by Daryl L.L. Houston
78: Pelletier is married to Norton and living near a cliff overlooking a beach. People are always on the beach, usually doing frivolous, meaningless things and apparently waiting for something. Sometimes he can soar over the beach like a seagull. Norton is something of a background presence in the house, sometimes making noise or speaking, but declining to enter a room he’s in. Pelletier loses any sense of time and tries to sleep sitting in his chair but keeps his eyes on the beach, looking for a glimmer of light. He discovers that the Archimboldi papers before him are in fact written in French rather than German. One day, the beach folk leave the beach, so that all that’s left is a “dark form projecting from a yellow pit.” He wonders if he should go bury it but thinks about how far he’d have to walk to get to the beach (compare to Morini’s observations of distance in his own recent dream). He sees a tremor in the sea and hears a hum of bees, and then silence. He calls Norton’s name but she doesn’t answer. He weeps and watches the remains of a simultaneously horrific and beautiful statue (formless stone, remnants of a hand, wrist, and forearm) emerge from the bottom of a metallic sea. This statue recalls Morini’s dream of a female figure making her way to a rock jutting from the edge of the pool.