I Hear Voices Read Online Free PDF

she only mumbles incoherently and, before I can decide how to proceed, someone, probably Cousin Susan, calls out her name and she patters away.
    I had better escape from here soon. I fancy some of them are imposters. They set me out too early. They also tried to bewilder me. I look down at the egg and try to distract myself with the yolk. Again, my thoughts flash to the brooding hen, the little bit of dust, the storm-torn sea, the hard rocks and the soft inter-streaming rocks—
    Oh stop, I plead, stop, a moment, grant me one moment to recollect myself.
    The prayer works. Wonderingly I touch the white sheet and thin ridges of my breast. I am here. This is No. 75, Walpole Avenue and my name is—this is No. 75, Walpole—and I am certainly here—no dates, I don’t really need them even at moments like these—but this is my real home and Arthur and Cousin Susan and the rest are about. I won’t have to work today. Of course, I haven’t worked for a long time. Firmly, Iresist a fleeting impulse to brood on this matter. And then, to improve the morning, I lay back my coverings, turn myself out of bed and pad, the surface rather waxy and disagreeable admittedly, to the windows. I draw back half the curtains and look out into Cabbage—no into Walpole Street.
    How we have caked the earth. How our deposits mar its surface. A number of us live in Walpole Street, brains working the whole time. Ivy Calverson who married an Italian lives here. Lots of others—Groggins—we keep them apart—Just now, at this early hour, the street is not very blue. It is not convulsed. A neighbor issues from his doorway, hesitates, and then makes a gesture at a flower or possibly at some parasite to which the flower is host. Then he looks sad for some time and then he looks at his watch. The street roars violently with engines. Cables lash above the street and above the world and a glare—
    No, a glass of beetroot. A glass of sage-dust and a little ear thing. It does not appear to be a school day. I detect no scholars. I do not hear their sad music for lately they have revived the old custom of assembling scholars into enormous choirs to chant sad hymns of endurance—they also crash—they have spirit, the scholars of today.
    But now I turn my attention once more to Corcoran Street and I notice that it is running slightly, as if there were a permanent drain of its substance. I also see a woman peering at me. I see a dog, of the kind that once hunted chores in the Lebanon and I can see little other life. There is little of it left these days. Hunter, I think it was, planted an apple pip recently but I don’t think anything came of it. Anyway, it is hardly lilac time. It is a curious time this morning. Things I had assumed to be parallel really form intersections. There is no postman, nor teeming couriers. There is no oak-heart. Now some bits of metal are empanoplied, empaneled—now somecores have begun emitting—I wonder briefly about the Central Focus but am distracted by Hunter climbing into his old van.
    I think they are setting up a hammer further on to pound down obsolete houses. They have started chasing people with metal claws and they are rolling huge steel balls down the side streets. These are all recent developments but they contribute to the general unrest.
    People are restless. You can tell by the way they move about. You can tell from the rigid bony structure. Governments are powerless to control it. They have not enough delegates. To keep the situation really in hand you need one for every handful of people. You need spies. You need tailors and the best carved goblets. There’s no government in the world has these resources . Sometimes they strike a new mine or dig up hosts of treasure that may, incidentally, provide illumination on other ages. Government had the same problems then. They kept changing. Parts of government would slide back into populace. Populace would rear up a crest of authority and become government . Who were