And now she sat very neatly shaped in the very outline of the guitar played by Rango, her body tuned by the keys of her fingers as if Rango were playing on the strands of her hair, of her nerves, and the black notes were issuing from the black pupils of her eyes.

At least she could be considered as attending the party: her eyes were not closed, as they had been a half hour earlier when she was telling the Chess Player about phosphenes: phosphenes are the luminous impressions and circles seen with the eyelids closed, after the sudden compression of the eyeball. "Try it!"

The guitar distilled its music. Rango played it with the warm sienna color of his skin, with the charcoal pupil of his eyes, with the underbrush thickness of his black eyebrows, pouring into the honey-colored box the flavors of the open road on which he lived his gypsy life: thyme, rosemary, oregano, marjoram and sage. Pouring into the resonant sound-box the sensual swing of his hammock hung across the gypsy-cart and the dreams born on his mattress of black horsehair.

Idol of the night clubs, where men and women barred the doors and windows, lit candles, drank alcohol, and drank from his voice and his guitar the potions and herbs of the open road, the charivaris of freedom, the drugs of leisure and laziness, the maypole dance of the fireflies, the horse's neighing fanfaronade, the fandangos and ridottos of sudden lusts.

Shrunken breasts, vacillating eyes, hibernating virilities, all drank out of Rango's guitar and sienna voice. At dawn, not content with the life transfusion through cat guts, filled with the sap of his voice which had passed into their veins, at dawn the women laid hands upon his body like a tree. But at dawn Rango swung his guitar over his shoulder and walked away.

Will you be here tomorrow, Rango?

Tomorrow he might be playing and singing to his black horse's philosophically swaying tail on the road to the south of France.

Now arrived a very drunken Jay with his shoal of friends: five pairs of eyes wide open and vacant, five men wagging their heads with felicity because they are five. One a Chinese poet, tributary of Lao Tze; one Viennese poet, echo of Rilke; Hans the painter derived from Paul Klee; an Irish writer feebly stemming from Joyce. What they will become in the future does not concern them: at the present moment they are five praising each other and they feel strong and they are tottering with felicity.

They had had dinner at the Chinese restaurant, a rice without salt and meat with tough veins, but because of the shoal beatitude Jay proclaimed he had never eaten such rice, and five minutes later forgetting himself he said: "Rice is for the dogs!" The Chinese poet was hurt, his eyelids dropped humbly.