my mind wrestled briefly with an incoherent array of imagessilhouettes of assailants standing at a bedroom doorway at night-time , a smorgasbord of red-colored desserts laid upon a long table with elegant crimson trimmings , a melancholy elder in the clothes of an ascetic who stroked his long beard with a stony , bemused grimace , a pin prick while hastily sewing together fabrics of patchy gray fur in the corner of an elaborately decorated bedroom .