Wednesday. My last day at Bouville
I have looked all over the town for the Autodidact. He can't possibly have gone home. He must be walking about at random, filled with shame and horror, that poor humanist whom men don't want anymore. To tell the truth, I was scarcely surprised when the thing happened: for a long time I had felt that his gentle, timid face was positively asking scandal to strike it. He was guilty in no small degree: his humble, contemplative love for little boys is scarcely sensuality - rather a form of humanism. But it was inevitable that one day he should find himself alone again. Like Monsieur Achille, like myself: he is one of my own breed, he is full of goodwill. Now he has entered into solitude - forever. Everything has collapsed at once, his dreams of culture, his dreams of an understanding with mankind. First there will be fear, horror, and sleepless nights, and then, after that, the long succession of days of exile. In the evening he will come back to wander round the cours des Hypothèques; from a distance he will look at the glowing windows of the library and his heart will miss a beat when he remembers the long rows of books, their leather bindings, the smell of their pages. I am sorry I didn't go with him, but he didn't want me to; it was he who begged me to leave him alone: he was beginning his apprenticeship in solitude. I am writing this in the Café Mably. I came here ceremoniously, I wanted to contemplate the manager and the cashier, and feel intensely that I was seeing them for the last time. But I can't stop thinking about the Autodidact, I can still see his drawn, reproachful face and his bloodstained collar. So I asked for some paper and I am going to tell what has happened to him.
I went to the library at about two o'clock in the afternoon. I was thinking: 'The library. I am coming here for the last time.'
The reading room was almost empty. I found it hard to recognize it because I knew that I would never come back. It was as light as mist, almost unreal, all reddish; the setting sun was casting a reddish colour over the table reserved for women readers, the door, the spines of the books. For a second I had the delightful feeling that I was entering a thicket full of golden leaves; I smiled. I thought: 'What a long time it is since I last smiled.' The Corsican was looking out of the window, his hands behind his back. What did he see? The skull of Impétraz? 'I shall never see the skull of Impétraz again, or his top hat or his frock coat. In six hours' time I shall have left Bouville.' I placed the two volumes I had borrowed last month on the assistant librarian's desk. He tore up a green slip and handed me the pieces:
"There you are, Monsieur Roquentin."
"Thank you."
I thought: 'Now I owe them nothing more. I owe nothing more to anybody here. In a little while I shall go and say goodbye to the patronne of the Rendez-vous des Cheminots. I am free.' I hesitated for a minute: should I use these last moments to take a long walk through Bouville, to see the boulevard Victor-Noir again, the avenue Galvani, the rue Tournebride? But this thicket was so calm, so pure: it seemed to me that it scarcely existed and that the Nausea had spared it. I went and sat down near the stove. The Journal de Bouville was lying on the table. I stretched out my hand, I picked it up.
Saved by His Dog.
Last night, Monsieur Dubosc of Remiredon was cycling home from the Naugis Fair ...
A fat lady came and sat down on my right. She put her felt hat beside her. Her nose was planted in her face like a knife in an apple. Under the nose, an obscene little hole was wrinkling up in disdain. She took a bound book out of her bag and leaned her elbows on the table, resting her head on her fat hands. In front of me, an old gentleman was sleeping. I knew him: he had been in the library the evening I had been so frightened. I think he had been frightened too. I thought: 'How far away all that is.'
At half-past four the Autodidact came in. I should have liked to shake hands with him and say goodbye. But our last meeting must have left him with unpleasant memories: he nodded distantly to me and went quite a long way away from me to put down a small white packet which presumably contained, as usual, a slice of bread and a bar of chocolate. After a moment, he came back with an illustrated book which he placed near his packet. I thought: 'I am seeing him for the last time.' Tomorrow evening, the evening of the day after tomorrow, and all the following evenings, he would come back to read at that table, eating his bread and chocolate, he would patiently continue his rat-like nibbling, he would read the works of Nabaud, Naudeau, Nodier, Nys, breaking off now and then to jot down a maxim in his little notebook. And I would be walking in Paris, in the streets of Paris, I would be seeing new faces. What would happen to me while he was here, while the lamp was lighting up his heavy, meditative face? I realized just in time that I was going to let myself be caught once more by the mirage of adventure. I shrugged my shoulders and went back to my reading.
Bouville and district.
Monistiers:
Operations of the Gendarmerie Brigade during 1932. Sergeant-Major Gaspard, commanding the Monistiers Brigade and his four gendarmes, Messieurs Lagoutte, Nizan, Pierpont, and Ghil, have scarcely been idle during 1932. Our gendarmes have in fact had to record 7 crimes, 82 misdemeanours, 159 offences, 6 suicides, and 15 motorcar accidents, 3 of which were fatal.
Jouxtebouville:
Friendly Society of the Trumpet Players of Jouxtebouville. Final rehearsal today: issue of tickets for the annual concert.
Compostel:
Presentation of the Legion of Honour to the Mayor.
The Bouville Tourist (Bouville Scout Foundation, 1924):
Monthly meeting this evening, 8.45 p.m., 10 rue Ferdinand-Bryon, Room A. Agenda: Minutes, Correspondence, Annual Dinner. Subscriptions for 1932. Programme of outings in March. Miscellaneous matters. New Members.
Bouville Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals:
Public meeting next Thursday, from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., Room C, 10 rue Ferdinand-Bryon, Bouville.
Correspondence to be sent to the President, at the above address of at 154 avenue Galvani.
Bouville Watchdog Club ... Bouville Association of Disabled Veterans ... Taxi-Owners' Union ... Bouville Committee of the Friends of the Training Colleges ...
Two boys with satchels came in. Schoolboys from the lycée. The Corsican likes the schoolboys from the lycée, because he can keep a friendly eye on them. Often, for his own pleasure, he lets them play about on their chairs and chatter, and then creeps up behind them and scolds them: "Is that the way for big boys to behave? If you don't mend your manners, the librarian is going to complain to the headmaster." And if they protest, he glares at them with his terrible eyes: "Give me your names." He also controls their reading: in the library, certain volumes are marked with a red cross; these are the forbidden books - works by Gide, Diderot, and Baudelaire, and some medical treatises. When a schoolboy asks for one of these books, the Corsican beckons to him, takes him into a corner and questions him. After a moment he explodes and his voice fills the reading room: "But there are more interesting books for a boy of your age. Educational books. First of all, have you finished your homework? What form are you in? The fifth form? And you've got nothing to do after four o'clock? Your master often comes in here and I'm going to tell him about you."
The two boys remained standing near the stove. The younger one had fine brown hair, an almost excessively delicate skin, and a tiny mouth, proud and wicked. His friend, a big strapping fellow with a hint of a moustache, touched his elbow and murmured a few words. The little brown-haired boy didn't reply, but he gave an almost imperceptible smile, full of arrogance and self-assurance. Then the two of them nonchalantly took a dictionary from one of the shelves and went over to the Autodidact, who was staring at them with tired eyes. They seemed to be unaware of his existence, but they sat right up against him, the little brown-haired boy on his left and the big strapping fellow on the left of his friend. They promptly started looking through their dictionary. The Autodidact let his gaze wander round the room, then he returned to his reading. Never had any library offered such a reassuring sight: I couldn't hear a sound, except for the short breathing of the fat lady, and I couldn't see anything but heads bent over octavo volumes. Yet, at that moment, I had the impression that something unpleasant was going to happen. All those people with their heads bent so studiously seemed to be play-acting: a few moments earlier, I had felt something like a breath of cruelty pass over us.
I had finished reading, but I couldn't make up my mind to leave: I waited, pretending to read my paper. What increased my curiosity and my uneasiness was that the others were waiting too. It seemed to me that my neighbour was turning the pages of her book more rapidly. A few minutes went by, then I heard some whispering. I cautiously raised my head. The two boys had closed their dictionary. The little brown-haired boy wasn't talking, his face, marked with deference and interest, was turned to the right. Half hidden behind his shoulder, the fair-haired boy was listening and laughing silently. 'Then who's talking?' I wondered.
It was the Autodidact. He was bending over his young neighbour, eye to eye, and smiling at him; I could see his lips moving and, now and then, his long eyelashes trembling. I had never seen him look so young before, he was almost charming. But, from time to time, he broke off and looked anxiously over his shoulder. The boy seemed to be drinking in his words. There was nothing extraordinary about this little scene and I was going to return to my reading when I saw the boy slowly slide his hand behind his back along the edge of the table. Thus hidden from the Autodidact's eyes, it moved along for a moment and started groping about, then, meeting the fair-haired boy's arm, it pinched hard. The other boy, too absorbed in silent enjoyment of the Autodidact's words, hadn't seen it coming. He gave a start and his mouth opened wide under the influence of surprise and admiration. The little dark-haired boy had kept his look of respectful interest. One might have doubted whether that mischievous hand belonged to him. 'What are you going to do to him?' I thought. I knew that something horrible was going to happen, and I saw, too, that there was still time to prevent it. But I couldn't manage to guess what it was that had to be prevented. For a second I thought of getting up, going and tapping the Autodidact on the shoulder, and starting a conversation with him. But at the same moment he caught sight of me looking at him. He stopped talking straightaway and pursed his lips with an irritated expression. Discouraged, I quickly turned my eyes away and returned to my paper to keep myself in countenance. Meanwhile the fat lady had pushed her book away and raised her head. She seemed fascinated. I could distinctly feel that the drama was going to begin; they all wanted it to begin. What could I do? I glanced at the Corsican: he wasn't looking out of the window anymore, he had half-turned towards us.
A quarter of an hour went by. The Autodidact had started whispering again. I didn't dare to look at him anymore, but I could easily imagine his young and tender expression and those heavy gazes which were weighing on him without his knowing it. At one moment I heard his laugh, a childish piping little laugh. It wrung my heart: I felt as if some nasty brats were going to drown a cat. Then, all of a sudden, the whispering stopped. The silence struck me as tragic: it was the end, the death-blow. I bent my head over my newspaper and I pretended to read: but I wasn't reading: I lifted my eyebrows and I raised my eyes as high as I could in an attempt to see what was happening in that silence in front of me. By turning my head slightly, I managed to catch sight of something out of the corner of my eye: it was a hand, the small white hand which had slid along the table a little earlier. Now it was lying on its back, relaxed, soft, and sensual, it had the indolent nudity of a woman sunning herself on the beach. A brown hairy object approached it hesitantly. It was a thick finger yellowed by tobacco; beside that hand, it had all the grossness of a male organ. It stopped for a moment, rigid, pointing at the fragile palm, then, all of a sudden, it timidly started stroking it. I wasn't surprised, more than anything I was furious at the Autodidact: couldn't he restrain himself, the fool, didn't he realize the risk he was running? He still had a chance, a small chance: if he put both his hands on the table, on either side of the book, if he stayed absolutely still, he might be able to escape his destiny this time. But I knew that he was going to miss his chance: the finger passed gently, humbly, over the inert flesh, scarcely touching it, without daring to exert any pressure: it was as if it were conscious of its ugliness. I raised my head abruptly, I couldn't stand that stubborn little back-and-forth movement any longer: I tried to catch the Autodidact's eye and I coughed loudly to warn him. But he had closed his eyes, he was smiling. His other hand had disappeared under the table. The boys had stopped laughing, they had turned very pale. The little brown-haired one was pursing his lips, he was frightened, he looked as if he felt that things had gone beyond his control. Yet he didn't draw his hand away, he left it on the table, motionless, scarcely clenched. His friend's mouth was open in stupid, horrified expression.
It was then that the Corsican started shouting. He had come up without being heard and placed himself behind the Autodidact's chair. He was crimson and he looked as if he were laughing, but his eyes were flashing. I sat up with a start, but I felt almost relieved; the waiting period had been such a strain. I wanted it to be all over as soon as possible. They could throw him out if they wanted, provided they got it over with. The two boys, white as a sheet, grabbed their satchels in a flash and disappeared.
"I saw you," cried the Corsican, drunk with rage, "I saw you this time, don't try and tell me it isn't true. You're going to tell me it isn't true, are you? You think I didn't see your little game, do you? I've got eyes in my head, I'd have you know. Patience, I said to myself, patience, and when I catch him he'll pay for it. Oh, yes, you'll pay for it. I know your name, I know your address, I've checked up on you, you see. I know your boss too, Monsieur Chuillier. And won't he be surprised tomorrow morning, when he gets a letter from the librarian. Eh? Shut up!" he said, rolling his eyes. "And don't imagine it's going to stop there. There are courts in France for people like you. So you were studying, were you? So you were completing your education, were you? So you kept on bothering me all the time, for information or for books. You never fooled me for a moment, you know."
The Autodidact didn't look surprised. He must have been expecting this to happen for years. A hundred times he must have imagined what would happen, the day the Corsican would creep up behind him and a furious voice would suddenly bellow in his ears. And yet he came back every evening, he feverishly went on with his reading, and then, from time to time, like a thief, he stroked the white hand or perhaps the leg of a little boy. What I read on his face was resignation rather than anything else.
"I don't know what you mean," he stammered. "I've been coming here for years ..."
He was feigning indignation and surprise, but without conviction. He knew perfectly well that the event was there, and that nothing could hold it back any longer, that he had to live through the minutes of it one by one.
"Don't listen to him," said my neighbour, "I saw him." She had struggled to her feet: "And that isn't the first time I've seen him; no later than last Monday I saw him and I didn't say anything because I couldn't believe my eyes and I would never have thought that in a library, a serious place where people come to study, things would happen fit to make you blush. I haven't any children, but I pity the mothers who send theirs to work here, thinking they're quite safe, then there are monsters here with no respect for anything and who prevent them from doing their homework."
The Corsican went up to the Autodidact.
"You hear what the lady says?" he shouted in his face. "There's no need to put on an act. We saw you, you filthy swine!"
"Monsieur, I must ask you to be polite," the Autodidact said with dignity. He was playing his part. Perhaps he would have liked to confess, to run away, but he had to play his part to the end. He was not looking at the Corsican, his eyes were almost closed. He arms hung limply by his sides; he was horribly pale. And then, all of a sudden, a flush of blood rose to his face.
The Corsican was choking with rage.
"Polite? You swine! Perhaps you think I didn't see you. I was watching you, I tell you. I've been watching you for months."
The Autodidact shrugged his shoulders and pretended to return to his reading. Scarlet, his eyes filled with tears, he had assumed an expression of extreme interest and was gazing intently at a reproduction of a Byzantine mosaic.
"He's going on reading, he's got a nerve," the lady said, looking at the Corsican.
The latter was undecided what to do. At the same time, the assistant librarian, a timid, respectable young man who was terrorized by the Corsican, slowly raised himself above his desk and called out: "Paoli, what's the matter?" There was a moment of hesitation and I hoped that the affair was going to end there. But the Corsican must have thought about it and felt that he was ridiculous. With his nerves on edge, no longer knowing what to say to that silent victim, he drew himself up to his full height and swung his fist into thin air. The Autodidact turned round in alarm. He looked at the Corsican open-mouthed; there was a horrible fear in his eyes.
"If you strike me, I shall report you," he mumbled. "I wish to leave of my own free will."
I got up in my turn, but it was too late: the Corsican gave a little whine of pleasure and suddenly crashed his fist into the Autodidact's nose. For a second I could see nothing but the latter's eyes, his magnificent eyes, wide with shame and horror above a sleeve and a swarthy fist. When the Corsican drew his fist back the Autodidact's nose was beginning to piss blood. He tried to put his hand to his face, but the Corsican struck him again on the corner of his mouth. The Autodidact collapsed onto his chair and stared in front of him with gentle, timid eyes. The blood was pouring from his nose onto his clothes. He groped about with his right hand, trying to find his pocket, while he left hand was stubbornly trying to wipe his streaming nostrils.
"I'm going," he said, as if speaking to himself.
The woman beside me was pale and her eyes were shining.
"Filthy rotter," she said, "serves him right."
I was shaking with anger. I went round the table. I grabbed the little Corsican by the neck, and I lifted him up, with his arms and legs waving in the air: I should have liked to smash him on the table. He had turned blue in the face and was struggling, trying to scratch me; but his short arms didn't reach my face. I didn't say a word, but I wanted to hit him on the nose and disfigure him. He realized this, he raised his elbow to protect his face: I was glad because I saw he was afraid. Suddenly he started gasping:
"Let go of me, you brute. Are you a fairy too?"
I still wonder why I let go of him. Was I afraid of complications? Have these lazy years at Bouville rusted me? In the old days I wouldn't have let go of him without knocking out his teeth. I turned to the Autodidact, who had finally got up. But he avoided my eyes; his head bowed, he went and got his coat. He kept passing his left hand under his nose as if to stop the bleeding. But the blood was still flowing and I was afraid that he might faint. Without looking at anybody, he muttered:
"I've been coming here for years ..."
But the little man had hardly got back on his feet before he had taken command of the situation once more....
"Get the hell out of here," he told the Autodidact, "and don't ever set foot in here again or I'll have the police on you." I caught up with the Autodidact at the foot of the stairs. I was embarrassed, ashamed of his shame, I didn't know what to say to him. He didn't seem to notice I was there. He had finally taken out his handkerchief and was spitting something out. His nose was bleeding a little less.
"Come to the chemist's with me," I said to him awkwardly.
He didn't reply. A loud murmur was coming from the reading room. Everybody in there must have been talking at once. The woman gave a shrill burst of laughter.
"I can never come back here," said the Autodidact. He turned round and looked with a puzzled expression at the staircase, at the entrance to the reading room. This movement made some blood run between his collar and his neck. His mouth and cheeks were smeared with blood.
"Come along," I said, taking him by the arm.
He gave a shudder and pulled away violently.
"Leave me alone!"
"But you can't stay by yourself. You need somebody to wash your face and fix you up."
He repeated:
"Leave me alone, please, Monsieur, leave me alone."
He was on the verge of hysterics: I let him walk away. The setting sun lit up his bent back for a moment, then he disappeared. On the threshold there was a bloodstain in the shape of a star.
One hour later
The sky is grey, the sun is setting: the train leaves in two hours from now. I have crossed the municipal park for the last time and I am walking along the rue Boulibet. I know that it is the rue Boulibet, but I don't recognize it. Usually, when I turned into it, I felt as if I were going through a thick layer of common sense; clumsy and square, with its solemn ugliness, its curved, tarred roadway, the rue Boulibet looked like a national highway when it passes through rich country towns and is lined with big three-storey houses for nearly a mile; I used to call it a country road and it delighted me because it was so out of place, so paradoxical in a commercial port. Today the houses are there, but they have lost their rural appearance: they are buildings and nothing more. I had the same sort of feeling in the municipal park just now: the plants, the lawns, the Olivier Masqueret Fountain were so expressionless they looked positively stubborn. I understand: the town is abandoning me first. I haven't left Bouville and already I am no longer here. Bouville is silent. I find it strange that I have to stay another two hours in this town which, without bothering about me anymore, has put away its furniture and covered it with dust sheets so as to be able to uncover it in all its freshness for new arrivals, this evening or tomorrow. I feel more forgotten than ever.
I take a few steps and I stop. I savour this total oblivion into which I have fallen. I am between two towns. One knows nothing of me, the other knows me no longer. Who remembers me? Perhaps a plump young woman in London ... and even then, is it really about me that she thinks? Besides, there is that fellow, that Egyptian. Perhaps he has just gone into her room, perhaps he has taken her in his arms. I am not jealous; I know perfectly well that she is outliving herself. Even if she loved him with all her heart, it would still be the love of a dead woman. I had her last living love. But all the same there is something he can give her: pleasure. And if she is fainting and sinking into ecstasy, then there is no longer anything in her which links her with me. She is having her orgasm and I am no more to her than if I had never met her; she has suddenly emptied herself of me and all the other consciousnesses in the world are also empty of me. That seems funny. Yet I know perfectly well that I exist, that I am here.
Now when I say 'I', it seems hollow to me. I can no longer manage to feel myself, I am so forgotten. The only real thing left in me is some existence which can feel itself existing. I give a long, voluptuous yawn. Nobody. Antoine Roquentin exists for Nobody. That amuses me. And exactly what is Antoine Roquentin? An abstraction. A pale little memory of myself wavers in my consciousness. Antoine Roquentin ... And suddenly the I pales, pales and finally goes out.
Lucid, motionless, empty, the consciousness is situated between the walls; it perpetuates itself. Nobody inhabits it anymore. A little while ago somebody still said me, said my consciousness. Who? Outside there were talking streets, with familiar colours and smells. There remain anonymous walls, and anonymous consciousness. This is what there is: walls, and between the walls, a small living and impersonal transparency. The consciousness exists like a tree, like a blade of grass. It dozes, it feels bored. Little ephemeral existences populate it like birds in branches. Populate it and disappear. Forgotten consciousness, forsaken between these walls, under the grey sky. And this is the meaning of its existence; it is that it is a consciousness of being superfluous. It dilutes itself, it scatters itself, it tries to lose itself on the brown wall, up the lamppost, or over there in the evening mist. But it never forgets itself; it is a consciousness of being a consciousness which never forgets itself. That is its lot. There is a muffled voice which says: "The train leaves in two hours" and there is a consciousness of that voice. There is also a consciousness of a face. It passes by slowly, covered with blood, smeared, and its big eyes weep. It is not between the walls, it is nowhere. It disappears, a bent body with a bleeding head replaces it, walks slowly away, seems to stop at every step, never stops. There is a consciousness of this body walking slowly along a dark street. It walks, but it gets no further away. The dark street does not come to an end, it loses itself in nothingness. I It is not between the walls, it is nowhere. And there is a consciousness of a muffled voice which says: "The Autodidact is wandering through the town."
Not through the same town, no! Between those toneless walls, the Autodidact is walking in a ferocious town which hasn't forgotten him. There are people who are thinking about him - the Corsican, the fat lady, perhaps everybody in the town. He has not yet lost, cannot lose his identity, that tortured, bleeding identity which they refused to kill. His lips, his nostrils hurt; he thinks: 'I'm hurt.' He walks, he must walk. If he stopped for a single moment, the high walls of the library would suddenly rise around him and shut him in; the Corsican would spring up beside him and the scene would begin again, exactly the same in all its details, and the woman would snigger: "Rotters like that ought to be put in jail." He walks, he doesn't want to go home: the Corsican is still waiting for him in his room and the woman and the two boys: "Don't try and deny it, I saw you." And the scene would begin again. He thinks: 'Oh, God, if only I hadn't done that, if only I could not have done that, if only it could not be true!'
The tormented face passes back and forth before the consciousness: 'Perhaps he is going to kill himself.' No: that gentle, hunted soul cannot think of death.
There is knowledge of the consciousness. It sees right through itself, peaceful and empty between the walls, freed from the man who inhabited it, monstrous because it is nobody. The voice says: "The trunks are registered. The train leaves in two hours." The walls glide past to right and left. There is consciousness of macadam, consciousness of the ironmonger's, of the loopholes in the barracks and the voice says: "For the last time."
Consciousness of Anny, of fat Anny, of old Anny, in her hotel room, there is consciousness of suffering, suffering is conscious between the long walls which are going away and will never return: "Will there never be an end to it?" the voice sings a jazz tune between the walls, "Some of these days"; will there never be an end to it? and the tune comes back softly, from behind, insidiously, to pick up the voice, and the voice sings without being able to stop and the body walks and there is consciousness of all that and consciousness, alas, of the consciousness. But nobody is there to suffer and wring his hands and take pity on himself. Nobody. It is a pure suffering of the crossroads, a forgotten suffering - which cannot forget itself. And the voice says: "There is the Rendez-vous des Cheminots" and the I surges into the consciousness, it is I, Antoine Roquentin, I am leaving for Paris in a little while; I have come to say goodbye to the patronne.
"I've come to say goodbye to you."
"You're leaving, Monsieur Antoine?"
"I'm going to live in Paris, just for a change."
"You lucky man!"
How can I have pressed my lips on this moonlike face? Her body no longer belongs to me. Yesterday I would still have been able to imagine it under the black woollen dress. Today the dress is impenetrable. That white body with the veins on the surface of the skin, was it a dream?
"We'll miss you," says the patronne. "Won't you have something to drink? It's on the house."
We sit down, we clink glasses. She lowers her voice a little.
"I'd got really used to you," she says with polite regret, "we got on well together."
"I'll come back to see you."
"That's right, Monsieur Antoine. The next time you're passing through Bouville, you drop in and say hello to us. You just say to yourself: 'I'll go and say hello to Madame Jeanne, she'll like that.' I mean that, it's always nice to know what's happened to other people. Besides, people always come back here to see us. We have sailors, you know, serving with the Transat: sometimes I go two years without seeing them, because they're either in Brazil or New York or else working on a transport at Bordeaux. And then one fine day I see them again. 'Hello, Madame Jeanne.' We have a drink together. Believe it or not I always remember what each one likes. From two years back! I say to Madeleine: 'Give Monsieur Pierre a dry vermouth, and Monsieur Léon a Noilly Cinzano.' They ask me: 'How do you remember that?' 'It's my business,' I tell them."
At the back of the room there is a burly man who has been sleeping with her lately. He calls her:
"Patronne!"
She gets up:
"Excuse me, Monsieur Antoine."
The waitress comes over to me:
"So you're leaving us just like that?"
"I'm going to Paris."
"I've lived in Paris," she says proudly. "For two years. I was working at Siméon's. But I was homesick."
She hesitates for a second, then realizes she has nothing more to say to me:
"Well, goodbye, Monsieur Antoine."
She wipes her hand on her apron and holds it out to me:
"Goodbye, Madeleine."
She goes off. I pull the Journal de Bouville over to me, and then I push it away again: I read it a little while ago at the library, from the first line to the last.
The patronne doesn't come back: she abandons her dumpy hands to her friend, who kneads them passionately.
The train leaves in three quarters of an hour.
I work out my finances to pass the time.
Twelve hundred francs a month isn't a fortune. But if I economize a little it should be enough. A room for three hundred francs, fifteen francs a day for food: that leaves four hundred and fifty francs for laundry, incidentals, and the cinema. I won't need any new clothes for a long time. Both my suits are clean, even if they're a little shiny at the elbows: they'll last me another three or four years if I take care of them.
Good lord! Is it I who is going to lead that mushroom existence? What am I going to do all day long? I'll go for walks. I'll go and sit in the Tuileries Gardens on an iron chair - or rather on a bench, to save money. I'll go and read in the libraries. And then what? Once a week the cinema. And then what? Shall I treat myself to a Voltigeur on Sunday? Shall I go and play croquet with the pensioners in the Luxembourg Gardens? At the age of thirty! I feel sorry for myself. There are times when I wonder if I wouldn't do best to spend in one year the three hundred thousand francs I have left - and afterwards ... But what would that give me? New suits? Women? Travel? I've had all that, and now it's over, I don't feel like it anymore: not for what I'd get out of it! A year from now I'd find myself as empty as I am today, without even a memory and afraid to face death.
Thirty years old! And an annual income of 14,400 francs. Dividend coupons to cash every month. Yet I'm not an old man! Let them give me something to do, no matter what.... I'd better think about something else, because at this moment I'm putting on an act for my own benefit. I know perfectly well that I don't want to do anything; to do something is to create existence - and there's quite enough existence as it is. The fact is that I can't put down my pen: I think I'm going to have the Nausea and I have the impression that I put it off by writing. So I write down whatever comes into my head.
Madeleine, who wants to please me, calls to me from a distance, showing me a record:
"Your record, Monsieur Antoine, the one you like, do you want to hear it for the last time?"
"Please."
I said that out of politeness, but I don't really feel in the mood for listening to a jazz tune. All the same, I'm going to pay attention, because, as Madeleine says, I'm hearing this record for the last time: it's a very old record; too old, even for the provinces; I shall look for it in vain in Paris. Madeleine is going to put in on the turntable of the gramophone, it is going to spin; in the grooves, the steel needle is going to start jumping and grating and then, when they have spiralled it into the centre of the record, it will be finished, the hoarse voice which sings Some of These Days will fall silent forever.
It begins.
To think that there are idiots who derive consolation from the fine arts. Like my Aunt Bigeois: "Chopin's Preludes were such a help to me when your poor uncle died." And the concert halls are full to overflowing with humiliated, injured people who close their eyes and try to turn their pale faces into receiving aerials. They imagine that the sounds they receive flow into them, sweet and nourishing, and that their sufferings become music, like those of young Werther; they think that beauty is compassionate
towards them. The mugs.
I'd like them to tell me whether they find this music compassionate. Just now, I was certainly a long way from swimming in bliss. On the surface I was doing my accounts, automatically. Underneath were stagnating all those unpleasant thoughts which have taken the shape of unformulated questions, of mute astonishments which no longer leave me either by day or by night. Thoughts about Anny, about my wasted life. And then, still further down, the Nausea, as timid as a dawn. But at that particular moment there was no music, I was morose and calm. All the objects around me were made of the same material as I, a sort of shoddy suffering. The world was so ugly, outside me, these dirty glasses on the table were so ugly, and the brown stains on the mirror and Madeleine's apron and the kindly look of the patronne's burly lover were so ugly, the very existence of the world was so ugly, that I felt completely at ease, at home.
Now there is this tune on the saxophone. And I am ashamed. A conceited little suffering has just been born, an exemplary suffering. Four notes on the saxophone. They come and go, they seem to say: "You must do like us, suffer in strict time." Well, yes! Of course I'd be glad to suffer that way, in strict time, without any complacency, without any self-pity, with an arid purity. But is it my fault if the beer at the bottom of my glass is warm, if there are brown stains on the mirror, if I am superfluous, if the sincerest and driest of my sufferings trails along heavily, with too much flesh and its skin too loose, like the sea-elephant, with bulging eyes which are wet and touching but so ugly? No, they certainly can't say it's compassionate, this little diamond pain which is spinning around above the record and dazzling me. It isn't even ironic: it spins gaily, completely absorbed in itself; it has cut like a scythe through the insipid intimacy of the world and now it spins and all of us, Madeleine, the burly man, the patronne, I myself and the tables, the benches, the stained mirror, the glasses, all of us who were abandoning ourselves to existence, because we were between ourselves, just between ourselves - it has caught us in our untidy, everyday condition: I am ashamed for myself and for what exists in front of it.
It does not exist. It is even irritating in its non-existence; if it were to get up, if I were to snatch that record from the turntable which is holding it and if I were to break it in two, I wouldn't reach it. It is beyond - always beyond something, beyond a voice, beyond a violin note. Through layers and layers of existence, it unveils itself, slim and firm, and when you try to seize it you meet nothing but existents, you run up against existents devoid of meaning. It is behind them: I can't even hear it, I hear sounds, vibrations in the air which unveil it. It does not exist, since it has nothing superfluous: it is all the rest which is superfluous in relation to it. It is.
And I too have wanted to be. Indeed, I have never wanted anything else; that's what lay at the bottom of my life: behind all these attempts which seemed unconnected, I find the same desire: to drive existence out of me, to empty the moments of their fat, to wring them, to dry them, to purify myself, to harden myself, to produce, in short, the sharp, precise sound of a saxophone note. That could even serve as a fable: there was a poor fellow who had got into the wrong world. He existed, like other people, in the world of municipal parks, of bistros, of ports, and he wanted to convince himself that he was living somewhere else, behind the canvas of paintings, with the doges of Tintoretto, with Gozzoli's worthy Florentines, behind the pages of books, with Fabrice del Dongo and Julien Sorel, behind gramophone records, with the long dry laments of jazz music. And then, after making a complete fool of himself, he understood, he opened his eyes, he saw that there had been a mistake: he was in a bistro, in fact, in front of
a glass of warm beer. He sat there on the bench, utterly depressed; he thought: I am a fool. And at that very moment, on the other side of existence, in that other world which you can see from a distance, but without ever approaching it, a little melody started dancing, started singing: "You must be like me, you must suffer in strict time."
The voice sings:
Some of these days
You'll miss me honey
Somebody must have scratched the record at that spot, because it makes a peculiar noise. And there is something that wrings the heart: it is that the melody is absolutely untouched by this little stuttering of the needle on the record. It is so far away - so far behind. I understand that too: the record is getting scratched and worn, the singer may be dead; I myself am going to leave, I am going to catch my train. But behind the existence which falls from one present to the next, without a past, without a future, behind these sounds which decompose from day to day, peels away and slips towards death, the melody stays the same, young and firm, like a pitiless witness.
The voice has fallen silent. The disc scrapes a little then stops. Delivered from a troublesome dream, the café ruminates, chews on the pleasure of existing. The patronne's face is flushed, she slaps the fat white cheeks of her new friend, but without succeeding in bringing any colour to them. A dead man's cheeks. I stagnate, I fall half-asleep. In a quarter of an hour I will be on the train, but I don't think about it. I think about a clean-shaven American, with thick black eyebrows, who is suffocating with the heat, on the twentieth floor of a New York skyscraper. Over New York the sky is burning, the blue of the sky has caught fire, huge yellow flames are licking the roofs; the Brooklyn children are going to stand in bathing-trunks under the jets of hosepipes. The dark room on the twentieth floor is baking hot. The American with the black eyebrows sighs, pants, and the sweat rolls down his cheeks. He is sitting in shirtsleeves at his piano: he has a taste of smoke in his mouth and, vaguely, a ghost of a tune in his head. 'Some of these days'. Tom will come along in an hour with his hip-flask; then the two of them will flop into leather armchairs and drink great draughts of spirits and the fire in the sky will come and burn their throats, they will feel the weight of an immense torrid slumber. But first of all that tune must be noted down. 'Some of these days, you'll miss me honey.'
It happened like that. Like that or some other way, it doesn't matter. That is how it was born. It was the worn body of that Jew with coal-black eyebrows which it chose to give it birth. He held his pencil limply and drops of sweat fell from his ringed fingers onto the paper. And why not me? Why had it to be that fat lour full of stale beer and spirits who was chosen so that the miracle could be performed?
"Madeleine, will you put the record on again? Just once, before I leave."
Madeleine starts laughing. She turns the handle and it begins again. But I am no longer thinking about myself. I am thinking about that fellow out there who composed this tune, one day in July, in the black heat of his room. I try to think about him through the melody, through the white, acid sounds of the saxophone. He made that. He had troubles, everything wasn't working out for him as it should have: bills to pay - and then there must have been a woman somewhere who wasn't thinking about him the way he would have liked her to - and then there was this terrible heatwave which was turning men into pool of melting fat. There is nothing very pretty or very glorious about all that. But when I hear the song and I think that it was that fellow who made it, I find his suffering and his sweat ... moving. He was lucky. He can't have realized that, of course. He must have thought: with a little luck, this thing ought to bring in fifty dollars. Well, this is the first time for years that a man has struck me as moving. I should like to know something about that fellow. I should be interested to find out what sort of troubles he had, whether he had a woman or whether he lived alone. Not at all out of humanism; far from it, but because he made that. I've no desire to know him - besides, he may be dead. Just to get a little information about him and to be able to think about him, now and then, when listening to this record. I don't suppose it would make the slightest difference to the fellow if he were told that in the seventh largest town in France, in the vicinity of the station, somebody is thinking about him. But I would be happy if I were in his place; I envy him. I have to go. I get up, but I hesitate for a moment, I should like to hear the Negress sing. For the last time.
She sings. That makes two people who are saved: the Jew and the Negress. Saved. Perhaps they thought they were lost right until the very end, drowned in existence. Yet nobody could think about me as I think about them, with this gentle feeling. Nobody, not even Anny. For me they are a little like dead people, a little like heroes of novels; they have cleansed themselves of the sin of existing. Not completely, of course - but as much as any man can. This idea suddenly bowels me over, because I didn't even hope for that anymore. I feel something timidly brushing against me and I dare not move because I am afraid it might go away. Something I didn't know anymore: a sort of joy.
The Negress sings. So you can justify your existence? Just a little? I feel extraordinarily intimidated. It isn't that I have much hope. But I am like a man who is completely frozen after a journey through the snow and who suddenly comes into a warm room. I imagine he would remain motionless near the door, still feeling cold, and that slow shivers would run over the whole of his body.
Some of these days
You'll miss me honey.
Couldn't I try ... Naturally, it wouldn't be a question of a tune ... but couldn't I in another medium? ... It would have to be a book: I don't know how to do anything else. But not a history book: history talks about what has existed - an existent can never justify the existence of another existent. My mistake was to try to resuscitate Monsieur de Rollebon. Another kind of book. I don't quite know which kind - but you would have to guess, behind the printed words, behind the pages, something which didn't exist, which was above existence. The sort of story, for example, which could never happen, an adventure. It would have to be beautiful and hard as steel and make people ashamed of their existence.
I am going, I feel irresolute. I dare not make a decision. If I were sure that I had talent ... but I have never, never written anything of that sort; historical articles, yes - if you could call them that. A book. A novel. And there would be people who would read this novel and who would say: "It was Antoine Roquentin who wrote it, he was a red-headed fellow who hung about in cafés", and they would think about my life as I think about the life of that Negress: as about something precious and almost legendary. A book. Naturally, at first it would only be a tedious, tiring job, it wouldn't prevent me from existing or from feeling that I exist. But a time would have to come when the book would be written, would be behind me, and I think that a little of its light would fall over my past. Then, through it, I might be able to recall my life without repugnance. Perhaps one day, thinking about this very moment, about this dismal moment at which I am waiting, round-shouldered, for it to be time to get on the train, perhaps I might feel my heart beat faster and say to myself: "It was on that day, at that moment that it all started." And I might succeed - in the past, simply in the past - in accepting myself.
Night is falling. On the first floor of the Hôtel Printania two windows have just lighted up. The yard of the New Station smells strongly of damp wood: tomorrow it will rain over Bouville.