Friday
Three o'clock. Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do. A peculiar moment in the afternoon. Today is intolerable.
A cold sunshine is whitening the dust on the windowpanes. A pale sky, mottled with white. The gutters were frozen this morning. I am digesting dully near the stove; I know in advance that this is a wasted day. I shan't do anything good, except, perhaps, after nightfall. It's on account of the sun; it vaguely gilds dirty white wisps of mist hanging in the air above the yard, it flows into my room, all fair and pale, and it spreads four dull, false patches of light on my table.
My pipe is daubed with a golden varnish which at first catches the eye by means of its appearance of gaiety: you look at it, and the varnish melts, nothing is left but a big pale streak on a piece of wood. And everything is like that, everything, even my hands. When the sun begins shining like that, the best thing to do would be to go to bed. Only, I slept like a log last night, and I don't feel sleepy.
I liked yesterday's sky so much, a narrow sky, dark with rain, pressing against the windowpanes like a ridiculous, touching face. This sun isn't ridiculous, quite the contrary. On everything I love, on the rust in the yards, on the rotten planks of the fence, a miserly, sensible light is falling, like the look you give, after a sleepless night, at the decisions you made enthusiastically the day before, at the pages you wrote straight off without a single correction. The four cafés on the boulevard Victor-Noir, which shine brightly at night, side by side, and which are much more than cafés - aquariums, ships, stars, or big wide eyes - have lost their ambiguous charm.
A perfect day to turn in upon oneself: these cold rays which the sun projects like a pitiless judgement on all creatures enter into me through my eyes; I am illuminated within by an impoverishing light. A quarter of an hour would be enough, I feel sure, for me to attain a feeling of supreme self-contempt. No, thank you very much, I can do without that. Nor shall I re-read what I wrote yesterday about Rollebon's stay in St Petersburg. I remain seated, my arms dangling, or else I write a few words, rather dispiritedly; I yawn, I wait for night to fall. When it is dark, the objects and I will come out of limbo.
Did Rollebon take part in the assassination of Paul I or didn't he? That is the question of the day: I have got as far as that and I can't go any further without deciding.
According to Tcherkov, he was paid by Count Pahlen. Most of the conspirators, says Tcherkov, would have been content with deposing and imprisoning the Czar. (Alexander indeed seems to have been in favour of that solution.) But Pahlen allegedly wanted to get rid of Paul completely, and Monsieur de Rollebon is said to have been given the task of converting each conspirator individually to the plan for assassination.
'He visited each of them and, with incomparable power, mimed the scene which was to take place. Like that he introduced or developed in them the lust to kill.' But I distrust Tcherkov. He isn't a reasonable witness, but a half-mad, sadistic magus: he gives a demoniacal twist to everything. I simply cannot see Monsieur de Rollebon in this melodramatic role. Would he have mimed the assassination scene? Not on your life! He was a cold man, who didn't usually sweep other people off their feet: he didn't show things, he insinuated, and his pale, colourless method could succeed only with men of his kind, intriguers accessible to reason, politicians.
Adhèmar de Rollebon [writes Madame de Charrières] did not paint pictures with his words, made no gestures, never changed the tone of his voice. He kept his eyes half-closed, and one could barely distinguish, between his lashes, the outer edges of his grey pupils. It has only been within the last few years that I have dared to admit to myself that he bored me more than I can say. He spoke rather in the way that the Abbé Mably used to write.
And this is the man who, by his gift for miming ...But then how did he manage to captivate women? And then there is this curious story which Ségur tells me and which strikes me as plausible:
In 1787, at an inn near Moulins, an old man was dying - a friend of Diderot's, whose ideas had been moulded by the philosophes. The local priests were baffled: they had tried everything in vain; the good man refused the last sacraments, saying he was a pantheist. Monsieur de Rollebon, who was passing by and who believed in nothing, bet the Curé of Moulins that he would take less than two hours to bring the sick man back to Christian sentiments. The Curé took the bet and lost: taken in hand at three in the morning, the sick man confessed at five and died at seven. "You must be very good at arguing," said the Curé, "to beat our own people!" "I didn't argue," replied Monsieur de Rollebon, "I made him frightened of Hell."
Now, did he take an effective part in the assassination? That evening, about eight o'clock, one of his officer friends accompanied him as far as his door. If he went out again, how did he manage to cross St Petersburg without being stopped? Paul, who was half-insane, had given orders that after nine o'clock at night all passers-by except midwives and doctors were to be arrested. Are we to believe the absurd legend that Rollebon disguised himself as a midwife in order to get to the palace? After all, he was quite capable of a think like that. In any case, it seems proved that he was not at home on the night of the assassination. Alexander must have been deeply suspicious of him, since one of the first official acts of his reign was to send the Marquis away under the vague pretext of a mission to the Far East.
Monsieur de Rollebon bores me to tears. I get up. I move about in this pale light; I see it change on my hands and on the sleeves of my jacket: I cannot say how much it disgusts me. I yawn. I light the lamp on the table: perhaps its light will be able to fight the light of day. But no: the lamp does nothing more than spread a pitiful pool around its base. I turn it out; I get up. On the wall there is a white hole, the mirror. It is a trap. I know that I am going to let myself be caught in it. I have. The grey thing has just appeared in the mirror. I go over and look at it, I can no longer move away.
It is the reflection of my face. Often, during these wasted days, I stay here contemplating it. I can understand nothing about this face. Other people's faces have some significance. Not mine. I cannot even decide whether it is handsome or ugly. I think it is ugly, because I have been told so. But that doesn't strike me. At heart, I am indeed shocked that qualities of this sort can be applied to it, as if you called a piece of earth or a lump of rock beautiful or ugly.
All the same there is one thing which is a pleasure to see, above the flabby regions of the cheeks, above the forehead: it is that beautiful red flame which gilds my skull, it is my hair. That is something pleasant to see. At least it's a definite colour: I am glad I have red hair. It's there in the mirror, it catches the eye, it shines out. I'm still lucky: if my forehead was adorned with one of those dull heads of hair which can't make up their mind whether to be chestnut or fair, my face would be lost in a vague expanse, it would make me feel giddy.
My gaze travels slowly and wearily down over this forehead, these cheeks: it meets nothing firm, and sinks into the sand. Admittedly there is a nose there, two eyes and a mouth, but none of that has any significance, nor even a human expression. Yet Anny and Vélines thought I looked alive; it may be that I am too accustomed to my face. When I was small, my Aunt Bigeois used to tell me: "If you look at yourself too long in the mirror, you'll see a monkey there." I must have looked at myself even longer than that: what I can see is far below the monkey, on the edge of the vegetable world, at the polyp level. It's alive, I can't deny that; but this isn't the life that Anny was thinking of: I can see some slight tremors, I can see an insipid flesh blossoming and palpitating with abandon. The eyes in particular, seen at such close quarters, are horrible. They are glassy, soft, blind, and red-rimmed; anyone would think they were fish-scales. I lean my whole weight on the porcelain edge, I push my face forward until it touches the mirror. The eyes, the nose, the mouth disappear: nothing human is left. Brown wrinkles on each side of the feverish swelling of the lips, crevices, molehills. A silky white down runs along the wide slopes of the cheeks, two hairs protrude from the nostrils: it's a geological relief map. And, in spite of everything, this lunar world is familiar to me. I can't say that I recognize the details. But the whole thing gives me an impression of something seen before which numbs me: I slip gently into sleep.
I should like to pull myself together: a sharp, abrupt sensation would release me. I slap my left hand against my cheek, I pull the skin; I grimace at myself. An entire half of my face gives way, the left half of the mouth twists and swells, uncovering a tooth, the eye-socket opens on a white globe, on pink, bleeding flesh. That isn't what I was looking for: nothing strong, nothing new; soft, vague, familiar stuff! I'm going to sleep with my eyes open; already the face is growing larger, growing in the mirror; it is an immense, pale halo slipping in the light ...
I lose my balance and that wakes me up with a start. I find myself sitting astride a chair, still quite dazed. Do other men find as much difficulty in appraising their face? It seems to me that I see my own as I feel my body, through a dull, organic sensation. But the others? Rollebon, for example? Did it send him to sleep as well to look in a mirror at what Madame de Genlis calls
his little wrinkled face, clean and sharp-featured, all pitted with smallpox, in which there was a remarkable mischievousness which caught the eye at once, however much he tried to disguise it. He took [she adds] great care with his coiffure and I never saw him without a wig. But his cheeks were a blue verging on black, because he had a heavy growth and insisted on shaving himself, which he did extremely badly. It was his custom to daub his face with ceruse, as Grimm did. Monsieur de Dangeville used to say that with all that blue and white he looked like a Roquefort cheese.
It seems to me that he must have been very amusing. But that, after all, isn't the way he looked to Madame de Charières. She, I believe, found him rather dull and quiet. Perhaps it is impossible to understand one's own face. Or perhaps it is because I am a solitary? People who live in society have learnt how to see themselves, in mirrors, as they appear to their friends. I have no friends: is that why my flesh is so naked? You might say - yes, you might say nature without mankind.
I no longer feel any inclination to work, I can do nothing more except wait for night to fall.
5.30
Things are bad! Things are very bad: I've got it, that filthy thing, the Nausea. And this time it's new: it caught me in a café. Until now cafés were my only refuge because they are full of people and well lighted: from now on I shan't even have that; when I am run to earth in my room, I shall no longer know where to go.
I had come along for a fuck, but I had scarcely opened the door before Madeleine, the waitress, called out to me: "The patronne isn't here, she's gone shopping in town."
I felt a sharp disappointment in my prick, a long disagreeable tickling. At the same time I felt my shirt rubbing against my nipples and I was surrounded, seized by a slow, coloured whirlpool, a whirlpool of fog, of lights in the smoke, in the mirrors, with the benches shining at the back, and I couldn't see why it was there or why it was like that. I was on the doorstep, I was hesitating, and then there was a sudden eddy, a shadow passed across the ceiling, and I felt myself being pushed forward. I floated along, dazed by the luminous mists which were entering me from all directions at once. Madeleine came floating up to me to take off my overcoat and I noticed that she had drawn her hair back and put on earrings: I didn't recognize her. I looked at her big cheeks which stretched endlessly away towards her ears. In the hollow of the cheeks, under the cheek-bones, there were two isolated pink patches which looked as if they were feeling bored on that poor flesh. The cheeks stretched away, away towards the ears and Madeleine smiled:
"What will you have, Monsieur Antoine?"
Then the Nausea seized me, I dropped onto the bench, I no longer even knew where I was; I saw the colours slowly spinning around me, I wanted to vomit. And there it is: since then, the Nausea hasn't left me, it holds me in its grip.
I paid. Madeleine took away my saucer. My glass crushes a puddle of yellow beer, with a bubble floating in it, against the marble table top. The bench is broken just where I am sitting, and to avoid slipping I am forced to press the soles of my shoes hard against the floor; it is cold. On the right, they are playing cards on a woollen cloth. I didn't see them when I came in; I simply sensed that there was a warm packet, half on the bench, half on the table at the back, with some pairs of arms waving about. Since then, Madeleine has brought them cards, the cloth, and the chips in a wooden bowl. There are three or five of them, I don't know how many, I haven't the courage to look at them. There's a spring inside me that's broken: I can move my eyes but not my head. The head is all soft and elastic, as if it had just been balanced on my neck; if I turn it, it will fall off. All the same, I can hear a short breath and now and then, out of the corner of my eye, I can see a reddish flash covered with white hairs. It is a hand.
When the patronne goes shopping it's her cousin who takes her place at the bar. His name is Adolphe. I began looking at him while I was sitting down and I went on because I couldn't turn my head. He is in shirt-sleeves with mauve braces; he has rolled the sleeves of his shirt above his elbows. The braces can scarcely be seen against the blue shirt; they are completely obliterated, buried in the blue, but this is false modesty; in point of fact they won't allow themselves to be forgotten, they annoy me with their sheep-like stubbornness, as if, setting out to become purple, they had stopped somewhere on the way without giving up their pretensions. You feel like telling them: "Go on, become purple and let's hear no more about it." But no, they remain in suspense, fixed in their unfinished effort. Sometimes the blue which surrounds them slips over them and covers them completely: for a moment I can't see them. But it is just a passing wave, and soon the blue goes pale in places and I see patches of hesitant mauve reappear, widen, join together, and reconstitute the braces. Cousin Adolphe has no eyes: his swollen, turned-up eyelids reveal just a little white. He smiles sleepily; now and then he snorts, yelps, and writhes feebly, like a dog having a dream.
His blue cotton shirt stands out cheerfully against a chocolate-coloured wall. That too brings on the Nausea. Or rather it is the Nausea. The Nausea isn't inside me: I can feel it over there on the wall, on the braces, everywhere around me. It is one with the café, it is I who am inside it.
On my right, the warm packet starts rustling, it waves its pairs of arms. "Look, there's your trump." "What are trumps?" Long black spine bent over the game: "Hahaha!" "What? There's the trump, he's just played it." "I don't know, I didn't see..." "Yes, I've just played trumps." "Ah, so hearts are trumps, hea-arts are trumps." Spoken: "What is it, Monsieur? What is it, Monsieur? I'll take it!"
Silence once more - the sugary taste of the air at the back of my throat. The smells, the braces.
The cousin has got up, taken a few steps, put his hands behind his back. He smiles, raises his head and leans back on his heels. In this position he goes to sleep. He is there, swaying, still smiling, with his cheeks trembling. He is going to fall. He bends backwards, bends, bends, his face turned completely up towards the ceiling, then, just as he is about to fall, he steadies himself adroitly on the edge of the bar and regains his balance. After which, he starts again. I have had enough, I call the waitress.
"Madeleine, please play me something on the gramophone. The one I like, you know: Some of These Days."
"Yes, but it might bother these gentlemen; these gentlemen don't like music when they're playing. But I'll ask them."
I make a great effort to turn my head. There are four of them. She bends over a red-faced old man with a pair of black-rimmed pince-nez on the end of his nose. He hides his cards against his chest and glances at me from under his glasses.
"Go ahead, Monsieur."
Smiles. His teeth are rotten. The red hand doesn't belong to him, it belongs to his neighbour, a fellow with a black moustache. This fellow with the moustache has huge nostrils which could pump air for a whole family and which eat up half his face, but in spite of that he breathes through his mouth, panting slightly. With them there is also a young man with a face like a dog. I can't make out the fourth player.
The cards fall onto the woollen cloth, spinning through the air. Then hands with ringed fingers come and pick them up, scratching the cloth with their nails. The hands make white patches on the cloth, they look puffy and dusty. More cards fall all the time, the hands come and go. What a peculiar occupation: it doesn't look like a game, or a rite, or a habit. I think they do it to pass the time, nothing more. But time is too large, it refuses to let itself be filled up. Everything you plunge into it goes soft and slack. That gesture, for example, of the red hand falteringly picking up the cards: it's all flabby. It ought to be unstitched and cut down.
Madeleine turns the handle of the gramophone. I only hope she hasn't made a mistake and put on the principal theme from Cavalleria Rusticana, as she did the other day. But no, that's it, I recognize the tune from the very first bars. It's an old rag-time tune with a vocal refrain. I head some American soldiers whistle it in 1917 in the streets of La Rochelle. It must date from before the War. But the recording is much more recent. All the same, it's the oldest record in the collection. A Pathé record for a sapphire needle.
The refrain will be coming soon: that's the part I like best and the abrupt way in which it flings itself forward, like a cliff against the sea. For the moment it's the jazz that's playing; there's no melody, only notes, a host of little jolts. They know no rest, an unchanging order gives birth to them and destroys them, without ever giving them time to recover, to exist for themselves. They run, they hurry, they strike me with a sharp blow in passing and are obliterated. I should quite like to hold them back, but I know that if I managed to stop one, nothing would remain between my fingers but a vulgar, doleful sound. I must accept their death; I must even will it; I know few harsher or stronger impressions.
I am beginning to warm up again, to feel happy. This is nothing out of the ordinary as yet, just a little Nausea happiness; it spreads out at the bottom of the slimy puddle, at the bottom of our time - the time of mauve braces and broken benches - it's made of wide, soft moments, which grow outwards at the edges like an oil stain. It's no sooner born than it's already old, it seems as if I had known it for twenty years.
There's another happiness: outside, there's that band of steel, the narrow duration of the music, which crosses our time through and through, and rejects it and tears it with its dry little points; here's another time.
"Monsieur Randu plays hearts, you put down the ace."
The voice slithers and disappears. Nothing bites on the ribbon of steel, neither the opening door, nor the gust of cold air flowing over my knees, nor the arrival of the vet with his little girl: the music pierces these vague shapes and passes beyond them. The little girl has scarcely sat down before she is seized: she holds herself rigid, her eyes wide open: she listens, rubbing the table with her fist.
Another few seconds and the Negress will sing. It seems inevitable, the necessity of this music is
so strong: nothing can interrupt it, nothing which comes from this time in which the world is slumped; it will stop of its own accord, on orders. If I love that beautiful voice, it is above all because of that: it is neither for its fullness nor its sadness, but because it is the event which so many notes have prepared so far in advance, dying so that it might be born. And yet I feel anxious; it would take so little to make the record stop: a broken spring, a whim on the part of Cousin Adolphe. How strange it is, how moving, that this hardness should be so fragile. Nothing can interrupt it but anything can break it.
The last chord has died away. In the brief silence which follows, I feel strongly that this is it, that something has happened.
Silence.
Some of these days
You'll miss me honey!
What has just happened is that the Nausea has disappeared. When the voice sounded in the silence, I felt my body harden and the Nausea vanished. All of a sudden: it was almost painful to become so hard, so bright. At the same time the duration of the music dilated, swelled like a waterspout. It filled the room with its metallic transparency, crushing our wretched time against the walls. I am in the music. Globes of fire revolve in the mirror; rings of smoke encircle them and spin around, veiling and unveiling the hard smile of the light. My glass of beer has shrunk, it huddles up on the table: it looks dense and indispensable. I want to pick it up and weigh it, I stretch out my hand ... Good Lord! It's that which has changed most of all, it's my gestures. That movement of my arm unfolded like a majestic theme, it glided along the song of the Negress; it seemed to me that I was dancing.
Adolphe's face is there, set against the chocolate-coloured wall; he seems quite close. Just as my hand was closing, I saw his face; it had the obvious, necessary look of a conclusion. I press my fingers against the glass, I look at Adolphe: I am happy.
"There!"
A voice rises above the general noise. It's my neighbour who is speaking, the drunken old man. His cheeks make a purple patch against the brown leather of the bench. He slaps a card down on the table. The queen of diamonds.
But the young man who looks like a dog smiles. The red-faced player, bent over the table, looks up at him, ready to spring.
"And there!"
The young man's hand emerges from the shadows, hovers for a moment, white, indolent, then suddenly drops like a kite and presses a card against the cloth. The fat red-faced man jumps into the air:
"Hell! He's trumped."
The outline of the king of hearts appears between clenched fingers, then it is turned on its face and the game goes on. Handsome king, come from so far away, prepared for by so many combinations, by so many vanished gestures. Now he disappears in his turn, so that other combinations may be born, other gestures, attacks, counter-attacks, changes of fortune, a host of little adventures.
I am moved, I feel my body like a precision tool at rest. I for my part have had some real adventures. I can't remember a single detail, but I can see the rigorous succession of circumstances. I have crossed the seas, I have left cities behind me, and I have followed the course of rivers towards their source or else plunged into forests, always making for other cities. I have had women, I have fought with men; and I could never turn back, anymore than a record can spin in reverse. And all that was leading me where? To this very moment, to this bench, in this bubble of light humming with music.
And when you leave me.
Yes, I who was so fond of sitting on the banks of the Tiber in Rome, or in the evening, in Barcelona, of walking a hundred times up and down the Ramblas, I who near Angkor, on the island of the Baray of Prah-Kan, saw a banyan tree knotting its roots around the chapel of the Nagas, I am here, I am living in the same second as these card players, I am listening to a Negress singing while the feeble night prowls outside.
The record has stopped.
Night has entered, smooth, hesitant. No one sees her, but she is there, veiling the lamps; you can breathe something thick in the air: it is she. It is cold. One of the players pushes the cards in an untidy heap towards another who picks them up. One card has been left behind. Can't they see it? It's the nine of hearts. Someone picks it up at last, and gives it to the dog-faced young man.
"Ah! It's the nine of hearts!"
Good, I'm off. The purple-faced old man bends over a sheet of paper, sucking the point of a pencil. Madeleine watches him with bright, empty eyes. The young man turns the nine of hearts over and over between his fingers. Good God!...
I get laboriously to my feet; in the mirror, above the vet's head, I see an inhuman face gliding along.
In a little while I'll go to the cinema.
The air does me good: it hasn't got the taste of sugar nor the winey smell of vermouth. But God, how cold it is.
It's half-past seven, I'm not hungry and the cinema doesn't start till nine o'clock; what am I going to do? I have to walk quickly to keep warm. I hesitate: behind me the boulevard leads to the heart of the town, to the big fiery jewels of the central streets, to the Palais Paramount, the Imperial, the Grands Magasins Jahan. That doesn't tempt me at all; it's apéritif time: for the time being I've seen enough of living things, of dogs, of men, of all the flabby masses which move about spontaneously.
I turn left, I'm going to plunge into that hole over there, at the end of the row of gas lamps: I'm going to follow the boulevard Noir as far as the avenue Galvani. Any icy wind is blowing from the hole: yonder there is nothing but stones and earth. Stones are hard and don't move.
There is a tedious stretch at first: on the right-hand pavement, a gaseous mass, grey with streaks of fire, is making a noise like rattling shells: this is the old station. It's presence has fertilized the first hundred yards of the boulevard Noir - from the boulevard de la Redoute to the rue Paradis - has spawned a dozen street lamps there and, side by side, four cafés, the Rendez-vous des Cheminots and three others, which languish all day long but light up in the evening and cast luminous rectangles on the roadway. I take another three baths of yellow light, and see an old woman come out of the Rabache general stores who pulls her shawl over her head and starts running. Now it's finished. I'm on the curb of the rue Paradis, next to the last lamp-post. The asphalt ribbon breaks off sharply. On the other side of the street there is darkness and mud. I cross the rue Paradis. I put my right foot in a puddle of water, my sock is soaked through; the walk begins.
Nobody lives in this part of the boulevard Noir. The climate is too harsh here, the soil too barren for life to settle here and grow. The three saw-works of the Soleil Brothers (the Soleil Brothers provided the panelled arch of the church of Sainte-Cécile-de-la-Mer, which cost a hundred thousand francs) open on the west, with all their doors and windows, on to the quiet rue Jeanne-Berthe-Coeuroy, which they fill with purring sounds. On the boulevard Victor-Noir they turn their three backs, joined by walls. These buildings border the left-hand pavement for four hundred yards: there isn't the smallest window, not even a skylight.
This time I've put both feet in the gutter. I cross the street; on the opposite pavement a solitary gas lamp, like a lighthouse at the far end of the earth, lights up a broken-down fence, which has been dismantled here and there.
Scraps of old posters are still sticking to the planks. A handsome face full of hatred grimaces against a green background, torn into the shape of a star; under the nose somebody has pencilled a curled-up moustache. On another scrap you can still make out the word purâtre in white letters from which red drops are falling, possibly drops of blood. It may be that the face and the word formed part of the same poster. Now the poster is torn, the simple, deliberate links which joined them have disappeared, but another unity has established itself of its own accord between the twisted mouth, the drops of blood, the white letters, and the terminations âtre: it is as if a restless criminal passion were trying to express itself through these mysterious signs. Between the planks you can see the lights from the railway shining. The fence is followed by a long wall: a wall without any openings, without any doors, without any windows, a wall which stops two hundred yards farther on, against a house. I have gone out of range of the street lamp; I enter the black hole. Seeing my shadow at my feet melt into the darkness, I have the impression of plunging into icy water. In front of me, far ahead, through layers of black, I can make out a pale patch of pink: it is the avenue Galvani. I turn round: behind the gas lamp, far away, there is a hint of light: that is the station with the four cafés. Behind me, in front of me, there are people drinking and playing cards in pubs. Here there is nothing but darkness. Intermittently the wind carries a lonely, distant ringing to my ears. Familiar noises, the roar of motorcars, shouts, and the barking of dogs scarcely stir from the lighted streets, they stay where it is warm. But this ringing sound pierces the darkness and reaches as far as here: it is harder, less human than the other noises.
I stop to listen to it. I am cold, my ears hurt; they must be all red. But I can't feel myself any longer; I am won over by the purity of my surroundings; nothing is alive; the wind whistles, straight lines flee into the darkness. The boulevard Noir doesn't have the indecent look of bourgeois streets, which try to charm the passers-by: it is simply a reverse side. The reverse side of the rue Jeanne-Berthe Coeuroy, of the avenue Galvani. In the vicinity of the station, the people of Bouville still look after it a little: they clean it now and then because of the travellers. But, immediately afterwards, they abandon it and it rushes straight on, in total darkness, finally bumping into the avenue Galvani. The town has forgotten it. Sometimes a big mud-coloured lorry thunders across it at top speed. Nobody even commits any murders on it, for want of murderers and victims. The boulevard Noir is inhuman. Like a mineral. Like a triangle. We are lucky to have a boulevard like that at Bouville. Usually you find them only in capitals - in Berlin near Neukölln or again towards Friedrichshain; in London behind Greenwich. Straight, dirty corridors, with a howling draught and wide, treeless pavements. They are nearly always on the outskirts in those strange districts where cities are manufactured, near goods stations, tram depots, slaughterhouses, and gasometers. Two days after a downpour, when the whole city is moist in the sunshine and radiates damp heat, they are still cold, they keep their mud and puddles. They even have puddles of water which never dry up, except one month in the year, August.
The Nausea has stayed over there, in the yellow light. I am happy: this cold is so pure, this darkness is so puree; am I myself not a wave of icy air? To have neither blood, nor lymph, nor flesh. To flow along this canal towards that pallor over there. To be nothing but coldness.
Here are some people. Two shadows. What did they have to come here for?
It's a little woman pulling a man by his sleeve. She is talking in a small quick voice. On account of the wind I can't understand what she is saying.
"Are you going to shut your trap or aren't you?" says the man.
She goes on talking. Suddenly he pushes her away. They look at each other, hesitant, then the man thrusts his hand into his pockets and goes off without looking around.
The man has disappeared. Barely three yards separate me now from the woman. All of a sudden, deep, hoarse sounds rend her, tear themselves away from her and fill the whole street with extraordinary violence:
"Charles, please, you know what I told you? Charles, come back, I've had enough, I'm too miserable!"
I pass so close to her that I could touch her. It's ... but how can I believe that this burning flesh, this face radiant with sorrow?... yet I recognize the headscarf, the coat, and the big wine-coloured birthmark on her right hand; it's she, it's Lucie, the charwoman. I dare not offer her my support, but she must be able to demand it if need be: I pass slowly in front of her, looking at her. Her eyes stare at me, but she doesn't seem to see me; she looks quite helpless in her suffering. I take a few steps. I turn round....
Yes, it's she, it's Lucie. But transfigured, beside herself, suffering with an insane generosity. I envy her. She stands there, absolutely erect, holding her arms out as if she were waiting for the stigmata; she opens her mouth, she is choking. I have the impression that the walls have grown higher on each side of the street, that they have come closer together, that she is at the bottom of a well. I wait a few moments: I am afraid she is going to collapse: she is too sickly to endure this unexpected sorrow. But she doesn't move, she looks petrified like everything around her. For a moment I wonder if I haven't been mistaken about her, if this isn't her real nature which has suddenly been revealed to me....
Lucie gives a little groan. She puts her hand to her throat, opening wide, astonished eyes. No, it isn't from herself that she is drawing the strength to suffer so much. It is coming to her from outside ... from this boulevard. She needs to be taken by the shoulders and led to the lights, among people, into the pink, gentle streets: over there you can't suffer so acutely; she would soften up, she would recover her positive look and return to the ordinary level of her sufferings.
I turn my back on her. After all, she is lucky. I for my part have been much too calm these last three years. I can receive nothing more from these tragic solitudes, except a little empty purity. I walk away.