MS-WU-MSS008-3-50-1

[0295] I called her Mag, when I had to call her something. [0296] And 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 the 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 money, five goodbye.
[0311] I was hard put to ram this code into her ruined and frantic
understanding, but I did it, in the end. [0312] That she should confuse
yes, no, I don't know and goodbye, was all the same to me, I