The Esoteric Drama Club 3

The people in the room now become more annoyed and argue technicalities of dramatic technique, relating to small points of hand gesture and vocalization, more ardently, but with an underlying good nature. M laughs, feels surging up inside of him a well of joy from some inexpressible source, and he leaps off the mattress.

As the discussion continues, he heads for the door. Through the bare, paint-peeled doorway, standing in the ante-room which is cluttered with files and is lit by a bare, burning-white bulb, M sees Anne, the student girl whom he nonchalantly loves. She is continuing to debate, inquiring in a high, wavering voice which dominates the two rooms so that the tumult is hushed around her, the etymology and proper usage of some small word. She is tall and thin, and dressed fussily in brown clothes, with round glasses and a virginal sort of neatness. She continues, with an incredibly pedantic determination, and with finger raised, to cry out for a clear definition of that word. Not without humour she watches M chuckle, ignore her, and walk through the door.

Once back out into the darkness of the stairwells and bat-ridden attics, he races down the stairs, whooshing to himself like the wind, full of an unspeakable dark joy like a vampire. As he glides down the stairs he is happy in the knowledge that he can leave the white-washed building for back home, suburban bedrooms, chalk streets, burnished lamps...

The Esoteric Drama Club is over for another week.