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crying, ‘I’ve remembered what it was I had to show you. You’ll be amazed!’
    I stepped through the invisible surface separating the cool sharp wax-polish smell of the hallway from the sleepy erotic scents of the white and purple pyramids of blossom in the courtyard. Daytime fireworks were scattering noisy black stars above the rooftops. Midgley was waving a photograph before my eyes; it was a mere blur in the dazzle. ‘It’s your opium-dream,’ he cried, capering around me in triumph.
    ‘What do you mean? Taken by action-at-a-distance?’
    ‘No, I ran back here to collect the apparatus, and arrived at the opium-shop just as you were going under. You are the first person ever to have his dream photographed; I hope you don’t mind.’
    ‘I’ll tell you that in a moment,’ I said. At the corner of the crowded street stood a man holding a bush; while Midgley bought one of the leaf-shaped festival programmes impaled on its twigs, Icrouched in its shade to examine the picture. It was indistinct, but I could make out a naked girl, on a beach, grinning, and waving some blurred object. ‘What’s the innuendo in her hand?’ I asked. Midgley shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘It’s your dream, you know.’
    It was hot; I began to shout. ‘My most idle reverie has more profundity than this! It’s nothing but a dirty postcard from your own subconscious!’
    Midgley twitched the thing out of my hands and gave me a reproving look. ‘You can’t argue with science, as I’m sure you will realizeupon reflection. My part in this was merely to clarify certain indications the layman might overlook, and which in fact Persimmon brought to my attention. Anyway she looks like the girl you danced with that night; it’s to be expected you should dream of her.’
    I grabbed the card back; the blotchy bulbous creature didn’t look at all like Nit. I tore it into little bits and flung them into the gutter. After a moment of paralysis Midgley dived to collect them. As I strode off into the crowd I heard him wailing after me, ‘How many pieces were there?’
    *
    A number of twisted alleys threw Midgley’s intrusive images off the track, but as soon as I rejoined the crowds lining the procession route I saw Persimmon looking down at me from one of the hundreds of windows in an immense office-block. There was someone at every window; why had my eye immediately met his? He beckoned , apparently offering me a share in his vantage-point, but I pretended not to see him and turned back into the quiet parts of the city emptied by the pull of the festival. Soon I found a small shapeless open space at the juncture of several narrow streets; in its centre a tree had transformed itself into a little forest by dropping dozens of minor trunks from its branches to the ground. The earthwas trodden hard into warm brown paths winding among the pillars of the tree; some fat grey monkeys slept fitfully in the branches. I leaned against the central trunk, where it was cool and shady. In the high wall opposite me was a gate; its delicate lattice of wood was broken in places. On either side of the worn step in front of it slept a small plump crocodile, blindfolded with moss. Above the wall I could see among foliage three people in bright yellow robes, climbing ladders to gather fruit; I could just hear their murmured talk. Further back in the little courtyard a gilded dragon marked the corner of a temple roof. A gong sounded, once, very deep and mellow . The priests came down from the trees with their baskets, and were hidden from me by the wall. The gong stroke came again, and then there was silence.
    I could hear flies buzzing. I stepped round the big tree-trunk and met a dreadful stench. A pig’s face, stripped from the bone and flattened out like a mask, was fixed to the tree-trunk by four nails; blood had collected and dried in the hollow of a stone below it. I jumped into the sunshine and hurried through the deserted streets to join the