[p. 15r][0388] he was committed to a liberal profession. [0389] That was yet another thing that went without saying. [0390] It was therefore impossible he should be unfitted for it. [0391] They thought of him as a doctor for preference. [0392] He will look after us when we are old, said Mrs Saposcat. [0393] And her husband replied, I see him rather as a surgeon, as though after a certain age people were inoperable.
[0394] What tedium.
[0395] And I call that playing.
[0396] I wonder if I am not talking yet again about myself.
[0397] Shall I be incapable, until the to the end, of lying on any other subject?
[0398] I feel 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 to play.
[0401] Soon I shall not know where Sapo comes from, nor what he hopes.
[0402] Perhaps I had better abandon this story and go on to the second, or even the third, the one about the stone.
[0403] No, it would be the same thing.
[0404] I must just simply be on my guard, [0405] reflecting on what I have said before I go on [0406] and stopping, each time ruin threatens, to look at myself as I am.
[0407] That is just what I wanted to avoid.
[0408] But there seems to be no other solution.
[0409] After that mud-bath I shall be better able to endure a world unsullied by my presence.
[0410] What a way to reason.
[0411] My eyes, I shall open my eyes, look at the little heap of my possessions, give my body the old orders I know it cannot obey, turn to my spirit gone to rack and ruin, spoil my agony the better to live it out, far already from the world that parts at last its labia and lets me go.
[[SPACE]]
[p. 16r][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 can 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 dolt is seldom solitary.
[0420] He boxed and wrestled well, was fleet of foot, sneered at his teachers and sometimes even gave them impertinent answers.
[0421] Fleet of foot?
[0422] Well well.
[0423] Pestered with questions one day he cried, Haven't I told you I don't know!
[0424] Much of his free time he spent confined in school doing impositions and often he 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 an exasperated master threatened 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] Butx But Sapo was not expelled, either then or later.
[0430] I must try and discover, when I have time to think about it quietly, why Sapo was not expelled when he so richly deserved to be.
[0431] For I want 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 and you go on.
[0434] But I know what darkness is, it accumulates, thickens, then suddenly bursts and drowns everything.
[[SPACE]]
[p. 17r][0435] I have not been able to find out why Sapo was not expelled. [0436] I shall have to leave this question open. [0437] I try not to be glad. [0438] I shall make haste to put a safe remove between him and this incomprehensible indulgence, I shall make him live as though he had been punished according to his deserts. [0439] We shall turn our backs on 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 fourteen he was a plump rosy boy.
[0445] His wrists and ankles were thick, which made his mother say that one day he would be evebn bigger than his father.
[0446] Curious deduction.
[0447] But the most striking thing about him was his big round head horrid with flaxen hair as stiff and straight as the bristles of a brush.
[0448] Even his teachers could not help thinking he had a remarkable head and they were all the more irked by their failure to get anything into it.
[0449] His father would say, when he was[₰] in good humour, One of these days he will astonish us all.
[0450] It was thanks to Sapo's skull that he was able enabled to hazard 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 endure the look in Sapo's eyes and went out of his way not to meet it.
[0452] He has your eyes, his wife would say.
[0453] Then Mr Saposcat chafed to be alone, in order to inspect his eyes in the mirror.
[0454] They were palest blue.
[0455] Just a shade lighter, said
[p. 18r][0455] Mrs Saposcat.
[0456] Sapo loved nature, took an interest
[0457] This is awful.
[0458] Sapo loved nature, took an interest in animals and plants and willingly raised his eyes to the sky, day and night. [0459] But he did not know how to look at all 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 crop from another crop. [0461] He did not associate the crocus with the spring nor the crysanthemum with Michaelmas. [0462] The sun, the moon, the planets and the stars did not fill him with wonder. [0463] He was sometimes tempted by the knowledge of these strange things, sometimes beautiful, that he would have about him all his life. But from his ignorance 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 distinguish it from all others. [0465] He would stand rapt gazing at the long pernings, the quivering poise, the wings lifted for the plummet drop, the wild reascent, fascinated by such extremes of need, of pride, of patience and 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
[p. 19r]
[0469] rasi raising my head from the pillow.
[0470] By this I do not mean the two windows in their entirety, but one in its entirety 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 curtain.
[0474] Until to-morrow I shall not see her again, her shadow perhaps from time to time.
[0475] She does not always draw the curtain.
[0476] The man has not yet come home. Home.
[0477] I have demanded certain movements of my legs and even feet.
[0478] I know them well and could feel the effort they made, to obey.
[0479] I have lived with them that little space of time, filled with drama, between the message received and the piteous respo[⁁]nse.
[0480] To old dogs the hour comes when, whistled by their master setting forth with his stick at dawn, they cannot spring after him.
[0481] Then they stay in their kennel, or in their basket, though they are not chained, and listen to the steps dying away.
[0482] The man too is sad.
[0483] But soon the pure air and the sun console him, he thinks no more about his old companion, until evening.
[0484] The lights in his house bid him welcome home and a feeble mbarking makes him say, It is time I had him destroyed.
[0485] There's a noice passage.
[0486] Soon it will be evebn better, soon things will be better.
[0487] I am going to rummage a little in my possessions.
[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 phlegm, his silent ways, were not of a nature to please. [0491] In the midst of tumult, at school and at home, he remained motionless in his place, often standing, and gazed