The Governor paused before the halls raying out from the anteroom. They were all precisely alike, shadowed, somber, murky; he chose the center one. The glow of kerosene lamps enshrined in recesses made pale brown half moons on the mud-colored floor. He would not have been surprised had the hall led to some cell from which there was no return, instead it ended in another anteroom. This one was square, with board benches. Fat candles on wooden stands slowly dripped wax; the floor was covered with sawdust and shavings.
There was a row of double-hinged saloon doors reaching from knee to shoulder. Lampley pushed through one. Sleepers were even more numerous here, piled closer together, and their smell was more nauseating. Some of the faces were rigid, lips drawn back in a snarl to uncover noisome caverns. Others were mobile in sleep, grinning, grimacing, teeth-grinding, cheek-puffing. Pale worms crawled out of one open mouth.
He recognized some of the sleepers. Playmates, school fellows, college acquaintances, his first employer, merchants and farmers to whom he had sold tractors or plows, political allies he had left behind, a candidate he had ostensibly supported, a lobbyist to whom he had promised his vote before he changed his mind, a legislator of the same party whom he had disavowed, an office-seeker whom he had praised with calculated faintness—a dozen others. He could remember the names of none. He saw a man he was sure was his uncle, his mother's brother, in whose home he had lived and who had sent him to school. "Uncle—Uncle—" he stammered, but the name would not come. He stooped to rouse the man, to beg him to tell his name, to relieve the burden of forgetfulness. His uncle—if it was—slept on, knees drawn up, jaw slack, fingers fluttering. Lampley's hands fell away from the recumbent figure.
He hooded his eyes against the other faces, heeding only the legs and bodies to keep himself from stumbling. He saw the treasures, tokens, souvenirs, keepsakes the outcasts possessed, spilled from their hands or pockets onto the crowded floor: curling photographs, creased letters, cracked newspaper clippings, locks of lifeless hair, tarnished luckpieces, battered amulets, illegible diplomas, crumpled certificates.
The dormitory was surrounded by bathrooms of lustrous tile, milky porcelain, harsh chrome fixtures. Men slept on the spotless floors, in the immaculate tubs, draped themselves over lavatories and close-stools. The one Lampley entered seemed less crowded than the others. A figure on the floor struggled free of his companions. It was the clerk. He closed the door and twisted the faucet in the bathtub. The elevator shot upward.
"I don't seem to remember any of the names," apologized the Governor.
The clerk smiled tolerantly, then frowned. He turned the faucet hard over; the elevator's speed became frightening. "There's forgetting and forgetting," he said. "Anyway, you'll remember these."
"What?" asked Lampley.
"These," said the clerk. The elevator stopped with a jolt. The clerk waved his hand. "Your floor."