“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.