I Hear Voices Read Online Free PDF Page A

“Nothing for Flower-Pot at all?” And still yearning hungrily back towards us, she wobbles heavily down the steps and away.
    “Is she really gone?” I ask fearfully.
    “Yes, she’s gone. Though I’ll meet her again. She often rides this way. Her swamp’s just over there.”
    And now I see that the wonderful colored banks have begun on either side of us. “Oh,” I exclaim, “how fine, we’ve reached the bowers at last.”
    The conductor nods cheerfully.
    “These are lovely bowers. These bowers have been provided by some benevolence. We never stop in these bowers.”
    “Still, just to look at them—”
    They are like roses, like sunset-cloud and dream.
    “What could one do in such bowers?” I ask.
    “Only bask.”
    Only bask? Is he really honest with me, this conductor?
    “You’re very plausible,” I say coldly and I see him stiffen slightly. His hand moves towards the bell.
    “This is your stop,” he says. “There can be nothing more between us.”
    And with an awful heaviness, I descend, plod wearily up the barren street and resume my egg.
    Our house is a small house. It is half a house and half the lives of our neighbors streams through its walls. I have not taken much interest in it lately. Breakfast is the meal I remember best. How old am I? You must count the vibrations and these are numerous. I tend to get out of touch with things. They never bring me newspapers. True, they never ask myopinion of the news but that doesn’t seem satisfactory either.
    I lie back and close my eyes. Is this my dark world? How deep shall I find it? How deep dare I descend? Whose hand waves in those dark mists? Is this my dark world? Is this my destiny?
    “Ah, younger brother, brave wanderer in dread regions.”
    “Arthur? Arthur, are you here too?”
    “In a sense, old son, in a sense I’m still beside you. You didn’t dream old Arthur got down here, did you? Old Arthur, you thought, blunt, sceptical old Arthur, he has no suspicion of my journeyings and explorations. Why, if I took old Arthur back a branch of the tree of night, he’s say it grew in old Groggin’s garden. But here I am, old son, groping beside you.”
    “Arthur,” I begin, and my heart is so full that I can hardly bring the words to my lips, “Arthur, I think I had rather you were here beside me than we were both careless in the bowers. But, Arthur—Arthur, what shall we do?”
    “Life tells you, old son. It always tells you, because you see, there is always only one thing to be done. We must plunge deeper yet.”
    “We will still be moving, then?”
    “Still moving, old son.”
    “I do hear you, Arthur. I’m paying close attention.”
    I strain to see him but see only a subterfuge. No one whistles, and then, tinkling through this dark world, comes a tin kicked in the street and restores my mortality.
    Arthur is not with me. Once I will not be deceived but it will be enough. It will be everything. Meanwhile it is a tissue. And this is my normal mood, the sort of mood they continually interrupt as I pursue it. I call it the indivisible. I see myself, broached in some corner and you would never guess the speed of my immobility. It takes that form. I must stay ever stiller to accelerate until—until—but this is my log—
    “Have you been good?”
    A relative has appeared in the doorway. For some time I do not answer, maintaining my glance on a blue resemblance. This makes her fearful and why should she not be fearful? Then I relent and allow her access to my glance. But it appears that she is not in the least fearful for she rummages furiously through my possessions.
    “Jane,” I cry, “Jane, what are you doing?”
    “Cousin Susan says, have you finished your egg?”
    “Has she got someone there? Did you look?”
    But the child only sits on the end of my bed looking a little cautious.
    “Jane, did you hear anything this morning?” I ask, trying to get to the bottom of this sprouting relative. “Don’t you respect me?”
    But