Manchurian Books

The room's contrast to the squalid neighbourhood was complete. The
apartment was carpeted in soft rugs laid one upon another so that
footfalls were silenced. The walls and ceiling were smoothly covered
with a neutral-tinted silk, patterned in dim figures; and from a
fluted pillar of exceeding lightness an enormous candelabrum shed
clear radiance upon the objects in the room. The couches and divans
were woven of some light reed, made with high fantastic backs, in
perfect purity of line however, and laid with white mattresses. A
little reed table showed slender pipes above its surface and these,
at a touch from the boy, sent to a great height tiny columns of
water that tinkled back to the square of metal upon which the table
was set. A huge fan of blanched grasses automatically swayed from
above. On a side-table were decanters and cups and platters of a
material frail and transparent. Before the shuttered window stood an
observable plant with coloured leaves. On a great table in the
room's centre were scattered objects which confused the eye.


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