[p. 85r]
[1553] I don't care what I said, but often darker than now, whereas ou[⁁]t[t] there up in the sky it is black night, with few stars, just enough to show that the black night I see is truly of mankind and not merely painted on the window-pane, for they tremble, like true stars,[⁁] s as they would not do if they were painted.
[1554] And asi as if that were not enough to satisfy me it is the outer world, the other world, suddenly the window across the way lights up, or suddenly I realize it is lit up, for I am not one of those people who can take in everything at a single glance, but I have to look long and fixedly and give things time to travel the long road that lies between me and them.
[1555] And that indeed is a happy chance and augurs well, unless it be devised on purpose to make mock of me, for I might have found nothing better to speed me from this place than the nocturnal sky where nothing happens, though it is full of tumult and violence, [1556] nothing unless you have the whole night before you to follow the slow fall and rise of other worlds, when there are any, or watch out for the meteors, and I have not the whole night before me.
[1557] And it does not matter to me whether they have risen before dawn, or not yet gone to bed, or risen in the middle of the night intending perhaps to go back to bed when they have finished, and it is enought enough for me to see them standing up against each pother behind the curtain, which is dark, so that it is a dark light, if one may say so, and dim the shadow they cast. For they cleave so fast together that they seem a single body, and consequently a
[p. 86r]
[1557] single shadow.
[1558] But when they totter it is clear they are twain, and in vain they clasp with the ene[⁁][e]rgy of despair, it is clear we have here two distinct and separate bodies, each enclosed a[⁁]w[w]ithin its own frontiers, and having no need of each other to come and go and sustain the flame of life, for each is well able to do so, independently of the other.
[1559] Perhaps they are cold, that they rub against each other so, for friction maintains heat and brings it back when it is gone.
[1560] It is all very pretty and strange, this bgig complicated shape made up of more than one, for perhaps there are three of them, and how it sways and totters, but rather poor in colour.
[1561] But the night lmust be warm, for od of a sudden the curtain lifts on a flare of tender colour, pale blush and who[⁁]i[i]te of flesh, then pink that must come from a garment and gold too that I haven't time to understand.
[1562] So it is not cold they are, standing so lightly clad by the open window.
[1563] Ah how stupid I am, I see what it is, they must be loving each other, that must be how it is gfdone.
[1564] Godod, that has done me good.
[1565] I'll see now if the sky is still there, then go.
[1566] They are right up against the curtain now, motionless.
[1567] Is it possible they have finished already?
[1568] They have loved each other standing, like dogs.
[1569] Soon the[⁁]y[y] will be able to part.
[1570] Or perhaps they are just having a breather, before they tackle the titbit.
[1571] Back and forth, back and forth, that must be wonderful.
[1572] They seem to be in pain.
[1573] Enough, enough, goodbye.
[
] 
[⃞][1574] Caught by the rain far from shelter Macmann stopped and lay
[p. 87r]
[1574] down, saying, The surface thus pressed against the ground will remain dry, whereas standing I would get uniformy uniformly wet all over, as if rain were a mere matter of drops per hour, like electricity.
[1575] So he lay down, prostrate, after a moment's hesitation, for he could just as easily have lain down supine or, meeting himself half-way, on one of his two sides.
[1576] But he fancied that the nape of the neck and the back right down to the loins were more vulnerable than the chest and belly, not realizing, any more than if he had been a crate of tomatoes, that all these parts are intimately and even indissolubly bound up together,
at leats least until death do them part, and to many another too of which he had no conception, and that a drop of water out of seaso season on the coccyx for example may lead to spasms of the risorius mlastingng for years as when, having waded through a bog, you merely die of pneumonia and your legs no wo none the worse for the wetting, but if anything better, thanks perhaps to the action of the bog-water.
[1577] It was a heavuy, cold and perpendicular rain, which led Macmann to suppose it would be brief, as if there were a relation between violence and duration, and that he would spring to his feet in ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, his front, no, his back, white with, no, front was right, his front white with dust.
[1578] This is the kind of story he has been telling himself all his life, saying, This cannot possibly [last] go on last much longer.
[1579] It was sometime in the afternoon, impossible to say more, for hours and hours past it had been the same leaden light,
[p. 88r]
[1579] so it was very probably the afternoon, very.
[1580] The still air, though not cold as in winter, seemed without promise or memory of warmth.
[1581] Incommoded by the rain pouring into his hat through the crack, Macmann took it off and laid it on his temple, that is to say turned his head and pressed his cheek to the ground.
[1582] His hands at the ends of the long outstretched arms clutched the grass, each hand a tuft, with as much energy as if he had been spreadeagled against the face of cliff.
[1583] Let us by all means continue this description.
[1584] The rain pelted down on his back with the sound first of a drum, but of in a short time of washing, as when washing is soused gurgling and squelching in a tub, and he distinguished clearly and with interest the difference in noise of the rain falling on him and falling on the earth.
For his ear, which is on the same plane as the cheek or nearly, was glued to the earth in a way it seldom is in wet weather, and he could hear the kind of distant roar of the earth drinking and the sighing of the soaked bowed grasses.
[1585] The idea of punishment came to hs his mind, addicted it is true to that chimera and probably impressed by the posture of the body and the fingers clenched as though in torment.
[1586] And without knowing exactly what his sin was he felt full well that living was not a sufficient atonement for it or that this atonement was in itself a sin, calling for other atonements more atonement, and so on, as if there could be anything but life, for the living.
[1587] And no doubt he would have wondered if it was really necessary to be guilty in order to be punished but for the more memory, more and more galling, i[⁁]o[o]f his having consented to live in his mother, then to leave her.
[1588] And
[p. 89r]
[1588] this again he could not see as his true sin, but as yet another atonement which he[₰] had failed to make[⁁] miscarried [miscarried] and, which[₰], far from cleansing him of his sin, had[₰] plunged him in it deeper than before.
[1589] And truth to tell the oideas of guilt and punishment were confused together in his mind, as those of cause and effect so often are,[₰] in the minds of those who continue to think.
[1590] And it was often in fear and trembling that he suffered, saying, This will cost me dear.
[1591] But not knowing how to go about it, in order to think and feel correctly, he would suddenly begin to smile for no reason, as now, as then, for already it is long since that afternoon, in March perhaps, or in November perhaps,[start here] [[]in October rather, when the rain caught him far from shelter, to smile and give thanks for the teeming rain and rthe promise it contained of stars a little later, to light his way and enable him to get his bearings, should he wish to do so.
[1592] For he did not know quite where he was, except that he was in a plain, and the mountains not far, nor the sea, nor the town, and that all he needed was a dust of light and a few fixed stars to enable him to make definite headway towards the one, or the other, or the third, or to hold fast where he was, in the plain, as he might be pleased to decide.
[1593] For in order to hold fast in the place where you happen to be you need light too, unless you go round in circles, which is practically impossible in the dark, or halt and wait, motionless, for day to dawn again, and then you die of cold, unless it does not happen to be cold.
[1594] But Macmann would have been more than human, after forty or forty-five minutes of sanguine expectation, seeing the rain persis[⁁]t[t] as heavy as ever and day recede at last, if he had