The Unnamable (12 page)

into it they can’t have explained to me sufficiently. They’ll never get the better
of my stupidity. Why do they speak to me thus? Is it possible certain things change
on their passage through me, in a way they can’t prevent? Do they believe I believe
it is I who am asking these questions? That’s theirs too, a little distorted perhaps.
I don’t say it’s not the right method. I don’t say they won’t catch me in the end.
I wish they would, to be thrown away. It’s this hunt that is tiring, this unending
being at bay. Images, they imagine that by piling on the images they’ll entice me
in the end. Like the mother who whistles to prevent baby’s bladder from bursting,
there’s another. They, yes, now they’re all in the same galley. Worm to play, his
lead, I wish him a happy time. To think I thought he was against what they were trying
to do with me! To think I saw in him, if not me, a step towards me! To get me to be
he, the anti-Mahood, and then to say, But what am I doing but living, in a kind of
way, the only possible way, that’s the combination. Or by the absurd prove to me that
I am, the absurd of not being able. Unfortunately it is no help my being forewarned,
I never remain so for long. In any case I wish him every success, in his courageous
undertaking. And I am even prepared to collaborate with him, as with Mahood and Co.,
to the best of my ability, being unable to do otherwise, and knowing my ability. Worm,
to say he does not know what he is, where he is, what is happening, is to underestimate
him. What he does not know is that there is anything to know. His senses tell him
nothing, nothing about himself, nothing about the rest, and this distinction is beyond
him. Feeling nothing, knowing nothing, he exists nevertheless, but not for himself,
for others, others conceive him and say, Worm is, since we conceive him, as if there
could be no being but being conceived, if only by the beer. Others. One alone, then
others. One alone turned towards the all-impotent, all-nescient, that haunts him,
then others. Towards him whom he would nourish, he the famished one, and who, having
nothing human, has nothing else, has nothing, is nothing. Come into the world unborn,
abiding there unliving, with no hope of death, epicentre of joys, of griefs, of calm.
Who
seems the truest possession, because the most unchanging. The one outside of life
we always were in the end, all our long vain life long. Who is not spared by the mad
need to speak, to think, to know where one is, where one was, during the wild dream,
up above, under the skies, venturing forth at night. The one ignorant of himself and
silent, ignorant of his silence and silent, who could not be and gave up trying. Who
crouches in their midst who see themselves in him and in their eyes stares his unchanging
stare. Thanks for these first notions. And it’s not all. He who seeks his true countenance,
let him be of good cheer, he’ll find it, convulsed with anguish, the eyes out on stalks.
He who longs to have lived, while he was alive, let him be reassured, life will tell
him how. That’s all very comforting. Worm, be Worm, you’ll see, it’s impossible, what
a velvet glove, a little worn at the knuckles with all the hard hitting. Bah, let’s
turn the black eye. And the starching begin at last, of this old clout so patiently
pawed in vain, as limp and drooping still as the first day. But it is solely a question
of voices, no other image is
appropriate
. Let it go through me at last, the right one, the last one, his who has none, by
his own confession. Do they think they’ll lull me, with all this hemming and hawing?
What can it matter to me, that I succeed or fail? The undertaking is none of mine,
if they want me to succeed I’ll fail, and vice versa, so as not to be rid of my tormentors.
Is there a single word of mine in all I say? No, I have no voice, in this matter I
have none. That’s one of the reasons why I confused myself with Worm. But I have no
reasons either, no reason, I’m like Worm, without voice or reason, I’m Worm, no, if
I were Worm I wouldn’t know it, I wouldn’t say it, I wouldn’t say anything, I’d be
Worm. But I don’t say anything, I don’t know anything, these voices are not mine,
nor these thoughts, but the voices and thoughts of the devils who beset me. Who make
me say that I can’t be Worm, the inexpugnable. Who make me say that I am he perhaps,
as they are. Who make me say that since I can’t be he I must be he. That since I couldn’t
be Mahood, as I might have been, I must be Worm, as I cannot be. But is it still they
who say that when I
have failed to be Worm I’ll be Mahood, automatically, on the rebound? As if, and a
little silence, as if I were big enough now to take a hint and understand, certain
things, but they’re wrong, I need explanations, of everything, and even then, I don’t
understand, that’s how I’ll sicken them in the end, by my stupidity, so they say,
to lull me, to make me think I’m stupider than I am. And is it still they who say
that when I surprise them all and am Worm at last, then at last I’ll be Mahood, Worm
proving to be Mahood the moment one is he? Ah if they could only begin, and do what
they want with me, and succeed at last, in doing what they want with me, I’m ready
to be whatever they want, I’m tired of being matter, matter, pawed and pummelled endlessly
in vain. Or give me up and leave me lying in a heap, in such a heap that none would
ever be found again to try and fashion it. But they are not of the same mind, they
are all of the same kidney and yet they don’t know what they want to do with me, they
don’t know where I am, or what I’m like, I’m like dust, they want to make a man out
of dust. Listen to them, losing heart! That’s to lull me, till I imagine I hear myself
saying, myself at last, to myself at last, that it can’t be they, speaking thus, that
it can only be I, speaking thus. Ah if I could only find a voice of my own, in all
this babble, it would be the end of their troubles, and of mine. That’s why there
are all these little silences, to try and make me break them. They think I can’t bear
silence, that some day, somehow, my horror of silence will force me to break it. That’s
why they are always leaving off, to try and drive me to extremities. But they dare
not be silent for long, the whole fabrication might collapse. It’s true I dread these
gulfs they all bend over, straining their ears for the murmur of a man. It isn’t silence,
it’s pitfalls, into which nothing would please me better than to fall, with the little
cry that might be taken for human, like a wounded wistiti, the first and last, and
vanish for good and all, having squeaked. Well, if they ever succeed in getting me
to give a voice to Worm, in a moment of euphory, perhaps I’ll succeed in making it
mine, in a moment of
confusion
. There we have the stake. But they won’t. Did they ever get
Mahood to speak? It seems to me not. I think Murphy spoke now and then, the others
too perhaps, I don’t remember, but it was clumsily done, you could see the ventriloquist.
And now I feel it’s about to begin. They must consider me sufficiently stupefied,
with all their balls about being and existing. Yes, now that I’ve forgotten who Worm
is, where he is, what he’s like, I’ll begin to be he. Anything rather than these college
quips. Quick, a place. With no way in, no way out, a safe place. Not like Eden. And
Worm inside. Feeling nothing, knowing nothing, capable of nothing, wanting nothing.
Until the instant he hears the sound that will never stop. Then it’s the end, Worm
no longer is. We know it, but we don’t say it, we say it’s the awakening, the
beginning
of Worm, for now we must speak, and speak of Worm. It’s no longer he, but let us
proceed as if it were still he, he at last, who hears, and trembles, and is delivered
over, to affliction and the struggle to withstand it, the starting eye, the labouring
mind. Yes, let us call that thing Worm, so as to exclaim, the sleight of hand accomplished,
Oh look, life again, life
everywhere
and always, the life that’s on every tongue, the only
possible
! Poor Worm, who thought he was different, there he is in the madhouse for life. Where
am I? That’s my first question, after an age of listening. From it, when it hasn’t
been answered, I’ll rebound towards others, of a more personal nature, much later.
Perhaps I’ll even end up, before regaining my coma, by thinking of myself as living,
technically speaking. But let us proceed with method. I shall do my best, as always,
since I cannot do
otherwise
. I shall submit, more corpse-obliging than ever. I shall transmit the words as received,
by the ear, or roared through a trumpet into the arsehole, in all their purity, and
in the same order, as far as possible. This infinitesimal lag, between arrival and
departure, this trifling delay in evacuation, is all I have to worry about. The truth
about me will boil forth at last, scalding, provided of course they don’t start stuttering
again. I listen. Enough procrastination. I’m Worm, that is to say I am no longer he,
since I hear. But I’ll forget that in the heat of misery, I’ll forget I am no longer
Worm, but a kind of tenth-rate Toussaint
L’Ouverture, that’s what they’re counting on. Worm then I catch this sound that will
never stop, monotonous beyond words and yet not altogether devoid of a certain variety.
At the end of I know not what eternity, they don’t say, this has
sufficiently
exasperated my intelligence for it to grasp that the nuisance is a voice and that
the realm of nature, in which I flatter myself I have a foot already, has other noises
to offer which are even more unpleasant and may be relied on to make themselves heard
before long. Don’t tell me after that I had no predispositions for man’s estate. What
a weary way since that first disaster, what nerves torn from the heart of insentience,
with the appertaining terror and the cerebellum on fire. It took him a long time to
adapt himself to this excoriation. To realise pooh it’s nothing. A mere bagatelle.
The common lot. A
harmless
joke. That will not last for ever. For me to gather while I may. They mentioned roses.
I’ll smell them before I’m finished. Then they’ll put the accent on the thorns. What
prodigious variety! The thorns they’ll have to come and stick into me, as into their
unfortunate Jesus. No, I need nobody, they’ll start sprouting under my arse, unaided,
some day I feel myself soaring above my condition. A billybowl of thorns and the air
perfume-laden. But not so fast. I still leave much to be desired, I have no technique,
none. For example, in case you don’t believe me, I don’t yet know how to move, either
locally, in
relation
to myself, or bodily, in relation to the rest of the shit. I don’t know how to want
to, I want to in vain. What doesn’t come to me from me has come to the wrong address.
Similarly my understanding is not yet sufficiently well-oiled to function without
the pressure of some critical circumstance, such as a violent pain felt for the first
time. Some nice point in semantics, for example, of a nature to accelerate the march
of the hours, could not retain my attention. For others the time-abolishing joys of
impersonal and disinterested speculation. I only think, if that is the name for this
vertiginous panic as of hornets smoked out of their nest, once a certain degree of
terror has been exceeded. Does this mean I am less exposed to doing so, by the
grace of inurement? To argue so would be to underestimate the extent of the repertory
in which I am plunged and which, it appears, is nothing compared to what is in store
for me at the conclusion of the novitiate. These lights gleaming low afar, then rearing
up in a blaze and sweeping down upon me, blinding, to devour me, are merely one example.
My familiarity with them avails me nothing, they invariably give me to reflect. Each
time, at the last moment, just as I begin to scorch, they go out, smoking and hissing,
and yet each time my phlegm is shattered. And in my head, which I am beginning to
locate to my
satisfaction
, above and a little to the right, the sparks spirt and dash themselves out against
the walls. And sometimes I say to myself I am in a head, it’s terror makes me say
it, and the longing to be in safety, surrounded on all sides by massive bone. And
I add that I am foolish to let myself be frightened by another’s thoughts, lacerating
my sky with harmless fires and assailing me with noises signifying nothing. But one
thing at a time. And often all sleeps, as when I was really Worm, except this voice
which has denatured me, which never stops, but often grows confused and falters, as
if it were going to abandon me. But it is merely a passing weakness, unless it is
done on purpose, to teach me hope. Strange thing, ruined as I am and still young in
this abjection they have brought me to, I sometimes seem to remember what I was like
when I was Worm, and not yet
delivered
into their hands. That’s to tempt me into saying, I am indeed Worm after all, and
into thinking that after all he may have become the thing that I have become. But
it doesn’t work. But they will devise another means, less childish, of getting me
to admit, or pretend to admit, that I am he whose name they call me by, and no other.
Or they’ll wait, counting on my weariness, as they press me ever harder, to wipe him
from my memory who cannot be brought to the pass they have brought me to, not to mention
yesterday, not to mention tomorrow. And yet it seems to me I remember, and shall never
forget, what I was like when I was he, before all became confused. But that is of
course impossible, since Worm could not know what he was like, or
who he was, that’s how they want me to reason. And it seems to me too, which is even
more deplorable, that I could become Worm again, if I were left in peace. This transmission
is really excellent. I wonder if it’s going to get us somewhere. If only they would
stop talking for nothing, pending their stopping
everything
. Nothing? That’s soon said. It is not for me to judge. What would I judge with? It’s
more provocation. They want me to lose patience and rush, suddenly beside myself,
to their rescue. How transparent that all is! Sometimes I say to myself, they say
to me, Worm says to me, the subject matters little, that my purveyors are more than
one, four or five. But it’s more likely the same foul brute all the time, amusing
himself pretending to be a many, varying his register, his tone, his accent and his
drivel. Unless it comes natural to him. A bare and rusty hook I might accept. But
all these titbits! But there are long silences too, at long intervals, during which,
hearing nothing, I say nothing. That is to say I hear murmuring, if I listen hard
enough, but it’s not for me, it’s for them alone, they are putting their heads together
again. I don’t hear what they say, all I know is they are still there, they haven’t
done, with me. They have moved a little aside. Secrets. Or if there is only one it
is he alone, taking counsel with himself, muttering and chewing his moustache, getting
ready for a fresh flow of inanity. To think of me