| MS. Pages: | cover - 04r | 05r - 07r |
[p. 05r]
[0135] I watched him recede, overtaken by his anxiety, at least by an anxiety which was not necessarily his, but of which as it were he partook. [0136] Who knows if it wasn't my own anxiety overtaking him. [0137] He hadn't seen me. [0138] I was perched higher than the road's highest point and flattened what is more against a rock the same colour as myself, that is grey. [0139] The rock he probably saw. [0140] He gazed around as if to engrave the landmarks on his memory, and must have seen the rock in the shadow of which I crouched like Belacqua, or Sordello, I forget. [0141] But a man, a fortiori myself, isn't exactly a landmark, because. [0142] I mean if by some strange chance he were to pass that way again, after a long lapse of time, vanquished, or to look for some forgotten thing, or to destroy something, his eyes would search out the rock, not the haphazard in its shadow of that unstable fugitive thing, still living flesh. [0143] No, he certainly didn't see me, for the reasons I've given and then because he was in no humour for that, that evening, no humour for the living, but rather for what doesn't stir, or stirs so slowly a child would scorn it, let alone an old man. [0144] However that may be, I mean whether he saw me or whether he didn't, I repeat I watched him recede, at grips (myself) with the temptation to get up and follow him, perhaps even to catch up on him one day, so as to know him better, be myself less lonely. [0145] But in spite of my soul's leap out to him, at the end of its elastic, I saw him only darkly, because of the dark and then because of the terrain, in the folds of which he disappeared from time to time, to re-emerge farther on, but most of all I think because of other things calling me and towards which too one after the other my soul was straining, unmethodical, distracted. [0146] I mean of course the fields, whitening under the dew, and the animals ceasing from wandering and settling for the night, and the sea, which I won't qualify, and the sharpening line of crests, and the sky where without seeing them I felt the first stars tremble, and my hand on my knee and above all the other wayfarer, A or B, I don't remember, wisely going home. [0147] Yes, towards my hand also, which my knee felt tremble and of which my eyes saw the wrist only, the heavily veined back, the pallid rows of knuckles. [0148] But that is not, I mean my hand, what I
[p. 06r]
[0148] wish to speak of now, everything in due course, but A or B returning to the town he had just left. [0149] But after all what was there particularly urban in his aspect? [0150] He was bare-headed, wore sand-shoes, smoked a cigar. [0151] He moved with a kind of loitering indolence which rightly or wrongly seemed to me expressive. [0152] But all that proved nothing, refuted nothing. [0153] Perhaps he had come from afar, from the other end of the island even, and was approaching the town for the first time or returning to it after a long absence. [0154] A little dog followed him, a pomeranian I think, but I don't think so. [0155] I wasn't sure at the time and I'm still not sure, though I've hardly thought about it. [0156] The little dog followed wretchedly, after the fashion of pomeranians, stopping, describing long gyrations, giving up and then, a little farther on, beginning all over again. [0157] Constipation is a sign of good health in pomeranians. [0158] At a given moment, pre-established if you like, I don't mind, the gentleman turned back, took the little creature in his arms, drew the cigar from his lips, and plunged his face in the orange fleece, [0159] for it was a gentleman, that was obvious. [0160] Yes, it was an orange pomeranian, the less I think of it the more certain I am. [0161] And yet. [0162] But would this gentleman have come from afar, bare-headed, in sand-shoes, smoking a cigar, followed by a pomeranian? [0163] Did he not seem rather to have issued from the ramparts, after a good dinner, to take his dog and himself for a walk, like so many citizens, dreaming and farting, when the weather is fine? [0164] But was not perhaps in reality the cigar a cutty, and were not the sand-shoes boots, hobnailed, dust-whitened, and what prevented the dog from being one of those stray dogs that you pick up and take in your arms, from compassion or because you have long been straying with no other company than these endless roads, sands, shingle, bogs and heather, than this nature answerable to another court, than at long intervals the fellow convict you long to stop, embrace, suck, suckle and whom you pass by, with hostile eyes, for fear of his familiarities. [0165] Until the day when, your endurance gone, in this world for you without arms, you catch up in yours the first mangy cur you meet, carry it the time needed for it to love you
[p. 07r]
[0165] and you it, then throw it away. [0166] Perhaps he had come to that, in spite of appearances. [0167] He disappeared, his head on his chest, the smoking object in his hand. [0168] Let me try and explain. [0169] From things about to disappear I turn away in time. [0170] To watch them out of sight, no, I can't do it. [0171] It was in this sense he disappeared. [0172] Looking away I thought of him, saying, He dwindles, dwindles. [0173] I knew what I meant. [0174] I knew I could catch him, lame as I was. [0175] I had only to want to. [0176] And yet no, for I did want to.
| MS. Pages: | cover - 04r | 05r - 07r |