[0135] finding something attt^[₰]ractive about everything. [0136] To return to the five. [0137] Pres^e[⁁]nt state, three stories, inventory, there. [0138] An occasional interlude is to be feared. [0139] A full programme. [0140] I shall not deviate it^[₰] from it any further than I must. [0141] So much for that. [0142] I feel I am making a great mistake. [0143] No matter.

[0144] Present state. [0145] This room seems to be mine. [0146] I can find no other explanation to my being left in it. [0147] All this time. [0148] Unless it be at the behest of one of the powers that be. [0149] That is hardly likely. [0150] Why should the powers have changed in their attitude towards me? [0151] It is better to adopt the simplest x^explanation, even if it is not simple, even if it does not explain very much. [0152] A bright light is not necessary, a taper is all one needs to live in strangeness, if it faithfully burns. [0153] P^Perhaps I came in for the room on the death of whoever was in it before me. [0154] I enquire no further in any case. [0155] It is not a room in a hospital, or in a madhouse, I can feel that. [0156] I have listened at different hours of the day and night and never heard anything suspicious or unusual, but always the peaceful sounds of men at large, getting up, lying down, preparing food, coming and going, weeping and laughing, or nt^othing at all, no sounds at all. [0157] And when I look out of the window it is clear to me, from certain sigh^[₰]ns, that I am not in a house of rest in any sesne ^[ ] of the word. [0158] No, this is just a plain private room apparently, in ^{what appears to be[⁁]} a plain ordinary house. [0159] I do not remember how I got here. [0160] In an ambulance perhaps, a vehicle of some kind certainly. [0161] One day I found myself here, in the bed. [0162] Having probably lost consciousness somewhere I benefit by a hiatus

[p. 07r]

[0162] in my ^re[⁁]collections, not to be resumed until I recovered my senses, in this bed. [0163] As to the events that led up to my fainting and to which I can hardly have been oblivious, at the time, they have left no discernible trace, on my mind. [0164] But who has not experienced such lapses? [0165] They are common after drunkenness. [0166] I have often amused mt^yself with trying to invent them, those same lost events. [0167] But without succeeding in amusing myself really. [0168] But what is the last thing I ~~remeber~~^remember, I could start from there, before I came to my senses again here? [0168|001] That too is lost. [0169] I was walking certainly, all my life I have been walking, except the first few months and since I have been here. [0170] But at the end of the day I did not know where I had been or what my thoughts had been. [0171] What then could I be expected to remember, and with what? [0172] I remember a mood. [0173] My young days were more varied, such as they come back to me, in fits and starts. [0174] I did not know my way about so well then. [0175] I have lived in a kind of coma. [0176] The loss of consciousness for me was never any great loss. [0177] But perhaps I was stunned with a blow, on the head, in a forest perhaps, yes, now that I speak of a forest I vaguely remember a forest. [0178] All that belongs to the past. [0179] Now it is the present I must establish, before I am avenged. [0180] It is an ordinary room. [0181] I have little experience of rooms, but this one seems quite ordinary to me. [0182] The truth is, if I did not feel myself dying, I could well believe myself dead, expiating my sins, or in one of heaven's mansions. [0183] But I feel at last that the sands are running out, which would not be the case if I were in heaven, or in hell. [0184] Beyond the grave, the sensation of being beyond the grave was stronger with me six months ago.

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[0185] Had it been foretold to me that one day I should feel myself living as I do to-day, I should have smiled. [0186] It would not have been noticed, but I would have known I was smiling. [0187] I remember them well, these last few days, they have left me more memories than the thirty thousand odd that went before. [0188] The reverse would have been less surprising. [0189] When I have completed my inventory, if my death is not ready for me then, I shall write my memoirs. [0190] That's funny, I have made a joke. [0191] No matter. [0192] There is a cupboard I have never looked into. [0193] My possessions are in a corner, in a little heap. [0194] With my long stick I can rummage in them, draw them to me, send them back. [0195] My bed is by the window. [0196] I lie turned towards it most of the time. [0197] I see roofs and sky, a glimpse of street too, if I crane. [0198] I do not see any fields or hills. [0199] And yet they are ~~hear~~ near. [0200] But are they near? I don't know. [0201] I do not see the sea either, but I hear it when it is high. [0202] I can see into a rom^om of the house across the way. [0203] Queer things go on there sometimes, [0204] people are queer. [0205] Perhaps these are abnormal. [0206] They must see me too, my big ~~hairy~~^shaggy head up against the window-pane. [0207] I never had so much hair as now, nor so long, I say it without fear of contradiction. [0208] But at night they do not see me, for I never have a light. [0209] I have studied the stars a little here. [0210] But I cannot find my way about among them. [0211] ~~Studying~~^{Gazing at} them one night I suddenly saw myself in London. [0212] Is it possible I got as far as London? [0213] And what have stars to do with that city? [0214] The moon on the other hand has grown familiar, [0215] I am well familiar now with her changes of aspect and orbit, I know more or less the hours of the night when I can look for her in the sky and the nights when she will not come. [0216] What else? [0217] The clouds. [0218] They are

[p. 09r]

[0218] varied, very varied. [0219] And all sorts of birds. [0220] They come and perch on the window-sill, asking for food! [0221] It is touching. [0222] They rap on the window-pane, with their beaks. [0223] I never give them anything. [0224] But they still come. [0225] What are they waiting for? [0226] They are not vultures. [0227] Not only am I left here, but I am looked after! [0228] This is how it is done now. [0229] The door half opens, a hand puts a dish on the little table left there for that purpose, takes away the dish of the previous day, and the door closes again. [0230] This is done for me every day, at the same time probably. [0231] When I want to eat I hook the table with my stick and draw it to me. [0232] It is on castors, it comes squeaking[⁁] ^and[⁁] m^lurching towards me. [0233] When I need it no longer I send it back to its place by the door. [0234] It is soup. [0235] They must know I am toothless. [0236] I eat it one time out of two, out of three, on an average. [0237] When my chamber-pot is full I put it on the table, beside the dish. [0238] Then I go twenty-four hours without a pot. [0239] No, I have two ~~poy poy~~ pots. [0240] They have thought of everything. [0241] I am naked in the bed, in the blankets, whose number I increase and diminish as the seasons come and go. [0242] I am never hot, never cold. [0243] I don't wash, but I don't get dirty. [0244] If I get dirty somewhere I rub the part with my ~~beg~~^finger wet with spittle. [0245] What matters is to eat and excrete. [0246] Dish and pot, dish and pot, these are the poles. [0247] In the beginning it was different. [0248] The woman came right into the room, bustled about, enquired about my needs, my wants. [0249] I succeeded in the end in getting them into her head, my needs and my wants. [0250] It was not easy. [0251] She did not understand. [0252] Until the day I found the terms, the accents, that fitted her. [0253] All that must be half imagination. [0254] It was she who got me this long stick. [0255] It has a

[p. 10r]

[0255] hook at one end. [0256] Thanks to it I can control the furthest recesses of my abode. [0257] How great is my debt to sticks! [0258] So great that I almost forget the blows they have transferred to me. [0259] She is an old woman. [0260] I don't know why she is good to me. [0261] Yes, let us call it goodness, without quibbling. [0262] For her it is certainly goodness. [0263] I believe her to be even older than I. [0264] But rather less well preserved, in spite of her mobility. [0265] Perhaps she goes with the room, in a manner of speaking. [0266] In that case she does not call for separate ~~treatment~~^study. [0267] But it is conceivable that she does what she does out of sheer charity, or moved with regard to me by a less gebⁿeral feeling of compassion or affection. [0268] Nothing is impossible, I cannot keep on denying it much longer. [0269] But it is more convenient to suppose that when I came in for the room I came in for her too. [0270] All I see of her now is the gaunt hand and part of the sleeve. [0271] Not even that, not even that. [0272] Perhaps she is dead, having predeceased me, perhaps now it is another's hand that ~~garnishes~~^lays and clears my little table. [0273] I don't know how long I have been here, I must have said so. [0274] All I know is that I was very old already before I found myself here. [0275] I call myself an octogenarian, but I cannot prove it. [0276] Perhaps I am only a quinquagenarian, or a quadragenarian. [0277] It is ages since I counted them, my years I mean. [0278] I know the year of my birth, I have not forgotten that, but I do not know what year I have got to now. [0279] But I think I have been ~~bere for~~ here for some very considerable time. [0280] For there is nothing the various seasons can do to me, within the shelter of these walls, that I do not know. [0281] That is not to be learnt in one year or two. [0282] In a flicker of my lids