MS-WU-MSS008-3-50-2

[4509] Gaber, Gaber, he said —. [4510] Louder! I cried. [4511] He said to me, said Gaber,
Gaber, he said, life is a thing of beauty, Gaber, and a joy for ever. [4512] He
brought his face nearer mine. [4513] A joy for ever, he said, a thing of beauty,
Moran, and a joy for ever. [4514] He smiled. [4515] I closed my eyes. [4516] Smiles are ^[⁁]all very
nice in their own way, very heartening, but at a reasonable distance. [4517] I
said, Do you think he meant human life? [4518] I listened.

[4519] Perhaps he didn't
mean human life, I said. [4520] I opened my eyes. [4521] I was alone. [4522] My hands were
full of grass and earth I had torn up unt^wittingly, was still tearing up.
[4523] I was literally uprooting. [4524] I desisted, yes, the second I realized what
I had done, what I was doing, such a nasty thing, I desisted from it, I
opened my hands, they were soon empty.

[4525] That night I set out for home. [4526] I did not get far. [4527] But it was a
start. [4528] It is the first step that counts. [4529] The second counts less. [4530] Each
day saw me advance a little further. [4531] That last sentence is not clear,
it does not say what I hoped it would. [4532] I counted at first by tens of
steps.

[4533] I stopped when I could go no further and I said, Bravo, that makes
so many tens, so many more than yesterday. [4534] Then I counted by fifteens,
by twenties and finally by fifties. [4535] Yes, in the end I could go fifty
steps before having to stop, for rest, leaning on my faithful umbrella.
[4536] In the beginning I must have strayed a little in Ballyba, if I really was
in Ballyba.

[4537] Then I followed more or less the same paths we had taken on
the way out. [4538] But paths look different, when you go back along them. [4539] I
ate, in obedience to the voice of reason, all that nature, the woods, the
fields, the waters had to offer me in the way of edibles. [4540] I finished the
morphine.

[4541] It was in August, in September at the latest, that I was ordered home.
[4542] It was spring when I got there, I will not be more precise. [4543] I had therefore
been all winter on the way.