Nunquam [antikvár]

Asleep or awakewhat difference? Or rather, if there were a difference how would you recognise it? And if it were a recognisable difference would there be anything or anyone to care if you did or notsome angel with a lily-gilding whisper to say: "Well done."? Ay, there's the rub.My head aches, it isn't only the woundthat is on the mend."Guilty in what you didn't know, what you hoped to escape merely by averting your face." Ah!He wakes, then, this manifestation of myself so vaguely realised that it is hard to believe in him: he wakes in a room whose spare anonymity suggests one of the better-class hotels; no feudal furniture, no curtains smelling of tobacco or cats. Yet the towels in the bathroom are only stencilled over with a capital "p". The Bible beside the bed is chained to the wall with a slender brass chain; owing to some typographical mishap it is quite illegible, the ink has run. Only the title-page can be made out. Well, where am I, then? In what city, what country? It will come back, it always does; but in waking up thus he navigates a long moment of confusion during which he tries to establish himself in the so-called reality which depends, like a poor relation, on memory. The radio is of unknown provenance; it plays light music so characterless that it might be coming from anywhere at all. But where? He cannot tell for the life of himnote the expression: for the life of him! His few clothes have no tabs of identity, and indeed some have no buttons. Ah, that strikes a vague chord! There is a small green diary by the bed, perhaps that might afford a clue? It has the other one's name in it. Felix Ch. But the book seems very much out of datesurely the Coronation was years ago? It seems, too, full of improbable Latin-American itineraries; moreover in the middle a whole span of months is missing, has been torn out. Gone! Vanished months, vanished days11