MS-WU-MSS008-3-49

[1109] whether it was wet or whether it was fine. [1110] Men were always busy there,
working at I know not what. [1111] For the garden seemed hardly to change, from
day to day, apart from the tiny changes due to the customary cycle of
birth, life and death. [1112] And in the midst of those men I drifted like a
dead leaf on springs, or ^else I lay down on the ground, and then they
stepped gingerly over me as though I had been a bed of rare flowers.

[1113] Yes,
it was doubtless in order to pre^serve the garden from apparent change that
they laboured at it thus. [1114] My bicycle had disappeared again. [1115] Sometimes
I felt the wish to look for it again, to find it again and find out what
was wrong with it or even go for a little ride on the walks and paths
connecting the different parts of the garden.

[1116] But instead of trying to
satisfy this wish I stayed where I was looking at it, if I may say so,
looking at it as it shrivelled up and finally disappeared, like the
famous fatal skin, only much quicker. [1117] But there seem to be two ways of
behaving in the presence of wishes, the active and the contemplative, and
though they both give the same result it was the latter I preferred,
matter of temperament I presume.

[1118] The garden was surrounded with a high
wall, its top bristling with broken glass like fins. [1119] But what must have
been absolutely unexpected was this, that this wall was broken by a
wicket-gate giving free access to the road, for it was never locked,
of that I was all but convinced, for I had ^opened and closed it without
the least difficulty on more than one occasion, both by day and by night,
and seen it used by others th^an myself, for the purpose as well of
entrance as of exit.

[1120] I would stick out my nose, then hastily call it in
again. [1121] A few further remarks. [1122] Never did I see a woman within these
precincts, and by precincts I do not merely mean the garden, as I
probably should, but the house too, but only men, with the ^obvious
exception of Lousse. [1123] What I saw and did not see did not matter much
admittedly, but I mention it all the same. [1124] Lousse herself I saw but