MS-TCD-4662

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[p. 15v]
^{Fragment of translation
of Malone meurt}
[0398] I ^sense the old dark gathering, the solitude preparing, by which I know myself, and the call of that ignorance which might be noble and is mere poltroonery. [0399] Already I forget what I have said. [0400] That is not how one plays. [0401] Soon I shall not know where Sapo comes from, nor what he hopes. [0402] It might be better if I abandoned this story and went on to the second, or even the third, the one about the stone. [0403] No, it would be the same thing. [0404] I have only to be more careful. [0405] I shall think over what I have said before I go any further. [0406] Each time ruin threatens I shall stop and look at myself, such as I am. [0407] That is just what I wanted to avoid. [0408] But there seems no other solution. [0409] After this mud bath, I shall be better fitted to admit a world exempt from me. [0410] What a way to reason. [0411] I shall open my eyes, I shall look at me trembling, I shall swallow my soup, I shall look at my little heap of possessions, I shall give my body the old orders that I know it cannnot ^perform, I shall take counsel of my spirit gone to rack and ruin, I shall spoil my agony the better to live it through, far already from the world that parts its labia at last and lets me out.

[0412] I have tried to reflect on the beginning of my story. [0413] There are things I do not understand. [0414] But nothing to signify. [0415] I have only to go on.

[0416] Sapo had no friends. [0417] No, that won't do.

[0418] Sapo was on good terms with his little friends, though they did not exactly love him. [0419] The dunce is seldom solitary. [0420] He boxed and wrestled well, was ^light of foot, was witty at the expense of his teachers and sometimes even replied to them pertly. [0421] Light of foot? [0422] Well well. [0423] Harried with questions one day he

[p. 16r] DOODLE 1

[0423] cried, Haven't I told you I don't know! [0424] He spent most of his time at school kept inclosed doing impositions and often did not get home before eight o'clock ^{at night} . [0425] He submitted with philosophy to these vexations. [0426] But he would not let himself be struck. [0427] The first time a master, his patience and reasonableness exhausted, made to strike him with a cane, Sapo snatched it ^from his hand and threw it out of the window, which was closed, for it was winter. [0428] This was enough to justify his expulsion. [0429] But Sapo was not expelled, neither then nor subsequently. [0430] I shall try and discover when I have time to think it over quietly, why Sapo was not expelled, when he so richly deserved to be. [0431] For I want ^dark as little as possible of darkness in his story. [0432] A little darkness, in itself, at the time, is nothing. [0433] You think no more about it, you go on, in the light. [0434] But I know what darkness is, it accumulates, thickens, then suddenly bursts and drowns everything.

[0435] I have not been able to find out why he was not expelled. [0436] I shall have to leave this question unanswered. [0437] I try not to be glad. [0438] I shall make haste to put a safe distance between him and this incomprehensible indulgence, I shall make him leave as though he had been punished according to his deserts. [0439] We shall turn our backs to this little cloud, but we shall not let it out of our sight. [0440] ^It will not cover the sky without our knowing, we shall not suddenly raise our eyes, far from help, far from shelter, to a sky as black as ink. [0441] That is what I have decided. [0442] I see no other solution. [0443] It is the best I can do.

[0444] At the age of 14 he was a plump, rosy complexioned boy. [0445] His wrists and ankles were thick, which made his mother say that one day he would be even bigger than his father.

[p. 16v] DOODLE 2

[0446] Strange deduction. [0447] But the most striking thing about him was ^his big round head covered with fair hair as stiff and bristling as the bristles of a brush. [0448] Even his masters could not help thinking that he had an intelligent head and this made them deplore all the more their failure to get anything into it. [0449] His father would say, when he was in a good humour, One of these days he will astonish us all. [0450] to It was Sapo's skull that enabled him to form this ^opinion and, in defiance of the facts and against his better ^judgement to revert to it from time to time. [0451] But he could ^not bear the look in Sapo's eyes and was at pains not to meet it. [0452] He has your eyes, his wife would say. [0453] Then Mr. Saposcat was impatient to be alone, in order to inspect his eyes in the mirror. [0454] These were palest blue. [0455] A shade lighter, said Mrs. Saposcat.

[0456] Sapo loved nature, ^{was interested}

[0457] This is awful.

[0458] Sapo loved nature, was interested in animals, plants and willingly raised his eyes to the sky, day and night. [0459] But he did not know how to look at these things, the looks he rained upon them taught him nothing about them. [0460] He confused the birds with one another, and the trees, and could not tell one cereal from another cereal. [0461] He did not associate the crocus with the spring, nor the chrysanthemum with Michaelmass. [0462] The sun, the moon, the planets and the stars, did

[p. 17r] [0462] not make him wonder. [0463] He was sometimes tempted by the knowledge of these strange and sometimes beautiful things that he would have about him ^{all his life}. But from his lack of understanding of them he drew a kind of joy, as from all that went to swell the murmur, You are a simpleton. [0464] But he loved the flight of the hawk and could it distinguish it from all others. [0465] He would stand gazing motionless at the long pernings, the trembling poise, the wings lifting for the plummet pounce ^drop, the angry reascent, fascinated by such extremes of need, of pride, of patience and of solitude. [0466] I shall not give up yet. [0467] I have finished my soup and sent back the little table to its place by the door. [0468] A ^{light has just gone on} in one of the two windows of the house across the way. [0469] By the two windows I mean those I can see always, without raising my head from the pillow. [0470] By this I do not mean two whole windows, but one whole one and part of the other. [0471] It is in this latter that the light has just gone on. [0472] For an instant I could see the woman coming and going. [0473] Then she drew the curtains. [0474] Until to-morrow I shall see her no more, her shadow perhaps from time to time. [0475] She does not always draw the curtains. [0476] The man has not yet come in. [0477] I have demanded certain movements from my legs and feet. [0478] I know them well and could feel the effort they made to obey me. [0479] I have lived with them that little space of time, filled with drama, between the message received and the lamentable response. [0480] To old dogs the hour comes when, whistled by their master setting forth at dawn with his stick in his hand, they cannot spring after him. [0481] Then they stay in the kennel, or in the basket, although they are not chained, and listen to the steps receding. [0482] The man too is sad. [0483] But the pure air and the sun soon console him, he thinks no more about his old companion, until evening. [0484]

[p. 17v] [0484] The lights in his house bid him welcome home and a feeble barking makes him say, It is time I had him destroyed. [0485] There's a nice ^passage.. [0486] ^{[↖]Soon it will be even better, soon things will be better.} [0487] I am going to rummage a little in my belongings. [0488] Then I shall put my head under the blankets. [0489] Then things will be better, for Sapo and for him who follows him, who asks nothing but to follow ^{in his footsteps}, ^by clear and endurable ways.

[0490] Sapo’s calm, his silent ways, were not calculated to please. [0491] In the midst of tumult, at school and at home, he remained motionless in his place, often standing, and looked straight before him with eyes as pale and unwavering as a gull's. [0492] People wondered what he could brood on thus, for hours at a stretch. [0493] His father supposed him the prey of the first stirrings of sex. [0494] At sixteen I was the same, he would say. [0495] At sixteen you were making a living, said his wife. [0496] So I was, said Mr. Saposcat. [0497] But in the opinion of his teachers the signs were those of besottedness pure and simple. [0498] Sapo dropped his jaw and breathed through his mouth. [0499] It is hard to see wherein this expression is incompatible with erotic thoughts. [0500] But indeed his dream was less of girls than of himself, his own life, his life to come. [0501] That is more than enough to stop up the nose of a lucid and sensitive boy, and cause his jaw to sag. [0502] But it is time I took a little rest, for safety's sake.

[0503] I don't like these gull's eyes. [0504] They remind me of an old shipwreck, I forget which. [0505] It's a small thing I know. [0506] But I am easily frightened now. [0507] I know these little phrases that seem so innocent and, when you let them in, can pollute the whole of speech. [0508] Nothing is realer than nothing

[p. 18r] [0509] They rise from the abyss and know no rest until they drag down into its depths. [0510] But now I am on my guard.

[0511] Then he was sorry ^that he had not let himself be taught the art of thinking, beginning by folding back his third and second fingers the better to put the index on the subject and the ear-finger on the verb, the way his Latin teacher had shown him, and that he could make no sense, or next to none, of the babel of doubts, desires, imaginings and fears that raged within his head. [0512] And less well endowed with courage and with strength he too would have abandoned, and despaired of ever knowing what manner of being he was, and how he was going to live, and lived vanquished, blindly, in a mad world, among strangers.

[0513] From these reveries he emerged tired and pale, which confirmed his father's impression that he was the prey of lascivious speculations. [0514] He ought to play more games, he would say. [0515] We're getting on, we're getting on. [0516] They told me he would be a good athlete, said M. Saposcat, and now he's not any team. [0517] His studies take up all his time, said Mrs. Saposcat. [0518] And he is always last, said M. Saposcat. [0519] He is fond of walking, said Mrs. Saposcat, the long walks do him good. [0520] Then M. Saposcat would make a face, at the thought of his son's long solitary walks and the good they did him. [0521] And sometimes he was carried away to the point of saying, It might have been better to have him taught a manual profession. [0522] Whereupon it was usual, though not compulsory, for Sapo to walk out, while his mother exclaimed, Oh Adrian, you have hurt his feelings!

[0523] We are getting on. [0524] Nothing is less like me

[p. 18v] [0524] than this reasonable, patient child, struggling all alone for years to throw a little light upon himself, avid of the faintest gleam, closed to the charms of dark. [0525] Here truly is the air I needed, a lively tenuous air, far from the nourishing murk that is killing me. [0526] I shall never go back into this carcass except to look at its time. [0527] I want to be there a little before the plunge, to close on top of me for the last time the old hatch, say goodbye to the holds where I have lived, go down with my refuge. [0528] Sentimental fool. [0529] But between now and then I have time to frolic, on shore, in the brave company I have always longed for, always searched for, and which would never have me. [0530] Yes, now I am easy in in my mind, I know the game is won, I lost all the others, but it is the last one that counts. [0531] That is what I would call a good job of work, if I did not fear to contradict myself. [0532] Fear to contradict myself! [0533] If this continues it is myself I shall lose and the thousand ways that lead there. [0534] And I shall be like the unfortunates famous in fable, crushed beneath the weight of their wish come true. [0535] And I even feel a strange desire come over me, the desire to know what I am doing, and why, and to say it. [0536] So I near the goal I set myself in my young years and which has prevented me from living. [0537] And on the threshold of being no more I succeed in being another. [0538] Very pretty.

______

[0539] The summer holidays. [0540] In the morning he received private tuition. [0541] You'll have us in the poorhouse, said Mrs. S. [0542] It's a good investment, replied her husband. [0543] In the afternoon he left the

[p. 19r] [0543] house, with his books under his arm, on the pretext that he worked better in the open air, no, without explanation. [0544] Once clear of the town he hid his books under a stone and wandered about the country. [0545] It was the season when the labours of the peasants reach their climax and the long bright days are too short for all there is to do. [0546] And often they took advantage of the moon to make a last journey between the fields, perhaps far away, and the barn or threshing-floor, or to overhaul the machines and get them ready for the imminent dawn. [0547] The imminent dawn.

[0548] I fell asleep. [0549] Now I do not want to sleep. [0550] There is no room for sleep in my time-table. [0551] I have no desire - no I have no explanation to give. [0552] Coma is for the living. [0553] They have always been more than I could bear, all of them, no, I don't mean that, groaning with tedium I watched them come and go, then I killed them, or put myself in their place, or fled. [0554] I feel within me the glow of that old frenzy, but I know it will set me on fire no more. [0555] I stop everything and wait. [0556] Sapo stands motionless on one leg, his strange eyes closed. [0557] The day's turmoil freezes in a thousand ridiculous postures. [0558] The little cloud in transit before their glorious sun will darken the earth as long as I please.

[0559] Live and invent. [0560] I have tried. [0561] I must have tried. [0562] Invent. [0563] It is not the right word. [0564] Neither is live. [0565] No matter. [0566] I have tried. [0567] While within me the wild beast of earnestness paced its cage, ravening, roaring, lacerating. [0568] I have done that.