[p. 50r]
[1089] earth was dwindling.[⁁],[,] [1090] T[⁁]t[t]he earth shone strangely in the raking evening light, glowing in patches as though with its own fires, in the fading light.
[1091] Edmund stopped often to rest, leaning on the spade and looking about him.
[1092] The slaughter-house, said Lambert, that's where I buy my beasts, [1093] will you look at that ol[⁁]loafer.
[1094] He went out and set to work, beside his son.
[1095] They worked together for a time, heedless of each other. Then the son dropped his shovel, turned aside and moved slowly away, passing from toil to rest in a single unbroken movement that did not seem of his doing.
[1096] The mule was no longer visible.
[1097] The face of the earth, on which it had plodded its life away, would see it no more, toiling before the plough, or the tumbrel.
[1098] [START →] 
And Big Lambert would soon be able to plough and harrow the place where it lay, with another mule, or an old horse, or an old ox, bought at the knacker's yard, knowing that the share would not turn up the putrid flesh or be blunted by the big bones.
[1099] For he knew how the dead and buried tend, contrary to what one might expect, to rise to the surface, [1100] in which they resemble the drowned.
[1101] And he had made allowance for this when digging the hole.
[1102] Edmund and his mother passed each other by in silence.
[1103] She had been to see a neighbour, to borrow a pound of lentils for their supper.
[1104] She was thinking of the handsome steelyard that had served to weigh them and wondering if it was true.
[1105] Before her husband too she rapidly passed, without a glance, and in his attitude there was nothing to suggest that he had seen her either.
[1106] She lit the lamp where it stood at its usual place on the chimney-piece, beside[⁁] between beside[⁁][⁁beside] the alarm[-]-clock
[p. 51r]
[1106] clock flanked in its rturn by a crucifix hanging from a nail.
[1108] The clock, being the lowest of the three, had to remain in the middle, and the lamp and crucifix could not change places because of the nail from which the latter was hung.
[1109] She stood with her forehead and her hands pressed against the wall, until she might turn up the wick.
[1110] She turned it up and put on the yellow globe which a large hole defaced.
[1111] Seeing Sapo she first thought he was her daughter.
[1112] Then her thoughts flew to the absent one.
[1113] She set down the lamp on the table and the outer world went out.
[1114] She sat down, emptied out the lentils on the table and began to sort them.
[1115] So that there were soon [ ] two heaps on the table, one big heap getting smaller and one small heap getting bigger.
[1116] But suddenly with a furious gesture she swept the two together, annihilating thus in less than a second the work of two or three minutes.
[1117] Then she went away and came back with a saucepan.
[1118] It won't kill them, she said, and with the heel of her hand she brought the lentils to the edge of the table and over the edge into the saucepan, as if all that mattered was not to be killed, [1119] but so clumsily and with such nervous haste that av a great number fell wide of the pan to the ground.
[1120] Then she took up the lamp and went out, to fetch wood perhaps, or a lump of fat bacon.
[1121] Now that it was dark again in the kitchen the dark outside gradually lightened and Sapo, his eye against the window-pane, was able to discern certain shapes, including that of Big Lambert stamping the ground.
[1122] To stop in the middle of a tedious and perhaps futile task was something that Sapo [stet] could readily understand.
[1123] For a great number of tasks of are of this kind, without a doubt, and the only way to end them is to
[p. 52r]
[1123] abandon them.
[1124] She could have gone on sorting her lentils all night and never achieved her purpose, which was to free them from all admixture.
[1125] But in the end she would have stopped, saying, I have done all I can do.
[1126] But she would not have done all she could have done.
[1127] But the moment comes when one desists, because it is the wisest thing to do, discouraged, but not to the extent of undoing all that has been done.
[1128] But what if her purpose, in sorting the lentils, were not to rid them of all that was not lentil, but only of the greater part, [1129] what then?
[1130] I don't know.
[1131] Whereas there are other tasks, other days, of which one may fairly safely say that they are finished, [1132] though I do not see which.
[1133] She came back, holding the lamp high and a little to one side, so as not to be dazzled.
[1134] In the other hand she held a white rabbit, by the hind-legs.
[1135] For whereas the mule had been black, the rabbit had been white.
[1136] It was dead already, it had ceased to be.
[1137] There are rabbits that die before they are killed, from sheer fright.
[1138] They have time to do so while being taken out of the hutch, often by the ears, and disposed in the most convenient position to receive the blow, whether on the back of the neck or on some other part.
[1139] And often you strike a corpse, without knowing it.
[1140] For you have just seen the rabbit alive and well behind the wire meshing, nibbling at its leaves.
[1141] And you congratulate yourself on having succeeded with the first blow, and not caused unnecessary suffering, whereas in reality you have taken all that trouble for nothing.
[1142] This occurs most frequently at night, fright being greater in the night.
[1143] Hens on the other hand are more stubborn livers and some have been observed,
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[1143] with the head already off, to cut a few last capers before collapsing.
[1144] Pigeons too are less impressionable and sometimes even struggle, before choking to death.
[1145] Mrs Lambert was breathing hard.
[1146] Little devil!! she cried.
[1147] But Sapo was already far away, tariling [ ] [tr.] his hand in the high waving meadow grasses.
[1148] Soon after(-wards Lambert, then his son, attracted by the savoury smell, entered the kitchen.
[1149] Sitting at the table, face to face, their eyes averted from each other's eyes, they waited.
[1150] VBut the woman, the mother, went to the door and called.
[1151] Lizzy!! she cried, again and again.
[1152] Then she went p[⁁]b[b]ack to her range.
[1153] She had seen the moon.
[1154] After a silence Lambert declared, I'll kill Whitey to-morrow.
[1155] Those of course were not the words he used, but that was the meaning.
[1156] But neo[⁁]i[i]ther his wife nor his son could approve him, the former because she would have preferred him to kill Blackey, the latter because he held that to kill the kids at such an early stage of their development, eoither of them, it was all the same to him, would be premature.
[1157] But Big Lambert told them to hold their tongue and went to the corner to fetch the case containing the k knives, three in number.
[1158] All he had to do was to wipe off the grease and whet, them [⁁]a little on one another.
[1159] Mrs Lambert went back to the door, listened, called.
[1160] In the far distance the flock replied.
[1161] DShe's coming, she said.
[1162] But a long time passed before she came.
[1163] When the meal was over Edmund went up to bed, so as to toss himself masturbate[masturbate] off[₰] in peace and comfort before his sister joined him, for they shared the same room.
[1164] Not that he was restrained by modesty, when his sister was there.
[1165] Nor was she, when her brother was there.
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[1166] Their quarters were cramped, certain delicacies [⁁]refinements [refinements] were not possible.
[1167] Edmund then went up to bed, for no particular reason.
[1168] He would have gladly slept with his sister, the father too, I mean the father would have gladly slept with his daughter, the time was long past and gone when he would have gladly slept with his sister. [1169] But something held them back.
[1170] And she did not seem eager.
[1171] But she was still young.
[1172] Incest then was in the air.
[1173] Mrs Lambert, the only member of the household who had no desire to sleep with anybody, saw it coming with indifference.
[1174] She went out.
[1175] Alone with his daughter Lambert sat watching her.
[1176] She was crouched before the range, in an attitude of dejection.
[1177] He told her to eat and she began to eat the remains of the rabbit, out of the pot, with a spoon.
[1178] But it is hard to look steadily for any length of time at a fellow-creature, even when you are resolved to, and suddenly Lambert saw his daughter at another place and otherwise engaged than in bringing the spoon up from the pot into her mouth and down from her mouth into the pot again.
[1179] And yet he could have sworn that he had not taken his eyes off her.
[1180] He said, To-morrow we'll kill Whitey, you can hold her if you like.
[1181] But seeing he r her still so sad,and her cheeks wet with tears, he went towards her.
[
]
[⃞][1182] What tedium. [1183] If I went on to the stone? [1184] No, it would be the same thing. [1185] The Lamberts, the Lamberts, does it matter about the Lamberts? [1186] No, not particularly. [1187] But while I am with them the other is lost. [1188] How are my plans getting on, my plans, I had plans