But though I kept the stove so hot that it glowed red, I still had to hug it close, my overcoat on, and a pair of huge, woollen socks that I'd bought at the general store down in West Grove.
But, despite the intense cold, I worked and worked ... my play, Judas was nearing completion ... its publication would mean the beginning of my life as a man of letters, my "coming out" in the literary world.
I ate my food from open cans, not taking the trouble to cook.
At night (I had pulled my bed out close to the stove) I heaped all the blankets in the house over me, and still shivered ... I lived on the constant stimulus of huge draughts of coffee....
"Only a little while longer ... only a few days more ... and the play will then be finished ... and it will be published. And it will be produced.
"Then the woman, my first and only woman, she will be with me again forever ... I'll take her to Italy, away from all the mess that has cluttered about our love for each other."
One day, in an effort to keep the house warm—the one room I confined myself to, rather,—I stoked the stove so hot that the stovepipe grew red to the place where it went through the roof into the attic....
My mind, at the time, was in far-off Galilee. I was on the last scene of the last act of my play ... the disciples, after the crucifixion, were gathered in the upper room again, waiting for the resurrected Christ to appear to take the seat left vacant for Him....
I looked up from the page over which my frosty fingers crawled....