As there seemed to be innumerable _paillasses_, laid
side by side at intervals of perhaps a foot with their heads to the wall
on three sides of me, I was wondering why the vulture had stopped at six.
On each mattress a crude imitation of humanity, wrapped ear-high in its
blanket, lay and drank from a cup like mine and spat long and high into
the room. The ponderous reek of sleepy bodies undulated toward me from
three directions. I had lost sight of the vulture in a kind of insane
confusion which arose from the further end of the room. It was as if he
had touched off six high explosives. Occasional pauses in the minutely
crazy din were accurately punctuated by exploding bowels; to the great
amusement of innumerable somebodies, whose precise whereabouts the gloom
carefully guarded.
I felt that I was the focus of a group of indistinct recumbents who were
talking about me to one another in many incomprehensible tongues. I
noticed beside every pillar (including the one beside which I had
innocently thrown down my mattress the night before) a good sized pail,
overflowing with urine, and surrounded by a large irregular puddle. My
mattress was within an inch of the nearest puddle. What I took to be a
man, an amazing distance off, got out of bed and succeeded in locating
the pail nearest to him after several attempts.
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