Cold Turkey 231
unique. But, of course, he is not really unique in the
way that I am....
We have lighted a huge fire in the billiard-room. We
sleep there so far as we sleep at all. We got the waiter
to bring down blankets and quilts from the bedroom,
and he leaves the food on the table.
But fires are no good. The cold comes from inside
us. We sit in front of the blaze, roasting our hands
and faces; but it makes no difference. We shiver.
We try to sing like soldiers round a camp fire, but
the only words that come are the appropriate ones.
That poem has obsessed us. It fills our souls to the
exclusion of everything else except the thirst.
“Every separate bone
Cold, an incarnate groan
Distilled from the icy sperm
Of Hell’s implacable worm.”
We repeated them over and over. ...
I don’t know how one thing ever turns into another.
We are living in an eternity of damnation. It is a
mystery how we ever get from the fire to the table or
the two big Chesterfields. Every action is a separate
agony rising to a climax which never comes. There
is no possibility of accomplishment or of peace.
“Every separate nerve
Awake and alert, on a curve
Whose asymptote’s name is ‘never’
In a hyperbolic ‘for ever !’”
I don’t know what some of the words mean. But
there is a fascination about them. They give the
idea of something without limit. Death has become
impossible, because death is definite. Nothing can
really ever happen. I am in a perpetual state of pain.
Everything is equally anguish. I suppose one state
D.D.F. Q