And then out of the dark another wheel was pressing and turning.
"How fast has brother followed brother
From sunshine to the sunless land."
Away on the hard dark periphery of his consciousness, the wheel of these words was turning and grinding.
His mind was turning helplessly, but his feet walked on. He realised in a weird, mournful way that he was shut groping in a dark unfathomable cave, and that the walls of the cave were his own aching body. And he was going on and on in the cave, looking for the fountain, the water. But his body was the aching, ghastly, jutting walls of the cave. And it made this weary grind of words on the outside. And he had need to struggle on and on.
In little flickers he tried to associate his dark cave-consciousness with his grinding body. Was it night, was it day?
But before he had decided that it was night, the two things had gone apart again, and he was groping and listening to the grind.
"But hushed be every thought that springs
From out the bitterness of things.
Those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things
Falling from us, vanishing."
He was so weary of the outward grind of words. He was stumbling as he walked. And waiting for the walls of the cave to crash in and bury him altogether. And the spring of water did not exist.
"Blank misgivings of a creator moving about in a world not realised."
This phrase almost united his two consciousnesses. He was going to crash into this creator who moved about unrealised. Other people had gone, and other things. Monica, Easu, Tom, Mary, Mother, Father, Lennie. They were all like papery, fallen leaves blowing about outside in some street. Inside here there were no people at all, none at all. Only the Creator moving around unrealised. His Lord.