never knew what he hoped to discover with those sessions, but each time he looked thoroughly satisfied with the result.
Six weeks went by in this way. Romanian was making some headway in my brain, and I also began active language sessions, when I had to answer a series of questions using the vocabulary I had memorised. I was now beginning to feel strangely serene; I saw learning Romanian as my salvation and, as things were going, salvation did indeed seem to be within my grasp. All that I had to do was speak, keep speaking, and allow my voice to lead the way. Just as Dr Barnung had foreseen, words were carving out sure banks between which the juices of my brain could flow without mingling, the backward-flowing waters of distress and fear now far from the pure sources of my new-found thoughts. Right from the very first sessions, my crises became less frequent and ultimately almost ceased altogether, though I was still surprised by the occasional attack, particularly in the morning, when I woke up. ‘That is when linguistic awareness drops its guard,’ the doctor explained to me. ‘Emerging from the night has always been a problem for man. In the void of sleep, consciousness loosens up, the ego loses its weight and rises through the air like a balloon, becoming reunited with the vague pulse from which it came; and at that moment all that keeps our paltry identity in place is a thin plastic film. That’s why, when you wake up, the first thing you must do is speak; any language whatsoever, even French, will immediately restore your identity to you, sickly though it may be. Words, your own voice, which distinguishes you from a billion others, will pull the fragile bubble of your identity back down to earth like a stone.’
After these sessions, I would spend many hours in total solitude, and this too did me good. The solitude I experienced in Dr Barnung’s clinic was of a completely new kind. No longer was I wandering down dark galleries which I feared to explore; now I was borne through light-filled halls in which I found traces of an earlier consciousness. I visited rooms furnished for all the Felix Bellamys who had never elbowed their way into existence, but whom I carried within me, unformed, irresolute. I sank into visions not my own, which yet belonged to me, with a familiar aura to them; I rediscovered pains experienced and never completely dulled, a secret birthright of lives unfulfilled. In a word, in Dr Barnung’s language clinic I felt myself happily unwell, assured of total recovery. Glimpses of a new identity were opening up before me, burgeoning in secret in the furthest recesses of my mind; thanks to Romanian, it was becoming less shadowy, brushing gently up against my mind. The doctor warned me that I must be certain of having reached its furthest roots before I tried to eradicate it. But I could also choose to let it take my place, I could pour myself into it through the channel opened up by the Romanian language. After two months I was actively speaking the language of the unknown Felix Bellamy who was reawakening within me, and a shiver of fear and excitement ran through me when I thought of the day when I would have to choose which of the two to be.
III
My life in the clinic slipped by almost imperceptibly, my anxieties pleasantly blunted by a serenity whose origins were all too clear to me, and which did not in the least surprise me. Everything in that place was the fruit of some form of artifice, of some complex intellectual fabrication; I too felt myself to be a concocted being, devoting myself to my illness as to some vice which I had learned to cultivate with skill, and from which I could derive the greatest pleasure, while fully aware that I was proceeding down a path of creeping addiction, although to what I could not say – perhaps simply to the architecture of the place, so secluded, so much itself, more fitted to housing the members of some orgiastic sect than a community of sufferers, or
Six weeks went by in this way. Romanian was making some headway in my brain, and I also began active language sessions, when I had to answer a series of questions using the vocabulary I had memorised. I was now beginning to feel strangely serene; I saw learning Romanian as my salvation and, as things were going, salvation did indeed seem to be within my grasp. All that I had to do was speak, keep speaking, and allow my voice to lead the way. Just as Dr Barnung had foreseen, words were carving out sure banks between which the juices of my brain could flow without mingling, the backward-flowing waters of distress and fear now far from the pure sources of my new-found thoughts. Right from the very first sessions, my crises became less frequent and ultimately almost ceased altogether, though I was still surprised by the occasional attack, particularly in the morning, when I woke up. ‘That is when linguistic awareness drops its guard,’ the doctor explained to me. ‘Emerging from the night has always been a problem for man. In the void of sleep, consciousness loosens up, the ego loses its weight and rises through the air like a balloon, becoming reunited with the vague pulse from which it came; and at that moment all that keeps our paltry identity in place is a thin plastic film. That’s why, when you wake up, the first thing you must do is speak; any language whatsoever, even French, will immediately restore your identity to you, sickly though it may be. Words, your own voice, which distinguishes you from a billion others, will pull the fragile bubble of your identity back down to earth like a stone.’
After these sessions, I would spend many hours in total solitude, and this too did me good. The solitude I experienced in Dr Barnung’s clinic was of a completely new kind. No longer was I wandering down dark galleries which I feared to explore; now I was borne through light-filled halls in which I found traces of an earlier consciousness. I visited rooms furnished for all the Felix Bellamys who had never elbowed their way into existence, but whom I carried within me, unformed, irresolute. I sank into visions not my own, which yet belonged to me, with a familiar aura to them; I rediscovered pains experienced and never completely dulled, a secret birthright of lives unfulfilled. In a word, in Dr Barnung’s language clinic I felt myself happily unwell, assured of total recovery. Glimpses of a new identity were opening up before me, burgeoning in secret in the furthest recesses of my mind; thanks to Romanian, it was becoming less shadowy, brushing gently up against my mind. The doctor warned me that I must be certain of having reached its furthest roots before I tried to eradicate it. But I could also choose to let it take my place, I could pour myself into it through the channel opened up by the Romanian language. After two months I was actively speaking the language of the unknown Felix Bellamy who was reawakening within me, and a shiver of fear and excitement ran through me when I thought of the day when I would have to choose which of the two to be.
III
My life in the clinic slipped by almost imperceptibly, my anxieties pleasantly blunted by a serenity whose origins were all too clear to me, and which did not in the least surprise me. Everything in that place was the fruit of some form of artifice, of some complex intellectual fabrication; I too felt myself to be a concocted being, devoting myself to my illness as to some vice which I had learned to cultivate with skill, and from which I could derive the greatest pleasure, while fully aware that I was proceeding down a path of creeping addiction, although to what I could not say – perhaps simply to the architecture of the place, so secluded, so much itself, more fitted to housing the members of some orgiastic sect than a community of sufferers, or
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