.. the stovepipe fell, but the wire that
held it up at the bend also prevented it from touching the carpet ...
the room was instantly full of suffocating soot and smoke.
I crawled forth like a scared animal ... found myself in the kitchen. In
the mirror hanging there I looked like a Senegalese.
Then, finding myself unhurt, I laughed and laughed at myself, at the
grotesqueness and irony of life, at everything ... but mostly at myself.
I righted the stove as best I could, brought the door in again from
where it had bitten to the bottom of the snow drift, like an angry
animal. It was still uncomfortably hot ... shifting it from hand to hand
I managed to manoeuvre it back to a slant position on its hinges....
Before I could light another and more moderate fire, unexpectedly the
inspiration for the completion of the last scene of _Judas_--the
inspiration for which I had been waiting and hoping--rode in on me like
a wave....
* * * * *
Christ, in the spirit, unseen, comes to his waiting disciples.
_Thomas_. Someone has flung open the door. The wind has blown out the
candles.
_Andrew_. Nay, I sit next the door. 'Tis closed!
_John_. He has risen. He is even now among us.
_Thomas_. Someone sits in the chair. I feel a presence by my side.
_Peter_. Brethren, 'tis the Comforter of which He spake! [_A misty light
fills the room_.
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