He was thinking: "Why shouldn't the women be the witches? They're
the intuitionalists, the traditionalists, the irrationalists. And
like Tansy, most of them are never quite sure whether or not their
witchcraft really works."
They had shoved back the carpet and were dancing to "Chloe." Sometime
or other she had changed to her rose dressing gown.
He was thinking: "In the second category, put the Estrey dragon.
Animated by a human or nonhuman soul conjured into it by Mrs. Gunnison
and controlled through photographs. Inhibited by the Protective Screen
so long as the Protective Screen existed."
They had put on a record of Ravel's "Bolero," and he was beating out
the rhythm with his fist.
He was thinking: "All sculpture has a magical significance, from the
Aurignacian Venus to Epstein's 'Genesis.' The underlying intention has
always been to produce a manikin capable of being animated by sorcery."
He was watching Tansy as she sang "St. Louis Blues" in a hoarsely
throbbing voice. It was true, just as Welby had always maintained, that
she had a genuine theatrical flair. Make a good chanteuse.
He was thinking: "Tansy stopped the Estrey dragon with the knots.
But she'll have a hard time doing anything like that again, because
Mrs. Gunnison has her book of formulas and can figure out ways to
circumvent."
They were sharing a highball that would have burned his throat if his
throat had not been numb, and he seemed to be getting most of it.
He was thinking: "The tarot stick figure of the man and the truck is
the key to a group of related sorceries. Cards began as instruments of
magic, like sculpture. These sorceries aim at finishing me off. The
bull-roarer acts as an amplifier or reinforcement. The thing standing
behind me, with the flat voice and heavy hands, is a guardian, to see
to it that I do not deviate from the path appointed. Bull-roaring and
flat voice were associated in my dream. Narrow corridor. Two weeks
more."
The strange thing was that these thoughts were not altogether
unpleasant. They had a wild, black, poisonous beauty of their own,
a lovely, deadly shimmer. They possessed the fascination of the
impossible, the incredible. They hinted at unimaginable vistas. Even
while they terrorized, they did not lose that chillingly poignant
beauty. They were like the visions conjured up by some forbidden drug.
They had the lure of an unknown sin and an ultimate blasphemy. He could
understand the force that compelled the practitioners of black magic
to take any risk.
His drunkenness made him feel safe. It had broken his mind down into
its ultimate particles, and those particles were incapable of fear
because they could not be injured. Just as the iron molecules of a
battleship are quite safe from the bomb which blows the battleship
apart.
But now the particles were whirling crazily. Consciousness was wavering.
They were in each other's arms.
Tansy was asking eagerly, coaxingly, "All that's mine is yours? All
that's yours is mine?"
The question awakened a suspicion in his mind, but he could not grasp
it clearly. Something made him think that the words held a trap. But
what trap? His thoughts stumbled and reeled.
She was saying--it sounded like the Bible--"and I have drunk from your
cup and eaten from your table--"
Her face was a blurred oval, her eyes like misty jewels.
"Everything you have is mine? You give it to me without hindrance and
of your own free choice?"
Somewhere a trap.
But the voice was irresistibly coaxing, like tickling fingers.
"All you have is mine? Just say it once, Norm, just once. For me."
Of course he loved her. Better than anything else in the world.
"Yes ... yes ... everything--" he heard himself saying.
And then his mind toppled and plunged down into a fathomless ocean of
darkness, and silence, and peace.