From the Journal of Mallare dated November.

“I no longer understand myself. My thoughts stretch themselves into baffling elasticities. My brain is a labyrinth through which reason searches in vain for itself. I walk cautiously. Yet I am lost.

“To think has become like adding a continually increasing column of figures. I sit and add. The figures will add up into a finite sum and this sum will be the understanding of myself. I apply myself carefully to each figure [Seventy-six] and say, ‘two and three are five. Five and seven are twelve.’ But as I reach what seems an end I find more figures waiting me.

“I can no longer add up the fragments or interpret them. I must be content now to sit and wait until this part of me—my relation to myself—splinters into fragments and I become a dice box shaking with mysterious and invisible combinations.

“It is the phantom Rita that is threatening to drive me into darkness. Since I murdered her in the street, the hallucination has become overwhelming. It is with me almost continually. When I open my eyes from sleep I find it waiting at my bed. The hallucination leaves me when I am outside, although at times a trace of it returns and I seem more to feel its presence within me than behold it with my senses.

“Yes, I am clinging desperately to these moments of objectivity which enable me to write. But even they threaten to betray me. For as I write doubts dance like macabre figures among my words. The very sentences seem to [Seventy-seven] stretch themselves into ridiculous postures. And I must almost close my eyes and stumble blindly through a storm of denouements.

“I desired to create for myself a world within which I might love and hate—to be a God lost within his dream. Madness was necessary, so I embraced it. But my dream becomes the product of a Frankenstein. She—the hallucination—is more real to my senses than am I. And I can no longer control her. My senses are unfaithful to me. They philander clownishly with this mirage of my thought. Then what is there left? I. This grim figure stumbling with his head down through a storm of denouements. I persist—an unwelcome visitor, a bargain-hunting tourist in Bedlam. I remain.

“But it is a boast that laughs back at me. For I will soon be a little plaything of my phantom. Last night I walked until I thought I had rid myself. Her eyes alone lingered. Her hands moved like slow dancers. But I walked and said to myself, ‘I am tired of nonsense. I am tired of this monotonous hallucination. At [Seventy-eight] least let me be unfaithful to my dream since I am the God who created it.’

“I walked to the street where a month ago she had followed me under the arc lamp. It was cold and I grew tired. I came back to sleep. ‘Gone, she is gone,’ I whispered to myself. The room appeared empty. I was cautious, knowing the ruses of this thing in my mind. For my madness and I are no longer friends. My madness hides for me and plays tricks.

“But she returned. I smiled at her. It is folly to grow angry with one’s own hallucinations. That would be a double madness. As she stood before me, my treacherous senses leaped to their sterile feast. And I smiled.

“‘My egoism has betrayed me,’ I reasoned. ‘The love that gleams from the eyes of this hallucination is the invention of my egoism. Alas, I love myself too much, for the passion for Mallare with which my madness endows this illusion of a woman, threatens me. My senses have already abandoned me. They no longer obey the direction of my will. And [Seventy-nine] I must stand like a scold, laughing and sneering at them as they yield themselves to her. She is more powerful, therefore, than I, even though her existence is no more than a shadow cast in front of my eyes.’

“I reasoned in this fashion and continued to smile. It would be best, perhaps, to humor her. Who knows but even hallucinations are subject to wiles and coquetry. A disturbing fancy, this—one of the distortions that insist upon raising their mocking heads from the midst of my cautious sentences.

“She came and knelt beside me and I shook my head at her. She was dressed in a gown I had never seen before. It was red. I spoke aloud and said—

“‘See, how abominably clever I am. My madness is a jack of all trades. It makes new dresses for its phantoms. It arranges their coiffures. It even puts rouge on their cheeks.’

“But as I talked her hands reached out to me. To look into her eyes that are always alive with flames is to succumb. For then I find [Eighty] myself dreaming my dream is not a dream. My senses clamor that I join them.

“‘Forget. Forget,’ they whisper, ‘come with us.’

“But I chose to persist. I remain. To sit in an empty whorehouse and masturbate…. No! If this hallucination grows powerful enough to trick my senses into clownish fornications, let my madness enjoy them. Not I. We are no longer friends, my madness and I.

“She pressed her cheek against my leg. I could feel her body trembling.

“I remained motionless and spoke to her. ‘Each night you grow bolder,’ I said. I am no different from other Gods in that I seem to have endowed you with the instinct of profanation. But at least Eve did not turn on Jehovah with the whore tricks learned from His apple. There is consolation, however, in the fact that I, too, can remain indifferent. Indifference is the wisdom of God.

“‘You may play with me. Yet I know that the burn of your hand on my body is an [Eighty-one] absurdity, of interest only to my idiot senses. My arms reach out to embrace you. Your breasts surprise my fingers. Come, sit in my lap if you wish. No, I would rather enjoy you as before—standing before me naked. Take off your clothes.’

“While I talked she clung to me. Her lips passed kisses over my face. I continued, however, to observe; to remain a spectator. She removed her clothes, tearing them from her body and laughing. And standing before me naked but for her black silk stockings and red slippers, she held out her arms. But I shook my head and smiled.

“‘I am the victim of an overwhelming desire to masturbate,’ I said to her, ‘since I find it difficult to resist you. But if I yield to the mysterious reality you have assumed I will become too grotesque for my vanity to tolerate. I will remain aware while possessing you that my penis is beating a ludicrous tattoo on a sofa cushion. I choose rather to emulate the pride of St. Anthony, who shrewdly refused to play the whoremonger with shadows.’[Eighty-two]
“I smiled at her and she laughed. She crouched on her feet staring up at me. Raising my eyes from her, I saw Goliath. He was standing in the curtains of his room, watching me with a curious, open-mouthed fury. I saw that the little monster was beginning to understand that I was mad, and this irritated me. There was danger in him, since even through his stupid head must have passed a wonder of what had happened to Rita.

“I frowned at Goliath and his head rolled frightenedly on his heavy shoulders.

“‘Why do you bother me when I wish to be alone?’ I cried. ‘Go to your bed and leave me.’

“I stood up and went for him. His head fell and he dragged himself back into his room. This was, perhaps, the most curious thing in the incident. ‘I am ashamed of being seen with this nude phantom,’ I thought. For a moment the mad idea came to me that she was visible to Goliath—that he was watching us—me and this figment of mine. My anger was shame. [Eighty-three] My senses are logical in their pretenses. How can I stand out against them, if they grow cleverer than I, more persuasive than I, and lead me finally into the total madness of accepting them as Mallare—the one Mallare, the lunatic who has escaped himself? I must not escape.

“When I returned she was still crouching on the floor. I decided to experiment. Perhaps there was still some lingering sense in me that would fail to succumb to this astonishing make-believe.

“‘Come here. On the couch,’ I ordered her.

“She obeyed. She stretched herself out and I sat beside her. The odor of her body was distinct. Perfumes spread a clever gloss over the woman smell, the bitter salt odor that stirred from between her closed thighs. I smiled, for the logic of this illusion grows entertaining. But I had decided on experiments. My hands stroked her hair, feeling of its strands. My fingers pressed at the skull beneath the warm skin of her head. Then I held her breasts, that [Eighty-four] had once seemed to me like two little blind faces raised in prayer. But imagery no longer decorates my thought. My hallucination is no longer a weaver of magical phrases. But stark, real—its heart beating under ribs, its skin glowing with perspiration, its nipples standing out. As I caressed her I heard her say:

“‘Yours. Yours. I am your woman.’

“Her thighs opened and her arms that had been held toward me fell to her sides. My hand slipped between. There was warm flesh. Yes, it was flesh to my mind. And I sat for moments allowing the illusion to stir a passion in me. I would throw myself on this thing, hold it in my arms, give myself to it. Where was the wrong in that, since it was only myself I ravished—a phantom mocking me behind my eyes?

“Goliath saved me. I saw him standing once more in the curtains of his room. His long arms were beating against his sides, the black fingers opening and shutting like frantic talons. He stood with his head rolling as if he [Eighty-five] were trying to stand erect. His eyes were insane.

“I sprang away, again pulled by the unmistakable emotion of shame. He glared at me for a moment, but as my hand caught his face he toppled over and lay whining. I picked him up and threw him into his bed and locked the door of his room.

“When I returned she still lay. Her eyes were closed. She looked at me and I saw she was weeping.

“‘Since you are not to be reasoned out of existence, since you seem to resist what is left of my sanity—there is nothing to do but tolerate you.’

“I sat in my chair and spoke to her.

“‘It will end in my loathing you,’ I said. ‘I created you in order to possess you beyond the realism of the senses. For a time your body was like a rich curtain before the door of enchantments which I might enter at will.

“‘But there is no longer a door. Your body alone confronts me. In this way I am reduced [Eighty-six] to enjoying my dream with my senses. Then it means only that I have achieved nothing more by my madness than the privilege of masturbating with the aid of an erotic phantom.

“‘Alas, the reason of it is clear. Man’s fiber is fouled throughout with sex. I sought to emancipate myself from all relation to life. The delusion of my hopes is more to be pitied than the disorder of my vanity. For I see now that man is a collection of adjectives loaned to a phallus. His intellect is no more than a diverting hiatus between fornications. His soul, yes, his very egoism on which he prides himself, is a synthetic erection.

“‘To possess! What a delusion! And for its sake I threw my genius away. I stripped the world from my eyes that it might not intrude upon the universe within me. A paradise in which I might strut alone. Possess myself. Yes, and here I am, aware at last of folly. For my senses belong to life. And though I buried myself in a madness deeper than night, they would still cling to me. Though I castrated [Eighty-seven] myself, they would remain—five invisible testicles. It is impossible to possess. Folly to attempt. As long as the senses remain life clings like a dead whore to my darkness. Even my madness that I prided myself upon is a babbling witch astride a phallus, her lips bending over it with grewsome hungers.

“‘There is only one castration—death. What am I now? Mad? Yes. And worse. Disillusioned. I have closeted myself with a lecherous animal and it turns on me. That is the reward of the privacy I hungered after.

“‘And you who lie and weep on a couch are no longer the dream of a God, but the crude marionette created by lust for its own diversion. I thought only to go mad. But I see I have become an idiot.’

“There was no more to say. Her weeping ended and she vanished. But she will return. In my sleep her outline wanders like an amorous ghost haunting the grave of my senses. Ah, I must be cautious now, more cautious, always cautious. It would be too easy to yield. And if [Eighty-eight] I yielded and returned again my defeat would be unbearable. I think it is easier to die. Death is no more than a premature torment. Its name alone is a suffering. Its reality but a final illusion.

“But I persist. I still remain. There is a rhythm to things that still seduces me. A gentle curiosity that gives the lie to my bewilderment. I sit, an audience, shedding crocodile tears at a melodrama.

“Tomorrow … tomorrow. Who can think that word is still himself? What difference does it make if I grow uncomfortable and swollen with illusions? I persist. And who knows but tomorrow will be a door in my labyrinth … a bottom to this pit into which I have fallen?”