The gigantic beast wriggled through the sky, from end to end of the vast
sky. The beast wobbled the point of its tail slowly up and down over the
earth: in the room, above the bed, which had become a narrow coffin;
and, commencing with that wobbling tail, the beast's body wound up and
up, filling the room and the house with one mighty contortion of
monstrous dragon's scales and sweeping away with its tangible reality
all the dreamy unreality of the room and the house, the ceilings and
roofs. With thousands of legs the beast humped its sinuous body over the
chimney-stacks and church-steeples, slung itself wriggling round the
church-steeples and chimney-stacks like a festoon of scales, which then
turned into a long, dense chain of clouds, filling the sky with great
cloud-eddies, which whirled and whirled over the town and through the
sky, from end to end of the vast sky. And the monstrous beast now lifted
its long crocodile's jaws out of its own winding clouds; and its eyes
belched forth fire like volcanoes; and shafts of flame shot like
lightning-flashes from its darting tongue: shafts darting to such a
length from the very high expanse, right up there, up there, from the
sky above the clouds, that they shot through the man in one second and
retreated and hid themselves again in the abyss of the dragon's mouth,
from such a height indeed that they shot quicker than lightning right
down to his marrow, licking it until it dried up; and, after each
burning lick, after each dab of fire, the lightning-quick, darting
flame, the miles-long shaft withdrew to its own source and birthplace in
the deep funnel of the fiery jaws. And the martyred man shivered under
the dabbing lick; and in his shivering he raised himself high as though
upon waves of trembling, as though his fever were a stormy sea that bore
him away from his bed high above the clouds, the clouds that were the
windings of the beast's body.... And, as he rose, as the man rose, the
beast set up all its stiff bristles, which stuck out between its scales
like trees, stuck them up and drew them in again, until the whole sky,
the whole vast stretch of sky, was all the time growing full of
tree-trunks, straight forests of dragon's bristles which swarmed and
vanished, swarmed and vanished as the beast put them out or drew them
in.... And the point of the beast's bristly, scaly tail flicked with
such oppressive weight upon the chest of the man who lay in the bed
which was a coffin that the man moaned and groaned and tried with both
hands to lift that heavy, flicking tail from his crushed heart.... But
the beast grinned with its cavernous jaws, shot fire from the volcanoes
of its eyes, darted swiftly up and down the miles-long fiery trail of
its all-penetrating tongue, split into myriad needles of fire, and with
long voluptuous licks sucked away the man's marrow, until the man, all
shivering and shaking, was scorched and roasted and shrivelled
within.... The beast left him no blood, licked up his marrow and blood
and poured fire into him instead. When the beast smacked its lips
voluptuously, when it greedily swallowed the blood and the marrow, when
the man thought that he was dying, then the beast pricked him with a
needle of its fiery tongue and goaded him to shivering-point; and the
man shivered and raised himself high upon the waves with his shivering,
as though his fever were a stormy sea....
Thus the man lay twisting and tossing, till he put out his hands towards
the demon and tried to fight the beast with human hands.... And it
seemed to him as if he were flinging his hands, the hands of a brave man
and a martyr and a hero, around the beast; and, while the stormy sea,
the sky, which was churned into billows by the contortions of the beast,
bore him up and up and up, he fought and wrestled with the ever more
violently writhing and coiling beast; and the beast humped its way
through the sombre universe of clouds, shooting out its thousands of
feet; its head was now here, now there; its tail flicked now high, now
low; the beast lashed earth and sky; the beast became one vast, dizzying
whirl, with town, spires, roofs and chimney-stacks all whirling in it;
the bed which was a coffin was now here, now there, now high, now low;
and he fought and wrestled and twisted round the beast and the beast
round him; and he would not let himself be conquered by the beast. Until
the beast from out of the volcano of its eyes and the abyss of its jaws
belched so much fire that the sky was a sea of blood-fire wherein a hell
of faces flamed--faces of women and children: naked women with eyes of
gold; bright children with flaxen hair--like a sudden flowering of
tortured affections, of tortured passions, all blossoming up in the
blood-fire into faces of laughing and crying children and ogling
siren-mermaids; and through it all and through them all the man writhed
and wrestled with the wrestling, writhing beast, which could not free
itself from him, even as he could not free himself from the beast....
"Gerrit, dear Gerrit," voices sounded, soft-murmuring, earthly voices,
voices from far below,
"Gerrit, dear, are you coming?"
And he answered:
"Yes ... yes ... I'm coming...."
And he, the man heaving up and down, down and up, on the mighty swaying
of the storm, down and up, up and down, he, this heaving, wrestling man,
one with the beast and the beast one with him, saw a woman, between the
faces of children and women, saw two women, two women belonging to him:
his wife and his sister. But in between them crept a third woman; and
her eyes mocked like golden eyes of mockery ... until suddenly they
ceased to mock and died away in sadness, in unutterable sadness, as
though really they had always been sad and had never mocked or laughed.
"Gerrit ... dear Gerrit ... are you coming?"
"Yes ... yes ... I'm coming...."
"He's delirious," whispered Constance.
The room around the sick man had now become as glass, but not
transparent glass. For he no longer, through the walls of the room, saw
the universe and the beast: he saw nothing now save the room; but so
brittle was that room, so brittle all the things which it contained that
it seemed to be all of glass--the room, the bed and he--all glass, all
brittle glass, which a single incautious movement might shiver into
dust. Yes, now that the beast had sucked up all his marrow with that
voluptuous licking, it had let him go, left him lying exhausted on his
bed; and he lay, his glass body lay powerless to move; and, now that,
after a long time, he had laboriously opened his eyes and saw his room
around him as glass and felt himself as glass, he knew that the beast
would no longer dart the fiery shafts of his tongue, because it had
eaten the whole of him up. His body lay lifeless, like a glass husk; and
he asked himself if he wasn't dead. He did not know for certain that he
was alive. He saw that the room was very quiet; beside him, in the glass
atmosphere of his room, sat a man, who also seemed made of brittle
glass; and the man sat motionless: he seemed to be sitting with a book
in his hand, reading in the glassy twilight that filtered through the
close-drawn window-curtains....
The sick man laboriously closed his eyes again; and it seemed to him
that he sank away very slowly, into a great, downy abyss, lower and
lower, a very depth of down, into which he sank and went on sinking,
sank and went on sinking....
"There's less fever now," said the military doctor. "He's asleep."
"Is he out of danger?" asked the pale little wife, who sat with
Constance' arms around her.
"Yes.... You would be wise to take a rest, mevrouw."
"I can't ... I can't...."
"Go and get some sleep, Adeline," said Constance. "I'll stay in the room
with Gerrit; and the nurse will keep a good watch."
"He looked round for a moment very peacefully, before he fell asleep,"
said the male nurse by Gerrit's bedside.
"Go and get some sleep, Adeline...."
How long the sick man sank and sank and sank in the downy abyss no one
knew.... At last he opened his eyes again and looked into the room and
saw the quiet attendant sitting on a chair at the foot of his bed, where
he also saw a woman standing:
"Constance," the sick man murmured.
He tried to smile because he knew her, but he felt too weak to smile.
Another woman appeared beside the first: he knew her too, but it was as
though she were dead....
"Line," murmured the sick man.
"He knows us," whispered Constance.