[p. 16r]
[2475] said.
[2476] He was still there.
[2477] I asked him what he was waiting for to do as I had told him.
[2478] If I had been my son I would have left me long ago.
[2479] He was not worthy of me, not in the same class at all.
[2480] I could not escape this conclusion.
[2481] A [₰] cCold comfort that is, to feel superior to one's son, and hardly sufficient to calm the remorse of having begotten him.
[2482] May I bring my stamps? he said.
[2483] My son had two albums, a big one for his collection properly speaking and a small one for the duplicates.
[2484] I authorised him to bring the latter.
[2485] When I can give pleasure, without doing violence to my princpiples, I do so gladly.
[2486] He withdrew.
[2487] I got up and went to the window.
[2488] I could not keep still.
[2489] I passed my head between the curtains.
[2490] Fine rain, lowering sky.
[2491] He had not lied to me.
[2492] Likely to lift round about eight.
[2493] Fine sunset, twilight, night.
[2494] Waning moon, rising towards midnight.
[2495] I rang for Martha and lay down again.
[2496] We shall dine at home, I said.
[2497] She looked at me in astonishment.
[2498] Did we not always dine at home?
[2499] I had not yet told her we were leaving.
[2500] I would not tell her till the last moment, one foot in the stirrup as the saying is.
[2501] I did not whoolly trust her.
[2502] I would call her at the last moment and tell her say, Martha, we're leaving, for one day, two days, three days, a week, two weeks, God knows, goodbye.
[2503] It was important to leave her in the dark.
[2504] Then why had I called her?
[2505] She would have served us dinner in any case, as she did every day.
[2506] I had made the mistake of putting myself in her place.
[2508] That was understandable. [2509] But to tell her we would dine at home, what a blunder.
[2510] For she knew it already, thought she knew, did know.
[2511] And as a result of this otiose [⁁]useless reminder she would sense that something was afoot and spy on us, in the hope of learning what it was.
[2512] First mistake.
[2513] The second, first in time, was my not having enjoined hermyy sson to keep what I had told him to himself.
[2514] Not that this would have served any purpose.
[2515] Nevertheless I should have insisted on it,
[p. 17r]
[2515] as due to myself.
[2516] I was floundering. I so cute sly as a rule.
[2517] I tried to mend matters, saying, A little later than usual, not before nine.
[2518] She turned to go, her simple mind already in a turmoil.
[2519] I am at home to no one, I said.
[2520] I knew what she would do, she would throw a sack over her shoulders and slip off to the bottom of the garden.
[2521] There she would call Hannah, the old cook of the Elsner sisters, and they would whisper together for a long time, through the railings.
[2522] Hannah never went out, she did not like going out.
[2523] The Elsner sisters were not bad neighbours, as neighbours go.
[2524] They made a little too much music, that was the only fault I could find with them.
[2525] If there is one thing gets on my nerves it is music.
[2526] What I assert, deny, question, in the present, I still can.
[2527] But mostly I shall use the various tenses of the past.
[2528] For mostly I do not know, it is perhaps no longer so, it is too soon to know, I simply do not know, perhaps shall never know.
[2529] I thought a little of the Elsner sisters.
[2530] Everything remained to be planned and there I was thinking of the Elsner sisters.
[2531] They had an aberdeen called Zulu.
[2532] People called it Zulu.
[2533] Sometimes, when I was in a good humour, I called, Zulu!
[2534] Little Zulu! and he would come and talk to me, through the railings.
[2535] But I had to be feeling gay. [2536] I don't like animals.
[2537] It's a strange thing, I don't like men and I don't like animals.
[2538] As for God, he is beginning to disgust me.
[2539] Crouching down I would stroke his ears, through the railings, and utter wheedling words.
[2540] He did not realize he disgusted me.
[2541] Heereared up on his hind legs and pressed his chest against the bars.
[2542] Then I could see his little black penis ending in a thin wisp of wetted hair.
[2543] He felt insecure, his hams trembled, his little paws fumbled for purchase, one after the other.
[2544] I too wobbled, squatting on my heels.
[2545] With my free hand I held on to the railings.
[2546] Perhaps I disgusted him too.
[2547] I found it hard to tear myself away from these vain thoughts.
[p. 18r]
[2548] I wondered, suddenly rebellious, what compelled me to accept this commission.
[2549] But I had already acceppted it, I had given my word.
[2550] Too late.
[2551] Honour.
[2552] It did not take me long to gild my importence.
[2553] But could I not postpone our departure to the following day? [2554] Or leave alone? [2555] Ah shilly-shally. [2556] But we would wait till the very last moment, a little before midnight. [2557] This decision is irrevocable, I said. [2558] It was justified moreover by the state of the moon.
[2559] I did as when I could not sleep.
[2560] I wandered in my mind, slowly, noting every detail of the labyrinth, its paths as familiar as those of my garden and yet ever new, as empty as the heart could wish or alive with strange encounters.
[2561] And I heard the distant cymbals, There is still time, still time.
[2562] But there was not, for I gave over [⁁]ceased, all vanished and I tried once more to turn my thoughts to the Molloy affair.
[2563] Unfamthomable mind, now beacon, now sea.
[2563|001] The agent and the messenger.
[2564] We agents never took anything in writing.
[2565] Gaber was not an agent in the sense I was.
[2566] Gaber was a xmessenger.
[2567] He was therefore entitled to a notebook.
[2568] A messenger had to be possessed of singular qualities, good messengers were even more rare than good agents.
[2569] I who was an excellent agent would have made but a sorry messenger.
[2570] I often regretted it.
[2571] Gaber was protected in numerous ways. [2572] He used a code incomprehensible to all but himself.
[2573] Each messenger, before being appointed, had to submit his code to the directorate.
[2574] BGaber understood nothing about the messages he carried.
[2575] Reflecting on them he arrived at the maddest [⁁]most extravagantly false conclusions.
[2576] Yes, it was not enough for him to understand nothing about them, he had also to believe he understood everything about them.
[2577] This was not all.
[2578] His memory was so bad that his messages had no existence in his head, but only in his notebook.
[2579] He had only to close his notebook to become, a moment later, perfectly innocent as to its contents.
[2580] And when
[p. 19r]
[2580] I say that he reflected on his messages and drew conclusions from them, it was not as we would have reflected on them, you and I, the book closed and probably the eyes too, but little by little as he read.
[2581] And wehen he raised his head and indulged in his commentaries, it was without losing a second, for if he had lost a second he would have forgotten everything, both text and gloss.
[2582] I have often wondered if the messengers were not compelled to undergo a surgical operation, to induce in them such a degree of amnesia.
[2583] But I think not.
[2584] For otherwise their memory was good enough.
[2585] And I have heard Gaber speak of his childhood, and of his family, in extremely plausible terms.
[2586] To be undecipherable to all but oneself, dead without knowing it to the meaning of one's instructions and incabpable of remembering them for more than a few seconds, these are capacities rarely united in the same individual.
[2587] No less however was demanded of our messengers.
[2588] And theat they were more highly esteemed than the agents, whose qualities were sound rather than brilliant, is shown by the fact that they received a weekly wage of eight pounds as against ours of six pounds ten only, these figures being exclusive of bonuses and travelling expenses.
[2589] And when I speak of agents and of messengers in the plural, it is with no guanrantee of truth.
[2590] For I had never seen any other messenger than Gaber nor any other agent than myself.
[2591] But I supposed we were not the only ones and Gaber must have supposed the same.
[2592] For the feeling that we were the only ones of our kind would, I believe, have been more than we could have borne.
[2593] And it must have appeared natural, to me that each agent had his own particular messenger, and to Gaber that each messenger had his own particular agent.
[2594] Thus I was able to say to Gaber, Let him give this job to someone else, I don't want it, and Gaber was able to reply, He wants it to be you.
[2595] And these last words, assuming Gaber had not invented them especially to annoy me, had perhaps been uttered by the chief with the
[p. 20r]
[2595] sole purpose of fostering our illusion, if it was one. [2596] All this is not very clear.
[2597] That we thought of ourselves as members of a vast organization was doubtless also due to the all too human feeling that trouble shared, or is it sorrow, is trouble something, I forget the word.
[2598] But to me at least, who knew how to listen to the falsetto of reason, it was obvious [⁁]that we were perhaps alone in doing what we did.
[2599] Yes, in my moments of lucidity I thought it poassible.
[2600] And, to keep nothing from you, this lucidity was so acute at times that I came even to doubt the existence of Gaber himself.
[2601] And if I had not hastily sunk back into my darkness I might have gone to the extent [⁁]extreme of conjuring away the chief too and regarding myself as solely responsible for my wretched existence.
[2602] For I knew I was wretched, at six pounds ten a week plus bonuses and expenses.
[2603] And having made away with Gaber and the chief (one Youdi), could I have refused denied myself the pleasure of — you know.
[2604] But I was not made for the great light that devours, a dim lamp was all I had been given, and patience without end, to shine it on the empty shadows.
[2605] I was a solid in the midst of other solids.
[2606] I went down to the kitchen.
[2607] I did not expect to find Martha there, but I found her there.
[2608] She was sitting in her rocking-chair, in the chimney-corner, rocking herself moodily.
[2609] This rocking chair, she would have you believe, was the only possession to which she clung and she would not have parted with it for an empire.
[2610] It is interesting to note that she had installed it not in her room, but in the kitchen, in the chimney-corner.
[2611] Late to bed and early to rise, it was in the kitchen that she benefited from by it most.
[2612] The wage-payers are numerous, and I was one of them, who do not like to see, in the place set aside for toil, the furniture of reclining and repose.
[2613] The servant wishes to rest?
[2614] Let her retire to her room.
[2615] In the kitchen,[₰] all must be of wood, white and unbending [⁁]rigid.
[2616] I