—­Black cockroaches are creeping under my skull and buzzing.

—­My brain is falling apart.  I feel the gray matter separating.  My brain is like rotten cheese.  It stinks.

—­There’s some sort of a corpse here.  I smell it.

—­Oh my!  Oh my!

—­I’ll sneak up to her to-night and cut her throat.

—­The blood will flow.  It’s flowing already.  See how red it is.

—­I am constantly being followed by three men.  They are calling me into a dark corner of the vacant lot, and they want to kill me.  They are already at the door.

—­Who is walking on the walls and ceiling?

—­Good Lord!  They have come to take me.

—­Who?

—­They.

—­My tongue is getting paralyzed.  I’ll cry. (Cries)

—­My whole body is coming out.  I’ll soon be turned inside out, and then I’ll be all red.

—­Listen, listen.  Ho!  Somebody!  A monster is going for me.  He’s raising his hand.  Help!  Ho!

—­What is it?  Help!  A spider!

—­Help!

[For some time they shout “Help!” hoarsely.

—­We are all drunkards.  Let’s call down all the people from above. 
It’s so disgusting up there.

—­No, don’t.  When I leave here and go out on the street, it rampages and tears about like a wild beast and soon throws me off my, feet.

—­We’ve all come here.  We drink rum and it gives us joy.

—­It gives us fright.  I shiver the whole day from fright.

—­Fright is better than life.  Who wants to return to life?

—­I don’t.

—­I don’t.  I’d rather croak here.  I don’t want to live.

—­No one!

—­Oh my!  Oh my!

—­Why does Man come here?  He drinks little and just sits still.  We don’t want him.

—­Let him go to his own house.  He has a house of his own.

—­Fifteen rooms.

—­Don’t touch him.  He has no place to go to any more.

—­He has fifteen rooms.

—­They’re empty.  Only rats run around and fight in them.

—­And his wife.

—­He hasn’t any.  Seems she died.

[During this conversation and the following, Old Women in strange headgear enter quietly and replace unnoticeably the Drunkards, who quietly depart.  The women mingle in the conversation, but in such a way that no one notices it.

CONVERSATION OF DRUNKARDS AND OLD WOMEN

—­He’ll soon die, too.  He can scarcely drag himself along, he’s so weak.

—­He has fifteen rooms.

—­Listen to the beating of his heart.  It’s uneven and faint.  It’ll soon stop beating altogether.

—­Hey, Man, give us an invitation to your house.  You have fifteen rooms.

—­It’ll soon stop beating altogether, that old, sick, feeble heart of Man!

—­He’s asleep, the drunken fool.  It’s dreadful to sleep, and yet he sleeps.  He might die in his sleep.