The Bell

And at last he reached the bell.  The bell with the iron or steel or some metal frame made from an old ship.  The bell with a strong double cord hanging from its clapper.  And when he pulled very lightly on the cord, so as not to ring the bell, but just to see what it felt like, what the weight was like of the cord in his hand, he heard the sound the clapper made when it was just activated ever so slightly, just swinging a bit up there on its own, for once independent of the bell.  And that sound it made it sounded to him like the violins from Bernard Herrmann's score to Psycho turned down very quietly (not just any violins but those and those only).  And he stood here tugging lightly on the strong cord listening to those two sounds, the only two sounds there were---the desert wind with the violins, just about to explode.