“Tsa. It is indeed a pity.”
“It is a series.” … are you sitting there already involved in engagements … cut off; changed. …
“Excellent. I shall most certainly come.” He was looking freely ahead. His evening had not interested him … he had gone and come back, his horizons unenlarged … but not seeing the impression he had made on those people; the steps they would take.
“It would be splendid for you. The lecturer’s English wonderful . The way the close thought made his sentences, fascinated me so much, that I often missed the meaning in listening to the rhythm; like a fugue.” Aren’t you glad you’ve enlarged your horizons? Don’t you know what people are … what you, a person, are to people? Are you a person? In a blankness, life streamed up in spirals, vanishing, leaving nothing. …
“That is not bad. Ah I should not have paid this visit. It was also in some respects most painful to me.” Poor little man, poor little lonely man white-faced and sensitive, in a world without individuals; grown and formed and wise without realising an individual; never to realise. Audible within the darkness was a singing, hovering on spaces of warm rosy light.
“You must not regret your visit.”
“Regret no; it was much as I anticipated. But it is disheartening, this actual witnessing.” They were disposed of in some way; in one piece; he would have a formula.
“What are they like?”
“Quite as I expected; good simple people, kind and hospitable. I have been the whole evening there. Ah but it is sad for me this first meeting with English Jews.”