compare with this luxuriant
prgfusion.
Step by step I went over recent events. The
night at the temple was last night. I was convinced
of it. Yet this was quite certainly not Greece. The
style of the house, its spaciousness, the countryside,
and above all those mountains, were definitely not
Grecian.
Although strange and singular things had been happening,
up to this point they had not happened to me personally.
This was the first big jump in my own personal
consciousness. Subjectively I felt quite
normal, yet objectively it seemed as if I
must be as nutty as a squirrel.
I decided to search the house. I saw a
second curtain opening off the balcony. As it was
of the same material as before I simply walked through
it without experiencing any sensation except a gentle
brushing against the cheek. There were further rooms,
smaller but designed in much the same fashion as the
big room. However in one of them there was a
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