Suddenly, the frightened, cornered screams of a child burst out very close to me, one scream after another in quick succession, followed by a muted, subdued weeping. While I was trying to make out where the sounds might have come from, a low, suppressed scream quavered once again, and I heard voices questioning, and one voice giving orders in an undertone, and then some machine or other began to hum, indifferent to everything. Now I remembered the wall that did not meet the ceiling, and realized that all the sounds were coming from the other side of the doors: they were at their work in there. Every so often, the attendant in the smirched apron did in fact appear and beckon. I had abandoned all thought that he could mean me. Was he signalling to me? No. There were two men with a wheelchair; they lifted the mass into it, and now I saw that it was an old, paralysed man who had another side to him, smaller and worn down by life, with one eye open, dim and doleful. They took him in, leaving a large amount of room vacant beside me. And there I sat, wondering what they would do to the dull-witted girl and whether she would scream as well. The hum of the machines had a pleasant, factory sound to it, not at all disquieting.
But suddenly everything was quiet, and in that silence a superior, complacent voice that I thought I knew said: ‘Riez.’ A pause. ‘Riez. Mais riez, riez.’ Already I was laughing. Why the man on the other side would not laugh was unaccountable. Some machine began to rattle but immediately fell silent again; words were exchanged, then the same brisk voice was upraised once again in command: ‘Dites-nous le mot: avant.’ Spelling it out: ‘a-v-a-n-t’… Silence. ‘On n' entend rien. Encore une fois:…’
And then, with that warm, flaccid babble going on beyond the partition, it was there again for the first time in many, many years – that big thing that had instilled a first profound terror into me when as a child I lay sick with a fever. That was what I had always called it when they all stood around my bed, taking my pulse and asking what had frightened me – that big thing. And when they sent for the doctor, and he came and talked comfortingly with me, I asked him just to make the big thing go away, nothing else mattered. But he was like the others. He could not remove it, although I was small at the time and could easily have been helped. And now it was there again. In later times, it had simply not appeared; even in nights of fever it did not return; but now it was there, although I was not feverish. Now it was there. Now it was growing from within me like a tumour, like a second head, and it was a part of me, though it surely could not be mine, since it was so big. There it was, like a big dead animal that had once been my hand when it was still alive, or my arm. And my blood was flowing through me, and through it, as if through one and the same body. And my heart was having to make a great effort to pump the blood into the big thing: there was very nearly not enough blood. And the blood was loth to pass in, and emerged sick and tainted. But the big thing swelled and grew before my face, like a warm, bluish boil, and grew before my mouth, and already its margin cast a shadow on my remaining eye.
I cannot remember how I made my way out through the many courtyards. Evening had fallen and, losing my way in a neighbourhood that was unfamiliar to me, I walked up boulevards with never-ending walls and, having taken one direction and found there was no end to it, went back the opposite way till I came to some square or other. Then I started down one street, and passed others I had never seen before, and still more. At times trams raced towards me and passed me, glaringly lit, their bells hard and clanging. But the names on their direction boards were names I did not know. I did not know what city I was in, or whether I had a dwelling-place somewhere thereabouts, or what I had to do so that I would not have to go on walking.
[20] And now, on top of everything, this illness which has always had so curious an effect on me. I am certain it is not taken seriously enough, just as the gravity of other illnesses is exaggerated. This illness has no particular characteristics; it assumes those of the person it befalls. With a somnambulist assurance it draws from within each one the deepest danger, which had seemed overcome, and confronts him with it afresh, right up close, any time now. Men who once in their schooldays tried out the helpless vice, which has for its deceived intimates the poor hard hands of lads, fall prey to it again; or an illness they overcame as children recurs in them; or a habit they lost returns to them, a certain tentative way of turning their head, which was distinctive in them years before. And with whatever it is that comes back, there rises a whole tangle of muddled memories, clinging to it like wet seaweed on some sunken thing. Lives of which one knew nothing come to the surface and commingle with what has really been, displacing the past one thought familiar: for there is a fresh and rested strength in whatever it is that rises to the surface, while the things that have always been there are tired from too frequent remembering.
I am lying in my bed, five flights up, and my day, interrupted by nothing, is like a clock-face without hands. Just as one morning a thing long missing is back in its accustomed place, safe and sound, almost newer than when it was lost, quite as though someone had been looking after it –: so things from my childhood that were lost are lying here and there on my blanket, seeming new again. All my long-lost fears are back.
The fear that a small thread of wool sticking out of the hem of the blanket might be hard, hard and sharp as a needle; the fear that this little button on my nightshirt might be larger than my head, large and heavy; the fear that this crumb of bread, falling right now from the bed, might be glass when it hits the floor, and smash, and the oppressive worry that, when it does, everything will be shattered, everything, for ever; the fear that the edge of a torn-open letter might be something forbidden which no one should see, something indescribably precious for which no place in the room is safe enough; the fear that if I fell asleep, I might swallow that lump of coal in front of the stove; the fear that some number might start growing inside my brain, till there is not enough space for it in me; the fear that what I am lying on might be granite, grey granite; the fear that I might scream, and people would come running and gather at my door and force it open; the fear that I might betray myself and speak of everything I am afraid of; and the fear that I might not be able to say anything, because it is all beyond saying – and the other fears… the fears.
I prayed to have my childhood, and it has come back again, and I sense that it is as heavy a burden as it was then, and that growing older has served no purpose at all.
[21] Yesterday my fever was better, and today began like the spring, like the springtime in paintings. I mean to try and go out, to the Bibliothèque Nationale, to my poet, whom I have not read for so long, and maybe afterwards I can take a leisurely stroll about the gardens. Perhaps there will be a wind over the big pond, where the water is so real and the children come to float their red-sailed boats and watch them.
Today I did not anticipate a thing; I went out so jauntily, as though it were the most natural, most straightforward of things. And yet there was something, something quite extraordinary, something that took me and crumpled me up like a piece of paper and tossed me away.
The boulevard Saint-Michel was deserted and vast, and walking up the gentle slope was easy. Casement windows overhead opened with a glassy sound, sending a flash flying across the street like a white bird. A carriage with bright red wheels passed by, and, further on, someone was wearing something of a light green colour. Horses in glinting harness trotted along the road, which was freshly washed down and dark. The breeze was brisk, fresh, mild, and bore everything up: smells, shouts, bells.
I passed one of the cafés where musicians wearing red and pretending to be gypsies play in the evenings. From the open windows, the stale air of the night before crept out with a bad conscience. Slickly combed waiters were busy scouring the doorstep. One of them was stooped over, throwing handful after handful of yellowish sand under the tables. A passer-by prodded him and pointed down the street. The waiter, who was quite red in the face, gazed closely in that direction for a moment or so; then a laugh spread over his whiskerless che
eks, as if it had been spilled on them. He beckoned the other waiters over, turning his laughing face rapidly from right to left a couple of times, so that while he called them all across he missed nothing himself. There they now all stood, looking down the street, or trying to see, smiling or vexed, whatever the absurdity was that they had not yet made out.
I sensed a touch of fear rising within me. Something was impelling me to cross the street; but I merely started to walk faster, and eyed the few people ahead of me, without really meaning to and without noticing anything out of the ordinary. I did see, however, that one of them, an errand boy wearing a blue apron and with an empty basket slung over his shoulder, was following someone with his gaze. When he had looked long enough, he turned on his heel to face the houses and, to a laughing clerk across the street, made that unsteady gesture of the hand before the forehead that everyone is familiar with. Then his dark eyes flashed and he swaggered towards me with a satisfied air.
I supposed that, as soon as I could see better, there would be some unusual and striking figure in view, but there proved to be no one else ahead of me but a tall, lean man in a dark greatcoat,13 wearing a soft black hat on his short, ash-blond hair. I could see to my satisfaction that there was nothing at all ridiculous either in this man's clothing or in his behaviour, and was already trying to look past him, down the boulevard, when he tripped over something. Since I was following close behind him, I took care when I came to the spot, but there was nothing there, nothing whatsoever. We both continued walking, he and I, the distance between us remaining the same. We came to a crossing, and the man ahead of me raised one leg and hopped down the steps to the street, as children who are having fun sometimes hop and skip when they're walking. The steps on the other side he cleared in a single bound. But scarcely was he up on the pavement than he again drew up one leg a little and hopped up high on the other foot, then did it again and again. At this point, you might easily once again have taken the sudden movement for tripping, if you'd concluded that there was some little thing there, the pit or the slippery skin of a fruit, something or other; and the odd thing was that the man himself seemed to imagine there was something in his way, because every time he gave the offending spot one of those looks, part vexed, part reproachful, that people do give at such moments. Once more some warning instinct urged me to cross the street, but I disregarded it and stayed hard on the man's heels, all my attention fixed on his legs. I must confess that I felt a curious sense of relief when he did not hop for some twenty paces; but when I looked up, I observed that something else was now bothering the man. The collar of his greatcoat was turned up; and however hard he tried to fold it down, now with one hand, now with both, he simply couldn't manage it. These things happen. I didn't find it disconcerting. But then I realized, to my boundless astonishment, that the man's busy hands were in fact describing two movements: one a hasty, secretive motion with which he covertly flapped up the collar, and the other the elaborate, prolonged, over-explicit motion, as it were, with which he was trying to fold it down. This observation so perplexed me that a full two minutes passed before I saw that the selfsame fearful, two-syllable hopping motion that had just deserted the man's legs was now going on in his neck, behind the raised greatcoat collar and his nervously busy hands. From that moment on, I was tethered to him. I grasped that this hopping motion was wandering about his body, trying to break out here or there. I understood his fear of other people, and myself began warily to check whether passers-by noticed anything. A thrill of cold went down my spine when his legs suddenly made a low, convulsive jump, but no one had seen it, and I decided that I would stumble a little too if anyone did notice. That would doubtless be one way of making people who couldn't mind their own business think there was something small and unimportant in the way, which we had both happened to trip on. But while I was thinking of how I might help, he himself had hit upon an excellent new expedient. I have forgotten to say that he was carrying a stick; it was a plain stick, of dark wood, with a simple, rounded handle. And as he cast about in his anxiety, it had occurred to him to hold this stick against his back with one hand (who could say what the other might be needed for), right along his spine, pressing it firmly into the small of his back and thrusting the crook under his coat collar, so that it would be hard and offer a kind of support behind the neck and the first dorsal vertebra. This posture was not one to attract attention, and looked at worst a little cocky; the unexpected spring day might excuse that. No one turned to stare at him, and now all was well, all was perfectly fine. True, at the next crossing he did indulge in two hops, but they were two small, half-suppressed hops of no consequence at all; and his one fully visible leap was so cannily timed (a hose-pipe lay across his path) that there was no cause for concern. Indeed, everything was still going well; now and then, his other hand would grip the stick and press it more firmly to him, and instantly the danger was averted once again. Even so, I could not keep my anxiety from growing. I knew that as he walked along, making an infinite effort to appear nonchalant and carefree, the terrible convulsions were gathering within his body; within me, too – I shared the fear with which he sensed them growing and growing, and I saw how he clutched the stick when the spasms began inside him. At those times, the expression of his hands was so severe and relentless that I placed all my hope in his will, which must be a mighty one. But what could the mere will do? The moment must inevitably come when his strength would be exhausted; it could not be long now. And I, following him with my heart pounding, I gathered what little strength I had, like cash, and, looking at his hands, begged him to take it if he had any need for it.