MS. Pages: | cover - 19r | 19v - 24r | 24v - backcover |
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[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 |
[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. |
[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 |
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[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 |
[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 |
______ [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 |
[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. |
MS. Pages: | cover - 19r | 19v - 24r | 24v - backcover |