[1671] If only they
[p. 73r] would stop talking for nothing, pending their stopping everything. [1672] Nothing? [1673] That's soon said. [1674] It is not for
me to judge. [1675] What would I judge with? [1676] It's more provocation. [1677] They want me to lose patience and rush, suudenly 
beside myself,
to their rescue. [1678] How transparent that all is. [1679] Sometimes I say
to myself, they say to me, Worm says to me, the subject matters
little, that my purveyors are more than one, four or five. [1680] And yet
there is no harmony, no overlapping. [1681] It's more likely the same
foul brute all the time, amusing himself pretending to be a
many, varying his register, his tone, his accent and his tomfoolery. [1682] Unless it comes natural to him. [1683] A bare and rusty hook
I might accept. [1684] But all these titbits! [1685] But there are long
silences too, at long intervals, during which, hearing nothing,
I say nothing. [1686] That is to say I hear a murmuring, if I listen
hard enough, [1687] but it's not for me, it's for them alone, they
are putting their heads together again. [1688] I don't hear what they
say, all I know is that they are still there, that
they haven't done, with me. [1689] They have moved a little aside. [1690] Secrets. [1691] Or if there is only one, it is he alone, taking counsel
with himself, muttering and chewing his moustache, getting ready
for a fresh flow of inanities. [1692] To think of me eavesdropping, me,
as soon as silence falls! [1693] Ah a nice state they have me in. [1694] But
it's with the hope there is no one left. [1695] But this is not the time
to speak of that. [1696] Good. [1697] Of what is it the time to speak? [1698] Of
Worm, at last. [1699] Good. [1700] We must first, to begin with, go back to
his beginnings, and then, to go on with, follow him patiently
throuhg the various stages, taking care to show their fatal concatenation, which have made him what I am. [1701] To be tossed off with
bravura. [1702] Then notes from day to day, until I capitulate. [1703] And to
wind up with song and dance of thanksgiving by victim, to
celebrate his nativity. [1704] Please God nothing goes wrong. [1705] Mahood I
couldn't die. [1706] Worm will I ever get born? [1707] It's the same problem. [1708] But perhaps not the same personage after all. [1709]
Father Time will tell, it's all one to him. [1710] 
[p. 74r] But let us go back as planned, afterwards we'll fall forward
as projected. [1711] The reverse would be more correct. [1712] But not by
much. [1713] Upstream, downstream, no matter, I begin by the ear,
that's the way to talk. [1714] Before that it is the night of time. [1715] Whereas since, what light! [1716] Now at least I know where I am, as
far as my origins go, I mean my origins considered as a subject
of conversation, that is what counts. [1717] The moment one can say,
Someone is on his way, all is well. [1718] Perhaps I have still a
thousand years to go. [1719] No matter. [1720] He is on his way. [1721] I begin to
be familiar with the premises. [1722] I wonder if I couldn't sneak
out by the fundament, one morning, with the French breakfast. [1723] No, I can't move, not yet. [1724] One day in a skull and the next in
a belly, strange, and the next nowhere in particular. [1725] Perhaps
it's Botal's Hole, when all about me palpitates and labours. [1726] Bait, bait. [1727] Can it be I have a friend among them, shaking his
head in sorrow and saying nothing or only, from time to time,
Enough, enough? [1728] One can be before beginning, they have set their
hearts on that. [1729] They want me roots and all. [1730] This onward rushing
time is the same which used to sleep. [1731] And this silence they
yelp against in vain and which one day will be restored, the
same as in the past. [1732] Perhaps a little the worse for wear. [1733] Agreed, agreed, I who am on my way, words bellying out my sails,
am also that unthinkable ancestor of whom nothing can be said. [1734] But perhaps I shall speak of him some day, and of that impenetrable age when I was he, some day when they have fallen
silent, convinced at last that I shall never get born, having
failed to be conceived. [1735] Yes, perhaps I shall speak of him, for
an instant, like the echo that mocks, before being restored to
him, the one they could not part me from. [1736] And indeed they are
weakening already, it's perceptible. [1737] But it's a feint, to
have me rejoice unduly without cause, after their fashion, and accept their
terms, for the sake of peace at any price. [1738] But I can do nothing,
that is what they seem to forget at each instant. [1739] I can't rejoice and I can't grieve, it's in vain they have explained to
[p. 75r] me how it's done, I never understood. [1740] And what terms? [1741] I don't know what it is they want. [1742] I say what it is, but
I don't know. [1743] I emit sounds, better and better it seems to
me. [1744] If that's not enough for them I can't help it. [1745] If I speak
of a head, referring to me, it's because I hera it being spoken
of. [1746] But why keep on saying the same thing? [1747] They hope that
things will change one day, it's natural. [1748] That one day on
my windpipe, or some other section of the channel, a nice
little abscess will form, with an idea inside, point of departure for a general infection. [1749] This would enable me to
jubilate like a normal person, knowing why. [1750] And I'd soon be
a network of fistulae, bubbling with the blessed pus of reason. [1751] Ah if I were in flesh and blood, as they are kind
enough to posit, I wouldn't say no, there might be something
in their little idea. [1752] They say I suffer like true thinking
flesh, but I feel nothing. [1753] Mahood I felt a little, now and
then, but what good did that do them? [1754] No, they would be better
advised to try something else. [1755] I felt the pillory collar,
the flies, the sawdust under my stumps, the tarpaulin on my
skull, when they were mentioned to me. [1756] But can that be called a
life, which vanishes when the subject is changed? [1757] I don't see
why not. [1758] But they must have decided it cannot. [1759] They are too hard
to please, they expect too much. [1760] They want me to have a pain
in the neck, indubitable proof of animation, while listening
to talk of the heavens. [1761] They want me to have a mind where it
is know[⁁]n, once and for all, that I have a pain in the
neck, that flies are devouring me and that the heavens
can do nothing to help. [1762] Let them scourge me without ceasing
and forever, more and more lustily (in view of the habit
forming factor), in the end I might begin to look as if I had
grasped the meaning of life. [1763] They might even take a breather
from time to time, without my ceasing to howl. [1764] For they
would have warned me, before they started, You must howl, do
you hear, otherwise it proves nothing. [1765] And worn out at last,
or feeble with old age, and my cries having ceased for
[p. 76r] want of nourishment, they could pronounce me dead with
every appearance of veracity. [1766] And without ever having had to
move I would have gained my rest and heard them say, striking
softly together their dry old hands as if to shake off
the dust, He'll never move again. [1767] That would be too simple. [1768] We
must have the heavens and God knows what else, lights, luminaries, the three-monthly ray of hope and the gleams of consolation. [1769] But let us close this parenthesis and with a
light heart, open the next. [1770] The noise. [1771] How long did I remain
a pure ear? [1772] Up to the moment when this could go on no
longer, being too good to last, compared to what was soming . [1773] These millions of different sounds, always the same, recurring
without pause, are all one requires to sprout a head, a bud to begin with, finally huge,
its function first to silence, then to extinguish when the eye
joins in, and worse than the evil, its treasure-house. [1774] But no
lingering on this thin ice. [1775] The mechanism matters little, provided I succeed in saying, before I go deaf, It's a voice, and it
speaks to me. [1776] In enquiring, boldly, if it is not mine. [1777] In
deciding, it doesn't matter how, that I have none. [1778] In blowing
darkly hot and cold, boiling and frozen, with attendant similar
sensations. [1779] It's a starting-point, he's off, they don't see
me, but they hear me, panting, riveted, they don't know I'm
riveted. [1780] He knows they are words, he is not sure they are not
his, that's how it begins, with such a start no one ever looked back, one day he'll
make them his, when he thinks he is alone, far from
all men, out of range of every voice, and come to the light
of day they keep telling him of. [1781] Yes, I know they are words,
there was a time I didn't, as I still don't know if they are
mine. [1782] Their hopes are therefore justified. [1783] In their shoes I'd
be content with my knowing what I know, I'd demand no more of
me than to know that what I hear is not the innocent and
necessary sound of dumb things in their need to endure, but
the terror-stricken babble of the condemned to silence. [1784] I
[p. 77r] would have pity, give me quittance, not harry me into appearing
my own destroyer. [1785] But they are severe, greedy, no less, perhaps
more, than when I was acting Mahood. [1786] Instead of drawing in their horns! [1787] It's true I have not spoken yet. [1788] In at one ear and incontinent
out through the mouth, or the other ear, that's possible too. [1789] No sense in multiplying the occasions of error. [1790] Two holes and me
in the middle, slightly choked. [1791] Or a single one, entrance and exit,
where the words swarm and jostle like ants, hasty, indifferent,
bringing nothing, taking nothing away, too light to leave a mark. [1792] I shall not say I again, ever again, it's too ridiculous. [1793] I shall
put in its place, whenever I hear it, the the third person, if I think
of it. [1794] Anything to please them. [1795] It will make no difference. [1796] Where I am there is no one but
me, who am not. [1797] So much for that. [1798] Words, he says he knows they are
words. [1799] But how can he know, who has never heard anything else? [1802] True. [1803] Not to mention other things, many others, to which the
abundance of matter has unfortunately up to now prohibited the
least allusion. [1804] For example, to begin with, the breathing of the
party concerned. [1805] There he is now, with breath in his nostrils,
it only remains for him to suffocate. [1806] The thorax rises and falls,
the wear and tear are in full swing, the rot spreads downward,
soon he'll have legs, the possibility of crawling. [1807] More lies, he
doen't breathe yet, he'll never breathe. [1808] Then what is this faint
noise, as of air stealthily stirred, recalling the breath of
life, to those whom it corrodes? [1809] It's a bad example. [1810] But these lights
that go out hissing? [1811] It's more likely a great crackle of laughter,
at the sight of his terror and distress. [1812] To see him flooded with
light, then suddenly plunged back in darkness, must strike them
as irresistibly funny. [1813] But they have been there so long now,
on every side, that may have made a hole in the wall, a little hole,
to glue their eyes to, turn about. [1814] And these lights are perhaps
those they shine upon him, from time to time, in order to observe
the progress he is making. [1815] But this question of lights deserves
to be treated in a section apart, it is so intriguing, and at length,
composedly, and so it will be, at the first opportunity, when time
[p. 78r] is not so short, and the mind more composed.