The taxi stopped in front of a minute garden, the entrance to which was lit up by the words: Black Cat. As he went past the cloakroom, Kyo looked at the time: two o'clock. 'It's a good thing any kind of clothes will do here.' Beneath his dark grey sports coat, of fluffy wool, he was wearing a sweater. The jazz was inconceivably irritating. It had been going on since five o'dock, proffering not so much cheerfulness as a frenzied intoxication to which couples gave themselves up a little doubtfully. Suddenly it stopped, and the crowd broke up. The patrons of the establishment collected at the far end of the room, and the dancing-partners sat round the sides. Chinese women sheathed in worked silk, Russians and half-castes; one ticket for each dance, or each conversation. An old man who might almost have been an English clergyman remained standing in the middle of the floor, completely bewildered, flapping his arms up and down like a penguin. For the first time in his life, at the age of fifty-two, he had failed to come home one night, and his dread of his wife was such that he had never since dared to return. For eight months now he had been spending his nights in the night-clubs, unable to get any washing done, and going to the Chinese shirt-makers to change his underwear, between two screens. Businessmen faced with bankruptcy proceedings, dancing-girls and harlots, all who felt themselves in danger - in fact almost everybody - kept their eyes fixed on that apparition, as if it had some strange power to save them from being engulfed in the abyss. At dawn they would go to bed, in a state of utter exhaustion - just when the executioner would be on his way through the Chinese quarter. That hour reminded one inevitably of the severed heads lying in the cages, lying there with their hair soaked by the rain, before even it was quite light.

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