This document was written with the typewriter, and contains edits in typewriter, black ink. In this visualisation, unclear words are placed between [brackets].
[p. 65r]
[3874] I waited for my image to come back, I watched it as it trembled towards an ever increasing likeness.
[3875] Now and then a drop, falling from my face, shattered it again.
[3876] I did not see a soul all day.
[3877] But towards evening I heard a prowling about the shelter.
[3878] I did not move,
[3879] and the footsteps died away.
[3880] But a little later, having left the shelter for some reason or other, I saw a man a few paces off, standing motionless.
[3881] He had his back to me.
[3882] He wore a coat much too heavy for the time of the year and was leaning on a stick so massive, and so much thicker at the bottom than at the top, that it seemed more like a club.
[3883] He turned and we looked at each other for some time in silence.
[3884] That is to say I looked him full in the face, as I always do, to make people think I am not afraid, whereas he merely threw me a rapid glance from time to time, then lowered his eyes, less from timidity apparently than in order quietly to think over what he had just seen, before adding to it.
[3885] There was a coldness in his stare, and a thrust, the like of which I never saw.
[3886] His face was pale and noble, I could have done with it.
[3887] I was thinking he could not be much over fifty-five when he took off his hat, held it for a moment in his hand, then put it back on his head.
[3888] No resemblance to what is called raising one's hat.
[3889] But I thought it advisable to nod.
[3890] The hat was quite extraordinary, in shape and colour.
[3891] I shall not attempt to describe it, it was like none I had ever seen.
[3892] He had a huge shock of dirty snow-white hair.
[3893] I had time, before he squeezed it in back under his hat, to see the way it swelled up on his skull.
[3894] His face was dirty and hairy, yes, pale, noble, dirty and hairy.
[3895] He made a curious movement, like a hen that puffs up its feathers and slowly dwindles till it is smaller than before.
[3896] I thought he was going to depart without a word to me.
[3897] But suddenly he asked me to give him a piece of bread.
[3898] He accompanied this humiliating request with a fiery llook.
[3899] His accent was that of a foreigner or of one who had lost
[p. 66r]
[3899] the habit of speech.
[3900] But had I not said already, with relief, at the mere sight of his back, He's a foreigner. [3901] Would you like a tin of sardines? I said.
[3902] He asked for bread and I offered him fish.
[3903] That is me all over.
[3904] Bread, he said.
[3905] I went into the shelter and took the piece of bread I was keeping for my son, [⁁]who would probably be hungry when he came back.
[3906] I gave it [|] to him.
[3907] I expected him to devour it there and then. [3908] But he broke it in two and put the pieces in hois coat-pockets.
[3909] Do you mind if I look at your stick? I said.
[3910] I stretched out my hand.
[3911] He did not move.
[3912] I put my hand on the stick, just under his.
[3913] I could feel his fingers gradually letting go.
[3914] Notw it was I who held the stick.
[3915] Its lightness astounded me.
[3916] I put it back in his hand. [3917] He threw me a last look and went.
[3918] It was almost dark.
[3919] He walked with swift uncertain step, often changing his course, dragging the stick like a hindrance.
[3920] I wished I could have stood there looking after him, and time at a standstill.
[3921] I wished I could have been in the middle of a desert, under the midday sun, to look after him till he was only a dot, on the edge of the horizon.
[3922] I stayed out in the air for a long time.
[3923] Every now and then I listened.
[3924] But my son did not come.
[3925] Beginning to feel cold I went back in to the shelter and lay down, under my son's raincoat.
[3926] But beginning to feel sleepy I went out again and lit a big wood-fire, to guide my son towards me.
[3927] When the fire had kindled I said, Why of course, now I can warm myself!
[3928] I warmed myself, rubbing my hands together after having held them to the flame and before holding them to it again, and turning my back to the flame and lifting the tail of my coat, and turning as on a spit.
[3929] And in the end, overcome with heat and weariness, I lay down on the ground near the fire and fell asleep, saying, Perhaps a spark will set fire to my clothes and I wake a living torch.
[3930] And saying many other things besides, belonging to separate and apparently unconnected trains
[p. 67r]
[3930] of thought.
[3931] But when I woke it was day again and the fire was out.
[3932] But the embers were still warm.
[3933] My leg was no better, but it was no worse either.
[3934] That is to say it was perhaps a little worse, without my being in a condition to realize it, for the simple reason that this leg was becoming a habit, mercifully.
[3935] But I think not.
[3936] For at the same time as I listened to my knee, and then submitted it to various tests, I was on my guard against the effects of this habit and tried to discount them.
[3937] And it was not so much Moran as another, in the secret of Moran's sensations exclusively, who said, No change, Moran, no change.
[3938] This may seem impossible.
[3939] I went into the copse to cut myself a stick.
[3940] But having finally found a suitable branch, I remembered I had no knife.
[3941] I went back to the shelter, hoping to find my son's knife among the things he had laid on the ground and neglected to pick up.
[3942] It was not among them.
[3943] To make up [⁁]for this I came across my umbrella and said, Why cut myself a stick when I have my umbrella.
[3944] And I practised walking with the help of my umbrella.
[3945] And though in this way I moved no faster and no less painfully, at least I did not tire so quickly.
[3946] And instead of having to stop every ten steps, to rest, I easily managed fifteen, before having to stop.
[3947] And even while I rested my umbrella was a help.
[3948] For I found that when I leaned upon it the heaviness in my leg, due probably to a defect in the bloodstream, disappeared even more quickly than when I stood supported only by my muscles and the tree of life.
[3949] And thus equipped I no longer confined myself to circling about the shelter, as I had done the previous day, but I radiated from it in every direction.
[3950] And I even gained a little knoll from which I had a better view of the expanse where my son might suddenly rise into view, at any moment.
[3951] And in my mind's eye from time to time I saw him, bent over the handlebars or standing on the pedals, draweing near, and I heard him panting and I saw written on his the chubby face the his joy at being back at last.
[p. 68r]
[3952] But at the same time I kept my eye on the shelter, which drew me with an extraordinary gravity pull, so that to cut across from the terminus of one sally to the terminus of the next, and so on, which would have been convenient, was out of the question.
[3953] But each time I had to retrace my steps, the way I had come, to the shelter, and make sure all was in order, before I sallied forth again.
[3954] And I consumed the greater part of this second day in these vain comings and goings, these vigils and imaginings, but not all of it.
[3955] For I also lay down from time to time in the shelter, which I was beginning to think of as my little house, to ruminate in peace on certain things, and notably on my provisions of food which were rapidly running out, so that after a meal devoured at five o'clock I was left with only two tins of sardines, a handful of biscuits and a few apples.
[3956] But I also tried to remember what I was to do with Molloy, once I had found him.
[3957] And on myself too I pored, on me so changed from what I was.
[3958] And I seemed to see myself ageing as swiftly as a day-fly.
[3959] But the idea of ageing was not exactly the one which offered itself to me.
[3960] And what I saw was more like a crumbling, a frenzied fcollapsing of all that had always protected me from all I was always condemned to be.
[3961] Or it was like a kind of clawing towards a light and countenance I could not name, that I had once known and long denied.
[3962] But what words can describe this sensation at first all darkness and bulk, with a noise like the grinding of stones, then suddenly as soft as water flowing.
[3963] And then I saw a little globe swaying up slowly from the depths, through the quiet water, smooth at first, and scarcely paler than its escorting ripples, then little by little a face, with holes for the eyes and mouth and other wounds, and nothing to show if it was a man's face or a woman's face, a young face or an old face, or if its calm too was not an effect of the water trembling between it and the light.
[3964] But I confess I attended but absently to these poor figures, in which I suppose my sense
[p. 69r]
[3964] of disaster sought to contqain itself.
[3965] And that I did not labour at them more diligently was a further index of the great changes I had suffered and of my growing resignation to being dispossessed of self.
[3966] And doubtless I should have gone from discovery to discovery, concerning myself, if I had persisted.
[3967] But at the first faint light, I mean in these wild shadows gathering about me, dispensed by a vision or by an effort of thought, at the first light I fled to other cares.
[3968] And all had been for nothing. [3969] And he who acted thus was a stranger to me too.
[3970] For it was not my nature, I mean it was not my custom, to conduct amy calculations simultaneously, but separately and turn about, pushing each one as far as it would go before turning in desperation to another.
[3971] Similarly the missing instructions concerning Molloy, when I felt them stirring in the depths of my memory, I turned from them in haste towards other unknowns.
[3972] And I who a fortnight before would joyfully have reckoned how long I could survive on the provisions that remained, probably with reference to the question of calories and vitamins, and established in my head a series of menus asymptotically approaching nutritional zero, was now content to note feebly that I should soon be dead of inanition, if I did not succeed in renewing my provisions.
[3973] So much for the second day.
[3974] But one incident remains to be noted, before I go on to the third.
[3975] It was evening. I had lit my fire and was watching it take when I heard myself hailed.
[3976] The voice, already so near that I started violently, was that of a man.
[3977] [⁁]But Aafter this one violent start I collected myself and continued to busy myself with my fire as if nothing had happened, poking it with a branch I had torn from its tree for the purpose a little earlier and stripped of its twigs and leaves and even part of its bark, with my bare nails.
[3978] I have always loved skinning branches and laying bare the pretty white glossy shaft of sapwood.
[3979] But obscure feelings of love and