'I believe in static forms of beauty,' he said. 'I like to measure off things and then let them remain. I try to create degrees of silence. Things in this room are simple and static. They're measured off carefully. When I change something slightly, everything changes. The change becomes immense. My life in here almost resembles a certain kind of dream. You know the way objects in dreams sometimes acquire massive significance. They resound somehow. It's easy to fear objects in dreams. It gets like that in here at times. I seem to grow smaller at times and the room appears almost to lengthen. The spaces between objects become a little bit frightening. I like the colors in here, the way they never move, never change. The room tone changes though. There's a hum at times. There's a low roar. There's a kind of dumb brute chant. I think the room tone changes at different times of day. Sometimes it's oceanic and there's other times when it's just barely there, a sort of small pulse in an attic. The radio is important in this regard. The kind of silence that follows the playing of the radio is never the same as the silence that precedes it. I use the radio in different ways. It becomes almost a spiritual exercise. Silence, words, silence, silence, silence.'
'My roommate wets the bed,' I said. 'It's a little hard for me to evolve any kind of genuine stasis under the circumstances. Somehow pee is inimical to stasis. Although I wouldn't want to have to prove it phenomenologically, if that's the word I want.'
'I can see your difficulty.'
'What about books, Taft? How do they enter into the scheme? I have a problem in that regard. I like to read about mass destruction and suffering. I spend a lot of time reading stuff that concerns thermonuclear war and things that pertain to it. Horrible diseases, fires raging in the inner cities, crop failures, genetic chaos, temperatures soaring and dropping, panic, looting, suicides, scorched bodies, arms torn off, millions dead. That kind of thing.'
'I like to read about the ovens,' Taft said.
'What do you mean, the ovens? Are you serious?'
'Atrocities. I like to read about atrocities. I can't help it. I like to read about the ovens, the showers, the experiments, the teeth, the lampshades, the soap. I've read maybe thirty or forty books on the subject. But I Like kids best. Putting the torch to kids and their mamas. Smashing kids in the teeth with your rifle butt. Laying waste to villages full of kids. Firing into ditches full of kids, infants, babies, so forth. That's my particular interest. Atrocities in general with special emphasis on kids.'
'I can't bear reading about kids.'
'I can't either, Gary.'
'The thought of children being tortured and killed.'
'It's the worst thing there is. I can't bear it. But I've read maybe eight books on it so far. Thirty or forty on the ovens and eight on the kids. It's horrible. I don't know why I keep reading that stuff.'
'There must be something we can do,' I said.
'It's getting to be time to turn toward Mecca. The black stone of Abraham sits in that shrine in old Mecca, the name of which I'll have to look up again because I keep forgetting it. Not that it matters. A name's a name. A place could just as easily be another place. Abraham was black. Did you know that? Mary the mother of Jesus was black. Rembrandt and Bach had some Masai blood. It's all in the history books if you look carefully enough. Tolstoy was threeeighths black. Euclid was sixfifths black. Not that it means anything. Not that any of it matters in the least. Lord, I think I'm beginning to babble.'
He took off the dark glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose in true weariness. His eyes were shut. He began to laugh quietly into the newspaper between his knees, preparing in his own way for whatever religious act was scheduled to follow.
I went downstairs to see what I could find out about the rumor concerning new uniforms. There was nobody around and no sign of uniforms, new or old. I decided to walk over to Zapalac's office, which was located in a cinder-block structure only a hundred yards away. I didn't bother getting a coat. It wasn't very cold and I took my time walking over there. The building was full of small dark rooms, all unoccupied. The walls of Zapalac's office were covered with posters, printed slogans, various symbols of this or that movement. His scarf was there but he wasn't.
In my room at five o'clock the next morning I drank half a cup of lukewarm water. It was the last of food or drink I would take for many days. High fevers burned a thin straight channel through my brain. In the end they had to carry me to the infirmary and feed me through plastic tubes.
