[p. 16r]
[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 monyey, five goodbye.
[0311] I was hard put to ram this code into her ruined and frantic understanding, but I did it.,[⁁]in the end.
[p. 17r]
[0312] That she should confuse yes, no, I don't know and goodbye, was all the same to me, I confused them myself.
[0313] But that she should associate the four knocks with anything but money was something to be avoided at all costs.
[0314] During the period of training therefore, at the same time as I administered the four knocks on her skull, I stuck a bank-note under her nose or in her mouth. [0315] In the innocence of my heart!
[0316] For she seemed to have lost, if not absolutely all notion of mensuration, at least the faculty of counting beyond two.
[0317] It was too far for her, yes, the distance was too great, from one to four.
[0318] By the time she came to the fourth knock she imagined she was ohnnly at the second, the first two having been erased from her memory as completely as if they had never been felt, though I don't quite see how something never felt can be erased from the memory, and yet it is a common occurrence.
[0319] She must have thought I was saying no to her all the time, whereas nothing was further from my purpose.
[0320] Enlightened by these considerations I looked for and finally found a more effective means of putting the idea of money into her head.
[0321] Thhis consisted in replacing the four knocks of my index-knuckle by one or more (according to my needs) blows thumps of the fist, on her skull. [0322] That she understood.
[0323] In any case I didn't come for money.
[0324] I took her money, but I didn't come for that.
[0325] My mother. I don't think too harshly of her.
[0326] I know she did all she could not to have me, except of course the one thing, and if she never succeeded in getting me unstuck, it was that fate had earmarked me for less compassionate sewers.
[0327] But it was well-meant and that's enough for me.
[0328] No it is not enough for me, but I give her credit, though she is my mother, for what she tried
[p. 18r]
[0328] to do mfor me.
[0329] And I forgive her for having jostled me a little in the first months and spoiled the only endurable, just endurable, period of my enormous history.
[0330] And I also give her credit for not having done it again, thanks to me, or for having stopped in time, when she did.
[0331] [⁁]And if ever I'm reduced to looking for a meaning to my life, you never can tell,,it's in that old mess I'll stick my nose to begin with, the mess of that poor old uniparous whore and myself the last of my foul brood, neither man nor beast.
[0332] I should add, before I getting down to the facts, you'd swear they were facts, of that distant summer afternoon, that with this deaf blind impotent mad old woman, who called me Dan and whom I called Mag, and with her alone, I — no, I can't say it.
[0333] That is to say I could say it but I won't say it, yes, I could say it easily, because it wouldn't be true.
[0334] What did I see of her?
[0335] A head always, the hands sometimes, the arms rarely.
[0336] A head always.
[0337] Veiled with hair, wrinkles, filth, slobber.
[0338] A head that darkened the air. [0339] Not that seeing matters, but it's something to go on with.
[0340] It's I who took the key from under the pillow, who took the money out of the drawer, who put the key back under the pillow.
[0341] But I didn't come for money.
[0342] I think there was a woman who came each week.
[0343] Once I touched with my lips, vaguely, hastily, that little grey wiszened pear.
[0344] Pah.
[0345] Did that please her?
[0346] I don't know.
[0347] Her babble stopped for a second, then began again. [0349] Perhaps she said to herself, Pah.
[0350] I smelt a terrible smell.
[0351] It must have come from the guts.
[0352] Odour of antiquity.
[0353] Oh I'm not criticising her, I don't diffuse the perfumes of Araby myself.
[0354] Shall I describe the room?
[0355] No.
[0356] I shall have occasion to do so later perhaps.
[0357] When I seek refuge there, bet, all shame drunk, my prick in my rectujm, who knows.
[p. 19r]
[0358] Good.
[0359] Now that we know where we're going, let's go there.
[0360] It's so nice to know where you're going, in the early stages.
[0361] It almost rids you of the wish to go there.
[0362] I was distraught, who am so seldom distraught, from what should I be distraught, and as to my motions even more uncertain than usual.
[0363] The night must have tired me, at least weakened me, and the sun, hoisting itself higher and higher in the east, haed poisoned me, while I slept.
[0364] I ought to have put the bulk of the rock between it and me before closing my eyes.
[0365] I confuse east and west, the poles too, I invert them readily.
[0366] I was out of sorts.
[0367] They are deep, my sorts, a deep ditch, and I am not often out of them.
[0368] That's why I mention it.
[0369] Nevertheless I covered several miles and found myself under the ramparts.
[0370] There I dismounted in compliance with the regulations.
[0371] Yes, on entering and leaving town the police compel cyclists to dismount, cars to go into bottom gear and horsedrawn vehicles to slow down to a walk.
[0372] The reason for this regulation is I think this, that the ways into and of course the ways out of this town are narrow and darkened by enormous vaults, without exception.
[0373] It is a good rule and I observe it meticulously, in spite of the difficulty I have in advancing on my crutches pushing my bicycle at the same time.
[0374] I managed somehow.
[0375] Being ingenious.
[0376] Thus we cleared these difficult straits, my bicycle and I, together.
[0377] But a little further on I heard myself hailed.
[0378] I raised my head and saw a policeman.
[0379] Elliptically speaking, for it was only later, by way of induction, or of deduction, I forget which, that I knew what it was. [0380] What are you doing there? he said.
[0381] I'm used to that question, I understood it immediately.
[0382] Resting, I said. [0383] Resting,
[p. 20r]
[0383] he said.
[0384] Resting, I said.
[0385] Will you answer my question? he cried.
[0386] So it always is when I'm reduced to confabulation, I honestly believe I have answered the question I am asked and in reality I do nothing of the kind.
[0387] I won't reconstruct the conversation in all its meanderings.
[0388] It ended in my understanding that my way of resting, my attitude when at rest, astride my bicycle, my arms on the handlebars, my head on my arms, was a violation of I don't know what, public order, public decency.
[0389] Modestly I pointed to my crutches and ventured one or two noises regarding my infirmity, which obliged me to rest as I could, rather than as I should.
[0390] But there are not two laws, that was the next thing I thought I understood, not two laws, one for the healthy, another for the sick, but one only to which all must bow, rich and poor, young and old, happy and sad. [0391] He was eloquent.
[0392] I pointed out that I was not sad.
[0393] That was a mistake.
[0394] Your papers, he said, I knew it after a moment.
[0395] Not at all, I said, not at all.
[0396] Your papers! he cried.
[0397] Ah my papers.
[0398] Now the only papers I carry with me are bits of newspaper, to wipe myself, you understand, when I go to the toilet have a stool..
[0399] Oh I don't say I wipe myself every time I go to the toilet have a stool,, no, but I like to be in a position to do so, if I have to.
[0400] Nothing strange about that, it seems to me.
[0401] In a panic I took this paper from my pocket and thrust it under his nose.
[0402] The weather was fine.
[0403] We took the little side streets, quiet, sunlit, I springing along between my crutches, he pushing my bicycle, at with the tips of his white-gloved fingers.
[0404] I wasn't — I didn't feel unhappy.
[0405] I stopped a moment, I made so bold, to lift my hand and touch the crown of my hat.
[0406] It was scorching.
[0407] I felt the faces turning to look after us, calm faces