To which I reply, in a
respectful
attitude: "I too, your Lordship.
Samuel Beckett
Or am I in equilibrium somewhere, on one of my numberless poles?
I feel strongly tempted to inquire.
What reams of discourse I could elicit from this seemingly so legitimate preoccupation!
But which would not be credited to me: no, between me and the right to silence, the living rest, stretches the same old lesson - the one I once knew by heart and would not say.
(I don't know why: perhaps for fear of silence.
Or thinking any old thing would do, and so for preference lies, in order to remain hidden.
No importance.
) But now I shall say my old lesson, if I can remember it.
Under the skies, on the roads, in the towns, in the woods, in the hills, in the plains, by the shores, on the seas, behind my mannikins (I was not always sad), I wasted my time, abjured my rights, suffered for nothing, forgot my lesson.
Then a little hell after my own heart (not too cruel), with a few nice damned to foist my groans on, something sighing off and on and the distant gleam of pity's fires biding their hour to promote us to ashes.
I speak
(speak? ) because I must, but I do not listen. I seek my lesson: my life I used to know and would not confess (hence possibly an occasional slight lack of limpidity). And perhaps now again I shall do no more than seek my lesson, to the self-accompaniment of a tongue that is not mine. But instead of saying what I should not have said (and what I shall say no more, if I can, and what I shall say - perhaps - if I can), should I not rather say some other thing? Even though it be not yet the right thing? I'll try, I'll try in another present (even though it be not yet mine). Without pauses, without tears, without eyes, without reasons. Let it be assumed then that I am at rest (though this is unimportant): at rest or forever moving (through the air or in contact with other surfaces). Or that I sometimes move, sometimes rest - since I feel nothing (neither quietude nor change), nothing that can serve as a point of departure towards an opinion on this subject. Which would not greatly matter if I possessed some general notions, and then the use of reason. But there it is: I feel nothing, know nothing. And as far as thinking is concerned I do just enough to preserve me from going silent - you can't call that thinking. Let us then assume nothing: neither that I move, nor that I don't (it's safer, since the thing is unimportant), and pass on to those that are. Namely? This voice that speaks (knowing that it lies), indifferent to what it says. Too old perhaps and too abased ever to succeed in saying the words that would be its last. Knowing itself useless and its uselessness in vain. Not listening to itself but to the silence that it breaks and whence perhaps one day will come stealing the long clear sigh of advent and farewell. (Is it one? I'll ask no more questions: there are no more questions, I know none any more. ) It issues from me, it fills me, it clamours against my walls. It is not mine. I can't stop it, I can't prevent it, from tearing me, racking me, assailing me. It is not mine, I have none: I have no voice and must speak, that is all I know. It's round that I must revolve, of that I must speak - with this voice that is not mine, but can only be mine, since there is no one but me. (Or if there are others, to whom it might belong, they have never come near me. ) I won't delay just now to make this clear. Perhaps they are watching me from afar (I have no objection, as long as I don't see them), watching me like a face in the embers which they know is doomed to crumble. But it takes too long: it's getting late, eyes are heavy and tomorrow they must rise betimes. So it is I who speak, all alone, since I can't do otherwise. No, I am speechless. Talking of speaking: what if I went silent? What would happen to me then? Worse than what is happening? But fie! These are questions again! That is typical. I know no more questions and they keep on pouring out of my mouth. I think I know what it is: it's to prevent the discourse from coming to an end - this futile discourse which is not credited to me and brings me not a syllable
nearer silence. But now I am on my guard. I shall not answer them any more (I shall not pretend any more to answer them). Perhaps I shall be obliged (in order not to peter out) to invent another fairy-tale, yet another - with heads, trunks, arms, legs and all that follows, let loose in the changeless round of imperfect shadow and dubious light. But I hope and trust not. But I always can if necessary. For while unfolding my facetiae, the last time that happened to me (or to the other who passes for me), I was not inattentive. And it seemed to me then that I heard a murmur telling of another and less unpleasant method of ending my troubles and that I even succeeded in catching (without ceasing for an instant to emit my "he said", and "he said to himself^', and "he asked", and "he answered") a certain number of highly promising formulae; and which indeed I promised myself to turn to good account at the first opportunity. (That is to say as soon as I had finished with my troop of lunatics. ) But all has gone clean from my head. For it is difficult to speak (even any old rubbish) and at the same time focus one's attention on another point, where one's true interest lies (as fitfully defined by a feeble murmur seeming to apologize for not being dead). And what it seemed to me I heard then (concerning what I should do, and say, in order to have nothing further to do, nothing further to say), it seemed to me I only barely heard it (because of the noise I was engaged in making elsewhere, in obedience to the unintelligible terms of an incomprehensible damnation). And yet I was sufficiently impressed by certain expressions to make a vow (while continuing my yelps) never to forget them - and (what is more) to ensure they should engender others and finally (in an irresistible torrent) banish from my vile mouth all other utterance (from my mouth spent in vain with vain inventions), all other utterance but theirs: the true at last, the last at last. But all is forgotten and I have done nothing - unless what I am doing now is something. And nothing could give me greater satisfaction. For if I could hear such a music at such a time (I mean while floundering through a ponderous chronicle of moribunds in their courses, moving, clashing, writhing or fallen in short-lived swoons), with how much more reason should I not hear it now, when supposedly I am burdened with myself alone? (But this is thinking again. ) And I see myself slipping (though not yet at the last extremity) towards the resorts of fable. Would it not be better if I were simply to keep on saying "bababa" (for example) while waiting to ascertain the true function of this venerable organ? Enough questions, enough reasoning. I resume, years later. Meaning I suppose that I went silent, that I can go silent. And now this noise again. (That is all rather obscure. ) I say "years", though here there are no years. What matter how long? Years is one of Basil's ideas. A short time, a long time? It's all the same. I kept silence, that's all that counts
(if that counts - I have forgotten if that is supposed to count). And now it is taken from me again. Silence, yes. But what silence? For it is all very fine to keep silence, but one has also to consider the kind of silence one keeps. I listened. (One might as well speak and be done with it. What liberty! ) I strained my ear towards what must have been my voice still - so weak, so far, that it was like the sea, a far calm sea dying No, none of that: no beach, no shore - the sea is enough. I've had enough of shingle, enough of sand, enough of earth. (Enough of sea too. ) Decidedly Basil is becoming more important: I'll call him Mahood instead (I prefer that, I'm queer). It was he told me stories about me, lived in my stead, issued forth from me, came back to me, entered back into me, heaped stories on my head. I don't know how it was done. I always liked not knowing, but Mahood said it wasn't right. He didn't know either, but it worried him. It is his voice which has often, always, mingled with mine, and sometimes drowned it completely. Until he left me for good (or refused to leave me any more - I don't know). Yes, I don't know if he's here now or far away, but I don't think I am far wrong in saying that he has ceased to plague me. When he was away I tried to find myself again, to forget what he had said, about me, about my misfortunes: fatuous misfortunes, idiotic pains, in the light of my true situation (revolting word). But his voice continued to testify for me, as though woven into mine - preventing me from saying who I was, what I was (so as to have done with saying, done with listening). And still today (as he would say), though he plagues me no more his voice is there, in mine - but less, less. And being no longer renewed it will disappear one day, I hope, from mine, completely. But in order for that to happen I must speak. Speak. And at the same time (I do not deceive myself) he may come back again (or go away again and then come back again). Then my voice (? the" voice) would say: "That's an idea, now I'll tell one of Mahood's stories, I need a rest. " (Yes, that's how it would happen. ) And it would say: "Then refreshed, set about the truth again, with redoubled vigour. " To make me think I was a free agent. But it would not be my voice, not even in part. That is how it would be done. Or quietly, stealthily, the story would begin - as if nothing had happened and I still the teller and the told. But I would be fast asleep, my mouth agape, as usual: I would look the same as usual. And from my sleeping mouth the lies would pour, about me. (No, not sleeping: listening, in tears. ) But now? Is it I now? I on me? Sometimes I think it is. And then I realize it is not. I am doing my best, and failing again, yet again. I don't mind failing, it's a pleasure - but I want to go silent. Not as just now, the better to listen - but peacefully, victorious, without ulterior object. Then it would be a life worth having, a life at last. My speech-parched voice at rest would fill with spittle, I'd let it flow over and over, happy at last, dribbling with
life, my pensum ended, in the silence. I spoke (I must have spoken) of a lesson. It was "pensum" I should have said: I confused pensum with lesson. Yes, I have a pensum to discharge, before I can be free (free to dribble, free to speak no more, listen no more), and I've forgotten what it is. There at last is a fair picture of my situation. I was given a pensum (at birth perhaps), as a punishment for having been born perhaps (or for no particular reason, because they dislike me) - and I've forgotten what it is. But was I ever told? Squeeze, squeeze! Not too hard, but squeeze a little longer: this is perhaps about you, and your goal at hand. (After ten thousand words? Well let us say one goal - after it there will be others. ) Speak? Yes: but to me. I have never spoken enough to me, never listened enough to me, never replied enough to me, never had pity enough on me. I have spoken for my master, listened for the words of my master never spoken: "Well done, my child, well done, my son - you may stop, you may go, you are free, you are acquitted, you are pardoned. " Never spoken. "My master. " There is a vein I must not lose sight of. But for the moment my concern (but before I forget: there may be more than one, a whole college of tyrants, differing in their views as to what should be done with me, in conclave since time began or a little later, listening to me from time to time, then breaking up for a meal or a game of cards) my concern is with the pensum of which I think I may safely say (without loss of face) that it is in some way related to that lesson too hastily proclaimed, too hastily denied. For all I need say is this: that if I have a pensum to perform it is because I could not say my lesson; and that when I have finished my pensum I shall still have my lesson to say, before I have the right to stay quiet in my corner (alive and dribbling, my mouth shut, my tongue at rest) far from all disturbance, all sound, my mind at peace (that is to say, empty). But this does not get me very far. For even should I hit upon the right pensum (somewhere in this churn of words at last) I would still have to reconstitute the right lesson (unless of course the two are one and the same, which obviously is not impossible either). Strange notion in any case (and eminently open to suspicion), that of a task to be performed, before one can be at rest. Strange task, which consists in speaking of one self. Strange hope, turned towards silence and peace. Possessed of nothing but my voice (the voice), it may seem natural, once the idea of obligation has been swallowed, that I should interpret it as an obligation to say something. But is it possible? Bereft of hands, perhaps it is my duty to clap or (striking the palms together) to call the waiter; and of feet, to dance the Carmagnole. But let us first suppose, in order to get on a little (then we'll suppose something else, in order to get on a little further), that it is in fact required of me that I say something, something that is not to be found in all I have said up to now. That seems a reasonable
assumption. But thence to infer that the something required is something about me suddenly strikes me as unwarranted. Might it not rather be the praise of my master, intoned, in order to obtain his forgiveness? Or the admission that I am Mahood after all and these stories of a being whose identity he usurps (and whose voice he prevents from being heard) all lies from beginning to end? And what if Mahood were my master? I'll leave it at that, for the time being. So many prospects in so short a time, it's too much. Decidedly it seems impossible, at this stage, that I should dispense with questions, as I promised myself I would. (No, I merely swore I'd stop asking them. ) And perhaps before long (who knows) I shall light on the happy combination which will prevent them from ever arising again in my - let us not be over-nice - mind. For what I am doing is not being done without a minimum of mind. Not mine perhaps (granted, with pleasure), but I draw on it. At least I try and look as if I did. Rich matter there, to be exploited, fatten you up: suck it to the core, keep you going for years, tasty into the bargain. I quiver at the thought (give you my word, spoken in jest), quiver and hurry on, all life before me, on and forget, what I was saying, just now, something important. It's gone, it'll come back, no regrets (as good as new? unrecognizable? let's hope so), some day when I feel more on for high-class nuts to crack. On. The master. I never paid him enough attention. (No more perhapses either: that old trick is worn to a thread. I'll forbid myself everything, then go on as if I hadn't. ) The master. A few allusions here and there, as to a satrap, with a view to enlisting sympathy. "They clothed me and gave me money" - that kind of thing, the light touch. Then no more. Or Moran's boss (I forget his name). Ah yes, certain things, things I invented (hoping for the best, full of doubts, croaking with fatigue) - I remember certain things, not always the same. But to investigate this matter seriously (I mean with as much futile ardour as that of the underling, which I hoped was mine, close to mine, the road to mine) - no, that never occurred to me. And if it occurs to me now it is because I have despaired of mine. A moment of discouragement, to strike while hot. My master then (assuming he is solitary, in my image) wishes me well, poor devil, wishes my good. And if he does not seem to do very much in order not to be disappointed it is because there is not very much to be done - otherwise he would have done it, my great and good master (that must be it), long ago, poor devil. Another supposition: he has taken the necessary steps, his will is done as far as I am concerned (for he may have other prot ^ s), and all is well with me without my knowing it. Cases one and two. I'll consider the former first, if I can. Then I'll admire the latter, if my eyes are still open. (This sounds like one of Malone's anecdotes. ) But quick, consider, before you forget. There he is then, the unfortunate brute, quite
miserable because of me, for whom there is nothing to be done - and he so anxious to help, so used to giving orders and to being obeyed. There he is, ever since I came into the world (possibly at his instigation, I wouldn't put it past him), commanding me to be well (you know, in every way, no complaints at all), with as much success as if he were shouting at a lump of inanimate matter. If he is not pleased with this panegyric I hope I may be I nearly said hanged - but that I hope in any case, without restriction (I nearly said con-). That would cut my cackle. Ah for a neck! "I want all to be well with you, do you hear me? " That's what he keeps on dinning at me.
To which I reply, in a respectful attitude: "I too, your Lordship. " I say that to cheer him up, he sounds so unhappy. (I am good-hearted, on the surface. ) No, we have no conversation, never a mum of his mouth to me. He's out of luck, that's certain: perhaps he didn't choose me. What he means by good (or my good) is another problem. He is capable of wanting me to be happy (such a thing has been known, it appears). Or to serve a purpose. Or the two at once! A little more explicitness on his part (since the initiative belongs to him) might be a help, as well from his point of view as from the one he attributes to me. Let the man explain himself and have done with it. It's none of my business to ask him questions, even if I knew how to reach him. Let him inform me once and for all what exactly it is he wants from me, for me. What he wants is my good, I know that. (At least I say it, in the hope of bringing him round to a more reasonable frame of mind - assuming he exists and, existing, hears me. ) But what good? There must be more than one. The supreme perhaps. In a word let him enlighten me, that's all I ask, so that I may at least have the satisfaction of knowing in what sense I leave to be desired. If he wants me to say something (for my good naturally), he has only to tell me what it is and I'll let it out with a roar straight away. It's true he may have told me already a hundred times. Well, let him make it a hundred and one: this time I'll try and pay attention. But perhaps I malign him unjustly, my good master. Perhaps he is not solitary like me, not free like me, but associated with others - equally good, equally concerned with my welfare, but differing as to its nature. Every day, up above (I mean up above me), from one set hour to another set hour (everything there being set and settled except what is to be done with me), they assemble to discuss me. (Or perhaps it's a meeting of deputies, with instructions to elaborate a tentative agreement. ) The fact of my continuing (while they are thus engaged) to be what I have always been is naturally preferable to a lame resolution (voted perhaps by a majority of one, or drawn from an old hat). They too are unhappy, all this time, each one to the best of his capacity, because all is not well with me. And now enough of that. If that doesn't mollify them so much the worse for me (I can still conceive of such a thing). But one
more suggestion before I forget and go on to serious matters. Why don't they wash their hands of me and set me free? That might do me good. I don't know. Perhaps then I could be silent, for good and all. Idle talk, idle talk. I am free: abandoned. All for nothing again. Even Mahood has left me, I'm alone. All this business of a labour to accomplish, before I can end. Of words to say, a truth to recover, in order to say it, before I can end. Of an imposed task (once known, long neglected, finally forgotten) to perform, before I can be done with speaking, done with listening: I invented it all, in the hope it would console me, help me to go on, allow me to think of myself as somewhere on a road, moving, between a beginning and an end - gaining ground, losing ground, getting lost, but somehow in the long run making headway. All lies. I have nothing to do (that is to say, nothing in particular). I have to speak (whatever that means). Having nothing to say, no words but the words of others, I have to speak. No one compels me to (there is no one): it's an accident, a fact. Nothing can ever exempt me from it. There is nothing, nothing to discover, nothing to recover, nothing that can lessen what remains to say: I have the ocean to drink. (So there is an ocean then! ) Not to have been a dupe, that will have been my best possession, my best deed. To have been a dupe, wishing I wasn't, thinking I wasn't, knowing I was: not being a dupe of not being a dupe. For any old thing, no, that doesn't work. That should work but it doesn't. Labyrinthine torment that can't be grasped, or limited, or felt, or suffered - no, not even suffered: I suffer all wrong too, even that I do all wrong too. Like an old turkey-hen dying on her feet, her back covered with chickens and the rats spying on her. Next instalment, quick. No cries, above all no cries. Be urbane, a credit to the art and code of dying, while the others cackle (I can hear them from here) like the crackling of thorns. (No, I forgot, it's impossible: it's myself I hear howling behind my dissertation. ) So not any old thing. Even Mahood's stories are not any old thing, though no less foreign. To what? To that unfamiliar native land of mine - as unfamiliar as that other where men come and go, and feel at home, on tracks they have made themselves, in order to visit one another with the maximum of convenience and dispatch, in the light of a choice of luminaries pissing on the darkness turn about, so that it is never dark, never deserted. That must be terrible. So be it. Not any old thing, but as near as no matter. Mahood. Before him there were others, taking themselves for me. (It must be a sinecure handed down from generation to generation, to judge by their family air. ) Mahood is no worse than his predecessors. But before executing his portrait (full-length on his surviving leg) let me note that my next vice-exister will be a billy in the bowl (that's final), with his bowl on his head and his arse in the dust, plump down on thousand- breasted Tellus
(it'll be softer for him). Faith that's an idea (yet another! ): mutilate, mutilate - and perhaps some day, fifteen generations hence, you'll succeed in beginning to look like yourself, among the passers-by. In the meantime it's Mahood: this caricature is he. What if we were one and the same after all, as he affirms (and I deny)? And I have been in the places where he says I have been, instead of having stayed on here, trying to take advantage of his absence to unravel my tangle? Here, in my domain? What is Mahood doing in my domain, and how does he get here? There I am launched again on the same old hopeless business: there we are face to face, Mahood and I (if we are twain, as I say we are). (I never saw him, I don't see him: he has told me what he is like, what I am like - they have all told me that, it must be one of their principal functions. It isn't enough that I should know what I'm doing: I must also know what I'm looking like. ) This time I am short of a leg. And yet it appears I have rejuvenated. (That's part of the programme. ) Having brought me to death's door (senile gangrene), they whip off a leg and yip! off I go again, like a young one, scouring the earth for a hole to hide in. A single leg and other distinctive stigmata to go with it (human to be sure, but not exaggeratedly, lest I take fright and refuse to nibble). "He'll resign himself in the end, he'll own up in the end" - that's the watchword. "Let's try him this time with a hairless wedge-head: he might fancy that" - that kind of talk. "With the solitary leg in the middle, that might appeal to him. " The poor bastards. They could clap an artificial anus in the hollow of my hand and still I wouldn't be there, alive with their life: not far short of a man (just barely a man) - sufficiently for a man to have hopes one day of being one, my avatars behind me. And yet sometimes it seems to me I am there, among the incriminated scenes, tottering under the attributes peculiar to the lords of creation: dumb with howling to be put out of my misery (and all round me the spinach blue rustling with satisfaction). Yes, more than once I almost took myself for the other, all but suffered after his fashion, the space of an instant. Then they uncorked the champagne: "One of us at last! Green with anguish! A real little terrestrial! Choking in the chlorophyll! Hugging the slaughterhouse walls! " (Paltry priests of the irrepressible ephemeral, how they must hate me! ) "Come, my lambkin, join in our gambols. It's soon over, you'll see, just time to frolic with a lambkinette. " That's jam. Love! There's a carrot never fails: I always had to thread some old bodkin. And that's the kind of jakes in which I sometimes dreamt I dwelt, and even let down my trousers. (Mahood himself nearly codded me, more than once. ) I've been he an instant, hobbling through a nature which (it is only fair to say) was on the barren side and (what is more, it is only just to add) tolerably deserted to begin with. After each thrust of my crutches I stopped, to devour a narcotic and measure the
distance gone, the distance yet to go. My head is there too: broad at the base, its slopes denuded, culminating in a ridge or crowning glory strewn with long waving hairs like those that grow on naevi. (No denying it, I'm confoundedly well informed! You must allow it was tempting. ) I say an instant - perhaps it was years. Then I withdrew my adhesion, it was getting too much of a good thing. I had already advanced a good ten paces (if one may call them paces) - not in a straight line I need hardly say, but in a sharp curve which, if I continued to follow it, seemed likely to restore me to my point of departure (or to one adjacent). I must have got embroiled in a kind of inverted spiral: I mean one the coils of which, instead of widening more and more, grew narrower and narrower and finally (given the kind of space in which I was supposed to evolve) would come to an end for lack of room. Faced then with the material impossibility of going any further I should no doubt have had to stop - unless of course I elected to set off again at once in the opposite direction: to unscrew myself as it were, after having screwed myself to a standstill. Which would have been an experience rich in interest and fertile in surprises, if I am to believe what I once was told, in spite of my protests: namely that there is no road so dull, on the way out, but it has quite a different aspect, quite a different dullness, on the way back, and vice versa. (No good wriggling, I'm a mine of useless knowledge. ) But a difficulty arises here. For if by dint of winding myself up (if I may venture to use that ellipse, it doesn't often happen to me now) - if by dint of winding myself up (I don't seem to have gained much time) - if by dint of winding myself up I must inevitably find myself stuck in the end, once launched in the opposite direction should I not normally unfold ad infinitum, with no possibility of ever stopping? (The space in which I was marooned being globular - or is it the earth? No matter, I know what I mean. ) (But where is the difficulty? There was one a minute ago, I could swear to it. ) Not to mention that I could quite easily at any moment, literally any, run foul of a wall, a tree or similar obstacle (which of course it would be prohibited to circumvent), and thereby have an end put to my gyrations as effectively as by the kind of cramp just mentioned. But obstacles, it appears, can be removed in the fullness of time (but not by me: me they would stop dead forever, if I lived among them). But even without such aids it seems to me that once beyond the equator you would start turning inwards again, out of sheer necessity: I somehow have that feeling. At the particular moment I am referring to (I mean when I took myself for Mahood) I must have been coming to the end of a world tour - perhaps not more than two or three centuries to go. My state of decay lends colour to this view: perhaps I had left my leg behind in the Pacific. Yes (no perhaps about it), I had: somewhere off the coast of Java and its jungles red with rafflesia stinking of carrion.
(No, that's the Indian ocean - what a gazetteer I am! No matter, somewhere round there. ) In a word I was returning to the fold. Admittedly reduced - and doubtless fated to be even more so, before I could be restored to my wife and parents (you know, my loved ones), and clasp in my arms (both of which I had succeeded in preserving) my little ones born in my absence. I found myself in a kind of vast yard or campus, surrounded by high walls, in surface an amalgam of dirt and ashes - and this seemed sweet to me after the vast and heaving wastes I had traversed (if my information was correct). I almost felt out of danger! At the centre of this enclosure stood a small rotunda - windowless, but well furnished with loopholes. Without being quite sure I had seen it before, I had been so long from home, I kept saying to myself: "Yonder is the nest you should never have left, there your dear absent ones are awaiting your return, patiently, and you too must be patient. " It was swarming with them: grandpa, grandma, little mother and the eight or nine brats. With their eyes glued to the slits and their hearts going out to me they surveyed my efforts. This yard so long deserted was now enlivened, for them, by me. So we turned, in our respective orbits: I without, they within. At night, keeping watch by turns, they observed me with the help of a searchlight. So the seasons came and went. The children increased in stature, the periods of Ptomaine grew pale, the ancients glowered at each other, muttering (to themselves): "I'll bury you yet" or "You'll bury me yet". Since my arrival they had a subject of conversation, and even of discussion (the same as of old, at the moment of my setting forth), perhaps even an interest in life (the same as of old). Time hung less heavy on their hands. "What about throwing him a few scraps? " "No, no, it might upset him. " They did not want to check the impetus that was sweeping me towards them. "You wouldn't know him! " "True, papa, and yet you can't mistake him. " They who in the ordinary way never answered when spoken to: my elders, my wife (she who had chosen me, rather than one of her suitors). "A few more summers and he'll be in our midst. Where am I going to put him? In the basement? " (Perhaps after all I am simply in the basement. ) "What possesses him to be stopping all the time? " "Oh he was always like that, ever since he was a mite - always stopping, wasn't he, Granny? " "Yes indeed, never easy, always stopping. " According to Mahood I never reached them - that is to say they all died first, the whole ten or eleven of them, carried off by sausage-poisoning, in great agony. Incommoded first by their shrieks, then by the stench of decomposition, I turned sadly away. But not so fast, otherwise we'll never arrive. (It's no longer I in any case. ) "He'll never reach us if he doesn't get a move on. He looks as if he had slowed down, since last year. " "Oh the last laps won't take him long. " (My missing leg didn't seem to affect them, perhaps it was already missing
when I left. ) "What about throwing him a sponge? " "No, no, it might confuse him. " In the evening, after supper, while my wife kept her eye on me, gaffer and gammer related my life history, to the sleepy children. Bedtime story atmosphere. (That's one of Mahood's favourite tricks: to produce ostensibly independent testimony in support of my historical existence. ) The instalment over, all joined in a hymn: "Safe in the arms of Jesus" (for example), or "Jesus lover of my soul, let me to they bosom fly" (for example). Then they went to bed (with the exception of the one on watch duty). My parents differed in their views on me, but they were agreed I had been a fine baby, at the very beginning - the first fortnight or three weeks. "And yet he was a fine baby" - with these words they invariably closed their relations. Often they fell silent, engulfed in their memories. Then it was usual for one of the children to launch, by way of envoy, the consecrated phrase "And yet he was a fine baby". A burst of clear and innocent laughter, from the mouths of those whom sleep had not yet overcome, greeted this premature conclusion. And the narrators themselves, torn from their melancholy thoughts, could scarce forbear to smile. Then they all rose (with the exception of my mother whose knees couldn't support her) and sang "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild" (for example), or "Jesus my one, my all, hear me when I call" (for example). (He too must have been a fine baby. ) Finally my wife announced the latest news, for them to take to bed with them: "He's backing away again", or "He's stopped to scratch himself^", or "You should have seen him hopping sidelong", or "Oh look children, quick he's down on his hands and knee". (Admittedly that must have been worth seeing. ) It was then customary that someone should ask her if I was approaching none the less, if in spite of everything I was making headway: they couldn't bear the thought of going to bed (those who were still awake) without the assurance that I wasn't losing ground. Ptoto set their minds at rest: I had moved, no further proof was needed. I had been drawing near for so long now that provided I remained in motion there could be no cause for anxiety. I was launched, there was no reason why I should suddenly begin to retreat, I just wasn't made that way. Then having kissed all round and wished one another happy dreams they retired (with the exception of the watch). "What about hailing him? " Poor Papa, he burned to encourage me vocally: "Stick it, lad, it's your last winter. " But in view of the trouble I was having, the trouble I was taking, they held him back, pointing out that the moment was ill-chosen to give me a shock. But what were my own feelings at this period? What was I thinking of? With what? Was I having difficulty with my morale? The answer to all that is this (I quote Malone): that I was entirely absorbed in the business on hand and was not at all concerned to know precisely (or even
approximately) what it consisted in. The only problem for me was how to continue (since I could not do otherwise), to the best of my declining powers, in the motion which had been imparted to me.
(speak? ) because I must, but I do not listen. I seek my lesson: my life I used to know and would not confess (hence possibly an occasional slight lack of limpidity). And perhaps now again I shall do no more than seek my lesson, to the self-accompaniment of a tongue that is not mine. But instead of saying what I should not have said (and what I shall say no more, if I can, and what I shall say - perhaps - if I can), should I not rather say some other thing? Even though it be not yet the right thing? I'll try, I'll try in another present (even though it be not yet mine). Without pauses, without tears, without eyes, without reasons. Let it be assumed then that I am at rest (though this is unimportant): at rest or forever moving (through the air or in contact with other surfaces). Or that I sometimes move, sometimes rest - since I feel nothing (neither quietude nor change), nothing that can serve as a point of departure towards an opinion on this subject. Which would not greatly matter if I possessed some general notions, and then the use of reason. But there it is: I feel nothing, know nothing. And as far as thinking is concerned I do just enough to preserve me from going silent - you can't call that thinking. Let us then assume nothing: neither that I move, nor that I don't (it's safer, since the thing is unimportant), and pass on to those that are. Namely? This voice that speaks (knowing that it lies), indifferent to what it says. Too old perhaps and too abased ever to succeed in saying the words that would be its last. Knowing itself useless and its uselessness in vain. Not listening to itself but to the silence that it breaks and whence perhaps one day will come stealing the long clear sigh of advent and farewell. (Is it one? I'll ask no more questions: there are no more questions, I know none any more. ) It issues from me, it fills me, it clamours against my walls. It is not mine. I can't stop it, I can't prevent it, from tearing me, racking me, assailing me. It is not mine, I have none: I have no voice and must speak, that is all I know. It's round that I must revolve, of that I must speak - with this voice that is not mine, but can only be mine, since there is no one but me. (Or if there are others, to whom it might belong, they have never come near me. ) I won't delay just now to make this clear. Perhaps they are watching me from afar (I have no objection, as long as I don't see them), watching me like a face in the embers which they know is doomed to crumble. But it takes too long: it's getting late, eyes are heavy and tomorrow they must rise betimes. So it is I who speak, all alone, since I can't do otherwise. No, I am speechless. Talking of speaking: what if I went silent? What would happen to me then? Worse than what is happening? But fie! These are questions again! That is typical. I know no more questions and they keep on pouring out of my mouth. I think I know what it is: it's to prevent the discourse from coming to an end - this futile discourse which is not credited to me and brings me not a syllable
nearer silence. But now I am on my guard. I shall not answer them any more (I shall not pretend any more to answer them). Perhaps I shall be obliged (in order not to peter out) to invent another fairy-tale, yet another - with heads, trunks, arms, legs and all that follows, let loose in the changeless round of imperfect shadow and dubious light. But I hope and trust not. But I always can if necessary. For while unfolding my facetiae, the last time that happened to me (or to the other who passes for me), I was not inattentive. And it seemed to me then that I heard a murmur telling of another and less unpleasant method of ending my troubles and that I even succeeded in catching (without ceasing for an instant to emit my "he said", and "he said to himself^', and "he asked", and "he answered") a certain number of highly promising formulae; and which indeed I promised myself to turn to good account at the first opportunity. (That is to say as soon as I had finished with my troop of lunatics. ) But all has gone clean from my head. For it is difficult to speak (even any old rubbish) and at the same time focus one's attention on another point, where one's true interest lies (as fitfully defined by a feeble murmur seeming to apologize for not being dead). And what it seemed to me I heard then (concerning what I should do, and say, in order to have nothing further to do, nothing further to say), it seemed to me I only barely heard it (because of the noise I was engaged in making elsewhere, in obedience to the unintelligible terms of an incomprehensible damnation). And yet I was sufficiently impressed by certain expressions to make a vow (while continuing my yelps) never to forget them - and (what is more) to ensure they should engender others and finally (in an irresistible torrent) banish from my vile mouth all other utterance (from my mouth spent in vain with vain inventions), all other utterance but theirs: the true at last, the last at last. But all is forgotten and I have done nothing - unless what I am doing now is something. And nothing could give me greater satisfaction. For if I could hear such a music at such a time (I mean while floundering through a ponderous chronicle of moribunds in their courses, moving, clashing, writhing or fallen in short-lived swoons), with how much more reason should I not hear it now, when supposedly I am burdened with myself alone? (But this is thinking again. ) And I see myself slipping (though not yet at the last extremity) towards the resorts of fable. Would it not be better if I were simply to keep on saying "bababa" (for example) while waiting to ascertain the true function of this venerable organ? Enough questions, enough reasoning. I resume, years later. Meaning I suppose that I went silent, that I can go silent. And now this noise again. (That is all rather obscure. ) I say "years", though here there are no years. What matter how long? Years is one of Basil's ideas. A short time, a long time? It's all the same. I kept silence, that's all that counts
(if that counts - I have forgotten if that is supposed to count). And now it is taken from me again. Silence, yes. But what silence? For it is all very fine to keep silence, but one has also to consider the kind of silence one keeps. I listened. (One might as well speak and be done with it. What liberty! ) I strained my ear towards what must have been my voice still - so weak, so far, that it was like the sea, a far calm sea dying No, none of that: no beach, no shore - the sea is enough. I've had enough of shingle, enough of sand, enough of earth. (Enough of sea too. ) Decidedly Basil is becoming more important: I'll call him Mahood instead (I prefer that, I'm queer). It was he told me stories about me, lived in my stead, issued forth from me, came back to me, entered back into me, heaped stories on my head. I don't know how it was done. I always liked not knowing, but Mahood said it wasn't right. He didn't know either, but it worried him. It is his voice which has often, always, mingled with mine, and sometimes drowned it completely. Until he left me for good (or refused to leave me any more - I don't know). Yes, I don't know if he's here now or far away, but I don't think I am far wrong in saying that he has ceased to plague me. When he was away I tried to find myself again, to forget what he had said, about me, about my misfortunes: fatuous misfortunes, idiotic pains, in the light of my true situation (revolting word). But his voice continued to testify for me, as though woven into mine - preventing me from saying who I was, what I was (so as to have done with saying, done with listening). And still today (as he would say), though he plagues me no more his voice is there, in mine - but less, less. And being no longer renewed it will disappear one day, I hope, from mine, completely. But in order for that to happen I must speak. Speak. And at the same time (I do not deceive myself) he may come back again (or go away again and then come back again). Then my voice (? the" voice) would say: "That's an idea, now I'll tell one of Mahood's stories, I need a rest. " (Yes, that's how it would happen. ) And it would say: "Then refreshed, set about the truth again, with redoubled vigour. " To make me think I was a free agent. But it would not be my voice, not even in part. That is how it would be done. Or quietly, stealthily, the story would begin - as if nothing had happened and I still the teller and the told. But I would be fast asleep, my mouth agape, as usual: I would look the same as usual. And from my sleeping mouth the lies would pour, about me. (No, not sleeping: listening, in tears. ) But now? Is it I now? I on me? Sometimes I think it is. And then I realize it is not. I am doing my best, and failing again, yet again. I don't mind failing, it's a pleasure - but I want to go silent. Not as just now, the better to listen - but peacefully, victorious, without ulterior object. Then it would be a life worth having, a life at last. My speech-parched voice at rest would fill with spittle, I'd let it flow over and over, happy at last, dribbling with
life, my pensum ended, in the silence. I spoke (I must have spoken) of a lesson. It was "pensum" I should have said: I confused pensum with lesson. Yes, I have a pensum to discharge, before I can be free (free to dribble, free to speak no more, listen no more), and I've forgotten what it is. There at last is a fair picture of my situation. I was given a pensum (at birth perhaps), as a punishment for having been born perhaps (or for no particular reason, because they dislike me) - and I've forgotten what it is. But was I ever told? Squeeze, squeeze! Not too hard, but squeeze a little longer: this is perhaps about you, and your goal at hand. (After ten thousand words? Well let us say one goal - after it there will be others. ) Speak? Yes: but to me. I have never spoken enough to me, never listened enough to me, never replied enough to me, never had pity enough on me. I have spoken for my master, listened for the words of my master never spoken: "Well done, my child, well done, my son - you may stop, you may go, you are free, you are acquitted, you are pardoned. " Never spoken. "My master. " There is a vein I must not lose sight of. But for the moment my concern (but before I forget: there may be more than one, a whole college of tyrants, differing in their views as to what should be done with me, in conclave since time began or a little later, listening to me from time to time, then breaking up for a meal or a game of cards) my concern is with the pensum of which I think I may safely say (without loss of face) that it is in some way related to that lesson too hastily proclaimed, too hastily denied. For all I need say is this: that if I have a pensum to perform it is because I could not say my lesson; and that when I have finished my pensum I shall still have my lesson to say, before I have the right to stay quiet in my corner (alive and dribbling, my mouth shut, my tongue at rest) far from all disturbance, all sound, my mind at peace (that is to say, empty). But this does not get me very far. For even should I hit upon the right pensum (somewhere in this churn of words at last) I would still have to reconstitute the right lesson (unless of course the two are one and the same, which obviously is not impossible either). Strange notion in any case (and eminently open to suspicion), that of a task to be performed, before one can be at rest. Strange task, which consists in speaking of one self. Strange hope, turned towards silence and peace. Possessed of nothing but my voice (the voice), it may seem natural, once the idea of obligation has been swallowed, that I should interpret it as an obligation to say something. But is it possible? Bereft of hands, perhaps it is my duty to clap or (striking the palms together) to call the waiter; and of feet, to dance the Carmagnole. But let us first suppose, in order to get on a little (then we'll suppose something else, in order to get on a little further), that it is in fact required of me that I say something, something that is not to be found in all I have said up to now. That seems a reasonable
assumption. But thence to infer that the something required is something about me suddenly strikes me as unwarranted. Might it not rather be the praise of my master, intoned, in order to obtain his forgiveness? Or the admission that I am Mahood after all and these stories of a being whose identity he usurps (and whose voice he prevents from being heard) all lies from beginning to end? And what if Mahood were my master? I'll leave it at that, for the time being. So many prospects in so short a time, it's too much. Decidedly it seems impossible, at this stage, that I should dispense with questions, as I promised myself I would. (No, I merely swore I'd stop asking them. ) And perhaps before long (who knows) I shall light on the happy combination which will prevent them from ever arising again in my - let us not be over-nice - mind. For what I am doing is not being done without a minimum of mind. Not mine perhaps (granted, with pleasure), but I draw on it. At least I try and look as if I did. Rich matter there, to be exploited, fatten you up: suck it to the core, keep you going for years, tasty into the bargain. I quiver at the thought (give you my word, spoken in jest), quiver and hurry on, all life before me, on and forget, what I was saying, just now, something important. It's gone, it'll come back, no regrets (as good as new? unrecognizable? let's hope so), some day when I feel more on for high-class nuts to crack. On. The master. I never paid him enough attention. (No more perhapses either: that old trick is worn to a thread. I'll forbid myself everything, then go on as if I hadn't. ) The master. A few allusions here and there, as to a satrap, with a view to enlisting sympathy. "They clothed me and gave me money" - that kind of thing, the light touch. Then no more. Or Moran's boss (I forget his name). Ah yes, certain things, things I invented (hoping for the best, full of doubts, croaking with fatigue) - I remember certain things, not always the same. But to investigate this matter seriously (I mean with as much futile ardour as that of the underling, which I hoped was mine, close to mine, the road to mine) - no, that never occurred to me. And if it occurs to me now it is because I have despaired of mine. A moment of discouragement, to strike while hot. My master then (assuming he is solitary, in my image) wishes me well, poor devil, wishes my good. And if he does not seem to do very much in order not to be disappointed it is because there is not very much to be done - otherwise he would have done it, my great and good master (that must be it), long ago, poor devil. Another supposition: he has taken the necessary steps, his will is done as far as I am concerned (for he may have other prot ^ s), and all is well with me without my knowing it. Cases one and two. I'll consider the former first, if I can. Then I'll admire the latter, if my eyes are still open. (This sounds like one of Malone's anecdotes. ) But quick, consider, before you forget. There he is then, the unfortunate brute, quite
miserable because of me, for whom there is nothing to be done - and he so anxious to help, so used to giving orders and to being obeyed. There he is, ever since I came into the world (possibly at his instigation, I wouldn't put it past him), commanding me to be well (you know, in every way, no complaints at all), with as much success as if he were shouting at a lump of inanimate matter. If he is not pleased with this panegyric I hope I may be I nearly said hanged - but that I hope in any case, without restriction (I nearly said con-). That would cut my cackle. Ah for a neck! "I want all to be well with you, do you hear me? " That's what he keeps on dinning at me.
To which I reply, in a respectful attitude: "I too, your Lordship. " I say that to cheer him up, he sounds so unhappy. (I am good-hearted, on the surface. ) No, we have no conversation, never a mum of his mouth to me. He's out of luck, that's certain: perhaps he didn't choose me. What he means by good (or my good) is another problem. He is capable of wanting me to be happy (such a thing has been known, it appears). Or to serve a purpose. Or the two at once! A little more explicitness on his part (since the initiative belongs to him) might be a help, as well from his point of view as from the one he attributes to me. Let the man explain himself and have done with it. It's none of my business to ask him questions, even if I knew how to reach him. Let him inform me once and for all what exactly it is he wants from me, for me. What he wants is my good, I know that. (At least I say it, in the hope of bringing him round to a more reasonable frame of mind - assuming he exists and, existing, hears me. ) But what good? There must be more than one. The supreme perhaps. In a word let him enlighten me, that's all I ask, so that I may at least have the satisfaction of knowing in what sense I leave to be desired. If he wants me to say something (for my good naturally), he has only to tell me what it is and I'll let it out with a roar straight away. It's true he may have told me already a hundred times. Well, let him make it a hundred and one: this time I'll try and pay attention. But perhaps I malign him unjustly, my good master. Perhaps he is not solitary like me, not free like me, but associated with others - equally good, equally concerned with my welfare, but differing as to its nature. Every day, up above (I mean up above me), from one set hour to another set hour (everything there being set and settled except what is to be done with me), they assemble to discuss me. (Or perhaps it's a meeting of deputies, with instructions to elaborate a tentative agreement. ) The fact of my continuing (while they are thus engaged) to be what I have always been is naturally preferable to a lame resolution (voted perhaps by a majority of one, or drawn from an old hat). They too are unhappy, all this time, each one to the best of his capacity, because all is not well with me. And now enough of that. If that doesn't mollify them so much the worse for me (I can still conceive of such a thing). But one
more suggestion before I forget and go on to serious matters. Why don't they wash their hands of me and set me free? That might do me good. I don't know. Perhaps then I could be silent, for good and all. Idle talk, idle talk. I am free: abandoned. All for nothing again. Even Mahood has left me, I'm alone. All this business of a labour to accomplish, before I can end. Of words to say, a truth to recover, in order to say it, before I can end. Of an imposed task (once known, long neglected, finally forgotten) to perform, before I can be done with speaking, done with listening: I invented it all, in the hope it would console me, help me to go on, allow me to think of myself as somewhere on a road, moving, between a beginning and an end - gaining ground, losing ground, getting lost, but somehow in the long run making headway. All lies. I have nothing to do (that is to say, nothing in particular). I have to speak (whatever that means). Having nothing to say, no words but the words of others, I have to speak. No one compels me to (there is no one): it's an accident, a fact. Nothing can ever exempt me from it. There is nothing, nothing to discover, nothing to recover, nothing that can lessen what remains to say: I have the ocean to drink. (So there is an ocean then! ) Not to have been a dupe, that will have been my best possession, my best deed. To have been a dupe, wishing I wasn't, thinking I wasn't, knowing I was: not being a dupe of not being a dupe. For any old thing, no, that doesn't work. That should work but it doesn't. Labyrinthine torment that can't be grasped, or limited, or felt, or suffered - no, not even suffered: I suffer all wrong too, even that I do all wrong too. Like an old turkey-hen dying on her feet, her back covered with chickens and the rats spying on her. Next instalment, quick. No cries, above all no cries. Be urbane, a credit to the art and code of dying, while the others cackle (I can hear them from here) like the crackling of thorns. (No, I forgot, it's impossible: it's myself I hear howling behind my dissertation. ) So not any old thing. Even Mahood's stories are not any old thing, though no less foreign. To what? To that unfamiliar native land of mine - as unfamiliar as that other where men come and go, and feel at home, on tracks they have made themselves, in order to visit one another with the maximum of convenience and dispatch, in the light of a choice of luminaries pissing on the darkness turn about, so that it is never dark, never deserted. That must be terrible. So be it. Not any old thing, but as near as no matter. Mahood. Before him there were others, taking themselves for me. (It must be a sinecure handed down from generation to generation, to judge by their family air. ) Mahood is no worse than his predecessors. But before executing his portrait (full-length on his surviving leg) let me note that my next vice-exister will be a billy in the bowl (that's final), with his bowl on his head and his arse in the dust, plump down on thousand- breasted Tellus
(it'll be softer for him). Faith that's an idea (yet another! ): mutilate, mutilate - and perhaps some day, fifteen generations hence, you'll succeed in beginning to look like yourself, among the passers-by. In the meantime it's Mahood: this caricature is he. What if we were one and the same after all, as he affirms (and I deny)? And I have been in the places where he says I have been, instead of having stayed on here, trying to take advantage of his absence to unravel my tangle? Here, in my domain? What is Mahood doing in my domain, and how does he get here? There I am launched again on the same old hopeless business: there we are face to face, Mahood and I (if we are twain, as I say we are). (I never saw him, I don't see him: he has told me what he is like, what I am like - they have all told me that, it must be one of their principal functions. It isn't enough that I should know what I'm doing: I must also know what I'm looking like. ) This time I am short of a leg. And yet it appears I have rejuvenated. (That's part of the programme. ) Having brought me to death's door (senile gangrene), they whip off a leg and yip! off I go again, like a young one, scouring the earth for a hole to hide in. A single leg and other distinctive stigmata to go with it (human to be sure, but not exaggeratedly, lest I take fright and refuse to nibble). "He'll resign himself in the end, he'll own up in the end" - that's the watchword. "Let's try him this time with a hairless wedge-head: he might fancy that" - that kind of talk. "With the solitary leg in the middle, that might appeal to him. " The poor bastards. They could clap an artificial anus in the hollow of my hand and still I wouldn't be there, alive with their life: not far short of a man (just barely a man) - sufficiently for a man to have hopes one day of being one, my avatars behind me. And yet sometimes it seems to me I am there, among the incriminated scenes, tottering under the attributes peculiar to the lords of creation: dumb with howling to be put out of my misery (and all round me the spinach blue rustling with satisfaction). Yes, more than once I almost took myself for the other, all but suffered after his fashion, the space of an instant. Then they uncorked the champagne: "One of us at last! Green with anguish! A real little terrestrial! Choking in the chlorophyll! Hugging the slaughterhouse walls! " (Paltry priests of the irrepressible ephemeral, how they must hate me! ) "Come, my lambkin, join in our gambols. It's soon over, you'll see, just time to frolic with a lambkinette. " That's jam. Love! There's a carrot never fails: I always had to thread some old bodkin. And that's the kind of jakes in which I sometimes dreamt I dwelt, and even let down my trousers. (Mahood himself nearly codded me, more than once. ) I've been he an instant, hobbling through a nature which (it is only fair to say) was on the barren side and (what is more, it is only just to add) tolerably deserted to begin with. After each thrust of my crutches I stopped, to devour a narcotic and measure the
distance gone, the distance yet to go. My head is there too: broad at the base, its slopes denuded, culminating in a ridge or crowning glory strewn with long waving hairs like those that grow on naevi. (No denying it, I'm confoundedly well informed! You must allow it was tempting. ) I say an instant - perhaps it was years. Then I withdrew my adhesion, it was getting too much of a good thing. I had already advanced a good ten paces (if one may call them paces) - not in a straight line I need hardly say, but in a sharp curve which, if I continued to follow it, seemed likely to restore me to my point of departure (or to one adjacent). I must have got embroiled in a kind of inverted spiral: I mean one the coils of which, instead of widening more and more, grew narrower and narrower and finally (given the kind of space in which I was supposed to evolve) would come to an end for lack of room. Faced then with the material impossibility of going any further I should no doubt have had to stop - unless of course I elected to set off again at once in the opposite direction: to unscrew myself as it were, after having screwed myself to a standstill. Which would have been an experience rich in interest and fertile in surprises, if I am to believe what I once was told, in spite of my protests: namely that there is no road so dull, on the way out, but it has quite a different aspect, quite a different dullness, on the way back, and vice versa. (No good wriggling, I'm a mine of useless knowledge. ) But a difficulty arises here. For if by dint of winding myself up (if I may venture to use that ellipse, it doesn't often happen to me now) - if by dint of winding myself up (I don't seem to have gained much time) - if by dint of winding myself up I must inevitably find myself stuck in the end, once launched in the opposite direction should I not normally unfold ad infinitum, with no possibility of ever stopping? (The space in which I was marooned being globular - or is it the earth? No matter, I know what I mean. ) (But where is the difficulty? There was one a minute ago, I could swear to it. ) Not to mention that I could quite easily at any moment, literally any, run foul of a wall, a tree or similar obstacle (which of course it would be prohibited to circumvent), and thereby have an end put to my gyrations as effectively as by the kind of cramp just mentioned. But obstacles, it appears, can be removed in the fullness of time (but not by me: me they would stop dead forever, if I lived among them). But even without such aids it seems to me that once beyond the equator you would start turning inwards again, out of sheer necessity: I somehow have that feeling. At the particular moment I am referring to (I mean when I took myself for Mahood) I must have been coming to the end of a world tour - perhaps not more than two or three centuries to go. My state of decay lends colour to this view: perhaps I had left my leg behind in the Pacific. Yes (no perhaps about it), I had: somewhere off the coast of Java and its jungles red with rafflesia stinking of carrion.
(No, that's the Indian ocean - what a gazetteer I am! No matter, somewhere round there. ) In a word I was returning to the fold. Admittedly reduced - and doubtless fated to be even more so, before I could be restored to my wife and parents (you know, my loved ones), and clasp in my arms (both of which I had succeeded in preserving) my little ones born in my absence. I found myself in a kind of vast yard or campus, surrounded by high walls, in surface an amalgam of dirt and ashes - and this seemed sweet to me after the vast and heaving wastes I had traversed (if my information was correct). I almost felt out of danger! At the centre of this enclosure stood a small rotunda - windowless, but well furnished with loopholes. Without being quite sure I had seen it before, I had been so long from home, I kept saying to myself: "Yonder is the nest you should never have left, there your dear absent ones are awaiting your return, patiently, and you too must be patient. " It was swarming with them: grandpa, grandma, little mother and the eight or nine brats. With their eyes glued to the slits and their hearts going out to me they surveyed my efforts. This yard so long deserted was now enlivened, for them, by me. So we turned, in our respective orbits: I without, they within. At night, keeping watch by turns, they observed me with the help of a searchlight. So the seasons came and went. The children increased in stature, the periods of Ptomaine grew pale, the ancients glowered at each other, muttering (to themselves): "I'll bury you yet" or "You'll bury me yet". Since my arrival they had a subject of conversation, and even of discussion (the same as of old, at the moment of my setting forth), perhaps even an interest in life (the same as of old). Time hung less heavy on their hands. "What about throwing him a few scraps? " "No, no, it might upset him. " They did not want to check the impetus that was sweeping me towards them. "You wouldn't know him! " "True, papa, and yet you can't mistake him. " They who in the ordinary way never answered when spoken to: my elders, my wife (she who had chosen me, rather than one of her suitors). "A few more summers and he'll be in our midst. Where am I going to put him? In the basement? " (Perhaps after all I am simply in the basement. ) "What possesses him to be stopping all the time? " "Oh he was always like that, ever since he was a mite - always stopping, wasn't he, Granny? " "Yes indeed, never easy, always stopping. " According to Mahood I never reached them - that is to say they all died first, the whole ten or eleven of them, carried off by sausage-poisoning, in great agony. Incommoded first by their shrieks, then by the stench of decomposition, I turned sadly away. But not so fast, otherwise we'll never arrive. (It's no longer I in any case. ) "He'll never reach us if he doesn't get a move on. He looks as if he had slowed down, since last year. " "Oh the last laps won't take him long. " (My missing leg didn't seem to affect them, perhaps it was already missing
when I left. ) "What about throwing him a sponge? " "No, no, it might confuse him. " In the evening, after supper, while my wife kept her eye on me, gaffer and gammer related my life history, to the sleepy children. Bedtime story atmosphere. (That's one of Mahood's favourite tricks: to produce ostensibly independent testimony in support of my historical existence. ) The instalment over, all joined in a hymn: "Safe in the arms of Jesus" (for example), or "Jesus lover of my soul, let me to they bosom fly" (for example). Then they went to bed (with the exception of the one on watch duty). My parents differed in their views on me, but they were agreed I had been a fine baby, at the very beginning - the first fortnight or three weeks. "And yet he was a fine baby" - with these words they invariably closed their relations. Often they fell silent, engulfed in their memories. Then it was usual for one of the children to launch, by way of envoy, the consecrated phrase "And yet he was a fine baby". A burst of clear and innocent laughter, from the mouths of those whom sleep had not yet overcome, greeted this premature conclusion. And the narrators themselves, torn from their melancholy thoughts, could scarce forbear to smile. Then they all rose (with the exception of my mother whose knees couldn't support her) and sang "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild" (for example), or "Jesus my one, my all, hear me when I call" (for example). (He too must have been a fine baby. ) Finally my wife announced the latest news, for them to take to bed with them: "He's backing away again", or "He's stopped to scratch himself^", or "You should have seen him hopping sidelong", or "Oh look children, quick he's down on his hands and knee". (Admittedly that must have been worth seeing. ) It was then customary that someone should ask her if I was approaching none the less, if in spite of everything I was making headway: they couldn't bear the thought of going to bed (those who were still awake) without the assurance that I wasn't losing ground. Ptoto set their minds at rest: I had moved, no further proof was needed. I had been drawing near for so long now that provided I remained in motion there could be no cause for anxiety. I was launched, there was no reason why I should suddenly begin to retreat, I just wasn't made that way. Then having kissed all round and wished one another happy dreams they retired (with the exception of the watch). "What about hailing him? " Poor Papa, he burned to encourage me vocally: "Stick it, lad, it's your last winter. " But in view of the trouble I was having, the trouble I was taking, they held him back, pointing out that the moment was ill-chosen to give me a shock. But what were my own feelings at this period? What was I thinking of? With what? Was I having difficulty with my morale? The answer to all that is this (I quote Malone): that I was entirely absorbed in the business on hand and was not at all concerned to know precisely (or even
approximately) what it consisted in. The only problem for me was how to continue (since I could not do otherwise), to the best of my declining powers, in the motion which had been imparted to me.
