The Unnamable (11 page)

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 in 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 apéritif. 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. Here all is killing
and eating. 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. Please God nothing has happened
to my protectress. I shall not hear her coming, I shall not hear 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
it 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 the 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 gates, 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 against 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 this 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 flight 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’ll 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 pronoun
will do, provided one 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 be still thinking). That the 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 she should have visions.
There was a time I thought she was perhaps a near relation, mother, sister, daughter,
or such-like, 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,
artistically 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 tar paulin, 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 more 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 railings, 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, nor 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 realised
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