derisive smile. Always I encounter faces of stupid earnestness. They are positively not putting it on, unless earnest self-deception had become second nature. They are not pretending to be such fools. They are such fools…

      There is this phase between dreaming and awakening, there is a sense of rapidly intensifying conflict and strain before the straining catgut snaps—exactly as it snaps when we come out of anaesthesia. The Brocken Witches’ Sabbath begins dispersing and dissolving, becomes a wildly spinning whirl. Will there be enough broomsticks for everybody? Hi broomstick! Are you engaged, broomstick? That’s my broomstick. They all leap for the nearest one. They rush to and fro about me and through me, terrified at the Berlioz clangor that heralds the night of the Gods. The Archbishop, Inge, His Holiness, Rabbis, thrust about me. They spin up towards the zenith colliding and fighting among themselves—serious to the end.