“That’s o right,” said Higgs. “You can hold in if you want to. So you better. He can’t.”
The poet went on in a soft insinuating undertone reviling and mocking Sargon’s faith to a refrain of: “Tra-la-la. Tra-la-la.”
§ 5
Sargon sat up in bed, motionless now except that his head turned slowly to look at the people about him, and silent. His recent outbreak had in some way assuaged the exasperation of that endless recitation. It continued, now crazily persuasive, now strident and vehement, now a mere babble of words, it flowed past him and over him; it was now manifestly directed at him, but he was able to disregard it. He sat up and looked at the people about him and contemplated the vast dreadful hours that plainly lay before him.
He did not look beyond the coming night. That alone he foresaw as an eternity.
He knew that this harsh, naked electric light which prized up his eyelids however tightly he closed them, would be glaring all night; he knew that because he had noted a glance that Higgs had directed at the violent man with red hair. Instantly he knew that Higgs was afraid of that red-haired man with the shining pink skin and would never dare to have the ward in darkness, never dare to have even shade in it, whatever the custom or the regulations might be. And also he understood why ever and again Higgs went out of the room at the upper end; he went out to assure himself of the presence of Jordan or some such other helper, within call. Yes, this light would certainly keep on all night and the poet seemed as likely to keep on, and there would be occasional outbreaks of table hammering and shouting from the red-haired man and from another man who uttered a sudden flat shout ever and again. And there would be misadventures of various sorts; noises and comings and goings. So he might just as well sit up and think as lie down and make hopeless attempts to slumber. One could always think. Of course if one was too tired one would cease thinking onward, one would just think round and round, but it would be impossible not to go on waking and thinking. There was no sleeping in this place. Eyes, ears, nose were all too much offended. Did anyone ever sleep here, mad or sane?
There was nothing for him to do, therefore, but to sit up and think, sit up and think, doze perhaps and think into a dream, until some unexpected jolt or jar brought him back to his thinking.
The longest night must end at last.
Then suddenly Sargon, between sleeping and waking, saw something horrible. At least it struck upon his nerves as horrible. Two beds away from him there lay an extremely emaciated young man and his head was lifted up. It was not supported by pillows; it was six inches above the pillow. It was held up in an attitude that it was painful to realize. The young man’s face expressed a serenely proud satisfaction at this fantastic rigidity. It was incredible. Was there such a thing as an invisible pillow? Or was this a delusion of Sargon’s eyes, a waking dream?
In the bed beyond another man was lying down with his wakeful face towards Sargon. His eyes met Sargon’s. Neither man said a word nor made a gesture, but to each came infinite comfort. For the eyes each encountered were as sane as his own and each gave support to the other. It is so, they said. It is strange, but your eyes are not deceiving you. That is the form of that young man’s affliction.