Texts for Nothing and Other Shorter Prose 1950-1976 Read online

  IV

  Where would I go, if I could go, who would I be, if I could be, what would I say, if I had a voice, who says this, saying it’s me? Answer simply, someone answer simply. It’s the same old stranger as ever, for whom alone accusative I exist, in the pit of my inexistence, of his, of ours, there’s a simple answer. It’s not with thinking he’ll find me, but what is he to do, living and bewildered, yes, living, say what he may. Forget me, know me not, yes, that would be the wisest, none better able than he. Why this sudden affability after such desertion, it’s easy to understand, that’s what he says, but he doesn’t understand. I’m not in his head, nowhere in his old body, and yet I’m there, for him I’m there, with him, hence all the confusion. That should have been enough for him, to have found me absent, but it’s not, he wants me there, with a form and a world, like him, in spite of him, me who am everything, like him who is nothing. And when he feels me void of existence it’s of his he would have me void, and vice versa, mad, mad, he’s mad. The truth is he’s looking for me to kill me, to have me dead like him, dead like the living. He knows all that, but it’s no help his knowing it, I don’t know it, I know nothing. He protests he doesn’t reason and does nothing but reason, crooked, as if that could improve matters. He thinks words fail him, he thinks because words fail him he’s on his way to my speechlessness, to being speechless with my speechlessness, he would like it to be my fault that words fail him, of course words fail him. He tells his story every five minutes, saying it is not his, there’s cleverness for you. He would like it to be my fault that he has no story, of course he has no story, that’s no reason for trying to foist one on me. That’s how he reasons, wide of the mark, but wide of what mark, answer us that. He has me say things saying it’s not me, there’s profundity for you, he has me who say nothing say it’s not me. All that is truly crass. If at least he would dignify me with the third person, like his other figments, not he, he’ll be satisfied with nothing less than me, for his me. When he had me, when he was me, he couldn’t get rid of me quick enough, I didn’t exist, he couldn’t have that, that was no kind of life, of course I didn’t exist, any more than he did, of course it was no kind of life, now he has it, his kind of life, let him lose it, if he wants to be in peace, with a bit of luck. His life, what a mine, what a life, he can’t have that, you can’t fool him, ergo it’s not his, it’s not him, what a thought, treat him like that, like a vulgar Molloy, a common Malone, those mere mortals, happy mortals, have a heart, land him in that shit, who never stirred, who is none but me, all things considered, and what things, and how considered, he had only to keep out of it. That’s how he speaks, this evening, how he has me speak, how he speaks to himself, how I speak, there is only me, this evening, here, on earth, and a voice that makes no sound because it goes towards none, and a head strewn with arms laid down and corpses fighting fresh, and a body, I nearly forgot. This evening, I say this evening, perhaps it’s morning. And all these things, what things, all about me, I won’t deny them any more, there’s no sense in that any more. If it’s nature perhaps it’s trees and birds, they go together, water and air, so that all may go on, I don’t need to know the details, perhaps I’m sitting under a palm. Or it’s a room, with furniture, all that’s required to make life comfortable, dark, because of the wall outside the window. What am I doing, talking, having my figments talk, it can only be me. Spells of silence too, when I listen, and hear the local sounds, the world sounds, see what an effort I make, to be reasonable. There’s my life, why not, it is one, if you like, if you must, I don’t say no, this evening. There has to be one, it seems, once there is speech, no need of a story, a story is not compulsory, just a life, that’s the mistake I made, one of the mistakes, to have wanted a story for myself, whereas life alone is enough. I’m making progress, it was time, I’ll learn to keep my foul mouth shut before I’m done, if nothing foreseen crops up. But he who somehow comes and goes, unaided from place to place, even though nothing happens to him, true, what of him? I stay here, sitting, if I’m sitting, often I feel sitting, sometimes standing, it’s one or the other, or lying down, there’s another possibility, often I feel lying down, it’s one of the three, or kneeling. What counts is to be in the world, the posture is immaterial, so long as one is on earth. To breathe is all that is required, there is no obligation to ramble, or receive company, you may even believe yourself dead on condition you make no bones about it, what more liberal regimen could be imagined, I don’t know, I don’t imagine. No point under such circumstances in saying I am somewhere else, someone else, such as I am I have all I need to hand, for to do what, I don’t know, all I have to do, there I am on my own again at last, what a relief that must be. Yes, there are moments, like this moment, when I seem almost restored to the feasible. Then it goes, all goes, and I’m far again, with a far story again, I wait for me afar for my story to begin, to end, and again this voice cannot be mine. That’s where I’d go, if I could go, that’s who I’d be, if I could be.

  V

  I’m the clerk, I’m the scribe, at the hearings of what cause I know not. Why want it to be mine, I don’t want it. There it goes again, that’s the first question this evening. To be judge and party, witness and advocate, and he, attentive, indifferent, who sits and notes. It’s an image, in my helpless head, where all sleeps, all is dead, not yet born, I don’t know, or before my eyes, they see the scene, the lids flicker and it’s in. An instant and then they close again, to look inside the head, to try and see inside, to look for me there, to look for someone there, in the silence of quite a different justice, in the toils of that obscure assize where to be is to be guilty. That is why nothing appears, all is silent, one is frightened to be born, no, one wishes one were, so as to begin to die. One, meaning me, it’s not the same thing, in the dark where I will in vain to see there can’t be any willing. I could get up, take a little turn, I long to, but I won’t. I know where I’d go, I’d go into the forest, I’d try and reach the forest, unless that’s where I am, I don’t know where I am, in any case I stay. I see what it is, I seek to be like the one I seek, in my head, that my head seeks, that I bid my head seek, with its probes, within itself. No, don’t pretend to seek, don’t pretend to think, just be vigilant, the eyes staring behind the lids, the ears straining for a voice not from without, were it only to sound an instant, to tell another lie. I hear, that must be the voice of reason again, that the vigil is in vain, that I’d be better advised to take a little turn, the way you manoeuvre a tin soldier. And no doubt it’s the same voice answers that I can’t, I who but a moment ago seemed to think I could, unless it’s old shuttlecock sentiment chiming in, full stop, got all that. Why did Pozzo leave home, he had a castle and retainers. Insidious question, to remind me I’m in the dock. Sometimes I hear things that seem for a moment judicious, for a moment I’m sorry they are not mine. Then what a relief, what a relief to know I’m mute for ever, if only it didn’t distress me. And deaf, it seems to me sometimes that deaf I’d be less distressed, at being mute, listen to that, what a relief not to have that on my conscience. Ah yes, I hear I have a kind of conscience, and on top of that a kind of sensibility, I trust the orator is not forgetting anything, and without ceasing to listen or drive the old quill I’m afflicted by them, I heard, it’s noted. This evening the session is calm, there are long silences when all fix their eyes on me, that’s to make me fly off my hinges, I feel on the brink of shrieks, it’s noted. Out of the corner of my eye I observe the writing hand, all dimmed and blurred by the – by the reverse of farness. Who are all these people, gentlemen of the long robe, according to the image, but according to it alone, there are others, there will be others, other images, other gentlemen. Shall I never see the sky again, never be free again to come and go, in sunshine and in rain, the answer is no, all answer no, it’s well I didn’t ask anything, that’s the kind of extravagance I envy them, till the echoes die away. The sky, I’ve heard – the sky and earth, I’ve heard great accounts of them, now that’s pure word for word
, I invent nothing. I’ve noted, I must have noted many a story with them as setting, they create the atmosphere. Between them where the hero stands a great gulf is fixed, while all about they flow together more and more, till they meet, so that he finds himself as it were under glass, and yet with no limit to his movements in all directions, let him understand who can, that is no part of my attributions. The sea too, I am conversant with the sea too, it belongs to the same family, I have even gone to the bottom more than once, under various assumed names, don’t make me laugh, if only I could laugh, all would vanish, all what, who knows, all, me, it’s noted. Yes, I see the scene, I see the hand, it comes creeping out of shadow, the shadow of my head, then scurries back, no connexion with me. Like a little creepy crawly it ventures out an instant, then goes back in again, the things one has to listen to, I say it as I hear it. It’s the clerk’s hand, is he entitled to the wig, I don’t know, formerly perhaps. What do I do when silence falls, with rhetorical intent, or denoting lassitude, perplexity, consternation, I rub to and fro against my lips, where they meet, the first knuckle of my forefinger, but it’s the head that moves, the hand rests, it’s to such details the liar pins his hopes. That’s the way this evening, tomorrow will be different, perhaps I’ll appear before the council, before the justice of him who is all love, unforgiving and justly so, but subject to strange indulgences, the accused will be my soul, I prefer that, perhaps someone will ask pity for my soul, I mustn’t miss that, I won’t be there, neither will God, it doesn’t matter, we’ll be represented. Yes, it can’t be much longer now, I haven’t been damned for what seems an eternity, yes, but sufficient unto the day, this evening I’m the scribe. This evening, it’s always evening, always spoken of as evening, even when it’s morning, it’s to make me think night is at hand, bringer of rest. The first thing would be to believe I’m there, if I could do that I’d lap up the rest, there’d be none more credulous than me, if I were there. But I am, it’s not possible otherwise, just so, it’s not possible, it doesn’t need to be possible. It’s tiring, very tiring, in the same breath to win and lose, with concomitant emotions, one’s heart is not of stone, to record the doom, don the black cap and collapse in the dock, very tiring, in the long run, I’m tired of it, I’d be tired of it, if I were me. It’s a game, it’s getting to be a game, I’m going to rise and go, if it’s not me it will be someone, a phantom, long live all our phantoms, those of the dead, those of the living and those of those who are not born. I’ll follow him, with my sealed eyes, he needs no door, needs no thought, to issue from this imaginary head, mingle with air and earth and dissolve, little by little, in exile. Now I’m haunted, let them go, one by one, let the last desert me and leave me empty, empty and silent. It’s they murmur my name, speak to me of me, speak of a me, let them go and speak of it to others, who will not believe them either, or who will believe them too. Theirs all these voices, like a rattling of chains in my head, rattling to me that I have a head. That’s where the court sits this evening, in the depths of that vaulty night, that’s where I’m clerk and scribe, not understanding what I hear, now knowing what I write. That’s where the council will be tomorrow, prayers will be offered for my soul, as for that of one dead, as for that of an infant dead in its dead mother, that it may not go to Limbo, sweet thing theology. It will be another evening, all happens at evening, but it will be the same night, it too has its evenings, its mornings and its evenings, there’s a pretty conception, it’s to make me think day is at hand, disperser of phantoms. And now birds, the first birds, what’s this new trouble now, don’t forget the question-mark. It must be the end of the session, it’s been calm, on the whole. Yes, that’s sometimes the way, there are suddenly birds and all goes silent, an instant. But the phantoms come back, it’s in vain they go abroad, mingle with the dying, they come back and slip into the coffin, no bigger than a matchbox, it’s they have taught me all I know, about things above, and all I’m said to know about me, they want to create me, they want to make me, like the bird the birdikin, with larvae she fetches from afar, at the peril – I nearly said at the peril of her life! But sufficient unto the day, those are other minutes. Yes, one begins to be very tired, very tired of one’s toil, very tired of one’s quill, it falls, it’s noted.

  VI

  How are the intervals filled between these apparitions? Do my keepers snatch a little rest and sleep before setting about me afresh, how would that be? That would be very natural, to enable them to get back their strength. Do they play cards, the odd rubber, bowls, to recruit their spirits, are they entitled to a little recreation? I would say no, if I had a say, no recreation, just a short break, with something cold, even though they should not feel inclined, in the interests of their health. They like their work, I feel it in my bones! No, I mean how filled for me, they don’t come into this. Wretched acoustics this evening, the merest scraps, literally. The news, do you remember the news, the latest news, in slow letters of light, above Piccadilly Circus, in the fog? Where were you standing, in the doorway of the little tobacconist’s closed for the night on the corner of Glasshouse Street was it, no, you don’t remember, and for cause. Sometimes that’s how it is, in a way, the eyes take over, and the silence, the sighs, like the sighs of sadness weary with crying, or old, that suddenly feels old and sighs for itself, for the happy days, the long days, when it cried it would never perish, but it’s far from common, on the whole. My keepers, why keepers, I’m in no danger of stirring an inch, ah I see, it’s to make me think I’m a prisoner, frantic with corporeality, rearing to get out and away. Other times it’s male nurses, white from head to foot, even their shoes are white, and then it’s another story, but the burden is the same. Other times it’s like ghouls, naked and soft as worm, they grovel round me gloating on the corpse, but I have no more success dead than dying. Other times it’s great clusters of bones, dangling and knocking with a clatter of castanets, it’s clean and gay like coons, I’d join them with a will if it could be here and now, how is it nothing is ever here and now? It’s varied, my life is varied, I’ll never get anywhere. I know, there is no one here, neither me nor anyone else, but some things are better left unsaid, so I say nothing. Elsewhere perhaps, by all means, elsewhere, what elsewhere can there be to this infinite here? I know, if my head could think I’d find a way out, in my head, like so many others, and out of worse than this, the world would be there again, in my head, with me much as in the beginning. I would know that nothing had changed, that a little resolution is all that is needed to come and go under the changing sky, on the moving earth, as all along the long summer days too short for all the play, it was known as play, if my head could think. The air would be there again, the shadows of the sky drifting over the earth, and that ant, that ant, oh most excellent head that can’t think. Leave it, leave it, nothing leads to anything, nothing of all that, my life is varied, you can’t have everything, I’ll never get anywhere, but when did I? When I laboured, all day long and let me add, before I forget, part of the night, when I thought that with perseverance I’d get at me in the end? Well look at me, a little dust in a little nook, stirred faintly this way and that by breath straying from the lost without. Yes, I’m here for ever, with the spinners and the dead flies, dancing to the tremor of their meshed wings, and it’s well pleased I am, well pleased, that it’s over and done with, the puffing and panting after me up and down their Tempe of tears. Sometimes a butterfly comes, all warm from the flowers, how weak it is, and quick dead, the wings crosswise, as when resting, in the sun, the scales grey. Blot, words can be blotted and the mad thoughts they invent, the nostalgia for that slime where the Eternal breathed and his son wrote, long after, with divine idiotic finger, at the feet of the adulteress, wipe it out, all you have to do is say you said nothing and so say nothing again. What can have become then of the tissues I was, I can see them no more, feel them no more, flaunting and fluttering all about and inside me, pah they must be still on their old prowl somewhere, passing themselves off as me. Did I ever believe in
them, did I ever believe I was there, somewhere in that ragbag, that’s more the line, of inquiry, perhaps I’m still there, as large as life, merely convinced I’m not. The eyes, yes, if these memories are mine, I must have believed in them an instant, believed it was me I saw there dimly in the depths of their glades. I can see me still, with those of now, sealed this long time, staring with those of then, I must have been twelve, because of the glass, a round shaving-glass, double-faced, faithful and magnifying, staring into one of the others, the true ones, true then, and seeing me there, imagining I saw me there, lurking behind the bluey veils, staring back sightlessly, at the age of twelve, because of the glass, on its pivot, because of my father, if it was my father, in the bathroom, with its view of the sea, the lightships at night, the red harbour light, if these memories concern me, at the age of twelve, or at the age of forty, for the mirror remained, my father went but the mirror remained, in which he had so greatly changed, my mother did her hair in it, with twitching hands, in another house, with no view of the sea, with a view of the mountains, if it was my mother, what a refreshing whiff of life on earth. I was, I was, they say in Purgatory, in Hell too, admirable singulars, admirable assurance. Plunged in ice up to the nostrils, the eyelids caked with frozen tears, to fight all your battles o’er again, what tranquillity, and know there are no more emotions in store, no, I can’t have heard aright. How many hours to go, before the next silence, they are not hours, it will not be silence, how many hours still, before the next silence? Ah to know for sure, to know that this thing has no end, this thing, this thing, this farrago of silence and words, of silence that is not silence and barely murmured words. Or to know it’s life still, a form of life, ordained to end, as others ended and will end, till life ends, in all its forms. Words, mine was never more than that, than this pell-mell babel of silence and words, my viewless form described as ended, or to come, or still in progress, depending on the words, the moments, long may it last in that singular way. Apparitions, keepers, what childishness, and ghouls, to think I said ghouls, do I as much as know what they are, of course I don’t, and how the intervals are filled, as if I didn’t know, as if there were two things, some other thing besides this thing, what is it, this unnamable thing that I name and name and never wear out, and I call that words. It’s because I haven’t hit on the right ones, the killers, haven’t yet heaved them up from the heart-burning glut of words, with what words shall I name my unnamable words? And yet I have high hopes, I give you my word, high hopes, that one day I may tell a story, hear a story, yet another, with men, kinds of men as in the days when I played all regardless or nearly, worked and played. But first stop talking and get on with your weeping, with eyes wide open that the precious liquid may spill freely, without burning the lids, or the crystalline humour, I forget, whatever it is it burns. Tears, that could be the tone, if they weren’t so easy, the true tone and tenor at last. Besides not a tear, not one, I’d be in greater danger of mirth, if it wasn’t so easy. No, grave, I’ll be grave, I’ll close my ears, close my mouth and be grave. And when they open again it may be to hear a story, tell a story, in the true sense of the words, the word hear, the word tell, the word story, I have high hopes, a little story, with living creatures coming and going on a habitable earth crammed with the dead, a brief story, with night and day coming and going above, if they stretch that far, the words that remain, and I’ve high hopes, I give you my word.