And as he stepped from the balcony back into the room, it was still the hook-nosed older woman of his childhood he was thinking of, the woman he had seen so long ago and had practically forgotten. Now he saw her again and felt her fat white arms, her swollen shoulders and her brown back creased with fat. There was a mole there somewhere too … her fingers had shiny little white nails, and those white nails were touching the young Sindbad in a spellbindingly feminine way. He feels those dazzling feminine nails first on his feet, then on his brow, then across his chest. The wide lips twist into that grotesque smile and he hears a sound, part sigh, part hiss, above his head. It’s as if a bird had flown across the room.
Once again Sindbad felt bands tightening about his heart, so he decided he would make final preparations for his impending death. He wrote a few lines to Monkey informing her of his condition. ‘I’ll be gone by the morning.’ The servant at the inn took his note and meandered down the stairs, whistling merrily in anticipation of a handsome tip. Perhaps he thought number 5 was sending him on another errand of love, much as he used to in the past, when his task was to bring nightly supplies of champagne, tea, cigarettes and stuff from the pharmacy and there was plenty of silver for him to slip into his waistcoat pocket.
While he was about his business Sindbad lay down on the worn old rug, because that was what he felt like doing. He spread his arms out and stared rigidly and desperately at the lamp above him. As long as he could see its two bulbs he was all right. So he kept looking at the two bulbs which used to shine with such peculiar brightness when they cast their light across the shoulders of a long succession of women.
Until now he had always felt a great sense of calm looking at the light, but now one of the bulbs gave a sudden wheeze. Immediately the other one groaned. It sounded like a chronic invalid turning on his bed … Somewhere, some time in the past, his father, his beautiful melancholy father, was lying on the bed. It was New Year’s Eve and the young Sindbad was holding his hands.
‘You’ll make the new year, father. The new year will bring good luck.’
The invalid opened his sad and hopeless eyes. ‘You think so?’ he asked and shook his head.
Sindbad suddenly wished him a quick death, so that his father should not have to suffer any more. There’d be no more groans and cries of pain …
‘My estate, doctor. If only I could live another week …’
Yes, those were the words. He had died prematurely. Now Sindbad seemed to hear one light bulb repeat those words to the other.
One more woman’s body, or simply part of her body, flashed before him: full, white, a globe of alabaster. And he could see the blue-black shadow creep across that globe, and was aware of a variety of delicious, well-remembered perfumes wafting about his head.
Soon Monkey arrived and tenderly closed Sindbad’s eyes for him.
Sindbad became a sprig of mistletoe. A sprig of mistletoe in the rose garland an elderly nun wore about her waist. For a while, he had a rather boring time of it. He regretted he had not chosen some other occupation when he had had the opportunity to do so at the bureau where men are allotted tasks in their life after death. Having run his eye down all the posts available there were three he particularly fancied, where he thought he might be able to spend his days in silence and idleness. One was as a toy soldier, better still a toy soldier lost in some dim attic. What more could a man longing for retirement want? Sindbad had all but signed up to this when a grey-bearded goldsmith appeared at the bureau with an agonised expression on his face and a gaping hole in his temple where the bullet had entered. He had killed himself on account of certain women, for whose sake he had given away the contents of his shop. Sindbad’s heart was moved at the sight of the woeful-looking little man; he thought of the men whom women had cheated, stolen from and discarded, men whom women had watched with interest, wondering when they would put a bullet through their brains — so he gave up the idea of being a soldier allowing the goldsmith to take precedence in the choice.
In considering his subsequent career he was equally tempted by the thought of becoming an ornamental comb. But how was one to know where one would wind up? The woman might be dirty. Sindbad had decided he might as well stay alive, and this is how he became a sprig of mistletoe in a rose garland. Not too many risks there: it was hard to get into scrapes in such a situation, he would still feel the touch of women’s hands and some people enjoy this long after they are dead. Unfortunately the nun into whose possession he came, who wore him about her waist, was a little too old for him: she ground him between her fingers as she muttered her prayers but these, alas, were of little interest to him. It was a fairly dull set of pleas and prayers that pulsed through his body. There was a prayer for sound digestion, one for deep sleep, another for protection from the severity of the Mother Superior, and only once something that referred, somewhat obscurely, to a certain Brother Francis. Sindbad pricked up his ears. It couldn’t be, could it? thought the sprig. No, unfortunately the Francis referred to was just a saintly old man who had caught a bad chill at midnight mass and was lying on his sickbed in the rectory. Sindbad grew very bored of this constant diet of virtue and sanctity and reflected painfully on the fact that he was not made for a high moral existence and, if things went on like this, he’d never reach the happy state of having purged his sins. He began to regret ever more intensely that he hadn’t chosen to be a toy soldier. Who knows what adventures he might have had? But he’d just as happily have been an ornamental comb on the head of a whore: it was the present state of grace he couldn’t tolerate.
One day the nun and the sprig went on a journey. They rattled through the convent gates in a wide leather-topped carriage drawn by stout horses, and consequently transferred to a train — travelling in the women’s compartment, of course — where the nun made the acquaintance of two elderly ladies who were full of stories of railway disasters. The conversation only became interesting when one of the old women happened to mention that she couldn’t be a nun because she couldn’t live without men … ‘My old man is a real gem,’ said she, blushing but proud. The nun cast her eyes down but later asked the woman her husband’s age, enquiring about his looks and habits and so on. Of her answers Sindbad noted only those relating to her husband’s habits: once he’d had a glass or two he would even go up to the attic for her and fetch the clothes she had hung out to dry there the previous week.
Before the other old lady could interject an account of the heroic deeds of her late husband the train reached the station, they got off, and Sindbad suddenly became aware that he was no longer attached to the pious nun’s skirts which he, being a sprig of mistletoe, had practically worn through by continuous friction. A happy accident had separated them. Sindbad had fallen between the rails: trains passed over him, firemen threw fiery ashes over him and a piece of greaseproof paper landed in his vicinity, containing the remnants of a well-chewed leg of duck. This unpleasant neighbour attempted to strike up some kind of relationship with him but Sindbad pretended to be asleep until night came, then succeeded in escaping without being observed, leaving the rails behind and drifting into the town which he immediately recognised.