Somewhere, something secret has been understood. You glimpse it in a handshake; you know something has changed in the world. Your life becomes an irritation, like something that has got caught in the corner of your eye. Yesterday's habits now bore you, and the things you thought you were looking forward to seem without relevance or importance. The world which you had felt you understood has become the code of something else, and, try as you might to forget it, the instant that you see this there is no turning back. Everything is standing in for some other thing, like a play which till now you had thought was real.

But to unravel that code you first must receive the handshake yourself, must be summoned to the room with the closed doors, must have your head thrust under the waters of the lake. You ask passers by to help you, but they cannot; they pass on, without refusing. You must wait to be called, and, waiting to be called, you must make preparations. Because you do not know how or when you will be called, you do not know what clothes to wear, or whether to cook something on the stove. You do not know if the one who will call you will be a vegetarian, or even what language he will speak. So you go about, trying to find others who have been called. But perhaps no one has ever been called; perhaps all of them are waiting. Perhaps the handshakes are their own private way of preparing for the call, for the waiting which must precede it.

There is nothing to stop you going to the Room Of Calling and trying to force apart the doors. But though there is no attendant, it has been locked from within. Looking through the keyhole, you can see men and women sitting on chairs; there is a podium, but you cannot see who is standing on it. Instead you hear the ebb and flow of something - affirmations, followed by a general murmur of assent. You wonder if the speaker may even be declaring - although it's impossible to hear the words - "Even now, the one who will call you is approaching. He has come from far away, summoned by you, by your need for him. Even now he is at the keyhole; in a moment he will be standing before you, if you can make the act of faith to let him in."