“What is wrong with Cryan and most people, said Byrne, is that they do not spend sufficient time in bed. When a man sleeps, he is steeped and lost in a limp toneless happiness: awake he is restless, tortured by his body and the illusion of existence.
Why have men spent the centuries seeking to overcome the awakened body? Put it to sleep, that is a better way. Let it serve only to turn the sleeping soul over, to change the blood-stream and thus make possible a deeper and more refined sleep.
I agree, I said.
We must invert our conception of repose and activity, he continued. We should not sleep to recover the energy expended when awake but rather wake occasionally to defecate the unwanted energy that sleep engenders. This might be done quickly – a five-mile race at full tilt around the town and then back to bed and the kingdom of the shadows.
You’re a terrible man for the blankets, said Kerrigan.
I’m not ashamed to admit that I love my bed, said Bymne, She was my first friend, my foster-mother, my dearest comforter…
He paused and drank.
Her warmth, he continued, kept me alive when my mother bore me. She still nurtures me, yielding without stint the parturition of her cosy womb. She will nurse me gently in my last hour and faithfully hold my cold body when I am dead. She will look bereaved when I am gone.
This speech did not please us, bringing to each of us our last personal end. We tittered in cynical fashion.”