Who, them? And why nothing more from them lately? Can it be they have abandoned me, saying "Very well, there's nothing to be done with him, let's leave it at that, he's not dangerous"? Ah but the little murmur of unconsenting man, to murmur what it is their humanity stifles! The little gasp of the condemned to life, rotting in his dungeon garrotted and racked, to gasp what it is to have to celebrate banishment! Beware!
No, they have nothing to fear. I am walled round with their vociferations. No one will ever know what I am, none will ever hear me say it: I won't say it, I can't say it, I have no language but theirs. No, perhaps I'll say it (even with their language), for me alone - so as not to have not lived in vain, and so as to go silent. (If that is what confers the right to silence - and it's unlikely: it's they who have silence in their gift, they who decide, the same old gang, among themselves.) No matter, to hell with silence: I'll say what I am, so as not to have been born for nothing. I'll fix their jargon for them. Then any old thing (no matter what, whatever they want), with a will, till time is done - at least with a good grace.
First I'll say what I'm not (that's how they taught me to proceed), then what I am. It's already under way: I have only to resume at the point where I let myself be cowed. I am neither (I needn't say) Murphy, nor Watt, nor Mercier, nor..... (no, I can't even bring myself to name them, nor any of the others whose very names I forget, who told me I was they, who I must have tried to be - under duress, or through fear, or to avoid acknowledging me): not the slightest connection. I never desired, never sought, never suffered, never partook in any of that, never knew what it was to have things, adversaries, mind, senses.
But enough of this. There is no use denying, no use harping on the same old thing I know so well, and so easy to say - and which simply amounts in the end to speaking yet again in the way they intend me to speak: that is to say about them (even with execration and disbelief). Perhaps they exist in the way they have decreed will be mine? It's possible: I don't know and I'm not interested. (If they had taught me how to wish I'd wish they did.)
There's no getting rid of them without naming them and their contraptions, that's the thing to keep in mind. I might as well tell another of Mahood's stories and no more about it (to be understood in the way I was given to understand it: namely as being about me).
That's an idea. To heighten my disgust. I'll recite 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, 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 way. 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 the 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 and bluebottles, these latter naturally abounding in such a neigbourhood) preserved me from being an object of envy for many, and a source of discontent.
I hope this gives a fair picture of my situation.
Once a week I was taken out of my receptacle, so that it might be emptied. This duty fell to the proprietress of the chop-house across the street, and she performed it punctually and without complaint (beyond an occasional good-natured reflection to the effect that I was a nasty old pig): for she had a kitchen garden. Without perhaps having exactly won her heart it was clear I did not leave her indifferent. And before putting me back she took advantage of the circumstance that my mouth was accessible to stick into it a chunk of lights or a marrow-bone. And when snow fell she covered me with a tarpaulin still watertight in places.
It was under its shelter, snug and dry, that I became acquainted with the boon of tears (while wondering to what I was indebted for it, not feeling moved). And this not merely once, but every time she covered me - that is to say twice or three times a year. Yes, it was fatal: no sooner had the tarpaulin settled over me, and the precipitate steps of my benefactress died away, than the tears began to flow. Is this, was this, to be interpreted as an effect of gratitude? But in that case should not I have felt grateful? Besides I realized darkly that if she took care of me thus, it was not solely out of goodness (or else I had not rightly understood the meaning of goodness, when it was explained to me).
It must not be forgotten that I represented for this woman an undeniable asset. For quite apart from the services I rendered to her lettuce, I constituted for her establishment a kind of landmark, not to say an advertisement - far more effective than for example a chef in cardboard (pot-bellied in profile and full face wafer thin). That she was well aware of this is shown by the trouble she had taken to festoon my jar with Chinese lanterns (of a very pretty effect in the twilight, and a fortiori in the night). And the jar itself (so that the passer-by might consult with greater ease the menu attached to it) had been raised on a pedestal at her own expense. It is thus I learnt that her turnips
in gravy are not so good as they used to be, but that on the other hand her carrots (equally in gravy) are even better than formerly. (The gravy has not varied.)
This is the kind of language I can almost understand, these the kind of clear and simple notions on which it is possible for me to build: I ask for no other spiritual nourishment. A turnip, I know roughly what a turnip is like. A carrot too (particularly the Flakkee, or Colmar Red). I seem to grasp at certain moments the nuance that divides bad from worse. And if I do not always feel the full force of yesterday and today, this does not detract very much from the satisfaction I feel at having penetrated the gist of the matter. Of her salad, for example, I have never heard anything but praise.
Yes, I represent for her a tidy little capital and, if I should ever happen to die, I am convinced she would be genuinely annoyed. (This should help me to live.) I like to fancy that when the fatal hour of reckoning comes (if it ever does), and my debt to nature is paid at last, she will do her best to prevent the removal, from where it now stands, of the old vase in which I shall have accomplished my vicissitudes. And perhaps in the place now occupied by my head she will set a melon, or a vegetable-marrow, or a big pineapple with its little tuft (or better still, I don't know why, a swede), in memory of me. Then I shall vanish quite (as is so often the way with people when they are buried). But it is not to speak of her that I have started lying again. (De nobis ipsis silemus: decidedly that should have been my motto. Yes, they gave me some lessons in pigsty Latin too - it looks well, sprinkled through the perjury.)
It is perhaps worth noting that snow alone (provided of course it is heavy) entitles me to the tarpaulin. No other form of filthy weather lets loose in her the maternal instinct, in my favour. I have tried to make her understand, dashing my head angrily against the neck of the jar, that I should like to be shrouded more often. At the same time I let my spittle flow over, in an attempt to show my displeasure. In vain. I wonder what explanation she can have found to account for this behaviour. She must have talked it over with her husband and probably been told that I was merely stifling. That is the reverse of the truth. But credit where credit is due: we made a balls of it between us, I with my signs and she with her reading of them.
This story is no good, I'm beginning almost to believe it. But let us see how it is supposed to end, that will sober me. The trouble is I forget how it goes on. (But did I ever know?) Perhaps it stops there. Perhaps they stopped it there, saying (who knows?): "There you are now, you don't need us any more."
This in fact is one of their favourite devices: to stop suddenly at the least sign of adhesion from me, leaving me high and dry, with nothing for my renewal but the life they have imputed to me. And it is only when they see me stranded that they take up again the thread of my misfortunes - judging me still insufficiently vitalized to bring them to a successful conclusion alone. But instead of making the junction (I have often noticed this) - I mean instead of resuming me at the point where I was left off - they pick me up at a much later stage, perhaps thereby hoping to induce in me the illusion that I had got through the interval all on my own; lived without help of any kind for quite some time, and with no recollection of by what means or in what circumstances: or even died, all on my own, and come back to earth again (by way of the vagina like a real live baby), and reached a ripe age, and even senility, without the least assistance from them and thanks solely to the hints they had given me.
To saddle me with a lifetime is probably not enough for them: I have to be given a taste of two or three generations. But it's not certain. Perhaps all they have told me has reference to a single existence - the confusion of identities being merely apparent and due to my inaptitude to assume any. If I ever succeed in dying under my own steam, then they will be in a better position to decide if I am worthy to adorn another age (or to try the same one again, with the benefit of my experience). I may therefore perhaps legitimately suppose that the one-armed wayfarer of a moment ago and the wedge-headed trunk in which I am now marooned are simply two phases of the same carnal envelope (the soul being notoriously immune from deterioration and dismemberment). Having lost one leg, what more likely than that I should mislay the other? And similarly for the arms. A natural transition in sum.
But what then of that other old age they bestowed upon me (if I remember right), and that other middle age, when neither legs nor arms were lacking, but simply the power to profit by them? And of that kind of youth in which they had to give me up for dead?
If I have warm place it is not in their hearts. Oh I don't say they haven't done all they could to be agreeable to me, to get me out of here (on no matter what pretext, in no matter what disguise). All I reproach them with is their insistence. For beyond them is that other who will not give me quittance until they have abandoned me as inutilizable and restored me to myself. Then at last I can set about saying what I was, and where, during all this long lost time.
But who is he, if my guess is right, who is waiting for that, from me? And who these others whose designs are so different? And into whose hands I play when I ask myself such questions? But do I, do I? In the jar did I ask myself questions? And in the arena?
I have dwindled, I dwindle. Not so long ago (with a kind of shrink of my head and shoulders, as when one is scolded) I could disappear. Soon, at my present rate of decrease, I may spare myself this effort. And spare myself the trouble of closing my eyes, so as not to see the day (for they are blinded by the jar a few inches away). And I have only to let my head fall forward against the wall to be sure that the light from above (which at night is that of the moon) will not be reflected there either, in those little blue mirrors. (I used to look at myself in them, to try and brighten them.)
Wrong again, wrong again! This effort and this trouble will not be spared me. For the woman, displeased at seeing me sink lower and lower, has raised me up by filling the bottom of my jar with sawdust which she changes every week (when she makes my toilet). It is softer than the stone, but less hygienic. And I had got used to the stone. Now I'm getting used to the sawdust. (It's an occupation: I could never bear to be idle, it saps one's energy.) And I open and close my eyes, open and close, as in the past. And I move my head in and out, in and out, as heretofore. And often at dawn, having left it out all night, I bring it in, to mock the woman and lead her astray. For in the morning, when she has rattled up her shutters, the first look of her eyes still moist with fornication is for the jar. And when she does not see my head she comes running to find out what has happened. For either I have escaped during the night or else I have shrunk again. But just before she reaches me I up with it like a jack-in-the-the-box, the old eyes glaring up at her.
(I mentioned I cannot turn my head, and this is true - my neck having stiffened prematurely. But this does not mean it is always facing in the same direction. For with a kind of tossing and writhing I succeed in imparting to my trunk the degree of rotation required - and not merely in one direction, but in the other also.)
My little game (which I should have thought inoffensive) has cost me dear - and yet I could have sworn I was insolvable. (It is true one does not know one's riches until they are lost and I probably have others still that only await the thief to be brought to my notice.) And today, if I can still open and close my eyes, as in the past, I can no longer (because of my roguish character) move my head in and out, as in the good old days. For a collar, fixed to the mouth of the jar, now encircles my neck, just below the chin. And my lips which used to be hidden (and which I sometimes pressed against the freshness of the stone) can now be seen by all and sundry.
Did I say I catch flies? I snap them up, clack! (Does this mean I still have my teeth? To have lost one's limbs and preserved one's dentition - what a mockery!)
But to revert now to the gloomy side of this affair: I may say that this collar, or ring, of cement, makes it very awkward for me to turn, in the way I have said. I take advantage of this to learn to stay quiet. To have forever before my eyes (when I open them) approxim
ately the same set of hallucinations exactly, is a joy I might never have known, but for my cang. There is really only one thing that worries me, and that is the prospect of being throttled if I should ever happen to shorten further. Asphyxia! I who was always the respiratory type! (Witness this thorax still mine, together with the abdomen.) I who murmured (each time I breathed in) "Here comes more oxygen", and (each time I breathed out) "There go the impurities, the blood is bright red again". The blue face! The obscene protrusion of the tongue! The tumefaction of the penis!
The penis! Well now, that's a nice surprise - I'd forgotten I had one. What a pity I have no arms: there might still be something to be wrung from it. No, 'tis better thus. At my age, to start manstuprating again, it would be indecent. And fruitless. And yet one can never tell. With a yo heave ho, concentrating with all my might on a horse's rump, at the moment when the tail rises: who knows, I might not go altogether empty-handed away. Heaven, I almost felt a flutter! Does that mean they did not geld me? I could have sworn they had gelt me. But perhaps I am getting mixed up with other scrota. Not anothe stir our of it in any case. I'll concentrate again. (A Clydesdale! A Suffolk stallion!)
Three Novels: Malloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable Page 18
