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[4676] my straw, not made to resist the rigours of winter, and with my stockings (two pairs) which the cold and damp, the trudging and the lack of laundering facilities had literally annihilated.
[4677] But I let out my braces to their full extent and my knickerbockers, very baggy as the fashion is, came down to my calves.
[4678] And at the sight of the blue flesh, between the knickerbockers and the tops of my boots, I sometimes thought of my son and the blow I had fetched him, so avid is the mind of the flimsiest analogy.
[4679] My boots became rigid, from lack of proper care.
[4680] So skin defends itself, when dead and tanned.
[4681] The air coursed through them freely, preserving perhaps my feet from freezing.
[4682] And I had likewise sadly to part with my drawers (two [⁁] pairs).
[4683] They had rotted, from constant contact with my incontinences.
[4684] Then the seat of my breeches, before it too decomposed, sawed my crack from Dan to Beersheba.[4685] What else did I have to discard?
[4686] My shirt?
[4687] Never!
[4688] But I often wore it inside out and back to front.
[4689] Let me see.
[4690] I had four ways of wearing my shirt.
[4691] Front to front right side out, front to front inside out, back to front right side out, back to front inside out.
[4692] And the fifth day I began again.
[4693] It was in the hope of making it last.
[4694] Did this make it last?
[4695] I do not know.
[4696] It lasted.
[4697] To major things the surest road is non the minor pains bestowed, if you don't happen to be in a hurry.
[4698] But what else did I have to discard?
[4699] My hard collars, yes, I discarded them all, and even before they were quite worn and torn. [4700] But I kept my tie, I even wore it, tied [⁁]knotted round [⁁]my bare neck, out of sheer bravado I suppose.
[4701] It was a spotted tie, but I fortget the colour.
[4702] When it rained, when it snowed, when it hailed, then I found myself faced with the following dilemma.
[4703] Was I to go on leaning on my umbrella and get drenched or was I to stop and take shelter under my open umbrella.?
[4704] It was a false dilemma, as so many dilemmas are.
[4705] For on the one hand all
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[4705] that remained of the canopy of my umbrella was a few flitters of silk fluttering from the stays and on the other I could have gone on, very slowly, using the umbrella no longer as a support, but as a shelter.
[4706] But I was so accustomed, on the one hand to the perfect watertightness of my expensive umbrella, and on the other hand to being unable to walk without its support, that the dilemma remained entire, for me.
[4707] I could of course have made myself a stick, out of a branch, and gone on, in
spite of the rain, the snow, the hail, leaning on the stick and the umbrella open above me.
[4708] But I did not, I do not know why. [4709] But when the rain descended, and the other things that descend upon us from the above, [₰]s[ky], sometimes I pushed on, leaning on the umbrella, getting drenched, but most often I stopped dead, opened the umbrella above me and waited for it to be over.
[4710] Then I got equally drenched.
[4711] But this was not the point.
[4712] And if it had suddenly begun to rain manna I would have waited, stock still, under my umbrella,for it to be over, before taking advantage of it.
[4713] And when my arm was weary of holding up the umbrella, then I gave it to the other hand.
[4714] And with my free hand I slapped and rubbed every part of my body within its reach, in order to keep the blood running trickling freely, or I drew it over my face, in a gesture that was characteristic, of me.
[4715] And the long spike of my umbrella was like a finger. [4716] My best thoughts came to me during these halts.
[4717] But when it was clear that the rain, etc., would not stop all day, or all night, then I did the sensible thing and built myself a proper shelter.
[4718] But I did not like proper shelters, made of boughs, any more.
[4719] For soon there were no more leaves, but only the needles of certain conifers.
[4720] But this was not the real reason why I did not like proper shelters any more, no.
[4721] But when I was inside them I could think of nothing but my son's raincoat, I literally saw it, I saw nothing else, it filled all space.
[4722] It was in reality what our English
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[4722] friends call a trench-coat, and I could smell the rubber, though trench-coats are not rubberized as a rule. [4723] So I avoided as far as possible having recourse to proper shelters, made of boughs, preferring the shelter of my faithful umbrella, or of a tree, or of a hedge, or of a bush, or of a ruin.
[4724] The thought of taking to the road, to try and get a lift, never crossed my mind.
[4725] The thought of turning for help to the villages, to the peasants, would have displeased me, if it had occurred to me.
[4726] I reached home with my fifteen shillings intact. [4727] No, I spent two. [4728] This is how.
[4729] I had to suffer other molestations than this, other offences, but I shall not record them. [4730] Let us be content with paradigms.
[4731] I may have to suffer others [per] in the future. This is not certain. But they will never be known. This is certain.
[4732] It was evening. [4733] I was waiting quietly, under my umbrella, for the weather to clear, when I was brutally accosted from behind. [4734] I had heard nothing. [4735] I had been in a place where I was all alone. [4736] A hand turned me about. [4737] It was a big ruddy farmer. [4738] He was wearing an oilskin, a bowler hat and wellingtons. [4739] His chubby cheeks were streaming, the water was dripping from his bushy moustache. [4740] But why describe him. [4741] We glared at each other with hatred. [4742] Perhaps he was the same who had so politely offered to drive us home in his car. [4743] I think not. [4744] And yet his face was familiar. [4745] Not only his face. [4746] He held a lantern in his hand. [4747] It was not lit. [4748] But he might light it at any moment. [4749] In the other he held a spade. [4750] To bury me with if necessary. [4751] He seized me by the jacket, by the lapel. [4752] He had not yet begun to shake me exactly, he would shake me in his own good time, not before.[4753] He merely cursed me. [4754] I wondered what I could have
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[4754] done, to put him in such a state.
[4755] I must have raised my eyebrows.
[4756] But I always raise my eyebrows, they are almost in my hair, my brow is nothing but wales and furrows.
[4757] I understood finally that I did not own the land.
[4758] It was his land.
[4759] What was I doing on his land?
[4760] If there is one question I dread, to which I have never been able to invent a satisfactory reply, it is the question what am I doing.
[4761] And on someone else's land to make things worse!
[4762] And at night!
[4763] And in weather not fit for a dog!
[4764] But I did not lose my presence of mind.
[4765] It is a vow, I said.
[4766] I have a fairly distinguished voice when I choose.
[4767] It must have impressed him.
[4768] He unhanded me.
[4769] A pilgrimage, I said, following up my advantage.
[4770] He asked me where to.
[4771] He was lost.
[4772] To the Turdy Madonna, I said.
[4773] The Turdy Madonna? he said, as if he knew Turdy like the back of his hand and there were no Madonna in the place. [⁁]length and breadth of it.
[4774] But where is the place in which there is no Madonna?
[4775] Herself, I said.
[4776] The black one? he said, to try me.
[4777] She is not black that I know of, I said.
[4778] Another would have lost countenance.
[4779] Not I.
[4780] I knew them my yokels and their weak points.
[4781] You'll never get there, he said. [4782] It's thanks to her I lost my infant boy, I said, and kept his mamma.
[4783] Such sentiments could not fail to please a cattle breeder.
[4784] Had he but know!n!
[4785] I told him more fully what alas had never happened.
[4786] Not that I miss Ninette.
[4787] But she, at least, who knows, in any case, yes, a pity, no matter.
[4788] She is the Madonna of pregnant women, I said, of pregnant married women, and I have vowed to drag myself miserably to her niche, and thank her.
[4789] This incident gives but a feeble idea of my ability, even at this late period.
[4790] But I had gone a little too far, for the vicious look came back into his eye.
[4791] May I ask you a favour, I said, God will reward you.
[4792] I added, God sent you to me, this evening.
[4793] Humbly to ask a favour of people who are on the point of knocking your brains out sometimes produces
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[4793] good results. [4794] A little hot tea, I implored, without sugar or milk, to revive me. [4795] To grant such a small favour to a pilgrim on the rocks was frankly a temptation difficult to resist. [4796] Oh all right, he said, come back to the house, you can dry yourself, before the fire. [4797] But I cannot, I cannot, I cried, I have sworn to make a bee-line to her. [4798] And to efface the bad impression created by these words I took a florin from my pocket and gave it to him. [4799] For your poor-box, I said. [4800] And I added, because of the dark, A florin for your poor-box. [4801] It's a long way, he said. [4802] God will go with you, I said. [4803] He thought it over. [4804] Well he might. [4805] Above all nothing to eat, I said, no really, I must not eat. [4806] Ah Moran, wily as a serpent, there was never the like of old Moran. [4807] Of course I would have preferred violence, but I dared not take the risk. [4808] Finally he took himself off telling me to stay where I was. [4809] I do not know what was in his mind. [4810] When I judged him at a safe remove I closed the umbrella and set off in the opposite direction, at right angles to the way I was going, in the driving rain. [4811] That was how I spent a florin.
[4812] Now I may make an end.
[4813] I skirted the graveyard.
[4814] It was night.
[4815] Midnight perhaps.
[4816] The lane is steep, I laboured.
[4817] A little wind was chasing the clouds over the faint sky.
[4818] It is a great thing to own a plot in perpetuity,
[4819] a very great thing indeed.
[4820] If only this that were the only perpetuity.
[4821] I came to the wicket.
[4822] It was locked.
[4823] Very properly.
[4824] But I could not open it.
[4825] The key went into the hole, but would not turn.
[4826] Long disuse?
[4827] A new lock[?]?
[4828] I burst it open.
[4829] I drew back to the other side of the lane and hurled myself at it.
[4830] I had come home, as Youdi had commanded.me.
[4831] In the end I got to my feet.
[4832] What smelt so sweet?
[4833] The lilacs?
[4834] The primroses perhaps.
[4835] I went towards my hives.
[4836] They were there, as I feared.
[4837] I lifted the top off one and laid it on the ground.
[4838] It was a little roof,