The hungry
compelled
by the position of the menu (and whether they like it or not) to post themselves literally face to face with me, in the full blast of my breath?
Samuel Beckett
Warmth, ease, conviction, the right manner - as if it were my own voice, pronouncing my own words, words pronouncing me alive (since that's how they want me to be - I don't know why, with their billions of quick, their trillions of dead: that's not enough for them, I too must contribute my little convulsion, mewl, howl, gasp and rattle, loving my neighbour and blessed with reason.
But what is the right manner?
I don't know.
It is they who dictate this torrent of balls, they who stuffed me full of these groans that choke me.
And out it all pours unchanged: I have only to belch to be sure of hearing them, the same sour old teachings I can't change a tittle of.
A parrot, that's what they're up against, a parrot.
If they had told me what I have to say, in order to meet with their approval, I'd be bound to say it, sooner or later.
But God forbid, that would be too easy, my heart wouldn't be in it!
I have to puke my heart out too, spew it up whole along with the rest of the vomit.
It's then at last I'll look as if I mean what I'm saying, it won't be just idle words.
(Well, don't lose hope.
Keep your mouth open and your stomach turned.
Perhaps you'll come out with it one of these days.
) But the other voice (of him who does not share this passion for
the animal kingdom, who is waiting to hear from me), what is its burden? Nice point - too nice for me. For on the subject of me properly so called (I know what I mean), so far as I know I have received no information up to date. May one speak of a voice, in these conditions? Probably not. And yet I do. The fact is all this business about voices requires to be revised, corrected and then abandoned. Hearing nothing I am none the less a prey to communications. And I speak of voices! After all, why not? So long as one knows it's untrue. But there are limits, it appears. Let them come. So nothing about me. That is to say no connected statement. Faint calls, at long intervals. "Hear me! " "Be yourself again! " Someone has therefore something to say to me. But never the least news concerning me, beyond the insinuation that I am not in a condition to receive any, since I am not there (which I knew already). I have naturally remarked, in a moment of exceptional receptivity, that these exhortations are conveyed to me by the same channel as that used by Malone and Co. for their transports. That's suspicious - or rather would be if I still hoped to obtain (from these revelations to come) some truth of more value than those I have been plastered with ever since they took it into their heads I had better exist. But this fond hope (which buoyed me up as recently as a moment ago, if I remember right) has now passed from me. Two labours then: to be distinguished perhaps (as the mine from the quarry) on the plane of the effort required, but identically deficient in charm and interest. "I". Who might that be? The galley-man, bound for the Pillars of Hercules, who drops his sweep under cover of night and crawls between the thwarts, towards the rising sun, unseen by the guard, praying for storm? Except that I've stopped praying for anything. (No, no, I'm still a suppliant. I'll get over it, between now and the last voyage, on this leaden sea. It's like the other madness, the mad wish to know, to remember, one's transgressions. ) I won't be caught at that again, I'll leave it to this year's damned. And now let us think no more about it, think no more about anything, think no more. He alone or they a many, all solicit me in the same tongue, the only one they taught me. (They told me there were others: I don't regret not knowing them. ) The moment the silence is broken in this way it can only mean one thing: orders, prayers, threats, praise, reproach, reasons. Praise? Yes, they gave me to understand I was making progress: "Well done, sonny, that will be all for today, run along now back to your dark and see you tomorrow. " And there I am, with my white beard, sitting among the children, babbling, cringing from the rod. I'll die in the lower third, bowed down with years and impositions - four foot tall again, like when I had a future, bare-legged in my old black pinafore, wetting my drawers. ("Pupil Mahood, for the twenty-five thousandth time, what is a mammal? ") And I'll fall down dead, worn out by the
rudiments. But I'll have made progress, they told me so. Only not enough, not enough. Ah! Where was I, in my lessons? That is what has had a fatal effect on my development: my lack of memory, no doubt about it. "Pupil Mahood, repeat after me: Man is a higher mammal. " I couldn't. Always talking about mammals, in this menagerie. Frankly, between ourselves, what the hell could it matter to pupil Mahood, that man is this rather than that? Presumably nothing has been lost in any case, since here it all comes slobbering out again, let loose by the nightmare. I'll have my bellyful of mammals, I can see that from here, before I wake. (Quick, give me a mother and let me suck her white, pinching my tits. ) But it's time I gave this solitary a name: nothing doing without proper names. I therefore baptize him Worm. It was high time. "Worm. " I don't like it, but I haven't much choice. It will be my name too, when the time comes, when I needn't be called Mahood any more (if that happy time ever comes). Before Mahood there were others like him, of the same breed and creed, armed with the same prong. But Worm is the first of his kind. (That's soon said: I must not forget I don't know him. ) Perhaps he too will weary, renounce the task of forming me and make way for another, having laid the foundations. He has not yet been able to speak his mind, only murmur (I have not ceased to hear his murmur, all the while the others discoursed). He has survived them all, Mahood too. (If Mahood is dead: I can hear him yet, faithful, begging me to still this dead tongue of the living. ) (I imagine that is what he says, in his unchanging tone. ) If I could be silent I would better understand what he wants of me, wants me to be, wants me to say. Why doesn't he thunder it at me and get it over? Too easy: it is I who must be silent, hold my breath. But there is something wrong here. For if Mahood were silent, Worm would be silent too. That the impossible should be asked of me, good - what else could be asked of me? But the absurd? Of me whom they have reduced to reason? It is true poor Worm is not to blame for this. That's soon said. But let me complete my views, before I shit on them. For if I am Mahood, I am Worm too (plop). Or if I am not yet Worm, I shall be when I cease to be Mahood (plop). On now to serious matters. No, not yet. Another of Mahood's yarns perhaps, to perfect my besotment? No, not worth the trouble: it will come at its appointed hour, the record is in position from time immemorial. (Yes, the big words must out too, all to be taken as it comes. ) The problem of liberty too, as sure as fate, will come up for my consideration at the pre- established moment. But perhaps I have been too hasty in opposing these two fomentors of fiasco. Is it not the fault of one that I cannot be the other? Accomplices therefore. (That's the way to reason: warmly. ) Or is one to postulate a tertius gaudens (meaning myself) responsible for the double failure? Shall I come upon my true
countenance at last, bathing in a smile? I have the feeling I shall be spared this spectacle. At no moment do I know what I'm talking about, nor of whom, nor of where, nor how, nor why. But I could employ fifty wretches for this sinister operation and still be short of a fifty-first, to close the circuit - that I know (without knowing what it means). The essential is never to arrive anywhere, never to be anywhere: neither where Mahood is, nor where Worm is, nor where I am (it little matters thanks to what dispensation). The essential is to go on squirming forever at the end of the line, as long as there are waters and banks and (ravening in heaven) a sporting God to plague his creature (per pro his chosen shits). (I've swallowed three hooks and am still hungry. Hence the howls. ) What a joy to know where one is, and where one will stay, without being there! Nothing to do but stretch out comfortably on the rack, in the blissful knowledge you are nobody for all eternity. (A pity I should have to give tongue at the same time - it prevents it from bleeding in peace, licking the lips. Well, I suppose one can't have everything, so late in the proceedings. ) They'll surely bring me to the surface one day or another, and all then sink their differences and agree it was not worth while going to so much trouble for such a paltry kill (for such paltry killers). What silence then! And now let's see what news there is of Worm (just to please the old bastard). I'll soon know if the other is still after me. But even if he isn't nothing will come of it: he won't catch me, I won't be delivered from him (I mean Worm), I swear it. (The other never caught me, I was never delivered from him. ) (It's past history, up to the present. ) I am he who will never be caught, never delivered, who crawls between the thwarts (towards the new day that promises to be glorious) festooned with lifebelts, praying for rack and ruin. The third line falls plumb from the skies: it's for her majesty my soul. (I'd have hooked her on it long ago if I knew where to find her. ) That brings us up to four, gathered together. I knew it. (There might be a hundred of us and still we'd lack the hundred and first: we'll always be short of me. ) Worm (I nearly said Watt). Worm. What can I say of Worm, who hasn't the wit to make himself plain? What to still this gnawing of termites in my Punch and Judy box? What that might not just as well be said of the other? Perhaps it's by trying to be Worm that I'll finally succeed in being Mahood: I hadn't thought of that. Then all I'll have to do is be Worm - which no doubt I shall achieve by trying to be Jones. Then all I'll have to do is be Jones. (Stop: perhaps he'll spare me that, have compassion and let me stop. The dawn will not be always rosy. ) (Worm. Worm. It's between the three of us now, and the devil take the hindmost. ) It seem to me besides that I must have already made (contrary to what it seems to me I must have already said) some efforts in this direction: I should have noted them, if only in my head. But Worm cannot note.
There at least is a first affirmation (I mean negation) on which to build: Worm cannot note. Can Mahood note? (That's it, weave, weave. ) Yes, it is the characteristic, among others, of Mahood to note (even if he does not always succeed in doing so) certain things - perhaps I should say all things - so as to turn them to account, for his governance. And indeed we have seen him do so (in the yard, in his jar), in a sense. I knew I had only to try and talk of Worm to begin talking of Mahood, with more felicity and understanding than ever. How close to me he suddenly seems, squinting up at the medals of the hippophagist Ducroix! It is the hour of the aperitif. Already people pause, to read the menu. Charming hour of the day - particularly when (as sometimes happens) it is also that of the setting sun whose last rays, raking the street from end to end, lend to my cenotaph an interminable shadow, astraddle of the gutter and the sidewalk. There was a time I used to contemplate it (when I was freer to turn my head than now, since being put on the collar). Then over there, far from me, I knew my head was lying, and people treading on it, and on my flies (which went on gliding none the less), prettily on the dark ground. And I saw the people coming towards me, all along my shadow, followed by long faithful trembling shadows. (For sometimes I confuse myself with my shadow, and sometimes don't. And sometimes I don't confuse myself with my jar, and sometimes do. It all depends what mood we're in. ) And often I went on looking without flinching until, ceasing to be, I ceased to see. Delicious instant truly! - coinciding from time to time (as already observed) with that of the aperitif. But this joy (which for my part I should have thought harmless, and without danger for the public) is something I have to go without now that the collar holds my face turned towards the railings, just above the menu (for it is important that the prospective customer should be able to compose his meal without the risk of being run over). The meat, in this quarter, has a high reputation, and people come from a distance (from great distances) on purpose to relish it. Which having done they hurry away. By ten o'clock in the evening all is silent (as the grave, as they say). (Such is the fruit of my observations accumulated over a long period of years and constantly subjected to a process of induction. ) This evening there is tripe. (It's a winter dish - or a late autumn one. ) Soon Marguerite will come and light me up. She is late. Already more than one passer-by has flashed his lighter under my nose the better to decipher what I shall now describe (by way of elegant variation) as the bill of fare. Please God nothing has happened to my protectress! I shall not hear her coming (I shall not near her steps), because of the snow. I spent all morning under my cover. When the first frosts come she makes me a nest of rags, well tucked in all round me, to preserve me from chills. It's snug. I wonder will she powder my skull this evening, with her great
puff? (It's her latest invention. She's always thinking of something new, to relieve me. If only the earth would quake! The shambles swallow me up! ) Through the railings, at the end of a vista between two blocks of buildings, the sky appears to me. (A bar moves over and shuts if off, whenever I please. ) If I could raise my head I'd see it streaming into the main of the firmament. What is there to add, to these particulars? The evening is still young, I know that. Don't let us go just yet, not yet say goodbye once more forever, to this heap of rubbish. What about trying to cogitate, while waiting for something intelligible to take place? Just this once? Almost immediately a thought presents itself. (I should really concentrate more often. ) Quick let me record it before it vanishes. How is it that people do not notice me? I seem to exist for none but Madeleine. That a passer-by pressed for time (in headlong flight or hot pursuit) should have no eyes for me, that I can conceive. But the idlers come to hear the cattle's bellows of pain and who, time obviously heavy on their hands, pace up and down waiting for the slaughter to begin?
The hungry compelled by the position of the menu (and whether they like it or not) to post themselves literally face to face with me, in the full blast of my breath? The children on their way to and from their playgrounds beyond the gate, all out for a bit of fun? It seems to me that even a human head, recently washed and with a few hairs on top, should be quite a popular curiosity in the position occupied by mine. Can it be out of discretion, and a reluctance to hurt, that they affect to be unaware of my existence? But this is a refinement of feeling which can hardly be attributed to the dogs that come pissing aganst my abode (apparently never doubting that it contains some flesh and bones). It follows therefore that I have no smell either. (And yet if anyone should have a smell, it is I. ) How, under these conditions, can Mahood expect me to behave normally? The flies vouch for me, if you like - but how far? Would they not settle with equal appetite on a lump of cowshit? No, as long as this point is not cleared up to my satisfaction (or as long as I am not distinguished by some sense organs other than Madeleine's) it will be impossible for me to believe (sufficiently to pursue my act) the things that are told about me. I should further remark (with regard to the testimony which I consider indispensable) that I shall soon be in no fit condition to receive it, so greatly have my faculties declined, in recent times. It is obvious we have here a principle of change pregnant with possibilities. But say I succeed in dying (to adopt the most comfortable hypothesis) without having been able to believe I ever lived? I know to my cost it is not that they wish for me. For it has happened to me many times already, without their having granted me as much as a brief sick-leave among the worms, before resurrecting me. But who knows, this time, what the future holds in store? That qua
sentient and thinking being I should be going downhill fast is in any case an excellent thing. Perhaps some day some gentleman, chancing to pass my way with his sweetheart on his arm, at the precise moment when my last is favouring me with a final smack of the light of time, will exclaim (loud enough for me to hear): "Oh I say, this man is ailing. We must call an ambulance! " Thus with a single stone, when all hope seemed lost, the two rare birds: I shall be dead, but I shall have lived. Unless one is to suppose him victim of a hallucination. Yes, to dispel all doubt his betrothed would need to say: "You are right, my love, he looks as if he were going to throw up. " Then I'd know for certain, and giving up the ghost be born at last - to the sound perhaps of one of those hiccups which mar (alas too often) the solemnity of the passing. (When Mahood, I once knew a doctor who held that scientifically speaking the latest breath could only issue from the fundament - and this therefore (rather than the mouth) the orifice to which the family should present the mirror, before opening the will. ) However this may be (and without dwelling further on these macabre details) it is certain I was grievously mistaken in supposing that death in itself could be regarded as evidence (or even a strong presumption) in support of a preliminary life. And I for my part have no longer the least desire to leave this world (in which they keep trying to foist me) without some kind of assurance that I was really there - such as a kick in the arse (for example), or a kiss. (The nature of the attention is of little importance, provided I cannot be suspected of being its author. ) But let two third parties remark me (there, before my eyes) and I'd take care of the rest. How all becomes clear and simple when one opens an eye on the within! (Having of course previously exposed it to the without, in order to benefit by the contrast. ) I should be sorry (though exhausted personally) to abandon prematurely this rich vein. For I shall not come back to it in a hurry. Ah no. But enough of this cursed first person: it is really too red a herring. I'll get out of my depth if I'm not careful. But what then is the subject? Mahood? No, not yet. Worm? Even less. Bah, any old protagonist will do, provided ones sees through it. Matter of habit. (To be adjusted later. ) Where was I? Ah yes: the bliss of what is clear and simple. The next thing is somehow to connect this with the unhappy Madeleine and her great goodness. Attentions such as hers, the pertinacity with which she continues to acknowledge me: do not these sufficiently attest my real presence here, in the Rue Brancion, never heard of in my island home? Would she rid me of my paltry excrements every Sunday, make me a nest at the approach of winter, protect me from the snow, change my sawdust, rub salt into my scalp (I hope I'm not forgetting anything), if I were not there? Would she have put me in a cang, raised me on a pedestal, hung me with
lanterns, if she were not convinced of my substantiality? How happy I should be to submit to this evidence and to the execution upon me of the sentence it entails! Unfortunately I regard it as highly subject to caution, not to say unallowable. For what is one to think of the redoubled attentions she has been lavishing on me for some time past? How different from the serenity of our early relations, when I saw her only once a week! No, there is no getting away from it: this woman is losing faith in me. And she is trying to put off the moment when she must finally confess her error by coming every few minutes to see if I am still more or less imaginable in situ. (Similarly the belief in God - in all modesty be it said - is sometimes lost following a period of intensified zeal and observance, it appears. ) Here I pause to make a distinction. (I must still be thinking. ) That jar is really standing where they say? All right, I wouldn't dream of denying it (after all it's none of my business) - though its presence at such a place (about the reality of which I do not propose to quibble either) does not strike me as very credible. No, I merely doubt that I am in it. It is easier to raise a shrine than bring the deity down to haunt it. (But what's all this confusion now? That's what comes of distinctions. No matter. ) She loves me, I've always felt it. She needs me. Her chop-house, her husband, her children (if she has any), are not enough: there is in her a void that I alone can fill. It is not surprising then that she should have visions. There was a time I thought she was perhaps a near relation (mother, sister, daughter, or suchlike - perhaps even a wife), and that she was sequestrating me. (That is to say Mahood - seeing how little impressed I was by his chief witness - whispered this suggestion in my ear, adding: "I didn't say anything. ") I must admit it is not so preposterous as it looks at first sight. It even accounts for certain bizarreries which had not yet struck me at the time of its formulation: among others my inexistence in the eyes of those who are not in the know (that is to say all mankind). But assuming I was being stowed away in a public place, why go to such trouble to draw attention to my head, artistically illuminated from dusk to midnight? You may of course retort that results are all that count. Another thing however: this woman has never spoken to me, to the best of my knowledge. (If I have said anything to the contrary I was mistaken. If I say anything to the contrary again I shall be mistaken again. Unless I am mistaken now. Into the dossier with it in any case, in support of whatever thesis you fancy. ) Never an affectionate word, never a reprimand. For fear of bringing me to the public notice? Or lest the illusion should be dispelled? I shall now sum up. The moment is at hand when my only believer must deny me. Nothing has happened. The lanterns have not been lit. (Is it the same evening? ) Perhaps dinner is over. Perhaps Marguerite has come and gone (come again and gone
again), without my having noticed her. Perhaps I have blazed with all my usual brilliance, for hours on end, all unsuspecting. And yet something has changed. It is not a night like other nights. Not because I see no stars (it is not often I see a star, away up in the depths of the sliver of sky I command). Not because I don't see anything, not even the railings (that has often happened). Not because of the silence either. It is a silent place, at night. And I am half-deaf. It is not the first time I have strained my ears in vain for the stables' muffled sounds. All of a sudden a horse will neigh. Then I'll know that nothing has changed. Or I'll see the lantern of the watchman, swinging knee-high in the yard. I must be patient. It is cold, this morning it snowed. And yet I don't feel the cold on my head. Perhaps I am still under the tarpaulin: perhaps she flung it over me again (for fear of more snow in the night) while I was meditating. But the sensation I so love, of the tarpaulin weighing on my head, is lacking too. Has my head lost all feeling? Or did I have a stroke, while I was meditating? I don't know. I shall be patient, asking no questions, on the qui vive. Hours have passed, it must be day again. Nothing has happened. I hear nothing. I placed them before their responsibilities: perhaps they have let me go. For this feeling of being entirely enclosed, and yet nothing touching me, is new. The sawdust no longer presses against my stumps. I don't know where I end. I left it yesterday, Mahood's world: the street, the chop-house, the slaughter, the statue and, through the railing, the sky like a slate pencil. I shall never hear again the lowing of the cattle, nor the clinking of the forks and glasses, nor the angry voices of the butchers, not the litany of the dishes and the prices. There will never be another woman wanting me in vain to live. My shadow at evening will not darken the ground. The stories of Mahood are ended. He has realized they could not be about me, he has abandoned. It is I who win, who tried so hard to lose, in order to please him, and be left in peace. Having won, shall I be left in peace? It doesn't look like it, I seem to be going on talking. In any case all these suppositions are probably erroneous: I shall no doubt be launched again (girt with better arms) against the fortress of mortality. What is more important is that I should know what is going on now, in order to announce it (as my function requires). It must not be forgotten (sometimes I forget) that all is a question of voices. I say what I am told to say, in the hope that some day they will weary of talking at me. The trouble is I say it wrong, having no ear, no head, no memory. Now I seem to hear them say it is Worm's voice beginning. (I pass on the news, for what it is worth. ) Do they believe I believe it is I who am speaking? (That's theirs too. To make me believe I have an ego all my own, and can speak of it, as they of theirs: another trap to snap me up among the living. It's how to fall into it they can't have explained
to me sufficiently: they'll never get the better of my stupidity. ) Why do they speak to me thus? (Is it possible certain things change on their passage through me, in a way they can't prevent? ) Do they believe I believe it is I who am asking these questions? (That's theirs too - a little distorted perhaps. ) I don't say it's not the right method. I don't say they won't catch me in the end: I wish they would, to be thrown away. It's this hunt that is tiring, this unending being at bay. Images! They imagine that by piling on images they'll entice me in the end. Like the mother who whistles to prevent baby's bladder from bursting. (There's another. ) They? Yes, now they're all in the same galley. Worm to play, his lead: I wish him a happy time. To think I thought he was against what they were trying to do with me! To think I saw in him, if not me, a step towards me! To get me to be he, the anti-Mahood, and then to say "But what am I doing but living, in a kind of way, the only possible way? " - that's the combination. Or by the absurd prove to me that I am (the absurd of not being able). Unfortunately it is no help my being forewarned. I never remain so for long. In any case I wish him every success, in his courageous undertaking. And I am even prepared to collaborate with him (as with Mahood and Co. ) to the best of my ability. (Being unable to do otherwise - and knowing my ability. ) Worm. To say he does not know what he is, where he is, what is happening, is to underestimate him. What he does not know is that there is anything to know. His senses tell him nothing: nothing about himself, nothing about the rest (and this distinction is beyond him). Feeling nothing, knowing nothing, he exists nevertheless: but not for himself, for others. Others conceive him and say "Worm is, since we conceive him". As if there could be no being but being conceived (if only by the be-er). Others. One alone, then others. One alone turned towards the all-impotent, all-nescient, that haunts him, then others. Towards him whom he would nourish (he the famished one! ), and who, having nothing human, has nothing else, has nothing, is nothing. Come into the world unborn, abiding there unliving, with no hope of death (epicentre of joys, of griefs, of calm). Who seems the truest possession, because the most unchanging. The one outside of life we always were in the end, all our long vain life long. Who is not spared by the mad need to speak, to think, to know where one is, where one was, during the wild dream, up above, under the skies, venturing forth at night. The one ignorant of himself and silent, ignorant of his silence and silent. Who could not be and gave up trying. Who crouches in their midst who see themselves in him and in their eyes stares his unchanging stare. Thanks for these first notions. And it's not all. He who seeks his true countenance, let him be of good cheer: he'll find it, convulsed with anguish, the eyes out on stalks. He who longs to have lived, while he was alive, let him be reassured: life will tell him how. (That's
all very comforting. ) Worm? Be Worm? You'll see, it's impossible. What a velvet glove - a little worn at the knuckles with all the hard hitting! Bah, let's turn the black eye. And the starching begins at last, of this old clout so patiently pawed in vain, as limp and drooping still as the first day. But it is solely a question of voices: no other image is appropriate. Let it go through me at last: the right one, the last one. (His who has none, by his own confession. ) Do they think they'll lull me, with all this hemming and hawing? What can it matter to me, that I succeed or fail? The undertaking is none of mine. If they want me to succeed I'll fail (and vice versa), so as not to be rid of my tormentors.
the animal kingdom, who is waiting to hear from me), what is its burden? Nice point - too nice for me. For on the subject of me properly so called (I know what I mean), so far as I know I have received no information up to date. May one speak of a voice, in these conditions? Probably not. And yet I do. The fact is all this business about voices requires to be revised, corrected and then abandoned. Hearing nothing I am none the less a prey to communications. And I speak of voices! After all, why not? So long as one knows it's untrue. But there are limits, it appears. Let them come. So nothing about me. That is to say no connected statement. Faint calls, at long intervals. "Hear me! " "Be yourself again! " Someone has therefore something to say to me. But never the least news concerning me, beyond the insinuation that I am not in a condition to receive any, since I am not there (which I knew already). I have naturally remarked, in a moment of exceptional receptivity, that these exhortations are conveyed to me by the same channel as that used by Malone and Co. for their transports. That's suspicious - or rather would be if I still hoped to obtain (from these revelations to come) some truth of more value than those I have been plastered with ever since they took it into their heads I had better exist. But this fond hope (which buoyed me up as recently as a moment ago, if I remember right) has now passed from me. Two labours then: to be distinguished perhaps (as the mine from the quarry) on the plane of the effort required, but identically deficient in charm and interest. "I". Who might that be? The galley-man, bound for the Pillars of Hercules, who drops his sweep under cover of night and crawls between the thwarts, towards the rising sun, unseen by the guard, praying for storm? Except that I've stopped praying for anything. (No, no, I'm still a suppliant. I'll get over it, between now and the last voyage, on this leaden sea. It's like the other madness, the mad wish to know, to remember, one's transgressions. ) I won't be caught at that again, I'll leave it to this year's damned. And now let us think no more about it, think no more about anything, think no more. He alone or they a many, all solicit me in the same tongue, the only one they taught me. (They told me there were others: I don't regret not knowing them. ) The moment the silence is broken in this way it can only mean one thing: orders, prayers, threats, praise, reproach, reasons. Praise? Yes, they gave me to understand I was making progress: "Well done, sonny, that will be all for today, run along now back to your dark and see you tomorrow. " And there I am, with my white beard, sitting among the children, babbling, cringing from the rod. I'll die in the lower third, bowed down with years and impositions - four foot tall again, like when I had a future, bare-legged in my old black pinafore, wetting my drawers. ("Pupil Mahood, for the twenty-five thousandth time, what is a mammal? ") And I'll fall down dead, worn out by the
rudiments. But I'll have made progress, they told me so. Only not enough, not enough. Ah! Where was I, in my lessons? That is what has had a fatal effect on my development: my lack of memory, no doubt about it. "Pupil Mahood, repeat after me: Man is a higher mammal. " I couldn't. Always talking about mammals, in this menagerie. Frankly, between ourselves, what the hell could it matter to pupil Mahood, that man is this rather than that? Presumably nothing has been lost in any case, since here it all comes slobbering out again, let loose by the nightmare. I'll have my bellyful of mammals, I can see that from here, before I wake. (Quick, give me a mother and let me suck her white, pinching my tits. ) But it's time I gave this solitary a name: nothing doing without proper names. I therefore baptize him Worm. It was high time. "Worm. " I don't like it, but I haven't much choice. It will be my name too, when the time comes, when I needn't be called Mahood any more (if that happy time ever comes). Before Mahood there were others like him, of the same breed and creed, armed with the same prong. But Worm is the first of his kind. (That's soon said: I must not forget I don't know him. ) Perhaps he too will weary, renounce the task of forming me and make way for another, having laid the foundations. He has not yet been able to speak his mind, only murmur (I have not ceased to hear his murmur, all the while the others discoursed). He has survived them all, Mahood too. (If Mahood is dead: I can hear him yet, faithful, begging me to still this dead tongue of the living. ) (I imagine that is what he says, in his unchanging tone. ) If I could be silent I would better understand what he wants of me, wants me to be, wants me to say. Why doesn't he thunder it at me and get it over? Too easy: it is I who must be silent, hold my breath. But there is something wrong here. For if Mahood were silent, Worm would be silent too. That the impossible should be asked of me, good - what else could be asked of me? But the absurd? Of me whom they have reduced to reason? It is true poor Worm is not to blame for this. That's soon said. But let me complete my views, before I shit on them. For if I am Mahood, I am Worm too (plop). Or if I am not yet Worm, I shall be when I cease to be Mahood (plop). On now to serious matters. No, not yet. Another of Mahood's yarns perhaps, to perfect my besotment? No, not worth the trouble: it will come at its appointed hour, the record is in position from time immemorial. (Yes, the big words must out too, all to be taken as it comes. ) The problem of liberty too, as sure as fate, will come up for my consideration at the pre- established moment. But perhaps I have been too hasty in opposing these two fomentors of fiasco. Is it not the fault of one that I cannot be the other? Accomplices therefore. (That's the way to reason: warmly. ) Or is one to postulate a tertius gaudens (meaning myself) responsible for the double failure? Shall I come upon my true
countenance at last, bathing in a smile? I have the feeling I shall be spared this spectacle. At no moment do I know what I'm talking about, nor of whom, nor of where, nor how, nor why. But I could employ fifty wretches for this sinister operation and still be short of a fifty-first, to close the circuit - that I know (without knowing what it means). The essential is never to arrive anywhere, never to be anywhere: neither where Mahood is, nor where Worm is, nor where I am (it little matters thanks to what dispensation). The essential is to go on squirming forever at the end of the line, as long as there are waters and banks and (ravening in heaven) a sporting God to plague his creature (per pro his chosen shits). (I've swallowed three hooks and am still hungry. Hence the howls. ) What a joy to know where one is, and where one will stay, without being there! Nothing to do but stretch out comfortably on the rack, in the blissful knowledge you are nobody for all eternity. (A pity I should have to give tongue at the same time - it prevents it from bleeding in peace, licking the lips. Well, I suppose one can't have everything, so late in the proceedings. ) They'll surely bring me to the surface one day or another, and all then sink their differences and agree it was not worth while going to so much trouble for such a paltry kill (for such paltry killers). What silence then! And now let's see what news there is of Worm (just to please the old bastard). I'll soon know if the other is still after me. But even if he isn't nothing will come of it: he won't catch me, I won't be delivered from him (I mean Worm), I swear it. (The other never caught me, I was never delivered from him. ) (It's past history, up to the present. ) I am he who will never be caught, never delivered, who crawls between the thwarts (towards the new day that promises to be glorious) festooned with lifebelts, praying for rack and ruin. The third line falls plumb from the skies: it's for her majesty my soul. (I'd have hooked her on it long ago if I knew where to find her. ) That brings us up to four, gathered together. I knew it. (There might be a hundred of us and still we'd lack the hundred and first: we'll always be short of me. ) Worm (I nearly said Watt). Worm. What can I say of Worm, who hasn't the wit to make himself plain? What to still this gnawing of termites in my Punch and Judy box? What that might not just as well be said of the other? Perhaps it's by trying to be Worm that I'll finally succeed in being Mahood: I hadn't thought of that. Then all I'll have to do is be Worm - which no doubt I shall achieve by trying to be Jones. Then all I'll have to do is be Jones. (Stop: perhaps he'll spare me that, have compassion and let me stop. The dawn will not be always rosy. ) (Worm. Worm. It's between the three of us now, and the devil take the hindmost. ) It seem to me besides that I must have already made (contrary to what it seems to me I must have already said) some efforts in this direction: I should have noted them, if only in my head. But Worm cannot note.
There at least is a first affirmation (I mean negation) on which to build: Worm cannot note. Can Mahood note? (That's it, weave, weave. ) Yes, it is the characteristic, among others, of Mahood to note (even if he does not always succeed in doing so) certain things - perhaps I should say all things - so as to turn them to account, for his governance. And indeed we have seen him do so (in the yard, in his jar), in a sense. I knew I had only to try and talk of Worm to begin talking of Mahood, with more felicity and understanding than ever. How close to me he suddenly seems, squinting up at the medals of the hippophagist Ducroix! It is the hour of the aperitif. Already people pause, to read the menu. Charming hour of the day - particularly when (as sometimes happens) it is also that of the setting sun whose last rays, raking the street from end to end, lend to my cenotaph an interminable shadow, astraddle of the gutter and the sidewalk. There was a time I used to contemplate it (when I was freer to turn my head than now, since being put on the collar). Then over there, far from me, I knew my head was lying, and people treading on it, and on my flies (which went on gliding none the less), prettily on the dark ground. And I saw the people coming towards me, all along my shadow, followed by long faithful trembling shadows. (For sometimes I confuse myself with my shadow, and sometimes don't. And sometimes I don't confuse myself with my jar, and sometimes do. It all depends what mood we're in. ) And often I went on looking without flinching until, ceasing to be, I ceased to see. Delicious instant truly! - coinciding from time to time (as already observed) with that of the aperitif. But this joy (which for my part I should have thought harmless, and without danger for the public) is something I have to go without now that the collar holds my face turned towards the railings, just above the menu (for it is important that the prospective customer should be able to compose his meal without the risk of being run over). The meat, in this quarter, has a high reputation, and people come from a distance (from great distances) on purpose to relish it. Which having done they hurry away. By ten o'clock in the evening all is silent (as the grave, as they say). (Such is the fruit of my observations accumulated over a long period of years and constantly subjected to a process of induction. ) This evening there is tripe. (It's a winter dish - or a late autumn one. ) Soon Marguerite will come and light me up. She is late. Already more than one passer-by has flashed his lighter under my nose the better to decipher what I shall now describe (by way of elegant variation) as the bill of fare. Please God nothing has happened to my protectress! I shall not hear her coming (I shall not near her steps), because of the snow. I spent all morning under my cover. When the first frosts come she makes me a nest of rags, well tucked in all round me, to preserve me from chills. It's snug. I wonder will she powder my skull this evening, with her great
puff? (It's her latest invention. She's always thinking of something new, to relieve me. If only the earth would quake! The shambles swallow me up! ) Through the railings, at the end of a vista between two blocks of buildings, the sky appears to me. (A bar moves over and shuts if off, whenever I please. ) If I could raise my head I'd see it streaming into the main of the firmament. What is there to add, to these particulars? The evening is still young, I know that. Don't let us go just yet, not yet say goodbye once more forever, to this heap of rubbish. What about trying to cogitate, while waiting for something intelligible to take place? Just this once? Almost immediately a thought presents itself. (I should really concentrate more often. ) Quick let me record it before it vanishes. How is it that people do not notice me? I seem to exist for none but Madeleine. That a passer-by pressed for time (in headlong flight or hot pursuit) should have no eyes for me, that I can conceive. But the idlers come to hear the cattle's bellows of pain and who, time obviously heavy on their hands, pace up and down waiting for the slaughter to begin?
The hungry compelled by the position of the menu (and whether they like it or not) to post themselves literally face to face with me, in the full blast of my breath? The children on their way to and from their playgrounds beyond the gate, all out for a bit of fun? It seems to me that even a human head, recently washed and with a few hairs on top, should be quite a popular curiosity in the position occupied by mine. Can it be out of discretion, and a reluctance to hurt, that they affect to be unaware of my existence? But this is a refinement of feeling which can hardly be attributed to the dogs that come pissing aganst my abode (apparently never doubting that it contains some flesh and bones). It follows therefore that I have no smell either. (And yet if anyone should have a smell, it is I. ) How, under these conditions, can Mahood expect me to behave normally? The flies vouch for me, if you like - but how far? Would they not settle with equal appetite on a lump of cowshit? No, as long as this point is not cleared up to my satisfaction (or as long as I am not distinguished by some sense organs other than Madeleine's) it will be impossible for me to believe (sufficiently to pursue my act) the things that are told about me. I should further remark (with regard to the testimony which I consider indispensable) that I shall soon be in no fit condition to receive it, so greatly have my faculties declined, in recent times. It is obvious we have here a principle of change pregnant with possibilities. But say I succeed in dying (to adopt the most comfortable hypothesis) without having been able to believe I ever lived? I know to my cost it is not that they wish for me. For it has happened to me many times already, without their having granted me as much as a brief sick-leave among the worms, before resurrecting me. But who knows, this time, what the future holds in store? That qua
sentient and thinking being I should be going downhill fast is in any case an excellent thing. Perhaps some day some gentleman, chancing to pass my way with his sweetheart on his arm, at the precise moment when my last is favouring me with a final smack of the light of time, will exclaim (loud enough for me to hear): "Oh I say, this man is ailing. We must call an ambulance! " Thus with a single stone, when all hope seemed lost, the two rare birds: I shall be dead, but I shall have lived. Unless one is to suppose him victim of a hallucination. Yes, to dispel all doubt his betrothed would need to say: "You are right, my love, he looks as if he were going to throw up. " Then I'd know for certain, and giving up the ghost be born at last - to the sound perhaps of one of those hiccups which mar (alas too often) the solemnity of the passing. (When Mahood, I once knew a doctor who held that scientifically speaking the latest breath could only issue from the fundament - and this therefore (rather than the mouth) the orifice to which the family should present the mirror, before opening the will. ) However this may be (and without dwelling further on these macabre details) it is certain I was grievously mistaken in supposing that death in itself could be regarded as evidence (or even a strong presumption) in support of a preliminary life. And I for my part have no longer the least desire to leave this world (in which they keep trying to foist me) without some kind of assurance that I was really there - such as a kick in the arse (for example), or a kiss. (The nature of the attention is of little importance, provided I cannot be suspected of being its author. ) But let two third parties remark me (there, before my eyes) and I'd take care of the rest. How all becomes clear and simple when one opens an eye on the within! (Having of course previously exposed it to the without, in order to benefit by the contrast. ) I should be sorry (though exhausted personally) to abandon prematurely this rich vein. For I shall not come back to it in a hurry. Ah no. But enough of this cursed first person: it is really too red a herring. I'll get out of my depth if I'm not careful. But what then is the subject? Mahood? No, not yet. Worm? Even less. Bah, any old protagonist will do, provided ones sees through it. Matter of habit. (To be adjusted later. ) Where was I? Ah yes: the bliss of what is clear and simple. The next thing is somehow to connect this with the unhappy Madeleine and her great goodness. Attentions such as hers, the pertinacity with which she continues to acknowledge me: do not these sufficiently attest my real presence here, in the Rue Brancion, never heard of in my island home? Would she rid me of my paltry excrements every Sunday, make me a nest at the approach of winter, protect me from the snow, change my sawdust, rub salt into my scalp (I hope I'm not forgetting anything), if I were not there? Would she have put me in a cang, raised me on a pedestal, hung me with
lanterns, if she were not convinced of my substantiality? How happy I should be to submit to this evidence and to the execution upon me of the sentence it entails! Unfortunately I regard it as highly subject to caution, not to say unallowable. For what is one to think of the redoubled attentions she has been lavishing on me for some time past? How different from the serenity of our early relations, when I saw her only once a week! No, there is no getting away from it: this woman is losing faith in me. And she is trying to put off the moment when she must finally confess her error by coming every few minutes to see if I am still more or less imaginable in situ. (Similarly the belief in God - in all modesty be it said - is sometimes lost following a period of intensified zeal and observance, it appears. ) Here I pause to make a distinction. (I must still be thinking. ) That jar is really standing where they say? All right, I wouldn't dream of denying it (after all it's none of my business) - though its presence at such a place (about the reality of which I do not propose to quibble either) does not strike me as very credible. No, I merely doubt that I am in it. It is easier to raise a shrine than bring the deity down to haunt it. (But what's all this confusion now? That's what comes of distinctions. No matter. ) She loves me, I've always felt it. She needs me. Her chop-house, her husband, her children (if she has any), are not enough: there is in her a void that I alone can fill. It is not surprising then that she should have visions. There was a time I thought she was perhaps a near relation (mother, sister, daughter, or suchlike - perhaps even a wife), and that she was sequestrating me. (That is to say Mahood - seeing how little impressed I was by his chief witness - whispered this suggestion in my ear, adding: "I didn't say anything. ") I must admit it is not so preposterous as it looks at first sight. It even accounts for certain bizarreries which had not yet struck me at the time of its formulation: among others my inexistence in the eyes of those who are not in the know (that is to say all mankind). But assuming I was being stowed away in a public place, why go to such trouble to draw attention to my head, artistically illuminated from dusk to midnight? You may of course retort that results are all that count. Another thing however: this woman has never spoken to me, to the best of my knowledge. (If I have said anything to the contrary I was mistaken. If I say anything to the contrary again I shall be mistaken again. Unless I am mistaken now. Into the dossier with it in any case, in support of whatever thesis you fancy. ) Never an affectionate word, never a reprimand. For fear of bringing me to the public notice? Or lest the illusion should be dispelled? I shall now sum up. The moment is at hand when my only believer must deny me. Nothing has happened. The lanterns have not been lit. (Is it the same evening? ) Perhaps dinner is over. Perhaps Marguerite has come and gone (come again and gone
again), without my having noticed her. Perhaps I have blazed with all my usual brilliance, for hours on end, all unsuspecting. And yet something has changed. It is not a night like other nights. Not because I see no stars (it is not often I see a star, away up in the depths of the sliver of sky I command). Not because I don't see anything, not even the railings (that has often happened). Not because of the silence either. It is a silent place, at night. And I am half-deaf. It is not the first time I have strained my ears in vain for the stables' muffled sounds. All of a sudden a horse will neigh. Then I'll know that nothing has changed. Or I'll see the lantern of the watchman, swinging knee-high in the yard. I must be patient. It is cold, this morning it snowed. And yet I don't feel the cold on my head. Perhaps I am still under the tarpaulin: perhaps she flung it over me again (for fear of more snow in the night) while I was meditating. But the sensation I so love, of the tarpaulin weighing on my head, is lacking too. Has my head lost all feeling? Or did I have a stroke, while I was meditating? I don't know. I shall be patient, asking no questions, on the qui vive. Hours have passed, it must be day again. Nothing has happened. I hear nothing. I placed them before their responsibilities: perhaps they have let me go. For this feeling of being entirely enclosed, and yet nothing touching me, is new. The sawdust no longer presses against my stumps. I don't know where I end. I left it yesterday, Mahood's world: the street, the chop-house, the slaughter, the statue and, through the railing, the sky like a slate pencil. I shall never hear again the lowing of the cattle, nor the clinking of the forks and glasses, nor the angry voices of the butchers, not the litany of the dishes and the prices. There will never be another woman wanting me in vain to live. My shadow at evening will not darken the ground. The stories of Mahood are ended. He has realized they could not be about me, he has abandoned. It is I who win, who tried so hard to lose, in order to please him, and be left in peace. Having won, shall I be left in peace? It doesn't look like it, I seem to be going on talking. In any case all these suppositions are probably erroneous: I shall no doubt be launched again (girt with better arms) against the fortress of mortality. What is more important is that I should know what is going on now, in order to announce it (as my function requires). It must not be forgotten (sometimes I forget) that all is a question of voices. I say what I am told to say, in the hope that some day they will weary of talking at me. The trouble is I say it wrong, having no ear, no head, no memory. Now I seem to hear them say it is Worm's voice beginning. (I pass on the news, for what it is worth. ) Do they believe I believe it is I who am speaking? (That's theirs too. To make me believe I have an ego all my own, and can speak of it, as they of theirs: another trap to snap me up among the living. It's how to fall into it they can't have explained
to me sufficiently: they'll never get the better of my stupidity. ) Why do they speak to me thus? (Is it possible certain things change on their passage through me, in a way they can't prevent? ) Do they believe I believe it is I who am asking these questions? (That's theirs too - a little distorted perhaps. ) I don't say it's not the right method. I don't say they won't catch me in the end: I wish they would, to be thrown away. It's this hunt that is tiring, this unending being at bay. Images! They imagine that by piling on images they'll entice me in the end. Like the mother who whistles to prevent baby's bladder from bursting. (There's another. ) They? Yes, now they're all in the same galley. Worm to play, his lead: I wish him a happy time. To think I thought he was against what they were trying to do with me! To think I saw in him, if not me, a step towards me! To get me to be he, the anti-Mahood, and then to say "But what am I doing but living, in a kind of way, the only possible way? " - that's the combination. Or by the absurd prove to me that I am (the absurd of not being able). Unfortunately it is no help my being forewarned. I never remain so for long. In any case I wish him every success, in his courageous undertaking. And I am even prepared to collaborate with him (as with Mahood and Co. ) to the best of my ability. (Being unable to do otherwise - and knowing my ability. ) Worm. To say he does not know what he is, where he is, what is happening, is to underestimate him. What he does not know is that there is anything to know. His senses tell him nothing: nothing about himself, nothing about the rest (and this distinction is beyond him). Feeling nothing, knowing nothing, he exists nevertheless: but not for himself, for others. Others conceive him and say "Worm is, since we conceive him". As if there could be no being but being conceived (if only by the be-er). Others. One alone, then others. One alone turned towards the all-impotent, all-nescient, that haunts him, then others. Towards him whom he would nourish (he the famished one! ), and who, having nothing human, has nothing else, has nothing, is nothing. Come into the world unborn, abiding there unliving, with no hope of death (epicentre of joys, of griefs, of calm). Who seems the truest possession, because the most unchanging. The one outside of life we always were in the end, all our long vain life long. Who is not spared by the mad need to speak, to think, to know where one is, where one was, during the wild dream, up above, under the skies, venturing forth at night. The one ignorant of himself and silent, ignorant of his silence and silent. Who could not be and gave up trying. Who crouches in their midst who see themselves in him and in their eyes stares his unchanging stare. Thanks for these first notions. And it's not all. He who seeks his true countenance, let him be of good cheer: he'll find it, convulsed with anguish, the eyes out on stalks. He who longs to have lived, while he was alive, let him be reassured: life will tell him how. (That's
all very comforting. ) Worm? Be Worm? You'll see, it's impossible. What a velvet glove - a little worn at the knuckles with all the hard hitting! Bah, let's turn the black eye. And the starching begins at last, of this old clout so patiently pawed in vain, as limp and drooping still as the first day. But it is solely a question of voices: no other image is appropriate. Let it go through me at last: the right one, the last one. (His who has none, by his own confession. ) Do they think they'll lull me, with all this hemming and hawing? What can it matter to me, that I succeed or fail? The undertaking is none of mine. If they want me to succeed I'll fail (and vice versa), so as not to be rid of my tormentors.
