The Unnamable (13 page)

eavesdropping
, me, when silence falls! Ah a nice state they have me in. But it’s with the hope
there is no one left. But this is not the time to speak of that. Good. Of what is
it the time to speak? Of Worm, at last. Good. We must first, to begin with, go back
to his beginnings and then, to go on with, follow him patiently through the various
stages, taking care to show their fatal concatenation, which have made him what I
am. The whole to be tossed off with bravura. Then notes from day to day, until I collapse.
And finally, to wind up with, song and dance of thanksgiving by victim, to celebrate
his nativity. Please God nothing goes wrong. Mahood I couldn’t die. Worm will I ever
get born? It’s the same problem. But perhaps not the same personage after all. The
scytheman will tell, it’s all one to him. But let us go back as
planned, afterwards we’ll fall forward as projected. The reverse would be more like
it. But not by much. Upstream,
downstream
, what matter, I begin by the ear, that’s the way to talk. Before that it was the
night of time. Whereas ever since, what radiance! Now at least I know where I am,
as far as my origins go, I mean my origins considered as a subject of conversation,
that’s what counts. The moment one can say, Someone is on his way, all is well. Perhaps
I have still a thousand years to go. No matter. He’s on his way. I begin to be familiar
with the
premises
. I wonder if I couldn’t sneak out by the fundament, one morning, with the French
breakfast. No, I can’t move, not yet. One minute in a skull and the next in a belly,
strange, and the next nowhere in particular. Perhaps it’s Botal’s Foramen, when all
about me palpitates and labours. Bait, bait. Can it be I have a friend among them,
shaking his head in sorrow and saying nothing or only, from time to time, Enough,
enough. One can be before beginning, they have set their hearts on that. They want
me roots and all. This onward-rushing time is the same which used to sleep. And this
silence they yelp against in vain and which one day will be restored, the same as
in the past. Perhaps a little the worse for wear. Agreed, agreed, I who am on my way,
words bellying out my sails, am also that unthinkable ancestor of whom nothing can
be said. But perhaps I shall speak of him some day, and of the impenetrable age when
I was he, some day when they fall silent, convinced at last I shall never get born,
having failed to be conceived. Yes, perhaps I shall speak of him, for an instant,
like the echo that mocks, before being restored to him, the one they could not part
me from. And indeed they are weakening already, it’s perceptible. But it’s a feint,
to have me rejoice without cause, after their fashion, and accept their terms, for
the sake of peace at any price. But I can do nothing, that is what they seem to forget
at each instant. I can’t rejoice and I can’t grieve, it’s in vain they explained to
me how it’s done, I never understood. And what terms? I don’t know what it is they
want. I say what it is, but I don’t know. I emit sounds, better and better it seems
to me. If that’s not
enough for them I can’t help it. If I speak of a head, referring to me, it’s because
I hear it being spoken of. But why keep on saying the same thing? They hope things
will change one day, it’s natural. That one day on my windpipe, or some other section
of the conduit, a nice little abscess will form, with an idea inside, point of departure
for a general infection. This would enable me to jubilate like a normal person, knowing
why. And in no time I’d be a network of fistulae, bubbling with the blessed pus of
reason. Ah if I were flesh and blood, as they are kind enough to posit, I wouldn’t
say no, there might be something in their little idea. They say I suffer like true
thinking flesh, but I’m sorry, I feel nothing. Mahood I felt a little, now and then,
but what good did that do them? No, they’d be better advised to try something else.
I felt the cang, the flies, the sawdust under my stumps, the tarpaulin on my skull,
when they were mentioned to me. But can that be called a life which vanishes when
the subject is changed? I don’t see why not. But they must have decreed it can’t.
They are too hard to please, they ask too much. They want me to have a pain in the
neck, irrefragable proof of animation, while listening to talk of the heavens. They
want me to have a mind where it is known once and for all that I have a pain in the
neck, that flies are devouring me and that the heavens can do nothing to help. Let
them scourge me without ceasing and evermore, more and more lustily (in view of the
habituation factor), in the end I might begin to look as if I had grasped the meaning
of life. They might even take a breather from time to time, without my ceasing to
howl. For they would have warned me, before they started, You must howl, do you hear,
otherwise it proves nothing. And worn out at last, or feeble with old age, and my
cries having ceased for want of
nourishment
, they could pronounce me dead with every appearance of veracity. And without ever
having had to move I would have gained my rest and heard them say, striking softly
together their dry old hands as if to shake off the dust, He’ll never move again.
No, that would be too simple. We must have the heavens and God knows what besides,
lights, luminaries, the three-monthly
ray of hope and the gleam of consolation. But let us close this parenthesis and, with
a light heart, open the next. The noise. How long did I remain a pure ear? Up to the
moment when it could go on no longer, being too good to last, compared to what was
coming. These millions of different sounds, always the same, recurring without pause,
are all one requires to sprout a head, a bud to begin with, finally huge, its function
first to silence, then to extinguish when the eye joins in, and worse than the evil,
its treasure-house. But no lingering on this thin ice. The mechanism matters little,
provided I succeed in saying, before I go deaf, It’s a voice, and it speaks to me.
In inquiring, boldly, if it is not mine. In deciding, it doesn’t matter how, that
I have none. In blowing darkly hot and cold, with concomitant
identical
sensations. It’s a starting-point, he’s off, they don’t see me, but they hear me,
panting, riveted, they don’t know I’m riveted. He knows they are words, he is not
sure they are not his, that’s how it begins, with such a start no one ever looked
back, one day he’ll make them his, when he thinks he is alone, far from all men, out
of range of every voice, and come to the light of day they keep telling him of. Yes,
I know they are words, there was a time I didn’t, as I still don’t know if they are
mine. Their hopes are therefore founded. In their shoes I’d be content with my knowing
what I know, I’d demand no more of me than to know that what I hear is not the innocent
and necessary sound of dumb things constrained to endure, but the terror-stricken
babble of the condemned to silence. I would have pity, give me quittance, not harry
me into appearing my own destroyer. But they are severe, greedy, no less, perhaps
more, than when I was playing Mahood. Instead of drawing in their horns! It’s true
I have not spoken yet. In at one ear and incontinent out through the mouth, or the
other ear, that’s possible too. No sense in multiplying the occasions of error. Two
holes and me in the middle, slightly choked. Or a single one, entrance and exit, where
the words swarm and jostle like ants, hasty, indifferent, bringing nothing, taking
nothing away, too light to leave a mark. I shall not say I again, ever again, it’s
too farcical. I shall put in
its place, whenever I hear it, the third person, if I think of it. Anything to please
them. It will make no difference. Where I am there is no one but me, who am not. So
much for that. Words, he says he knows they are words. But how can he know, who has
never heard anything else? True. Not to mention other things, many others, to which
the abundance of matter has
unfortunately
up to now prohibited the least allusion. For example, to begin with, his breathing.
There he is now with breath in his nostrils, it only remains for him to suffocate.
The thorax rises and falls, the wear and tear are in full spring, the rot spreads
downwards, soon he’ll have legs, the possibility of crawling. More lies, he doesn’t
breathe yet, he’ll never breathe. Then what is this faint noise, as of air stealthily
stirred, recalling the breath of life, to those whom it corrodes? It’s a bad example.
But these lights that go out hissing? Is it not more likely a great crackle of laughter,
at the sight of his terror and distress? To see him flooded with light, then suddenly
plunged back in darkness, must strike them as irresistibly funny. But they have been
there so long now, on every side, they may have made a hole in the wall, a little
hole, to glue their eyes to, turn about. And these lights are perhaps those they shine
upon him, from time to time, in order to observe the progress he is making. But this
question of lights deserves to be treated in a section apart, it is so
intriguing
, and at length, composedly, and so it will be, at the first opportunity, when time
is not so short, and the mind more composed. Resolution number twenty-three. And in
the
meantime
the conclusion to be drawn? That the only noises Worm has had till now are those
of mouths? Correct. Not forgetting the groaning of the air beneath the burden. He’s
coming, that’s the main thing. When on earth later on the storms rage, drowning momentarily
the free expression of opinion, he’ll know what is afoot, that the end of the world
is not at hand. No, in the place where he is he cannot learn, the head cannot work,
he knows no more than on the first day, he merely hears, and suffers,
uncomprehending
, that must be possible. A head has grown out of his ear, the better to enrage him,
that must be it. The head is there,
glued to the ear, and in it nothing but rage, that’s all that matters, for the time
being. It’s a transformer in which sound is turned, without the help of reason, to
rage and terror, that’s all that is required, for the moment. The circumvolutionisation
will be seen too later, when they get him out. Why then the human voice, rather than
a hyena’s howls or the clanging of a hammer? Answer, so that the shock may not be
too great, when the writhings of true lips meet his gaze. Between them they find a
rejoinder to everything. And how they enjoy talking, they know there is no worse torment,
for one not in the conversation. They are numerous, all round, holding hands perhaps,
an endless chain, taking turns to talk. They wheel, in jerks, so that the voice always
comes from the same quarter. But often they all speak at once, they all say simultaneously
the same thing exactly, but so perfectly together that one would take it for a single
voice, a single mouth, if one did not know that God alone can fill the rose of the
winds, without moving from his place. One, but not Worm, who says nothing, knows nothing,
yet. Similarly turn about they benefit by the peephole, those who care to. While one
speaks another peeps, the one no doubt whose voice is next due and whose remarks may
possibly have reference to what he may possibly have seen, this depending on whether
what he has seen has aroused his interest to the extent of appearing worthy of remark,
even indirectly. But what hope has sustained them, all the time they have been thus
employed? For it is difficult not to suppose them sustained by some form of hope.
And what is the nature of the change they are on the look out for, gluing one eye
to the hole and closing the other. They have no pedagogic purpose in view, that’s
definite. There is no question of
imparting
to him any instruction whatsoever, for the moment. This catechist’s tongue, honeyed
and perfidious, is the only one they know. Let him move, try and move, that’s all
they ask, for the moment. No matter where he goes, being at the centre, he will go
towards them. So he is at the centre, there is a clue of the highest interest, it
matters little to what. They look, to see if he has stirred. He is nothing but a shapeless
heap, without a
face capable of reflecting the niceties of a torment, but the disposition of which,
its greater or lesser degree of crouch and huddledness, is no doubt expressive, for
specialists, and enables them to assess the chances of its suddenly making a bound,
or dragging its coils faintly away, as if stricken to death. Somewhere in the heap
an eye, a wild equine eye, always open, they must have an eye, they see him possessed
of an eye. No matter where he goes he will go towards them, towards their song of
triumph, when they know he has moved, or towards their sudden silence, when they know
he has moved, to make him think he did well to move, or towards the voice growing
softer, as if receding, to make him think he is drawing away from them, but not yet
far enough, whereas he is drawing nearer, nearer and nearer. No, he can’t think anything,
can’t judge of anything, but the kind of flesh he has is good enough, will try and
go where peace seems to be, drop and lie when it suffers no more, or less, or can
go no further. Then the voice will begin again, low at first, then louder, coming
from the quarter they want him to retreat from, to make him think he is pursued and
struggle on, towards them. In this way they’ll bring him to the wall, and even to
the precise point where they have made other holes through which to pass their arms
and seize him. How physical this all is! And then, unable to go any further, because
of the obstacle, and unable to go any further in any case, and not needing to go any
further for the moment, because of the great silence which has fallen, he will drop,
assuming he had risen, but even a reptile can drop, after a long flight, the expression
may be used without impropriety. He will drop, it will be his first corner, his first
experience of the vertical support, the vertical shelter, reinforcing those of the
ground. That must be something, while waiting for oblivion, to feel a prop and buckler,
not only for one of one’s six planes, but for two, for the first time. But Worm will
never know this joy but darkly, being less than a beast, before he is restored, more
or less, to that state in which he was before the beginning of his prehistory. Then
they will lay hold of him and gather him into their midst. For if they could make
a small hole for the eye, then