MS-HRC-SB-5-10

[0814] I was launched, there was no reason why I should suddenly begin to retreat, I wasn't made[p. 36r] that way. [0815] Then having kissed all round and wished one another happy dreams and sweet repose they all retired, with the exception naturally of the watch. [0816] What about hailing him? [0817] Por^or Papa, he would have liked to encourage me vocally. [0818] Stick it, lad, it's your last winter. [0819] But in the view of the trouble I a^was having, the trouble I was taking, they wouldn't let him ^{held him back}, pointing out that it wasn't the moment ^{was ill chosen} to give me a shock. [0820] But what were my own feelings at this period ^juncture? [0821] What was I thinking of? [0822] With what? [0823] Was I having difficulty with my morale? [0824] The answer to all that is this, I quote Mahhod , that I was entirely absorbed by the business on hand and not at all concerned to know precisely, or even approximately, what it consisted in. [0825] 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. [0826] This obligation, and the quasi-impossibility of fulfuⁱlling it, engrossed me in a purely mechanical way, excluding notably the free play of my intelligence and sensibility, so that my situation rather resembled that of an old broken^-down cart or bat^-horse incapable of receic^ving the least information either from its instinct or from its observation as to whether it is moving towards it ^the stable or away from ^{[⁁] it}, and not greatly caring. [0827] The question, among others, of how such things are possible had long since ceased to preoccupy me. [0828] This touching picture of my situation I found by no means unattractive and as I recall it I find myself wondering again if I was not in fact the creature revom^lving in that yard, as Mahood assured me. [0829] Well supplied with pain^-killers I drew upon them freely, without however permitting myself the lethal dose that would hac^ve cut short my functions, whatever they were may have been. [0830] Having somehow or other remarked the habitation and even admitted to myself that I had perhaps seen it before^, I gave it no further thought^, nor to the near and dears ones who filled it to overflowing, in a mouⁿting fever of expectation. [0831] Though now close at hand, as the crow flies, to my destination, I did not quicken my step. [0832] I could have no doubt, but I had to husband my strength, if I was ever[p. 37r] to arrive. [0833] I did not particularly want ^{had no particular wish} to arrive, but I had to do my utmost, in order to arrive. [0834] A desirable goal, no, I never had time to dwell on that. [0835] To go on, I call that on, to go on and get on has been my only care, if not always in a straight line, at least in obedience to the figure assigned to me. [0836] There was never any room in my life for anything else. [0837] Still Mahood speaking. [0838] Never once have I stopped. [0839] My halts do not count. [0840] Their purpose was to enable me to go on. [0841] I did not use them to brood on my lot, but to rub myself as best I might with Elliman's Embrocation, for example, or to give mself an injection of laudanum, no easy matters for a man with only one leg. [0842] Often the cry went up, He's down! But in reality I had sunk to the ground of my own free will, in order to be free rid of my crutches and have both hands free ^available to minister to myself in peace and comfort. [0843] Admittedly it is difficult, for a man with but one leg, to sink to earth in the full force of the expression, partcⁱcularly when he is weak in the head and when the remaining ^{sole surviving} leg [is] flabby ^flaccid for want of exercise, or from excess i^of it. [0844] The simplest then is to fling aside the crutches and collapse. [0845] That is what I did. [0846] They were therefore right in saying I had fallen, they were not far wrong. [0847] I have also been known to fall involuntarily, but not often, an old warrior like me, you can ^well imagine, he isn't often known to fall involuntarily, he lets himself fall in time. [0847|001] But have it any way you like. But have it any way you like. [0848] Up or down, taking my remedies ^anodynes, waiting for the pain to get better ^abate, panting to be on my way again, I stopped, if you insist, but not in the sense they meant when they said, He's stopped again, he'll never arrive. [0849] When I penetrate into that house, if I ever do, it will be to go on turning, ^{faster and faster, more and more convulsive,} like a constipated dog, or one sufferoⁱng from worms, overturning the furnitru^ure, in the midst of my familt^y all trying to embrace me at once, i^until by virtue of a su^^preme spasm I am catapulted in the opposite direction and h^gradually leave backwards, without having said good-evening. [0850] I must really lend myself to this story a little longer, there may just[p. 38r] possibly be some truth in it. [0851] Must Mahood must have remarked that I remained sceptical, for he let fall casually that I was lacking not only a leg, but an arm also. [0852] With regard to the coo^rresponding crutch, I seem to have retained sufficient armpit ^[stump] to hold and manoeuvre it, with the help of my unique foot to kick the end of it forward as occasion required. [0853] But what shocked me profoundly, to such a d[r]egree ^degree that my mind (Mahood fecit ^dixit) was assailed by insuperable doubts, was the suggestion that the misfortune experienced by my family and brought to my notice first by the noise of their agony, then by the smell of their corpses, had caused me to turn away back. [0854] From that moment on I cease^[⁁]d to go along with him. [0855] I'll explain why, that will permit to think of something else and in the first place of how to get back to me, back to where I am waiting for me, I'd just as soon not, but it's my only chance, at least I think so, the only chance I have of going silent, of saying something at last that is not false, ^{if that's what they want,} so as to have no more to say. [0856] My reasons. [0857] I'll give three or four, h^that will be enough for me. [0858] First my g^family, the mere fact of having a family should have been enough to put me on my guard, but my good will is such at certain my moments, and my longing to have flounderer^d however briefly, however feebly, in the the great animated ^life tore^rent streaming from the first protozoon to the very latsest ^latest humans, that I, no, parenthesis unfinished. [0859] I'll begin again. [0860] My family. [0861] To begin with it had no part or share in what I was doing. [0862] Having set forth from that place, it was natural I should return to it, given the accuracy of my navigation. [0863] And my family could have moved to other quarters during my absence, and settled down a hundred leagues away, without my deviating by a^s much as a hair's-breadth from my whirligigs ^evolutions. [0864] As for the screams of pain and wafts of decomposition, assuming I was capable of noticing them, they would have semed to me quite in the natural order of things, such as I had come to know it. [0865] If before such manifestations I had been compelled each time to turn aside, I should not have got very far. [0866] Washed on the surface only by the rains, my head cracking with unutterable mⁱmprecations, it waa^s from myself I should have had[p. 39r] to turn aside, before all else. [0867] Perhaps after all that is what Aftera all perhaps I a^was doing so. [0868] That would account for my vaguely circular motion. [0869] Lies, lies, mine was not to know, nor to judge, nor to rail, but to go. [0870] That the bacillus botulinus should have exterminated mye entire kith and kin, I shall never weary of repeating this, was something I could readily admit, but ^only on condition that ^my personal behaviour had not to suffer by it. [0871] Let us rather consider what really took place, if Mahood is ^was telling the truth. [0872] And why should he have lied to me, he so anxious to obtain my adhesion, to what now that I come to think of it, to his conception of my ^me probably. [0872|001] Why? [0873] For fear of paining me perhaps. [0874] But I am there to be pained, that is what my tempters have never grasped. [0875] What they all wanted, each one according to his particular notion of what is bearable ^endurable, was that I should exist and at the same time be only moderately, or perhaps I should say finitely pained. [0876] They have even killed ^{[⁁] me off}, with the ^{compassionate} remark that having reached the end of my endurance I had no choice [Stet] but to disappear. [0877] The end of my endurance! [0878] It was one second they should have schooled me to endure, after that I would have held out for all eternity, whistling a merry tune. [0879] [^| ]The hard knocks they invented for me! [0880] But the bouquet was this story of Mahood's in which I appear as upset at having been delivered so economically of a clatter ^pack of blood relations, not to mention the two cunts into the bargain, the one for ever accursed that ejected me into this world and the other, infundibuliform in which, pumping my likes, I tried to take my revenge. [0881] To tell the truth, let us n^be honest at least, it is some considerable time now since I last knew what I was talking about. [0882] It is because my thoughts are elsewhere. [0883] I am therefore forgiven. [0884] So long as one's thoughts are something^where everything is permitted. [0885] On then, without misgiving, as if nothing had happened. [0886] And let us consider what really took place, if Mahood was telling the truth when he represented me as bereft ^delivered at one fell swee^oop of parents, wife and heirs. [0887] I've plenty of time to blow it all skyhigh, this circus where it is enough to breathe to[p. 40r] qualify for asphyxiation, I'k^ll find a way out of it, it won't be like the other times. [0888] But I should not like to defame my defamer. [0889] For when he had ^made me turn and set off in the other direction, before I had exhausted the possibilities of the one I waq^s following, he had not in mind a moram^l breakdown, as I may have seemed to insinuate, ni^ot for a moment, but simply and solely a ^{simply purely} physiological commotion, followed by a simple desire to vomit, corresponding respectively to the howls of my family as they reluctantly ^grudgingly succmbed and the nauseous gases ^{subsequent stink foul emanations [foul] [xxx] emanations}, these latter ^{this latter} obliging me to beat in retreat, in pain ^{under penalty} of losing consv^ciousness completely. [0890] This version of the facts having been restored, it only remains to say that it is no better than the other and no less incompatible witn^h the kind of creature I might just conceivably have been, if they had taken me the right way ^{known how to take me}. [0891] So let us consider now what really took place ^occurred. [0892] Finally I found myself, not unexpectedly ^{without surprise [xxx xxx] ?}, within the building, circular in form as already stated, its ground floor consisting of a single room flush with the arena, and it was there I completed my rounds, stamping under foot the unrecognizable remains of my family, here a face, there a stomach, as the case might be, and sinking into them with the ends of mu^y crutches, both coming and going. [0893] To say I did so with satisfaction would be stretching the truth. [0894] For my feeling was rather one of annoyance at having to stumble ^trudge in such a slough ^{flounder in such muck} just at the moment when my concluding ^closing convulsions called for a firm and level sy^urface. [0895] I like to fancy, even if it is not true, that it was in mother's entrails I spent the last days of my long journey, and set off on the next. [0896] No, I have no preference. [0897] Isolde's breast would have done just as well, or papa's private parts ^genitals, or the heart of one of the little bastards. [0898] But is it certain? [0899] Would I not have been more likely, in a sudden access of independence, to devour the fatal what remained of the fatal corned-beef? [0900] How often did I drop during these final ^{closing (and [xxx]ing)} [Stet] stages, while the storms raged without? [0901] But this has ^enough been going on long enough ^{of this [xxx] nonsense}. [0902] I was never anywhere else but here, no one ever got me out of here. [0903] I've had e^Enough of acting the infant who has been told so often he was found under a v^cabbage[p. 41r] that in the end he remembers the exact spot in the vegetable garden and the kind of life he led there before coming into the world.