It is night. It has never happened. He tries to plug the gaps through which the nightmare enters. Mostly those gaps open onto nothingness. Then an argument begins in a flash. You’re so sorry for yourself, he’d hear her say. I think you are despicable. This is sanity returning like a type of revenge. I’ll show those fuckers outside! Is there anyone will come part of the road with me? The man from Bohola will. So will the man from Bellagarvaun. And the man from Buleenaun. The man from Balla. His friend from Manulla. The girl from Dereen. And the woman out of Pontoon who wears football socks.

Then we’ll begin to wear each other down.

Each man has a fellow who gives him counsel.

If they take away the drugs they fear the loss of their soul. They need their souls. The soul does not fear isolation. It has no time for bitterness. It has unhinged bitterness. The nurse talks to him, taking down his words in her own hand. He can’t write. They sit in the Male Admissions office trying to spell certain words. When he hears his first name on her lips he feels weak.

He would like to sit in a room with nurse Rita forever dictating his confession. What he says to Rita is believed by her. Rita is sloe-black and tender. She takes up her pen. He recommences. Each man’s story must be written down. He writes theirs. She writes his. As he hesitates, she looks away desiring something back there, something else. She looks bruised; remembering passes the thing on.

“God stands beside me like a bedside lamp,” said the hairdresser, and she formed an O with her lips.

Jack dreamt that Catherine’s clitoris came away in his hands though it still remained part of her. He did not realize immediately what it was. She observed him closely as he moved around with her pleasure-centre in his hand. To him for a while it looked like a goanna, but presently it became a frog. When the goanna became a frog the room smelled of mushrooms and wet grass.

With that, he realized with a shock what he was carrying. He asked her if he took it behind the wall and rubbed it would she still feel pleasure? But Catherine said: No, you must be where I can see you. Then she closed her eyes. The fact that she closed her eyes could be interpreted as meaning that she trusted him completely, or that she had complete power over him as she lay there passively. Or, indeed, that she was entering a fantasy in which he had no part, all because of her propensity, as she would call it, for the stranger.