MS-HRC-SB-4-3

[2197] seemed to help him greatly. And one day, rolling up the leg of his
trousers, he showed Macmann his shin covered with bruises, scars
and abrasions. [2198] Then producing smartly a hammer from an inner pock-
et he dealt himself, right in the middle of his ancient wounds,
so violent a blow that he fell down backwards, or perhaps I should
say forwards.

[2199] But the part he struck most readily, with his hammer,
was the head, and that is understandable, for it too is a bony
part, and sensitive, and difficult to miss, and the seat of all
the shit and misery, so you rain blows upon it, with more pleasure
than on the leg for example, which never did you any harm, it's
only human. [2200] Up, cried Macmann, let ^{[place = supralinear] Up! cried Macmann. Let} me up! [2201] Lemuel came to a stand-
still. [2202] What? he roared. [2203] Up! cried Macmann. [2204] Let me up! [2205] Let me up!

[2206] I have had a visit. [2207] Things were going too well. [2208] I had for-
gotten myself, lost myself. [2209] I exaggerate. [2210] Things were not going
too badly. [2211] I was elsewhere. [2212] Another was suffering. [2213] Then I had the
visit. [2214] To bring me back to dying. [2215] If that amuses them. [2216] The fact
is they don't know, neither do I, but they think they know. [2217] An
aeroplane passes, flying low, with a noise like thunder.

[2218] It is a
noise quite unlike thunder, one says thunder but one does not
think it, it is just a loud, fleeting noise, nothing more, unlike
any other. [2219] It is certainly the first time I have heard it here,
to my knowledge. [2220] But I have heard aeroplanes elsewhere and have
even seen them in flight, I saw the very first in flight and then
in the end the latest models, oh not the very latest, the very
second-latest, the very antepenultimate. [2222] I was present at one of