Nausea (19 page)

Above all, not move, not move . . . Ah! I could not prevent this movement of the shoulders . . . The thing which was waiting was on the alert, it has pounced on me, it flows through me, I am filled with it. It's nothing: I am the Thing. Existence, liberated, detached, floods over me. I exist.

I exist. It's sweet, so sweet, so slow. And light: you'd think it floated all by itself. It stirs. It brushes by me, melts and vanishes. Gently, gently. There is bubbling water in my mouth. I swallow. It slides down my throat, it caresses meùand now it comes up again into my mouth. For ever I shall have a little pool of whitish water in my mouthùlying lowùgrazing my tongue. And this pool is still me. And the tongue. And the throat is me.

I see my hand spread out on the table. It livesùit is me. It opens, the fingers open and point. It is lying on its back. It shows me its fat belly. It looks like an animal turned upside down. The fingers are the paws. I amuse myself by moving them very rapidly, like the claws of a crab which has fallen on its back.

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The crab is dead: the claws draw up and close over the belly of my hand. I see the nailsùthe only part of me that doesn't live. And once more. My hand turns over, spreads out flat on its stomach, offers me the sight of its back. A silvery back, shining a littleùlike a fish except for the red hairs on the knuckles. I feel my hand. I am these two beasts struggling at the end of my arms. My hand scratches one of its paws with the nail of the other paw; I feel its weight on the table which is not me. It's long, long, this impression of weight, it doesn't pass. There is no reason for it to pass. It becomes intolerable ... I draw back my hand and put it in my pocket; but immediately I feel the warmth of my thigh through the stuff. I pull my hand out of my pocket and let it hang against the back of the chair. Now I feel a weight at the end of my arm. It pulls a little, softly, insinuatingly it exists. I don't insist: no matter where I put it it will go on existing; I can't suppress it, nor can I suppress the rest of my body, the sweaty warmth which soils my shirt, nor all this warm obesity which turns lazily, as if someone were stirring it with a spoon, nor all the sensations going on inside, going, coming, mounting from my side to my armpit or quietly vegetating from morning to night, in their usual corner.

I jump up: it would be much better if I could only stop thinking. Thoughts are the dullest things. Duller than flesh. They stretch out and there's no end to them and they leave a funny taste in the mouth. Then there are words, inside the thoughts, unfinished words, a sketchy sentence which constantly returns: "I have to fi. . . I ex. . . Dead . . . M. de Roll is dead . . . I am not ... I ex. . ." It goes, it goes . . . and there's no end to it. It's worse than the rest because I feel responsible and have complicity in it. For example, this sort of painful rumination: I exist, I am the one who keeps it up. I. The body lives by itself once it has begun. But thoughtùI am the one who continues it, unrolls it. I exist. How serpentine is this feeling of existingùI unwind it, slowly. ... If I could keep myself from thinking! I try, and succeed: my head seems to fill with smoke . . . and then it starts again: "Smoke . . . not to think . . . don't want to think ... I think I don't want to think. I mustn't think that I don't want to think. Because that's still a thought." Will there never be an end to it?

My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist because I think . . . and I can't stop myself from thinking. At this very momentùit's frightfulùif I exist, it is because I am horrified at

99existing. I am the one who pulls myself from the nothingness to which I aspire: the hatred, the disgust of existing, there are as many ways to make myself exist, to thrust myself into existence. Thoughts are born at the back of me, like sudden giddiness, I feel them being born behind my head ... if I yield, they're going to come round in front of me, between my eyesù and I always yield, the thought grows and grows and there it is, immense, filling me completely and renewing my existence.

My saliva is sugary, my body warm: I feel neutral. My knife is on the table. I open it. Why not? It would be a change in any case. I put my left hand on the pad and stab the knife into the palm. The movement was too nervous; the blade slipped, the wound is superficial. It bleeds. Then what? What has changed? Still, I watch with satisfaction, on the white paper, across the lines I wrote a little while ago, this tiny pool of blood which has at last stopped being me. Four lines on a white paper, a spot of blood, that makes a beautiful memory. I must write beneath it: "Today I gave up writing my book on the Marquis de Rollebon."

Am I going to take care of my hand? I wonder. I watch the

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small, monotonous trickle of blood. Now it is coagulating. It's over. My skin looks rusty around the cut. Under the skin, the only thing left is a small sensation exactly like the others, perhaps even more insipid.

Half-past five strikes. I get up, my cold shirt sticks to my flesh. I go out. Why? Well, because I have no reason not to. Even if I stay, even if I crouch silently in a corner, I shall not forget myself. I will be there, my weight on the floor. I am.

I buy a newspaper along my way. Sensational news. Little Lucienne's body has been found! Smell of ink, the paper crumples between my fingers. The criminal has fled. The child was raped. They found her body, the fingers clawing at the mud. I roll the paper into a ball, my fingers clutching at the paper; smell of ink; my God how strongly things exist today. Little Lucienne was raped. Strangled. Her body still exists, her flesh bleeding. She no longer exists. Her hands. She no longer exists. The houses. I walk between the houses, I am between the houses, on the pavement; the pavement under my feet exists, the houses close around me, as the water closes over me, on the paper 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 any more, I am because I think that I don't want to be, I think that

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I ... because . . . ugh! I flee. The criminal has fled, the violated body. She felt this other flesh pushing into her own. I ... there I ... Raped. A soft, criminal desire to rape catches me from behind, gently behind the ears, the ears race behind me, the red hair, it is red on my head, the wet grass, red grass, is it still I? Hold the paper, existence against existence, things exist one against the other, I drop the paper. The house springs up, it exists; in front of me, along the wall I am passing, along the wall I exist, in front of the wall, one step, the wall exists in front of me, one, two, behind me, a finger scratching at my pants, scratches, scratches and pulls at the little finger soiled with mud, mud on my finger which came from the muddy gutter and falls back slowly, softly, softening, scratching less strongly than the fingers of the little girl the criminal strangled, scratching the mud, the earth less strong, the finger slides slowly, the head falls first and rolling embraces 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 chute, will not fall, will fall, the finger scratches at the window, existence is an imperfection. The gentleman. The handsome gentleman exists. The gentleman feels that he exists. No, the handsome gentleman who passes, proud and gentle as a convolvulus, does not feel that he exists. To expand; my cut hand hurts, exist, exist, exist. The handsome gentleman exists, the Legion of Honour, the moustache exists, it is all; how happy one must be to be nothing more than a Legion of Honour and a moustache and no one sees the rest, he sees the two pointed ends of his 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 looked in the crotch of the trousers you would surely discover a pair of little balls. He has the Legion of Honour, the bastards have the right to exist: "I exist because it 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 opening of white sheets the white ecstatic flesh which falls back gently, touch the blossoming moisture of armpits, the elixis and cordials and florescence of flesh, enter into the existence of another, into the red mucus with the heavy, sweet, sweet odour of existence, feel myself exist between these soft, wet lips, the lips red with pale blood, throbbing lips yawning, all wet with existence, all wet with clear pus, between the wet sugary lips weeping like eyes? My body of living flesh which murmurs and turns gently,

101liquors which turn to cream, the flesh which turns, turns, the sweet sugary water of my flesh, the blood on my hand. I suffer in my wounded flesh which turns, walks, I walk, I flee, I am a criminal with bleeding flesh, bleeding with existence to these walls. I am cold, I take a step, I am cold, a step, I turn left, he turns left, he thinks he turns left, mad, am I mad? He says he is afraid of going mad, existence, do you see into existence, he stops, the body stops, he thinks he stops, where does he come from? What is he doing? He starts off, he is afraid, terribly afraid, the criminal, desire like a fog, desire, disgust, he says he is disgusted with existence, is he disgusted, weary of being disgusted with existence? He runs. What does he hope for? He runs to flee to throw himself into the lake? He runs, the heart, the heart beats, it's a holiday, the heart exists, the legs exist, the breath exists, they exist running, breathing, beating, all soft, all gently breathless, leaving me breathless, he says he's breathless; existence takes my thoughts from behind and gently expands them from behind; someone takes me from behind, they force me to think from behind, therefore to be something, behind me, breathing in light bubbles of existence, he is a bubble of fog and desire, he is pale as death in the glass, Rollebon is dead, Antoine Roquentin is not dead, I'm fainting: he says he would like to faint, he runs, he runs like a ferret, "from behind" from behind from behind, little Lucienne assaulted from behind, violated 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 of the little brothel, he is pale in the little mirrors of the little brothel the big redhead who drops onto a bench, the gramophone plays, exists, all spins, the gramophone exists, the heart beats: spin, spin, liquors of life, spin, jellies, sweet sirups of my flesh, sweetness, the gramophone:

When that yellow moon begins to beam Every night I dream my little dream.

The voice, deep and hoarse, suddenly appears and the world vanishes, the world of existence. A woman in the flesh had this voice, she sang in front of a record, in her finest get up, and they recorded her voice. The woman: bah! she existed like me, like Rollebon, I don't want to know her. But there it is. You can't say it exists. The turning record exists, the air struck by the voice which vibrates, exists, the voice which made an

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impression the record existed. I who listen, I exist. All is full, existence everywhere, dense, heavy and sweet. But, beyond all this sweetness, inaccessible, near and so far, young, merciless and serene, there is this . . . this rigour.

Tuesday:

Nothing. Existed.

Wednesday:

There is a sunbeam on the paper napkin. In the sunbeam there is a fly, dragging himself along, stupefied, sunning himself and rubbing his antennae one against the other. I am going to do him the favour of squashing him. He does not see this giant finger advancing with the gold hairs shining in the sun.

"Don't kill it, Monsieur!" the Self-Taught Man shouted.

"I did it a favour."

Why am I here?ùand why shouldn't I be here? It is noon, I am waiting for it to be time to sleep. (Fortunately sleep has not fled from me.) In four days I shall see Anny again: for the moment, my sole reason for living. And afterwards? When Anny leaves me? I know what I surreptitiously hope for: I hope she will never leave me. Yet I should know that Anny would never agree to grow old in front of me. I am weak and lonely, I need her. I would have liked to see her again in my strength: Anny is without pity for strayed sheep.

"Are you well, Monsieur? Do you feel all right?"

The Self-Taught Man looks at me out of the corner of his eyes, laughing. He pants a little, his mouth open, like a dog. I admit: this morning I was almost glad to see him, I needed to talk.

"How glad I am to have you at my table," he says. "If you're cold, we could go and sit next to the stove. These gentlemen are leaving soon, they've asked for the bill."

Someone is taking care of me, asking if I am cold: I am speaking to another man: that hasn't happened to me for years.

"They're leaving, do you want to change places?"

The two men have lighted cigarettes. They leave, there they are in the pure air, in the sunlight. They pass along the wide windows, holding their hats in both hands. They laugh; the wind bellies out their overcoats. No, I don't want to change places. What for? And then, through the windows, between the white roofs of the bathing-cabins I see the sea, green, compact.The Self-Taught Man has taken two rectangles of purple cardboard from his wallet. He will soon hand them over the counter. I decipher on the back of one of them:

Maison Bottanet, cuisine hourgeoise

Le dejeuner a frix fixe: 8 francs

Hors d'ceuvre au choix

Viande garnie

Fromage ou dessert

140 francs les 20 cachets

The man eating at the round table near the doorùI recognize him now: he often stops at the Hotel Printania, he's a commercial traveller. From time to time he looks at me, attentive and smiling; but he doesn't see me; he is too absorbed in his food. On the other side of the counter, two squat, red-faced men are eating mussels and drinking white wine. The smaller, who has a thin yellow moustache is telling a story which makes him laugh. He pauses, laughs, showing sparkling teeth. The other does not laugh; his eyes are hard. But he often nods his head affirmatively. Near the window, a slight, dark-complexioned man with distinguished features and fine white hair, brushed back, reads his paper thoughtfully. A leather despatch case is on the bench beside him. He drinks Vichy water. In a moment all these people are going to leave; weighted down by food, caressed by the breeze, coat wide open, face a little flushed, their heads muzzy, they will walk along by the balustrade, watching the children on the beach and the ships on the sea; they will go to work. I will go nowhere, I have no work.