it. This will leave me free to consider how I may
best proceed with my own affair, beginning again at the point where I had to interrupt
it, under duress, or through fear, or through ignorance. It will be the last story.
I’ll try and look as if I was telling it willingly, to keep them quiet in case they
should feel like refreshing my memory, on the subject of my behaviour above in the
island, among my compatriots, contemporaries, coreligionists and companions in distress.
This will leave me free to consider how to set about showing myself forth. No one
will be any the wiser. But who are these maniacs let loose on me from on high for
what they call my good, let us first try and throw a little light on that. To tell
the truth – no, first the story. The island, I’m on the island, I’ve never left the
island, God help me. I was under the impression I spent my life in spirals round the
earth. Wrong, it’s on the island I wind my endless ways. The island, that’s all the
earth I know. I don’t know it either, never having had the stomach to look at it.
When I come to the coast I turn back inland. And my course is not helicoidal, I got
that wrong too, but a succession of irregular loops, now sharp and short as in the
waltz, now of a parabolic sweep that embraces entire boglands, now between the two,
somewhere or other, and invariably unpredictable in direction, that is to say determined
by the panic of the moment. But at the period I refer to now this active life is at
an end, I do not move and never shall again, unless it be under the impulsion of a
third party. For of the great traveller I had been, on my hands and knees in the later
stages, then crawling on my belly or rolling on the ground, only the trunk remains
(in sorry trim), surmounted by the head with which we are already familiar, this is
the part of myself the description of which I have best assimilated and retained.
Stuck like a sheaf of flowers in a deep jar, its neck flush with my mouth, on the
side of a quiet street near the shambles, I am at rest at last. If I turn, I shall
not say my head, but my eyes, free to roll as they list, I can see the statue of the
apostle of horse’s meat, a bust. His pupilless eyes of stone are fixed upon me. That
makes four, with those of my creator,omnipresent, do not imagine I flatter myself I am privileged. Though not exactly in
order I am tolerated by the police. They know I am speechless and consequently incapable
of taking unfair advantage of my situation to stir up the population against its governors,
by means of burning oratory during the rush hour or subversive slogans whispered,
after nightfall, to belated pedestrians the worse for drink. And since I have lost
all my members, with the exception of the one-time virile, they know also that I shall
not be guilty of any gestures liable to be construed as inciting to alms, a prisonable
offence. The fact is I trouble no one, except possibly that category of hypersensitive
persons for whom the least thing is an occasion for scandal and indignation. But even
here the risk is negligible, such people avoiding the neighbourhood for fear of being
overcome at the sight of the cattle, fat and fresh from their pastures, trooping towards
the humane killer. From this point of view the spot is well chosen, from my point
of view. And even those sufficiently unhinged to be affected by the spectacle I offer,
I mean upset and temporarily diminished in their capacity for work and aptitude for happiness, need only look at me a second time, those who can bring themselves
to do it, to have immediately their minds made easy. For my face reflects nothing
but the satisfaction of one savouring a well-earned rest. It is true my mouth was hidden, most of the
time, and my eyes closed. Ah yes, sometimes it’s in the past, sometimes in the present. And alone perhaps the state of my skull,
covered with pustules
best proceed with my own affair, beginning again at the point where I had to interrupt
it, under duress, or through fear, or through ignorance. It will be the last story.
I’ll try and look as if I was telling it willingly, to keep them quiet in case they
should feel like refreshing my memory, on the subject of my behaviour above in the
island, among my compatriots, contemporaries, coreligionists and companions in distress.
This will leave me free to consider how to set about showing myself forth. No one
will be any the wiser. But who are these maniacs let loose on me from on high for
what they call my good, let us first try and throw a little light on that. To tell
the truth – no, first the story. The island, I’m on the island, I’ve never left the
island, God help me. I was under the impression I spent my life in spirals round the
earth. Wrong, it’s on the island I wind my endless ways. The island, that’s all the
earth I know. I don’t know it either, never having had the stomach to look at it.
When I come to the coast I turn back inland. And my course is not helicoidal, I got
that wrong too, but a succession of irregular loops, now sharp and short as in the
waltz, now of a parabolic sweep that embraces entire boglands, now between the two,
somewhere or other, and invariably unpredictable in direction, that is to say determined
by the panic of the moment. But at the period I refer to now this active life is at
an end, I do not move and never shall again, unless it be under the impulsion of a
third party. For of the great traveller I had been, on my hands and knees in the later
stages, then crawling on my belly or rolling on the ground, only the trunk remains
(in sorry trim), surmounted by the head with which we are already familiar, this is
the part of myself the description of which I have best assimilated and retained.
Stuck like a sheaf of flowers in a deep jar, its neck flush with my mouth, on the
side of a quiet street near the shambles, I am at rest at last. If I turn, I shall
not say my head, but my eyes, free to roll as they list, I can see the statue of the
apostle of horse’s meat, a bust. His pupilless eyes of stone are fixed upon me. That
makes four, with those of my creator,omnipresent, do not imagine I flatter myself I am privileged. Though not exactly in
order I am tolerated by the police. They know I am speechless and consequently incapable
of taking unfair advantage of my situation to stir up the population against its governors,
by means of burning oratory during the rush hour or subversive slogans whispered,
after nightfall, to belated pedestrians the worse for drink. And since I have lost
all my members, with the exception of the one-time virile, they know also that I shall
not be guilty of any gestures liable to be construed as inciting to alms, a prisonable
offence. The fact is I trouble no one, except possibly that category of hypersensitive
persons for whom the least thing is an occasion for scandal and indignation. But even
here the risk is negligible, such people avoiding the neighbourhood for fear of being
overcome at the sight of the cattle, fat and fresh from their pastures, trooping towards
the humane killer. From this point of view the spot is well chosen, from my point
of view. And even those sufficiently unhinged to be affected by the spectacle I offer,
I mean upset and temporarily diminished in their capacity for work and aptitude for happiness, need only look at me a second time, those who can bring themselves
to do it, to have immediately their minds made easy. For my face reflects nothing
but the satisfaction of one savouring a well-earned rest. It is true my mouth was hidden, most of the
time, and my eyes closed. Ah yes, sometimes it’s in the past, sometimes in the present. And alone perhaps the state of my skull,
covered with pustules
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