The ferry buildings were like space stations, with their lights and roundness and dockings; but they did not whirl, only rose and fell, and a reflection of the sea rose and fell in their television-like windows. Beyond the Star terminal rose a golden bowtie of neon, tall and absurd, crowned by a white trapezoid and a blue spire. Forgetting the scarlet-lipped girl and the woman whom he'd saved, he let himself be caught by the blue neon-light on black water.
Goodbye, a woman's voice said from under the water.
The thin old man with the white star on his chest stood holding the gangplank railing in a gloved hand, watching something too proud for others: the blackhaired girls with arms folded over their breasts, the skinny boys jutting out their chins, the ladies in glasses happy not to have missed the ferry, the married couples (wives on their husbands' arms). Then the whistle blew, the ferryman braced his foot against the bulkhead and strained at the rope, winching the gangplank up against the door. He stood watching Kowloon come closer (another ferry passing the black water, a vast illuminated casket). He remembered the Japanese restaurant where the indigo-pigtailed waitresses stood in corners with their hands behind their backs, white bows tied behind their short black skirts; and they wished him happy New Year and grew into the New Year like those tropical trees tas-seled as if by strings of lime-colored beads. But he himself was coming outside his life again as steadily as the Kowloon ferry bearing through the cold and fishy night. — The ferryman stood still, squinting at a newspaper, his pinkish-orange face worn down almost to a skull by rain and fog and wind. He stood without support, swaying easily with the lurching deck. The horn sounded three times; the water began to burn evilly with the red and blue neon reflections of Tsim Sha Tsui, and he locked his newspaper away to again pull on his plastic gloves. He stood by the gangplank, patiently watching the greenish-gray window-lights and orange-gray wall-lights come closer. Then he gripped the rope, unhooked the chain, and let the pulley go. The crowd went out calmly, lighted faces going steadily into darkness.
So after that they let him outside. He was back inside his mind, they said. His behavior was normal. Just as in the ancient Egyptian cartouches south of Aswan each world is pale blue inside, yellow all around, so within himself he kept his secret color now. He'd closed the book and shelved it. Henceforth he'd return silence to all pleas.
He wanted to buy a ticket to take him farther outside. The sun formed white triangles and trapezoids on the floor of the railroad station whose early morning air was hot and stale, and people sat around picking their eyebrows because none of the ticket windows had opened yet. Two officials went into the MODULA DE ASIGNACIONES and he felt hopeful until they came back out and locked the door.
He waited all day and half the night. Finally, at the stroke of midnight, the window flew soundlessly open, and the woman stood behind it, smiling. Without speaking, she gave him a ticket of glowing gold.
He got on the train, and it took him into a tunnel that coiled round and round underneath the earth. And he came to the core, which was a giant geode glittering with crystals underfoot and overhead. And in the very center of the world was an atlas on a chain. He opened it, and the woman's bones fell out (they were very skinny and fragile, like fishbones), followed by her hair and gobbets of greasy flesh and flakes of her blood and all the other things which he had given her. The man broke off a crystal from the ceiling and buried it in her remains like a seed. Soon there grew a brilliant flower that filled the entire hollow heart of the world. Just before it enveloped the space which he had occupied, it invited him in. .
