Jean Paul Sartre — Nausea (Audiobook)

Editor's note these notebooks were found among the papers of antoan Ora they are published without alteration the first sheet is undated but there's good reason to believe it was written some weeks before the diary itself thus it would have been written around the beginning of January 1932 at the latest at that time Anan roont after traveling through Central Europe North Africa and the Far East settled in bouille for three years to conclude his historical research on the mar de the editors undated Pages the best thing would be to write down events from dayto day keep

a diary to see clearly let none of the nuances or small happenings Escape even though they might seem to mean nothing and above all classify them I must tell how I see this table this street The people my packet of tobacco since those are the things which have changed I must determine the exact extent and nature of this change for instance here is a cardboard box holding my bottle of ink I should try to tell how I saw it before and now how I word left out well it's a parallelopiped rectangle it opens that's stupid

there's nothing I can say about it this is what I have to avoid I must not put in strange where there is none I think that is the big danger in Keeping a diary you exaggerate everything you continually Force the truth because you're always looking for something on the other hand it is certain that from one minute to the next and precisely uppr propo of this box or any other object at all I can recapture this impression of day before yesterday I must always be ready otherwise it will slip through my fingers I must never

word crossed out possibly forced or Forge another word added above is Illegible but carefully note and detail all that happens naturally I can write nothing definite about this Saturday and the day before yesterday business I'm already too far from it the only thing I can say is that in neither case was there anything which could ordinarily be called an event Saturday the children were playing ducks and Drakes and like them I wanted to throw a stone into the sea just at that moment I stopped dropped the stone And left probably I looked somewhat foolish or

absentminded because the children laughed behind my back so much for external things what has happened inside of me has not left any clear traces I saw something which disgusted me but I no longer know whether it was the sea or the stone the stone was flat and dry especially on one side damp and muddy on the other I held it by the edges with my fingers wide apart so as not to get them Dirty the day before yesterday was my much more complicated and there was also this series of coincidences of quidd proquo that I

can't explain to myself but I'm not going to spend my time putting all that down on paper anyhow it was certain that I was afraid or had some other feeling of that sort if I had only known what I was afraid of I would have made a great step forward the strangest thing is that I am not at all inclined to call myself insane I clearly See that I am not all these changes concern objects at least that is what I'd like to be sure of 10:30 evidently in the evening the following paragraph is much

later than the preceding ones we are inclined to believe it was written the following day at the earliest perhaps it was a passing moment of Madness after all there is no trace of it anymore my odd feelings of the other week seem to me quite ridiculous Today I can no longer enter into them I'm quite at ease this evening quite solidly ter in the world here is my my room facing Northeast below the rud de Muti and the construction yard of the new station from my window I see the red and white flame of the

Railway men's rendevu at the corner of the Boulvard Victor Noir The Paris train has just come in people are coming out of the old station and spreading into the streets I hear steps and voices a lot of people Are waiting for the last Tramway they must make a sad little group around the street light just under my window well they have a few minutes more to wait the the tram won't pass before 10:45 I hope no commercial Travelers will come tonight I have such a desire to sleep and I'm so much behind in my sleep

a good night one good night and all this nonsense will be swept away 10:45 nothing more to fear they would be Here already unless it's the day for the man from R he comes every week they Reserve number two on the second floor for him the room with a biday he might still show up he often drinks a beer at the railway men's rendevu before going to bed but he doesn't make too much noise he's very small and clean with a waxed black mustache and a wig here he is now but when I heard him

come up the stairs it gave me quite a thrill it was so Reassuring what is there to fear in such a regular world I think I am cured here is Tramway number seven abat gr bass it stops with a Clank of iron rails it's leaving again now loaded with suitcases and sleeping children it's heading towards gbas towards the factories in The Black East it's the next to the last Tramway the last one will go by in an hour I'm going to bed I'm cured I'll give up writing my daily Impressions like a little girl in

Her nice new notebook in one case only it might be interesting to keep a diary it would be if the text of the undated Pages ends here diary Monday the 29th of January 1932 something has happened to me I can't doubt it anymore it came as an illness does not like an ordinary certainty not like anything evident it came cunningly little by little I felt a little strange a little put out that's all once established it never moved it Stayed quiet and I was able to persuade myself that nothing was the matter with me that

it was a false alarm and now it's blossoming I don't think the historian's trade is much given to psychological analysis in our work we have to do only with sentiments in the hall to which we give generic titles such as ambition and interest and yet if I had even a shadow of self- knowledge I could put it to Good use now for instance there is something new about my hands a certain way of picking up my pipe or fork or else it's the fork which now has a certain way of having itself picked up I

don't know a little while ago just as I was coming into my room I stopped short because I felt in my hand a cold object which held my attention through a sort of personality I opened my hand looked I was simply holding the door Knob this morning in the library when the self-taught man Ori will be often mentioned in this journal he was a BFF's clerk roont met him in 1930 in the bou Library came to say good morning to me it took me 10 seconds to recognize him I saw an unknown face barely a

face then there was his hand like a fat white worm in my own hand I dropped it almost immediately and the arm fell back flabbily there are a great number of suspicious noises in the streets too so A change has taken place during these last few weeks but where it is an abstract change without object am I the one who has changed if not then it is this room this city and this nature I must choose I think I'm the one who has changed that's the simplest solution also the most unpleasant but I must finally

realize that I am subject to these sudden Transformations the thing is that I Rarely think a crowd of small metamorph phes accumulate in me without my noticing it and then One Fine Day a veritable Revolution takes place this is what has given my life such a jerky incoherent aspect for instance when I left France there were a lot of people who said I left for a whim and when I suddenly came back after 6 years of traveling they still could call it a whim I see myself with merer again and the office of that French

functionary Who resigned after the Petr business last year Mercier was going join to Bengal on an archaeological Mission I always wanted to go to Bengal and he pressed me to go with him now I wonder why I don't think he was too sure of portel and was counting on me to keep an eye on him I saw no reason to refuse and even if I had suspected that little deal with portal it would have been one more reason to accept with enthusiasm well I was paralyzed I Couldn't say a word I was staring at a

little Chim statuette on a Green carpet next to a telephone I seemed to be full of lymph or warm milk with Angelic patience veiling a slight irritation Mercier told me now Look I have to be officially fixed up I know you'll end up by saying yes so you might as well accept right away he had a reddish Black Beard heavily scented I got a waft of perfume at each movement of his head and then suddenly I woke from a six-year Slumber the statue seemed to me unpleasant and stupid and I felt terribly deeply bored I

couldn't understand why I was in Indochina what was I doing there why was I talking to these people why was I dressed so oddly my passion was dead for years it had rolled over and submerged me now I felt empty but that wasn't the worst before me posed with a sort of indolence was a voluminous insipid idea I did not see clearly what it was but it sickened me So much I couldn't look at it all that was confused with the perfume of mercier's beard I pulled myself together convulsed with anger and answered drily thank

you but I believe I've traveled enough I must go back to France now two days later I took the boat for Mar if I'm not mistaken if all the signs which have been amassed are precursors of a new overthrow in my life well then I am terrified it isn't that my life is Rich Or weighty or precious but I'm afraid of what will be born and take possession of me and drag me where shall I have to go off again leaving my research my book and everything else unfinished shall I awake in a few months

in a few years broken deceived in the midst of new ruins I would like to see the truth clearly before it is too late Tuesday the 30th of January nothing new I worked from 9 till 1 in The library I got chapter 12 started and all that concerns R Bon stay in Russia after the death of Paul the this work is finished nothing more to do with it until the final revision it is 1:30 I'm eating a sandwich in the cafe mabli everything is more or less normal anyway everything is always normal in cafes and

especially the cafe Mai because of the manager Miss Fel was a Rish look which is positively reassuring it will soon be time for his Nap and his eyes are pink already but he stays quick and decisive he strolls among the tables and speaks confidently to the customers is everything all right Miss I smile at seeing him thus when his place empties his head empties too from 2: to 4: the cafe is deserted then miss fcel takes a few dazed steps the waiters turn out the lights and he slips into unconsciousness when this man is lonely

he sleeps there are still about 20 Customers left Bachelors smalltime Engineers office employees they eat hurriedly in boarding houses which they call their poot and since they need a little luxury they come here after their meals they drink a cup of coffee and play poker dice they make a little noise an inconsistent noise which doesn't bother me in order to exist they also must consort with others I live alone entirely alone I never speak to anyone never I Receive nothing I give nothing the self-taught man doesn't count there is franoise the woman who runs the

railway men's rendevu but do I speak to her sometimes after dinner when she brings my beer I ask her have you time this evening she never says no I follow her into one of the big rooms on the second floor She rents by the hour or by the day I do not pay her her our need is mutual she takes pleasure in it she has to have a man a day and she has many More besides me and thus I purge myself of a certain Nostalgia the cause of which I know too well but we

hardly speak what good is it every man for himself besides as far as she's concerned I am preeminently a customer in her Cafe taking off her dress she tells me say have you ever heard of that apperitive Brio because there two customers who asked for some this week the girl didn't know and she came to ask me they were commercial Travelers they Must have drunk that in Paris but I don't like to buy without knowing I'll keep my stockings on if you don't mind in the past even a long while after she left me I

thought about Ani now I think of no one anymore I don't even bother looking for words it flows in me more or less quickly I fix nothing I let it go through the of attaching myself to words my thoughts remain nebulous most of the time they sketch vague Pleasant shapes and then are swallowed up I Forget them almost immediately I Marvel at these young people drinking their coffee they tell clear plausible stories if they asked what they did yesterday they aren't embarrassed they bring you up to date in a few words if I were in

their place I'd fall over myself it's true that no one has bothered about how I spend my time for a long while when you live alone alone you no longer know what it is to tell something the plausible disappears At the same time as the friends you let events flow past suddenly you see people pop up who speak and who go away you plunge into stories without beginning or end you'd make a terrible witness but in compensation one misses nothing no improbability or story too tall to be believed in cafes for example Saturday about 4:

in the afternoon on the end of the timbered side walk of the new station yard a little woman in sky blue was running backwards laughing waving a Handkerchief at the same time a negro in a cream colored raincoat yellow shoes and a green hat turned the corner of the street and whistled still going backwards the woman bumped into him underneath a lantern which hangs on a paling and which is lit at night all at once there was the paling smelling strongly of wet wood this Lantern and this little blonde woman in the negro's arms and

Sky the color of fire if there had been four or five of us I suppose we Would have noticed the jolt the soft colors the beautiful blue coat that looked like an idd quilt the light raincoat the red paines of the lantern we would have laughed at the stupefaction which appeared on those two childish faces a man rarely feels like laughing alone the whole thing was animated enough for me but it was a strong even a fierce yet pure sensation then everything came aside Thunder there was nothing left but the lantern the Palisade and the

sky it was still rather beautiful an hour later the lantern was lit the wind blew the sky was black nothing at all was left all that is nothing new I've never resisted these harmless emotions far from it you must be just a little bit lonely in order to feel them just lonely enough to get rid of plausibility at the proper time but I remained close to people on the surface of solitude quite Resolved to take refuge in their midst in case of emergency up to now I was an amateur at heart everywhere now there are

objects like this glass of beer on the table there when I see it I feel like saying enough I realize quite well that I have gone too far I don't suppose you can take sides with Solitude that doesn't mean that I look under my bed before going to sleep or think I see the door of my room open suddenly in the middle of the night still somehow I am Not at peace I have been avoiding looking at this glass of beer for half an hour I look above below right and left but I don't want

to see it and I know very well that all these Bachelors around me can be of no help it is too late I can no longer take refuge among them they could come and tap me on the shoulder and say well what's the matter with that glass of beer it's just like all the others it's beveled on the edges has a handle a little coat of arms with A spade on it and on the coat of arms is written Spartan bow I know all that but I know there is something else almost nothing but I

can't explain what I see to anyone there I am quietly slipping into the water's depths towards fear I am alone in the midst of these happy reasonable voices all these creatures spend their time explaining realizing happily that they agree with each other in Heaven's name why is it so important to think the Same things Al together it's enough to see the face they make when one of these fishy eyed men with an inward look and with whom no agreement is possible passes them when I was 8 years old and used to play in The luxemborg

Gardens there was a man who came and sat in a centry box against the iron fence which runs along the ru AUST comp he did not speak but from time to time stretched out his leg and looked at his foot fearfully the foot was encased in a boot But the other one was in a slipper the guard told my uncle that the man was a former Proctor they retired him because he used to come dressed up as an academician to read the school term marks we had a horrible fear of him because we sensed he

was alone one day he smiled at Rober holding out his arms to him from a distance Rober almost fainted it wasn't this creature's poverty-stricken look which frightened us or the tumor he had on his neck that Rubbed against the edge of his collar but we felt that he was shaping thoughts of crab or Lobster in his head and that terrified us the fact that one could conjure thoughts of lobsters on the Sentry box on our Hoops on the bushes is that what awaits me then for the first time I'm disturbed at being alone I would

like to tell someone what is happening to me before it is too late and before I start frightening little boys I wish Ani were here this is odd I've just filled up 10 pages and I have told the truth at least not the whole truth I was writing nothing new with a bad conscience as a matter of fact I boggled at bringing out a quite harmless little incident nothing new I admire the way we can lie putting reason on our side evidently nothing new has happened if you care to put it that way this morning

at 8:15 just as I was leaving the hotel crania to go to the library I wanted to and could not pick up a paper Lying on the ground this is all and it is not even an event yes but to tell the whole truth I was deeply impressed by it I felt I was no longer free I tried unsuccessfully to get rid of this idea at the library I wanted to escape from it at the cafe Mai I hoped it would disappear in the bright light but it stayed there like a dead weight inside me

it is responsible for the preceding Pages Why didn't I mention it it must be Out of Pride and then too a little out of awkwardness I'm not in the habit of telling myself what happens to me so I cannot quite recapture the succession of events I cannot distinguish what is important but now it is finished I've reread what I wrote in the cafe mabi and I am ashamed I want no secrets or Soul States nothing ineffable I am neither virgin nor priest enough to play with the inner Life but there's nothing much to say I

could not pick up the paper that's all I very much like to pick up chestnuts old rags and especially papers it is Pleasant to me to pick them up to close my hand on them with a little encouragement I would carry them to my mouth the way children do an KN went into a white rage when I picked up the corners of heavy Sumptuous papers probably soiled by excrement in summer or the beginning of autumn you can find Remnants of sunb newspapers in gardens dry and fragile as Dead Leaves so yellow you might think they'd

been washed with PICC acid in Winter some pages are pounded to pulp crushed stained they return to the Earth others quite new and covered with ice all white or throbbing like swans about to fly but the Earth has already caught them from below they twist and tear themselves from the mud only to be finally flattened out a little further on It is good to pick up all that sometimes I simply feel them looking at them closely other times I tear them to hear their drawn out crackling or if they are damp I light them not

without difficulty then I wipe my muddy hands on a wall or tree trunk so today I was watching the riding boots of a Cavalry officer who was leaving his Barracks as I followed them with my eyes I saw a piece of paper lying beside a puddle I thought the Officer was to crush the paper into the mud with his heel but no he straddled paper and puddle in a single step I went up to it it was a lined page undoubtedly torn from a school notebook the rain had drenched and twisted it it was covered

with blisters and swellings like a burned hand the red line of the margin was smeared into a pink splotch ink had run in places the bottom of the page disappeared beneath a crust of mud I bent down already rejoicing at the touch Of this pulp fresh and tender which I should roll in my fingers into grayish balls I was unable I stayed bent down for a second I read dictation the white owl then I straightened up empty-handed I am no longer free I can no longer do what I will objects should not touch because they

are not alive you use them put them back in place you live among them they are useful nothing more but they touch Me it is unbearable I'm afraid of being in contact with them as though they were living beasts now I see I recall better what I felt the other day at the seashore when I held the pebble it was a sort of sweetish sickness how unpleasant it was it came from the stone I'm sure of it it passed from the stone to my hand yes that's it that's just it a sort of nausea in

the hands Thursday morning in the Library a little while ago going down the hotel stairs I heard Lucy who for the h hundredth time was complaining to the land lady while polishing the steps the proprietress spoke with difficulty using short sentences because she had not put in her false teeth she was almost naked in a pink dressing gown and Turkish slippers Lucy was dirty as usual from time to time she stopped rubbing and straightened up on her knees to look at The proprietor she spoke without pausing reasonably I'd like it a 100 times better if

he went with other women she said it wouldn't make the slightest difference to me so long as it didn't do him any harm she was talking about her husband at 40 this sarthy little woman had offered herself in her savings to a handsome young man a fitter in the usine L Quant she she has an unhappy home life Her husband does not beat her is not unfaithful to her but he drinks he comes home drunk every evening he's burning his candle at both ends in 3 months I have seen him turn yellow and melt away

Lucy thinks it is drink I believe he is tubercular you have to take the upper hand Lucy said it gnaws at her I'm sure of it but slowly patiently she takes the upper hand she's able neither console herself nor abandon herself to her suffering she thinks about it a little Bit a very little bit now and again she passes it on especially when she's with people because they console her and also because it Comforts her a little to talk about it with poise with an air of giving advice when she is alone in the rooms

I hear her humming to keep herself from thinking but she is morose all day suddenly weary and Sullen it's there she says touching her throat it won't go down she suffers as a miser she must be Miserly with her Pleasures as well I wonder if sometimes she doesn't wish she were free of this monotonous sorrow of these mutterings which start as soon as she stops singing if she doesn't wish to suffer once and for all to drown herself in despair in any case it would be impossible for her she is bound Thursday afternoon missong was

quite ugly Queen Maria Antoinette called him her dear ape yet He had all the ladies of the court but not by clowning like vnon the baboon but by a magnetism which carried his lovely victims to the worst excesses of passion he intrigues plays a fairly suspect role in the affair of the Queen's necklace and disappears in 1790 after having dealings with mirabu tuno Andia he turns up again in Russia where he attempts to assassinate Paul the first and from there he travels to the farthest countries the Indies China Turkistan he smuggles plots spies in 1813

he returns to Paris by 1816 he has become all powerful he is the sole Confidant of The Duchess dong gulm this capricious old woman obsessed by horrible childhood memories grows calm and smiles when she sees him through her he works his will at court in March 1820 he met marries mm moiselle deair a very beautiful girl of 18 M Debon is 70 he is at the height of Distinction at the apery of his life 7 months later accused Of treason he is arrested thrown into a cell where he dies after 5 years of imprisonment without

ever being brought to trial I reread with Melancholy this note of je editor's footnote isi page 406 Note 2 compion 1906 it was by those few lines that I first knew Miss theor how attractive he seemed and how I loved him after these few words it is For him for this mannequin that I am here when I came back from my trip I could just as well have settled down in Paris or Marseilles but most of the documents concerning the mares long stays in France are in the Municipal Library of buil hon was the lord

of the manner of mom before the war you could still find one of his descendants in this little town an architect named Ron campur who at his death in 1912 left an important Legacy To the bouille library letters of the Marquee the fragment of a journal and all sorts of papers I have not yet gone through it all I'm glad to have found these notes I'd not read them for 10 years my handwriting has changed or so it seems to me I used to write in a smaller hand how I love Miss Z bour that

year I remember one evening a Tuesday evening I had worked all day in the masarin I just gathered from his correspondence of 1789 to 1790 in what a Magisterial way he duped nura it was dark I was going down to the Avenue D men and I bought some chestnuts at the corner of the rate was I happy I laughed all by myself thinking of the face NF must have made when he came back from Germany the the face of the Marquee is like this Inc it has paled considerably since I have worked over it in

the first place starting from 1801 I understand nothing more about his conduct it is not the Lack of documents letters fragments of Memoirs secret reports police records on the contrary I have almost too many of them what is lacking in all this testimony is firmness and consistency they do not contradict each other neither do they agree with each other they do not seem to be about the same person and yet other historians work from the same sources of information how do they do it am I more scrupulous or less intelligent in any Case the question

leaves me completely cold in truth what am I looking for I don't know for a long time rbor the man has interested me more than the book to be written but now the man the man begins to bore me it is the book which attracts me I feel more and more need to write in the same proportion as I grow old you might say evidently it must be admitted that rbon took an active part in the assassination of Paul the that he then accepted an extremely important Espionage mission to the Orient from the Zar and

constantly betrayed Alexander to the advantage of Napoleon at the same time he was able to carry on an act of correspondence with the com dtoa and send him unimportant information in order to convince him of his fidelity none of all that is improbable fé at the same time was playing a comedy much more dangerous and complex perhaps the Marquee also carried on a rifle Supplying business with the Asiatic principalities for his own profit well yes he could have done all that but it is not proved I'm beginning to believe that nothing can ever be proved

these are honest hypotheses which take the facts into account but I sense so definitely that they come from me that they are simply a way of unifying my own knowledge not a glimmer comes from rbon side slow lazy sulky the facts adapt themselves to the rigor of the order I Wish to give them but it remains outside of them I have the feeling of doing a work of Pure Imagination and I am certain that the characters in a novel would have a more genuine appearance or in any case would be more agreeable Friday 3:00 3:00

is always too late or too early for anything you want to do an odd moment in the afternoon today it is intolerable a cold Sun whitens the dust on the window panes pale Sky clouded With white the gutters were frozen this morning I ruminate heavily near the gas stove I know in advance the day is lost I shall do nothing good except perhaps after Nightfall it is because of the sun it ephemerally touches the dirty white wisps of fog which float in the air above the construction yards it flows into my room all gold all

pale it spreads four dull false Reflections on my Table my pipe is doed with a golden varnish which first catches the eye by its bright appearance you look at it and the varnish melts nothing is left but a great dull streak on a piece of wood everything is like that everything even my hands when the sun begins shining like that the best thing to do is go to bed only I slept like a log last night and I am not sleepy I liked yesterday's sky so much a narrow sky black with rain pushing against the

Windows like a Ridiculous touching face this sun is not ridiculous quite the contrary and everything I like and the rest of the construction GDs on the rotten Boards of the fence a miserly uncertain light falls like the look you give after a sleepless night on decisions made with enthusiasm the day before on pages you have written in one spurt without Crossing out a word the four cafes on the boulevard Victor Noir shining in the light side by side and which are much More than cafes aquariums ships stars or great white eyes have lost their ambiguous

charm a perfect day to turn back to oneself these cold clarities which the sun projects like a judgment shorn of pity Over All Creatures enter through my eyes I am illuminated Within by a diminishing light I'm sure that 15 minutes would be enough to reach Supreme self-contempt no thank you I want none of that neither shall I reread what I Wrote yesterday on R born stay in St Petersburg I stay seated my arms hanging or write a few words without courage I yawn I wait for night to come when it is dark the objects and

I will come out of limbo did rbon or did he not participate in the assassination of Paul the first that is the question for today I am that far and can't go on without deciding according to cherof he was paid By count parin most of the other conspirators chov says were content with deposing and imprisoning the Zar in fact Alexander seems have been a partisan of that solution but pin it was alleged wanted to do away with Paul completely and M Debon was charged with persuading the individual conspirators to the assassination he visited each one

of them and with an incomparable power mimed the scene which was to take place thus he caused to be born or developed In them a Madness for murder but I suspect cherkov he is not a reasonable witness he is a half-mad sadistic magician he turns everything into the demoniacal I cannot see m deborn in this melodramatic role or his mimic of the assassination scene never on your life he is cold not carried away he exposes nothing he insinuates and his method pale and colorless can succeed only with men of his own level intriguers Accessible to

reason politicians Adar de writes Madame the Shier painted nothing with words made no gesture never altered the tone of his voice he kept his eyes half closed and one could barely make out between his lashes the lowest rim of his gray Iris it has only been within the past few years that I dare confess he bored me beyond all possible limits he spoke a little in the way Abe Mai used to write and this is the man who by his Talent for mimickry but then how was he able to charm women then there is this

curious story SE reports and which seems true to me in 1787 at an in near Mulan an old man was dying a friend of dido trained by the philosophers the priests of the neighborhood were nonplused they had tried everything in vain the good man would have no last rights he was a pantheist Miss deau who was passing by and who believed in nothing BET The Cure Of Mulan that he would need less than 2 hours to bring the sick man back to Christian sentiments the Cur took the bed and lost hom began at 3:00 in

the morning the sick man confessed at 5:00 and died at 7: are you so forceful in argument asked the curee you out do even us I did not argue answered Miss deom I made him fear hell how did he take an effective part in the assassination that evening one of his Officer friends conducted him to his door if he had gone out again how could he have crossed St Petersburg without trouble Paul half insane had given the order that after 9:00 at night all pastors except midwives and doctors were to be arrested can we believe

the Absurd legend that holor disguised himself as a midwife to get as far as the palace after all he was quite capable of it in any case he was not at home on the night Of the assassination that seems proved Alexander must have suspected him strongly since one of his official acts was to send the Marquee away on the vague pretext of a mission to the Far East M Theon bores me to tears I get up I move through this pale light I see a change beneath my hands and on the sleeves of my coat

I cannot describe how much it disgusts me I yawn I light the lamp on the table perhaps its light will Be able to combat the light of day but no the lamp makes nothing more than a pitiful Pond around its base I turn it out I get up there's a white hole in the wall all a mirror it is a trap I know I'm going to let myself be caught in it I have the gray thing appears in the mirror I go over and look at it I can no longer get away it is the

reflection of my face often in these last days I study it I can understand nothing of this face the Faces of others have some sense some direction not mine I cannot even decide whether it is handsome or ugly I I think it is ugly because I've been told so but it doesn't strike me at heart I'm even shocked that anyone can attribute qualities of this kind to it as if you called a clot of Earth or a block of stone beautiful or ugly still there is one thing which is pleasing to see above the flabby

cheeks above the forehead it is the beautiful red flame which crowns My head it is my hair that is Pleasant to see anyhow it is a definite color I'm glad I have red hair there it is in the mirror it makes itself seen it shines I am still lucky if my forehead was surmounted by one of those neutral heads of hair which are neither Chestnut nor blonde my face would be lost in vagueness it would make me dizzy my glance slowly and wearily travels over my forehead my cheeks it finds nothing firm it is Stranded

obviously there are a nose two eyes and a mouth but none of it makes sense there is not even a human expression yet Anie and Vine thought I looked so alive perhaps I'm too used to my face when I was little my aunt boua told me if you look at yourself too long in the mirror you'll see a monkey I must have looked at myself even longer than that what I see is well below the monkey and the Fringe of the vegetable world at The level of jellyfish it is alive I can't say it isn't

but this was not the life that an contemplated I see a slight Tremor I see the insipid flesh blossoming and palpitating with abandon the eyes especially are horrible seen so close they are glassy soft blind red rimmed they look like fish scales I lean all my weight on the porcelain ledge I draw my face closer until it touches the mirror the eyes nose and mouth disappear nothing human is left Brown wrinkles on Each side of the feverish swelled lips crevices mole holes a silky white down covers the great slopes of the cheeks two hairs protrude

from the nostrils it is a geological embossed map and in spite of everything this lunar world is familiar to me I cannot say I recognize the details but the whole thing gives me an impression of something seen before which Stupify me I slip quietly off to sleep I would like to take hold of myself myself an acute Vivid sensation Would deliver me I plaster my left hand against my cheek I pull the skin I Grimace at myself an entire half of my face yields the left half of the mouth twists and swells uncovering a tooth

the eye opens on a white globe on pink bleeding flesh this is not what I was looking for nothing strong nothing new soft flaccid stale I go to sleep with my eyes open already the face is growing larger growing in the mirror an immense light Halo gliding in the light I lose my balance and that wakes me I find myself straddling a chair still dazed do other men have as much difficulty in appraising their face it seems that I see my own as I feel my body through a dumb organic sense but the others horn

for example was he also put to sleep by looking in the mirror at what Madame Deon Le calls his small wrinkled countenance clean and sharp all pitted with small pox in which there was A strange malice which caught the eye no matter what effort he made to dissemble it he took she adds great care with his quor and I never saw him without his week but his cheeks were blue verging on black owing to his heavy beard which he shaved himself not being at all expert it was his custom to wash his face with white

lead in the manner of grim Miss dvil said that with all his white and all this blue he looked like a rock for cheese it seems to me he must have been Quite pleasing but after all this is not the way he appeared to Madame de sharier I believe she found him rather worn Perhaps it is impossible to understand one's own face or perhaps it is because I am a single man people who live in society have learned how to see themselves in mirrors as they here to their friends I have no friends is that

why my flesh is so naked you might say yes you might say nature without Humanity I have no taste for work any longer I can do nothing more except wait for night 5:30 things are bad things are very bad I have it the filth the nausea and this time it is new it caught me in a cafe until now cafes were my only Refuge because they were full of people and well-lighted now there won't even be that anymore when I'm run to Earth in my room I sh know where to go I was coming To

make love but no sooner had I opened the door than mine the waitress called to me the patron isn't here she's in town shopping I felt a sharp disappointment in the sexual parts a long disagreeable tickling at the same time I felt my shirt rubbing against my breasts and I was surrounded seized by a slow colored mist and a Whirlpool of Lights in the smoke in the mirrors in the booths glowing at the Back of the cafe and I couldn't see why it was there or why it was like that I was on the doorstep

I hesitated to go in and then there was a Whirlpool an Eddie a shadow passed across the ceiling and I felt myself pushed forward I floated dazed by luminous fogs dragging me in all directions at once mine came floating over to take off my Overcoat I noticed she had drawn her hair back and put on earrings I did not recognize her I looked at her large cheeks which never Stopped rushing towards the ears in the hollow of the cheeks beneath the cheekbones there were two pink stains which seemed weary on this poor flesh the cheeks

ran ran towards the ears and meline smiled what will you have missam then the nausea seized me I dropped to a seat I no longer knew where I was I saw the color spin slowly around me I wanted to vomit and since that time the nausea has not left me it holds me I paid madlen took away my saucer my Glass crushes a puddle of yellow beer against the marble tabletop a bubble floating in it the bottom of my seat is broken and in order not to slide I'm compelled to press my heels firmly against

the ground it is cold on the right they are playing cards on a Woolen cloth I did not see them when I came in I simply felt there was a warm packet half on the seat half on the table in the back with pairs of waving arms afterwards meline brought them Cards the cloth and chips in a wooden bowl there are three or five of them I don't know I haven't the courage to look at them I have a broken spring I can move my eyes but not my head the head is all pliable and

elastic as though it had been simply set on my neck if I turn it it will fall off all the same I hear a short breath and from time to time out of the corner of my eye I see a reddish flash covered with hair it is a hand when the Patron goes shopping her Cousin replaces her at the bar his name is adulf I began looking at him as I sat down I've kept on because I cannot turn my head he's in shirt sleeves with purple suspenders he has rolled the sleeves of his shirt

above the elbows the suspenders can hardly be seen against the blue shirt they're all obliterated buried in the blue but it is false humility in fact they will not let themselves be forgotten they annoy me by their sheeplike stubbornness as if Starting to become purple they stopped somewhere along the way without giving up their pretentions you feel like saying all right become purple and let's hear know more about it but now they stay in suspense stubborn in their defeat sometimes the blue which surrounds them slips over and covers them completely I stay an instant without

seeing them but it is merely a passing wave soon the blue pales in places and I See the small island of hesitant purple reappear grow larger rejoin and reconstitute the suspenders cousin Adolf has no eyes his swollen retracted eyelids open only on a little of the whites he smiles sleepily from time to time he snorts Yelps and rides feebly like a dreaming dog his blue cotton shirt stands out joyfully against a chocolate colored wall that too brings on the nausea the nausea is not inside me I feel it out there in the wall in The

suspenders everywhere around me it makes itself one with the cafe I am the one who is within it on my right the warm packet begins to rustle it waves its pair of arms here there's your Trump what are trumps black neck bent over the game what he just played trumps I don't know I didn't see yes I played trumps just now ah good hearts are trumps then he in tones hearts are trumps hearts are trumps hearts are Trumps spoken what is it sir what is it sir I take it again silence the taste of sugar

in the air at the back of my throat the smells the suspenders the cousin has got up and taken a few steps put his hands behind his back smiling raising his head and leaning back on his heels he goes to sleep in this position he is there oscillating always smiling his cheeks tremble he's going to fall he bends backwards bends bends the face turned Completely up to the ceiling the and just as he is about to fall he catches himself adroitly on the ledge of the bar and regains his balance after which he starts again

I have enough I call the waitress madin if you please play something on the phonograph the one I like you know some of these days yes but maybe that'll bother these gentlemen these gentlemen don't like music when they're playing but I'll ask them I make a great effort And turn my head there are four of them she bends over a congested old man who wears black rimmed eyeglasses on the end of his nose he hides his cards against his chest and glances at me from under the glasses go ahead M Smiles his teeth are rotten

the red hand does not belong to him it is his neighbors a fellow with a black mustache this fellow with the mustache has enormous nostrils that could pump air for a whole family and that eat up Half his face but in spite of that he breathed through his mouth gasping a little with him there is also a young man with a face like a dog I cannot make out the fourth player the cards fall on the Woolen cloth spinning the hands with ringed fingers come and pick them up scratching the cloth with their nails the

hands make white splotches on the cloth they look puffed up and Dusty other cards fall the hands go and come what an odd Occupation it doesn't look like a game or a right or a habit I think they do it to pass the time nothing more the time is too large it can't be filled up everything you plunge into it is stretched and disintegrates that gesture for instance the red hand picking up the cards and fumbling it is all flabby it would have to be ripped apart and tailored inside madin turns the crank on the

Phonograph I only hope she has not made a mistake that she hasn't put on cavaleria Rusticana as she did the other day but no this is it I recognize the Melody from the very first bars it is an Old Rag time with a vocal refrain I heard American soldiers whistl it in 1917 in the streets of lelle it must date from before the war but the recording is much more recent still it is the oldest record in the collection a pate record for Sapphire Needle the vocal chorus will be along shortly I like that part

especially and the abrupt manner in which it throws itself forward like a a cliff against the sea for the moment the jazz is playing there's no Melody only notes a myriad of tiny jolts they know no rest an inflexible order gives birth to them and destroys them without even giving them time to recuperate and exist for themselves they race they press forward they strike me a sharp blow in passing And are obliterated I would like to hold them back but I know if I succeeded in stopping one it would remain between my fingers only as

a ra languishing sound I must accept their death I must even will it I know few Impressions stronger or more harsh I grow warm I begin to feel happy there is nothing extraordinary in this it is a small happiness of nausea it spreads at the bottom of the viscous puddle at the bottom of our time the time of purple suspenders and broken Chair seats it is made of wide soft instance spreading at the ledge like an oil stain no sooner than born it is already old it seems as though I have known it for 20

years there is another happiness outside there is this band of Steel the narrow duration of the music which traverses our time through and through rejecting it tearing at it with its dry little points there is another time mondu plays hearts and you play an Ace The Voice dies away and disappears nothing bites on the ribbon of Steel neither the opening door nor the breath of cold air flowing over my knees or the arrival of the veterinary surgeon and his little girl the music Trends pierces these vague figures and passes through them barely seated the girl

has been seized by it she holds herself stiffly her eyes wide open she listens rubbing the table with her fist a few seconds more and the will sing it's Seems inevitable so strong is the necessity of this music nothing can interrupt it nothing which comes from this time in which the world has fallen it will stop of itself as if by order if I love this beautiful voice it is especially because of that it is neither for its fullness nor its sadness rather because it is the event for which so many notes have been preparing

from so far away dying that it might be born and yet I am troubled It would take so little to make the record stop a broken spring the whim of cousin Adolf how strange it is how moving that this hardness should be so fragile nothing can interrupt it it all can break it the last cord has died away and the brief silence which follows I feel strongly that there it is that something has happened Silence some of these days you'll miss me honey but has just happened that the nausea has disappeared when The Voice Was

Heard in the silence I felt my body Harden and the nausea vanish suddenly it was almost unbearable to become so hard so brilliant at the same time the music was drawn out dilated swelled like a water spout it filled the room with its metallic transparency crushing our Miserable time against the walls I am in the music Globes of fire turn in the mirrors and circled by rings of smoke veiling and unveiling the hard smile of light my glass of beer has shrunk it seems heaped up on the table it looks dense and indispensable I want

to pick it up and feel the weight of it I stretch out my hand God that is what has changed my gestures this movement of my arm is developed like a majestic theme it is glided along The song of the neges I seem to be dancing ad Do's face is there set against the chocolate colored wall he seems quite close just at the moment when my hand closed I saw his face it witnessed to the necessity of a conclusion I pressed my fingers against the glass I look at ad do I'm happy voila a voice

rises from the tumult my neighbor is speaking the old man burns his cheeks make a violet stain on the Brown leather of the bench he slaps a card down on the table diamonds but the dog-faced young man Smiles the flushed opponent bent over the table watches him like a cat ready to spring IFA the hand of the young man rises from the shadow Glides an instant white indolent then suddenly drops like a hawk and presses a card against the cloth the great red-faced man leaps up hell he's Trumped the outline of the King of Hearts

appears between his curled fingers then it is turned on its face and the game goes on mighty king come from so far prepared by so many combinations by so many vanished gestures he disappears in turn so that other combinations can be born other gestur attacks counterattacks turns of luck a crowd of small Adventures I am touched I feel my body At rest like a precision machine I've had real Adventures I can recapture no detail but I perceive the rigorous succession of circumstances I have crossed Seas left cities behind me followed the course of rivers or

plunged into forests always making my way toward other cities I've had women I've fought fought with men and never was I able to turn back any more than a record can be reversed and all that led me Where at this very instant on this bench in this translucent bubble all humming with music and when you leave me yes I who loved so much to sit on the banks of the Tyber at Rome or in the evening in Barcelona Ascend and descend the ramblas a 100 times I near anger on the island of bar praan saw

a banion tree knot its roots about a Naga Chapel I am here living in the same second as these card players I listen to a neg Sing while outside roves the feeble night the record stops night has entered sweetish hesitant no one sees it but it is there veiling the lamps I breathe something opaque in the air a it is night it is cold one of the players pushes a disordered pack of cards towards another man who picks them up one card has stayed behind don't they see it it's the nine of Hearts someone takes

it at last gives it to the Dog-faced young man ah the nine of Hearts enough I'm going to leave the purple-faced man bends over a sheet of paper and sucks his pencil meline watches him with clear your empty eyes the young man turns and turns the nine of Hearts between his fingers God I get up with difficulty I see an inhuman face Glide in the mirror above the veterinary's head in a little while I'll go to the cinema the air does me good it doesn't Taste like sugar it doesn't have the whiny odor of her

mouth but good God how cold it is it is 7:30 I'm not hungry and the cinema doesn't start until 9:00 what am I going to do I have to walk quickly to keep warm I pause behind me the boulevard leads to the Heart of the City to the great fiery jewels of central streets to the P Paramount the Imperial the G magaza Jan it doesn't tempt me at all it is a perti time for the time being I've seen enough of Living things of dogs of men of all flabby masses which move spontaneously I turn

left I'm going to crawl into that hole down there at the end of the row of gaslights I'm going to follow the Boulvard Noir as far as the Avenue galvani an icy Wind Blows from the hole down there is nothing but stones and Earth stones are hard and do not move there is a tedious little stretch of Street on the pavement at the right a Gaseous Mass gray with streams of smoke makes a noise like rattling shells the Old Railway Station its presence has fertilized the first 100 yards of the Boulvard Noir from the Boulvard

deut to the radi has given birth there to a dozen street lights and side by side four cafes the railway man's Rondevu and three others which languish all through the day but which light up in the evening and cast luminous rectangles on the Street I take three more baths of yellow light see an Old Woman come out of the epis rabash drawing her Shaw over her head and starting to run now it's finished I'm on the curb of the radi beside the last lamp poost the asphalt ribbon breaks off sharply darkness and mudder on the

other side of the street I crossed the R I put my right foot in a puddle of water my sock is soaked through my walk begins no one lives in this section of The boulevard Noir the climate is too harsh there the soil too Barren for life to be established there and grow the three SI de fr the FR Sol furnished the panel arch of the S Cil de la which cost 100,000 Franks open on the west with all their doors and windows on the quiet rber coroy which they fill with purring sounds they turn

their backs of triple adjoining walls on the boulevard Victor Noir these buildings border the left-hand pavement for 400 yards without The smallest window not even a skylight this time I walked with both feet in the gutter I crossed the street on the opposite sidewalk a single Gaslight like a beacon at the extreme end of the Earth lights up a dilapidated fence broken down in places bits of old posters still clung to the boards a fine face full of hatred grimacing against a green background torn into the shape of a star just below the nose someone

had penciled in a curling Mustache on another strip I could still decipher the word purat from which red Drops Fall drops of blood perhaps the face and the word might have been part of the same poster now the poster is lacerated the simple necessary lines which United them have disappeared but another Unity has established itself between the Twisted mouth the drops of blood the white letters and the termination atra as though a restless and criminal passion were seeking to Express Itself by these mysterious signs I can see the lights from the railroad shining between the

boards a long wall follows the fence a wall without opening without doors without Windows a well which stops 200 yards further on against a house I have passed out of a range of the lamp poost I enter the black hole seeing the shadow at my feet lose itself in the darkness I have the impression of plunging into icy water before me at the very end through the layers of black I Can make out a pinkish palor it is it is the Avenue galvani I turn back behind the gas lamp very far there is a hint

of light that is the station with the four cafes behind me in front of me are people drinking and playing cards in pubs here there is nothing but Blackness intermittently the wind carries a solitary farway ringing to my ears familiar sounds the rumble of Motorcars shouts and The Barking of dogs which hardly Venture from the lighted streets They stay within the warmth but the ringing pierces the shadows and comes thus far it is harder less human than the other noises I stop to listen I am cold my ears hurt they must be all red but

I no longer feel myself I'm won over by the Purity surrounding Me Nothing is alive the wind whistles the straight lines flee in the night the boulevar Noir does not have the indecent look of Bourgeois streets offering the regrets to the Passers by no one has bothered to Adorn it it is simply the reverse side the reverse side of the ruber Kura of the Avenue galvani around the station the people of buil still look after it a little they clean it from time to time because of The Travelers but immediately after that they abandon it

and it rushes Straight Ahead blindly bumping finally into the Avenue galvani the town has forgotten it Sometimes a great mud come colored truck Thunders across it at top speed no one even commits any murders there want of Assassins and victims the Boulvard Noir is inhuman like a mineral like a triangle it's lucky there's a Boulevard like that in bouille ordinarily you find them only in Capitals in Berlin near nool or freden in London behind Greenwich straight dirty corridors full of drafts with wide treeless sidewalk they're almost always outside the town In these strange sections where

cities are manufactured near Freight stations car bars abat gas tanks 2 days after a rainstorm when the whole city is moist beneath the Sun and radiates damp heat they are still cold they keep their mud and puddles they even have puddles which never dry up except one month out of the Year August the nausea has stayed down there in the yellow light I am happy this cold is so pure this night so pure am I Myself not a wave of icy air with neither blood nor lymph nor flesh flowing down this long Canal towards the

paor down there to be nothing but coldness here are some people two Shadows what do they need to come here for it is a short woman pulling a man by his sleeve she speaks in a thin rapid voice because of the wind I understand nothing of what she says you're going to shut your trap now aren't you the man says she still speaks He pushes her roughly they look at each other uncertain then the man thrusts his hands in his pockets and leaves without looking back the man has disappeared a scant three yards separate me

from this woman now suddenly deep horar sounds come from her tear at her and fill the whole street with extraordinary violence sh I beg of you you know what I told you Char come back I've had enough I'm too miserable I passed so close to her that I could touch her it's but how can I Believe that this burning flesh this face shining with sorrow and yet I recognize the scarf the coat and the large wine colored birth mark on the right hand it is Lucy the charwoman I dare not offer her my support but

she must be able to call for it if need be I pass before her slowly looking at her her eyes stare at me but she seems not to see me she looks as though she were lost in her suffering I take a few steps turn back yes it's Lucy but transfigured Beside herself suffering with a frenzy generosity I envy her there she is standing straight holding out her arms as if awaiting the Stigmata she opens her mouth she suffocating I feel as though the walls have grown higher on each side of the street that they

have come closer together that she's at the bottom of a well I wait a few moments I'm afraid she will fall she's too sickly to stand this unwanted sorrow but she does not move she seems turned to Stone like everything around her one moment I wonder if I have not been mistaken about her if this is not her true nature which has suddenly been revealed to Me Lucy gives a little groan her hand goes to her throat and she opens wide astonished eyes no it is not from herself that she draws strength to suffer it

comes to her from the outside from the boulevard she should be taken by the arm LED back to the lights in the midst of People into quiet pink streets down there one cannot suffer so acutely she would be mollified she would find her positive look again and the usual level of her sufferings I turned my back on her after all she is lucky I've been much too calm these past 3 years I can receive nothing more from these tragic solitudes than a little empty Purity I leave Thursday 11:30 I have worked 2 hours in the

reading room I went down to the C to smoke a pipe a square paved with pinkish bricks the people of buil are proud of it because it dates from the 18th century at the entrance to the rad in the rused old chains bar the way to Vehicles women in black who come to exercise their dogs Glide beneath the arcades along the walls they rarely come out into the full light but they cast anenu glances from The corner of their eyes on the Statue of Gustav impet they don't know the name of this bronze giant but

they see clearly from his frock coat and top hat that he was someone from the bond he holds his hat in his left hand placing his right on a stack of papers it is a little as though their grandfather were there on the pedestal cast in bronze they do not need to look at him very long to understand that he Thought as they do exactly as they do on all subjects at the service of their obstinately narrow small ideas he has placed the authority in immense AR addition drawn from the papers crushed in his hand

the women in black feel soothed they can go peacefully minding their own business running their households walking their dogs out they no longer have the responsibility of standing up for their Christian ideals The high ideals which they get from their fathers a man of bronze has made himself their Guardian the encyclopedia devotes a few lines to this personage I read them last year I'd set the volume on the window ledge I could see imp's green skull through the pain I discovered that he flourished around 189 90 he was a school inspector he painted and Drew

Charming sketches and wrote three books popularity and the ancient Greeks 1887 Roland's pedagogy 1891 and a poetic Testament in 1899 he died in 1902 to the Deep regret of his dependence and people of good taste I lean against the front of the library I suck out my pipe which threatens to go out I see an old lady fearfully leaving the gallery of arcades looking slightly and obstinately at impet she suddenly grows Bolder she crosses the courtyard as fast as her legs can carry her stops for a moment in Front of the statue her Jaws trembling

then she leaves black against the pink pavement and disappears into a in the wall this place might have been gay around 1800 with its pink bricks and houses now there is something dry and evil about it a delicate Touch of horror it comes from that fellow up there on his pedestal when they cast this scholar in bronze they also turned out a sorcerer I look at him petas full in the Face he has no eyes hardly any nose and beard eaten Away by that strange leprosy which sometimes descends like an epidemic on all the statues

in one neighborhood he bows on the left hand side near his heart his waist coat is soiled with a light green stain he looks he does not live but neither is he inanimate a mute power emanates from him like a wind driving me backwards impet would like to chase me out of the cot but I shall not leave before I Finish this pipe a great gaunt Shadow suddenly Springs up behind me I jump excuse me mure I didn't mean to disturb you I saw your lips moving you were undoubtedly repeating passages from your book he

laughs you were hunting alexandrine my look at the self-taught man was stuper but he seemed surprised at my surprise should we not miss carefully avoid alexandrin in Pros I've been slightly lowered in his Estimation I ask him what he's doing here at this hour he explains that his boss has given him the day off and he came straight to the library that he's not going to eat lunch that he's going to read till closing time I'm not listening to him anymore but he must have strayed from his original subject because I suddenly hear to have

as you the good fortune of writing a book I have to say something good fortune I say Dubiously he mistakes the sense of my answer and rapidly corrects himself Miss I should have said Merit we go up the steps I don't feel like working someone has left erene Grande on the table the book is open at page 2 27 I pick it up mechanically and begin to read page 27 then page 28 I haven't the courage to begin at the beginning the self-taught man has gone quickly to the shelves along the wall he brings back

two books which he places on The table looking like a dog who found a bone what are you reading he seems reluctant to tell me he hesitates rolls his great roving eyes then stiffly holds out the books Pete Moss's and where to find them by and hopa or useful instruction by lastic so I don't know what's bothering him the books are definitely decent out of conscience I thumb through hopa and see nothing but the highest types of [Music] Sentiment 3 p.m. I've given up Grande and begun work without any heart in it the self-taught man

seeing that I am writing observes me with respectful lust from time to time I raise my head a little and see the immense stiff collar and the chicken-like neck coming out of it his clothes are shabby but his shirt is dazzling white he has just taken another book from the same shelf I can make out the title upside down the arrow of cbec A Norman Chronicle by Mademoiselle Julie La the self-taught man's choice of reading always disconcerts me me suddenly the names of the authors he Last Read come back to my mind lomber long litri

lastic L it is a revelation I have understood the self-taught man's method he teaches himself alphabetically I study him with a sort of admiration what willpower he must have To carry through slowly obstinately a plan on such a vast scale one day 7 years ago he told me he'd been a student for 7 years he came pompously into this reading room he scanned the innumerable books which lined the walls and he must have said something like rosak science it is up to us then he went and took the first book from the first shelf on

the far right he opened to the first page with a feeling of respect and fear mixed with an unshakable decision today he has Reached l k after J L after k he has passed brutally from the study of kopter to the quantum theory from a work on tamaran to a Catholic pamphlet against Darwinism he has never been disconcerted for an instant he has read everything he has stored up in his head most of what anyone knows about partho Genesis and half the arguments against Viv section there is a universe behind and before him and the

day is approaching when closing the last book On the last shelf on the far left he will say to himself now what this is his lunchtime innocently he eats a slice of bread and a bar of galap Peter his eyes are lowered and I can study at leisure his fine curved lashes like a woman's when he breathes he gives off an aroma of old tobacco mixed with the sweet scent of chocolate Friday 3 p.m. a little more I would have fallen into the lure of the mirror I avoid it only to fall into that of

the window indolent arms dangling I go to the window the building yard the fence the old station the old station the fence the building yard I give such a big yawn that tears come into my eyes I hold my pipe in my right hand and my tobacco in my left I should F this pipe but I don't have the heart to do it my arms hang Loosely I lean my forehead against the window pane that old woman annoys me she trots along obstinately With unseeing eyes sometimes she stops frightened as if an invisible fear had

brushed against her there she is under my window the wind blows her skirts against her knees she stops straightens her cchie her hands tremble she is off again now I can see her from the back old wood louse I suppose she's going to turn right into the boulevar Victor Noir that gives her 100 yards to go it will take her 10 minutes at the rate she's going 10 minutes during which time I Shall stay like this watching her my forehead glued against the window she's going to stop 20 times start again stop again I see

the future it is there poised over the street hardly more dim than the present what advantage will a crew from its realization the old woman stumps further and further away she stops pulls at a gray lock of hair which escapes from her cchie she walks she was there now she is here I don't know where I am anymore do I see her motions or do I foresee them I can no longer distinguish present from future and yet it lasts it happens little by little the old woman advances in the deserted Street shuffling her heavy Manish

brogues this is time time laid bare coming slowly into existence keeping us waiting and when it does come making us sick because we realize it's been there for a long time the old woman reaches the corner of the street no more than a Bundle of black clothes all right then it's new she wasn't there a little while ago but it's a tarnished deflowered nness which can never surprise she's going to turn the corner she turns during an eternity I tear myself from the window and stumble across the room I glue myself against the Looking Glass

I stare at myself I disgust myself one more eternity finally I flee from my image and fall on the bed I watched the Ceiling I'd like to sleep calm calm I can no longer feel the slipping the rustling of time I see pictures on the ceiling first rings of light then crosses they flutter and now another picture is forming at the bottom of my eyes this time it is a great kneeling animal I see its front paws and pack saddle the rest is in fog but I recognize it it is a camel I saw at

Marakesh Tethered to a stone he knelt And stood up six times running the urchins laughed and shouted at him it was wonderful two years ago all I had to do was close my eyes and my head would start buzzing like a beehive I could conjure faces trees houses a Japanese girl and kamiki washing herself naked in a wooden tub a dead Russian emptied of Blood by a great gaping wound all his blood in a pool beside him I could recapture the taste of cuscus the smell of olive oil which fills the street of Buros at

noon the scent of fennel floating through the tetan streets the piping of Greek Shepherds I was touched This Joy was used up a long time ago will it be reborn today a torrid sun moves stiffly in my head like a magic lantern slide a fragment of Blue Sky follows after a few jolts it becomes motionless I'm all golden within from what Moroccan or Algerian or Syrian day did this flash suddenly detach itself I let myself flow Into the past mes what was that man from The Hills like the one who frightened us in The Narrow

Street between the berin mosque and that Charming Square shaded by a mulbery tree he came toward us and he was on my right or on my left the Sun and blue sky were only a snare this is the H hundredth time I've let myself be caught my memories are like coins in the Devil's Purse when you open it you find only Dead Leaves now I Can only see the great empty eye socket of the hill tribesmen is this eye really his the doctor at Baku who explained the principle of State abortions to me was also

blind of one eye and the white empty socket appears every time I want to remember his face like the norns these two men have only one eye between them with which they take turns as for the square at mches where I used to go every day it's even simpler I Do not see it at all anymore All That Remains is the vague feeling that it was charming and these five words are indivisibly bound together a Charming square at mches undoubtedly if I close my eyes or stare vaguely at the ceiling I can recreate the scene

a tree in the distance a short dingy figure run towards me but I'm inventing all this to make out a case that Moroccan was big and weather beaten besides I only saw Him after he had touched me so I still know he was big and weather beaten certain details somehow curtail live in my memory but I don't see anything anymore I can search the past in vain I can only find these scraps of images and I'm not sure what they represent whether they are memories or just fiction there are many cases where even these scraps

have disappeared nothing is left but words I could still tell stories tell them too well as far as Anecdotes are concerned I can stand up to anyone except ship's officers and professional people but these are only the skeletons there's the story of a person who does this does that but it isn't I I have nothing in common with him he travels through countries I know no more about than if I'd never been there sometimes in my story it happens that I pronounce These Fine names you read in atlases aranth or Canterbury new Images are born

in me images such as people create from books who have never traveled my words are dreams that is all for a 100 dead stories there still remain one or two living ones I evoke these with caution occasionally not too often for fear of wearing them out I fish one out again I see the scenery the characters the attitudes I stop suddenly there is a flaw I have seen a word Pierce through the web of Sensations I suppose that this word will Soon take the place of several images I love I must stop quickly and think

of something else I don't want to Tire my memories in in vain the next time I evoke them a good part will be congealed I make a pretense of getting up going to look for my photos of meches in the chest I pushed under my table what good would it do these aphrodisiacs scarcely affect my memory anymore I found a faded little photo under my blotter the other day a woman was Smiling near a tank I studied this person for a moment without recognizing her then on the other side I read Ani Portsmouth April 7th

1927 I've never before had such a strong feeling that I was devoid of secret Dimensions confined within the limits of my body from which Airy thoughts float up like bubbles I build memories with my present self I am cast out forsaken in the present I vainly try to rejoin the past I cannot Escape someone knocks it's the self-taught man I'd forgotten him I promised to show him the photograph s of my travels he can go to hell he sits down on a chair his extended buttocks touch the back of it and his stiff torso leans

forward I jump from the end of my bed and turn on the light oh do we really need that we were quite comfortable not for looking at pictures I relieve him of his hat true M do you Really want to show me your pictures of course this is a plot I hope he will keep quiet while he looks at them I dive under the table and push the chest against his patent leather shoes I put an armload of postcards and photos on his lap Spain and Spanish Morocco but I see by his laughing open look

that I have been singularly mistaken in hoping to reduce him to silence he glances over a view of San Sebastian from Monte guo sets it cautiously on the table and remains silent for an instant then he sigh ah ass you're lucky if what they say is true travel is the best school is that your opinion Miss I make a vague gesture luckily he has not finished it must be such an upheaval if I were ever to go on a trip I think I should make written notes of the slightest traits of my character before leaving

so that when I returned I Would be able to compare what I was and what I had become I've read that there are Travelers who have changed physically and morally to such an extent that even their closest relatives did not recognize them when they came back he handles a thick packet of photographs AB distractedly he takes one and puts it on the table without looking at it then he stares intently at the next picture showing sanom sculptured on a Pulpit in The Burgos Cathedral have you seen the Christ made of animal skins at borgos there

is a very strange book mure on these statues made of animal skin and even human skin and the Black Version she isn't at borgos but at Saragosa I think yet there may possibly be one at buros the pilgrims kiss her don't they the one at Saragosa I mean and isn't there the print of her foot on a stone in a hole where the mothers push their Children stiffly he pushes an imaginary child with his hands you'd think he was refusing the gifts of AR xerxis ah manners and Customs M they are they are curious a

little breathless he points his great ass's Jawbone at me he smells of tobacco and stagnant water his fine roving eyes shine like Globes of fire and his sparse hair forms a streaming Halo on his skull under his skull seds yam yams malates And fans celebrate their strangest solemnities eat their old fathers their children spin to the sound of Tom tooms until they faint run a muck burn their dead exhibit them on the roofs leave them to the river current in a boat lighted by a torch copulate at random mother with son father with daughter brother

with sister mutilate themselves castrate themselves distend their lips with PL plates have monstrous animals sculptured on their backs can one say With Pascal that custom is second nature he has fixed his black eyes on mine he begs for an answer that depends I say he draws a deep breath that's just what I was saying to myself missure but I distrust myself so much one should have read everything he almost goes mad over the next photo and shouts joyfully Soria Soria I've read a book about sovia then he adds with a certain nobility Miss I don't

remember the name anymore I sometimes have spells of absent Mindedness nah no no impossible I tell him quickly we were only up to L I regret my words immediately after all he had never told me about his reading methods it must have been a precious secret and in fact his face Falls and his thick lips jut out as if he were going to cry then he bows his head and looks at a dozen more postcards without a word but after 30 seconds I can see that a Powerful enthusiasm is mounting in him and that he

will burst if he doesn't speak when I finished my instruction I allow six more years for that I shall join if I permitted to the group of students and professors who take an annual cruise to the near East I should like to make some new acquaintances he says unctuously to speak frankly I would also like something unexpected to happen to me something new adventure He has lowered his voice and his face has taken on a rogish look what sort of Adventures I ask him astonished all sorts mure getting on the wrong train stopping in an

unknown City losing your brief case being arrested by mistake spending the night in prison Miss I believe the word Adventure could be defined an event out of the ordinary without being necessarily extraordinary people speak of the magic of Adventures does this expression seem correct to you I would like to ask you a question Miss what is it he blushes and smiles possibly it is indiscreet ask me anyway he leans towards me his eyes half closed and asks have you had Many Adventures miss a few I answer mechanically throwing myself back to avoid his tainted breath

yes I said that mechanically without thinking in fact I'm generally proud of having had so many Adventures but today I had barely pronounced the Words that I was seized with Contrition it seems as though I am lying that I have never had the slightest Adventure in my life or rather that I don't even know what the word means anymore at the same time I'm weighed down by the same discouragement I had in Hanoi four years ago when Mercier pressed me to join him I stared at a CH statuette without answering and the idea is there

this great white Mass which so disgusted me then I hadn't seen it for 4 years could I ask you the self-taught man Begins by Jo to tell I'm one of those famous Tales but I won't say another word on the subject there I say bending down over his narrow shoulders putting my finger on a photograph there that's santiana the prettiest town in Spain the santiana Jil Blas I didn't believe it existed ah Miss how profitable your conversation is one can tell you've Traveled I put out the self-taught man after filling his pockets with postcards prints

and photos he left Enchanted and I switched off the light I alone now not quite alone hovering in front of me is still this idea it has rolled itself into a ball it stays there like a large cat it explains nothing it does not move and contents itself with saying no no I haven't had any Adventures I fill my pipe light it and stretch out on the bed throwing a coat Over my legs what astonishes me is to feel so sad and exhausted even if it were true that I never had any Adventures what difference

would that make to me first it seems to be a pure question of words this business at meches for example I was thinking about a little while ago a Moroccan jumped on me and wanted to stab me with an enormous knife but I HIIT him just below the temple Le then he began shouting in Arabic and a swarm of lousy Beggars came Up and chased us all the way to suarin well you can call that by any name you like in any case it was an event which happened to me it is completely dark I

can't tell whether my pipe is lit a trolley passes red light on the ceiling then a heavy truck which makes the house tremble it must be 6:00 I have never had Adventures things have happened to me events incidents anything you like but no Adventures it isn't a question of words I'm beginning to understand there is something to which I clung more than all the rest without completely realizing it it wasn't love heaven forbid not Glory not money it was I had imagined that at certain times my life could take on a rare and precious quality

there was no need for extraordinary circumstances all I asked for was a little Precision there's nothing brilliant About my life now but from time to time for example when they play music in the cafes I look back and tell myself in old days in London mechanus Tokyo I have known Great Moments I have had Adventures now I am deprived of this I have suddenly learned without any apparent reason that I've been lying to myself for 10 years and naturally everything they tell about in books can happen in real real life but not in the same

way it is to this way of happening That I clung so tightly the beginnings would have had to be real Beginnings alas now I see so clearly what I wanted real Beginnings are like a Fanfare of trumpets like the first notes of a jazz tune cutting short tedium making for continuity then you say about these evenings within evenings I was out for a walk it was an evening in May you walk the moon has just risen you feel lazy vacant a little empty and then suddenly you think something has Happened no matter what a slight

rustling in the shadow a thin silhouette crossing the street but this poultry event is not like the others suddenly you see that it is the beginning of a great shape whose outlines are lost in mist and you tell yourself something is beginning something is beginning in order to end Adventure does not let it be drawn out it only makes sense when dead I am drawn irrevocably towards this death which is perhaps mine as well each Instant appears only as part of a sequence I cling to each instant with all my heart I know that it

is unique Irreplaceable and yet I would not raise a finger to stop it from being annihilated this last moment I am spending in Berlin in London in the arms of a woman casually met 2 days ago most moment I love passionately woman I may adore all is going to end I know it soon I shall leave for another country I shall never ReDiscover either this woman Or this Knight I grasp at each second trying to suck it dry nothing happens which I do not seize which I do not fix forever in myself nothing neither The

Fugitive tenderness of those lovely eyes nor the noises of the street nor the false dawn of early morning and even so the minute passes and I do not hold it back I like to see it pass all of a sudden something breaks off sharply the adventure is over time Resumes its daily routine I turn behind me this beautiful melodious form sinks entirely into the past it grows smaller contracts as it declines and now the end makes one with the beginning following this gold spot with my eyes I think I would accept even if I had

to risk death lose a fortune a friend to live it all over again in the same circumstances from end to end but an adventure never returns nor is prolonged yes it's what I wanted what I Still want I'm so happy when a sings What Summits would I not reach if my own life made the subject of the melody the idea is still there unnamable it waits peacefully now it seems to say yes is that what you wanted well that's exactly what you've never had remember you fooled yourself with words you called the glitter of travel

the love of women quarrels and trinkets adventure and this is what You'll never have and no one other than yourself but why why Saturday noon the self-taught man did not see me come into the reading room he was sitting at the end of a table in the back he had set his book down in front of him but he was not reading he was smiling at a seedy looking student who often comes to the library the student allowed himself to be looked at for a Moment and suddenly stuck his tongue out and made a horrible

face the self-taught man blushed hurriedly plunged his nose into his book and became absorbed by his reading I have reconsidered my thoughts of yesterday I was completely dry it made no difference to me whether there had been no Adventures I was only curious to know whether there could never be any this is what I thought for the most benal even to become an adventurer you Must and this is enough begin to recount it this is what fools people a man is always a teller of tales he lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of

others he sees everything that happens to him through them and he tries to live his own life as if you were telling a story but you have to choose live or tell for example example when I was in Hamburg with that AA girl I didn't trust and who was afraid of me I led a funny sort of life but I was in The middle of it I didn't think about it and then one evening in a little cafe in Sali she left me to go to the ladies room I stayed alone there was a phonograph

playing blue skies I began to tell myself what had happened since I landed I told myself the third evening as I was going into a dance hall called lth Blue I noticed a large woman half sees over and that woman is the one I'm waiting for now listening to Blue Skies the woman who's going to come back and Sit down at my right and put her arms around my neck then I felt violently that I was having an adventure but AA came back and sat down beside me she wound her arms around my neck and

I hated her without knowing why I understand now one had to begin living again and the adventure was fading out nothing happens while you live the scenery changes people come in and go out that's all there are no Beginnings days are tacked onto days without Rhyme Or Reason an interminable monotonous addition from time to time you make a semi- tootal you say I've been traveling for 3 years I've been in buil for 3 years neither is there any end you never leave a woman a friend a city in one go and then everything looks alike

Shanghai Moscow alers everything is the same after 2 weeks there are moments rarely when you make a landmark you realize that you're going with a woman in some messy business the time of a flash after That the procession starts again you begin to add up hours and days Monday Tuesday Wednesday April May June 1924 1925 1926 that's living but everything changes when you tell about life it's a change no one notices the proof is that people talk about true stories as if there could possibly be true stories things happen one way and we tell about

them in the opposite sense you seem to start at the beginning it was a fine Autumn evening in 1922 I was a notary's clerk in marome and in reality you have started at the end it was there invisible and present it is the one which gives the words the Pomp and value of a beginning I was out walking I had left the town without realizing it I was thinking about my money troubles this sentence taken simply for what it is means that the man was absorbed morose 100 leagues from an adventure Exactly in the mood

to let things happen without noticing them but the end is there transforming everything for us the man is already the hero of the story his moroseness his money troubles are much more precious than ours they are all gilded By the Light Of Future passions and the story goes on in the reverse instance have stopped piling themselves in a light-hearted way one on top of the other they're snapped up by the end of the story which draws them and each one Of them in turn draws out the preceding instant it was night the street was deserted

the phras is cast out negligently it seems Superfluous but we do not let ourselves be caught and we put it aside this is a piece of information whose value we shall subsequently appreciate and we feel that the hero has lived all the details of this night like an unse ations promises or even that he lived only those that were promises blind and deaf to all that Did not Herald Adventure we forget that the future was not yet there the man was walking in a night without forethought a night which offered him a choice of dull

Rich prizes and he did not make his choice I wanted the moments of my life to follow and Order themselves like those of a life remembered we might as well try and catch time by the tail Sunday I'd forgotten that this morning was Sunday I went out and walked along the streets as usual I'd taken along Grand then suddenly when opening the gate of the public park I got the impression that something was signaling to me the park was Bare and deserted but how can I explain it didn't have its usual look it smiled at

me I leaned against the railing for a moment and suddenly realized bued it was Sunday it was there on the trees on the grass like a faint smile it couldn't be described you would have had to repeat very quickly this is a public park this is Winter this is Sunday morning I let go of the railing turned back towards the houses and streets of the town and half aloud I murmured it's Sunday it's Sunday behind the docks along the Sea Coast near the freight station all around the City there are empty warehouses and motionless machines

in the darkness in all the houses men are shaving behind their Windows their heads are thrown back sometimes they stare at the Looking Glass sometimes at The sky to see whether it's going to be a fine day the broal are opening to their first customers rustics and soldiers in the churches in the light of candles a man is drinking wine in the sight of kneeling women and all the suburbs between the interminable walls of factories long black processions have started walking they are slowly advancing towards the center of the town to receive them the streets

have taken on the look they have when disturbance Is expected all the stores except the ones in the r have lowered their iron shutters soon silently these black columns are going to invade the death shamming streets first the railroad workers from tville and their wives who work in the Sans s foran soap factories then the little Bourgeois from to buil then the workers from the Pino weaving Mills then all the odd jobbers from the Sak sense quarter the men from tiak will arrive last in the 11:00 Trolley soon the Sunday crowd will be borne between

bolted shops and closed doors a clock strikes half 10 and I start on my way Sundays at this hour you can see a fine show in bille but you must not come too late after high mass the little rou f dead it smells of a Cellar but as on every Sunday it is filled with a Sumptuous noise a noise like a tide I turn into the rud presid Shar where the houses have four stories with long white Venetian blinds the Street of notaries is entirely filled by the voluminous clamor of Sunday the noise increases in

the passage Gile and I recognize it it is a noise which men make then suddenly on the left comes an explosion of light and sound here is the all I have to do is take my place among my fellows and watch them raising their hats to each other 60 years ago no one could have foreseen the miraculous Destiny of the rut which the inhabitants of buil today Call the little pra I saw a map dated 1847 on which the street was not even mentioned at that time it must have been a dark stinking bowel with

a trench between the paving stones in which fish's heads and entrails were stacked but at the end of 1873 the assemblé national declared the construction of a church on the slope of mmat to be of public utility a few months later the mayor's wife had a Vision s Cil her patron saint came to remonstrate with her was it tolerable for the elite to soil themselves every Sunday going to S Rene or S claan to hear Mass with shopkeepers hadn't the assemblé national set an example bille now had thanks to the protection of Heaven a first

class financial position wouldn't it be fitting to build a church where to give thanks to the Lord these Visions were accepted the City council held a historic meeting and the bishop agreed to organize a subscription all that was left was the choice of locality the old families of businessmen and ship owners were of the opinion that the building should be constructed in the summit of the CTO where they lived so that s Cil could watch over buil as the sakur the Jesus over Paris the noish gentlemen of the Boulvard marim of which there were only

a few shook their heads they would give All that was needed but the church would have to be built on the pl Marino if they were going to pay for a church they expected to be able to use it they were not reluctant to make their power felt by the higher Bourgeois who considered them parvenu the bishop suggested a compromise the church was built halfway between the kotov and the bouv marim on the de ALU which was baptized de this monstrous edifice completed in 1887 cost no less than 14 million Franks the r wide but

dirty and of ill repute had to be entirely rebuilt and its inhabitants firmly pushed back behind the pl sonil but little pra became especially on Sunday mornings the meeting place of elegant and distinguished people fine shops opened one by one on the passage of the elite they stayed open Easter Monday all Christmas night and every Sunday until noon next to julen the pork Butcher renowned for his P fullon the pastry cook exhibits his famous Specialties conical peur made of M butter topped by a sugar Violet in the window of dupati Library you can see the

latest books published by PL a few technical works such as a theory of navigation or A Treatise on sails and sailing an enormous Illustrated history of buil and elegantly appointed editions Deluxe Corn's Mark Bound in blue leather the L they may feel by PA D Bound in tan Leather with purple flowers jlen Ur Parisian models separates P the florist from P the antique dealer Gustav the hairdresser who employs four manicures occupies the second floor of an entirely new yellow painted building two years ago at the corner of theast mang and the an impudent little shop

still advertised for the tun insecticide it had flourished in the time when cfish were hawked in the pl Cil it was 100 years old the windows Were rarely washed it required a great effort to distinguish through dust and Mist a crowd of tiny wax figures decked out in Orange doublets representing cats and mice these animals were disembarking from a high decked ship leaning on sticks barely had they touched the ground when a peasant girl attractively dressed but filthy and black with dirt put them all to flight by sprinkling them with tune I liked this shop

very much it had A cynical and obstinate look it insolently recalled the rights of dirt and Vermin only two paces from the most costly Church in France the old herborist died last year and her nephew sold the house it was enough to tear down a few walls it is now a small lecture hall La bonier last year HRI Bordeaux gave a talk on alpinism there you must not be in a hurry in the r t the fames walk slowly sometimes you move up a step Because one family is turned into Fons or pis but at

other times you must stop and Mark time because two families one going up the street the other coming down have met and have solidly clasped hands I go forward slowly I stand a whole head above both columns and I see hats a sea of hats most of them are black and hard from time to time you see one fly off at the end of an arm and you catch the soft glint of a skull then after a few instants of heavy flight it Returns at 16 Orban the hatter specializing in forage caps has hung up

as a symbol an immense red archbishop's hat whose gold tassels hang 6 feet from the ground a halt a group is collected just under the tassels my neighbor Waits impatiently his arms dangling this little old man pale and fragile as porcelain I think he must be Kofi president of the Chamber of Commerce it seems he is intimidating because he Never speaks he lives on the summit of the Coto in a great Brick House whose windows are always wide open it's over the group is broken up another group starts forming but it takes up less space

barely formed it is pushed against Jen's window front the column does not even stop it hardly makes a move to step aside we're walking in front of six people who hold hands do put your hat on again you'll catch cold thank you Madame it isn't Very warm out is it my dear let me present Dr leis doctor I'm very glad to make your acquaintance my husband always speaks of Dr leonis Who took such care of him but do put your hat on Doctor you'll catch cold but a doctor would get will quickly Al ask Madame

doctors are the least well-looked after the doctor is a remarkable musician really doctor but I never knew you play the violin the doctor is very gifted the little old man next to me is Surely Kofi one of the women of the group The brunette is devouring him with her eyes all the while smiling at the doctor she seems to be thinking there's Miss Kofi president of the Chamber of Commerce how intimidating he looks they say he's so frigid but miss kof DS to see nothing these people are from the boulevard maritim they do not belong

to his world since I've been coming to the street to see the Sunday hat raising I have Learned to distinguish people from the Boulevard and people from the Cotto when a man wears a new Overcoat a soft felt hat a dazzling shirt when he creates a vacuum in passing there's no mistake it he is someone from the bouv marim you know people from the CTO by some kind of shabby sunken look they have narrow shoulders and an air of insolence on their worn faces this fat gentleman holding a child by the hand I'd swear he

comes from the coutu his face is all Gray and his tie knotted like a string the fat man comes near us he stares at Miss Ki but just before he crosses his path he turns his head away and begins joking in a fatherly way with his little boy he takes a few more steps bent over his son his eyes gazing in the child's eyes nothing but a father and suddenly he turns quickly towards us throws a quick glance at the little old man and makes an ample quick salute with a sweep of his arm disconcerted

the little boy Is not taken off his hat this is an affair between grown-ups at the corner of the rasier our column AB buts into a column of the faithful coming out of mass a dozen persons Rush forward shaking each other's hand and whirling round but the Hat raising is over too quickly for me to catch the details the AG s Cil stands a monstrous Mass above the fat pale crowd chalk White against a somber Sky its sides hold a little of the night's Darkness Behind These shining walls we are off again in a slightly

modified order Mr Kier has been pushed behind me a lady dressed in navy blue is glued to my left side she's come from Mass she blinks her eyes a little dazed at coming into the light of morning the gentleman walking in front of her with such a thin neck is her husband on the other side of the street a gentleman holding his wife by the arm has just whispered a few words in her Ear and has started to smile she immediately wipes all expression from her chalky cream colored face and blindly takes a few steps

there is no mistaking these signs they are going to greet somebody indeed indeed after a moment the gentleman throws his hands up when his fingers reach his felt hat they hesitate a second before coming down delicately on the crown while he slowly raises his hat bowing his head a little to help its removal his wife gives a Little start and forces a young smile on her face a bowing Shadow passes them but their twin Smiles do not disappear immediately they stay on their lips a few instance by a sort of magnetism the lady and gentlemen

have regained their impassibility by the time they pass me but a certain air of gayety still lingers around their mouths it's finished the crowd is less congested the Hat raisings less frequent the sharp Windows have something less Exquisite about them I'm at the end of the rout shall I cross and go up the street on the other side I think I've had enough I have seen enough pink skulls thin distinguished and Faded countenances I'm going to cross the pl marinho as I cautiously extricate myself from the column the face of a real gentleman in a

black hat Springs up near me the husband of the lady niy blue ah the fine Long dollo calic skull planted with short wiry hair the handsome American mustache sewn with silver threads and the smile above all the admirable cultivated smile there is also an eyeglass somewhere on a nose turning to his wife he says he's a new Factory designer I wonder what he can be doing here he's a good boy he's timid and he amuses me standing against the window of Julien the pork butcher shop the young designer Who has just done his hair still

pink his eyes lowered an obstinate look on his face has all the appearance of a voluptuary this is undoubtedly the first Sunday he has dared cross the rout to he looks like a lad who has been to his first communion he has crossed his hands behind his back and turned his face towards the window with an air of excitement modesty without appearing to see he looks at four small sausages shining in gelatin spread out on a bed Of parsley a woman comes out of the shop and takes his arm his wife she's quite young despite

her pocked skin she can stroll along the rout to as much as she likes no one will mistake her for a lady she's betrayed by the cynical Sparkle of her eyes by her sophisticated look real ladies do not know the price of things they like adorable fall their eyes are like beautiful hot house flowers I reached the bras veliz on the Stroke of one the old manner there as usual two of them have already started to eat four playing cards and drinking aars the others are standing watching them play while their table is being laid

the biggest the one with a flowing beard is a stock broker another is a retired commissioner from the an marim they eat and drink like men of 20 they eat sour crout on Sunday the late arrivals question the others who are already Eating the usual Sunday sourkraut they sit down and breathe size of relaxation mariet my dear a beer without a head and a sauerkraut this Mariette is a buxom wench as I sit down at a table in the back a red-faced old man begins coughing furiously while being served with a vermouth come on pour

me out a little more he says coughing but she grows angry herself she hadn't finished pouring well let me pour will you who said anything to you you holler before You're hurt the others begin to laugh tche the stock broker going to his seat takes Mariette by the shoulders it's Sunday Mariette I guess we have our boyfriend to take us to the movies oh sure this is anet's day off I've got a date in here all day the stock broker has taken a chair opposite the clean shaven lbus looking old man the clean shaven old

man immediately begins an animated story the stock broker does not listen to him he makes faces and pulls At his beard they never listen to each other I recognize my neighbors small businessmen in the neighborhood Sundays their maid's day off so they come here always sitting at the same table the husband eats a fine rib of underdone beef he looks at it closely and smells it from time to time the wife picks at her plate a heavy blonde woman of 4 40 with red Downy cheeks she has Fine hard breasts under her satin blouse like

a man she polishes off a bottle of Bordeaux at every meal I'm going to read oen it isn't that I get any great pleasure out of it but I have to do something I open the book at random the mother and daughter are speaking of aini's growing love aeni kissed her hands saying how good you are Dear Mama at these words the maternal old face worn with longsuffering lights up don't you think he's nice Eren asked Madame gond answered only by a smile then after a moment of silence she lowered her Voice and said could

you love him already it would be wrong wrong oen repeated why you like him Nan likes him why shouldn't I like him now Mama let's set the table for his luncheon she dropped her work her mother did likewise saying you are mad but she wanted to justify her daughter's Madness by sharing iten called Nano what do you want Melle you'll have cream for noon n ah for noon yes the old servant answered well give him his coffee very strong I Heard miss the Gan say that they make coffee very strong in Paris put in a

lot where do you want me to get it buy some and if Miss sees me he's out in the fields my neighbors had been silent ever since I had come but suddenly the husband's voice distracted me from my reading the husband amused and mysterious say did you see that the woman gives a start and looks coming out of a dream he eats and drinks then starts again with the same malicious Hair a moment of silence the woman has fallen back into a dream suddenly she shutters and asks what did you say suzan yesterday ah yes

the woman says she went to see Victor what did I tell you the woman pushes her plate aside impatiently it's no good the side of her plate is adorned with lumps of gristle she spits out the husband follows his idea that little woman there he stops and smiles vaguely across from us the old stock broker is stroking maret's arm and Breathing heavily after a moment I told you so the other day what did you tell me Victor that she'd go and see him what's the matter he asks Brusly with a frightened look don't you like

that it's no good it isn't the same anymore he says with importance it isn't the way it was in Art's time do you know where he is eart isn't he yes who told you you did you told me Sunday she eats a morsel of crumb which Is scattered on the paper tablecloth then her hand smoothing the paper on the edge of the table with hesitation you know you're mistaken suzan is more that may well be my dear that may well be he answers distractedly he tries to catch maret's eyes makes a sign to her it's

hot Mariette leans familiarly on the edge of the table yes it is hot the woman says sighing deeply it's stifling here and Besides the beef's no good I'm going to tell the manager it's not the way it used to be do open the window a little Marette amused the husband continues say didn't you see her eyes when darling he Apes her impatiently when darling that's you all over in summer when it snows ah you mean yesterday he laughs looks into the distance and recites quickly with a certain application the eyes of a cat on live

coals he's so pleased that he seems to Have forgotten what he wanted to say she laughs in her turn without malice Old Devil she Taps on his shoulder Old Devil Old Devil he repeats with Assurance the eyes of a cat on live coals but she stops laughing no ser seriously you know she's really respectable he leans over Whispers a long story in her ear her mouth hangs open for a moment the face a little drawn like someone who's going to burst out laughing then suddenly she throws Herself back and Claws at his hands it isn't

true it isn't true he says in a considered way listen to me my pet will you since he said so himself if it weren't true why should he have said it no no but he said so listen suppose she began to laugh I'm laughing because I'm thinking about Renee is he laughs too she goes on in a low Earnest voice so he noticed it's Tuesday Thursday no Tuesday you know because of the she sketches a sort of ellipses in the air a Long silence the husband dips his bread in the gravy Marette changes the plates

and brings them tart I too shall want a tart suddenly the the woman a little dreamy with a proud and somewhat shocked smile on her lips says in a slow dragging voice oh no now come there is so much sensuality in her voice that it stirs him he Strokes the back of her neck with his fat hand sh stop you're getting me excited darling she murmurs smiling her mouth Full I try to go back to my reading where do you want me to get it buy some and if Miss sees me but I still hear

the woman she says say I'm going to make Mara laugh I'm going to tell her my neighbors are silent after the tart Mariette serves them prunes and the woman is busy gracefully laying stones in her spoon the husband staring at the ceiling Taps out a rhythm on the table you might think that silence was their normal State and Speech of fever that sometimes takes them where do you want me to get it buy some I closed the book I'm going out for a walk walk it was almost 3:00 when I came out of the B

I felt the afternoon all through my heavy body not my afternoon but theirs the one 100,000 bouis were going to live in common at the same time after the long and copious Sunday meal they were getting up from the table for them something had died Sunday had spent its Fleeting youth you had to digest the chicken and the tart get dressed to go out the bell of the C Dorado resounded in the clear air this is a familiar Sunday noise this ringing in broad daylight more than 100 people were lined up along the green wall

they were greedily awaiting the hour of soft Shadows of relaxation abandoned the hour when the screen glowing like a white stone underwater would speak and dream for them vain Desire something would stay taught in them they were too afraid someone would spoil their lovely Sunday soon as every Sunday they would be disappointed the film would be ridiculous their neighbor would be smoking a pipe and spitting between his knees or else Lucien would be disagreeable he wouldn't have a decent word to say or else as if on purpose just for today for the one time they

went to the movies their intercostal Neuralgia would start up again soon as on every Sunday small mute rages would grow in the darkened Hall I followed the calm R Bron the son of had broken through the clouds it was a fine day a family had come out of a villa called The Wave the daughter was buttoning her gloves standing on the pavement she could have been about 30 the mother planted on the first step was looking straight ahead with an Assured Air Breathing heavily I could only see the Enormous back of the father bent over

the keyhole he was closing the door and locking it the house would remain black and empty till they got back in the neighboring houses already bolted and deserted the floor and furniture creaked gently before going out they'd put out the fire in the dining room fireplace the Father rejoins the two women and the family walks away without a word where were they going on Sunday you go to the memorial Cemetery where you visit your parents where if you're completely free you go for a walk along the jetty I was free I followed the ruon which

leads to the jetty prominade the sky was pale blue a few wisps of smoke and from time to time a fleeting Cloud passed in front of the Sun in the distance I could see the white cement ballustrade which runs along the jetty prominade the sea glittered through the interstices the Family turns right in the rud Theon which climbs up the Coto I saw the mount slowly making three black stains against the sparkling asphalt I turned left and join the crowd streaming towards the sea there was more of a mixture than in the morning it seemed

as though all these men no longer had strength to sustain this fine social hierarchy they were so proud of before luncheon businessmen and officials walked side by Side they let themselves be elbowed even jostled out of the way by shabby employees Aristocrats Elite and professional groups had melted into the warm crowd only scattered men were left who were not representative a puddle of light in the distance the sea at low tide only a few reefs broke the clear surface fishing smacks lay on the sand not far from sticky blocks of stone which had been thrown

pel Mell at the foot of the jetty To protected from the waves and through the interstices the sea rumbled at the entrance to the outer harbor against the sun bleached Sky a dredge defined its shadow every evening until midnight it howls and groans and makes the devil of a noise but on Sunday the workers are strolling over the land there's only a Watchman on board there is silence the sun was clear and diaphanous like white wine its light barely touched The moving figures gave them no Shadow no relief faces and hands made spots of pale

gold all these men in top coat seemed to float idly a few inches above the ground from time to time the wind cast Shadows against us which trembled like water faces were blotted out for an instant chalky white it was Sunday masked between the ballot Streed in the gates of residence Chalet the crowd dispersed slowly forming itself into a thousand rivulets Behind the grandel de and children children in carriages children in arms held by the hand or walking by twos and threes in front of their parents with a stiff and formal look I had seen

all these faces a little while before almost triumphant in the Youth of a Sunday morning now dripping with sunlight they expressed nothing more than calm relaxation and a sort of obstinacy little movement there was still a little hat raising here and There but without the expansiveness the nervous gayety of the morning the people all let themselves lean back a little head high looking into the distance abandoned to the wind which swept them and swelled out their coats from time to time a short laugh quickly stifled the call of a mother Jano Jano come here and

then silence a faint arum of pale tobacco the commercial Travelers are smoking it salambo AA Sunday cigarettes I thought I could detect sadness in some Of the more relaxed faces but know these people were neither sad nor gay they were at rest their wide open staring eyes passively reflected sea and sky they would soon go back drink a cup of family tea together around the dining room table for the moment they wanted to live with the least expenditure economize words gestures thoughts float they had only one day in which to smooth out their wrinkles their

crows feet the bitter lines made by a hard Week's work one day only they felt the minutes flowing between their fingers would they have time to store up enough youth to start a new on Monday morning they filled their lungs because Sea Air vivifies only their breathing deep and regular as that of sleepers still testify that they alive I walked stealthily I didn't know what to do with my hard vigorous body in the midst of this tragic relaxed crowd the sea was now the color of slate it was Rising Slowly by night it would be

high tonight the jetty prominade would be more deserted than the Boulvard victtor Noir in front and on the left a red fire would burn in the channel the sun went down slowly over the sea in passing it lit up the window a Norman Chalet a woman dazzled by it wearily brought her hand to her eyes and shook her head Gaston is blinding me she says with a little laugh hey that son's all right her husband says it doesn't keep you Warm but it's a pleasure to watch it turning to the Sea she spoke again I

thought we might have seen it not a chance the man says it's in the sun they must have been talking about the ilot whose southern tip could sometimes be seen between the dredge and the key of the outer harbor the light grows softer at this uncertain hour one felt evening drawing in Sunday was already passed the Villas in gay ballustrade seemed Only Yesterday One By One The faces lost their leisured look several became almost tender a pregnant woman leaned against a fair brutall looking young man there there there look she said what there there the

seagulls he Shrugged there were no seagulls The Sky Had become almost pure a little blush on the horizon I heard them listen they're crying he answered something's creaking that's all a gas Lamp glowed I thought the lamp lighter had already passed the children watched him because he gives the signal for them to go home but it was only a last Ray of the setting sun the sky was still clear but the Earth was bathed in Shadow the crowd was dispersing you could distinctly hear the death rattle of the sea a young woman leaning with both

hands on the ballustrade raised her blue face towards the sky barred in Black by lipstick for a moment I wondered if I Were not going to love Humanity but after all it was their Sunday not mine the first light to go on was that of the lighthouse on the ilot a little boy stopped near me and murmured in ecstasy oh the lighthouse then I felt my heart swell with a great feeling of Adventure I turn left and through the rud de Vol rejoin the little prto the iron shutters have been lowered on all the shop

Windows the r bre is light but deserted it has lost its brief glory of the morning nothing distinguishes it any longer from the neighboring streets a fairly strong wind has come up I hear the archbishop's metal hat creaking I am alone most of the people have gone back home they are reading the evening paper listening to the radio Sunday has left them with a taste of ashes and their thoughts are already turning towards Monday but for me there Is neither Monday nor Sunday there are days which pass in disorder and in sudden lightning like this

one nothing has changed and yet everything is different I can't describe it it's like the nausea and yet it's just the opposite at last an adventure happens to me and when I question myself I see that it happened that I am myself and that I am here I am the one who splits the night I am as happy as the hero of a novel something is going to happen Something is waiting for me in the shadow of the rasier it is over there just at the corner of this calm street that my life is going

to begin I see myself advancing with a sense of fatality there is a sort of white Milestone at the corner of the street from far away it seemed black and at each stride it takes on a whiter color this dark body which grows lighter little by little makes an extraordinary Impression on me when it becomes entirely clear entirely white I shall stop just beside it and the adventure will begin it is so close now this white Beacon which comes out of the Shadows that I'm almost afraid for a moment I think of turning back but

it is impossible to break the spell I advance I stretch out my hand and touch the stone here is the rier and the enormous mass of s Cil crouching in the window its Windows glowing the metal Hat Creeks I do not know whether the whole world has suddenly shrunk or whether I am the one who unifies all sounds and shapes I cannot even conceive of anything around me being other than what it is I stop for a moment I wait I feel my heart beating my eyes search the empty Square I see nothing a fairly

strong wind has risen I am mistaken the rasier was only a stage the thing is waiting For me at the end of the pl duon I'm in no hurry to start walking again it seems as if I touched the goal of my happiness in Mar and Shanghai meches what wouldn't I have done to achieve such satisfaction I expect nothing more today I'm going home at the end end of an empty Sunday it is there I leave again the whale of a siren comes to me on the Wind I'm all alone but I March like a

regiment descending on a city at this Very moment there are ships on the sea resounding with music lights are turned on in all the cities of Europe Communists and Nazis shooting it out in the streets of Berlin unemployed pounding the Pavements of New York Women at their dressing tables in a warm room putting mascara on their eyelashes and I am here in this deserted Street and each shot from a window in nool each hiccup of the Wounded being carried away each precise gesture of Women at their toilet answers to my every step my every heartbeat

I don't know what to do in front of the pasile isn't anyone waiting for me at the end of the passage but there is also at the pl duon at the end of the r something which needs me in order to come to life I'm full of Anguish the slightest movement irks me I can't imagine what they want with me yet I must choose I Surrender the passage Gile I shall never know what had been reserved for me the plaston is empty am I mistaken I don't think I could stand it will nothing really happen

I go towards the lights of the cafe Mai I'm lost I don't know whether I'm going in I glan through the large steamed Windows the place is full the air is blue with cigarette smoke and steam rising from damp clothing the cashier is at her counter I know her well she's red-haired as I am she has some sort of Stomach trouble she's rotting quietly under her skirts with a Melancholy smile like the odor of violets given off by a decomposing body a shudder goes through me she she is the one who was waiting for me

she was there standing erect above the counter smiling from the far end of the cafe something returns which helps to link the scattered moments of that Sunday and solder them together and which gives them a meaning I have spent the whole day only to end there with my Nose glued against the window to gaze at this delicate face blossoming against the red curtain all has stopped my life has stopped this wide window this heavy air blue as water this fleshy white plant at the bottom of the water and I myself we form a complete and

static hole I am happy when I found myself on the Boulvard de Laut again nothing was left but bitter regret I said to myself perhaps there is nothing in the world I Cling to as much as this feeling of Adventure but it comes when it pleases it has gone so quickly and how empty I am once it is left does it ironically pay me these short visits in order to show me that I have wasted my life behind me in the town along the great straight streets lit up by the cold Reflection from the lamp

posts a formidable social event was dissolving Sunday was at an End Monday how could I have written that pompous absurd sentence yesterday I was alone but I marched like a regiment descending on a city I do not need to make phrases I write to bring certain circumstances to light beware of literature I must follow the pen without looking for words at heart what disgusts me is having been so Sublime last evening when I was 20 I used to get drunk and then explained that I was a Fellow in the style of deart I knew I

was inflating myself with heroism but I let myself go it pleased me after that the next morning I felt as sick as if I had awakened in a Bed full of vomit I never vomit when I'm drunk but that would really be better yesterday I didn't even have the excuse of drunkenness I got excited like an imbecile I must wash myself clean with abstract thoughts transparent as water this feeling of Adventure Definitely does not come from events I have proved it it's rather the way in which the moments are are link together I think this

is what happens you suddenly feel that time is passing but each instant leads to another this one to another one and so on that each instant is annihilated and that it isn't worthwhile to hold it back etc etc and then you attribute this property to events which appear to you in the instance what belongs to the form you Carry over to the content you talk a lot about this amazing flow of time but you hardly see it you see a woman you think that one day she'll be old Only You Don't See Her grow old

but there are moments when you think you see her grow old and feel yourself growing old with her this is the feeling of Adventure if I remember correctly they call that the irreversibility of time the feeling of Adventure would simply be That of the irreversibility of time but why don't we always have it is it that time is not always irreversible there are moments when you have the impression that you can do what you want go forward or backward that it has no importance and then other times when you might say that the links have

been tightened and in that case it's not a question of missing your turn because you could never start again Ani made the most of time when she Was in jibou and I was in ardan and I used to go and see her for 24 hours she managed to multiply the misunderstandings between us until there were only exactly 60 minutes before before I had to leave 60 minutes just long enough to make you feel the seconds passing one by one I remember one of those terrible evenings I was supposed to leave at midnight we went to

an open air movie we were desperate she as much as I only she led the game at 11:00 at The beginning of the main picture she took my hand and held it in hers without a word I was flooded with a bitter joy and I understood without having to look at my watch that it was 11:00 from that time on we began to feel the minutes passing that time we were leaving each other for 3 months at one moment they threw a completely blank image on the screen the darkness lifted and I saw Ani was

crying then at Midnight she let go of my hand after pressing it violently I got up and left without saying a word to her that was a good job 700 p.m. work today it didn't go too badly I wrote six pages with a certain amount of pleasure the more so since it was a question of abstract considerations on the reign of Paul the after last evening's orgy I stayed tightly buttoned up all day it would not do to appeal to My heart but I felt quite at ease unwinding the mainsprings of the Russian autocracy but

this Hon annoys me he's mysterious in the smallest things what could he have been doing in the Ukraine in 1804 for he tells of his trip in veiled words posterity will judge whether my efforts which no success could recompense did not Merit something better than a brutal denial and all the humiliations which had to be borne in silence when I had locked in my breast The we with all to silence the scoffers once and for all I let myself be caught once he showed himself full of pompous reticence on the subject of a short trip

he took to buil in 1790 I lost a month verifying his assertions finally it came out that he had made the daughter of one of his tenant Farmers pregnant can it be that he is nothing more than a low comedian I feel full of ill will towards This lying little fop Perhaps it is spite I was quite pleased that he lied to others but I would have liked him to make an exception of me I thought we were thick as thieves and that he would finally tell me the truth he told me nothing nothing at

all nothing more than he told Alexander or Louis the 18th whom he duped it matters a lot to me that hon should have been a good fellow undoubtedly a rascal who isn't but a big or little rascal I don't have a high Enough opinion of historical research to lose my time over a dead man whose hand if you were alive I would not Dain to touch what do I know about him you couldn't dream of a better life than his but did he live it if only his letters weren't so formal ah I wish I

had known his look perhaps he had a Charming way of Leaning his head on his shoulder or mischievously placing his long index on his nose or sometimes between two Polished lies having a sudden fit of violence which he stifled immediately but he is dead all that is left of him is A Treatise on strategy and Reflections on virtue I could imagine him so well if I let myself go beneath His Brilliant irony which made so many victims he was simple almost naive he thinks little but at all times by a profound intuition he does exactly

what should be done his rascality is candid spontaneous generous As sincere as his love of virtue and when he betrays his benefactors and Friends he turns back Gravely to the events and draws a moral from them he never thought he had the slightest right over others any more than others over him he considered as unjustified and gratuitous the gifts life gave him he attached himself strongly to everything but detaches himself easily he never wrote his own letters or his Works himself but had them composed by the Public scribe but if this is where it all

leads me I'd be better off writing a novel on the mar de R 11:00 p.m. I dined at the revu the shimo the patron was there and I had to kiss her but it was mainly out of politeness she disgusts me a little she is too white and besides she smells like a newborn child she pressed my head against her breast in a burst of passion she thinks It is the right thing I played distractedly with her sex under the cover and my arm went to sleep I thought about dbon after all why shouldn't I

write a novel on his life I let my arm run along the woman's thigh and suddenly saw a small garden with low wide trees on which immense hairy leaves were hanging ants were running everywhere centipedes and ringworm they were even more horrible animals their bodies were made from a Slice of toast the kind you put under roast pigeons they walked sideways with legs like a crab the larger leaves were black with beasts behind the cactus and the barbery fig trees the Via of the public park pointed a finger at her sex this park smells of

vomit I shouted I didn't to wake you up the woman said but the sheet got folded under my back and besides I have to go down and look after the customers from the Paris Train shove [Music] Tuesday I gave morice baress a spanking we were three soldiers and one of us had a hole in the middle of his face Maurice baress came up to us and said that's fine and he gave each of us a small bouquet of violets I don't know where to put them said the soldier with the hole in his head then

Maurice peress said put them in the hole you have in your head the soldier answered I'm going to stick Them up your ass and we turned over Maurice perz and took his pants off he had a Cardinal's red robe on under his trousers we lifted up the robe and Maurice Perez began to shout look out I've got on trousers with footstraps but we spanked him until he bled and then we took the pedals of violets and Drew the face of deed on his back side for some time now I've been remembering my dreams much too

often Moreover I must toss quite a bit because every morning I find the blankets on the floor today is shov Tuesday but that means very little in buil in the whole town there are hardly 100 people to dress up as I was going down the stairs the land lady called to me there's a letter for you a letter the last one I got was from the curator of the r Public Library last May the land lady leads me to her office and holds out a long thick yellow envelope Anie had written to me I Hadn't

heard from her for 5 years the letter had been sent to my old Paris address it was postmarked the 1st of February I go out I hold the envelope between my fingers I dare not open it Ani hasn't changed her letter paper I wonder if she still buys it at the little stationers in Picadilly I think that she's also kept her qu four her heavy blonde locks she didn't want to cut she must struggle patiently in front of mirrors to save her face it isn't Vanity or fear of growing old she wants to stay as

she is just as she is perhaps this is what I liked best in her this austere loyalty to her most insignificant features The Firm letters of the address written in Violet Ink she hasn't changed her ink either still shine a little miss how I love to read my name on envelopes in a Mist I've recaptured one of her Smiles I can see her eyes her inclined head whenever I sat down she would come And plant herself in front of me smiling she stood half a head higher than I she grasped my shoulders and shook me

with outstretched arms the envelope is heavy it must have at least six pages in it my old concierge has scrolled hieroglyphics over this lovely writing Hotel pritan bille these small letters do not shine when I open the letter my disillusion makes me 6 years younger I don't know how Annie manages To fill up her envelopes there's never anything inside that sentence I said it a 100 times during the Spring of 1924 struggling as today to extract a piece of paper folded in four from its lining the lining is a splendor dark green with gold stars

you'd think it was a heavy piece of starched cloth it alone makes 3/4 of the envelope weight Anie had written in pencil I am passing through Paris in a few days come and see me at The hotel desp on February 20th please she added I beg you above the line and joined it to to see me in a curious spiral I must see you Annie in meches in 10 years when I went back in the evening I sometimes used to find a note on my bed I want to see you right away I used to

run and would open the door for me her eyebrows raised looking surprised she had nothing more to tell me she was even a little irritated that I had come I'll go she may refuse to see me or they may tell me at the desk No One by that name is stopping here I don't believe she'd do that only she could write me a week from now and tell me she's changed her mind and to make it some other time people are at work this is a flat and stale shove Tuesday the rud mutil smells strongly

of damp wood as it does every time it's going to rain I don't like these queer days the movies have Maes The school children have a vacation there is a vague feeling of holiday in the air which never ceases to attract attention but disappears as soon as you notice it I'm undoubtedly going to see any but I can't say that the idea makes me exactly joyous I have felt ever since I got her letter luckily it is noon I'm not hungry but I'm going to eat to pass the time I go to camil's In the

Rudi it's a quiet place they serve sauerkraut or coule all night people go there for supper after the theater policemen send Travelers there who arrive late at night and are hungry eight marble tables a leather bench runs along the walls two mirrors eaten Away by rust spots the panes of the two windows and the door are frosted glass the counter is in a recess in the back there's also a room on the side but I've Never been in it it is reserved for couples give me a hem omelet the waitress an enormous girl with red

cheeks can ever keep herself from giggling when she speaks to a man I'm afraid I can't do you want a potato omelette the hams locked up the patron is the only one who cuts it I order a culle the Patron's name name is Camille a hard man the waitress goes off I alone in this dark old room there is a letter from Ani in my dispatch case a false Shame keeps me from reading it again I try to remember the phrases one by one my dear Anam I smile certainly not and he certainly did not

write my dear Anam 6 years ago we just separated by mutual agreement I decided to leave for Tokyo I wrote her a few few words I could no longer call her my dear love in all innocence I began My Dear Annie I admire your cheek she answered I have never been and am not your Dear Annie and I must ask you to believe that You are not my dear Anan if you don't know what to call me don't call me anything it's better that way I take her letter from my dispatch case she did not

write my dear Anan nor was there anything further at the end of the letter I must see you Annie nothing that could give me any indication of her feelings I can't complain I recognize her love of perfection there she always wanted to Have perfect moments if the time was not convenient she took no more interest in anything her eyes became lifeless she dragged along lazily like a great awkward girl or else she would pick a quarrel with me you blow your nose solemnly like a Bourgeois and you cough very carefully in your handkerchief it was

better not to answer just wait Suddenly at some signal which escapes me now she shuddered her fine languishing features hardened and she Began her aunt's work she had an imperious and Charming magic she hummed between her teeth looking all around and straightened herself up smiling came to shake me by the shoulders and for a few instants seemed to give orders to the objects that surrounded her she explained to me in a low rapid voice what she expected of me listen do you want to make an effort or don't you you were so stupid the last

time don't you see how beautiful this Moment could be look at the sky look at the color of the sun and the carpet I've got my green dress on and my face isn't made up I'm quite pale go back go and sit in the shadow you understand what you have to do come on how stupid you are speak to me I felt that the success of the Enterprise was in my hands the moment had obscure meaning which had to be trimmed and perfected certain motions had to be made certain words spoken I Staggered under the

weight of my responsibility I stared and saw nothing I struggled in the midst of rights which a KN invented on the spot and tore them to shreds with my strong arms at those times she hated me certainly I would go to see her I still respect and love her with all my heart I hope that someone else has had better luck and skill in the game of perfect moments your damned hair spoils everything she said what can you do with The red head she smiled first I lost the memory of her eyes then the memory

of her long body I kept her smile as long as possible and then finally lost that 3 years ago just now Brusly as I was taking the letter from the land lady's hands it came back to me I thought I saw Anie smiling I tried to refresh my memory I need to feel all the tenderness that an inspires it is there this tenderness it is near me only asking to be born but the smile does not return it Is finished I remain dry and empty a man comes in shivering Miss B he sits down without

taking off his greenish Overcoat he rubs his long hands clasping and unclasping his fingers what will you have he gives a start his eyes look worried give me a bear and water the waitress does not move in the glass her face seems to sleep her eyes are indeed open but they are only slits that's the way she is she's never In a hurry to wait on customers she always takes a moment to dream over their orders she must allow herself the pleasure of imagining I believe she's thinking about the bottle she's going to take from

above the counter the white label and red letters the thick black syrup she's going to pour out it's a little as though she were drinking it herself I slip an's letter back into my dispatch case she has done what she Could I cannot reach the woman who took it in her hands folded and put it in the envelope is it possible even to think of someone in the past as long as we loved each other we never allowed the meanest of our instance the smallest grief to be detached and forgotten Left Behind sounds smells nuances

of light even though the thoughts we never told each other we carried them all away and they remained alive even now they have the power to Give us joy and pain not a memory an implacable Torrid love without Shadow Without Escape Without Shelter three years rolled into one that is why we parted we did not have enough strength to bear this burden and then when an left me all of a sudden all at once the three years crumbled into the past I didn't even suffer I felt emptied out then time began to flow again and

The Emptiness grew larger then in Saigon when I decided to go back to France all That was still left strange faces places keys on the banks of long rivers all was wiped out now my past is nothing more than an enormous vacuum my present this waitress in the black blouse dreaming near the counter this man it seems as though I have learned all I know of life in books the Palaces of benarus the Terrace of the leper King the temples of java with their great broken steps are reflected in my eyes for an instant but

they have remained There on the spot the Tramway that passes in front of the hotel pritan in the evening does not catch the reflection of the neon sign board it Flames up for an instant then goes on with black windows this little man has not stopped looking at me he bothers me he tries to give himself importance the waitress has finally decided to serve him she raises her great black arm lazily reaches the bottle and brings it to him with a glass There you are Miss Miss asil he says with her bity she pours without

answering all of a sudden he takes his finger from his nose places both hands flat on the table he throws his head back and his eyes shine he says in a cold voice poor girl the waitress gives a start and I start too he has an indefinable expression perhaps one of Amazement as if it were someone else who had spoken all three of us are uncomfortable the fat waitress Recovers first she has no imagination she measures M shei with dignity she knows quite well that one hand alone would be enough to tear him from his

seat and throw him out and what makes you think I'm a poor girl he hesitates he looks taken back then he laughs his face crumples up into a thousand wrinkles he makes vague gestures with his wrist she's annoyed it was just to say something I didn't mean to offend but she turns her back on him And goes behind the counter she's really offended he laughs again you know that just slipped out are you cross she's cross with me he says addressing himself vaguely to me I turned my head away he raises his glass a little

but he's not thinking about drinking he blinks his eyes looking surprised and intimidated he looks as if you were trying to remember something the waitress is sitting at the counter she picks up her sewing everything is silent Again but it isn't the same silence it's raining tapping lightly against the frosted glass windows if there are any more masked children in the street the rain is going to spoil their cardboard masks the waitress turns on the lights it is hardly 2:00 but the sky is all black she can't see to sew soft glow people are in

their houses they've undoubtedly turned on the lights too they read they watch the sky from the window for them it means something Different they've aged differently they live in the midst of legacies gifts each piece of furniture holds a memory clocks medallions portraits shells paper weights screens Shaws they have closets full of bottles stuffs old clothes newspapers they've kept everything the past is a landlord's luxury where shall I keep mine you don't put your past in your pocket you have to have a house I have only my body a man entirely alone with his lonely

body Cannot indulge in memories they pass through him I shouldn't complain all I wanted was to be tree the little man stirs and size he all wrapped in his Overcoat but from time to time he straightens up and puts on a huy look he has no past either looking closely he would undoubtedly find in a cousin's house a photograph showing him at a wedding with a wing collar stiff shirt and a slight young man's mustache of myself I don't think that even that is Left here he is looking at me again this time he's going

to speak to me and I feel all taught inside there is no sympathy between us we are all alike that's all he is alone as I am but more sunken into Solitude than I he must be waiting for his own nausea or something of that sort now there are still people who recognize me who see me and think he's one of us so what does he want he must know that we can do nothing for one another the Families are in their houses in the midst of their memories and here we are two Wanderers without

memory if he were suddenly to stand up and speak to me I'd jump into the air the door opens with a great to-do it is Dr RI good day everybody he comes in ferocious and suspicious swaying swaying a little on his long legs which can barely support his body I see him often on Sundays at the Bra but he doesn't know me he's built like the old monitors of jeanville arms like thighs a chest measurement of 110 and he can't stand up straight Z my little he trots over to the coat rack to hang up

his wide felt hat on the peg the waitress has put away her sewing and comes without hurrying sleepwalking to help the doctor out of his raincoat what will you have doctor he studies her Gravely that's what I call a Handsome masculine face worn furrowed by life and passions but the doctor has understood life mastered his passions I really don't know what I want he says in a deep voice he's dropped onto the bench opposite me he wipes his forehead he feels at ease as soon as he gets off his feet his great eyes black and

imperious are intimidating I'll have I'll have oh Calvados the waitress without making a move studies this enormous pitted face She is dreamy the little man raises his head with a smile of relief and it is true this Colossus has freed us something horrible was going to catch us I breathe freely we are among men now well is that calvado coming the waitress gives a start and leaves he has stretched out his Stout arms and grasped the table at both ends Miss Shi is joyful he would like to catch the doctor's eye but he swings his

legs and shifts about in the bench in vain he's So thin that he makes no noise the waitress brings the Calvados with a nod of her head she points out the little man to the doctor Dr Ro slowly turns he can't move his neck so it's you you old swine he shouts aren't you dead yet he addresses the waitress you let people like that in here he stares at the little man ferociously a direct look which puts everything in place here explains he's crazy as a loon that's that he doesn't Even take the trouble to

let on that he's joking he knows that the loony won't be angry but he's going to smile and there it is the man Smiles with humility a crazy Lon he relaxes he feels protected against himself nothing will happen to him today I am reassured too a crazy old loon so that was it that was all the doctor laughs he gives me an engaging conspiratorial glance because of my size undoubtedly and besides I Have a clean shirt on he wants to let me in on his joke I do not laugh I do not respond to his

advances then without stopping to laugh he turns the terrible fire of his eyes on me we look at each other in silence for several seconds he sizes me up looking at me with half closed eyes up and down he play faes me in the crazy loon category in the category still he is the one who turns his face away allows himself to deflate Before one lone wretch without social importance it isn't worth talking about you can forget it right away he rolls a cigarette and lights it then stays motionless with his eyes hard and staring

like an old man's the fine wrinkles he has all of them horizontal ones running across his forehead crow's feet bitter lines at Each corner of the mouth without counting the yellow cords depending from his chin there's a lucky man as soon as you perceive him you can Tell he must have suffered that he is someone who has lived he deserves his face for he has never for one instant lost an occasion of utilizing his past to the best of his ability he stuffed it full used his experience on women and children exploited them M Shi

is probably happier than he has ever been he has a gape with admiration he drinks his bur in small mouthfuls and swells his cheeks out with it the doctor knew how to take him the doctor wasn't the One to let himself be hypnotized by an old mad man on the verge of having his fit one good blow a few rough lashing words that's what they need the doctor has experience he is a professional inexperience doctors priests magistrates and army officers know men through and through as if they had made them I am ashamed from Miss

shil we are on the same side we should have stood up against them but he left me he went over to theirs he honestly believes in Experience not in his not in mine in Dr Ro's a little while ago M shei felt queer he felt lonely now he knows that there are others like him many others Dr Ro has met them he could tell M Shield the case history of each one of them and tell him how they ended up Miss shei is simply a case and lets himself be brought back easily to the accepted

ideas how I would like to tell him he's being deceived that he is the butt of the Important experienced professionals they have dragged out their life in stuper and semi sleep they've married hastily out of impatience they've made children at random they have met other men in cafes at weddings and funerals sometimes caught in the tide they've struggled against it without understanding what was happening to them all that has happened around them has eluded them long obscure shapes events from afar brushed by them rapidly and When they turned to look all had vanished and then

around 40 they Christen their small obstinacion they begin to simulate slot machines put a coin in the leftand slot and you get Tails wrapped in silver paper put a coin in the slot on the right and you get precious bits of advice that stick to your teeth like caramels as far as that goes I too could have myself invited to people's houses and they'd say among themselves that I Was a vo yes the muhammadans squat to pass water instead of Urgot Hindu midwives use ground glass and cowdung in Borneo when a woman has her period

she spends three days and nights on the roof of her house in Venice I saw burials in gondolas Holy Week festivals in Seville I saw the passion play at obaro naturally that's just a small sample of all I know I could lean back in a chair and begin Amusement do you know jilava Madam it's a curious little town in Moravia where I stayed in 1924 and the judge who has seen so many cases would add at the end of my story how true it is Miss how human it is I had a case just like

that at the beginning of my career it was in 1902 I was Deputy judge in LMO but I was bothered too much by that when I was young yeah I didn't belong to a professional family they're also amateurs they're secretaries office Workers shopkeepers people who listen to others in cafes around 40 they feel swollen with an experience they can't get rid of luckily they've made children on whom they can pass it off they would like to make us believe that their past is not lost that their memories are condensed gently transformed into wisdom convenient past

p panded out of a pocket little guilt books full of fine sayings believe me I'm telling you from experience all I know I've learned from Life has life taken charge of their thoughts they explain the new by the old and the old they explain by the older still like those historians who turn a Lenin into a Russian robs Pierre and a Robespierre into a French Cromwell when all is said and done they have never understood anything at all you can imagine a morose eye ESS behind their importance they see the long parade of pretenses they

yawn they think there's nothing new Under the Sun crazy as a Loon and Dr Ro vaguely recalls other crazy loons not remembering any one of them in particular now nothing Miss shei can do will surprise us because he's a crazy loon he is not one he is afraid what is he afraid of when you want to understand something you stand in front of it alone without help all the past in the world is of no use then it Disappears and what you wanted to understand disappears with it General ideas are more flattering and then professionals

and even amateurs always end up by being right their wisdom prompts them to make the least possible noise to live as little as possible to let themselves be forgotten their best stories are about the rash and the original who were chastised yes that's how it happens and no one will say the contrary perhaps M shi's Conscience is not easy perhaps he tells himself he wouldn't be there if he had heeded his father's advice or his Elder sisters the doctor has the right to speak he is not wasted his life he has known how to make

himself useful he rises calm and Powerful Above This Flats him and jets him he is a rock Dr Ro has finished his Calvados his great body relaxes and his eyelids droop heavily for the first time I see his face without the eyes like a cardboard Mask the kind they're selling in the shops today his cheeks have a horrid pink color the truth stares me in the face this man is going to die soon he surely knows he need only look in the glass each day he looks a little more like the corpse who have become

that's what their experience leads to that's why I tell myself so often that they smell of death it is their last defense the doctor would like to believe he would like to hide out the Stark reality That he is alone without gain without a past with an intelligence which is clouded a body which is disintegrating for this reason he is carefully built up furnished and padded his nightmare compensation he says he's making progress as he Vacuums in his thoughts moments when everything spins round in his head it's because his judgment no longer has the impulse

of youth he no longer understands what he reads in Books it's because he's so far away from books now he can't make love anymore but he's made love in the past having made love is much better than still making it looking back he Compares Ponders and this terrible Corpse's face to be able to stand the sight of it in the glass He makes himself believe that the lessons of experience are Graven on it the doctor turns his head a little his eyelids are half open and he watches me with the red eyes of sleep I

smile at Him I would like this smile to reveal all that he is trying to hide from himself that would give him a jolt if he could say to himself there's someone who knows I'm going to die but his eyelids droop he sleeps I leave letting Miss shei watch over his Slumber the rain has stopped the air is mild the sky slowly rolls up fine black images it is more than enough to frame a perfect moment to reflect these images and he would cause dark little tides to Be borne in our hearts I don't know

how to take advantage of the occasion I walk at random calm and empty under this wasted Sky [Music] Wednesday I must not be afraid Thursday four pages written then a long moment of Happiness must not think too much about the value of History we run the risk of being disgusted with it must not forget that Doon now represents the Only justification for my existence a week from today I'm going to see Annie Friday the fog was so thick on the boulevard de la redut that I thought it wise to stick close to the walls of

the Kazar on my right the headlights of cars chased a misty light before them and it was impossible to see the end of the pavement there were people around me I sometimes heard the sound of their steps Or the low hum of their voices but I saw no one once a woman's face took shape somewhere at the height of my shoulder but the fog engulfed it immediately another time someone brushed by me breathing very heavily I didn't know where I was going I was was too absorbed you had to go ahead with caution feel the

ground with the end of your foot and even stretch your hands ahead of you I got no pleasure from this exercise yet I wasn't thinking about going back I was Caught finally after half an hour I noticed a bluish vapor in the distance using this as a guide I soon arrived at the edge of a great glow in the center piercing the fog with its lights I recognized the cafe Mai the cafe Mai has 12 electric lights but only two of them were on one above the counter the other on the ceiling the only waiter

there pushed me forcibly into a dark corner this way Miss I'm cleaning up he had on a jacket without Vest or collar with a white and violet striped shirt he was yawning looking at me sourly running his fingers through his hair black coffee and rolls he rubbed his eyes without answering and went away I was up to my eyes in shad Shadow an icy dirty Shadow the radiator was surely not working I was not alone a woman with a waxy complexion was sitting opposite me and her hands trembled unceasingly sometimes smoothing a blouse Sometimes straightening

her black hat she was with a big blonde man eating a bio without saying a word the silence weighed on me I wanted to light my pipe but I would have felt uncomfortable attracting their attention by striking the match the telephone Bell Rings the hands stopped they stayed clutching at the blouse the waiter took his time he calmly finished sweeping before going to take off the receiver hello is that Miss Jos good morning Mr Jos yes Mr Jos the patron isn't here yes he should be down yes but with a fog like this he generally

comes down about 8 yes Mr Jos I'll tell him Goodbye Mr Jos fog weigh in the windows like a heavy curtain of gray velvet a face pressed against the pain for an instant disappeared the woman said plaintively tie up my shoe for me it isn't untied the man said without looking she grew agitated her hands moved along her Blouse and over her neck like large spiders yes yes do up my shoe he bent down looking cross and lightly touched her foot under the table it's done she smiled with satisfaction the man called the waiter how

much do I owe you how many the waiter asked I'd lowered my eyes so as not to seem to stare at them after a few instants I heard a creaking and saw the Hem of a skirt and two shoes stained with dry mud appear the Man's Shoes followed polished and pointed they Came towards me stopped and turned sideways he was putting on his coat at that moment a hand at the end of a stiff arm moved downwards hases ated a moment and scratched at the skirt ready the man asked the hand opened and touched a

large splash of mud on the right shoe then disappeared he had picked up a suitcase near the coat rack they went out I saw them swallowed up in the fog they're on the stage the waiter told me as he brought me coffee they play the Onra at the C palas the woman blindfolds herself and tells the name and age of people in the audience they're leaving today because it's Friday and the program changes he went to get a plate of rolls from the table the people had just left don't bother I didn't feel inclined to

eat those rules I have to turn off the light two lights for One customer at 9:00 in the morning the patron would give me Hell Shadow floods the cafe a feeble illumination spattered with gray and brown falls in the upper Windows I'd like to see Miss fcel I hadn't seen the old woman come in a gust of cold air made me shiver Miss fcel hasn't come down yet Madame flon sent me she went on she isn't well she won't be in today Madame flon is the cashier the redhaired girl this weather the old woman said

is bad for her stomach the waiter put on an important Air it's the fog he answered Miss fcll is the same trouble I'm surprised he isn't done yet somebody telephoned for him usually he's down at 8 mechanically the old woman looked at the ceiling is he up there yes that's his room in a dragging voice as if she were talking to herself the old woman said suppose he's dead well the waiter's face showed Lively indignation well I never suppose you were dead this thought brushed by me just the kind of idea you get on foggy

Days the old woman left I should have done the same it was cold cold and dark the fog filtered in under the door it was going to rise slowly and penetrate everything I could have found light and warmth at the library again a face came and pressed against the window it grimaced you just wait the waiter said angrily and ran out the face disappeared I was alone I reproached myself bitterly for leaving my room the fog would have filled it by this time I would be afraid To go back behind the the cashier's table in

the shadow something cracked it came from the private staircase was the manager coming down at last no there was no one the steps were cracking by themselves Miss fcel was still sleeping or else he was dead up there above my head found dead in bed one foggy morning subheading in the cafe customers went on eating without suspecting but was he still in bed hadn't he fallen out dragging the sheets With bumping his head against the floor I Know M fcel very well he sometimes asks after my health a big Jolly fellow with a carefully combed

beard if he is dead it's from a stroke he will be the color of eggplant with his tongue hanging out of his mouth the beard in the air the neck Violet under the Frizzle of hair the private stairways lost in darkness I can hardly make out the nle poost the shadow would have to be Crossed the stairs would creep Creek above I would find the door of the room the body is there over my head I would turn the switch I would touch his warm skin to see I can't stand anymore I get up if

the waiter catches me on the stairs I'll tell him I heard a noise the waiter came in suddenly breathless he shouted he Advanced towards me that's two Franks I heard a noise up there I told him it's about time yes but I think Something's wrong it sounded like choking and then there was a thud it sounded quite natural in the dark Cafe with the fog behind the windows I shall never forget his eyes you ought to go up and see I added slightly oh no he said then I'm afraid he'd give me hell what time

is it 10 if he isn't down here by 10:30 I'll go up I took a step towards the door you're going you aren't going to stay no did it sound like a death rattle I don't know I told Him as I walked out maybe just because I was thinking about it the fog had lifted a little I hurried towards the rout I longed for its lights it was a disappointment but there was light certainly dripping down the store windows but it wasn't a gay light it was all white because of the fog and rained down

on your shoulders a lot of people about especially women Maids Char women Ladies as well the kind who say I do my own buying it's Safer they sniffed at the window displays and finally went in I stopped in front of Julian's pork butcher shop through the glass from time to time I could see a hand designing the truffled pigs feet in the sausages then a fat blond girl bent over her bosom showing and picked up a piece of dead flesh between her fingers in his room 5 minutes from there miss fcel was dead I looked

around me for support a refuge from my thoughts there Was none little by little the fog lifted but some disquieting thing stayed behind in the streets perhaps not a real Menace it was pale transparent but it was that which finally frightened me I leaned my forehead against the window I noticed a dark red drop on the mayonnaise of a stuffed egg it was BL the red on the yellow made me sick at my stomach suddenly I had a vision someone had fallen face down and was bleeding in The dishes the egg had rolled in blood

the slice of tomato which crowned it had come off and Fallen flat red on red the mayonnaise had run a little a pool of yellow cream which divided the trickle of blood into two arms this is really too silly I must pull myself together I'm going to work in the library work I knew perfectly well I shouldn't write a line another day wasted crossing the park I saw a great blue Cape motionless on the bench where I usually sit there's Someone at least who isn't cold when I entered the reading room the self-taught man was

just coming out he threw himself on me I have to thank you miss your photographs have allowed me to spend many Unforgettable hours I had a ray of hope when I saw him it might be easier to get through this day together but with a self-taught man you only appear to be two he wrapped on an in quto volume it was a history of religion Miss no one was better Qualified than n safier to attempt this vast synthesis isn't that true he seemed weary and his hands were trembling you look ill I said ah Miss

I should think so something abominable has happened to me the guardian came towards us a peevish little corsac with mustaches like a drum major he w for whole hours among the tables clacking his heels and winry spits in his handkerchiefs and dries them on the stove the self-taught man came close enough to breathe in my Face I won't tell you anything in front of this man he said in confidence if you would miss would what he blushed and his lips swayed gracefully miss miss all right I'll lay my cards on the table will you do

me the honor of lunching with me on Wednesday with pleasure I had as much desire to eat with him as I had to hang myself I'm so glad the self-taught man said he added rapidly I'll pick you up at your hotel if you like then disappeared Afraid undoubtedly that I would change my mind if he gave me time it was 11:30 I worked until quter 2 poor work I had a book in my hands but my thoughts returned incessantly to the cafe mle had Miss fcel come down by now at heart I didn't believe he

was dead and this was precisely what irritated me it was a floating idea which I could neither persuade myself to believe or disbelieve the corin's shoes creaked on the floor several times he came and Stood in front of me as though he wanted to talk to me but he changed his mind and went away the last readers left around 1:00 I wasn't hungry above all I didn't want to leave I worked a moment more than started up I felt shrouded in silence I raised my head I was alone the Corsican must have gone down to

his wife who was the concierge of the library I wanted to hear the sound of his Footsteps just then I heard a piece of coal fall in the stove fog had filled the room not the real fog that had gone a long time ago but the other the one the streets were still full of which came out of the walls and Pavements the inconsistent of inanimate objects the books were still there arranged in alphabetical order on the shelves with their brown and black backs and their labels UPF 7996 for public use French literature or UPN

for public use natural science but how can I explain it usually powerful and squat along with the stove the green lamps the wide Windows the ladders they Dam up the future as long as you stay between these walls whatever happens must happen on the right or the left of the stove sonini himself could come in carrying his head in his hands and he would still have to enter on the right walk between The shelves devoted to French literature and the table reserved for women readers and if he doesn't touch the ground if he floats 10

in above the floor his bleeding neck will just be at the level of the third shelf of books thus these objects serve at least to fix the limits of probability today they fixed nothing at all it seemed that their very existence was subject to doubt that they had the greatest difficulty in passing from one Instant to the next I held the book I was reading tightly in my hands but the most violent Sensations went dead nothing seemed true I felt surrounded by cardboard scenery which could quickly be removed the world was waiting holding its breath

making itself small it was waiting for its convulsion its GS IA just like Miss the other day I got up I could no longer keep my place in the midst of these unnatural objects I went to the window and glanced out at The skull of impetus I murmured anything can happen anything but evidently it would be nothing horrible such as humans might invent impetus was not going to start dancing on his pedestal it would be something else entirely frightened I looked at these unstable beings which in an hour in minute were perhaps going to crumble

yes I was there living in the midst of these books full of knowledge describing the immutable forms of the animal species Explaining that the right quantity of energy is kept integral in the universe I was there standing in front of a window whose pains had a definite refraction index but what feeble barriers I suppose it is out of laziness that the world is the same day after day today it seemed to want to change and then anything anything could happen I had no time to lose the cafe mabl Affair was at the root of this

uneasiness I must go back there see Miss Fcel alive touch his beard or his hands if need be then perhaps I would be free I seized my overcoat and threw it around my shoulders I fled crossing the public gardens I saw once more the man in the blue Cape he had the same ghastly white face with two Scarlet ears sticking out on either side the cafe mably sparkled in the distance this time the 12 lights must have been lit I hurried I had to get it over first I glanced in through the big window the

place was deserted The cashier was not there nor the waiter nor M fcel I had to make a great effort to go in I did not sit down I shouted waiter no one answered an empty Cup on a table a lump of sugar on the saucer anyone here an Overcoat hung from a peg magazines were piled up in Black cardboard boxes on a low table I was on the alert for the slightest sound holding my breath the private stairway creaked slightly I heard a fog horn outside I walked out Backwards my eyes never leaving the

stairway I know customers are rare at 2 in the afternoon Mr fcel had influenza he must have sent the waiter out on an errand maybe to get a doctor yes but I needed to see Miss fcel at the R I turned back I studied the garish deserted Cafe with disgust the blinds on the second floor were drawn a real Panic took hold of me I didn't know where I was going I ran along the docks turned into the deserted streets in the BVO District the houses watched my flight with her mournful eyes I repeated with

anguish where shall I go where shall I go anything can happen sometimes my heart pounding I made a sudden writeout turn what was happening behind my back maybe it would start behind me and when I would turn around suddenly it would be too late as long as I could stare at things nothing would happen I looked at them as much as I could Pavements houses gas lights my eyes went rapidly from one to the other to catch them unawares stopped them in the midst of their metamorphosis they didn't look too natural but I told told

myself forcibly this is a Gaslight this is a drinking fountain and I Tred to reduce them to their everyday aspect by the power of my gaze several times I came across barriers in my path the cafe Deon the bar de la marine I stopped hesitated in Front of their pink net curtains perhaps these snug places had been spared perhaps they still held a bit of yesterday's World isolated forgotten but I would have to push the door open and enter I didn't dare I went on doors of houses frightened me especially I was afraid they would

open of themselves I ended by walking in the middle of the street I suddenly came out in the K Band fishing smacks and small Yachts I put my foot on a ring set in the stone Here far from houses far from doors I would have a moment of respit a cork was floating on the calm black speckled water and under the the water you haven't thought what could be under the water a monster a giant carop sunk in the mud a dozen pairs of claws or fins laboring slowly in the Slime the monster Rises at

the bottom of the water I went near watching every Eddie in undulation the cork stayed immobile among the black spots then I heard voices it was time I Turned and began my race again I caught up with two men who were talking in the r castillon at the sound of footsteps they started violently and both turned round I saw their worried Eyes Upon me then behind me to see if something else was coming were they like me were they too afraid we looked at each other in passing a little more than we would have spoken

but the looks suddenly expressed Defiance on a day like this you don't Speak to just anyone I found myself breathless on the ru the die was cast I was going back to the library take a novel and try to read going along the park railing I noticed the man in the cape he was still there in the deserted Park his nose had grown as red as his ears I was going to push open the gate but the expression on his face stopped me he wrinkled his eyes and half grinned stupidly and affectedly but at the

same time he Stared Straight Ahead at something I could not see with a look so hard and with such intense but I suddenly turned back opposite to him one foot raised her mouth half opened a little girl of about 10 fascinated was watching him pulling nervously at her scarf her pointed face thrusting forward the man was smiling to himself like someone about to play a good joke suddenly he stood up his hands in the pockets of his cloak which fell To his feet he took two steps forward his eyes rolling I thought he was going

to fall but he kept on smiling sleep I suddenly understood the cloak I wanted to stop it it would have been enough to cough or open the gate but in my turn I was fascinated by the little girl's face her features with drawn with fear and her heart must have been beating horribly yet I could also read something powerful and Wicked on that rat-like face it was not curiosity but rather a Sort of assured expectation I felt impotent I was outside on the edge of the park on the edge of their little drama but they

were riveted one to the other by the Obscure power of their desires they made a pair together I held my breath I wanted to see what expression would come on that elfish face when the man behind my back would spread out the folds of his cloak but suddenly freed the little girl Shook her head and began to run the man in the cloak had seen me that was what stopped him for a second he stayed Motionless in the middle of the path then went off his back hunched the cloak flapped against his calves I pushed

open the gate and was next to him in one bound hey I shouted he began to tremble a great Menace sways over the city I said politely and went on I went into a reading room and took the chus the par from a table I tried to Absorb myself in Reading to find a refuge in the lurid Italy of St sometimes I succeeded in spurts in short hallucinations then fell back again into this day of Menace opposite an old man who was clearing his throat a young man dreaming leaning back in his chair hours passed

the windows had turned black there were four of us not counting the corsac who was in the office stamping the latest Acquisitions of the library there was the little old Man the blonde young man a girl working for her degree and I from time to time one of us would look up glance rapidly and scornfully at the other three as if you were afraid of them once the old man started to laugh I saw the girl tremble from head to foot but I had deciphered from upside down the title of the book she was reading

it was a light novel 10 minutes to 7: I suddenly realized that the library closed at 7 once again I was going to be cast out Into the town where would I go what would I do the old man had finished his book but he did not leave he tapped his finger on the table with sharp regular beats closing time soon the corsan said the young man gave a start and shot me a quick glance the girl turned toward the corsan then picked up her book again and seemed to dive into it closing time said

the corsan 5 minutes later the old man shook his head undecidedly the girl pushed her book away without getting up Up the corsin looked baffled he took a few hesitating steps then turned out the switch the lamps went out at the reading tables only the center bulb stayed lighted do we have to leave the old man asked quietly the young man got up slowly and regretfully it was a question of who was going to take the longer time putting on his coat when I left the girl was still seated one hand flat on her book

below the door gaped into the the night the young man who was walking Ahead turned slowly went down the stairs and crossed the vestibule he stopped for an instant on the threshold and threw himself into the night and disappeared at the bottom of the stairs I looked up after a moment the old man left the reading room buttoning his Overcoat by the time he had gone down three steps I took strength closed my eyes and dived out I felt a cool little caress on my face someone was with Ling In the distance I raised my

eyes it was raining a soft calm rain the square was lighted peacefully by four lamposts a provincial Square in the Rain the young man was going further away taking great strides and whistling I wanted to shout to the others who did not yet know that they could leave without fear but the Menace had passed the old man appeared at the door he scratched his cheek embarrassed then smiled broadly and opened his Umbrella Saturday morning a Charming sun with a light mist which promises a clear day I had breakfast at the cafe mapley Madame floron the

cashier smiled graciously at me I called to her from my table is Miss fcel sick yes a bad go of flu he'll have to stay in bed a few days his daughter came from dunker this morning she's going to stay here and take care of him for the first time since I got her letter I am definitely happy at the idea Of seeing Anie again what has she been doing for six years shall we feel strange when we see each other an he doesn't know what it is to feel awkward she'll greet me as if

I'd left her yesterday I hope I sh make a fool of myself and put her off at the beginning I must remember not to offer her my hand when I get there she hates that how many days shall we stay together perhaps I could bring her back to bouille it would be enough if she would live here only For a few hours if she would sleep at the hotel prania for one night it would never be the same after that I shouldn't be afraid anymore afternoon when I paid my first visit to the bouille museum

last year I was struck by the portrait of Olivier Bine faulty proportion perspective I couldn't tell but something bothered me this Deputy didn't seem Plum on his canvas I've gone back several times Since then but my worry persisted I didn't want to admit that bud had made a mistake in his drawing but this afternoon turning the pages of an old collection of the Sati bua a black male sheet whose owner was accused of high treason during the War I caught a glimpse of the truth I went to the museum as soon as I left the

library I crossed the shadow of the vestibule quickly my steps made no sound of the black and white tiles a whole race of Plaster folk twisted their arms in passing I glanced through two great openings and saw cracked vases plates and a blue and yellow Sater on a pedestal it was the Bernard pal room devoted to Ceramics and minor Arts but Ceramics do not amuse me a lady and gentleman in morning were respectively contemplating the baked objects above the entrance to the main hall the [Music] salon someone had hung undoubtedly only A little while ago

a large canvas which I did not recognize it was signed by rishard seon and entitled The bachelor's death it was a gift of the state naked to the waist his body little green like that of a dead man The Bachelor was lying on an unmade bed the disorder of sheets and blankets attested to a long death Agony I smiled thinking about Miss fcel but he wasn't alone his daughter was taking care of him on the canvas the maid his Mistress her features marked by Vice had already opened a bureau drawer and was counting the money

an Open Door disclosed a man in a cap a cigarette stuck to his lower lip waiting in the shadows near the wall a cat lapped milk indifferently this man had lived only for himself by a harsh and well-deserved punishment no one had come to his bedside to close his eyes this painting gave me a last warning there was still time I could retrace my steps but if I Were to turn a deaf ear I had been forewarned more than 150 portraits were hanging on the wall of the room I was about to enter with the

exception of a few young people prematurely taken from their families and the Mother Superior of a boarding school none of those painted had died a bachelor none of them had died childless or intested none without the last rights their souls had peace that day is on other days with God in the world these men had slipped Quietly into death to claim their share of eternal life to which they had a right for they had a right to everything to life to work to wealth to command to respect and finally to immortality I took a moment

to compose myself and entered a guardian was sleeping near the window a pale light falling from the windows made Flex the paintings nothing alive in this great rectangular room except a cat who was frightened at my Approach and fled but I Felt the looks of 150 pairs of eyes on me all who belonged to the buil elite between 1875 and 1910 were there men and women scrupulously painted by renal and B the men had built s Cil de la in 1882 they founded the Federation of ship owners and Merchants of buil to group in one

powerful entity all men of Good Will to cooperate in National Recovery and to hold in check the parties of disorder they made buil the best equipped port in France for unloading Coal and wood the lening and widening of the keys were their work they extended the marine terminal and by constant dredging brought the low tide depth of Anchorage to 10.7 m in 20 years The Catch of the fishing fleet which was 5,000 Barrels in 1869 Rose thanks to them to 18,000 barrels stopping at no sacrifice to assist the Improvement of the best elements in the

working class they created on their own initiative various centers for Technical And professional study which prospered under their lofty protection they broke the famous shipping strike in 1898 and gave their sons to their country in 1914 the women worthy helpmates of these strugglers founded most of the town's charitable and philanthropic organizations but above all they were wives and mothers they raised fine children taught them rights and duties religion and a respect for the Traditions which made France Great the general complexion of these portraits bordered on dark brown Lively colors had been banished out of decency

however in the portraits of rala who showed a partiality towards old men the snowy hair and side whiskers showed up well against deep black backgrounds he excelled in painting hands B who was a little weak on Theory sacrificed the hands somewhat but the collars shown like white marble it was very hot the guardian was Snoring gently I glanced around the walls I saw hands and eyes here and there a spot of light obliterated a face as I began walking towards the portrait of Olivier bline something held me back from the molding pom the merchant cast

a bright look down on me he was standing there his head thrown slightly back in one hand he held a top hat and gloves against his Pearl gray trousers I could not keep myself from a certain admiration I saw nothing mediocre in him Nothing which allowed of criticism small feet slender hands wide wrestlers shoulders a hint of Whimsy it courteously offered visitors the UN wrinkled purity of his face the shadow of a smile played on the lips but his gray eyes were not smiling he must have been about 50 but he was as young and

fresh as a man of 30 he was beautiful I gave up finding fault with him but he did not let go of me I read a calm and implacable judgment in his eyes Then I realized what separated us what I thought about him could not reach him it was psychology the kind they write about in books but his judgment went through me like a sword and questioned my very right to exist and it was true I had always realized it I hadn't the right to exist I had appeared by chance I existed like a stone

a plant or a microbe my life put out feelers towards small Pleasures in every direction sometimes it sent out Vague signals at other times I felt nothing more than a harmless buzzing but for this handsome faultless man now dead for JE pacom son of the bom of the defense National it had been an entirely different matter the beating of his heart and the mute Rumblings of his organs in his case assumed the form of rights to be instantly obeyed for 60 years without a halt he had used his right to live the slightest doubt had

never crossed those magnificent gray Eyes pcom had never made a mistake he had always done his duty all his duty his duty as son husband father leader he never weakened in his demands for his due as a child the right to be well brought up and United Family the right to inherit a spotless name a prosperous business as a husband the right to be cared for surrounded with tender affection as a father the right to be venerated as a leader the right to be obeyed without a murmur for a right is Nothing more than the

other aspect of Duty his extraordinary success today the pom are the richest family in buil could never have surprised him he never told himself he was happy and while he was enjoying himself he must have done so with moderation saying this is my refreshment thus pleasure itself also becoming a right lost its aggressive futility on the left a little above his bluish gray hair I noticed a shelf of books the bindings were handsome they Were surely Classics every evening before going to sleep pom undoubtedly read over a few pages of his old Mont or one

of horus's ODS in the Latin text sometimes too he must have read a contemporary work to keep up to date B he knew Baris and bour he would put his book down after a moment he would smile his look losing its admirable circumspection became almost dreamy he would say how easy and how difficult it is to do one's Duty he had never looked any further into himself he was a leader there were other leaders on the walls nothing but leaders he was a leader this tall vertiges man in his armchair his white waist coat was

a happy reminder of his silver hair attention to Artistry was not excluded from these portraits which were above all painted for moral edification and exactitude was pushed to the furthest limit of scruple his long slender hand Was placed on the head of a small boy an open book rested on his knees which were covered by a rug but his look had strayed into the distance he was seeing all those things which were invisible to young people his name was written on a plaque of gilded wood below his portrait his name must have been pacom or

par or shenu I'd not thought of looking for his close relatives for this child for himself he was simply the grandfather soon if he deemed the time fitting to Instruct his grandson about the scope of his future duties he would speak of himself in the third person you're going to promise your grandfather to be good my boy to work hard next year perhaps grandfather won't be here anymore next year in the evening of his life he scattered his indulgent goodness over everyone even if he were to see me though to him I was transparent I

would find Grace in his eyes he would think That I too had grandparents once he demanded nothing one has no more desires at that age nothing except for people to lower their voices slightly when he entered nothing except a touch of tenderness and smiling respect when he passed nothing except for his daughter-in-law to say sometimes father is amazing he's younger than all of us nothing except to be the only one able to calm the temper of his grandson by putting his hands on the boy's head and Saying grandfather knows how to take care of all

those troubles nothing except for his son several times a year to come asking his advice on delicate matters finally nothing more than to feel himself Serene appeased and infinitely wise the old gentleman's hand barely weighed on his grandson's curls it was almost a benedic what could he be thinking of of his honorable past which conferred on him The right to speak on everything and to have the last word on everything I had not gone far enough the other day experience was much more than a defense against death it was a right the right of old

men General auy hanging against the molding with his great saber was a leader another leader presid e well read friend of impas his face was long and symmetrical with an interminable chin punctuated just Under the lip by a goatee he thrust out his jaw slightly with the amused air of being distinguished of rolling out an objection on principles like a faint belch he dreamed he held a quill pen he was taking his relaxation too by heaven and it was writing verses but he had the Eagle Eye of a leader and soldiers I was in the

center of the room the sinosure of all those grave eyes I was neither father nor grandfather not even a Husband I did not have a vote I hardly paid any taxes I could not boast of being a taxpayer an elector nor even of having the humble right to honor which 20 years of obedience confers on an employee my existence began to worry me seriously was I not a simple Spectre hey I suddenly told myself I am the soldier it really made me laugh a portly quinquagenarian politely returned a handsome smile renoda had Painted him with

loving care no touch was too tender for those fleshy finely chiseled little ears especially for the hands long nervous with loose fingers the hands of a real Savant or artist his face was unknown to me I must have pass before the canvas often without noticing it I went up to it and read peram born in buil in 1849 professor at the E de Med Paris Dr Wakefield had spoken to me of him once in my life I met a great man Remy per I took courses under him during the winter of 1904 you know I

spent two years in Paris studying obstetrics he made me realize what it was to be a leader he had it in him I swear he did he electrified us he could have led us to the ends of the Earth and with all that he was a gentleman he had an immense Fortune gave a good part of it to help poor students this is how this Prince of science the first time I heard him Spoken of inspired strong feelings in me now I stood before him and he was smiling at me what intelligence and affability in

his smile his plump body rested leisurely in the hollow of a great leather armchair this unpretentious wise man put people at their ease immediately if it hadn't been for the spirit in his look he would have taken him for just anybody it did not take long to guess the reason for his Prestige he was loved Because he understood everything you could tell him anything he looked a little like renan all in all with more distinction he was one of those who say socialists will I go further than they do when you followed him down this

perilous Road you were soon to leave behind not without a shiver family country private property rights and the most sacred values you you even doubted for a second the right of the Bourgeois Elite to command another step and Suddenly everything was reestablished miraculously founded on solid reason good old reasons you turned around and saw the Socialists already far behind you all tiny waving their handkerchiefs and shouting wait for us through Wakefield I knew what the master liked as he himself said with a smile to deliver souls to prolong his own he surrounded himself with youth

he often received young men of good family who were studying medicine Wakefield had Often been to his house for luncheon after the meal they retired to the smoking room the master treated these students who were at their first cigarettes like men he offered them cigars he stretched out on a Divan and discoursed at Great length his eyes half closed surrounded by an eager crowd of disciples he evoked memories told stories drawing a sharp and profound moral from each and if there were among those well-bred young men one who seemed Especially headstrong Paran would take a

special interest in him he made him speak listen to him attentively gave him ideas and subjects for meditation it usually happened that one day the young man full of generous ideas excited by the hostility of his parents weary of thinking alone his hand against every man asked to visit the master privately and stammering with shyness confided in him his most intimate thoughts his indignations his hopes Baran embraced Him he said I understand you I understood you from the first day they talked on pan went far still farther so far that the young men followed him

with great difficulty after a few conversations of this sort one could detect a favorable change in the young rebel he saw clearly within himself he learned to know the Deep bonds which attached him to his family to his environment at last he understood the admirable role of the elite and finally As if by Magic found himself once again enlightened repentant he cured more souls concluded Wakefield then I've cured bodies Ry per smiled affably at me he hesitated tried to understand my position to turn gently and Lead Me Back To The Fold but I wasn't afraid

of him I was no lamb I looked at his fine forehead calm and un wrinkled his small belly his hand set flat against his knee I returned his smile and left Jean peran His brother president of the Sab leaned both hands on the edge of a table loaded with papers his whole attitude signified to the visitor that the audience was over his look was extraordinary although abstracted yet shining with high Endeavor his dazzling eyes devoured his whole face behind this glow I noticed the thin tight lips of a Mystic it's odd I said he looks

like Remy per I turned to the Great Master examining him in the light of this Resemblance a sense of aridity and desolation a family resemblance took possession of his face I went back to Jean per this man was one ideed nothing more was left in him but bones dead flesh and pure right a real case of possession I thought once right has taken hold of a man exorcism cannot drive it out Jean Paran had consecrated his whole life to thinking about his right nothing else instead of the slight headache I feel Coming on each time

I visit a museum he would have felt the painful right of having his temples cared for it never did to make him think too much or attract his attention to unpleasant realities to his possible death to the sufferings of others undoubtedly on his death bed at that moment when ever since Socrates it has been proper to pronounce certain elevated words he told his wife as one of my uncles told his who had watched beside him for 12 nights I do Not thank you terz you have only done your duty when a man gets that far

you have to take your hat off to him his eyes which I stared at in wonderment indicated that I must leave I did not leave I was resolutely Indiscreet I knew as a result of studying at Great length a certain portrait of Philip II in the library of the escurial that when one is confronted with a face sparkling with righteousness after after a moment the sparkle dies away and only an ashy Residue remains this residue interests me botan put up a good fight but suddenly his look burned out the picture grew dim what was left

blind eyes the thin mouth of a dead snake and cheeks the pale round cheeks of a child they spread over the canvas the employees of the Sab never suspected it they never stayed in paran's office long enough when they went in they came up against that terrible look like a wall from behind it the cheeks were in Shelter white and Flappy how long did it take his wife to notice them 2 years 5 years one day I imagine as her husband was sleeping on his side with a ray of light caressing his nose or else

on a hot day while he was having trouble with his digestion sunk into an armchair his eyes half closed with a splash of sunlight on his cheek she dared to look him in the face all this flesh appeared to her defenseless blo slobbering vaguely Obscene from that day on Madame Paran undoubtedly took command I took a few steps backward and in one glance covered all these great personages bakom presid both parans and general o they had worn top hats every Sunday on the rout they met Madame G the mayor's wife Who Saw s Cecil in

a dream they greeted her with great ceremonious salutes The Secret of which is now lost they had been painted very minutely yet under the brush their Countenances had been stripped of the mysterious weakness of men's faces their faces even the least powerful were clear as porcelain in vain I looked for some relation they could bear to trees and animals to thoughts of Earth or water in life they evidently did not require it but at the moment of passing on to posterity they had confided themselves to a renowned painter in order that he should discreetly carry

out on their faces the system of dredgings drillings And irrigations by which all around buil they had transformed the sea in the land thus with the help of renoda and borura they had enslaved nature without themselves and within themselves what these somber canvases offered to me was man reconsidered by man with as Soul adorned the finest conquest of man a bouquet of the rights of man and citizen without mental reservation I admired the reign of Man a woman and a man came in they were dressed in black and tried to make themselves inconspicuous they stopped

Enchanted on the doorstep and the man automatically took off his hat ah the lady said deeply touched the gentleman quickly regained his s he said respectfully it's a whole era yes the lady said this is in the time of my grandmother they took a few steps and met the look of Jean per the woman stood Gaping but the man was not proud he looked humble he must have known intimidating looks and brief interviews well he tugged gently at the woman's arm look at that one he said Ry peran smile had always put the humble at

ease the woman went forward and read studiously portrait of Remy per born in muil in 1849 professor of the UL Medan Paris Baroda Paran of the Academy of Science her husband said Baroda of The Institute That's History the lady nodded then Looked at the Great Master how handsome he is she said how intelligent he looks the husband made an expensive gesture they're the ones who made buil what it is he said with simplicity it's right to have had them put here alt together the woman said tenderly we were three soldiers maneuvering in this immense Hall

the husband who laughed with respect silently shot me a troubled glance and Suddenly stopped laughing a sweet joy flooded over me well I was right it was really too funny the woman came near me Gaston she said suddenly bold come here the husband came towards us look she went on he has a street named after him Olivier bline you know the little street that goes up to kouto just before you get toille after an instant she added he doesn't look exactly easy no some people must have found him a pretty awkward Customer these words were

addressed to me the man watching me out of the corner of his eye began to laugh softly this time with a conceited air a busy body as if he were Olivier B himself Olivier Bine did not laugh he thrust his compact jaw towards us and his Adams Apple jutted out there was a moment of ecstatic silence you'd think he was going to move the lady said the husband explained obligingly he was a great cotton Merchant then he went into Politics he was a deputy I knew it two years ago I had looked him up in

the DI de Grand de by AB I copied the article BL Olivier marcial son of the late Olivier marcial BL born and died in buil 1849 to 1908 studied law in Paris passed bar examinations in 1872 deeply impressed by the commune Insurrection which forced him as it did so many other parisians to take refuge in versailes under the protection of the National Assembly he swore at an age when young men think only of pleasure to consecrate his life to the re establishment of order he kept his word immediately after his return to our city he

founded the famous club de which every evening for many years United the principal businessmen and ship owners of buil this aristocratic Circle which one might jokingly describe as being more restricted than the Jockey Club exerted until 1908 a salutary influence on the Destiny of our great commercial port in 1880 Olivier Bine married Marie Luise pum younger daughter of shal pom businessman C pacom and at the death of the latter founded the company of pacom Bin and Son shortly there after he entered actively into politics and placed his candidature before the deputation the country he said

in a celebrated speech is suffering from a most serious malady the ruling class no longer Wants to Rule and who then shall Rule gentlemen if those who by their heredity their education their experience have been rendered most fit for the exercising of power turned from it in resignation or weariness I've often said to rule is not a right of the elite it is a primary duty of the elite gentlemen I beg of you let us restore the principle of authority elected first on October 4th 1885 he was constantly reelected thereafter of an energetic and viral

Eloquence he delivered many brilliant speeches he was in Paris in 1898 when the terrible strike broke out he returned to buil immediately and became the guiding Spirit of the resistance he took the initiative of negotiating with the strikers these negotiations inspired by an open-minded attempt at conciliation were interrupted by the small Uprising in Jil we know that the timely intervention of the military restored calm to our Minds the premature death of his son okav who had entered the AOL poly technique at a very early age and of whom he wanted to make a leader was

a terrible blow to Olivier Bine he was never to recover from it and died 2 years later in February 1908 collected speeches moral forces 1894 out of print the duty to punish 1900 all speeches in this collection were given appr propo of the dfus case out of print willp power 1902 out of Print after his death his last speeches in a few letters to intimate friends were collected under the title labor impros plon 1910 iconography there is an excellent portrait of him by ban at the bouille Museum an excellent portrait ented Olivier BV had a

small black mustache and his Olive tinted face somewhat resembled Maurice Perez the two men had surely met each other they used to sit on the same benches but the deputy from Bouille did not have the nonchalance of the president of the league of Patriots he was stiff as a poker and sprang at you from his canvas like a Jack In The Box his eyes sparkled the pupil was black the cornea reddish he pursed up his fleshy little mouth and held his right hand hand against his breast how this portrait annoyed me sometimes blena seemed too

large or too small to me but today I knew what to look for I had learned the truth turning over the pages Of the Sati boua the issue of six November 1905 was devoted entirely to bvin he was pictured on the cover tiny hanging onto the man of oldc and the caption read the Lion's L everything was explained from the first page on Olivier B was only 5T tall they mocked his small stature and squeaking voice which more than once threw the whole chamber into hysterics they accused him of putting rubber lifts in his shoes

on the other Hand Madame B N pom was a horse here we can well say the paper added that his other half is his double 5T tall yes bordur with jealous care had surrounded him with objects which ran no risk of diminishing him a hassk a low armchair a Shelf with a few little books a small Persian table only he had given him the same stature as his neighbor Jean peran and both canvases had the same dimensions the result was that the small table in one picture was Almost as large as the immense table in

the other and that the hassk would have almost reached paran's shoulder the I instinctively made a comparison between the two my discomfort had come from that now I wanted to laugh 5 feet tall if I had wanted to talk to Bia I would have had to lean over or bend my knees I was no longer surprised that he held up his nose so impetuously the destiny of these small men is always working itself out a few inches above their Head admirable power of art from this shrill voiced mannequin nothing would pass on to posterity save

a threatening face a superb gesture and the bloodshot eyes of a bull the student terrorized by the commune the deputy a bad-tempered that was what death had taken but thanks to B the president of the club de the orator of moral forces was Immortal oh poor little people the woman stifled a cry under the portrait of Octav blin son of the late a Pious hand had traced these words died at the AOL poly technique in 1904 he's dead just like the arel boy he looked intelligent how hard it must have been for his poor mother

they make them work too hard in those big schools the brain works while you're asleep I like those two cornered hats it looks so stylish is that what you call a caer no they have ceries at sansia in my turn I studied the Prematurely dead poly technician his wax complexion and well-groomed mustache would have been enough to turn one's idea to approaching death he had foreseen his fate as well a certain resignation could be read in his clear farseeing eyes but at the same time he carried his head high in this uniform he represented the

French army to marcelos Eris Manis a cut rose a dead Pol technician what could be Sadder I quietly followed the long Gallery greeting in passing without stopping the distinguished faces which peered from the Shadows Miss bosar president of the Board of Trade Miss fabii president of the board of directors of the autonomous Port of bouille Miss bong businessman with his family Miss Honan mayor of bouille Miss duen born in bouille French ambassador to the United States and a poet as well an unknown dressed like a prefect mother S Marie Luise Mother Superior of the orphan

Asylum Miss and Madame tereson Miss tiu General president of the trades Council m b principal administrator of the inscription marim m b Minette Le dror Madame pan B himself painted by his son Pierre bord clear cold looks fine features thin lips Miss bong was economical and patient mother Sam Marie Louise of an industrial piety Miss tius guron was as hard on himself as on Others Madame teres struggled without weakening against deep illness her infinitely weary mouth told unceasingly of her suffering but this Pious woman had never said it hurts she took the upper hand she

made up bills of fair and presided over welfare societies sometimes she would slowly close her eyes in the middle of a sentence and all traces of life would leave her face this fainting spell lasted hardly more than a second shortly Afterward Madame tereson would reopen her eyes and finish her sentence and in the workroom they whispered poor Madame tereson she never complains I'd crossed the whole length of the salon B Roda I turned back farewell beautiful lies elegant in your painted little sanctuaries goodbye lovely lies our pride and reason for existing goodbye you bastards Monday

and not writing my book on rbon Anymore it's finished I can't write any more of it what am I going to do with my life it was 3:00 I was sitting at my table I had set beside me the file of letters I stole in Moscow I was writing care had been taken to spread the most Sinister rumors M Debon must have let himself be taken in by this maneuver since he wrote to his nephew on the 13th of September that he had just made his will the Marquee was there waiting for the moment when

I should Have definitely installed him in a niche in history I'd loaned him my life I felt him like a glow in the pit of my stomach I suddenly realized an objection someone might raise hon was far from being frank with his nephew whom he wanted to use if the plot failed as his defense witness with Paul the first it was only too possible that he had made up the story of the will to make himself appear completely innocent this was a minor objection it Wouldn't hold water but it was enough to plunge me into

a brown study suddenly I saw the fat waitress at Camille's again the Haggard face of Miss Shi the room in which I'd so clearly felt I was forgotten forsaken in the present wearily I told myself how can I who have not the strength to hold to my own past hope to save the past of someone else I picked up my pen and tried to get back to work I was up to my neck in these Reflections on the past the Present the world I asked only one thing to be allowed to finish my book in

peace but as my eyes fell on the pad of white sheets I was struck by its look and I stayed pen raised studying this dazzling paper so hard and farseeing so present the letters I just inscribed on it were not even dry yet and already they belonged to the Past care had been taken to spread the most Sinister rumors I thought out the Sentence at first it had been a small part of myself now it was inscribed on the paper it took sides against me I didn't recognize it anymore I couldn't conceive it again it

was there in front of me in vain for me to trace some sign of its origin anyone could have written it but I I wasn't sure I wrote it the letters glistened no longer they were dry that had disappeared too nothing was left but their ephemeral Spark I looked anxiously Around me the present nothing but the present Furniture light and solid rooted in its present a table a bed a closet with a mirror and me the true nature of the present revealed itself it was what exists and all that was not present did not exist

the past did not exist not at all not in things not even in my thoughts it is true that I had realized a long time ago that mine had escaped me but until then I believed that it had Simply gone out of my range for me the past was only a pensioning off it was another way of existing a state of vacation and inaction each event when it had played its part put itself politely into a box and became an honorary event we have so much difficulty imagining nothingness now I knew things are entirely what

they appear to be and behind them there is nothing this thought absorbed me a few minutes longer then I violently moved my shoulders to Free myself and pulled the pad of paper towards me that he had just made his will an immense sickness fluttered over me suddenly and the pen fell from my hand spluttering ink what happened did I have the nausea no it wasn't that the room had its paternal everyday look the table hardly seemed heavier and more solid to me nor my pen more compact only miss the B had just died for the

second time he was still there inside me a little while ago quiet and warm and I Could feel him stir from time to time he was quite alive More Alive to me than the self-taught man or the woman at the railwayman's rendevu he undoubtedly had his whims he could stay several days without showing himself but often on a mysteriously fine day like a weather prophet he put his nose out I could see his pale face and bluish cheek and even when he didn't show himself he was await on my heart and I felt full up

nothing more was left now no more than On these traces of dry ink is left the memory of their freshness it was my fault I had spoken the only words I should not have said I had said that the past did not exist and suddenly noisess M Debon had returned to his nothingness I held his letters in my hands felt felt them with a kind of Despair he is the one I said he is the one who made these marks one by one he leaned on this paper he put his hand against the sheets to

prevent them from Turning under his pen too late these words had no more sense nothing existed but a bundle of Yellow Pages which I clasped in my hands it is true there was that complicated Affair Bon's nephew assassinated by the sar's police in 1810 his papers confiscated and taken to the secret archives then 110 years later deposited by the Soviets who acted for him in the State Library where I stole them in 1923 but that didn't seem true and I had No real memory of a theft I had committed myself it would not have been

difficult to find a hundred more credible stories to explain the presence of these papers in my room all would seem Hollow and ephemeral in the face of these scored sheets rather than count on them to put me in communication with roon I would do better to take up spirit trapping oron was no more no more at all if there were still a few bones left of him they existed for themselves Independently they were nothing more than a little phosphate and calcium carbonate with salts and water I made one last attempt I repeated the words of

Madame Deon Le by which I usually evoked the Marquee his small wrinkled countenance clean and sharp all pitted with small pox in which there was a singular malice which struck the eye no matter whatever effort he made to dissemble it his face appeared to me with docility his pointed Nose his bluish cheeks his smile I could shape his features at will perhaps with even greater ease than before only it was nothing more than an image in me a fiction I sighed let myself lean back against the chair with an intolerable sense of loss 4:00 strikes

I've been sitting here an hour my arms hanging it's beginning to get dark apart from that nothing in this room has changed the white paper is still on the table next to the pen and Inil but I shall never write again on this page already started never again following the rud de mutil and the buv deut shall I turn into the library to look through their archives I want to get up and go out do anything no matter what to Stupify myself but if I move one finger if I don't stay Absolut still I know

what will happen I don't want that to happen to me yet it will happen too soon as it is I don't move mechanically I read the Paragraph I left unfinished on the pad of paper care had been taken to spread the most Sinister rumors M theau must have let himself be caught by this maneuver since he wrote to his nephew on the 13th of September that he had just made his will the great hon Affair was over like a great passion I must find something else a few years ago in Shanghai in mercier's office I

suddenly woke from a dream then I had another dream I lived In the Zars Court an old palaces so cold that the icles formed above the doors in Winter today I wake up in front of a pad of white paper the Torches the ice carnivals the uniforms the lovely cool shoulders have disappeared something has stay behind in this warm room something I don't want to see M zon was my partner he needed me in order to exist and I needed him so as not to feel my existence I furnished the raw material the material I

had to Resell which I didn't know what to do with existence my existence his part was to have an imposing appearance he stood in front of me took up my life to lay bear his own to me I did not notice that I existed anymore I no longer existed in myself but in him I ate for him breathed for him each of my movements had its sense outside there just in front of me in him I no longer saw my hand writing letters on the paper not even the sentence I had Written but behind beyond

the paper I saw the Marquee who had claimed this gesture as his own the gesture which prolonged Consolidated his existence I was only a means of making him live he was my reason for living he had delivered me from myself what shall I do now above all not move not move ah I could not prevent this movement of the shoulders the thing which was waiting was on the alert it has pounced on me it flows through me I Am filled with it it's nothing I am the thing existence liberated detached floods over me I exist

I exist it's sweet so sweet so slow and light you'd think it floated all by itself it stirs it brushes by me melts and vanishes gently gently there is bubbling water in my mouth I swallow it slides down my throat it caresses me and now it comes up again into my mouth forever I shall have a little pool of whitish water in my mouth lying low Grazing my tongue and this pool is still me and the tongue and the throat is me I see my hand spread out on the table it lives it is me

it opens the fingers open and point it is lying on its back it shows me its fat belly it looks like an animal turned upside down the fingers are the paws I amuse myself by moving them very rapidly like the claws of a crab which has fallen on its back the crab is dead the claws draw up and close over the belly of my hand I see the Nails the only part of me that doesn't live and once more my hand turns over spreads out flat on its stomach offers me the sight of its back

a silvery back shining a little like a fish except for the red hairs and the knuckles I feel my hand I am these two beasts struggling at the end of my arms my hand scratches one of its paws with the nail of the other paw I feel it's weight on the table which is not me it's long long this impression of weight it doesn't Pass there is no reason for it to pass it becomes intolerable I draw back my hand and put it in my pocket but immediately I feel the warmth of my thigh through

the stuff I pull my hand out of my pocket and let it hang against the back of the chair now I feel a weight at the end of my arm it pulls a little softly insinuatingly it exists I don't insist no matter where I put it it will go on existing I can't suppress it nor can I suppress the rest Of my body the sweaty warmth which soils my shirt nor all this warm obesity which turns lazily as if someone were stirring it with a spoon nor all all the sensations going on inside going coming

mounting from my side to my armpit or quietly vegetating from morning to night in their usual corner I jump up it would be much better if I could only stop thinking thoughts are the dullest things duller than flesh they stretch out there's no end to them And they leave a funny taste in the mouth then there are words inside the thoughts unfinished words a sketchy sentence which constantly returns I have to fear I ex dead m is dead I am not ex it goes It goes and there's no end to it it's worse than the

rest because I feel responsible and have complicity in it for example this sort of painful rumination I exist I am the one who keeps it up I the body lives by itself once it has begun but thought I I'm the one who continues it unrolls it I exist how Serpentine is this feeling of existing I unwinded slowly if I could keep myself from thinking I try and succeed my head seems to fill with smoke and then it starts again smoke not to think don't want to think I think I don't want to think I mustn't

think that I don't want to think because that's still a thought will there never be an end to it my thought is me that's why I can't stop I exist because I think and I Can't stop myself from thinking at this very moment it's frightful if I exist it is because I am horrified at existing I am the one who pulls myself from the nothingness to which I Aspire the hatred the disgust of everything there are as many ways to make myself exist to thrust myself into existence thoughts are born at the back of me

like sudden giddiness I feel them being born by behind my head if I yield they're going to come around in front of me Between my eyes and I always yield the thought grows and grows and there it is immense filling me completely and renewing my existence my saliva is sugary my body warm I feel neutral my knife is on the table I open it why not it would be a change in any case I put my left hand on the pad and stabbed the knife into the palm the movement was too nervous the blade slipped

the wound is superficial it bleeds then what what has changed Still I watch with satisfaction on the white paper across the lines I wrote a little while ago this tiny pool of blood which has at last stopped being me four lines on a white paper a spot of blood that makes a beautiful memory I must write beneath it today I gave up writing my book on the Marque de rbon am I going to take care of my hand I wonder I watch the small monotonous trickle of blood now it is coagulating it's over my skin

looks Rusty around the cut Under the Skin the only thing left is a small sensation exactly like the others perhaps even more insipid halfast 5 strikes I get up my cold shirt sticks to my flesh I go out why well because I have no reason not to even if I stay even if I Crouch silently in a corner I shall not forget myself I will be there my weight on the floor I am I buy a newspaper along my way Sensational news little Lucien's body Has been found smell of ink the paper crumples between my

fingers the criminal is fled the child was raped they found her body the fingers clawing at the mud I roll the paper into a bowl my fingers clutching at the paper smell of ink my God how strongly things exist today little Lucien was raped strangled her body still exists her flesh bleeding she no longer exists her hands she no longer exists the houses I walk between the houses I'm between the Houses and the pavement the pavement under my feet exists the houses close around me as the water closes over me on the paper the shape

of a swan I am I am I exist I think therefore I am I am because I think why do I think I don't want to think anymore I am because I think that I don't want to be I think that I because I flee the criminal has fled the violated body she felt this other flesh pushing into her own I there I Raped a soft criminal desire to rape catches me from behind gently behind the ears the ears race behind me the red hair it is red on my head the wet grass red grass

is it still I hold the paper existence against existence things exist one against the other I drop the paper the House Springs up it exists in front of me along the wall I am passing along the wall I exist in front of the wall one step the wall exists in front of me one two behind me a finger scratching at My pants scratches scratches and pulls at the little finger soiled with mud mud on my finger which Came From the Muddy Gutter and falls back slowly softly softening scratching less strongly than the fingers of the

little girl the criminal strangled scratching the mud the Earth less strong the finger slide slowly the head Falls first and rolling Embraces my thigh existence is soft and roll Falls and tosses I toss between the houses I am I exist I think therefore I Toss I am existence is a fallen shoot will not fall will fall the finger scratches at the window existence is an imperfection the gentleman the handsome gentleman exists the gentleman feels that he exists no the handsome gentleman who passes proud and gentle as a convolvulus does not feel that he exists Twix

man my cut hand hurts exist exist exist the handsome gentleman exists the Legion of Honor the mustache exists it is all how Happy one must be to be nothing more than a Legion of Honor and a mustache and no one sees the rest he sees the two- pointed ends of his mustache on both sides of the nose I do not think therefore I am a mustache he sees neither his gaunt body nor his big feet if you looked in the crotch of the trousers you would surely discover a pair of little bows he has the

Legion of Honor the bastards have the right to exist I exist because it is my right I Have the right to exist therefore I have the right not to think the finger is raised am I going to caress in the opening of white sheets the white ecstatic flesh which falls back gently touch the blossoming moisture of armpits the elixis and cordiales and fluoresence of Flesh enter into the existence of another into the red mucus with a heavy sweet sweet odor of existence feel myself exist between these soft wet lips the lips red with Pale blood

throbbing lips yawning all wet with existence all wet with clear pus between the wet sugary lips weeping like eyes my body of living flesh which murmurs and turns gently Liquors which turn to cream the flesh which turns turns the sweet sugary water of My Flesh the blood on my hand I suffer in my wounded flesh which turns walks I walk I flee I am a criminal with bleeding flesh bleeding with existence to these walls I'm cold I take a step I'm cold a step I Turn left he turns left he thinks he turns left mad

am I mad he says he's afraid of going mad existence do you see into existence he stops the body stops he thinks he stops where does he come from what is he doing he starts off he is afraid terribly afraid the criminal desire like a fog desire disgust he says he is disgusted with existence is he disgusted wey of being disgusted with existence he runs what does he hope for he runs to flee to Throw himself into the lake he runs the heart the heart beats it is a holiday the heart exists the legs exist

the breath exists they exist running breathing beating all soft all gently breathless leaving me breathless he says he's breathless existence takes my thoughts from behind and gently expands them from behind someone takes me from behind they force me to think from behind therefore to be something behind me breathing in light bubbles of Existence he has a bubble of fog and desire he is pale as death in the glass Ron is dead on H is not dead I'm fainting he says he would like to faint he r he runs like a feret from behind from behind

from behind little Lucien assaulted from behind violated by existence from behind he begs for Mercy he's ashamed of begging for mercy pity help help therefore I exist he goes into the B La Marin the little mirrors of the little brothel he is pale in the little Mirrors of the little brothel the big redhe head who drops onto a bench the gramophone plays exists all spins the gramophone exists the heart beats spin spin Liquors of Life spin jellies sweet syrups of My Flesh sweetness the gramophone when that yellow moon begins to beam every night I dream

My Little Dream The Voice deep and horse suddenly appears and the world vanishes the world of existence a woman in the flesh had This voice she sang in front of a record in her finest get up and they recorded her voice the woman she existed Like Me Like H I don't want to know her but there it is you can't say it exists the Turning record exists the air struck by The Voice which vibrates exists The Voice which made an impression the record existed I who listen I exist all is full existence everywhere dense heavy

and sweet but beyond all this sweetness inaccessible near and so far young Merciless and Serene there is this this rigor Tuesday nothing existed [Music] Wednesday there is a Sunbeam on the paper napkin in the Sunbeam there is a fly dragging himself along stupified sunning himself and rubbing his and tenny one against the other I'm going to do him the favor of squashing him he Does not see this giant finger advancing with the gold hairs shining in the sun don't kill it Miss the self-taught man shouted I did it a favor why am I here and

why shouldn't I be here it is noon I'm waiting for it to be time to sleep fortunately sleep has not fled from me in 4 days I shall see ani again for the moment my soul reason for living and afterwards when Annie leaves me I know what I surreptitiously hope for I hope she will never leave me Yet I should know that Annie would never agree to grow old in front of me I am weak and lonely I need her I would have liked to see her again in my strength an is Without Pity for

stray sheep are you well miss do you feel all right the self-taught man looks at me out of the corner of his eyes laughing he pants a little his mouth open like a dog I admit this morning I was almost glad to see him I needed to talk how glad I am to have you at my Table he says if you're cold we could go and sit next to the stove these gentlemen are leaving soon they asked for the bill someone is taking care of me asking if I'm cold I'm speaking to another man that

hasn't happened to me for years they're leaving do you want to change places the two of lighted cigarettes they leave there they are in the pure air in the sunlight they pass along the wide Windows holding their Hats in both hands they laugh the wind bellies out their overcoats no I don't want to change places what for and then Through the Windows between the white roofs of the bathing cabins I see the sea green compact the self-taught man has taken two rectangles of purple cardboard from his wallet he will soon hand them over over the

counter I decipher on the back of one of them Prix FR FR Leon Kashi the man eing at the round table near the door I recognize him now he often stops at the hotel printania he's a commercial traveler from time to time he looks at me at attentive and smiling but he doesn't see me he is too absorbed in his food on the other side of the counter two squat red-faced men are eating muscles and drinking white wine the smaller who has a thin yellow Mustache is telling a story which makes him laugh he pauses

laughs showing sparkling teeth the other does not laugh his eyes are hard but he often nods his head affirmatively near the window a slight dark complexioned man with distinguished features and fine white hair brushed back reads his paper thoughtfully a leather despatch case is on the bench beside him he drinks vishy water in a moment all these people are going to leave weighted down by food Caressed by the breeze coat Wide Open Face a little flushed their heads Muzzy they will walk along by the ballustrade watching the children on the beach and the ships on

the sea they will go to work I will go nowhere I have no work the self-taught man laughs innocently and the sun plays through his sparse hair would you like to order he hands me the menu I am allowed one or derve either five slices of sausage or radishes or shrimps or a dish of stuffed Celery snails are extra I'll have sausage I tell the waitress he tears the menu from my hands isn't there anything better here are some boronia snails I don't care too much for snails ah what about oyers there four Franks more

the waitress says all right oysters mm moiselle and radishes for me blushing he explains to me I like radishes very much so do I I glance over the list of meats spiced beef tempts me but I know in advance that I shall have chicken the Only extra meat this gentleman will have he says the chicken spiced beef for me he turns the card the wine list is on the back we shall have some wine he says solemnly well the waitress says times have changed you never drank any before I can stand a glass of wine

now and then will you bring us a car of pink onju the self-taught man puts down the menu breaks his bread into small bits and rubs his knife and fork with his napkin he glances at the white-haired Man reading the paper then Smiles at me I usually come here with a book even though it's against doctor's orders one eats too quickly and doesn't chew but I have have a stomach like an ostrich I can swallow anything during the winter of 1917 when I was a prisoner the food was so bad that everyone got ill naturally

I went on the sick list like everybody else but nothing was the matter he had been a prisoner of war this is the first time he mentioned It to me I can't get over it I can't picture him as anything other than the self-taught man where were you a prisoner he doesn't answer he puts down his fork and looks at me with prodigious intensity he's going to tell me his troubles now I remember he said something was wrong in the library I'm all years I'm only too glad to feel pity for other people's troubles that

will make a change I have no troubles I have Money like a capitalist no boss no wife no children I exist that's all and that trouble is so vague so metaphysical that I'm ashamed of it the selftaught man doesn't seem to want to talk what a curious looking gives me it isn't a casual glance but heart- searching the soul of the self-taught man is in his eyes his magnificent Blind Man's eyes where it blooms let mine do the same let it come and stick its nose against the windows they could exchange Greetings I don't want

any communion of souls I haven't fallen so low I draw back but the self-taught man throws his chest out over the table his eyes never leaving mine fortunately the waitress brings him his radishes he drops back in his chair his soul leaves his eyes and he daily begins to eat have you straightened out your troubles he gives a start what troubles Miss he asks nervously you know the other day you told me he blushes Violently he says in a dry voice H yes the other day well it's that cors miss that cors in the library

he hesitates a second time with the obstinate look of a sheep it's really nothing worth bothering you about Miss I don't insist without seeming to he eats with extraordinary speed he has already finished his radishes when the girl brings me the oysters nothing is left on his plate but a heap of radish stalks and a little damp salt outside a young Couple is stopped in front of the menu which a cook and cardboard holds out to them in his left hand he has a frying pan in his right they hesitate the woman is cold she

tucks her chin into her fur collar the man makes up his mind first he opens the door and steps inside to let the woman pass she enters she looks around her amiably and shivers a little it's hot she says Gravely the young man closes the door missam he says the self-taught man turns round with a Pleasant miss you them the other customers do not answer but the distinguished looking gentleman lowers his paper slightly and scrutinizes the new arrivals with a profound look don't bother thank you before the waitress would run up to help him could

make a move the young man had slipped out of his raincoat and place of a morning coat he wears a leather blouse with a zip the waitress a little Disappointed turns to the young woman but once more he is ahead of her and helps the girl out of her coat with gentle precise movements they sit near us one against the other they don't look as if they'd known each other very long the young woman has a weary face pure and a little Sullen she suddenly takes off her hat shakes her black hair and smiles the

self-taught man studies them at Great length with a kindly eye then he turns to me and Winks tenderly as if To say how wonderful they are they are not ugly they're quiet happy at being together happy at being seen together so sometimes when Ani and I went into a restaurant in Picadilly we felt ourselves the objects of admiring attention it annoyed Ani but I must confess that I was somewhat proud Above All Amazed I never had the cleancut look that goes so well with that young man and no one could even say that my ugliness

was touching Only We Were Young Now I am at the age to be touched by the Youth of others but I am not touched the woman has dark gentle eyes the young man's skin as an orange Hue a little leathery and a Charming small obstinate chin they are touching but they also make me a little sick I feel them so far from me the warmth makes them languid they pursue the same dream in their hearts so low so feeble they are comfortable they look with Assurance at the yellow walls the people and they Find the

world pleasant as it is just as it is and each one of them temporarily draws life from the life of the other soon the two of them will make a single life a slow tepid life which will have no sense at all but they won't notice it they look as though they frighten each other finally the young man awkward and Resolute takes the girl's hand with the tips of his fingers she breathes heavily and together they lean over the menu yes they're happy so what the self-taught Man puts on an amused mysterious air I saw

you the day before yesterday where ha he says respectfully teasing he makes me wait for a second then you were coming out of the Museum oh yes I say not the day before yesterday Saturday the day before yesterday I certainly had no heart for running around museums have you seen that famous reproduction in carved wood Oren's attempted Assassination I don't recall it is it possible it's in a little room on the right as you go in it's the work of an insurgent of the commune who lived in buil until the amnesty hiding in an attic

he wanted to go to America but the Harbor Police there were too quick for him an admirable man he spent his spare time carving a Great Oak panel the only tools he had were a pen knife and a nail file he did the delicate Parts with the file the hands and eyes the panel is 5T Long by 3T wide there 70 figures each no larger than a hand without counting the two horses pulling the emperor's carriage and the faces miss the faces made by the file they have a distinct physiognomy a human look Miss if

I may allow myself to say so it is a work worth seeing I don't want to be involved I had simply wanted to see boran's paintings again the self-taught man suddenly grow sad those portraits in The main hall Miss he asks with a trembling smile I understand nothing about painting of course I realize that ban is a great painter I can see he has a certain touch a certain Knack as they say but pleasure m aesthetic pleasure is foreign to me I tell him sympathetically I feel the same way about sculpture ah Miss I too

Alas and about music and about dancing yet I am not without a certain knowledge well it is inconceivable I have seen Young people who don't know half what I know standing in front of a painting seem to take pleasure in it they must be pretending I said to encourage him perhaps the self-taught man dreams for a moment what I regret is not not so much being deprived of a certain taste but rather that a whole branch of human activity is foreign to me yet I'm a man and men have painted those pictures suddenly his tone

changes Miss at one time I ventured to Think that the beautiful was only a question of taste are there not different rules for each epic allow me Miss with surprise I see him draw a black leather notebook from his pocket he goes through it for an instant a lot of blank pages and further on a few lines written in red ink he has turned pale he has set the notebook flat on the tablecloth and spread his huge hand on the open page he coughs with embarrassment sometimes things come to My mind I dare not call

them thoughts it is very curious I'm there I'm reading when suddenly I don't know where it comes from I feel illuminated first I paid no attention and then I resolve to buy a notebook he stops and looks at me he is waiting ah I say miss these maxims are naturally unpolished my instruction is not yet completed he picks up the notebook with Trembling Hands he is deeply moved and there just happens to Be something here about painting I should be very happy if you would allow me to read with pleasure I say he reads no

longer do people believe what the 18th century held to be true why should we still take pleasure in works because they thought them beautiful he looks at me pleadingly what must one think Miss Perhaps it is a paradox I thought to endow my idea with the quality of a Caprice well I I find that very Interesting have you read it anywhere before no of course not really nowhere then miss he says his face growing sad it is because it is not true if it were true someone would already have thought of it wait a minute

I tell him now that I think about it I believe I have read something like that his eyes are shining he takes out his pencil which author he asks me his voice precise oh renan he is in Paradise would you be kind enough to quote the exact passage For me he asks sucking the point of his pencil oh as a matter of fact I read that quite a while ago oh it doesn't matter it doesn't matter he writes renan in his notebook just below his Maxim I have come upon renan I wrote the name in

pencil he explains delighted but this evening I'll go over it in red ink he looks ecstatically at his notebook for a moment and I expect him to read me other maxims but he closes it cautiously and stuffs it back in his pocket he Undoubtedly has decided that this is enough happiness for one time how pleasant it is he says intimately to be able to talk sometimes as now with abandon this as might be supposed puts an end to our languishing conversation a long silence follows the atmosphere of the restaurant has changed since the arrival of

the young couple the two red-faced men are silent they are nonchalantly detailing the young lady's charms the distinguished looking Gentleman has put down his paper and is watching the couple with kindness almost complicity he thinks that old age is wise and youth is beautiful he nods his head with a certain cety he knows quite well that he is still handsome well preserved that with his dark complexion and his slender figure he is still attractive he plays it feeling paternal the waitress's feelings appear simpler she is standing in front of the young people staring at them

Open-mouthed they are speaking quietly they have been served their ordures but they don't touch them listening carefully I can make out snatches of their conversation I understand better what the woman says her voice is Rich and veiled no Jean no why not the young man murmurs with passionate vivacity I told you why that's not a reason a few words Escape me then the young woman makes a Charming LAX gesture I've tried too Often I'm past the age when you can start your life again I'm old you know the young man laughs ironically she goes on

I couldn't stand being deceived you must have confidence in life the young man says the way you are this moment isn't living she sigh I know look at Janette yes she says making a little Grimace well I think what she did was Splendid she had courage you know the young woman says She rather jumped at the opportunity you must know that if ID wanted I could have had a 100 opportunities like that I preferred to wait you were right he says tenderly you were right in waiting for me she laughs in turn great stupid I

didn't say that I don't listen to them anymore they annoy me they're going to sleep together they know it each one knows that the other Knows It But since they are young chased and decent since each one wants to keep His self respect and that of the other since love is a great poetic thing which you must not frighten away several times a week they go to dances and restaurants offering the spectacle of their ritual mechanical dances after all you have to kill time they are young and well-built they have enough to last them another

30 years so they're in no hurry they delay and they are not wrong once they have slept together they will have to find something else to Veil The Enormous Absurdity of their existence still is it absolutely necessary to lie I glance around the room what a comedy all these people sitting there looking serious eating no they aren't eating they are recuperating in order to successfully finish their tasks each one of them has his little personal difficulty which keeps him from noticing that he exists there isn't one of them who doesn't believe himself indispensable to something

or someone Didn't the self-taught man tell me the other day no one better qualified than n to undertake this vast synthesis each one of them does one small thing and no one is better qualified than he to do it no one is better qualified than the commercial traveler over there to sell Swan toothpaste no one is better qualified than that interesting young man to put his hand under his girlfriend's skirts and I am among them and if they look at Me they must think that no one is better qualified than I to do what I'm

doing but I know I don't look like much but I know I exist and that they exist and if I knew how to convince people I'd go and sit down next to that handsome white-haired gentleman and explain to him just what existence means I burst out laughing at the thought of the face he would make the self-taught man looks at me with surprise I'd like to stop but I can't I Laugh until I cry you're are gay M the self-taught man says to me circumspectly I was just thinking I tell him laughing that here we

sit all of us eating and drinking to preserve our precious existence and really there is nothing nothing nothing absolutely no reason for existing the self-taught man becomes serious he makes an effort to understand me I laughed out loud I saw several Faces turn towards me then I regretted having said so much after all that's nobody's business he repeats slowly no reason for existing you undoubtedly mean miss that life is without a goal isn't that what one might call pessimism he thinks for an instant then says gently a few years ago I read a book by

an American Author it was called is life worth living isn't that the question you are asking yourself certainly not that Is not the question I am asking myself but I have no desire to explain his conclusion the self-taught man says consolingly is in favor of voluntary optimism life has a meaning if we choose to give it one one must must First Act throw oneself into some Enterprise then if one reflects the die is already cast one is pledged I don't know what you think about that Miss nothing I say rather I think that that is

Precisely the sort of lie that the commercial traveler the two young people and the man with white hair tell themselves the self-taught man Smiles with a little malice and much solemnity neither is it my opinion I do not think we need look so far to know the direction now life should take ah there is a goal M there is a goal there is Humanity that's right I forgot he was a humanist he remains silent for a moment long enough to make most of his spiced Beef and a whole slice of bread disappear cleanly and inexorably

there are people he has just painted a whole picture of himself this philanthropist yes but he doesn't know how to express himself his soul is in his eyes eyes unquestionably but soul is not enough before when I used to hang around some Parisian humanists I would hear them say a hundred times there are people and it was quite another thing Virant was without equal he would take off his spectacles as if to show himself naked in his man's flesh and stare at me with eloquent eyes with a weary insistent look which seemed to undress me

and drag out my human Essence then he would murmur iously there are people old man there are people giving the there are a sort of awkward power as if his love of people perpetually new and astonished was caught up in its giant Wings the self-taught man's mimicry had Not acquired this smoothness his love for people is naive and barbaric a provincial humanist people I told him people in any case you don't seem to worry about them very much you're always alone always with your nose in a book The self-taught Man clapped his hands and began

to laugh maliciously you're wrong I M allow me to tell you so what an error he pulls himself together for an instant and finishes a discreet Gulp his face is radiant as Dawn behind him the young woman breaks out in a light laugh her friend bends over her whispering in her ear your error is only too natural the self-taught man says I should have told you a long time ago but I am so timid Miss I was waiting for the opportunity here it is I told him politely I think so too I think so too

Miss what I'm about to tell you he stops blushing but perhaps I'm imposing on you I assure him that he isn't he breathes a Sigh of Happiness one does not find men like you every day M man whose breath the vision is joined to so much penetration I've been wanting to speak to you for months explain to you what I have been what I've become his plate is as empty and clean as if it had just been brought to him I suddenly discover next to my plate a small tin dish where a drumstick swims in

a brown gravy it has to be eaten a little while ago I spoke of my captivity in Germany it all Started there before the War I was lonely and didn't realize it I lived with my parents good people but I didn't get on with them when I think of those years how could I have lived that way I was dead Miss and I didn't know it I had a collection of postage stamps he looks at me and interrupts himself miss you are pale you look fatigued I hope I'm not disturbing you you interest me greatly

then the war came and I enlisted without knowing why I spent two years without understanding because life at the front left little time for thoughts and besides the soldiers were too common I was taken prisoner at the end of 1917 since then I've been told that many soldiers recovered their childhood Faith while they were prisoners miss the self-taught man says lowering his eyelids over bloodshot eyes I do not believe in God his existence is beled by science but in the internment camp I Learned to believe in men they bore their fate with courage yes he

says vaguely there was that too besides we were well treated but I wanted to speak of something else the last months of the war they hardly gave us any work to do when it rained they made us go into a big wooden shed about 200 of us all together jammed in tightly they closed the door and left us there pressed one against the other in almost total Darkness he hesitated an instant I don't know how to explain it Miss all those men were there you could hardly see them but you could feel them against you

you could hear the sound of their breathing one of the first times they locked us in the shed the crush was so great that at first I thought I was going to suffocate then suddenly an overwhelming Joy came over me I almost fainted then I felt that I love these men like brothers I wanted to embrace All of them each time I went back there I felt the same Joy I have to eat my chicken which by now must be cold the self-taught man has been silent for a long time and the waitress is waiting

to change the plates that sh took on a sacred character in my eyes sometimes I managed to escape the watchfulness of my guards I slipped into it all alone and there in the shadow the memory of the joys I had known filled me with a sort of ecstasy Hours passed and I did not notice them sometimes I wept I must be sick there is no other way of explaining this terrible Rage which suddenly overwhelms me yes the Rage of a sick man my hands were shaking the blood had rushed to my face and finally my

lips began to tremble all this simply because the chicken was cold I was cold too and that was the worst I mean that inside me I was cold Freezing and had been like that for 36 hours anger passed through me like a whirlwind my conscience effort to react to fight against this lowered temperature caused something like a Tremor to pass through me vain effort undoubtedly for nothing I would have rained down blows and curses on the self-taught man nor the waitress but I should not have been in the spirit of it my rage and fury

struggled to the surface and for a Moment I had the terrible impression of being turned into a block of ice enveloped in fire a kind of omelette surprise this momentary agitation vanished and I heard the self-taught man say every Sunday I used to go to m Miss I have never been a Believer but couldn't one say that the real mystery of the mass is the communion of souls a French chaplain who had only one arm celebrated the mass we had a harmonium we listened standing our heads bare and As the sounds of the harmonium carried

me away I felt myself at one with all the men surrounding me ah miss how I loved those masses even now in memory of them I sometimes go to church on Sunday morning may have a remarkable organist at s Cil you must have often missed that life yes Miss in 1919 the year of my Liberation I spent many miserable months I didn't know what to do with myself I was wasting away whenever I saw men Together I would insert myself into their group it has happened to me he added smiling to follow the funeral procession

of a stranger one day in despair I threw my stamp collection in the fire but I found my vocation really someone advised me Miss I know that I can count on your discretion I am perhaps these are not your ideas but you are so broad-minded I am a Socialist he lowered his eyes and his long lashes trembled I have been a registered member of the Socialist Party sfio since the month of September 1921 that is what I wanted to tell you he's radiant with pride he gazes at me his head thrown back his eyes half

closed mouth open looking like a martyr that's very fine I say that's very fine Miss I knew that you would commend me and how could you blame someone who comes and tells you I have Spent my life in such and such a way I am perfectly happy he spreads his arms and presents his open Palms to me the fingers pointing to the ground as if he were about to receive the Stigmata his eyes are glassy I see a dark pink Mass rolling in his mouth ah I say as long as you're happy happy his look

is disconcerting he raised his eyelids and stares harshly at me you will be able to judge mure before taking this decision I felt myself in a Solitude so frightful that I contemplated suicide what held me back was the idea that no one absolutely no one would be moved by my death that I would be even more alone in death than in life he straightens himself his cheeks swell I no longer Lonely Miss I shall never be so ah you know a lot of people I ask he smiles and I immediately realize my mistake I mean

that I no longer feel alone but naturally miss it is not Necessary for me to be with anyone but I say what about the Socialist section ah I know everybody there but most of them only by name M he says mischievously is one obliged to choose his friend so narrowly all men are my friends when I go to the office in the morning in front of me behind me there are other men going to work I see them if I dared I would smile at them I think that I'm a socialist that all of them

are my life's goal the goal of my Efforts and that they don't know it yet it's a holiday for me miss his eyes questioned me I nod approval but I feel he is a little disappointed that he would like more enthusiasm what can I do is it my fault if in all he tells me I recognize the lack of the genuine article is it my fault if as he speaks I see all the humanists I have known rise up I've known so many of them the radical humanist is the particular friend of Officials the so-called

left humanist main worry is keeping human values belongs to no party because he does not want want to betray the human but his sympathies go towards the humble he consecrates his beautiful classic culture to the humble he's generally a widower with a fine eye always clouded with tears he weeps at anniversaries he also loves cats dogs and all the higher mammals the Communist writer has been loving men since the second 5-year plan He punishes because he loves modest as all strong men he knows how to hide his feelings but he also knows by a look

an inflection of his voice how to recognize behind his Rough and Ready justicial utterances his passion for his Brethren the Catholic humanist the latecomer the Benjamin speaks of men with a marvelous air but a beautiful fairy tale says he is the humble life of a London doand the girl in The Shoe Factory he has chosen the humanism of the Angels he writes forther edification long sad and beautiful novels which frequently win the pre femina those are the principal roles but there are others a swarm of others the humanist philosopher who bends over his brothers like

a wise elder brother was a sense of his responsibilities the humanist who loves men as they are the humanist who loves men as they ought to be the one who Wants to save them with their consent and the one who will save them in spite of themselves the one who wants to create new myths and the one who is satisfied with the old ones the one who loves death in man the one who loves life in man the happy humanist who always has the right word to make people laugh the sober humanist who we meet

especially at funerals or wakes they all hate each other as individuals naturally not as men but the self-taught man Doesn't know it he has locked them up inside himself like cats in a bag and they are tearing each other in pieces without his noticing it he's already looking at me with less confidence don't you feel as I do M gracious under his troubled somewhat spiteful glance I regret disappointing him for a second but he continues amiably I know you have your research your books you serve the same cause in your own way my books my

research the Imbecile he couldn't have made a worse howler that's not why I'm writing at that instant the face of the self-taught man is transformed as if he had centered the enemy I'd never seen that expression on his face before something has died between us feigning surprise he asks but if I'm not being Indiscreet why do you write Miss I don't know just to write he smiles he thinks he has put me Out would you write on a desert island doesn't one always write to be R he gave the this sentence his usual interrogative turn

in reality he is affirming his veneer of gentleness and timidity has peeled off I don't recognize him anymore his features assume an air of heavy obstinacy a wall of sufficiency I still haven't got over my astonishment when I hear him say if someone tells me I write for a certain Social class for a group of friends good luck to them perhaps you write for posterity but m in spite of yourself you write for someone he waits for an answer when it doesn't come he smiles feebly perhaps you are a misanthrop I know what this fallacious

effort at conciliation hides he asks little from me simply to accept a label but it is a trap if I consent the self-taught men wins I'm immediately Turned round reconstituted overtaken for humanism takes possession and melts all human attitudes into one if you oppose him headon you play his game he lives off his opponents there is a race of beings Limited in headstrong who lose to him every time he digests all their violences and worst excesses he makes a white frogy lymph of them he has digested anti-intellectualism manism mysticism pessimism Anarchy and egotism they are

nothing more than Stages unfinished thoughts which find their justification only in him misanthropy also has its place in the concert it is only a dissonance necessary to the harmony of the whole the misanthrope is a man therefore the humanist must be misanthropic to a certain extent but he must be a scientist as well to have learned how to water down his hatred and hate men only to love them better afterwards I don't want to be integrated I don't want my good red blood to go and fatten this lymphatic Beast I will not be fool enough

to call myself anti-humanist I am not a humanist that's all there is to it I believe I tell the self-taught man that one cannot hate a man more than one can love him the self-taught man looks at me pityingly and aloof he murmurs as though he were paying no attention to his words you must love them you must love them whom must you love the people here they too All he turns towards the radiant young couple that's what you must love for a moment he contemplates the man with white hair then his look returns to

me I read a mute question on his face I shake my head no he seems to pity me you don't either I tell him annoyed you don't love them really M would you allow me to differ he has become respectful again respectful to the tip of his toes but in His eyes he has the ironic look of someone who is amusing himself enormously he hates me I should have been wrong to have any feeling for this Maniac I question him in my turn so those two young people behind you you love them he looks at

them again Ponders you want to make me say he begins suspiciously that I love them without knowing them well miss I confess I don't know them unless love is he adds with a foolish Laugh but what do you love I see they are young and I love the youth in them among other things missure he interrupts himself and listens do you understand what they're saying do I understand the young man emboldened by the sympathy which surrounds him tells in a loud voice about a football game his team won against a club from laav last year

he's telling a story I say to the self-taught man ah I can't hear them very well but I Hear the voices the soft voice the grave voice they alternate it's it's so sympathetic only I also hear what they're saying unfortunately well they're playing a comedy really The Comedy of Youth perhaps he asks ironically allow me Miss to find that quite profitable is playing it enough to make one young again I stayed deaf to his irony I continue you turn your back on them what they say escapes you what color is the Woman's hair he is

worried well I he glances quickly at the young couple and regains his Assurance black so you see see what you see that you don't love them you wouldn't recognize them in the street they're only symbols in your eyes you are not at all touched by them you're touched by the Youth of the man the love of man and woman the human voice well doesn't that exist certainly not it doesn't exist neither youth nor maturity nor old age Nor death the face of the self-taught man hard and yellow as a Quin has stiffened into a reproachful

lock jaw nevertheless I keep on just like that old man drinking vishy water there behind you I suppose you love the mature man in him mature man going courageously towards his Decline and who takes care of himself because he doesn't want to let himself go exactly he says definitely and you don't think he's a Bastard he laughs he finds me frivolous he glances quickly at the handsome face framed in white hair but missure admitting that he seems to be what you say how can you judge a man by his face a face M tells nothing

when it is at rest blind humanists this face is so outspoken so Frank but their tender abstract soul will never let itself be touched by the sense of a Face how can you the selftaught man says stop a man say he is this or that who can empty a man who can know the resources of a man empty a man I salute in passing the Catholic humanism from which the self-taught men borrowed this formula without realizing it I know I tell him I know that all men are admir able you are admirable I am admirable

in as far as we are creations of God naturally he looks at me without Understanding then with a thin smile you are undoubtedly joking mure but it is true that all men deserve our admiration it is difficult missure very difficult to be a man without realizing it he has abandoned the love of men in Christ he nods his head and by a curious phenomenon of mimicry he resembles this poor man of gehenna excuse me I say but I'm not quite sure of being a man I never found it very difficult it seemed to me that

You had only to let yourself alone the self-taught man laughs candidly but his eyes stay Wicked you are too modest Miss in order to tolerate your condition The Human Condition you as everybody else need much courage miss the next instant may be the moment of your death you know it and you can smile isn't that admirable and your most insignificant actions he adds sharply there is an enormous amount of heroism what will you gentleman have for Dessert the waitress says the self-taught man is quite white his eyelids are half shut over his Stony eyes he

makes a feeble motion with his hand as if inviting me to choose cheese I say heroically and you he jumps oh yes well I don't want anything I finished Louise the two Stout men pay and leave one of them limps the patron shows them to the door they are important customers They were served a bottle of wine in a bucket of ice I study the self-taught man with a little remorse he's been happy all the week imagining this luncheon where he could share his love of men with another man he so rarely the opportunity to

speak and now I have spoiled his pleasure at heart he is as lonely as I am no one cares about him only he doesn't realize his Solitude well yes but it wasn't up to me to open his eyes I feel very ill at ease I'm furious but not against him against vuran and all the others all the ones who have poisoned this poor brain if I could have them here in front of me I would have much to say to them I shall say nothing to the self-taught man I've only sympathy for him he is

someone like M Shi someone on my side but who has been betrayed by ignorance and Goodwill a burst of laughter from the self-taught man pulls me out of my sad Reflections you will excuse me but when I think of the depth of my love for people of the force which impels me towards them and when I see us here reasoning arguing it makes me want to laugh I keep quiet I smile constrainedly the waitress puts a plate of chalky camar in front of me I glance around the room and a violent disgust floods me what

am I doing here why did I have to get mixed up in a discussion on humanism why are these people here why Are they eating it's true they don't know they exist I want to leave go to some place where I will be really in my own Niche where I will fit in but my place is nowhere I am unwanted the the self-taught man grows softer he expected more resistance on my part he's ready to pass a sponge over all I have said he leans toward me confidentially you love them at heart miss you love

them as I do we are separated by Words I can't speak anymore I bow my head the self-taught man's face is close to mine he smiles foolishly all the while close to my face like a nightmare with difficulty I chew a piece of bread which I can't make up my mind to swallow people you must love people men are admirable I want to vomit and suddenly there it is the nausea a fine climax it shakes me from top to bottom I saw it coming more than An hour ago only I didn't want to admit it

this taste of cheese in my mouth the selft talk man is babbling and his voice buzzes gently in my ears but I don't know what he's talking about I nod my head mechanically my hand is clutching the handle of the desert knife I feel this black wooden handle my hand holds it my hand personally I would rather let this knife alone what good is it to be always touching something objects are not made To be touched it is better to slip between them avoiding them as much as possible sometimes you take take one of them

in your hand and you have to drop it quickly the knife falls on the plate the white-haired man starts and looks at me I pick up the knife again I rest the blade against the table and bend it so this is nausea this blinding evidence I have scratched my head over it I've written about it now I know I Exist the world exists and I know that the world exists that's all it makes no no difference to me it's strange that everything makes so little difference to me it frightens me ever since the day I

wanted to play ducks and Drakes I was going to throw that peble I looked at it and then it All Began I felt that it existed and after that there were other nauseas from time to time objects started existing in your hand there was The nausea of the Railway men's rendevu and then another before that the night I was looking out the window then another in the park while one Sunday than others but it had never been as strong as today of ancient Rome M the self-taught man is asking me a question I think I

turned towards him and smile well what's the matter with him why is he shrinking back into his chair do I frighten people now I shall end up That way but it makes no difference to me they aren't completely wrong to be afraid I feel as though I could do anything for example stab this cheese knife into the self-taught man's eye after that all these people would trample me and kick my teeth out but that isn't what stops me a taste of blood in the mouth instead of this taste of cheese makes no difference to me

only I should make some move introduce some Superfluous event the self-taught man's cry would be too much and the blood flowing down the cheek and all the people jumping up there are quite enough things like that which exist already everyone is watching me the two representatives of Youth have interrupted their gentle chat the woman's mouth looks like a chicken's backside and yet they ought to see that I am harmless I get up everything spins Around me the self-taught man stares at me with his great eyes which I shall not gouge out leaving already he murmurs

I'm a little tired it was very nice of you to invite me goodbye as I'm about to leave I notice that I've kept the dessert knife in my left hand I throw it on my plate which begins to clink I cross the room in the midst of Silence no one is eating they watching me they've lost their appetite if I were to go up to the young woman And say Boo she'd begin screaming that's certain it isn't worth the trouble still before going out I turn back and give them a good look at my face

so they can engrave it in their memory goodbye ladies and gentlemen they don't answer I leave now the color will come back to their cheeks they'll begin to jabber I don't know where to go I stay Planted in front of the cardboard Chef I don't need to turn around to know they are watching me through the windows they are watching my back with surprise and disgust they thought I was like them but I was a man and I deceived them I suddenly lost the appearance of a man and they saw a crab running backwards out

of this human room now the unmasked Intruder has fled the show goes on it annoys me to feel on my back the Stirring of eyes and frightened thoughts I crossed the street the other pavement runs along the beach and the bathouses many people are walking along the shore turning poetic Springtime faces towards the sea they're having a holiday because of the Sun there are lightly dressed women who have put on last Springs outfit they pass long and white as kid gloves there are also big boys who go to high school and the school of Commerce

old men with Medals they don't know each other but they look at each other with an air of conans because it's such a fine day and they are men strangers Embrace each other when war is declared they smile at each other every spring a priest advances slowly reading his Breviary now and then he raises his hand and looks at the sea approvingly the sea is also a Braviary it speaks of God delicate colors delicate perfumes Souls of Spring what a lovely day the sea is green I like this dry cold better than the damp poets

if I grabbed one of them by the back of the coat if I told him come help me he'd think what's this crab doing here and would run off leaving his coat in my hands I turned Turn Back Lean both hands on the ballustrade the true sea is cold and black full of animals it crawls under This thin green film made to deceive human beings the sils all around me have let themselves be taken in they see only the thin film which proves the existence of God I see beneath it the veneer melts The Shining

velvety scales the scales of gods catch explode everywhere at my look they split and gape here is the Santa lir tra way I turn around and the objects turn with me pale and green as oysters useless it was useless to get in since I don't want to go anywhere bluish Objects pass the windows and jerks all stiff and brittle people walls a house offers me its black heart through open Windows all the windows pale all that is black becomes blue blue this great Yellow Brick House advancing uncertainly trembling suddenly stopping and taking a nose dive

a man gets on and sits down opposite to me the yellow house starts up again it leaps against the windows it is so close that you can only see part of it it is obscured the windows rattle It rises crushing higher than you can see with hundreds of Windows opened on black hearts it slides along the car brushing past it night has come between the rattling Windows it slides interminably yellow is mud and the windows are sky blue suddenly it is no longer there it has stayed behind a sharp gray illumination fills the car and

spreads everywhere with an exorable Justice it is the sky Through the Windows you can still see Layer on layer of Sky because we're going up elar hill and you can see clearly between the two slopes on the right as far as the sea on the left as far as the Airfield no smoking not even a jiten I lean my hand on the seat but pull it back hurry it exists this thing I'm sitting on leaning my hand on is called a seat they made it purposely for people to sit on they took Leather Springs and

cloth they went to work with the idea of making a seat and when they finished that was what they had made They carried it here into this car and the car is now rolling and jolting with its rattling Windows carrying this red thing in its bosom I murmur it's a seat a little like an exorcism but the word stays on my lips it refuses to go and put itself on the thing it stays with what is with its red plush thousands of little red paws in The air all still little dead Paws this enormous belly

turned upward bleeding inflated bloated with all its dead Paws this belly floating in this car in this gray sky is not a seat it could just as well be a dead donkey tossed about in the water floating with the current belly in the air and a great gray River a river of floods and I could be sitting on the donkey's belly my feet dangling in the clear water things are divorced from their names they are there Grotesque headstrong gigantic and it seems ridiculous to call them seats or say anything at all about them I'm in

the midst of things nameless things alone without words defenseless they surround me are beneath me behind me above me they demand nothing they don't impose themselves they are there under the cushion on the seat there is a thin line of Shadow a thin black line running along the seat mysteriously and mischievously almost a Smile I know very well that it isn't a smile and yet it exists it runs under the whitish windows under the jangle of glass obstinately obstinately behind the blue images which pass in a throng like the inexact memory of a smile like

a half gotten word of which you can only remember the first syllable and the best thing you can do is turn your eyes away and think about something else about that man half lying down on the seat opposite me there his blue-eyed Terracotta face the whole right side of his body is sunk the right arm is stuck to the body the right side barely lives it lives with difficulty with avarice as if it were paralyzed but on the whole left side there is a little parasitic existence which proliferates a chance the arm begins to tremble

and then is raised up and the hand at the end is stiff then the hand begins to tremble too and when it reaches the height of the skull a finger stretches out and Begins scratching the scalp with a nail a sort of voluptuous Grimace comes to inhabit the right side of the mouth and the left side stays dead the windows rattle the arm shakes the nail scratches scratches the mouth Smiles under the staring eyes and the man tolerates hardly noticing it this tiny existence which swells his right side which has borrowed his right arm and

right cheek to bring itself into being the conductor blocks my path wait Until the car stops but I push him aside and jump out of the Tramway I couldn't stand anymore I could no longer stand things being so close I push open a gate go in Airy creatures are bounding and leaping and perching on the Peaks now I recog recogniz myself I know where I am I'm in the park I drop onto a bench between great black tree trunks between the black naughty hands reaching Towards the Sky a tree scrapes at the Earth under my

Feet with a black nail I would so like to let myself go forget myself sleep but I can't I'm suffocating existence penetrates me everywhere Through The Eyes the nose the mouth and suddenly suddenly the veil is torn away I have understood I have seen 6: p.m. I can't say I feel relieved or Satisfied just the opposite I'm crushed only my goal is reached I know what I wanted to know I've understood all that has happened to me since January the nausea has not left me and I don't believe it will leave me soon but I

no longer have to bear it it is no longer an illness or a passing fit it is I so I was in the park just now the roots of the chestnut tree were sunk in the ground just under my bench I couldn't remember it was a root anymore The words had vanished and with them the significance of things their methods of use and the feeble points of reference which men have traced on their surface I was sitting stooping forward head bowed alone in front of this black naughty Mass entirely beastly which frightened me then I

had this Vision it left me breathless never until these last few days had I understood the meaning of existence I was like the others like the Ones walking along the seashore all dressed in their spring finery I said like them the ocean is green that white Speck up there is a seagull but I didn't feel that it existed or that the seagull was an existing seagull usually existence hides itself it is there around us in us it is us you can't say two words without mentioning it but you can never touch it when I believed

I was thinking about it I must believe that I was thinking nothing my head was Empty well there was just one word in my head the word to be or else I was thinking how can I explain it I was thinking of belong in I was telling myself that the sea belonged to the class of green objects or that the green was a part of the quality of the sea even when I looked at things I was miles from dreaming that they existed they looked like scenery to me I picked them up in my hands

they served me as tools I foresaw their Resistance but that all happened on the surface if anyone had asked me what existence was I would have answered in good faith that it was nothing simply an EMP form which was added to external things without changing anything in their nature and then all of a sudden there it was clear as day existence had suddenly unveiled itself it had lost the harmless look of an abstract category it was the very paste of things this route was needed into existence or rather the Route the park Gates the bench

the sparse grass all that had vanished the diversity of things that their individuality were only an appearance a veneer this veneer had melted leaving soft monstrous masses all in disorder naked in a frightful obscene nakedness I kept myself from making the slightest movement but I didn't need to move in order to see behind the trees the blue columns and the lamposts of the Bandstand in the vaa in the midst of a Mountain of Laurel all these objects how can I explain inconvenienced me I would have liked them to exist less strongly more dry in a

more abstract way with more reserve the chestnut tree pressed itself against my eyes green rust covered it halfway up the bark black and swollen looked like boiled leather the sound of the water in the masquer fountain sounded in my ears made a nest there filled them with signs my nostrils overflowed with a green Putrid odor all things gently tenderly were letting themselves drift into existence like those relaxed women who burst out laughing and say it's good to laugh in a wet voice they were parading one in front of the other exchanging abject secrets about their

existence I realized that there was no halfway house between non-existence and this flaunting abundance if you existed you had to exist all the way as far as Moldiness bloatedness obscenity were concerned in another world circles bars of music keep their pure and rigid lines but existence is a deflection trees night blue pillars the happy bubbling of a fountain vital smells little heat Mists floating in the cold air a red-haired man digesting on a bench all this somnolence all these meals digested together had its comic side comic No it didn't go as far as that nothing

that exists can be comic it was like a floating analogy almost entirely elusive with certain aspects of Ville we were a heap of living creatures irritated embarrassed at ourselves we hadn't the slightest reason to be there none of us each one confused vaguely alarmed felt in the way in relation to the others in the way it was the only relationship I could establish between these trees these Gates these stones in Vain I tried to count the chestnut trees to locate them by the relationship to the vea to compare their height with the height of the

plain trees each of them escaped the relationship in which I tried to enclose it isolated itself and overflowed of these relations which I insisted on maintaining in order to delay the crumbling of the human world measures quantities and directions I felt myself to be the arbitrator they no longer had their Teeth into things in the way the chestnut tree there opposite me a little to the left in the way the vaa and I soft weak obscene digesting juggling with dismal thoughts I too was in the way fortunately I didn't feel it although I realized it

but I was uncomfortable because I was afraid of feeling it even now I am afraid afraid that it might catch me behind my head and lift me up like a wave I dreamed vaguely of Killing myself to wipe out at least one of these Superfluous lives but even my death would have been in the way in the way my corpse my blood on these Stones between these plants at the back of this smiling garden and the decomposed flesh would have been in the way in the earth which would receive my bones at last cleaned stripped

peeled proper and clean as teeth it would have been in the way I was in the way for eternity the word absurdity is coming to Life under my pen a little while ago in the garden I couldn't find it but Nei was I looking for it I didn't need it I thought without words on things with things absurdity was not an idea in my head or the sound of a voice only this long serpent dead at my feet this wooden serpent serpent or claw or root or vulture's Talon what difference does it make and without

formulating anything clearly I understood that I had found the key to Existence the key to my nauseas to my own life in fact all that I could grasp beyond that returns to this fundamental absurdity absurdity another word I struggle against words down there I touched the thing but I wanted to fix the absolute character of this absurdity here a movement an event in the tiny colored world of men is only relatively absurd by relation to the accompanying circumstances a mad man's ravings for Example are absurd in relation to the situation in which he finds himself

but not in relation to his delirium but a little while ago I made an experiment with the absolute or the Absurd this root there was nothing in relation to which it was absurd oh how can I put it in words absurd in relation to the stones the toughs of yellow grass the dry mud the tree the sky the green benches absurd irreducible nothing not even a profound Secret upheaval of nature could explain it evidently I did not know everything I'd not seen the seeds sprout or the tree grow but faced with this great wrinkled paw

neither ignorance nor knowledge was important the world of explanations and reasons is not the world of existence a certain circle is not absurd it is clearly explained by the rotation of a straight segment around one of its extremities but neither does a circle Exist this route on the other hand existed in such a way that I could not explain it naughty inert nameless it fascinated me filled my eyes brought me back unceasingly to its own existence in vain to repeat this is a root it didn't work anymore I saw clearly that you could not pass

from its function as a root as a breathing pump to that to this hard and compact skin of a sea lion to this oily callous headstrong look the function explained Nothing it allowed you to understand generally that it was a root but not that one at all this root with its color shape its congealed movement was below all explanation each of its qualities escaped it a little flowed out of it half solidified almost became a thing each one was in the way in the root and the whole stump now gave me the impression of unwinding

itself a little denying its existence to lose itself in a frenzied excess I scraped my heel Against this black claw I wanted to peel off some of the Bark for no reason at all out of defiance to make the bare pink appear absurd on the tanned leather to play with the absurdity of the world but when I drew my heel back I saw that the bark was still black black I felt the word deflating emptied of meaning with extraordinary rapidity black the root was not black there was no black on this piece of wood there

was Something else black like the circle did not exist I looked at the root was it more than black or almost black but I soon stopped questioning myself because I had the feeling of knowing where I was yes I had already scrutinized innumerable objects with deep uneasiness I had already tried vainly to think something about them and I had already felt their cold inert qualities elude me slip through my fingers adolf's suspenders the other Evening in the railway men's rendevu they were not purple I saw the two inexplicable stains on the shirt and the stone

the well-known Stone the origin of this whole business it was not I can't remember exactly just what it was that the stone refused to be but I'd not forgotten its passive resistance and the Hand of the self-taught man I held it and shook it one day in the library and then I had the feeling that it wasn't quite a Hand I'd thought of a great white worm but that wasn't it either and the suspicious transparent of the glass of beer in the cafe Mai suspicious that's what they were the sounds the smells the tastes when

I ran quickly under your nose like startled hairs and you didn't pay too much attention you might believe them to be simple and reassuring you might believe that there was real blue in the world real red a real perfume of almonds or violets but as soon as you Held on to them for an instant this feeling of comfort and security gave way to a deep uneasiness colors tastes and smells were never real never themselves and nothing but themselves the simplest most indefinable quality had too much content and relation to itself in its heart that black

against my foot it didn't look like black but rather the confused effort to imagine Black by someone who had never seen black and who wouldn't Know how to stop who would have imagined an ambiguous being Beyond colors it looked like a color but also like a brw o or a secretion like an oozing and something else an odor for example that melted into the odor of wet earth warm moist wood into a black odor that spread like varnish over the sensitive wood in a flavor of chewed sweet fiber I did not simply see this black

sight is an abstract invention a simplified idea one of man's ideas that Black amorphous weekly presence far surpassed sight smell and taste but this richness was lost in confusion and finally was no more because it was too much this moment was extraordinary I was there motionless and icy plunged in a horrible Ecstasy but something fresh just appeared in the very heart of this ecstasy I understood the nausea I possessed it to tell the truth I did not formulate my discoveries to myself but I think it would be easy For me to put them in words

now the essential thing is contingency I mean that one cannot Define existence as necessity to exist is simply to be there those who exist let themselves be encountered but you can never deduce anything from them I believe there are people who have understood this only they try to overcome this contingency by inventing a necessary casual being but no necessary being can explain existence contingency Is not a delusion a probability which can be dissipated it is the absolute consequently the perfect free gift all is free this park this city and myself when you realize that it

turns your heart upside down and everything begins to float as the other evening at the railway men's rendevu here is nausea here there is what those bastards the ones in the C and others try to hide from themselves with their idea of their rights but what a a poor Lie no one has any rights they are entirely free like other men they cannot succeed in not feeling Superfluous and in themselves secretly they are Superfluous that is to say amorphous vague and sad how long will this Fascination last I was the root of the chestnut tree

or rather I was entirely conscious of its existence still detached from it since I was conscious of it yet lost in it nothing but it an uneasy conscience with Notwithstanding let itself fall with all its weight on this piece of dead wood time had stopped a small black pool at my feet it was impossible for something to come after that moment I would have liked to tear myself from that atrocious Joy but I did not even imagine it would be possible I was inside the black stump did not move it stayed there in my eyes

as a lump of food sticks in the windpipe I could neither accept nor refuse it at what a cost did I raise my eyes did I Raise them rather did I not obliterate myself for an instant in order to be reborn in the following instant with my head thrown back and my eyes raised upward in fact I was not even conscious of the transformation but suddenly it became impossible for me to think of the existence of the root it was wiped out I could repeat in vain it exists it is still there under the bench

against my right foot it no longer meant anything Existence is not something which lets itself be thought of from a distance it must invade you suddenly Master you weigh heavily on your heart like a great motionless Beast or else there is nothing more at all there was nothing more my eyes were empty and I was Spellbound by my Deliverance then suddenly it began to move before my eyes in light uncertain motion the wind was shaking the top of the Tree it did not displease me to see a movement it was a change from these motionless

beings who watched me like staring eyes I told myself as I followed the swinging of the branches movements never quite exist they are passages intermediaries between two existences moments of weakness I expected to see them come out of nothingness progressively ripen Blossom I was finally going to surprise beings in the process of being Born no more than 3 seconds and all my hopes were swept away I could not attribute the passage of time to these branches groping around like Blind Men this idea of passage was still an invention of man the idea was too transparent

all these poultry agitations Drew in on themselves isolated they overflowed the leaves and branches everywhere they Whirled about these empty hands enveloped them with tiny whirlwinds of course a movement was Something different from a tree but it was still an absolute a thing my eyes only encountered completion the tips of the branches rustled with existence which unceasingly renewed itself and which was never born the existing wind rested on the tree like a great blue bottle and the tree shuttered but the shutter was not a nent quality a passing from power to AC it was a

thing a shudder thing flowed into the tree took possession of it Shook it and suddenly abandoned it going further on to spin about itself all was fullness and all was active there was no weakness in time all even the least perceptible stirring was made of existence and all these existence which bustled about this tree came from nowhere and were going nowhere suddenly they existed and suddenly they existed no longer existence is without memory of the vanished it retains nothing not even A memory existence everywhere infinitely in excess forever and everywhere existence which is limited only

by existence I sank down on the bench stupified stunned by this profusion of beings without origin everywhere blossoming hatchings out my ears is buzzed with existence my very flesh throbbed and opened abandoned itself to the universal burgeoning and was repugnant but why I thought why so many Existences since they all look alike what could are so many duplicates of trees so many existences missed obstinately begun again and again missed like the awkward efforts of an insect fallen on its back I was one of those efforts that abundance did not give the effect of generosity just

the opposite it was dismal ailing embarrassed at itself those trees those great clumsy bodies I began to laugh because I suddenly thought of the formidable Springs described in books full of crackings bursting gigantic explosions there were those idiots who came to tell you about willpower and struggle for Life hadn't they ever seen a beast or a tree this plain tree with its scaling bark this half rotten Oak they wanted me to take them for rugged youthful Endeavor surging towards the sky and that root I would have undoubtedly had to present it as a voracious claw

tearing at the Earth Devouring its food impossible to see things that way weaknesses frailties yes the trees floated gushing towards the sky or rather a collapse at any instant I expected to see the tree trunk shrivel like weary w WS crumple up fall on the ground in a soft folded black Heap they did not want to exist only they could not help themselves so they quietly minded their own business the sap rose up slowly Through the structure half reluctant and The Roots sank slowly into the Earth but at each instant they seemed on the verge

of leaving everything there and obliterating themselves tired and old they kept on existing against the grain simply because they were too weak to die because death could only come to them from the outside strains of music Alone can proudly carry their own death within themselves like an internal necessity only they don't exist every Existing thing is born without reason prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance I leaned back and closed my eyes but the images forwarned immediately leaped up and filled my closed eyes with existences existence is a fullness which man can never

abandon strange images they represented a multitude of things not real things other things which looked like them wooden objects which looked like chairs Shoes other objects which looked like plants and then two faces the couple who were eating opposite to me last Sunday in the VES fat hot sensual absurd with red ears I could see the woman's neck and shoulders nude existence those two it suddenly gave me a turn those two were still existing somewhere in buil somewhere in the midst of smells this soft throat rubbing up luxuriously against smooth stuffs nestling in lace and

the woman picturing her bosom under Her blouse thinking my titties my lovely fruits smiling mysteriously attentive to the swelling of her breast which tickled then I shouted and found myself with my eyes wide open had I dreamed of this enormous presence it was there in the garden toppled down into the trees all soft sticky soiling everything all thick a jelly and I was inside I with the garden I was frightened Furious I thought it was so stupid so out of place I hated this Ignoble mess mounting up mounting up as high as the sky spilling

over filling everything with its gelatinous Slither and I could see depths upon depths of it reaching far beyond the limits of the garden the houses and buil as far as the eye could reach I was no longer in buil I was nowhere I was floating I was not surprised I knew it was the world the naked World suddenly revealing itself and I choked with rage at this gross absurd being you couldn't Even wonder where all that sprang from or how it was that a world came into existence rather than nothingness it didn't make sense the

world was everywhere in front behind there had been nothing before it nothing there had never been a moment in which it could not have existed that was what worried me of course there was no reason for this flowing larvae to exist but it was impossible for it not to exist it was Unthinkable to imagine nothingness you Had to be there already in the midst of the world eyes wide open and Alive nothingness was only an idea in my my head an existing idea floating in this immensity this nothingness had not come before existence it was

an existence like any other and appeared after many others I shouted filth what rotten filth and shook myself to get rid of this sticky filth but it held fast and there was so much tons and tons of existence endless I stifled at the depths of this Immense weariness and then suddenly the park emptied as through a great hole the world disappeared as it had come or else I woke up in any case I saw no more of it nothing was left but the yellow Earth around me out of which dead branches Rose upward I got

up and went out once at the gate I turned back then the garden smiled at me I leaned against the gate and watched for a long time the smile of the Trees of the Laurel meant something That was the real secret of existence I remembered one Sunday not more than 3 weeks ago I'd already detected everywhere a sort of conspiratorial air was it in my intention I felt with boredom that I had no way of understanding no way yet it was there waiting looking at one it was there on the trunk of the chestnut tree

it was the chestnut tree things you might have called them thoughts which stopped halfway which Were forgotten which forgot what they wanted to think and which stayed like that hanging about with an odd little sense which was beyond them that little sense annoyed me I could not understand it even if I could have stayed leaning against the gate for a century I had learned all I could know about existence I left I went back to the hotel and I wrote Night I have made my decision I have no more reason for staying in bouille since

I'm not writing my book anymore I'm going to live in Paris I'll take the 5:00 train on Saturday I'll see ani I think we'll spend a few days together then I'll come back here to settle my accounts and pack my trunks by March 1st at the latest I will be definitely installed in Paris Friday in the railway men's Rendevu my train leaves in 20 minutes the gramophone strong feeling of [Music] Adventure Saturday and he opens to me in a long black dress naturally she does not put out her hand she doesn't say hello suddenly and

quickly to get the formalities over with she says come in and sit down anywhere except on the armchair near the Window it's really she she lets her arm hang she has the morose face which made her look like an awkward adolescent girl but she doesn't look like a little girl anymore she's fat her breasts are heavy she closes the door and says meditatively to herself I don't know whether I'm going to sit on the bed finally she drops onto a sort of chest covered with a carpet her walk is no longer the same she moves

with a majestic heaviness not without Grace she Seems embarrassed at her youthful fleshiness but in spite of everything it's really Anie an he bursts out laughing what are you laughing at as usual she doesn't answer right away and starts looking quarrelsome tell me why you're laughing because of that wide smile you've been wearing ever since you got here you look like a father who's Just Married off his daughter come on don't just stand there take off your coat and sit down yes over there if you Want a silence follows and he does not try to

break it how bare this room is before Annie always used to carry an immense trunk full of Shaws turbin Manas Japanese masks pictures of epol hardly arrived at a hotel even if it is only for one night then her first job is to open this trunk and take out all her wealth which she hangs on the walls on lamps spreads over tables or on the floor following a changeable and complicated order in less than 30 Minutes the dullest room became invested with a heavy sensual almost tolerable personality perhaps the trunk got lost or stayed in

the check room this cold room with the door half open on the bathroom has something sinister about it it looks like only sadder and more luxurious like my room in buil Annie Laughs Again how will I recognize this high-pitched nasal little laugh well you haven't changed what are you looking for with that bewildered Look on your face she smiles but studies my face with almost hostile curiosity I was only thinking this room doesn't look as if you were living in it really she answers vaguely another silence now she's sitting on the bed very pale in

her black dress she hasn't cut her hair she's still watching me calmly raising her eyebrows a little has she got nothing to say to me why did she make me come here this silence is Unbearable suddenly I say pitifully I'm glad to see you the last word sticks in my throat I would have done better to keep quiet she is surely going to be angry I expected the first 15 minutes to be difficult and the old days when I saw Ani again whether after a 24-hour absence or on waking in the morning I could never

find the words she expected The Words which went with her dress with the weather were the last words we had spoken the night Before what does she want I can't guess I raise my eyes again and he looks at me with a sort of tenderness you haven't changed it all you're still just as much of a fool her face shows satisfaction but how tired she looks you're a milestone she says a milestone beside a road you explain imperturbably and for the rest of your life you'll go on explaining that meon is 27 km and Moni

is 42 that's why I need you so much need me you mean you've needed me these Four years I haven't seen you you've been pretty quiet about it I spoke lightly she might think I'm resentful I feel a false smile on my mouth I'm uncomfortable what a fool you are naturally I don't need to see you if that's what you mean you know you're not exactly a CIT forur eyes I need you to exist and not to change you're like that Platinum wire they keep in Paris or somewhere in the neighborhood I don't Think anyone's

ever needed to see it that's where you're mistaken not I anyhow it doesn't matter I'm glad to know that it exists that it measures the exact 10 millionth part of a quarter of a Meridian I think about it every time they start taking measurements in an apartment or when people sell me cloth by the yard is that so I say coldly but you know I could very well think of you only as an abstract virtue a sort of limit you should be grateful To me for remembering your face each time here we are back to

these alexandrian discussions I had to go through before when in my my heart I had the simplest commonest desires such as telling her I loved her taking her in my arms today I have no such desire except perhaps a desire to be quiet and to look at her to realize in silence all the importance of this extraordinary event the presence of an opposite me is this day like any other Day for her her hands are not trembling she must have had something to tell me the day she wrote or perhaps it was only a whim

now there's been no question of it for a long time and he suddenly Smiles at me with a tenderness so apparent that tears come to my eyes I've thought about you much more often than that yard of platinum there hasn't been a day when I haven't thought of you and I remembered exactly what you looked like every Detail she gets up comes and rests her arms on my shoulders you complain about me but you Daren pretend you remembered my face that's not fair I say you know I have a bad memory memory you admit it

you'd forgotten me completely would you have known me in the street naturally it's not a question of that did you at least remember the color of my hair of course blonde she begins to laugh you're really proud when you say that now that you see it you aren't worth much she Rumes my hair with One Sweep of her hand and you your hair is red she says imitating me the first time I saw you I'll never forget you had a movish hurg hat and it swore horribly with your red hair it was hard to look

at where's your hat I want to see if your taste is as bad as ever I don't wear one anymore she whistles softly opening her eyes wide you didn't think of that all by yourself did you well Congratulations of course I should have realized that hair can't stand anything it swears with Hats chair cushions even at a wallpaper background or else you have to pull your hat down over your ears like that felt you bought in London tucked all your hair away under the brim you might have been bald for all anyone could see she

adds in the decisive tone with which you end old quarrels it didn't look at all nice on you I don't know what hat she's talking About did I say it looked good on me I should say you did you never talked of anything else and you were always sneaking a look in the glass when you thought I wasn't watching you this knowledge of the past overwhelms me and he does not even seem to be evoking memories her tone of voice does not have the touch of tender remoteness suitable to that kind of occupation she seems

to be speaking of today rather than yesterday she has kept her opinions her Obstinacion and poetic impression I'm ready for all concessions suddenly she says in a toneless voice you see I'm getting fat I'm getting old I have to take care of myself yes and how weary she looks just as I'm about to speak she adds I was in the theater in London with kendler no of course not with kendler how like you you had it in your head that I was going to act with kendler how many times must I tell you that kendler

is the orchestra Leader no in a little theater in SoHo Square we play the emperor Jones some sing in okasi and britannicus britannicus I say amazed yes britannicus I quit because of that I was the one who gave them the idea of putting on britannicus and they wanted to make me play Juni really well naturally I could only play agine and now what are you doing I was wrong in asking that life Fades entirely from her face still she answers at once I'm not acting anymore I travel I'm being kept she smiles oh don't look

at me in that solicitous way I always told you didn't make any difference to me being kept besides heun's an old man he isn't any trouble English what does it matter to you she says irritated we not going to talk about him he has no importance whatsoever for you or me do you want some tea she goes into the bathroom I hear her moving around rattling cups talking to herself a sharp Unintelligible murmur on the night table by her bed as always there's a volume of mich's history of France now I can make out a

single picture hung above the bed A reproduction of a portrait of Emily Bronte done by her brother and he returns and suddenly tells me now you must talk to me about you then she disappears again into the bathroom I remember that in spite of my bad memory that was the way she asked those direct questions which annoyed me so much Because I felt a genuine interest and a desire to get things over with at the same time in any case after that question I know for certain that she wants something from me these are only

the preliminaries you get rid of anything that might be disturbing you definitely rule out secondary questions now you must talk to me about you soon she will talk to me about herself all of a sudden I no longer have the slightest desire to tell her Anything what good would it be the nausea the fear existence it is better to keep all that to myself come on hurry up she shouts through the partition she returns with a teapot what are you doing are you living in Paris I live in buil buil why you aren't married I

hope married I say with a start it is very pleasant for me to have any think that I tell her it's absurd that's exactly the sort of naturalistic imagination you accused me of before you know when I Used to imagine you a widow and mother of two boys and all the stories I used to tell about what would happen to us you hated it and you liked it she answered unconcernedly you said that to put on a big act besides even though you get indignant in conversation you're traitor enough to get married one day on

the sly you swore indignantly for a year that you wouldn't see Violet Imperial then one day when I was sick you went and saw it alone in a cheap Movie I am in bouille I say with dignity because I am writing a book on the mar de R and he looks at me with studied interest H he lived in the 18th century yes as a matter of fact you did mention something about it it's a history book then yes if she asks me one more question I will tell her everything but she asks nothing more

apparently she has decided that she knows enough about me Anie knows how to be a good listener but only When she wants to be I watch her she has lowered her eyelids she's thinking about what she's going to tell me how she's going to begin do I have to question her now I don't think she expects it she will speak when she decides it would be good to do so my heart is beating very fast she says suddenly I've changed this is the beginning but she is silent now she pours tea into the white porcelain

cups she's waiting for me to speak I must say something not just Anything it must be what she's expecting it is torture has she really changed she's gotten head she looks tired that is surely not what she means I don't know I don't think so I've already found your laugh again your way of getting up and putting your hands on my shoulders your Mania for talking to yourself you're still reading mish's history and a lot of other things this profound interest which she Brings to my eternal Essence and her total indifference to all that can

happen to me in this life and then this curious affectation at once charming and pedantic and this way of suppressing from the very outs at all the mechanical formulas of politeness friendship all that makes relationships between people easier forever obliging her Partners to invent a role she shrugs yes I have changed she says dry I've changed in every way I'm Not the same person anymore I thought you'd notice it as soon as you saw me instead you talk to me about mish's history she comes and stands in front of me we'll see whether this man

is as strong as he pretends yes how have I changed I hesitate she Taps her foot still smiling but sincerely annoyed there was something that tormented you before or at least you pretended it did and now it's gone disappeared you should notice it don't You feel more comfortable I dare only to answer no I am just as before sitting on the edge of the chair careful to avoid ambushes ready to conjure away inexplicable rages she sits down again well she says nodding her head with conviction if you don't understand it's because you've forgotten things more

than I thought come on don't you remember your misdeeds anymore you came you spoke you went all contrarily Supposing nothing had changed you would have come in there have been masks and Shaws on the wall I'd have been sitting on the bed and I'd have said she throws her head back dilates her nostrils and speaks in a theatrical voice as if in self-mockery where well what are you waiting for sit down and naturally I'd have carefully avoided telling you except on the armchair near the window you set traps for me they weren't traps so naturally

you'd have gone straight Over and sat down and what would have happened to me I asked turning and looking at the armchair with curiosity it looks ordinary it looks paternal and comfortable only something bad Annie answers briefly I leave it at that an always surrounded herself with taboos I think I tell her suddenly that I guess something but it would be so extraordinary wait let me think as a matter of fact this room is completely Bare do me the justice of admitting that I noticed it right away all right I would have come in I'd

have seen these masks on the wall and the Shaws and all that the hotel always stopped at your door your room was something else you wouldn't have come to open open the door for me I'd have seen you crouched in a corner maybe sitting on that piece of red carpet you always carried with you looking at me pitilessly waiting I would have hardly said a word made a move Taken a breath before he'd have started frowning I would have felt deeply guilty without knowing why then with every moment that passed I'd have plunged deeper into

error how many times has that happened a 100 times at least are you more Adept sharper now no I like to hear you say it well then well then it's because there are no more she shouts theatrically he hardly dares believe it then she continues Softly well you can believe me there are no more no more perfect moments no I'm dumbfounded I insist you mean you it's all over those tragedies those instantaneous tragedies with the masks and shs the f furniture and myself where we each had a minor part to play and you had the

lead she smiles HEK ungrateful sometimes I gave him greater roles than my own but he never suspected well yes it's finished are you really surprised yes I'm surprised I thought That was a part of you that if it were taken away from you it would have been like tearing out your heart I thought so too she says without regret then she adds with a sort of irony that affects me unpleasantly but you see I can live without that she has laced her fingers and holds one knee in her hands she looks with a vague smile

which rejuvenates her whole face she looks like a fat little girl mysterious and satisfied yes I'm glad You stayed the same my Milestone if you'd been moved or repainted or planted by the side of a different Road I would have nothing fixed to orient myself you are indispensable to me I change you naturally stay motionless and I measure my changes in relation to you I still feel a little vexed well that's most inaccurate I say sharply on the contrary I've been evolving all this time and at heart I oh she says with Crushing scorn intellectual

changes I've changed to the very whites of my eyes to the very whites of her eyes what startles me about her voice anyhow I suddenly give a jump I stop looking for an an who is isn't there this is the girl here this fat girl with a ruined look who touches me and whom I love I have a sort of physical certainty I feel there are no more perfect moments I feel it in my legs when I walk I feel it all The time even when I sleep I can't forget it there's never been anything

like a revelation I can't say starting on such in such a day at such a time my life has been transformed but now I always feel a bit as if I'd suddenly seen it yesterday I'm dazzled uncomfortable I can't get used to it she says these words in a calm voice with a touch of Pride at having changed she balances herself on the chest with extraordinary Grace not once Since I came has she more strongly resembled the an of before the an of M she has caught me again once more I have plunged into her

strange universe beyond ridicule affectation subtlety I've even recovered the little fever that has always stirred in me when I was with her and this bitter taste in the back of my mouth Anan clasps her hand and drops her knee she's silent a concerted silence as when at the Opera the stage is empty for exactly 7 Minutes of music she drinks Her tea then she puts down her cup and holds herself stiffly leaning her clasped hands on the back of the chest suddenly she puts on her superb look of Medusa which I loved so much all

swollen with hate Twisted venomous and he hardly changes expression she changes faces as the actors of antiquity changed the masks suddenly and each one of the masks is destined to create atmosphere to give tone to what follows it appears and Stays without modification as she speaks then it falls detached from her she stares at me without seeming to see me she's going to speak I expect a tragic speech height to the Dignity of her mask a funeral oration she does not say a single word I outlive myself the tone does not correspond in any way

to her face it is not tragic it is horrible it expresses a dry despair without tears Without Pity yes something In her is irredeemably dried out the mask Falls she smiles I'm not at all sad I'm often amazed at it but I was wrong why should I be sad I used to be capable of rather Splendid passions I hated my mother passionately and you she says defiantly I loved you passionately she waits for an answer I say nothing all that is over of course how can you tell I know I know that I shall never

again meet anything or anybody who Will inspire me with passion you know it's quite a job starting to love somebody you have to have energy generosity blindness there is even a moment in the very beginning when you have to jump across a precipice if you think about it you don't do it I know I'll never jump again why she looks at me ironically and does not answer now she says I live surrounded with my dead passions I try to recapture the fine Fury that threw me Off the fourth floor when I was 12 the day

my mother whipped me she adds with app parent in consequence and a far away look it isn't good for me to stare at things too long I look at them to find out what they are then I have to turn my eyes away quickly why they disgusted me it would almost seem there are surely similarities in any case it happened once in London we had separately thought the same things about the same subjects Almost at the same time I'd like so much to but an's mind takes many turnings you can never be sure you've understood

it completely I must get to the heart of it listen I want to tell you something you know I never quite knew what perfect moments were you never explained them to me yes I know you made absolutely no effort you sat beside me like a lump on a log I know what it cost me you deserved everything that happened to you you were Very Wicked you annoyed me with your stolid look you seem to say I'm normal and you practically breathed Health you dripped with moral well-being still I must have asked you a 100 times

at least would I yes but in what a tone of voice she says angrily you condescended to inform yourself and that's the whole truth you are kindly and distre like the old ladies who used to ask me what I was playing when I was little at heart she says Dreamily I wonder if you weren't the one I hated most she makes a great effort to collect herself and smiles her cheeks still flaming she's very beautiful I want to explain what they are I'm old enough now to talk calmly to old women like you about my

childhood games go ahead talk what do you want to know what they were I told you about the privileged situations I don't think so yes she says With Assurance it was an A in that square I don't remember the name anymore we were in the courtyard of a cafe in the sun under orange parasol you don't remember we drank lemonade and I found a dead fly in the powdered sugar I yes maybe well I talked to you about that in the cafe I talked to you about it appr propo of the big edition of mish's

History the one I had when I was little it was a lot bigger than this one and the pages were livid like the inside Of a mushroom when my father died my uncle Joseph got his hands on it and took away all the volumes that was the day I called him a dirty Pig and my mother whipped me and I jumped out the window yes yes you must have told me about that history of France didn't you read it in the Attic you see I remember you see you were unjust when you accused me of

forgetting everything a little while ago be quiet yes as you remember so well I carried those enormous books To the attic there were very few pictures in them maybe three or four in each volume but each one had a big page all to itself and the other side of the page was blank that had much more effect on me than the other Pages where they'd arranged the text in two columns to save space I had an extraordinary love for those pictures I knew them all by heart and whenever I read one of michelet's books I'd

waited for them 50 pages in advance it always seemed a miracle to Find them again and then there was something better the scene they showed never had any relation to the text on the next page you had to go looking for the event 30 pages farther on I beg you tell me about the perfect moments I'm talking about privileged situations they were the ones the pictures told about I called them privileged I told myself they must have been terribly important to be made the subject of such rare pictures they'd all been chosen Above all the

others to understand and yet there were many episodes which had a greater plastic value others with a greater historical interest for example there were only three pictures for the whole 16th century one for the death of HRI II one for the assassination of the Duke deiz and one for the entry of HRI IV into Paris then I imagined that there was something special about these events the pictures confirmed the idea the drawings were bad the arms and legs were Never too well attached to the bodies but it was full of grandeur when the Duke deiz

was assassinated for example The Spectators showed their amazement and indignation by stretching out their hands and turning their faces away like a chorus and don't think they left out any Pleasant details you could see Pages falling to the ground little dogs running away Jesters sitting on the steps of the throne but all these Details were treated with so much Grandeur and so much clumsiness that they were in perfect harmony with the rest of the picture I don't think I've ever come across pictures that had such a strict Unity but they came from there they privileged

situations the idea I had of them they were situations which had a rare and precious quality style if you like to be king for example when I was 8 years old seemed like a privileged Situation to me or to die you may laugh but there were so many people drawn at the moment of their death and so many who spoke such Sublime words at that moment that I quite genuinely thought well I thought that by dying you were transported above yourself besides it was enough just to be in the room of a dying person death

being a privileged situation something emanated from it and communicated itself to everyone there a sort of grandeur when my father died They took me up to his room to see him for the last time I was very unhappy going up the stairs but I was also drunk with a sort of religious ecstasy I was finally entering a privileged situation I leaned against the wall I tried to make the proper motions but my aunt and mother were kneeling by the bed and I spoiled it all by crying she says these last words with anger as if

the memory still scorched her she interrupts herself eyes staring Eyebrows raised she takes advantage of the occasion to live the scene once more I developed all that later on first I added a new situation love I mean the act of Love look if you never understood why I refused certain of your demands here's your opportunity to understand now for me there was something to be saved then I told myself that there should be many more privileged situations that I could count finally I admitted an infinite number of them yes But what were they but I've

told you she says with amazement I've been explaining to you for 15 minutes well it was especially necessary for people to be impassioned Carried Away by hatred or love for example or did the exterior aspect of the event have to be great I mean what you could see of it both it all depended she answers ungraciously and the perfect moments where do they come in they came afterward words first there are Enunciator signs then the privileged situation slowly majestically comes into people's lives then the question whether you want to make a perfect moment out of

it yes I say I understand in each one of these privileged situations there are certain acts which have to be done certain attitudes to be taken Words which must be said and other attitudes other words are strictly prohibited is that it I suppose so in fact then the situation Is the material it demands exploitation that's it she says first you had to be plunged into something exceptional and feel as though you were putting it in order if all those conditions had been realized the moment would have been perfect in fact it was a sort of

work of art you've already said that she says with irritation no it was a duty you had to transform privileged situation into perfect moments it was a moral question yes you can laugh if you Like it was moral I'm not laughing at all listen I say spontaneously I'm going to admit my shortcomings too I never really understood you I never sincerely tried to help you if I had known thank you thank you very much she says ironically I hope you're not expecting recognition for your delayed regrets besides I hold nothing against you I I never

explained anything too clearly I was all in knots I couldn't tell anyone about it not even You especially not you there was always something that rang false at those moments then I was lost but I still had the feeling I was doing everything I could but what had to be done what actions what a fool you are I can't give you any examples it all depends but tell me what you are trying to do no I don't want to talk about it but here's a story if you like a story that made a great impression

on me when I was in school there was a king who had Lost a battle and was taken prisoner he was there off in a corner in the Victor's camp he saw his son and daughter pass by in Chains he didn't weep he didn't say anything then he saw one of his servants pass by in Chains too then he began to groan and tear out his hair you can make up your own examples you see there are times when you mustn't cry or else you'll be unclean but if you drop a log on your foot

you can do as you please groan cry Jump around on the other foot it would be foolish to be stoical all the time you'd wear yourself out for nothing she smiles other times you must be more than stoical naturally you don't remember the first time I kissed you yes very clearly I say triumphantly it was in Q Gardens by the banks of the temps but what you never knew was that I was sitting on a patch of net my dress was up my thighs were covered with stings and every time I made the Slightest movement

I was stung again well stoicism wouldn't have been enough there you didn't bother me at all I had no particular desire for your lips the kiss I was going to give you was much more important it was an engagement a PCT so you understand that this pain was irrelevant I wasn't allowed to think about my thighs at a time like that it wasn't enough not to show my suffering it was necessary not to suffer she looks at me proudly still Surprised at what she had done for more than 20 minutes all the time you were

insisting on having the kiss I decided to give you all the time I had you begging me because I had to give it to you according to form I managed to anesthetize myself completely and God knows I have a sensitive skin I felt nothing until we got up that's it there are no Adventures there are no per moments we have lost the same Illusions we have Followed the same paths I can guess the rest I can even speak for her and tell myself all that she has left to tell so you realize that there were

always women in tears or a redheaded man or something else to spoil your effects yes naturally she answers without enthusiasm isn't that it oh you know I might have resigned myself in the end to the clumsiness of a red-headed man after all I was always interested in the way other people played their parts no It's that that there are no more privileged situations that's it I used to think that hate or love or death descended on us like tongues of fire on Good Friday I thought one could radiate hate or death what a mistake yes

I really thought that hate existed that it came over people and raised them above themselves naturally I'm the only one I'm the one who hates who loves but it's always the same thing a piece of dough that gets Longer and longer everything looks so much alike that you wonder how people got the idea of inventing names to make distinctions she thinks as I do it seems as though I had never left her listen carefully I say for the past moment I've been thinking of something that pleases me much more than the role of a milestone

you generously gave me to play it's that we've changed together and in the same way I like that better you know than to see you going farther and Farther away and being condemned to mark your Point of Departure forever all that you've told me I came to tell you the same thing that with other words of course we meet at the arrival I can't tell you how pleased I am yes she says gently but with an obstinate look well I'd still have liked it better if you hadn't changed it was more convenient I'm not like

you it rather displeases me to know that someone has thought the same things I Have besides you must be mistaken I tell her my Adventures I tell her about existence perhaps it too great length she listens carefully her eyes wide open and her eyebrows raised when I finish she looks soothed well you're not thinking like me at all you complain because things don't arrange themselves around you like a bouquet of flowers without your taking the slightest trouble to do anything but I have never asked as much I want wanted Action you know when we played

adventure and adventurous you were the one who had Adventures I was the one who made them happen I said I'm a man of action remember well now I simply say one can't be a man of action I couldn't have looked convinced because she became animated and began again with more energy then there's a heap of things I haven't told you because it would take too long to explain for example I had to be able to Tell myself at the very moment I took action that what I was doing would have fatal results I can't explain

that to you very well it's quite useless I say somewhat pedantically I've thought that too she looks at me with scorn you'd like me to believe you thought exactly the same way I have you really amaze me I can't convince her all I do is irritate her I keep quiet I want to take her in my arms suddenly she looks at me Anxiously well if you thought about all that what can you do I bow my head I I outlive myself she repeats heavily what can I tell her do I know any reasons for living

I'm not as desperate as she is because I didn't expect much I'm rather amazed before this life which is given to me given for nothing I keep my head bowed I don't want to see an's face now I travel she goes on gloomily I'm just back from Sweden I stopped in Berlin for a week this man who's keeping me take Her in my arms what good would it do I can do nothing for her she is as solitary as I what are you muttering about I raise my eyes she's watching me tenderly nothing I was

thinking about something oh mysterious person or talk or be quiet but do one or the other I tell her about the railway men's rendevu the Old Rag time I had played on the phonograph the strange happiness it gives me I was wondering if in that direction One couldn't find or look For she doesn't answer I don't think she was much interested in what I told her still after a moment she speaks again and I don't know whether she's following her own ideas or whether it is an answer to what I've just told her paintings statues

can't be used they're lovely facing me music but the theater what about the theater do you want to enumerate all the Fine Arts before you used to say you wanted to act because on the stage you had to realize perfect Moments yes I realized them for the others I was in the dust in the draft under raw lights between cardboard sets I usually played with Thorndike I think you must have seen him at coven Garden I was always afraid I'd burst out laughing in his face but weren't you ever Carried Away by your part a

little sometimes never very strongly the essential thing for all of us was the black pit just in front of us and the bottom of it there were people you didn't see obviously you Were presenting them with a perfect moment but you know they didn't live in it it unfolded in front of them and we the actors do you think we lived inside it in the end it wasn't anywhere not on either side of the foot lights it didn't exist and yet everybody thought about it so you see little man she says in a dragging almost

vulgar tone of voice I walked out on the whole business I tried to write a book she interrupts me I live in the past I take Everything that has happened to me and arrange it from a distance like that it doesn't do any harm you'd almost let yourself be caught in it our whole story is fairly beautiful I give it a few prods and it makes a whole string of perfect moments then I close my eyes and try to imagine that I'm still living inside it I have other character too you have to know how

to concentrate do you know what I read Lola's spiritual exercises it has been quite useful for Me there's a way of first setting up the background then making characters appear you manag to see she adds with a maniacal air well I say that wouldn't satisfy me at all do you think it satisfies me we stay silent for a moment evening is coming on I can hardly make out the pale spot of her face her black dress melts with the shadow which floods the room I pick up my cup mechanically there's a little tea left in

it and I bring it to my lips the tea is cold I Want to smoke but I don't dare I have the terrible feeling that we have nothing more to say to one another only yesterday I had so many questions to ask her where she had been what she had done whom she had met but that interested me only in so far as Ane gave her whole heart to it now I'm without curiosity all these countries all these cities she has passed through all the men who have courted her and whom she has perhaps loved

she clung to none of That at heart she was indifferent to it all little flashes of sun on the surface of a cold dark sea and he is sitting opposite to me we haven't seen each other for four years and we have nothing more to say you'll have to leave now Ani says suddenly I'm expecting someone you're waiting for no I'm waiting for a German a painter she begins to laugh this laugh Rings strangely in the dim room there's someone who isn't like us not yet he Acts he spends himself I get up reluctantly when

shall I see you again I don't know I'm leaving for London tomorrow evening by DEA yes and I think I'll go to Egypt after that maybe I'll be back in Paris next winter I'll write you I'll be free all day tomorrow I say timidly yes but I have a lot to do she answers dry no I can't see you I'll write you from Egypt just give me your Address yes in the shadow I scribbl my address on an envelope I have to put down Hotel prit so they can forward my letters when I leave pil

yet I know very well that she won't write perhaps I shall see her again in 10 years years perhaps this is the last time I shall see her I'm not only overwhelmed at leaving her I have a frightful fear of going back to my solitude again she gets up at the door she kisses me lightly on the mouth to remember your Lips she says smiling I have to refresh my memories for my spiritual exercises I take her by the arm and draw her to me she does not resist but she shakes her head no that

doesn't interest me anymore you can't begin again and besides for what people are worth the first good-look boy that comes along is worth as much as you what are you going to do then I told you I'm going to England no I mean nothing I haven't let go of her arms I Tell her gently then I must leave you after finding you again I can see her face clearly now suddenly it grows pale and drawn an old woman's face absolutely frightful I'm sure she didn't put that one on purposely it is there unknown to her

or perhaps in spite of her no she says slowly no you haven't found me again she pulls her arms away she opens the door the hall is sparkling with light an he begins to laugh poor boy he never has Any luck the first time he plays his part well he gets no thanks for it get out I hear the door closed behind me Sunday this morning I consulted the railway guide assuming that she hasn't lied to me that the EP train will leave at 5:38 but maybe her man will be driving her I wandered around

many mon or morning then the keys in the afternoon a few steps a few walls separate me from Her at 5:38 our conversation of yesterday will become a memory the opul woman whose lips brushed against my mouth will rejoin in the past the slim little girl of meches of London but nothing was passed yet since she was still there since it was still possible to see her again to persuade her to take her away with me forever I did not feel alone yet I wanted to stop thinking about Annie because imagining her body and her

face So much I'd fallen into a state of extreme nervousness my hand hands trembled and icy chills shook me I began to look through the books on display at secondhand stalls especially obscene ones because at least that occupies your mind when the G do Clock Struck 5 I was looking at the pictures in a book entitled the doctor with the whip there was little Variety in most of them a heavy bearded man was brandishing A riding whip over monstrous naked rumps as soon as I realized it was 5:00 I threw the book back on the

pile and jumped into a taxi which took me to the G sand laar I walked around the platform for about 20 minutes then I saw them she was wearing a heavy fur coat which made her look like a lady and a short Veil the man had on a camel's hair coat he was Tann still young very big very handsome a foreigner surely but not English Possibly Egyptian they got on the train without seeing me they did not speak to each other then the man got off and bought newspapers Annie had lowered the window of her

compartment she saw me she looked at me for a long time without anger with inexpressive eyes then the man got back into the compartment and the train left at that moment I clearly saw the restaurant in Picadilly where we used to eat before then everything went blank I Walked when I felt tired I came into this Cafe and went to sleep the waiter had just wakened me and I am writing this while half asleep tomorrow I shall take the noon train back to bouille two days there will be enough to pack my bags and straighten

out my accounts at the bank I think the hotel prit will want me to pay 2 weeks extra because I didn't give them notice then I have to return all the books I borrowed from the library in any case I'll be back in Paris before the end of the week will I gain anything by the change it is still a city this one happens to be cut into two by a river the other one is by the Sea yet they look alike one takes a piece of bare sterile Earth and one rolls Big Hollow Stones

onto it odors are held captive in these Stones odors heavier than air sometimes people throw them out of the windows into the streets and they stay there until the wind breaks them Apart in clear weather noises come in one end of the city and go out the other after going through all the walls at other times the noises whirl around inside these sunbaked ice split ston bones I'm afraid of cities but you mustn't leave them if you go too far you come up against the vegetation belt vegetation has crawled for Miles towards the cities it

is waiting once the city is dead the vegetation will cover it or climb over the stones grip them search Them make them burst with its long black pincers it will blind the holes and let its Green Paws hang over everything you must stay in the cities as long long as they are alive you must never penetrate alone this great mass of hair waiting at the gates you must let it undulate and crack or by itself in the cities if you know how to take care of yourself and choose the times when all the beasts are

sleeping in their holes and digesting behind the heaps of organic debris you Rarely come across anything more than minerals the least frightening of all existence I'm going back to buil the vegetation has only surrounded three sides of it on the fourth side there is a great hole full of black water which moves all by itself the wind whistles between the houses the odors stay less time there than anywhere chased out to sea by the wind they race along the surface of the black water like playful Mists it rains they let plants grow Between the gratings

castrated domesticated so fat that they are harmless they have enormous whitish leaves which hang like ears when you touch them it feels like cartilage everything is fat and white and bouille because of all the water that falls from the sky I am going back to buil how horrible I wake up with a start it is midnight an left Paris 6 hours ago the boat is already at Sea she's sleeping in A cabin and up on Deck the handsome bronze man is smoking cigarettes Tuesday in buil is that what freedom is below me the gardens go

limply down towards the city and a house Rises up from each Garden I see the ocean heavy motionless I see buil it is a lovely day I am free there is absolutely no more reason for living all the ones I've tried have given way and I can't imagine any more of them I'm still fairly Young I still Have enough strength to start again but do I have to start again how much in the strongest of my Terrors my disgusts I'd counted on an need to save me I realized only now my past is dead the

marbon is dead an KN came back only to take all hope away I'm alone in this white Garden rimmed Street alone and free but this freedom is rather like death today my life is ending by tomorrow I will have left this town which spreads out at my feet where I Have lived so long it will be nothing more than a name squat Bourgeois quite French a name in my memory not as rich as the names of Florence OR Baghdad a time will come when I shall wonder whatever could I have done all day long when

I was in buil nothing will be left of this sunlight this afternoon not even a memory my whole life has behind me I see it completely I see its shape and the slow movements which have brought me This far there is little to say about it a lost game that's all 3 years ago I came solemnly to buil I'd lost the first round I wanted to play the second and I lost again I lost the whole game at the same time I learned that you always lose only The Rascals think they win now I'm going

to be like Annie I'm going to outlive myself eat sleep sleep eat exist slowly softly like these trees like a puddle of water like the red bench in the street car the nausea has given me a Short breathing spell but I know it will come back again it is my normal state only today my body is to exhausted to standard invalids also have happy moments of weakness which take away the consciousness of their illness for a few hours I am bored that's all from time to time I yawn so widely that tears roll down my

cheek it is a profound boredom profound the profound heart of existence the very matter I am made of I do not neglect myself quite the contrary this Morning I took a bath and shaved only when I think back over those careful little actions I cannot understand how I was able to make them they are so vain habit no doubt made them for me they aren't dead they keep on busying themselves gently insidiously weaving their webs they wash me dry me dress me like nurses did they also lead me to this hill I can't remember how

I came anymore probably up the escal did I really climb up its 110 Steps one by one what is perhaps more difficult to imagine is that I'm soon going to climb down again yet I know I am in a moment I shall find myself at the bottom of the C if I raise my head see in the distance the lighting Windows of these houses which are so close now in the distance above my head above my head and this instant which I cannot leave which locks me in and limits me on every side this instant

I made of will be no more Than a confused dream I watch the gray shimmering of buil at my feet in the sun they look like heaps of shells scales splinters of bone and gravel lost in the midst of this debris tiny glimmers of glass or Micah intermittently throw off light flames and an hour the ripples trenches and thin furrows which run between these shells will be streets I shall walk in these streets between these walls these little black men I can just Make out in the ru bully in an hour I shall be one

of them I feel so far away from them on the top of this hill it seems as though I belong to another species they come out of their offices after their day of work they look at the houses and the squares with satisfaction they think it is their City a good solid Bourgeois City they aren't afraid they feel at home all they've ever seen is trained water running from Taps light which fills bulbs when you turn on the Switch Half Breed bastard trees held up with crutches they have proof a 100 times a day that

everything happens mechanically but the world obeys fixed unchangeable laws in a vacuum all bodies fall at the same rate of speed the public park is closed at 400 p.m. in winter at 600 p.m. in Summer lead melts at 335° Centigrade the last street car leaves the hotel DeVille at 11:05 p.m. they are peaceful a little morose they think about tomorrow that is to say Simply a new today cities have only one day at their disposal and every morning it comes back exactly the same they scarcely doll it up a bit on Sundays idiots it is

repugnant to me to think that I am going to see their thick self-satisfied faces they make laws they write popular novels they get married they are fools enough to have children and all this time great vague Nature has slipped into their City it is infiltrated everywhere in their house in Their office in themselves it doesn't move it stays quietly and they are full of it inside they breathe it and they don't see it they imagine it to be outside 20 mi from the city I see it I see this nature I know that its obedience

is idleness I know it has no laws what they take for constancy is only habit and it can change tomorrow what if something were to happen what if something suddenly started throbbing then they would notice It was there and they'd think their hearts were going to burst then what good with their dikes bullworks powerhouses furnaces and pile drivers be to them it can happen any time perhaps right now the Omens are present for example the father of a family might go out for a walk and across the street he'll see something like a red rag

blown towards him by the wind and when the rag has gotten close to him he'll see that it is a side of rotten meat grimy with Dust dragging itself Along by crawling skipping a piece of writhing flesh rolling in the gutter SP spasmodically shooting out sprits of blood or a mother might look at her child's cheek and ask him what's that a pimple and see the flesh puff out a little split open at the bottom of the split an eye a laughing eye might appear or they might feel things gently brushing against their bodies like

the caresses of reeds to swimmers in a river and they will Realize that their clothing has become living things and someone else might feel something scratching in his mouth he goes to the Mirror opens his mouth and his tongue is an enormous live centipede rubbing its legs together and scraping his pallet he'd like to spit it out but the centipede is a part of him and he will have to tear it out with his own hands and a crowd of things will appear for which people will have to find new names Stone eye great three

Cornered arm toe crutch spider jaw and someone might be sleeping in his comfortable bed in his quiet warm room and wake up naked on a bluish Earth and a forest of rustling birch trees Rising red and white Towards the Sky like the smoke stacks of jubil with big bumps halfway out of the ground hairy and bulbous like onions and birds will fly around these birch trees and pick at them with their beaks and make them bleed sperm will flow slowly Gently from these wounds sperm mixed with blood warm and glassy with little bubbles or else

nothing like that will happen there will be no appreciable change but one morning people will open their blinds and be surprised by a sort of frightful six sense brooding heavily over things and seeming to pause nothing more than that but for the little time at lasts there will be hundreds of suicides yes let it change just a little Just to see I don't ask for anything better then you will see other people suddenly plunged into Solitude men all alone completely alone with horrible monstrosities will run through the streets pass heavily in front of me their

eyes staring fleeing their ills yet carrying them with them open-mouthed with her insect tongue flapping its wings then I'll burst out laughing even though my body may be covered with Filthy infected scabs which blossom into flowers of Flesh violets buttercups I'll lean against a wall and when they go by I'll shout what's the matter with your science what have you done with her humanism where is your dignity I will not be afraid or at least no more than now will it not still be existence variations on existence all these eyes which will slowly devour a

face they will undoubtedly be too much but no more than the first two existence is what I Am afraid of evening Falls the first lamps are lit in the city my God how natural the city looks despite all its geometries how crushed it looks in the evening it's so so evident from here could I be the only one to see it is there nowhere another Cassandra on the summit of a hill watching a city engulfed in the depths of nature but what difference does it make what could I tell Her my body slowly turns Eastward

oscillates a little and begins to walk Wednesday my last day in bouille I've looked all over town for the self-taught man he surely hasn't gone home he must be walking at random filled with shame and horror this poor humanist whom men don't want to tell the truth I was hardly surprised when the thing happened for a long time I'd thought that his soft timid face would bring Scandal on itself he was so little Guilty his humble contempla love for young boys is hardly sensuality rather a form of humanity but one day he had to find

himself alone like Miss Shi like me he's one of my race he has good will now he has entered into Solitude forever everything suddenly crumbled his dreams of culture his dreams of an understanding with mankind first there will be fear horror sleepless nights and then after that the long succession of days days of Exile in The evening he will come back to wander around the kot from a distance he will watch the glowing Windows of the library and his heart will fail him when he remembers the long rows of books their leather bindings the swell

of their Pages I'm sorry I didn't go along with him but he didn't want me to he begged me to let him alone he was beginning his apprenticeship and Solitude I'm writing this in the cafe Mai I went in with great ceremony I wanted to study the manager the cashier and forcibly feel that I was seeing them for the last time but I can't stop thinking about the selftaught man I still have his open face before my eyes his face full of reproach his bloodstained collar so I asked for some paper and I'm going to

tell what happened to him I went to the library about 2:00 this afternoon I was thinking the library I'm Going in here for the last time the room was almost deserted it hurt me to see it because I knew I would never come back it was light as Mist almost unreal or reddish the Setting Sun rusted the table reserved for women the door the back of the books for a second I had the delightful feeling that I was going into underbrush full of Golden Leaves I smiled I thought I haven't smiled for a long time

the Corsican was looking out of the Window his hands behind his back what did he see the skull of imp petas I shall never see that skull again or his top hat or his morning coat in 6 hours I will have left buil I put the two books I borrowed last month on the assistant librarian's desk he tore up a green slip and handed me the pieces there you are Miss thank you I thought now I owe them nothing more I don't owe anything more to anybody here soon I'm going to say goodbye to the

woman and the railway Men's rendevu I am free I hesitated a few instants but I use these last moments to take a long walk through buil to see the boulevard Victor Noir again the Avenue galvani and the r but this forest was so calm so pure it seemed to me as though it hardly existed and that the nausea had spared it I went and sat down near the stove the joural deil was lying on the table I reached out and took Saved by his dog yesterday evening Miss dubos of Reon was bicycling home from the

ngus fair a fat woman sat down at my right she put her felt hat beside her her nose was planted on her face like a knife in an apple under the nose a small obscene hole wrinkled disdainfully she took a bound book from her bag leaned her elbows on the table resting her face against her fat hands an old man was sleeping opposite me I Knew him he was in the library the evening I was so frightened I think he was afraid too I thought how far away all that is at 4:15 the self-taught man

came in I would have liked to shake hands and say goodbye to him but I thought our last meeting must have left him with unpleasant memories he nodded distantly to me and far enough away he set down a small white package which probably contained as us ual a slice of bread and a piece of chocolate after a Moment he came back with an illustrated book which he placed near his package I thought I am seeing him for the last time tomorrow evening the evening after tomorrow and all the following evenings he will return to read

at his table eating his bread and chocolate he will patiently keep on with his rats nibbling he will read The Works of Nabu no n n interrupting himself from time to time to jot down a Maxim in his notebook and I will be walking in Paris in Paris Streets I will be seeing new faces what could happen to me while he would still be here with the lamp lighting up his heavy pondering face I felt myself drifting back to the Mirage of Adventure just in time I Shrugged my shoulders and began reading again UIL and

neighboring areas mon activities on the for the year the sergeant major Gaspar commanding the mon Brigade and its forarm M Lut nison Pon and Gil were hardly idle during the past Year in fact our je have reported seven crimes 82 misdemeanors 159 contraventions six suicides and 15 automobile accidents three of which resulted in death friendly Society of trumpet players of Jil General rehearsal today remittance of cards for the annual concert compostelle presentation of the Legion of Honor to the mayor muil Boy Scouts monthly meeting This evening at 8:45 p.m. 10 R room a program reading

of minutes correspondence annual banquet 1932 assessment March hiking schedule questions new members Society for the prevention of cruelty to animals next Thursday from 3:00 to 5: p.m room C 10 public meeting send inquiries in correspondence to the president to the main office or to 154 Avenue galvani buil Watchdog club buil Association of disabled veterans taxi owners Union bille committee for the friends of the board schools two boys with satchels come in students from the high school the cor can like students from the high school because he can exercise a paternal supervision over them of for

his own pleasure he lets them stir around on their chairs and talk then suddenly tiptoes up behind them and scolds is that the way big boys behave if you Don't behave yourselves the librarian is going to complain to your Headmaster and if they protest he looks at them with terrible eyes give me your names he also directs their reading in the library certain volumes are marked with a red cross hell The Works of jid dero bodair and medical Texs when a student wants to consult one of these books the corsan makes a sign to him

draws him over to a corner and questions him after a moment he explodes and his Voice fills the reading room there are a lot more interesting books for a boy of your age instructive books have you finished your homework what grade are you in and you don't have anything to do after 4:00 your teacher comes in here a lot and I'm going to tell him about you the two boys stay near the stove the younger one is brown skin a skin almost too fine and a tiny mouth Wicked and proud his friend a big heavy

set boy with the shadow of a mustache touched His elbow and murmured a few words the little brown-haired boy did not answer but he gave an imperceptible smile full of arrogance and self-sufficiency then both of them nonchalantly chose a dictionary from one of the shelves and went over to the self-taught man who was staring wearily at them they seemed to ignore his existence but they sat down right next to him the brown-haired boy on his left and a thick set one on the left of the Brown-haired boy they began looking through the dictionary the self-taught

man's look wandered over the room then returned to his reading never had a library offered such a reassuring spectacle I heard no sound except the short breathing of the fat woman I only saw heads bent over books yet at that moment I had the feeling that something unpleasant was going to happen all these people who lowered their eyes with such a studious look seemed to be playing a Comedy a few instants before I felt something like a breath of Cruelty pass over us I had finished reading but hadn't decided to leave I was waiting pretending

to read my newspaper what increased my curiosity and annoyance was that the others were waiting too it seemed as though my neighbor was turning the pages of her books more rapidly a few minutes passed then I heard Whispering I cautiously raised my head both boys had closed their dictionaries The brown-haired one was not talking his face stamped with difference and interest was turned to the right half hidden behind his shoulder the blonde was listening and laughing silently who's talking I thought it was the self-taught man he was bent over his young neighbor eye to eye

smiling at him I saw his lips move from time to time his long eyelashes palpitate I didn't recognize this look of youthfulness it was almost Charming but from time to time he interrupted himself and looked anxiously behind him the boy seemed to drink his words there was nothing extraordinary about this little scene and I was going to go back to my reading when I saw the boy slowly slide his hand behind his back on the edge of the table thus hidden from the self-taught Man's eyes it went on its way for a moment and began

to feel around then finding the arm of the bigger boy pinched it Violently the other to absorbed in silent enjoyment of the self-taught man's words had not seen it coming he jumped up and his mouth opened widely in Surprise and admiration the brown-haired boy had kept his look of respectful interest one might have doubted that this mischievous hand belonged to him what are they going to do to him I thought I knew that something bad was going to happen and I saw too that there was still time to keep it from happening But I couldn't

guess what there was to prevent from for a second I had the idea of getting up slapping the self-taught man on the shoulder and starting a conversation with him but just at that moment he caught my look he stopped speaking and pinched his lips together with an air of irritation discouraged I quickly lowered my eyes and made a show of reading my paper however the fat woman had set down her book and raised her head she seemed Hypnotized I felt sure the woman was going to burst they all wanted something to burst what could I

do I glanced at the corsac he wasn't looking out of the window anymore it turned halfway towards us 15 minutes passed the self-taught man had begun his Whispering again I didn't dare look at him anymore but I could well imagine his young and tender air and those heavy looks which weighed on him without his knowing it once I heard His laugh a fluted childish little laugh it gripped my heart it seemed as though the two kids were going to drown a cat then the whisper stopped suddenly the silence seemed tragic to me it was the

end the death blow I bowed my head over my newspaper and pretended to read but I wasn't reading I raised my eyes as high as I could trying to catch what was happening in this silence across from me by turning my head slightly I could see something out of the corner of my eye it Was a hand the small white hand which slid along the table a little while ago now it was rest resting on its back relaxed soft and sensual it had the indolent nudity of a woman sunning herself after bathing a brown hairy

object approached it hesitant it was a thick finger yellowed by tobacco inside this hand it had all the grossness of a male sex organ it stopped for an instant rigid pointing at the fragile Palm then suddenly it timidly began to stroke it I Was not surprised I was only furious at the self taught man couldn't he hold himself back the fool didn't he realize the risk he was running he still had a chance a small chance if he were to put both hands on the table on either side of the book if he stayed absolutely

still perhaps he might be able to escape his Destiny this time but I knew he was going to miss his chance the finger passed slowly humbly over the inert flesh barely grazing it Without daring to put any weight on it he might have thought it was conscious of its ugliness I raised my head Brusly I couldn't stand this obstinate little back and forth movement anymore I tried to catch the self-taught man's eye I coughed loudly to warn him but he closed his eyes he was smiling his other hand disappeared under the table the boys were

not laughing anymore they had both turned pale the brownhair one pinched his lips he was afraid he looked as Though what was happening had gone beyond his control but he did not draw his hand away he left it on the table motionless a little curled his friend mouth was open in a stupid horrified look then the Corsican began to shout he had come up without anyone hearing him and placed himself behind the self-taught man's chair he was crimson and looked as though he were going to laugh but his eyes were flashing I started up from

my chair but I felt almost relieved The Waiting was too unbearable I wanted it to to be over as soon as possible I wanted them to throw him out if they wanted but get it over with the two boys white as sheets seized their satchels and disappeared I saw you the Corsican shouted drunk with Fury I saw you this time don't try and tell me it isn't true don't think I'm not wise to your little game I've got eyes in my head and this is going to cost you plenty I know your Name I know

your address I know everything about you I know your boss chier and won't he be surprised tomorrow morning when he gets a letter from the librarian what shut up he said his eyes rolling and don't think it's going to stop there we have courts in France for people like you see you were studying so you were getting culture so you were always after me to get books for you don't think you are kidding me the self-taught man did not look surprised He must have been expecting this for years he must have imagined what would happen

a hundred times the day the corsen would slip up behind him and a furious voice would ReSound suddenly in his ears yet he came back every evening he feverishly pursued his reading and then from time to time like a thief stroked a white hand or perhaps the leg of a small boy it was resignation that I read on his face I don't know what you mean he stammered I've been coming here For years he feigned indignation and surprise but without conviction he knew quite well that the event was there and that nothing could hold hold

it back any longer that he had to live the minutes of it one by one don't listen to him my neighbor said I saw him she got up heavily and that isn't the first time I've seen him no later than last Monday I saw him and I didn't want to say anything because I couldn't believe my eyes and I'd never Have thought that in a library a serious place where people come to learn things like that would happen things that would make you blush I haven't any children but I pity the mothers who send their

own to work here thinking they're well taken care of and all the time there are monsters with no respect for anything and who keep them from doing their homework the Corin went up to the self-taught man you hear what the lady says he shouted in his face you don't Need to try and make fools of us we saw you you swine Miss I advise you to be polite the self-taught man said with dignity it was his part perhaps he would have liked to confess and run but he had to play his part to the end

he was not looking at the corsac his eyes were almost closed his arms hung limply by his sides he was horribly pale and then a flush of Blood Rose to his face the corsan was suffocating with Fury polite Filth maybe you think I didn't see you I was watching you all the time I've been watching you for months the self-taught man Shrugged his shoulders and pretended to drop back into his reading Scarlet his eyes filled with tears he had taken on a look of supreme interest and looked attentively at a reproduction of a Byzantine Mosaic

he goes on reading he's got a nerve the woman said looking at the corsac the corsan was Undecided at the same time the assistant librarian a timid well-meaning young man whom the corsan terrorized slowly raised himself from his desk and called po what's the matter there was a moment of irresolution and I hoped the affair would end there but the corsac must have thought again and found himself ridiculous angry not knowing what more to say to this mute victim he drew himself up to his full stature and flung a great fist into the air the

Self-taught man turned around frightened he looked at the corsan openmouth there was a horrible fear in his eyes if you strike me I shall report you he said with difficulty I shall leave of my own free will I got up but it was too late the corsac gave a voluptuous little wine and suddenly crashed his fist against the self-taught man's nose for a second I could only see his eyes his magnificent eyes wide with shame and horror above a Sleeve and sarthy fist when the corsen Drew back his fist the self-taught man's nose began pouring

blood he wanted to put his hands to his face but the coren struck him again on the corner of the mouth the selftaught man sank back in his chair and stared in front of him with gentle timid eyes the blood ran from his nose onto his coat he groped around with his left hand trying to find his package while with his right he stubbornly tried to wipe his dripping Nostrils I'm going he said as if to himself the woman next to me was pale and Her Eyes Were Gleaming rter she said serves him right I

shook with rage I went around the table and grabbed the little corsin by the neck and lifted him up trembling I would have liked to break him over the table he turned blue and struggled trying to scratch me but his short arms didn't reach my face I didn't say a word but I wanted to smash in his nose and disfigure him he understood he Raised his elbow to protect his face I was glad because I saw he was afraid suddenly he began to Rattle let go of me you brute are you a fairy too I

still wonder why I let him go was I afraid of complications had these lazy years in buil rotted me before I wouldn't have let go of him without knocking out his teeth I turned to the self-taught man who had finally got up but he fled from my look head Bowed and went to take his coat from the hanger he passed his left hand constantly over his nose as if to stop the bleeding but the blood was still flowing I was afraid he would be sick without looking at anyone he muttered I've been coming here for

years hardly back on his feet the little man had become Master of the situation again get the hell out he told the self-taught man and don't ever set foot in here again or I'll have the police on You I caught up with the self-taught man at the foot of the stairs I was annoyed ashamed at his shame I didn't know what to say to him he didn't seem to notice I was there he had finally taken out his handkerchief and he spat continuously into it his nose was bleeding a little less come to the drugstore

with me I told him awkwardly he didn't answer a loud murmur escaped from the reading room I can never come back here the self-taught man Said he turned and looked perplexedly at the stairs at the entrance to the reading room this movement made the blood run between his collar and his neck his mouth and cheeks were smeared with blood come on I said taking him by the arm he shuddered and pulled away violently let me go but you can't stay by yourself someone has to wash your face and fix you up he repeated let me

go I beg you sir let me go he was on the verge of his sterck I let him go the Setting Sun lit his bent back for a moment then he disappeared on the threshold there was a star-shaped splash of blood 1 hour later it is gray outside the Sun is setting the train leaves in 2 hours I cross theth park for the first time and I'm walking down the ruly bay I know it's the ruly bay but I don't recognize it usually when I start down it I seem to cross a deep layer of

Good Sense Squat and awkward the rubul bay with its and uneven surface looked like a national highway when it passes through rich country towns with solid three-story houses for more than half a mile I called it a country road and it Enchanted me because it was so out of place so paradoxical in a commercial port today the houses are there but they have lost their rural look they are buildings and nothing more I had the same feeling In the park a little while ago the plants the grass plots the Olivier mcer Fountain looked stubborn through

being inexpressive I understand the city is the first one to abandon me I have not left buil and already I am there no longer buil is silent I find it strange that I have to stay two more hours in this city which without bothering about me anymore has straightened up its furniture and put it under dust sheets so as to be able to uncover it in all Its freshness to new arrivals this evening or tomorrow I feel more forgotten than ever I take a few steps and stop I Savor this total Oblivion into which I've

fallen I'm between two cities one knows nothing of me the other knows me no longer who remembers me perhaps a heavy young woman in London and is it really of me that she thinks besides there is that man that Egyptian perhaps he's just gone into a Room perhaps he's taken her in his arms I'm not jealous I know that she is outliving herself even if she loved him with all her heart it would still be the love of a dead woman I had her last living love but there is still something he can give her

pleasure and if she is fainting and sinking into enjoyment there is nothing more which attaches her to me she takes her pleasure and I am no more for her than if I had never met her she has Suddenly emptied herself of me and all other Consciousness in the world has also emptied itself of me it seems funny yet I know that I exist that I am here now when I say I it seems Hollow to me I can't manage to feel myself very well I'm so forgotten the only real thing left in me is existence

which feels it exists I yawn lengthly no one antoan Ron exists for no one that amuses me and just what is Antoan ront an abstraction a pale reflection of myself wavers in my Consciousness antoan H and suddenly the eye pales pales and Fades out Lucid forlorn Consciousness is Walled up it perpetuates itself nobody lives there anymore a little while ago someone said me said my Consciousness who outside there were Streets Alive with known smells and colors now nothing is left but Anonymous walls Anonymous Consciousness that is what there is walls and between the walls a

small transparency alive and impersonal Consciousness exists as a tree as a blade of grass it Slumbers it grows bored small fugitive presences populated like birds in the branches populated and disappear Consciousness forgotten forsaken between these walls under this gray sky and here is the sense of its existence it is conscious of being Superfluous it dilutes scatters itself tries to lose itself on the brown wall along the lamp post or down there in the evening mist but it never forgets itself that is its lot there is a stifled voice which tells it the train leaves in

2 hours and there is the consciousness of this voice there is also consciousness of a face it passes slowly full of blood spattered and its bulging eyes weep it is not between the walls it is nowhere it Vanishes a bent body with a bleeding face replaces it walks slowly away seems to stop at each step never stops there is a consciousness of this body walking slowly in a dark Street it walks but it gets no further away the dark Street does not end it loses itself in nothingness it is not between the walls it is

nowhere and there is consciousness of a stifled voice which says the self-taught man is wandering through the city not the same city not between these T less walls the self-taught man walks in a city where he is not forgotten people are thinking about him the corsac the fat woman perhaps everybody in the city he is not yet lost he cannot lose himself this tortured bleeding self they didn't want to kill his lips and nostrils hurt him he thinks it hurts he walks he must walk if he stopped for one instant the high walls of the

library would suddenly rise up around him and lock him in the Corsican would spring From one side and the scene would begin again exactly alike in all the details and the woman would smirk they ought to be in jail those RS and the scene would begin again he thinks my God if only I hadn't done that if only that could not be true the troubled face passes back and forth through my Consciousness maybe he's going to kill himself no this gentle baited Soul could never dream of death there is knowledge of the Consciousness it sees

through itself peaceful and empty between the walls freed from the man who inhabited it monstrous because empty the voice says the luggage is registered the train leaves in 2 hours the walls slide right and left there is a consciousness of Madam a consciousness of the iron mongers the loopholes of the barracks and the voice says for the last time consciousness of Annie of Annie fat old Annie in her hotel room conscious of Suffering and the suffering is conscious between the long walls which leave and will never return will there never be an end to it

the voice sings a jazz tune between the walls some of these days will there never be an end to it and the tune comes back softly insidiously from behind to take back the voice and the voice sings without being able to stop and the body walks and there is consciousness of all that and consciousness of Consciousness but no One is there to suffer and ring his hand hands and take pity on himself no one it is a suffering of the crossroads a forgotten suffering which cannot forget itself and the voice says there is the railway

men's rendevu and the eye surges into the Consciousness it is I antoan ront I'm leaving for Paris shortly I'm going to say goodbye to the patron I'm coming to say goodbye to you you're leaving Miss R I'm going to Paris I need need a Change lucky how was I able to press my lips against this large face her body no longer belongs to me yesterday I was able to imagine it under the black wool dress today the dress is impenetrable this white body with veins on the surface of the skin was it a dream we'll

miss you the patron says won't you have something to drink it's on the house we sit down touch glasses she lowers her voice a little I was used to you she says with polite regret we got along together I'll be back to see you be sure to miss stop in and say hello to us the next time you're in bouille you just tell yourself I'm going to say hello to Madame je she like that that's true a person really likes to know what happens to others besides people always come back here to see us we

have Sailors don't we working for the Transat sometimes I go for 2 years without seeing them they either in Brazil or New York or else working on a transport in Bordeaux and then one fine day I see them again alello Madame je and we have a drink together you can believe it or not but I remember what each one likes from two years back I tell meline give a driver move to miss pier and R chinzo to miss Leon they ask me how can you remember that it's my business I tell them in the back

of the room there's a thick set man who's been sleeping with her recently he calls her Patrol she gets up Excuse Me Miss the waitress comes over to me so you're leaving us just like that I'm going to Paris I lived in Paris she says proudly for 2 years I worked in Simon but I was homesick she hesitates a second then realizes she has nothing more to say to me well goodbye missam she wipes her hand on her apron and holds it out to me goodbye Madeline she leaves I pull the joural deil over To

me then push it away again I read it in the library a little while ago from top to bottom the patron does not come back she abandons her fat hands to her boyfriend who needs them with passion the train leaves in 3/4 of an hour I count my money to pass the time 1,200 Franks a month isn't enormous but if I hold myself back a little it should be enough a room for 300 Franks 15 Franks a day for food that leaves 450 Franks for petty cash laundry and movies I won't need underwear or clothes

for a long while both my suits are clean even though they shine at the elbows a little they'll last Me 3 or 4 years if I take care of them good God is it I who's going to lead this mushroom existence what will I do all day long I'll take walks I'll sit on a folding chair in the twery or rather on a bench out of economy I'll read in the libraries and then what a movie once a week and then what can I smoke a vol girl on Sunday shall I play croquet with the

retied old men in the Luxemburg 30 years old I pity myself there are times when I wonder if it wouldn't be better to spend all my 300,000 Franks in one year and after that but what good would that do me new clothes women travel I've had all that and now it's over I don't feel like it anymore for what I'd get out of it a year from now I'd find myself as empty as I am today without even a memory and A coward facing death 30 years and 14,400 franks in the bank coupons to cash

every month yet I'm not an old man but then give me something to do no matter what I better think about something else because I'm playing a comedy now I know very well that I don't want to do anything to do something is to create existence and there's quite enough existence as it is the truth is that I can't put down my pen I think I'm going to have the nause here and I feel As though I'm delaying it while writing so I write whatever comes into my mind Maden who wants to please me calls

me from the distance holding up a record your record missan the one you like do you want to hear it for the last time please I said that out of politeness but I don't feel too well disposed to listen to Jazz still I'm going to pay attention because as madin says I'm hearing it for the last time it is very old even too old for the provinces I will look for it In vain in Paris madin goes and sets it on the gramophone it is going to spin in the grooves the steel needle is going

to start jumping and grinding and when the grooves will have spiraled it into the center of the disc it will be finished and the horse Voice singing some of these days will be silent forever it begins to think that there idiots who get consolation from the Fine Arts like my Aunt Bea shopan preludes were such a Help to me when your poor uncle died and the concert Halls overflow with humiliated outraged people who close their eyes and try to turn their pale faces into receiving and tenny they imagine that the sounds flow into them sweet

nourishing and that their sufferings become music like ver they think that beauty is compassionate to them mugs I'd like them to to tell me whether they find this music compassionate a While ago I was certainly far from swimming in Beatitudes on the surface I was counting my money mechanically underneath stagnated all those unpleasant thoughts which took the form of unformulated questions mute astonishments and which leave me neither day nor night thoughts of ani of my wasted life and then still further down NAIA timid as Dawn but there was no music then I was morose and

calm All the things around me were made of the same material as I a sort of messy suffering the world was so ugly outside of me these dirty glasses on the table were so ugly and the brown stains on the mirror and melin's apron and the friendly look of the gross lover of the patron the very existence of the world so ugly that I felt comfortable at home now there is this song on the saxophone and I'm ashamed a glorious the suffering has Just been born an exemplary suffering four notes on the saxophone they come

and go they seem to say You must be like us suffer in Rhythm all right naturally I'd like to suffer that way in Rhythm without complacence without self-pity with an arid Purity but is it my fault if the beer at the bottom of my glass is warm if there are brown stains on the mirror if I'm not wanted if the sincerest of my sufferings drags in w with too much flesh and the skin too Wide at the same time like a sea elephant with bulging eyes damp and touching and yet so ugly no they certainly

can't tell me it's compassionate this little jeweled pain which spins around above the record and dazzles me not even ironic it spins gay completely self-absorbed like a scythe it is cut through the drab intimacy of the world and now it spins and all of us meline The thick set man the myself the tables benches the stained mirror the glasses all of us abandon ourselves to existence because we were among ourselves only among ourselves it has taken us unawares in the disorder the day-to-day drift I'm ashamed for myself and for what exists in front of it

it does not exist it is even an annoyance if I were to get up and rip This record from the table which holds it if I were to break into I wouldn't reach it it is beyond always Beyond something a voice a violin note through layers and layers of existence it veils itself thin and firm and when you want to seize it you find only existence you butt against existance devoid of sense it is behind them I don't even hear it I hear sounds vibrations in the air which unveil it it does not exist because

it has nothing Superfluous it is all the r which in relation to it is Superfluous it is and I too wanted to be that is all I wanted this is the last word at the bottom of all these attempts which seemed without bonds I find the same desire again to drive existence out of me to rid the passing moments of their fat to twist them dry them purify myself Harden myself to give back at last the sharp precise sound of a saxophone note that could even make an Appal there was a poor man who got

in the wrong world he existed like other people in a world of public parks beos commercial cities and he wanted to persuade himself that he was living somewhere else behind the canvas of paintings with the doges of Tinto with got's florentines behind the pages of books with fabrio delongo and Julian sell behind the phonograph records with a long dry laments of jazz and then after making a complete fool of himself He understood he opened his eyes he saw that it was a misdeal he was in a beastro just in front of a glass of warm

beer he stayed overwhelmed on the bench he thought I am a fool and at that very moment on the other side of existence in this other world which you can see in the distance but without ever approaching it a little Melody began to sing and dance you must be like me you must suffer in Rhythm The Voice sings some of these days you'll miss me honey someone must have scratched the record at that spot because it makes an odd noise and there is something that clutches the heart the melody is absolutely Untouched by this tiny

coughing of the needle on the record it is so far so far behind I understand that too the disc is scratched and is wearing out perhaps the singer is dead I'm going to leave I'm going to take my Train but behind the existence which falls from one present to the other without a past without a future Behind these sounds which decompose from day to day peel off and slip towards death the melody stays the same young and firm like a pitiless witness the voice is silent the disc scrapes a little then stops delivered from a

Troublesome dream the cafe ruminates chews the cud over the pleasure of existing the Patron's face Is flushed she slaps the fat white cheeks of her new friend but without succeeding in Coloring them cheeks of a corpse I stagnate fall half asleep in 15 minutes I will be on the train but I don't think about it I think about a clean shaven American with thick black eyebrows suffocating with the heat on the 21st floor of a New York skyscraper the sky Burns above New York the blue of the sky is inflamed enormous yellow flames come and

lick the roofs The Brooklyn children are going to put on bathing drawers and play Under the Water of a fire hose the dark room on the 21st floor Cooks under a high pressure the American with the black eyebrows sigh gasps and the sweat rolls down his cheeks he is sitting in shirt sleeves in front of his piano he has a taste of smoke in his mouth and vaguely a ghost of a tune in his head some of these days Tom will come in an hour with his hip flask and both of them Will lower themselves

into leather armchairs and drink brimming glasses of whiskey the fire of the sky will come and inflame their throats they will feel the weight of an immense Torrid Slumber but first the tune must be written down some of these days the moist hand seizes the pencil on the piano some of these days you'll miss me honey that's the way it happened that way or another way it makes little difference that is How it was born it is the worn out body of this Jew with black eyebrows which it chose to created he held the pencil

limply and the drops of sweat fell from his ringed fingers onto the paper and why not I why should it need precisely this fat fool full of stale beer and whiskey for the miracle to be accomplished madin would you put the record back just once before I leave Maden starts to laugh she turns the crank and it begins Again but I no longer think of myself I think of the man out there who wrote this tune one day in July in the black heat of his room I tried to think of him through the melody

through the white acidulated sounds of the saxophone he made it he had troubles everything didn't work out for him the way it should have bills to pay and then there surely must have been a woman somewhere who wasn't thinking about him the way he would have liked or two and then there Was this terrible Heat Wave which turned men into pools of melting fat there's nothing pretty or glorious and all that but when I hear the sound and I think that that man made it I find this suffering and sweat moving he was lucky he

couldn't have realized it he must have thought with a little luck this thing will bring in $50 well this is the first time in years that a man has seemed moving to me I'd like to know something about him it Would interest me to find out the type of troubles he had if he had a woman or if he lived alone not at all out of Humanity on the contrary besides he may be dead just to get a little information about him and be able to think about him from time to time listening to the

record I don't suppose it would make the slightest difference to him if he were told that in the seventh largest city of France in the neighborhood of a station someone is thinking about him but I'd be Happy if I were in his place I envy him I have to go I get up but I hesitate an instant I'd like to hear the sing for the last time she sings so two of them are saved the Jew and the saved maybe they thought they were lost irrevocably drowned in existence yet no one could think of me

as I think of them with such gentleness no one not even honey they are a little like dead dead People for me a little like the heroes of a novel they've washed themselves with the sin of existing not completely of course but as much as any man can this idea suddenly knocks me over because I was not even hoping for that anymore I feel something brush against me lightly and I dare not move because I'm afraid it will go away something I didn't know anymore a sort of Joy the sings can you Justify Your Existence

Then just a little I feel extraordinarily intimidated it isn't because I have much hope but I'm like a man completely Frozen after a trek through the snow and who suddenly comes into a warm room I think he would stay motionless near the door still cold and that slow shutters would go right through him some of these days you'll miss me honey couldn't I try naturally it wouldn't be a question of a tune but Couldn't I in another medium it would have to be a book I don't know how to do anything else but not a

history book history talks about what has existed an existent can never justify the existence of another existent my error I wanted to resuscitate the Marque de another type of book I don't quite know which kind but you would have to guess behind the printed words behind the pages at something which would not exist which Would be above existence a story for example something that could never happen an adventure it would have to be beautiful and hard as steel and make people ashamed of their existence I must leave I'm vacillating I dare not make a decision

if I were sure I had talent but I've never never written anything of that sort historical articles yes lots of them a book a Novel and there would be people who would read this book and say Anan Ronan wrote it a red-headed man who hung around cafes and they would think about my life as I think about the negres as something precious and almost legendary a book naturally at first it would only be a Troublesome tiring work it wouldn't stop me from existing or feeling that I exist but a time would come when the book

would be written when it would be behind me and I think that a little of Its Clarity might fall over my past then perhaps because of it I could remember my life without repugnance perhaps one day thinking precisely of this hour of this Gloomy hour in which I wait stooping for it to be time to get on the train perhaps I shall feel my heart beat faster and say to myself that was the day that was the hour when it all started and I might succeed in the past nothing but the past and accepting Myself

night falls on the second floor floor of the hotel PL two windows have just lighted up the building yard of the new station smells strongly of damp wood tomorrow it will rain in buil