Monday

I've stopped writing my book about Rollebon; it's finished, I can't go on writing it.  What am I going to do with my life?

      It was three o'clock.  I was sitting at my table; I had put the bundle of letters I stole in Moscow beside me; I was writing:

      Care had been taken to spread the most sinister rumours.  Monsieur de Rollebon must have allowed himself to be taken in by this trick since he wrote to his nephew on 13 September that he had just made his will.

      The Marquis was present: pending the moment when I should have finally installed him in historical existence, I was lending him my life.  I could feel him like a slight glow in the pit of my stomach.

      I suddenly became aware of an objection which somebody would be sure to raise: Rollebon was far from frank with his nephew, whom he wanted to use, if the plot failed and he appeared before Paul I, as a defence witness.  It was perfectly possible that he had made up the story of the will to give the impression that he was a simpleton.

      This was a very important objection; it was nothing to get worried about.  But it was enough to plunge me into a fit of depression.  I suddenly recalled the fat waitress at Camille's, the haggard face of Monsieur Achille, the room in which I felt so clearly that I was forgotten and forsaken in the present.  I told myself wearily:

      "How on earth can I, who hasn't had the strength to retain my own past, hope to save the past of somebody else?"

      I picked up my pen and tried to get back to work; I was sick to death of these reflections on the past, the present, the world.  I asked for only one thing: to be allowed to finish my book in peace.

      But as my eyes fell on the pad of white sheets, I was struck by its appearance, and I stayed there, my pen raised, gazing at that dazzling paper: how hard and brilliant it was, how present it was.  There was nothing in it that wasn't present.  The letters which I had just written on it were not dry yet and already they no longer belonged to me.

      'Care had been taken to spread the most sinister rumours ...'

      I had thought out this sentence, to begin with it had been a little of myself.  Now it had been engraved in the paper, it had taken sides against me.  I no longer recognized it.  I couldn't even think it out again.  It was there, in front of me; it would have been useless for me to look at it for some sign of its origin.  Anybody else could have written it.  But I, I wasn't sure that I had written it.  The letters didn't shine anymore, they were dry.  That too had disappeared; nothing remained of their ephemeral brilliance.  I looked anxiously around me: the present, nothing but the present.  Light and solid pieces of furniture, encrusted in their present, a table, a bed, a wardrobe with a mirror - and me.  The true nature of the present revealed itself: it was that which exists, and all that was not present did not exist.  The past did not exist.  Not at all.  Neither in things nor even in my thoughts.  True, I had realized a long time before that my past had escaped me.  But until then I had believed that it had simply gone out of my range.  For me the past was only a pensioning off: it was another way of existing, a state of holiday and inactivity; each event, when it had played its part, dutifully packed itself away in a box and became an honorary event: we find it so difficult to imagine nothingness.  Now I knew.  Things are entirely what they appear to be and behind them ... there is nothing.

      For a few more minutes this thought absorbed my attention.  Then I gave a violent shrug of my shoulders to free myself and I pulled the pad of paper towards me.

      '... that he had just made his will.'

      A feeling of immense disgust suddenly flooded over me and the pen fell from my fingers, spitting ink.  What had happened?  Had I got the Nausea?  No, it wasn't that, the room had its paternal, everyday look.  At the very least the table seemed a little heavier and more solid, and my fountain pen more compact.  Only, Monsieur de Rollebon had just died for the second time.

      A little earlier he was there, inside me, quiet and warm, and now and then I could feel him stirring.  He was quite alive, more alive to me than the Autodidact or the manageress of the Rendez-vous des Cheminots.  Admittedly he had his whims, he could stay for several days without giving any sign of life; but often, on mysteriously fine days, like the man in a weatherbox, he would put his nose out and I would catch sight of his pale face and his blue cheeks.  And even when he didn't show up himself, he weighed heavily on my heart and I felt full up.

      Now nothing remained of him.  No more than anything remained, in those traces of dry ink, of the memory of their brilliance.  It was my fault: I had uttered the only words that had to be avoided: I said that the past did not exist.  And straightaway, noiselessly, Monsieur de Rollebon had returned to his nothingness.

      I picked up his letters in my hands, I felt them with a sort of despair:

      "Yet it was he," I said to myself, "it was he who traced these characters one by one.  He pressed on this paper, he put his finger on the sheets to prevent them from shifting under his pen."

      Too late: these words no longer had any meaning.  Nothing existed anymore but a bundle of yellow papers which I was clasping in my hands.  True, there was this complicated story: Rollebon's nephew murdered in 1810 by the Czar's police, his papers confiscated and taken to the Secret Archives, then, a hundred and ten years later, deposited by the Soviets, after they had taken power, in the State Library, from which I stole them in 1923.  But this didn't seem true, and I retained no real memory of this theft which I had committed myself.  It wouldn't have been difficult to find a hundred more plausible stories to explain the presence of these papers in my room: all of them, in the face of these coarse sheets of paper, would seem as light and hollow as bubbles.  Rather than count on these papers to put me in communication with Rollebon, I would do better to resort straightaway to table-turning.  Rollebon was no more.  No more at all.  If there were still a few bones left of him, they existed for themselves, in absolute independence, they were nothing more than a little phosphate and calcium carbonate with salt and water.

      I made one last attempt; I repeated to myself these words of Madame de Genlis by which I usually evoked the Marquis: '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.'

      His face obediently appeared to me, his pointed nose, his blue cheeks, his smile.  I was able to shape his features at will, perhaps indeed with greater facility than before.  Only, it was no longer anything but an image in me, a fiction.  I sighed, I let myself lean back in my chair, with the impression of an unbearable loss.

      Four o'clock strikes.  I've been sitting here in my chair for an hour, with my arms dangling.  It's beginning to get dark.  Apart from that, nothing in this room has changed: the white paper is still on the table, next to the fountain pen and the inkwell ... but I shall never write anymore on this page I have started.  Never again, following the rue des Mutilés and the boulevard de la Redoute, shall I go to the library to consult the archives there.

      I want to jump up and go out, to do anything - anything at all - to dull my wits.  But if I lift one finger, if I don't stay absolutely still, I know very well what will happen.  I don't want that to happen to me yet.  It will happen too soon as it is.  I don't move; I read automatically, on the pad of paper, the paragraph I have left unfinished:

      Care had been taken to spread the most sinister rumours.  Monsieur de Rollebon must have allowed himself to be taken in by this trick, since he wrote to his nephew on 13 September that he had just made his will.

      The great Rollebon affair has come to an end, like a great passion.  I shall have to find something else.  A few years ago, in Saigon, in Mercier's office, I suddenly emerged from a dream, I woke up.  After that I had another dream, I was living in the court of the Czars, in old palaces so cold that icicles formed in the doorways in winter.  Today I wake up in front of a pad of white paper.  The torches, the festivities, the uniforms, the lovely shivering shoulders have disappeared.  In this place something remains in the warm room, something I don't want to see.

      Monsieur de Rollebon was my partner: he needed me in order to be and I needed him in order not to feel my being.  I furnished the raw material, that material of which I had far too much, which I didn't know what to do with: existence, my existence.  His task was to perform.  He stood in front of me and had taken possession of my life in order to perform his life for me.  I no longer noticed that I existed, I no longer existed in myself, but in him; it was for him that I ate, for him that I breathed, each of my movements had its significance outside, there, just in front of me, in him; I no longer saw my hand writing letters on the paper, nor even the sentence I had written - but, behind, beyond the paper, I saw the Marquis, who had called for that gesture, and whose existence was prolonged and consolidated by that gesture.  I was only a means of making him live, he was my raison d'être, he had freed me from myself.  What am I going to do now?

      Above all not move, not move ... Ah!

      I couldn't prevent that shrug of the shoulders....

      The thing which was waiting has sounded the alarm, it has pounced upon me, it is slipping into me, I am full of it. - It's nothing: I am the Thing.  Existence, liberated, released, surges over me.  I exist.

      I exist.  It's sweet, so sweet, so slow.  And light: you'd swear that it floats in the air all by itself.  It moves.  Little brushing movements everywhere which melt and disappear.  Gently, gently.  There is some frothy water in my mouth.  I swallow it, it slides down my throat, it caresses me - and now it is starting up again in my mouth, I have a permanent little pool of whitish water in my mouth - unassuming - touching my tongue.  And this pool is me too.  And the tongue.  And the throat is me.

      I see my hand spread out on the table.  It is alive - it is me.  It opens, the fingers unfold and point.  It is lying on its back.  It shows me its fat underbelly.  It looks like an animal upside down.  The fingers are the paws.  I amuse myself by making them move about very quickly, like the claws of a crab which has fallen on its back.  The crab is dead: the claws curl up and close over the belly of my hand.  I see the nails - the only thing in me which isn't alive.  And even that isn't sure.  My hand turns over, spreads itself out on its belly, and now it is showing me its back.  A silvery, somewhat shiny back - you might think it was a fish, if it weren't for the red hairs near the knuckles.  I feel my hand.  It is me, those two animals moving about at the end of my arms.  My hand scratches one of its paws with the nail of another paw; I can feel its weight on the table which isn't me.  It's long, long, this impression of weight, it doesn't go.  There's no reason why it should go.  In the long run, it's unbearable ... I withdraw my hand, I put it in my pocket.  But straightaway, through the material, I feel the warmth of my thigh.  I promptly make my hand jump out of my pocket; I let it hang against the back of the chair.  Now I feel its weight at the end of my arm.  It pulls a little, not very much, gently, softly, it exists.  I don't press the point: wherever I put it, it will go on existing; I can't suppress it, nor can I suppress the rest of my body, the damp warmth which soils my shirt, nor all this warm fat which turns lazily, as if somebody were stirring it with a spoon, nor all the sensations wandering about inside, coming and going, rising from the side to my armpit or else quietly vegetating, from morning till night, in their usual corner.

      I jump to my feet: if only I could stop thinking, that would be something of an improvement.  Thoughts are the dullest things on earth.  Even duller than flesh.  They stretch out endlessly and they leave a funny taste in the mouth.  Then there are the words, inside the thoughts, the unfinished words, the sketchy phrases which keep coming back: 'I must fini ... I ex ... Dead ... Monsieur de Roll is dead ... I am not ... I ex ...’ It goes on and on ... and there's no end to it.  It's worse than the rest because I feel responsible, I feel that I am to blame.  For example, it is I who keep us this sort of painful rumination: I exist.  It is I.  The body lives all by itself, once it has started.  But when it comes to thought, it is I who continue it, I who unwind it.  I exist.  I think I exist.  Oh, how long and serpentine this feeling of existence is - and I unwind it, slowly ... if only I could prevent myself from thinking!  I try, I succeed: it seems as if my head is filling with smoke ... And now it starts again: 'Smoke.... Mustn't think ... I don't want to think ... I think that I don't want to think.  I mustn't think that I don't want to think.  Because it is still a thought.'  Will there never be an end to it?

      My thought is me: that is why I can't stop.  I exist by what I think ... and I can't prevent myself from thinking.  At this very moment - this is terrible - if I exist, it is because I hate existing.  It is I, it is I who pulls myself from the nothingness to which I aspire: hatred and disgust for existence are just so many ways of making me exist, of thrusting me into existence.  Thoughts are born behind me like a feeling of giddiness, I can feel them being born behind my head.... If I give way, they'll come here in front, between my eyes - and I go on giving way, the thought grows and grows and here it is, huge, filling me completely and renewing my existence.

      My saliva is sugary, my body is warm; I feel insipid.  My penknife is on the table.  I open it.  Why not?  In any case it would be a change.  I put my left hand on the pad and I jab the knife into the palm.  The movement was too sudden; the blade slipped, the wound is superficial.  It is bleeding.  And what of it?  What has changed?  All the same, I look with a feeling of satisfaction at the white paper, where, across the lines I wrote a little while ago, there is this little pool of blood which has at last stopped being me.  Four lines on a white paper, a splash of blood, together that makes a beautiful memory.  I must write underneath it: 'That day I gave up writing my book about the Marquis de Rollebon.'

      Am I going to see to my hand?  I hesitate.  I watch the small, monotonous trickle of blood.  Now it is coagulating.  It's over.  My skin looks rusty round the cut.  Under the skin, there is nothing left but a small sensation like the rest, perhaps even more insipid.

      That is half-past five striking.  I get up, my cold shirt is sticking to my flesh.  I go out.  Why?  Well, because I have no reason for not going out either.  Even if I stay, even if I curl up quietly in a corner, I shan't forget myself.  I shall be there, I shall weigh on the floor.  I am.

      I buy a newspaper on the way.  Sensational news.  Little Lucienne's body has been found!  Smell of ink, the paper crumples up between my fingers.  The murderer has fled.  The child was raped.  They have found her body, the fingers clutching at the mud.  I roll the paper into a ball, my fingers clutching at the paper; smell of ink; God, how strongly things exist today.  Little Lucienne was raped.  Strangled.  Her body still exits, her bruised flesh.  She no longer exists.  Her hands.  She no longer exists.  The houses.  I am walking between the houses, I am between the houses, upright on the pavement; the pavement beneath my feet exists, the houses close in on me, as the water closes over me, over the paper in the shape of a swan, I am.  I am, I exist, I think therefore I am; I am because I think, why do I think?  I don't want to think anymore, I am because I think that I don't want to be, I think that I ... because ... Ugh!  I flee, the criminal has fled, her raped body.  She felt that other flesh slipping into hers.  I ... now I ... raped.  A sweet, bloody longing for rape takes hold of me from behind, gently, behind the ears, the ears race along behind me, the red hair, it is red on my head, wet grass, red grass, is it me too? and is this paper me too? hold the paper existence against existence, things exist against one another, I let go of the paper.  The house juts out, it exists; in front of me I walk alongside the wall, alongside the long wall I exist, in front of the wall, a step, the wall exists in front of me, one, two, behind me, a finger which scratches inside my pants, scratches, scratches and pulls the little girl's finger soiled with mud, the mud on my finger which came out of the muddy gutter and falls back gently, gently, relaxing, scratching less hard than the fingers of the little girl who was being strangled, criminal, scratching the mud, the earth less hard, the finger slides gently, falls head first and caresses curled up warm against my thigh; existence is soft and rolls and tosses, I toss between the houses, I am, I exist, I think therefore I toss, I am, existence is a fallen fall, won't fall, will fall, the finger scratches at the window, existence is an imperfection.  The gentleman.  The fine gentleman exists.  The gentleman feels that he exists.  No, the fine gentleman passing by, as proud and gentle as a convolvulus, doesn't feel that he exists.  To expand; my cut hand hurts, exists, exists, exists.  The fine gentleman exists Legion of Honour, exists moustache, that's all; how happy one must be to be nothing more than a Legion of Honour and a moustache and nobody sees the rest, he sees two pointed ends of moustache on both sides of the nose; I do not think therefore I am a moustache.  He sees neither his gaunt body, nor his big feet, if you fumbled about inside his trousers, you would be sure to find a pair of little grey india-rubbers.  He has the Legion of Honour, the Bastards have the right to exist: 'I exist because that is my right.'  I have the right to exist, therefore I have the right not to think: the finger is raised.  Am I going to ... caress in the splendour of white sheets the splendid white flesh which falls back gently, touch the blossoming moisture of the armpits, the elixirs and the liqueurs and the florescences of the flesh, enter into the other person's existence, into the red mucous membranes with the heavy, sweet, sweet smell of existence, feel myself existing between the soft wet lips, the lips red with pale blood, the throbbing, yawning lips all wet with existence, all wet with a transparent puss, between the wet sugary lips which cry like eyes?  My body of living flesh, the flesh which swarms and turns gently liqueurs, which turns cream, the flesh which turns, turns, turns, the sweet sugary water of my flesh, the blood of my hand, it hurts, gentle to my bruised flesh which turns, walks, I walk, I flee, I am a criminal with bruised flesh, bruised with existence against these walls.  I am cold, I take a step, I am cold, a step, I turn left, he turns left, he thinks that he turns left, mad, am I mad?  He says that he is afraid of being mad, existence, you see child in existence, he stops, the body stops, he thinks that he stops, where does he come from?  What does he do?  He sets off again, he is afraid, terribly afraid, criminal, desire like a fog, desire, disgust, he says that he is disgusted with existence, is he disgusted, tired of disgusted with existence?  He runs.  What does he hope for?  Does he run to flee from himself, to throw himself into the lake?  He runs, the heart, the heart beating is a holiday.  The heart exists, the legs exist, the breath exists, they exist running, breathing, beating softly, gently gets out of breath, gets me out of breath, he says that he is getting out of breath; existence takes my thoughts from behind and gently expands them from behind; somebody takes me from behind, they force me from behind to think, therefore to be something, behind me, breathing in light bubbles of existence, he is a bubble of fog of desire, he is pale in the mirror like a dead man, Rollebon is dead, Antoine Roquentin isn't dead, I'm fainting, he says that he would like to faint, he runs, he runs races (from behind) from behind from behind, like Lucienne assaulted from behind, raped by existence from behind, he begs for mercy, he is ashamed of begging for mercy, pity, help, help therefore I exist, he goes into the Bar de la Marine, the little mirrors in the little brothel, he is pale in the little mirrors in the little brothel the big soft red-head who drops on to the bench, the gramophone plays, exists, everything turns, the gramophone exists, the heart beats: turn, turn liqueurs of life, turn jellies, syrups of my flesh, sweetnesses ... the gramophone.

                                             When that yellow moon begins to beam

                                                         Every night I dream my little dream.

      The voice, deep and husky, suddenly appears and the world vanishes, the world of existences.  A woman of flesh had that voice, she sang in front of a record, in her best dress and they recorded her voice.  A woman: bah, she existed like me, like Rollebon, I don't want to know her.  But there it is.  You can't say that that exists.  The spinning record exists, the air struck by the vibrating voice exists, the voice which made an impression on the record existed.  I who am listening, I exist.  Everything is full, existence everywhere, dense and heavy and sweet.  But, beyond all this sweetness, inaccessible, quite close, so far away alas, young merciless, and serene, there is this ... this rigour.