MS-WU-MSS008-3-49

[0294] personally in the scences she evoked, it was just as if I had.
[0295] I called her Mag, when I had to call her something. [0296] And if I
called her Mag because for me, without my knowing why, the letter
g abolished the syllable Ma, and as it were spat on it, better
than any other letter would have done. [0297] And at the same time
I satisfied a deep and doubtless unacknowledged need, the need
to have a Ma, that is a mother, and to proclaim it, audibly.

[0298] For before you say mag you say ma, inevitably. [0299] And da, in my
part of the world, means father. [0300] Besides for me the question
did not arise, at the period I'm worming into now, I mean the
question of whether to call her Ma, Mag or the Countess Caca,
she having for countless years been as deaf as a post. [0301] I think
she was quite incontinent, both of faeces and water, but a kind
of prudishness made us avoid the subject when we met, and I
could never be certain of it.

[0302] In any case it can't have amounted
to much, a few niggardly wetted goat-droppings every two or three
days. [0303] The room smelt of ammonia, oh not merely of ammonia, but
of ammonia, ammonia. [0304] She knew it was me, by my smell. [0305] Her
shrunken hairy old face lit up, she was happy to smell me. [0306] She
jabbered away with a rattle of dentures, and most of the time
didn't realize what she was saying.

[0307] Anyone but myself would
have been lost in this clattering gabble, which can only have
stopped during her brief instants of unconsciousness. [0308] In any
case I didn't come to listen to her. [0309] I got into communication
with her by knocking on her skull. [0310] One knock meant yes, two no,
three I don't know, four mony ^{[place = overwritten] e}y, five goodbye. [0311] I was hard put to
ram this code into her ruined and frantic understanding, but I did it. ^{[place = overwritten] ,}[⁁] ^{[place = supralinear] in the end.}