[p. 121r][2073] surprise each other yet. [2074] With regard to tetty-beshy I must beg to differ, it is well worth persevering with, in my opinion. [2075] Follow my instructions, you'll come back for more. [2076] For shame, you dirty old man! [2077] It's all these bones that makes it awkward, that I grant you. [2078] Well, we must just accept ourselves as we are. [2079] And above all not fret, these are trifles. [2080] Let us think of the hours when, spent, we lie twined together in the dark, our hearts labouring as one, and listen to the wind saying what it is to be abroad, at night, in winter, and what it is to have been what we have been, and sink together, in an unhappiness that has no name. [2081] That is how we must look at things. [2082] So courage, my sweet old hairy Mac, and oyster kisses just where you think from your own Sucky Moll. [2083] P.S. I enquired about the oysters, I have hopes. [2084] Such was the rather rambling style of the declarations which Moll, despairing no doubt of giving vent to her feeling[⁁]s by the normal channels, addressed three or four times a week to Macmann, who never answered, I mean in writing, but manifested by every other means in his power how pleased he was to receive them. [2085] But towards the close of this idyll, that is to say when it was too late, he began to compose brief rimes of curious structure, to offer to his mistress, for he felt she was drifting away from him. [2086] Example.
[2087] Hairy Mac and Sucky Molly
[2089] In the ending days and nights
[2090] Of unending melancholy
[2088] Love it is at last unites.
[2093] Other example.
[2095] To the lifelong promised land
Of the nearest cemetery
With his Sucky hand in hand
[2094] Love it is at last leads Hairy.
[2100] He had time to compose ten or twelve more or less in this vein, all
[p. 122r][2100] remarkable for their exaltation of love regarded as a kind of lethal glue, a conception frequently to be met with in mystic texts. [2101] And it is extraordinary that Macmann should have succeeded, in so short a time and after such inauspicious beginnings, in elevating himself to a view of this altitude. [2102] And one can only speculate on what he might have achieved if he had become acquainted with true sexuality at a less advanced age.
[2103] I am lost. [2104] Not a word.
[2105] Inauspicious beginnings indeed, during which his feeling for Moll was frankly one of repugnance. [2106] Her lips in particular repelled him, those selfsame lips, or so little changed as to make no matter, that some months later he was to suck with grunts of pleasure, so that at the very sight of them he not only closed his eyes, but covered them with his hands for greater safety. [2107] She was it [₰] therefore who at this period exerted herself in tireless ardours, which may serve to explain why she seemed to weaken in the end and stand in her turn in need of stimulation. [2108] Unless it was simply a question of health. [2109] Which does not exclude a third hypothesis, namely that Moll, having finally decided that she had been mistaken in Macmann and that he was not the man she had taken him for, sought a means of putting an end to their intercourse, but gently, in order not to give him a shock. [2110] Unfortunately our concern here is not with Moll, who after all is only a female, but with Macmann, and not with the close of their relations, but rather with the beginning.
[p. 123r][2111] Of the brief period of plenitude between these two extremes, when between the warming up of the one party and the cooling down of the other there was established a fleeting equality of temperature, no further mention will be made. [2112] For if it is indispensable to have in order not to have had and in order to have no longer, there is no obligation to expatiate upon it. [2113] But let us rather let events speak for themselves, [2114] that is more or less the right tone. [2115] Example. [2116] One day, just as Macmann was getting used to being loved, though without as yet responding as he was subsequently to do, he thrust Moll's face away from his on the pretext of examining her ear-rings. [2117] But as she made to return to the charge he checked her again with the first words that came into his head, namely, Why two Christs?, implying that in his opinion one was more than sufficient. [2118] To which she made the absurd reply, Why two ears? [2119] But she obtained his forgiveness a moment later, saying, with a smile (she smiled at the least thing), Besides they are the thieves, Christ is in my mouth. [2120] Then parting her jaws and pulling down her blobber-lip she discovered, breaking with its solitary fang the monotony of the gums, a long yellow canine bared to the roots and carved, with the drill probably, to represent the celebrated sacrifice. [2122] With the forefinger of her free hand she fingered it. [2123] It's loose, she said, one of these fine mornings I'll wake up and find I've swallowed it, perhaps I should have it out. [2124] She let go her lip which sprang back into place with a smack. [2125] This incident made a strong impression on Macmann and Moll rose with a bound in his affections. [2126] And in the pleasure he was later to enjoy, when he put his tongue in her mouth and let it
[p. 124r][2126] wander over her gums, this rotten crucifix had assuredly its part. [2127] But from these harmless aids what love is free? [2128] Sometimes it is an object, a garter I believe or a sweat-absorber for the armpit. [2129] And sometimes it is the simple image of a third party. [2130] A few words in conclusion on the decline of this liaison. [2131] No, I can't.
[2132] Weary with my weariness, white last moon, sole regret, not even. [2133] To be dead, before her, on her, with her, and turn, dead on dead, about poor mankind, and never have to die any more, from among the living. [2134] Not even, not even that. [2135] My moon was here below, far below, the little I was able to desire. [2136] And one day, soon, soon, one earthlit night, beneath the earth, a dying being will say, like me, in the earthlight, Not even, not even that, and die, without having been able to find a regret.
[2137] Moll. [2138] I'm going to kill her. [2139] She continued to look after Macmann, but she was no longer the same. [2140] When she had finished cleaning up she sat down on a chair, in the middle of the room, and remained without stirring. [2141] If he[₰] called her she went and perched on the edge of the bed and even submitted to be titillated. [2142] But it was obvious her thoughts were elsewhere and her only wish to return to her chair and resume the now familiar gesture of massaging her stomach, slowly, weighing on it with her two hands. [2143] She was also beginning to smell. [2144] She had never smelt sweet, but between not smelling sweet and giving off the smell she was giving off now there is a gulf. [2145] She was also subject to fits of vomiting. [2146] Turning away, so that her lover should only see her convulsive back, she vomited at length on the floor. [2147] And these dejections remained sometimes for hours where they fell,
[p. 125r][2147] until such time as she had the strength to go and fetch what was needed to clean up the mess. [2148] Half a century younger she might have been taken for pregnant. [2149] At the same time her hair began to fall out in abundance and she confessed to Macmann that she did not dare comb it any more, for fear of making it fall out even faster. [2150] He said to himself with satisfaction, She tells me everything. [2151] But these were small things compared to the change in her complexion, now rapidly turning from yellow to saffron. [2152] The sight of her so diminished did not damp Macmann's desire to take her, all stinking, yellow, bald and vomiting, in his arms. [2153] And he would certainly have done so had she not been opposed to it. [2154] One can understand him (her too). [2155] For when one has within reach the one and only love requited of a life so monstrously prolonged, it is natural one should wish to profit by it, before it is too late, and refuse to be deterred by feelings of squeamishness excusable in the faint-hearted, but which true love disdains. [2156] And though all pointed to Moll's being out of sorts, Macmann could not help interpreting her attitude as a falling off of her affection for him. [2157] And perhaps indeed there was something of that too. [2158] At all events the more she declined the more Macmann longed to crush her to his breast, which is at least sufficiently curious and unusual to deserve of mention. [2159] And when she turned and looked at him (and from time to time she did so still), with eyes in which he fancied he could read boundless regret and love, then a kind of frenzy seized upon him and he began to belabour with his fists his chest, his head and even the