ii.
the building does not ask you to take off your coat. it merely provides the hook. there are three; one of them is already occupied by something that, at this distance, looks like a coat and may once have been one. the other two are waiting in the way that hooks wait — that is, without impatience.
an umbrella leans against the wainscot. you cannot tell if it is yours. it is the kind of umbrella anyone would forget. it has the small dignity of an object that has been useful and is now resting.
above the door, where in another house there would be a bell, there is a bell that does not ring. a small brass tongue, a small brass mouth. it is here as a courtesy, the way some houses keep a fire laid that will not be lit tonight. you notice it; you do not test it. testing it would be a question, and the antechamber is not a place for questions.
there is a small table. on the table, a tray. on the tray, a saucer. on the saucer, nothing — but recently, you can tell, there was a key, or a coin, or a folded note. you choose not to know which. the antechamber is mostly the absence of what you have just put down.
somewhere a clock that is not in this room is doing its work. you can hear the room's restraint against it. the building is wider than you thought; the antechamber is the smallest part of it, and you are aware now that you are very small inside something very patient.
you take a breath you did not realise you had been saving. the next room is darker. the building has prepared for this; it gives you a moment in this pale one first. a kind of vestibule for the body before what follows.