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[0576] off my hat and pressed about my face the long, leafy stalks.
[0577] Then I smelt the earth, the smell of the earth was in the
grass, that my hands wove round my face till I was blinded.
[0578] I ate a little, too. [0579] It came back to my mind, from nowhere,
as a moment before my name had, that I had set out to see [/]my
mother at the beginning of this ending day. [0580] My reasons?
[0581] I had forgotten them. [0582] But I knew what they were, I must have
known what they were, I had only to find them again and I
would sweep, with the clipped wings of necessity, to my mother.
[0583] Yes, it's all easy when you know why, a mere matter of magic.
[0584] Yes, the whole thing is to know what saint to implore, any
fool can implore him. [0585] For the particulars, if you are interested in particulars, there is no need to despair, you may knock
upon the right door, in the right way, in the end. [0586] It's for
the whole there seems to be no spell. [0587] Perhaps there is no
whole, before you're dead. [0588] An opiate for the life of the dead,
that should be easy. [0589] What am I waiting for then, to
exorcise mine? [0590] It's coming, it's coming. I hear from here
the howl resolving all, even if it is not mine. [0591] Meanwhile,
there's no use knowing you are gone, you are not, you are
writhing yet, the hair is growing, the nails are growing,
the entrails emptying, all the morticians are dead. [0592] Someone
has drawn the blinds, you perhaps. [0593] Not the faintest sound.
[0594] Where are the famous flies? [0595] Yes, there is no denying it,
any longer, it is not you who are dead, but all the others.
[0596] So you get up and go to your mother, who thinks she is alive.
[0597] That's my impression. [0598] But now I'm going to have to get out of
this ditch. [0599] How willingly I would vanish there, sinking
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[0599] deeper and deeper under the rains. [0600] No doubt I'll come back
some day, here, or to a similar slough, I can trust my feet
for that, as no doubt some day I'll meet again the sergeant and
his merry men. [0601] And if, too changed to know it is they, I do
not say it is they, do not be deceived, it will be they, though
changed. [0602] For to conjure up a being, a place, I nearly said an
hour, but I would not hurt anyone's feelings, and then to use
them no more, that would be, how shall I say, I don't know. [0603] Not
to want to say, not to know what you want to say, not to be
able to say what you think you want to say, and never to stop
saying, or hardly ever, that is the thing to keep in mind, even
in the heat of composition. [0604] That night was not like the other
night, if it had been I would have known. [0605] For when I try and think
of that night, on the canal[#]bank, I find nothing, no night
properly speaking, nothing but Molloy in the ditch, and perfect
silence, and behind my closed lids the little night and its
little lights, faint at first, then flaming and extinguished,
now ravening, now fed, as fire by filth and martyrs. [0606] I say
that night, but there was more than one perhaps. [0607] The lie,
the lie, to lying thought. [0608] But I find the morning, a morning,
and the sun already high, and the little sleep I had then,
according to my custom, and space with its sounds again, and
the shepherd watching me sleep and under whose eyes I opened
my eyes. [0609] Beside him a panting dog, watching me too, but less
closely than his master, for from time to time he stopped
watching me to gnaw at his flesh, furiously, where the ticks were
in him I suppose. [0610] Did he take me for a black sheep entangled
in the brambles and was he waiting an order from his master
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[0610] to drag me out? [0611] I don't think so. [0612] I don't smell like a
sheep, I wish I smelt like a sheep, or a puckaun[?] . [0613] When I wake
I see the first things quite clearly, the first things that
offer, and I understand them, when they are not too difficult.
[0614] Then in my eyes and in my head a fine rain begins to falls , as
from a rose, [0615] highly important. [0616] So I knew at once it was a
shepherd and his dog I had before me, above me rather, for they
had not left the path. [0617] And I identified the bleating too, without any trouble, the anxious bleating of the sheep, missing the
dog at their heels. [0618] It is then, too, that the meaning of words
is least obscure to me, so that I said, with tranquil assurance,
Where are you taking them, to the fields or to the slaughterhouse?
[0619] I must have completely lost my sense of direction, as if direction
had anything to do with the matter. [0620] For even if he was going
toward the town, what prevented him from skirting it, or from
leaving it again by another gate, on his way to new pastures,
and if he was going away from it that meant nothing either, for
slaughterhouses are not confined to towns, no, they are everywhere,
the country is full of them, every butcher has his slaughterhouse
and the right to slaughter, according to his needs. [0621] But whether
it was he didn't understand, or didn't want to reply, he didn't
reply, but went on his way without a word, without a word for me
I mean, for he spoke to his dg who listened attentively, cocking
his ears. [0622] I got to my knees, no, that doesn't work, I got up and
watched the little procession recede. [0623] I heard the shepherd
whistle, and I saw him flourishing his crook, and the dog bustling
about the herd, which but for him would no doubt have fallen into
the canal. [0624] All that through a glittering dust, and soon through
that mist, too, which rises in me every day and v[/]eils the worl[/]d from
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[0624] me and veils me from myself. [0625] The bleating grew faint, because
the sheep were less anxious, or because they were further away,
or because my hearing was worse than a moment before, which would
surprise me, for my hearing is still very good, scarcely blunted
coming up to dawn, and if I sometimes hear nothing for hours on
end it is for reasons of which I know nothing, or because about
me all goes really silent, from time to time, whereas for the just
the tumult of the world never stops. [0626] That then is how that second
day began, unless it was the third, or the fourth, and it was a bad
beginning, because it left me with persisting doubts as to the
destination of those sheep, among which there were lambs, and often
wondering if they had safely reached some commonage or fallen, their
skulls shattered, their thin legs crumpling, first to their knees,
then over on their fleecy sides, under the poleax, though that
is not the way they slaughter sheep. [0627] But there is much to be said
too, for these little doubts. [0628] Good God, what a land of breeders,
you see quadrupeds everywhere. [0629] And it's not over yet, there are
still horses and goats, to go no further, I feel them watching for
me, to get in my path. [0630] I have no need of that. [0631] But I did not lose
sight of my immediate goal, which was to go to my mother as
quickly as possible, and standing in the ditch I summoned to my
aid the good reasons I had for going there without a moment's delay.
[0632] And though there were many things I could do without thinking, not
knowing what I was going to do until it was done, and not even then,
going to my mother was not one of them. [0633] My feet, you see, never took
me to my mother unless they received a definite order to do so.[]]
[0634] [[]The glorious, the truly glorious weather would have gladdened any
other heart than mine. [0635] But I have no reason to be gladdened by the
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[0635] sun and I take good care not to be. [0636] The Aegean, thirsting for
heat and light, him I killed, he killed himself, early on, in me.
[0637] The pale gloom of rainy days was better fitted to my taste, no,
that's not it, to my humor, no, that's not it either, I had neither
taste nor humor, I lost them early on. [0638] Perhaps what I mean is
that the pale gloom etc., hid me better, without its being on
that account particularly pleasing to me. [0639] Chameleon in spite of
himse[/]lf, there you have Molloy, viewed from a certain angle. [0640] And
in winter, under my greatcoat, I wrapped myself in swathes of
newspaper, and did not shed them until the earth awoke, for good,
in April. [0641] [[]The Times Literary Supplement was admirably adapted
to this purpose, of a never-failing toughness and impermeability.
[0642] To break wind [?] did not tear it. [0643] I can't help it, gas escapes from
my fundament on the least pretext, it's hard not to mention it
now and then, however great my loathing. [0644] One day I counted them.
[0645] Three hundred and fifteen break winds[?] in nineteen hours, or an
average of over sixteen break winds an hour. [0646] After all it's not
[please check] excessive. [0647] Four break winds every fifteen minutes. [0648] It's nothing.
[0649] Not even one break wind every four minutes. [0650] It's unbelievable.
[0651] Come, come, I hardly break wind at all, I should never have
mentioned it. [0652] Extraordinary how mathematics help you to know
yourself. [0653] In any case this whole question of climate left me cold,
I could stomach any mess. [0654] So I will only add that the mornings
were often sunny, in that part of the world, until ten o'clock or
coming up to eleven, and that then the sky was overcast and the
rain fell, fell till evening. [0655] Then the sun came out and went down,
the drenched earth sparkled an instant, then went out, bereft of
light.[]] [0656] [[]There I am then back in the saddle, in my numbed heart
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