As I contemplated them in the darkness, the eyes of my cat, companion of many years, became Takashi’s eyes, and the eyes of great-grandfather’s brother whom I’d never known, and my wife’s eyes, red like plums; and they all linked up into a shining ring that was rapidly becoming an undeniable part of my being. They would go on multiplying, I felt sure, throughout the time remaining to me, till a hundred pairs of eyes would glitter like a chain of stars in the night of my experience. And I would live on, suffering agonies of shame under the light of those stars, peering out timidly like a rat,
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