, a sedate and familiar
voice, which knows me without my knowing the voice.

"Yes," I say!

CHAPTER XVII

MORNING

I went to sleep in Chaos, and then I awoke like the first man.

I am in a bed, in a room. There is no noise--a tragedy of calm, and
horizons close and massive. The bed which imprisons me is one of a row
that I can see, opposite another row. A long floor goes in stripes as
far as the distant door. There are tall windows, and daylight wrapped
in linen. That is all which exists. I have always been here, I shall
end here.

Women, white and stealthy, have spoken to me. I picked up the new
sound, and then lost it. A man all in white has sat by me, looked at
me, and touched me. His eyes shone strangely, because of his glasses.

I sleep, and then they make me drink.

The long afternoon goes by in the long corridor. In the evening they
make light; at night, they put it out, and the lamps--which are in
rows, like the beds, like the windows, like everything--disappear.
Just one lamp remains, in the middle, on my right. The peaceful ghost
of dead things enjoins peace. But my eyes are open, I awake more and
more. I take hold of consciousness in the dark.

A stir is coming to life around me among the prostrate forms aligned in
the beds. This long room is immense; it has no end. The enshrouded
beds quiver and cough. They cough on all notes and in all ways, loose,
dry, or tearing. There is obstructed breathing, and gagged breathing,
and polluted, and sing-song. These people who are struggling with
their huge speech do not know themselves. I see their solitude as I
see them. There is nothing between the beds, nothing.

Of a sudden I see a globular mass with a moon-like face oscillating in
the night. With hands held out and groping for the rails of the
bedsteads, it is seeking its way. The orb of its belly distends and
stretches its shirt like a crinoline, and shortens it. The mass is
carried by two little and extremely slender legs, knobbly at the knees,
and the color of string. It reaches the next bed, the one which a
single ditch separates from mine. On another bed, a shadow is swaying
regularly, like a doll. The mass and the shadow are a negro, whose
big, murderous head is hafted with a tiny neck.

The hoarse concert of lungs and throats multiplies and widens. There
are some who raise the arms of marionettes out of the boxes of their
beds. Others remain interred in the gr