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[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] Poror 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 awas 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 fulf
uilling 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 receicving 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 revomlving 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 hacve 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 iof 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 furnitruure, in the midst
of my familty all trying to embrace me at once, iuntil by virtue
of a su^preme spasm I am catapulted in the opposite direction and
hgradually 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 coorresponding
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, hthat will be
enough for me. [0858] First my gfamily, 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 floundere
rd
however briefly, however feebly, in the the great animated life torerent
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 as 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 waas 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 awas 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 nbe 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 somethingwhere
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 sweeoop 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'
kll 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 waqs following, he had not in mind a moraml breakdown, as I may
have seemed to insinuate, niot 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 consvciousness 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
witnh 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 muy 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 syurface. [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 eEnough of acting the
infant who has been told so often he was found under a vcabbage[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.
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