MS-HRC-SB-5-9-3

[2330.4] admit it, after all, I deny nothing, I
admit nothing, I say what I hear,
I hear what I say, I don't know, one
or the other, or both, that makes three
possibilities, pick your fancy,
all these stories about travellers, these
stories about paralytics, all are mine,
I must be extremely old, or it's memory

[2330.4] playing tricks, if only I knew if I've
lived, if I live, if I'll live, that
would simplify everything, impossible
to know, that's where you're buggered,
I haven't stirred, that's all I know, no,
I know something else, it isn't I, I always
forget that, [2330.5] I resume, you must resume,
^never stirred from here, never stopped telling

[2330.5] myself stories, hardly hearing them, hearing
something else, listening for something else,
wondering now and then where I got
them, was I in the land of the living,
were they in mine, and where, where do
I keep them, in my head, I don't feel a
head on me, and what do I tell them
with, with my mouth, same remark,

[2330.5] and what do I hear them with, and so
on, the usual rigmarole, it can't be I,
or it's because I don't
pay attention, it's such an old habit,
I do it without minding what I'm doing,
or as if I were elsewhere, there I am
afar again, there I am the absentee,
it's his turn now, he who neither speaks

[2330.5] nor listens, who has neither body nor
soul, it's something else he has,
he must have something, he must be
somewhere, he is made of silence, there's
a pretty analysis, he's in the silence, he is
the one to be sought, he the one to be,
he the one to speak of, but he cannot speak,
then I could stop, I'd be he, I'd be the

[2330.5] silence, I'd be in the silence, we'd be
reunited, his story the story to be told,
[2330.6] but he has no story, he hasn't been in
story, it's not certain, he's in his own
story, unimaginable, unspeakable,
that doesn't matter, the attempt must
be made, in ^the old stories incompre-
hensibly mine, to find his, it must

[2330.6] be there, it must have been, before being
his, I'll recognize it, in the end I'll
recognize it, the story of the silence ^that he
never left, that I should never have left,
that I may never find again, that I may