MS-WU-MSS008-3-49

[0774] have done, and I would have done it gladly. [0775] And yet I did not do it.
[0776] All the things you would do gladly, oh without enthusiasm, but gladly,
all the things there seems no reason for not doing, and that you do not
do! [0777] Can it be we are not free? [0778] It might be worth looking into. [0779] But
what was my contribution to this burial. [0780] It was she dug the hole, put
in the dog, filled up the hole. [0781] On the whole I was a mere spectator,
[0782] I contributed my presence. [0783] As if it had been my own burial. [0784] And it was.

[0785] It was a larch. [0786] It is the only tree I can identify, with certainty.
[0787] Funny she should have chosen, to bury her dog beneath, the only tree I
can identify, with certainty. [0788] The sea-green needles are like silk and
speckled, it always seems to me, with little red, how shall I say, with
little red specks. [0789] The dog had ticks in his ears, I have an eye for such
things, they were buried with him. [0790] When she had finished her grave she
handed me the spade and began to muse, or brood.

[0791] I thought she was
crying, it was the thing to do, but on the contrary she laughed. [0792] It was
perhaps her way of crying. [0793] Or perhaps I was mistaken and she was really
crying, with the noise of laughter. [0794] Tears and laughter, they are so much
Hebrew to me. [0795] She would see him no more, her Teddy whom she had loved
like her own child.

[0796] I wonder why, since she had obviously made up her
mind to bury the dog at home, she had not asked the vet to call, and
destroy the dog on the premises. [0797] Was she really on her way to the vet
at the moment her path crossed mine^? [0798] Or had she said so ^solely in order
to attenuate my guilt? [0799] Private calls are naturally more expensive.

[0800] She
ushered me into the drawing-room and gave me food and drink, good things
without a doubt. [0801] Unfortunately I didn't much care for good things to eat.
[0802] But I quite liked getting drunk. [0803] If she lived in embarrassed circumstances,
there was no sign of it. [0804] That kind of embarrassment I feel at once.
[0805] Seeing how painful the sitting posture was for me she fetched a chair for