You could say that I dreamed.

I was standing on the roof next door where Halliday had stood. I was looking down at the steps. There was sunlight everywhere, not the heavy light of Rome but a kind of radiance as if the sun were everywhere. I’d never noticed before, but now I saw, looking down, that the steps had the symmetrical curve of a musical instrument, guitar, cello, violin. But this harmonious shape was now embellished and interrupted everywhere by the people and the flowers and the glitter of the jewels strewn among them on the steps. All the people were young and like flowers. I found that he was standing by me on the roof of his house after all and we went down together and stood among the people with the patterns of jewels and the heaps of flowers all blazing inside and out with the radiance. Then they made music of the steps. They held hands and moved and the movement was music. I saw they were neither male nor female or perhaps they were both and it was of no importance. What mattered was the music they made. Male and female was of no importance for me, he said, taking me by the hand and leading me to one side. There were steps going down, narrow steps to a door with a drum head. We went through. I think that there was a dark, calm sea beyond it, since I have nothing to speak with but with metaphor. Also there were creatures in the sea that sang. For the singing and the song I have no words at all.

I woke up not singing but crying; or of those tears it is better to say that I wept and went on weeping. Believe it or not I was drunker when I woke than when I went to sleep and the tears were flowing so that when I found where I was I examined the bed to see if I’d pissed myself but I hadn’t. The bedspread and pillow were wet with tears like in books. Even so the boil had burst, the pain and the strain had gone because I knew where I was going myself, or rather the direction in which I was facing and that there was no more need to run. I could walk and the rest of the journey would simply be provided. A woman knocked on the door and brought in croissants and coffee and a bottle of wine. When she came in I was laughing which startled her but I couldn’t explain what I was laughing at. She wouldn’t have believed it. But the fact is my feet and my hands were not hurting unbearably. They were still hurting but as if a doctor had put some sort of salve on them that hurt because it would heal. I don’t think there’s a scientific explanation though if you’re a scientist you may cook one up and if you’ve kept up your religion you may cook one up but hell I’m not dealing with fatuous abstractions like religion or science I’m dealing with life I tell you and asisness, Istigkeit I think they sometimes call it, how it is to be human though a, quote, mere fish but a queer fish, unquote. It was also because my feet and hands were hurting sort of like funny bones, as if I’d knocked four elbows.