A man recounts a dream in which he walks down a long hall toward his naked father, who is pumping a bicycle pump. What he is inflating turns out to be a rubber-like woman, who swells until she becomes his mother. Then a child emerges from between her legs, filled out by the same pumping air. The dreamer wonders if it is his brother.
The twist comes at the end. After telling the dream, he realizes the child was himself. The dream turns out to be a picture of his own conception and birth, seen from outside.
The mood is strange, awkward and a little unsettling. The flat, matter-of-fact language and the repeated "up and down" make the scene mechanical and almost comic, yet it is also uncomfortable to watch. The mother is treated like an object, and the child is made rather than born. The dreamer's question "Was it a dark hall?" shows his uncertainty, and his slow recognition at the end suggests something he did not want to admit about his own origins.