[p. 55r][1188] not so long ago. [1189] Perhaps I have another ten years ahead of me. [1190] The Lamberts! I shall try and go on all the same, a little longer, my thoughts elsewhere, I can't stay here. [1191] I shall hear myself talking, afar off, from my far mind, talking of the Lamberts, talking of myself, my mind wandering, far from here, among its ruins.
[1192] Tehen Mrs Lambert was alone in the kitchen.
[1193] She sat down by the window and turned down the wick of the lamp, as she always did before blowing it out, for she did not like to blow out[⁁] a lamp that was still hot.
[1194] When she thought the chimney and shade and had cooled sufficiently she got up and blew down the chimney.
[1195] She stood a moment irresolute, bowed forward with her hands on the table, before she sat down again.
[1196] Her day of toil over, day dawned on other toils within her, on the crass tenacity of life and its diligent pains.
[1197] Sitting, moving about, she bore them better than in bed.
[1198] From the well of this unending weariness her sigh went up unendingly, for day when it was night, for night when it was day, and day and night, fearfully, for the light she had been tiolfd told about, and told she could never understand, because it was not like those she knew,
[1199] not like the summer dawn she knew w would come again, to her waiting in the kitchen, sitting up straight ont eh on the chair, or bowed down over the table, with little sleep, little rest, but more than in her bed.
[1200] Often she tood 
up and moved about the room, or out and round the ruinous old house.
[p. 56r]
[1201] Five years now it had been going on, five or six, not more.
[1202] She told herself she had a woman's disease, but half-heartedly.
[1203] Night seemed less night in the kitchen pervaded with the everyday tribulations, day less dead.
[1204] It helped her, when things were bad, to cling with her fingers to the worn table at which her family would soon be united, waiting for her to serve them, and to feel about her, ready for use, the lifelong pots and pans.
[1205] She opened the door and looked out.
[1206] The moon had gone, but the stars were shining.
[1207] She stood gazing up at them.
[1208] It was a scene that had sometimes solaced her.
[1209] She went to the well and grasped the chain.
[1210] The buckert was at the bottom, the windlass locked.
[1211] So it was.
[1212] Her fingers strayed along the sinuous links.
[1213] Her mind was a press of formless questions, mingling and crumbling limply away.
[1214] Some seemed to have to do with her daughter, that minor worry, [1215] now lying sleepless in her bed, listening.
[1216] Hearing her mother moving about she was on the point of getting up and going down to her.
[1217] But it was only the next day, or the day after, that she decided to tell her what Sapo had told her, namely that he was going away and would not come back.
[1218] Then, as people do when someone even insignificant dies, they summoned up such memories as he had left them, helping one another and trying to agree.
[1219] But we all know that little flame and its flickerings in the wild shadows.
[1220] And agreement only comes a little later, with the forgetting.
[1221] Mortal tedium. [1222] One day I took counsel of an Israelite on the subject of conation. [1223] That must have been when I was still looking
[p. 57r]
[1223] for someone to be faithful to me, and for me to be faithful to.
[1224] Then I opened wide my eyes so that the candidates might admire their bottomless depths and the way they phosphoresced at all we left unspoken.
[1225] Our faces were so close that I felt on mine the wafts of hot air and sprays of saliva, and he too, no doubt, on his.
[1226] I can see him still, the fit of laughter past, wiping his eyes and mouth, and myself, with downcast eyes, pained by my wetted trousers and the little pool of urine at my gfeet.
[1227] Now that I have no further use for him I may as well give his name, [1228] Jackson.
[1229] I was sorry he had not a cat, or a young door dog, or better still an old dog.
[1230] But all he had to offer in the way of dumb companions was a pink and grey parrot. He used to try and teach it to say, Nihil in intellectu etc.
[1231] These first three words the bird managed well enough, but the celebrated restriction was too much for it, all you heard was a series of squawks.
[1232] This annoyed Jackson who kept nagging at it to begin all over again. Then Polly flew into a rage and retreated to a corner of its cage.
[1233] It was a very fine cage, with every convenience, perches, swings, trays, troughs, stairs and cuttle-bones.
[1234] It was even overcrowded, personally I would have felt cramped.
[1235] Jackson called me the merino, I don't know why, perhaps because of the French expression.
[1236] I could not help thinking that the notion of a wandering herd was better adapted to him than to me.
[1237] NBut I have never thought anything but wind, the same that was never measured to me.
[1238] My relations with Jackson were of short duration.
[1239] I could have put up with him as a friend, but unfortunately he found me disgusting, as did Johnson, Wilson,
[p. 58r]
[1239] Nicholson and Watson, all whoresons.
[1240] I then tried, for a space, to lay hold of a kindred sprit among the inferior races, red, yellow, chocolate, and so on.
[1241] And if the plague-stricken had been less difficult of access I would have intruded on them too, ogling, sidling, leering, ineffing and coanting[ ] , my heart palpitating.
[1242] With the insane too I failed, by a hair's-breadth.
[1243] That must have been the way with me then. But the point is rather what is the way with me now.
[1244] When young the old filled me with wonder and awe.
[1245] Bawling babies are what dumbfound me now.
[1246] The house is full of them finally.
[1247] Suave mari magno, especially for the old salt.
[1248] What tedium.
[1249] And I thought I had it all thought out.
[1250] If I had the use of my body I would throw it out of the window.
[1251] But perhaps it is the knowledge of my impotence that emboldens me to that thought.
[1252] All hangs togetyher, I am in chains.
[1253] Unfortunately I do not know quite what floor I am on, perhaps I am only on the mezzanine.
[1254] The doors banging, the steps on the stairs, the noises of the street, have not enlightened me, on this subject.
[1255] All I know is that the living are there, above me and beneath me.
[1256] It follows that I a at least I am not in the basement.
[1257] QAnd do I not sometimes see the sky and, through my window, other windows facing it apparently?
[1258] But that proves nothing., [1259] I do not wish to prove anything.
[1260] Or so I say.
[1261] Perhaps after all I am in a kind of vault and this space which I take to be the street in reality no more than a wide trench or ditch with other vaults opening upon it.
[1262] But the noises that rise up from below, the steps that cominge climbing towards me?
[1263] Perhaps there are other vaults even deeper than mine, [1264] why not?
[1265] In which case the question
[p. 59r]
[1265] arises again as to which floor I am on, there is nothing to be gained by my saying I am in a basement if there are tiers of basements one on top of another.
[1266] But the noises that I say rise up from below, the steps that I say come climbing towards me, do they really do so?
[1267] I have no proof that they do.
[1268] To conclude from this that I am a prey to hallucinations pure and simple is however a step I hest[₰]itate to take.
[1269] And I honestly believe that in this house there are people coming and going and even conversing, and multitudes of fine babies, particularly of late, which the parents keep moving about from one place to another, to prevent their forming the habit of motionlessness, with a view to the day when they will have to move about unaided.
[1270] But all things considered I would be hard set to say for certain where exactly they are, in relation to where exactly I am.
[1271] And when all is said and done there is nothing more like a step that climbs than a step that decsscends or even that paces to and fro forever on the same level, I mean for one not only in ignorance of his positi position and consequently of what he is to expect, in the way of sounds, but at the same time more than half-deaf more than half the time.
[1272] There is naturally another possibility that does not escape me, though it would be a great disappointment to have it corroborated, and that is that I am dead already and that all continues more or less as when I was not.
[1273] Perhaps I expired in the fiorest, or even earlier.
[1274] In which case all the trouble I have been taking for some time past, for what purpose I do not clearly recall except that it was in some way connected with the feeling that