Come come, a little co-operation please: finish dying. It's the least you might do, after all the trouble they've taken to bring you to life. The worst is over. You've been sufficiently assassinated, sufficiently suicided, to be able now to stand on your own feet, like a big boy. That's what I keep telling myself. And I add (quite carried away): "Slough off this mortal inertia, it is out of place, in this society. They can't do everything. They have put you on the right road, led you by the hand to the very brink of the precipice: now it's up to you, with an unassisted last step, to show them your gratitude." (I like this colourful language, these bold metaphors and apostrophes.) Through the splendours of nature they dragged a paralytic and now there's nothing more to admire it's my duty to jump, that it may be said: "There goes another who has lived." It does not seem to occur to them that I was never there: that this glassy eye, this fallen chap and the foam at the mouth owe nothing to the Bay of Naples, or Aubervilliers.
The last step! I who could never manage the first. But perhaps they would consider themelves sufficiently rewarded if I simply waited for the wind to blow me over. That by all means - it's in my repertory. The trouble is there is no wind equal to it. The cliff would have to cave in under me. If only I were alive inside one might look forward to heart-failure, or to a nice little infarctus somewhere or other.
It's usually with sticks they put me out of my agony - their idea being to demonstrate (to the backers, and bystanders) that I had a beginning, and an end. Then (planting the foot on my chest, where all is as usual) to the assembly: "Ah if you had seen him fifty years ago! What push, what go!" Knowing perfectly well they have to begin me all over again.
But perhaps I exaggerate my need of them. I accuse myself of inertia, and yet I move. (At least I did: can I by any chance have missed the tide?) Let us consider the head. There something seems to stir, from time to time: no reason therefore to despair of a fit of apoplexy. What else? The organs of digestion and evacuation, though sluggish, are not wholly inactive (as is shown by the attentions I receive). It's encouraging. While there's life there's hope.
(The flies, considered as traumatic agents, hardly call for mention. I suppose they might bring me typhus. No, that's rats. I have seen a few, but they are not yet reduced to me. A lowly tapeworm? Not interesting.)
It is clear in any case that I have lost heart too lightly. It is quite possible I have all that is required to give them satisfaction. But already I'm beginning to be there no more, in that calamitous street they made so clear to me. I could describe it (I could have, a moment ago) as if I had been there, in the form they chose for me: diminished certainly (not the man I was, not much longer for this world), but the eyes still open to impressions (and one ear, sufficiently), and the head sufficiently obedient, to provide me at least with a vague idea of the elements to be eliminated from the setting in order for all to be empty and silent.
That was always the way. Just at the moment when the world is assembled at last, and it begins to dawn on me how I can leave it, all fades and disappears. I shall never see this place again, where my jar stands on its pedestal, with its garland of many-coloured lanterns, and me inside it: I could not cling to it. Perhaps they will have me struck by lightning (for a change), or pole-axed, one merry bank-holiday evening, then bundled in my shroud and whisked away, out of sight and mind. Or removed alive (for a change), shifted and deposited elsewhere, on the off chance. And at my next appearance (if I ever appear again) all will be new, new and strange. But little by little I'll get used to it (admonished by them) - used to the scene, used to me. And little by little the old problem will raise its horrid head: how to live, with their kind of life, for a single second, young or old, without aid and assistance. And thus reminded of other attempts, other circumstances, I shall start asking myself questions (prompted by them) like those I have been asking, concerning me, and them, and these sudden shifts of time and age. And how to succeed at last where I have always failed, so that they may be pleased with me, and perhaps leave me in peace at last, and free to do what I have to do: namely try and please the other (if that is what I have to do), so that he may be pleased with me, and leave me in peace at last, and give me quittance, and the right to rest, and silence (if that is in his gift).
It's a lot to expect of one creature, it's a lot to ask: that he should first behave as if he were not, then as if he were, before being admitted to the peace where he neither is, nor is not (and where the language dies that permits of such expressions). Two falsehoods, two trappings, to be borne to the end, before I can be let loose, alone, in the unthinkable unspeakable, where I have not ceased to be, where they will not let me be. (It will perhaps be less restful than I appear to think, alone there at last, and never importuned. No matter: "rest" is one of their words, "think" is another.)
But here at last, it seems to me, is food for delirium. (What a shame if I should pitch on something and never notice it, another candle throw its little light and I be none the wiser.) Yes, I feel the moment has come for me to look back, if I can, and take my bearings, if I am to go on. If only I knew what I have been saying! Bah, no need to worry: it can only have been one thing, the same as ever. I have my faults, but changing my tune is not one of them. I have only to go on, as if there was something to be done, something begun, somewhere to go. It all boils down to a question of words, I must not forget this (I have not forgotten it). But I must have said this before, since I say it now.
I have to speak in a certain way (with warmth perhaps, all is possible) first of the creature I am not (as if I were he) and then (as if I were he) of the creature I am. (Before I can, etc.) It's a question of voices - of voices to keep going, in the right manner, when they stop (on purpose, to put me to the test - as now the one whose burden is roughly to the effect that I am alive). Warmth, ease, conviction, the right manner - as if it were my own voice, pronouncing my own words, words pronouncing me alive (since that's how they want me to be - I don't know why, with their billions of quick, their trillions of dead: that's not enough for them, I too must contribute my little convulsion, mewl, howl, gasp and rattle, loving my neighbour and blessed with reason.
But what is the right manner? I don't know. It is they who dictate this torrent of balls, they who stuffed me full of these groans that choke me. And out it all pours unchanged: I have only to belch to be sure of hearing them, the same sour old teachings I can't change a tittle of. A parrot, that's what they're up against, a parrot. If they had told me what I have to say, in order to meet with their approval, I'd be bound to say it, sooner or later. But God forbid, that would be too easy, my heart wouldn't be in it! I have to puke my heart out too, spew it up whole along with the rest of the vomit. It's then at last I'll look as if I mean what I'm saying, it won't be just idle words. (Well, don't lose hope. Keep your mouth open and your stomach turned. Perhaps you'll come out with it one of these days.)
But the other voice (of him who does not share this passion for the animal kingdom, who is waiting to hear from me), what is its burden? Nice point - too nice for me. For on the subject of me properly so called (I know what I mean), so far as I know I have received no information up to date. May one speak of a voice, in these conditions? Probably not. And yet I do. The fact is all this business about voices requires to be revised, corrected and then abandoned. Hearing nothing I am none the less a prey to communications. And I speak of voices! After all, why not? So long as one knows it's untrue. But there are limits, it appears. Let them come.
So nothing about me. That is to say no connected statement. Faint calls, at long intervals. "Hear me!" "Be yourself again!" Someone has therefore something to say to me. But never the least news concerning me, beyond the insinuation that I am not in a condition to receive any, since I am not there (which I knew already).
I have naturally remarked, in a moment of exceptional receptivity, that these exhortations are conveyed to me by the same channel as that used by Malone and Co. for their transports. That's suspicious - or rather would be if
I still hoped to obtain (from these revelations to come) some truth of more value than those I have been plastered with ever since they took it into their heads I had better exist. But this fond hope (which buoyed me up as recently as a moment ago, if I remember right) has now passed from me.
Two labours then: to be distinguished perhaps (as the mine from the quarry) on the plane of the effort required, but identically deficient in charm and interest.
"I". Who might that be? The galley-man, bound for the Pillars of Hercules, who drops his sweep under cover of night and crawls between the thwarts, towards the rising sun, unseen by the guard, praying for storm? Except that I've stopped praying for anything. (No, no, I'm still a suppliant. I'll get over it, between now and the last voyage, on this leaden sea. It's like the other madness, the mad wish to know, to remember, one's transgressions.) I won't be caught at that again, I'll leave it to this year's damned.
And now let us think no more about it, think no more about anything, think no more.
He alone or they a many, all solicit me in the same tongue, the only one they taught me. (They told me there were others: I don't regret not knowing them.) The moment the silence is broken in this way it can only mean one thing: orders, prayers, threats, praise, reproach, reasons.
Praise? Yes, they gave me to understand I was making progress: "Well done, sonny, that will be all for today, run along now back to your dark and see you tomorrow." And there I am, with my white beard, sitting among the children, babbling, cringing from the rod. I'll die in the lower third, bowed down with years and impositions - four foot tall again, like when I had a future, bare-legged in my old black pinafore, wetting my drawers. ("Pupil Mahood, for the twenty-five thousandth time, what is a mammal?") And I'll fall down dead, worn out by the rudiments. But I'll have made progress, they told me so.
Only not enough, not enough.
Ah! Where was I, in my lessons? That is what has had a fatal effect on my development: my lack of memory, no doubt about it. "Pupil Mahood, repeat after me: Man is a higher mammal." I couldn't. Always talking about mammals, in this menagerie. Frankly, between ourselves, what the hell could it matter to pupil Mahood, that man is this rather than that? Presumably nothing has been lost in any case, since here it all comes slobbering out again, let loose by the nightmare. I'll have my bellyful of mammals, I can see that from here, before I wake. (Quick, give me a mother and let me suck her white, pinching my tits.)
But it's time I gave this solitary a name: nothing doing without proper names. I therefore baptize him Worm. It was high time.
"Worm." I don't like it, but I haven't much choice. It will be my name too, when the time comes, when I needn't be called Mahood any more (if that happy time ever comes). Before Mahood there were others like him, of the same breed and creed, armed with the same prong. But Worm is the first of his kind. (That's soon said: I must not forget I don't know him.) Perhaps he too will weary, renounce the task of forming me and make way for another, having laid the foundations. He has not yet been able to speak his mind, only murmur (I have not ceased to hear his murmur, all the while the others discoursed). He has survived them all, Mahood too. (If Mahood is dead: I can hear him yet, faithful, begging me to still this dead tongue of the living.) (I imagine that is what he says, in his unchanging tone.) If I could be silent I would better understand what he wants of me, wants me to be, wants me to say. Why doesn't he thunder it at me and get it over? Too easy: it is I who must be silent, hold my breath.
But there is something wrong here. For if Mahood were silent, Worm would be silent too. That the impossible should be asked of me, good - what else could be asked of me? But the absurd? Of me whom they have reduced to reason? It is true poor Worm is not to blame for this. That's soon said. But let me complete my views, before I shit on them. For if I am Mahood, I am Worm too (plop). Or if I am not yet Worm, I shall be when I cease to be Mahood (plop).
On now to serious matters.
No, not yet.
Another of Mahood's yarns perhaps, to perfect my besotment?
No, not worth the trouble: it will come at its appointed hour, the record is in position from time immemorial. (Yes, the big words must out too, all to be taken as it comes.) The problem of liberty too, as sure as fate, will come up for my consideration at the pre-established moment.
But perhaps I have been too hasty in opposing these two fomentors of fiasco. Is it not the fault of one that I cannot be the other? Accomplices therefore. (That's the way to reason: warmly.) Or is one to postulate a tertius gaudens (meaning myself) responsible for the double failure? Shall I come upon my true countenance at last, bathing in a smile?
I have the feeling I shall be spared this spectacle.
At no moment do I know what I'm talking about, nor of whom, nor of where, nor how, nor why. But I could employ fifty wretches for this sinister operation and still be short of a fifty-first, to close the circuit - that I know (without knowing what it means). The essential is never to arrive anywhere, never to be anywhere: neither where Mahood is, nor where Worm is, nor where I am (it little matters thanks to what dispensation). The essential is to go on squirming forever at the end of the line, as long as there are waters and banks and (ravening in heaven) a sporting God to plague his creature (per pro his chosen shits). (I've swallowed three hooks and am still hungry. Hence the howls.)
What a joy to know where one is, and where one will stay, without being there! Nothing to do but stretch out comfortably on the rack, in the blissful knowledge you are nobody for all eternity. (A pity I should have to give tongue at the same time - it prevents it from bleeding in peace, licking the lips. Well, I suppose one can't have everything, so late in the proceedings.) They'll surely bring me to the surface one day or another, and all then sink their differences and agree it was not worth while going to so much trouble for such a paltry kill (for such paltry killers). What silence then!
And now let's see what news there is of Worm (just to please the old bastard). I'll soon know if the other is still after me. But even if he isn't nothing will come of it: he won't catch me, I won't be delivered from him (I mean Worm), I swear it. (The other never caught me, I was never delivered from him.) (It's past history, up to the present.) I am he who will never be caught, never delivered, who crawls between the thwarts (towards the new day that promises to be glorious) festooned with lifebelts, praying for rack and ruin.
The third line falls plumb from the skies: it's for her majesty my soul. (I'd have hooked her on it long ago if I knew where to find her.) That brings us up to four, gathered together. I knew it. (There might be a hundred of us and still we'd lack the hundred and first: we'll always be short of me.)
Worm (I nearly said Watt). Worm. What can I say of Worm, who hasn't the wit to make himself plain? What to still this gnawing of termites in my Punch and Judy box? What that might not just as well be said of the other?
Perhaps it's by trying to be Worm that I'll finally succeed in being Mahood: I hadn't thought of that. Then all I'll have to do is be Worm - which no doubt I shall achieve by trying to be Jones. Then all I'll have to do is be Jones. (Stop: perhaps he'll spare me that, have compassion and let me stop. The dawn will not be always rosy.) (Worm. Worm. It's between the three of us now, and the devil take the hindmost.)
It seem to me besides that I must have already made (contrary to what it seems to me I must have already said) some efforts in this direction: I should have noted them, if only in my head. But Worm cannot note. There at least is a first affirmation (I mean negation) on which to build: Worm cannot note. Can Mahood note? (That's it, weave, weave.) Yes, it is the characteristic, among others, of Mahood to note (even if he does not always succeed in doing so) certain things - perhaps I should say all things - so as to turn them to account, for his governance. And indeed we have seen him do so (in the yard, in his jar), in a sense.
I knew I had only to try and talk of Worm to begin talking of Mahood, with more felicity and understanding than ever. How close to me he suddenly seems, squin
ting up at the medals of the hippophagist Ducroix! It is the hour of the aperitif. Already people pause, to read the menu. Charming hour of the day - particularly when (as sometimes happens) it is also that of the setting sun whose last rays, raking the street from end to end, lend to my cenotaph an interminable shadow, astraddle of the gutter and the sidewalk. There was a time I used to contemplate it (when I was freer to turn my head than now, since being put on the collar). Then over there, far from me, I knew my head was lying, and people treading on it, and on my flies (which went on gliding none the less), prettily on the dark ground. And I saw the people coming towards me, all along my shadow, followed by long faithful trembling shadows. (For sometimes I confuse myself with my shadow, and sometimes don't. And sometimes I don't confuse myself with my jar, and sometimes do. It all depends what mood we're in.) And often I went on looking without flinching until, ceasing to be, I ceased to see. Delicious instant truly! - coinciding from time to time (as already observed) with that of the aperitif. But this joy (which for my part I should have thought harmless, and without danger for the public) is something I have to go without now that the collar holds my face turned towards the railings, just above the menu (for it is important that the prospective customer should be able to compose his meal without the risk of being run over).
The meat, in this quarter, has a high reputation, and people come from a distance (from great distances) on purpose to relish it. Which having done they hurry away. By ten o'clock in the evening all is silent (as the grave, as they say). (Such is the fruit of my observations accumulated over a long period of years and constantly subjected to a process of induction.) This evening there is tripe. (It's a winter dish - or a late autumn one.) Soon Marguerite will come and light me up. She is late. Already more than one passer-by has flashed his lighter under my nose the better to decipher what I shall now describe (by way of elegant variation) as the bill of fare.
Three Novels: Malloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable Page 19