[p. 36ar]
[3050] far as to shake her by the hand, which she hastily wiped, as soon as she grasped my intention, on her apron. [3051] When I had finished shaking it, that flabby red hand, I did not let it go. [3052] But I took one finger between the tips of mine, drew it towards me and gazed at it. [3053] And had I had any tears to shed I should have shed them then, in torrents, for hours. [3054] She must have wondered if I was not on the point of making an attempt on her virtue. [3055] I gave her back her hand, took the sandwiches and left her.
[3056] Martha had been a long time in my service.
[3057] I was often away from home.
[3058] I had never taken leave of her in this way, but always offhandedly, even when a prolonged absence was to be feared, which was not the case on this occasion.
[3059] Sometimes I departued without a word to her.
[3060] Before going into my son's room I went into my own.
[3061] I still had the cigar in my mouth, but the pretty ash had fallen off.
[3062] I reproached myself with this negligence.
[3063] I dissolved a sleeping poweder in the milk.
[3064] He asked for a report, he'll get his report.
[3065] I was going out with the tray when my eyes fell on the two albums lying on my desk.
[3066] I wondered if I might not relent, at any rate so far as the album of duplicates was concerned.
[3067] A little while ago he had come here to fetch the thermometer.
[3068] He had been a long time.
[3069] Had he taken advantage of the opportunity to secure some of his favourite stamps?
[3070] I had not time to check them all.
[3071] I put down the tray and looked for a few stamps at random, the Togo one mark carmine with the pretty boat, the Nyassa 1901 ten reis, and several others.
[3072] I was very fond of the Nyassa.
[3073] It was green and showed a dgiraffe nibbling [⁁]grazing off the top of a palm-tree.
[3074] They were all there.
[3075] That proved nothing.
[3076] It only proved that those particular stamps were there.
[3077] I finally decided that to go back on my decisoion, freely taken and clearly stated, would deal a blow to my authority which it was in no condition to sustain.
[3078] I did so with sorrow.
[3079] My son was already sleeping.
[3080] I woke him.
[3081] He ate and drank,
[p. 36br]
[3081] grimacing in disgust.
[3082] That was all the thanks I got.
[3083] I waited until the last drop, the last crumb, had disappeared.
[3084] He turned to the wall and I tucked him in.
[3085] I was within a hair's breadth of kissing him.
[3086] Neither he nor I had uttered a word.
[3087] We had no further need of words, for the time being.
[3088] Besides my son rarely spoke to me unless I spoke to him.
[3089] And when Id[|] did so he answered but lamely and as it were with reluctance.
[3090] And yet with his little friends, when he thought I was out of the way, he was incredibly voluble.
[3091] That my presence had the effect of fdampening this disposition was far from displeasing me.
[3092] Not one person in a hundred is[₰] able [⁁]knows how to be silent and listen, no, nor even to conceive what such a thing means.
[3093] Yet only then can you detect, beyond the fatuous clamour, the sil silence of which the universe is made.
[3094] I desired this advantage for my son.
[3095] And that he should hold aloof from those who pride themselves on their eagle gaze.
[3096] I had not struggled, toiled, suffered, made good, lived like a Hottentot, so that my son should do the same.
[3097] I tiptoed out.
[3098] I quite enjoyed playing my parts [⁁]through to the bitter end.
[3099] Since in this way I shirked the issue, I have I to apologise for saying so?
[3100] I let fall this suggestion for what it is worth.
[3101] And perfunctorily.
[3102] For in describing this day I am once more he who suffered it, who crammed it full of futile anxious life, with no other purpose than his own stultification,[₰] and the means of not doing what he had to do.
[3103] And as then my thoughts would have none of Molloy, so tonight my pen.
[3104] This confession has been preying on my mind for some time past.
[3105] To have made it gives me no relief.
[3106] I reflected with bitter satisfaction that if my son lay down and died by the wayside, it would be none of my doing.
[3107] To every man his own responsibilities.
[3108] I know of some they do not keep awayke.
[3109] I said, There is something in this house tying my hands. [3110] A man like
[p. 37r]
[3110] me cannot forget, in his evasions, what it is he evades.
[3111] I went down to the garden and moved about in the almost total darkness.
[3112] If I had not known my garden so well I would have blundered into my shrubberies, or my bee-hives.
[3113] My cigar had gone out without my knowledge [⁁]unnoticed.
[3114] I shook it and put it in my pocket, intending to discard it in the ash-tray, or in the waste-paper basket, later on.
[3115] But the next day, far from Turdy, I found it in my pocket and indeed not without satisfaction.
[3116] For I was able to get a few more puffs [⁁]out of from it.
[3117] To discover the cold cigar between my teeth, to spit it out, to search for it in the dark, to pick it up, to wonder what I should do with it, to shake off the ash it needlessly and put it in my pocket, to conjure up the shash-tray and the waste-paper basket, these were merely the principal stages of a sequence which I spun out for a quarter of an hour at least.
[3118] Others concerned the dog Zulu, the perfumes sharpened tenfold by the rain,[₰] and whose sources I amused myself exploring, in my head and with my hands, a neighbour's light, another's noise, and so on.
[3119] My son's window was faintly lit.
[3120] He liked sleeping with a night-light beside him.
[3121] I sometimes felt it was wrong of me to let him humour this weakness.
[3122] Until quite recently he could not sleep unless he had his woolly bear to hug.
[3123] When he had forgotten the bear (Baby Jack) I would forbid the night-light.
[3124] What would I have done that day without my son to distract me?
[3125] My duty perhaps.
[3126] Finding my spirits as low in the garden as in the house, I turned to go in, saying to myself it was one of two things, either my house had nothing to do with the kind of nothingness in the midst of which I stumbled or else the whole of my little property was to blame.
[3127] To adopt this latter hypothesis was to condone what I had done and, in advance, what I was to do, pending my departure.
[3128] It brought me a semblance of pardon and a brief moment of factitious freedom.
[3129] I therefore aedopted it.
[p. 38r]
[3130] From a distance the kitchen had sememed to be in darkness.
[3131] And in a sense it was.
[3132] But in another sense it was not.
[3133] For gluing my eyes to the window-pane I discerned a faint reddish glow which could not have come from the oven, for I had no oven, but a simple gas-stove.
[3134] An oven if you like, but a gas-oven.
[3135] That is to say there was a real oven too in the kitchen, but out of service.
[3136] I'm sorry, but there it is, in a house without a gas-oven I would not have felt at easy.
[3137] In the night, interrupting my prowl, I like to go up to a window, lit or unlit, and look into the room, to see what is going on.
[3138] I cover my face with my hands and peer through my fingers.
[3139] I have terrified more than one neighbour in this way.
[3140] He rushes outside, finds no one.
[3141] For me then from their darkness the darkzest rooms emerge, as if still instant with the vanished day or with the light turned out a moment before, for reasons perhaps of which less said the better.
[3142] But the gloaming in the kitchen was of another kind and came from the night-light with the red chimney which, in Martha's room, adjoining the kitchen, burned eternally at the feet of a little Virgin carved in wood, hanging on the wall.
[3143] Weary of rocking herself,[₰] she had gone in and lain down on her bed, leaving the door of her room open so as to miss none of the sounds in the house.
[3144] But perhaps she had gone to sleep.
[3145] I went upstairs again. [3146] I stopped at my son's door. [3147] I stooped and applied my ear to the keyhole. [3148] Some apply the eye, I the ear, to keyholes. [3149] I heard nothing, to my great surprise. [3150] For my son slept noisily, with open mouth. [3151] I took good care not to open the door. [3152] For this silence was of a nature to occupy my mind, for some little time. [3153] I went to my room.
[3154] It was then the unheard of sight was to be seen of Moran making ready to go without knowing where he was going, having consulted neither map nor time-table, considered neither itinerary nor halts, heedless of the weather outlook, with only the vaguest notion of the outfit he would need,
[p. 39r]
[3154] the time the expedition was likely to take, the money he would need [⁁]require and even the very nature of the work to be done and consequently the means to be employed.
[3155] And yet there I was whistling away while I stuffed into my haversack a minimum of effects, similar to those I had recommended to my son.
[3156] I put on my old pepper-and-salt shooting-suit with the knee-breeches, stockings to match and a pair of stout black boots.
[3157] I bent down, my hands on my buttocks, and looked at my legs.
[3158] Knock-kneed and skeleton thin they made a poor show in this accoutrement, unknown locally I may add.
[3159] But when I left at night, for a distant place, I wore it with pleasure, for the sake of comfort, though a laughing stock. I looked a sight.
[3160] All I needed was a butterfly net to have vaguely the air of a country schoolmaster on convalescent leave.
[3161] The heavy glittering black boots, which seemed to implore a pair of navy-blue serge trousers, gave the finishing blow to this get-up which otherwise might have appeared, to the uninformed, an example of well-bred bad taste.
[3162] On my head, after mature hesitation, I decided to wear my straw boater, yellowed by the rain. [3163] It had lost its band, which gave it an appearance of inordinate height.
[3164] I was tempted to take my black cloak, but finally rejected it in favour of a heavy massive-handled winter umbrella.
[3165] The cloak is a serviceable garment and I had more than one.
[3166] It leaves great freedom of movement to the arms and at the same time conceals them.
[3167] And there are times when a cloak is so to speak indispensable.
[3168] But the umbrella too has great merits.
[3169] And if it had been winter, or even autumn, instead of summer, I might have taken both.
[3170] I had already done so, with most gratifying results.
[3171] Dressed thus I could hardly hope to pass unseen.
[3172] I did not wish to.
[3173] Conspicuousness is the A B C of my profession.
[3174] To call forth feelings of pity and indulgence, to be the butt of jeers and hilarity, is indispensable.
[3175] So many vent-holes in the cask of secrets.
[3176] On confdition you cannot feel, nor denigrate, nor laugh.
[3177] This state was mine at will.
[3178] And then there was