“BREAKFAST,” I ANNOUNCED.
This time Insel did not stir.
His head, although returned to normal volume scarcely indented the pillow. He was set in the perfect quadrates of a couch, having no rumple anywhere. As he lay upon it without taking contact with it, the comfortable bulges of covers tucked under a mattress sharpened to corners of trigonometric exactitude.
The smoothing systemizing vibrations that straightened his surroundings, obviously did not issue from his frame, which had half-died for contributing vitality to some focus of force.
Perhaps they were transmitted by his hair. I have always presumed that hair with its electric properties will not remain unutilized in a future evolution of the brain.
His hair—what little was left—was so fine, that without amalgamating, it had the unity of surface of the horny plate with which hair furnishes the extremities in its aggregate form of a nail.
Tentatively—I touched that hair, repeating “Breakfast” on a cheerful note—to appear as if I were patting his head to wake him up.
In a decreased microscopic degree, my fingers encountered the same onslaught as had my whole person in the corridor. A sharp crackle of inconceivably minuscule machine guns carried to some psychic center of my ear.
The effect was astonishing as when I had tapped him on the arm. Insel did not awaken—he turned his head as if he were pushing it up into strata of delight above him. Which on contact melted upon his face in a slow smile.
He was smiling as if the tip of the wing of an angel had fanned him.
Again, as I watched, I had the sensation of “breaking point,” an expectance of a spring flying loose to whirr insanely.
His face, like stale bread smeared with his private honey, stood still.
Then it broke.
With the unforeseen ugliness opening up suddenly emerging hippopotami the gums in their hideous defenselessness observed me—an obscene enjoyment of ill-will pleated his clamped lids.
His teeth had not decayed. They were worn down.
Der Totenkopf hung in my tract of vision like the last of Alice in Wonderland’s Cheshire cat.
Getting in touch with Insel was the whole itinerary of Good and Evil.
In the passing away of a miasma Insel awakened. Although never much the better for food, his temperament having relieved itself of some disproportionate impulse in that monomaniac gape, he now seemed normalized.
It was a serene creature who began to breakfast. Whatever introspective conflict usually engaged him, it had ceased.
“You really look rather well now. Why don’t you just stay and have that rest cure here. I’ll hire Bebelle to feed you—do everything for you while you lie down and drowse till you’re quite fit. I must get back to Saint-Cloud.”
“Impossible,” moaned Insel, instantly sagging, “I have to return to my troubles. You do not understand. They are my life. It waits for me.”
“Nonsense, you spent the night in Montparnasse in one incessant gurgle of laughter.”
“It was a hollow laughter,” he intercepted, sepulchrally. Insel had resumed his “line” which seemed so inadequate.
Should I risk an attempt to reveal to Insel those real-essences in Insel? Real-essences to a slight degree rationalized for my mind, they might be either the very symptoms of the so-called madness in him, or precisely the incognizable cause of his befuddlement.
“Insel,” I set out determinedly. “You must get over your ugliness—it’s an obsession! That’s not all there is to you—you have some intrinsic quality I have never found in anyone else. It’s difficult to tell you about it because I have no idea what it is. But it’s something so valuable it’s one’s duty to keep you alive to discover its nature.”
“Several alienists have offered to examine me— regularly—” said Insel, with self-complacence, “twice a week!”
“It’s not pathological—only unprecedented. A kind of radio-activity you give off—. Insel,” I asked puzzled, “how does the world look to you? Like an Aquarium?”
Insel looking no less puzzled than myself, I was taken aback. But I went on in the hope of striking common ground.
“It was the evening outside the Lutetia I experienced its effects. A sort of doubling of space where different selves lived different ways in different dimensions at once. Sitting on the sidewalk—floating in an Atlantic Ocean full of skyscrapers and ethereal cars. That was not particularly important— the wonder was the sense of timeless peace—of perfect happiness—”