It was,
indeed, as though this, the very first of the strange scenes I was to witness
in the land of Moribundia, had been specially prepared for me – so arranged
that the members of the community were spread out before me, for my benefit, as
it were, in a state of absolute naturalness and unself-consciousness, and so
absorbed in their own rites that a stranger could move among them with less
conspicuousness than a ghost.
I knew at once that I must seize this moment – drink in these unspoiled impressions while I could and keeping close to the trees, I began to circle slowly, but without stealth in the direction of the pavilion.
It was not
until I passed the second or third group of boys lying sprawled across the
grass that I became aware that something
was ‘wrong’ – had my first intimation, in other words, that this world into which I had come had certain physical
characteristics and peculiarities which differed, however faintly, from those in
the world from which I had come. There
was, in fact, something ‘wrong’ about these boys themselves.
And this something ‘wrong’ derived from the fact that there was
something much too ‘right’ about them.
