round in a ring with blub lips, entranced, listening. Still life. Lap it
up like milk, I suppose.


The cold smell of sacred stone called him. He trod the worn steps,
pushed the swingdoor and entered softly by the rere.

Something going on: some sodality. Pity so empty. Nice discreet place
to be next some girl. Who is my neighbour? Jammed by the hour to slow
music. That woman at midnight mass. Seventh heaven. Women knelt in the
benches with crimson halters round their necks, heads bowed. A batch knelt
at the altarrails. The priest went along by them, murmuring, holding the
thing in his hands. He stopped at each, took out a communion, shook a
drop or two (are they in water?) off it and put it neatly into her mouth.
Her hat and head sank. Then the next one. Her hat sank at once. Then the
next one: a small old woman. The priest bent down to put it into her
mouth, murmuring all the time. Latin. The next one. Shut your eyes and
open your mouth. What? CORPUS: body. Corpse. Good idea the Latin.
Stupefies them first. Hospice for the dying. They don't seem to chew it:
only swallow it down. Rum idea: eating bits of a corpse. Why the cannibals
cotton to it.

He stood aside watching their blind masks pass down the aisle, one by
one, and seek their places. He approached a bench and seated himself in
its corner, nursing his hat and newspaper. These pots we have to wear. We
ought to have hats modelled on our heads. They were about him here and
there, with heads still bowed in their crimson halters, waiting for it to
melt in their stomachs. Something like those mazzoth: it's that sort of
bread: unleavened shewbread. Look at them. Now I bet it makes them feel
happy. Lollipop. It does. Yes, bread of angels it's called. There's a big