MS-WU-MSS008-3-50-1

[0759] dangling at mid-thigh at the end of a meagre cord, there was nothing
more to be squ^eezed, not a drop. So that non che la speme il desiderio,
and I longed to see them gone, from the old stand where they bore false
witness, for and against, in the lifelong case against me. [0760] For if they
accused me of having made a balls of it, of me, of them, they thanked me
for it too^, from ^[⁁]depths of their rotten bag, the right lower than the
left, or inversely, I forget, decaying circus clowns.

[0761] And, worse still,
they got in my way when I tried to walk, when I tried to sit down, as if
my sick leg was not enough, and when I rode my bicycle they bounced up
and down. [0762] So the best thing for me would have been for them to go, and
I would have seen to it myself, with a knife or secateurs, but for my
terror of physical pain and festered wounds, so that I shook.

[0763] Yes, all
my life I h^ave gone in terror of festered wounds, I who never festered,
I was so acid. [0764] My life, my life, now I speak of it as of something over,
now as of a joke which still goes on, and ^{[⁁]it is neither} for at the same
time it is over and it goes on, and is there any tense for that? [0765] Watch
wound and buried by the watchmaker, before he died, whose ruined works
will one day speak of God, to the worms.

[0766] But those cullions, I must be
attached to them after all, cherish them as others do their scars, or the
family album. [0767] In any case it wasn't their fault I couldn't dig, but my
leg's. [0768] It was Lousse dug the hole while I held the dog in my arms. [0769] He
was heavy already and cold, but he had not yet begun to stink. [0770] He smelt
bad, if you like, but bad like an old dog, not like a dead dog. [0771] He too
had dug holes, perhaps at this very spot.

[0772] We buried him as he was, no
box or wrapping of any kind, like a Carthusian monk, but with his colla^r
and lead. [0773] It was she put him in the hole, though I was the gentleman.
^[⁁]For I cannot stoop, neither can I kneel, because of my infirmity, and ^if
ever I stoop, forgetting who I am, or kneel, ^{[⁁]make no mistake}, it
will not be me, but another. [0774] To throw him in the hole was all I coul^d