Please God nothing has happened to my protectress! I shall not hear her coming (I shall not near her steps), because of the snow. I spent all morning under my cover. When the first frosts come she makes me a nest of rags, well tucked in all round me, to preserve me from chills. It's snug. I wonder will she powder my skull this evening, with her great puff? (It's her latest invention. She's always thinking of something new, to relieve me. If only the earth would quake! The shambles swallow me up!) Through the railings, at the end of a vista between two blocks of buildings, the sky appears to me. (A bar moves over and shuts if off, whenever I please.) If I could raise my head I'd see it streaming into the main of the firmament.
What is there to add, to these particulars? The evening is still young, I know that. Don't let us go just yet, not yet say goodbye once more forever, to this heap of rubbish. What about trying to cogitate, while waiting for something intelligible to take place? Just this once?
Almost immediately a thought presents itself. (I should really concentrate more often.) Quick let me record it before it vanishes.
How is it that people do not notice me? I seem to exist for none but Madeleine.
That a passer-by pressed for time (in headlong flight or hot pursuit) should have no eyes for me, that I can conceive. But the idlers come to hear the cattle's bellows of pain and who, time obviously heavy on their hands, pace up and down waiting for the slaughter to begin? The hungry compelled by the position of the menu (and whether they like it or not) to post themselves literally face to face with me, in the full blast of my breath? The children on their way to and from their playgrounds beyond the gate, all out for a bit of fun? It seems to me that even a human head, recently washed and with a few hairs on top, should be quite a popular curiosity in the position occupied by mine. Can it be out of discretion, and a reluctance to hurt, that they affect to be unaware of my existence? But this is a refinement of feeling which can hardly be attributed to the dogs that come pissing aganst my abode (apparently never doubting that it contains some flesh and bones). It follows therefore that I have no smell either. (And yet if anyone should have a smell, it is I.)
How, under these conditions, can Mahood expect me to behave normally? The flies vouch for me, if you like - but how far? Would they not settle with equal appetite on a lump of cowshit? No, as long as this point is not cleared up to my satisfaction (or as long as I am not distinguished by some sense organs other than Madeleine's) it will be impossible for me to believe (sufficiently to pursue my act) the things that are told about me.
I should further remark (with regard to the testimony which I consider indispensable) that I shall soon be in no fit condition to receive it, so greatly have my faculties declined, in recent times. It is obvious we have here a principle of change pregnant with possibilities. But say I succeed in dying (to adopt the most comfortable hypothesis) without having been able to believe I ever lived? I know to my cost it is not that they wish for me. For it has happened to me many times already, without their having granted me as much as a brief sick-leave among the worms, before resurrecting me. But who knows, this time, what the future holds in store?
That qua sentient and thinking being I should be going downhill fast is in any case an excellent thing. Perhaps some day some gentleman, chancing to pass my way with his sweetheart on his arm, at the precise moment when my last is favouring me with a final smack of the light of time, will exclaim (loud enough for me to hear): "Oh I say, this man is ailing. We must call an ambulance!" Thus with a single stone, when all hope seemed lost, the two rare birds: I shall be dead, but I shall have lived.
Unless one is to suppose him victim of a hallucination. Yes, to dispel all doubt his betrothed would need to say: "You are right, my love, he looks as if he were going to throw up." Then I'd know for certain, and giving up the ghost be born at last - to the sound perhaps of one of those hiccups which mar (alas too often) the solemnity of the passing. (When Mahood, I once knew a doctor who held that scientifically speaking the latest breath could only issue from the fundament - and this therefore (rather than the mouth) the orifice to which the family should present the mirror, before opening the will.)
However this may be (and without dwelling further on these macabre details) it is certain I was grievously mistaken in supposing that death in itself could be regarded as evidence (or even a strong presumption) in support of a preliminary life. And I for my part have no longer the least desire to leave this world (in which they keep trying to foist me) without some kind of assurance that I was really there - such as a kick in the arse (for example), or a kiss. (The nature of the attention is of little importance, provided I cannot be suspected of being its author.) But let two third parties remark me (there, before my eyes) and I'd take care of the rest.
How all becomes clear and simple when one opens an eye on the within! (Having of course previously exposed it to the without, in order to benefit by the contrast.) I should be sorry (though exhausted personally) to abandon prematurely this rich vein. For I shall not come back to it in a hurry. Ah no.
But enough of this cursed first person: it is really too red a herring. I'll get out of my depth if I'm not careful. But what then is the subject? Mahood? No, not yet. Worm? Even less. Bah, any old protagonist will do, provided ones sees through it. Matter of habit. (To be adjusted later.)
Where was I?
Ah yes: the bliss of what is clear and simple. The next thing is somehow to connect this with the unhappy Madeleine and her great goodness. Attentions such as hers, the pertinacity with which she continues to acknowledge me: do not these sufficiently attest my real presence here, in the Rue Brancion, never heard of in my island home? Would she rid me of my paltry excrements every Sunday, make me a nest at the approach of winter, protect me from the snow, change my sawdust, rub salt into my scalp (I hope I'm not forgetting anything), if I were not there? Would she have put me in a cang, raised me on a pedestal, hung me with lanterns, if she were not convinced of my substantiality?
How happy I should be to submit to this evidence and to the execution upon me of the sentence it entails! Unfortunately I regard it as highly subject to caution, not to say unallowable. For what is one to think of the redoubled attentions she has been lavishing on me for some time past? How different from the serenity of our early relations, when I saw her only once a week! No, there is no getting away from it: this woman is losing faith in me. And she is trying to put off the moment when she must finally confess her error by coming every few minutes to see if I am still more or less imaginable in situ. (Similarly the belief in God - in all modesty be it said - is sometimes lost following a period of intensified zeal and observance, it appears.)
Here I pause to make a distinction. (I must still be thinking.) That jar is really standing where they say? All right, I wouldn't dream of denying it (after all it's none of my business) - though its presence at such a place (about the reality of which I do not propose to quibble either) does not strike me as very credible. No, I merely doubt that I am in it. It is easier to raise a shrine than bring the deity down to haunt it. (But what's all this confusion now? That's what comes of distinctions. No matter.)
She loves me, I've always felt it. She needs me. Her chop-house, her husband, her children (if she has any), are not enough: there is in her a void that I alone can fill. It is not surprising then that she should have visions. There was a time I thought she was perhaps a near relation (mother, sister, daughter, or suchlike - perhaps even a wife), and that she was sequestrating me. (That is to say Mahood - seeing how little impressed I was by his chief witness - whispered this suggestion in my ear, adding: "I didn't say anything.")
I must admit it is not so preposterous as it looks at first sight. It even accounts for certain bizarreries which had not yet struck me at the time of its formulation: among others my inexistence in the eyes of those who are not in the know (that is to say all mankind). But assuming I was being stowed away in a public place, why go to such trouble to draw attention to my head, artist
ically illuminated from dusk to midnight?
You may of course retort that results are all that count. Another thing however: this woman has never spoken to me, to the best of my knowledge. (If I have said anything to the contrary I was mistaken. If I say anything to the contrary again I shall be mistaken again. Unless I am mistaken now. Into the dossier with it in any case, in support of whatever thesis you fancy.) Never an affectionate word, never a reprimand. For fear of bringing me to the public notice? Or lest the illusion should be dispelled?
I shall now sum up.
The moment is at hand when my only believer must deny me. Nothing has happened. The lanterns have not been lit. (Is it the same evening?) Perhaps dinner is over. Perhaps Marguerite has come and gone (come again and gone again), without my having noticed her. Perhaps I have blazed with all my usual brilliance, for hours on end, all unsuspecting. And yet something has changed. It is not a night like other nights. Not because I see no stars (it is not often I see a star, away up in the depths of the sliver of sky I command). Not because I don't see anything, not even the railings (that has often happened). Not because of the silence either. It is a silent place, at night. And I am half-deaf. It is not the first time I have strained my ears in vain for the stables' muffled sounds. All of a sudden a horse will neigh. Then I'll know that nothing has changed. Or I'll see the lantern of the watchman, swinging knee-high in the yard. I must be patient.
It is cold, this morning it snowed. And yet I don't feel the cold on my head. Perhaps I am still under the tarpaulin: perhaps she flung it over me again (for fear of more snow in the night) while I was meditating. But the sensation I so love, of the tarpaulin weighing on my head, is lacking too. Has my head lost all feeling? Or did I have a stroke, while I was meditating? I don't know. I shall be patient, asking no questions, on the qui vive.
Hours have passed, it must be day again. Nothing has happened. I hear nothing. I placed them before their responsibilities: perhaps they have let me go. For this feeling of being entirely enclosed, and yet nothing touching me, is new. The sawdust no longer presses against my stumps. I don't know where I end.
I left it yesterday, Mahood's world: the street, the chop-house, the slaughter, the statue and, through the railing, the sky like a slate pencil. I shall never hear again the lowing of the cattle, nor the clinking of the forks and glasses, nor the angry voices of the butchers, not the litany of the dishes and the prices. There will never be another woman wanting me in vain to live. My shadow at evening will not darken the ground. The stories of Mahood are ended. He has realized they could not be about me, he has abandoned. It is I who win, who tried so hard to lose, in order to please him, and be left in peace.
Having won, shall I be left in peace? It doesn't look like it, I seem to be going on talking. In any case all these suppositions are probably erroneous: I shall no doubt be launched again (girt with better arms) against the fortress of mortality.
What is more important is that I should know what is going on now, in order to announce it (as my function requires). It must not be forgotten (sometimes I forget) that all is a question of voices. I say what I am told to say, in the hope that some day they will weary of talking at me. The trouble is I say it wrong, having no ear, no head, no memory. Now I seem to hear them say it is Worm's voice beginning. (I pass on the news, for what it is worth.) Do they believe I believe it is I who am speaking? (That's theirs too. To make me believe I have an ego all my own, and can speak of it, as they of theirs: another trap to snap me up among the living. It's how to fall into it they can't have explained to me sufficiently: they'll never get the better of my stupidity.)
Why do they speak to me thus? (Is it possible certain things change on their passage through me, in a way they can't prevent?) Do they believe I believe it is I who am asking these questions? (That's theirs too - a little distorted perhaps.) I don't say it's not the right method. I don't say they won't catch me in the end: I wish they would, to be thrown away. It's this hunt that is tiring, this unending being at bay. Images! They imagine that by piling on images they'll entice me in the end. Like the mother who whistles to prevent baby's bladder from bursting. (There's another.)
They? Yes, now they're all in the same galley.
Worm to play, his lead: I wish him a happy time. To think I thought he was against what they were trying to do with me! To think I saw in him, if not me, a step towards me! To get me to be he, the anti-Mahood, and then to say "But what am I doing but living, in a kind of way, the only possible way?" - that's the combination. Or by the absurd prove to me that I am (the absurd of not being able). Unfortunately it is no help my being forewarned. I never remain so for long. In any case I wish him every success, in his courageous undertaking. And I am even prepared to collaborate with him (as with Mahood and Co.) to the best of my ability. (Being unable to do otherwise - and knowing my ability.)
Worm. To say he does not know what he is, where he is, what is happening, is to underestimate him. What he does not know is that there is anything to know. His senses tell him nothing: nothing about himself, nothing about the rest (and this distinction is beyond him). Feeling nothing, knowing nothing, he exists nevertheless: but not for himself, for others. Others conceive him and say "Worm is, since we conceive him". As if there could be no being but being conceived (if only by the be-er).
Others. One alone, then others. One alone turned towards the all-impotent, all-nescient, that haunts him, then others. Towards him whom he would nourish (he the famished one!), and who, having nothing human, has nothing else, has nothing, is nothing. Come into the world unborn, abiding there unliving, with no hope of death (epicentre of joys, of griefs, of calm). Who seems the truest possession, because the most unchanging. The one outside of life we always were in the end, all our long vain life long. Who is not spared by the mad need to speak, to think, to know where one is, where one was, during the wild dream, up above, under the skies, venturing forth at night. The one ignorant of himself and silent, ignorant of his silence and silent. Who could not be and gave up trying. Who crouches in their midst who see themselves in him and in their eyes stares his unchanging stare.
Thanks for these first notions. And it's not all. He who seeks his true countenance, let him be of good cheer: he'll find it, convulsed with anguish, the eyes out on stalks. He who longs to have lived, while he was alive, let him be reassured: life will tell him how. (That's all very comforting.)
Worm? Be Worm? You'll see, it's impossible. What a velvet glove - a little worn at the knuckles with all the hard hitting! Bah, let's turn the black eye. And the starching begins at last, of this old clout so patiently pawed in vain, as limp and drooping still as the first day.
But it is solely a question of voices: no other image is appropriate. Let it go through me at last: the right one, the last one. (His who has none, by his own confession.)
Do they think they'll lull me, with all this hemming and hawing? What can it matter to me, that I succeed or fail? The undertaking is none of mine. If they want me to succeed I'll fail (and vice versa), so as not to be rid of my tormentors.
Is there a single word of mine in all I say? No, I have no voice (in this matter I have none). That's one of the reasons why I confused myself with Worm. But I have no reasons either, no reason. I'm like Worm, without voice or reason: I'm Worm. No, if I were Worm I wouldn't know it. But I don't say anything, I don't know anything. These voices are not mine, nor these thoughts, but the voices and thoughts of the devils who beset me. Who make me say that I can't be Worm, the inexpugnable. Who make me say that I am he perhaps (as they are). Who make me say that since I can't be he I must be he. That since I couldn't be Mahood (as I might have been), I must be Worm (as I cannot be).
But is it still they who say that when I have failed to be Worm I'll be Mahood? Automatically, on the rebound? As if (and a little silence), as if I were big enough now to take a hint and understand (certain things)? But they're wrong. I need explanations, of everything. And even then, I don't understand. That's ho
w I'll sicken them in the end, by my stupidity. (So they say, to lull me, to make me think I'm stupider than I am.)
And is it still they who say that when I surprise them all and am Worm at last, then at last I'll be Mahood? Worm proving to be Mahood the moment one is he?
Ah if they could only begin, and do what they want with me, and succeed at last (in doing what they want with me)! (I'm ready to be whatever they want, I'm tired of being matter, matter, pawed and pummelled endlessly in vain.) Or give me up and leave my lying in a heap - in such a heap that none would ever be found again to try and fashion it. But they are not of the same mind: they are all of the same kidney and yet they don't know what they want to do with me. They don't know where I am, or what I'm like.
I'm like dust: they want to make a man out of dust.
Listen to them, losing heart! That's to lull me, till I imagine I hear myself saying (myself at last!), to myself at last, that it can't be they, speaking thus: that it can only be I, speaking thus. Ah if I could only find a voice of my own, in all this babble! It would be the end of their troubles, and of mine. That's why there are all these little silences: to try and make me break them. They think I can't bear silence - that some day, somehow, my horror of silence will force me to break it. That's why they are always leaving off: to try and drive me to extremities. But they dare not be silent for long, the whole fabrication might collapse.
It's true I dread these gulfs they all bend over, straining their ears for the murmur of a man. It isn't silence, it's pitfalls - into which nothing would please me better than to fall (with the little cry that might be taken for human, like a wounded wistit, the first and last), and vanish for good and all, having squeaked. Well, if they ever succeed in getting me to give a voice to Worm (in a moment of euphory) perhaps I'll succeed in making it mine (in a moment of confusion). There we have the stake. But they won't. (Did they ever get Mahood to speak? It seems to me not. I think Murphy spoke now and then - the others too perhaps, I don't remember. But it was clumsily done, you could see the ventriloquist.)
Three Novels: Malloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable Page 20