-time and people are straggling back to their rooms
with that weary, dejected air which comes from earning a living honestly.
Most of the windows are wide open: the dingy rooms have the appearance of so
many yawning mouths. The occupants of the rooms are yawning too, or else
scratching themselves. They move about listlessly and apparently without
much purpose; they might just as well be lunatics.

As we turn down the corridor towards room 57, a door suddenly opens in front
of us and an old hag with matted hair and the eyes of a maniac peers out.
She startles us so that we stand transfixed. For a full minute the three of
us stand there powerless to move or even to make an intelligent gesture.
Back of the old hag I can see a kitchen table and on it lies a baby all
undressed, a puny little brat no bigger than a plucked chicken. Finally the
old one picks up a slop-pail by her side and makes a move forward. We stand
aside to let her pass and as the door closes behind her the baby lets out a
piercing scream. It is room number 56, and between 56 and 57 is the toilet
where the old hag is emptying her slops.

Ever since we have mounted the stairs Van Norden has kept silence. But his
looks are eloquent. When he opens the door of 57 I have for a fleeting moment
the sensation of going mad. A huge mirror covered with green gauze and tipped
at an angle of 45 degrees hangs directly opposite the entrance over a
baby-carriage which is filled with books. Van Norden doesn't even crack a
smile; instead he walks nonchalantly over to the baby-carriage and picking up
a book begins to skim it through, much as a man would enter the public
library and go unthinkingly to the rack nearest to hand. And perhaps this
would not seem so ludicrous to me if I had not espied at the same time a pair
of handle-bars resting in the corner. They look so absolutely peaceful and
contented, as if they had been dozing there for years, that suddenly it seems
to me as if we had been standing in this room, in exactly this position, for
an incalculably long time, that it was a pose we had struck in a dream from
which we never emerged, a dream which the least gesture, the wink of an eye
even, will shatter. But more remarkable still is the remembrance that
suddenly floats up of an actual dream which occurred only the other night, a
dream in which I saw Van Norden in just such a corner as is occupied now by
the handle-bars, only instead of the handle-bars there was a woman crouching
with her legs drawn up. I see him standing over the woman with that alert,
eager look in his eye, which comes when he wants something badly. The street
in which this is going on is blurred -- only the angle made by two walls is
clear, and the cowering figure of the woman. I can see him going at her in
that quick, animal way of his, reckless of what's going on about him,
determined only to have his way. And a look in his eye as though to say --
"you can kill me afterwards, but just let me get it in ... I've got to get it
in!" And there he is, bent over her, their heads knocking against the wall,
he has such a tremendous erection that it's simply impossible to get it in
her. Suddenly, with that disgusted air which he knows so well how to summon,
he picks himself up and adjusts his clothes. He is about to walk away when
suddenly he notices that his penis is lying on the sidewalk. It is about the
size of a sawed-off broom-stick. He picks it up nonchalantly and slings it
under his arm. As he walks off I notice two huge bulbs, like tulip bulbs,
dangling from the end of the broom-stick, and I can hear him muttering to
himself "flower-pots ... flower-pots."

The <i>garcon</i> arrives panting and sweating. Van Norden looks at him
uncomprehendingly. The madame now marches in and walking straight up to Van
Norden she takes the book out of his hand, thrusts it in the baby-carriage,
and without saying a word, wheels the baby-carriage into the hallway.

"This is a bug-house," says Van Norden, smiling distressedly. It is such a
faint, indescribable smile that for a moment the dream feeling comes back
and it seems to me that we are standing at the end of a long corridor at the
end of which is a corrugated mirror. And down this corridor, swinging his
distress like a dingy lantern. Van Norden staggers, staggers in and out as
here and there a door opens and a hand yanks him in or a hoof pushes him
out. And the further off he wanders the more lugubrious is his distress; he
wears it like a lantern which the cyclists hold between their teeth on a
night when the pavement is wet and slippery. In and out of the dingy rooms
he wanders, and when he sits down the chair collapses, when he opens his
valise there is only a tooth-brush inside. In every room there is a mirror
before which he stands attentively and chews his rage, and from the
constant chewing, from the grumbling and mumbling and the muttering and
cursing his jaws have gotten unhinged and they sag badly and, when he rubs
his beard, pieces of his jaw crumble away and he's so disgusted with himself
that he stamps on his own jaw, grinds it to bits with his big heels.

Meanwhile the luggage is being hauled in. And things begin to look crazier
even than before -- particularly when he attaches his exerciser to the
bedstead and begins his Sandow exercises. "I like this place," he says,
smiling at the <i>garcon.</i> He takes his coat and vest off. The
<i>garcon</i> is watching him with a puzzled air; he has a valise in one hand
and the douche-bag in the other. I'm standing apart in the ante-chamber
holding the mirror with the green gauze. Not a single object seems to possess
a practical use. The ante-chamber itself seems useless, a sort of vestibule
to a barn. It is exactly the same sort of sensation which I get when I enter
the Comedie Francaise or the Palais Royal Theatre; it is a world of
bric-a-brac, of trapdoors, of arms and busts and waxed floors, of candelabras
and men in armor, of statues without eyes and love letters lying in glass
cases. Something is going on, but it makes no sense; it's like finishing the
half-empty bottle of Calvados because there's no room in the valise.

Climbing up the stairs, as I said a moment ago, he had mentioned the fact
that Maupassant used to live here. The coincidence seems to have made an
impression upon him. He would like to believe that it was in this very room
that Maupassant gave birth to some of those gruesome tales on which his
reputation rests. "They lived like pigs, those poor bastards," he says. We
are sitting at the round table in a pair of comfortable old arm-chairs that
have been trussed up with thongs and braces; the bed is right beside as, so
close indeed that we can put our feet on it. The <i>armoire</i> stands in a
corner behind us, also conveniently within reach. Van Norden has emptied his
dirty wash on the table; we sit here with our feet buried in his dirty socks
and shirts, and smoke contentedly. The sordidness of the place seems to have
worked a spell on him: he is content here. When I get up to switch on the
light he suggests that we play a game of cards before going out to
<i>eat.</i> And so we sit there by the window, with the dirty wash strewn
over the floor and the Sandow exerciser hanging from the chandelier, and we
play a few rounds of two-handed pinochle. Van Norden has put away his pipe
and packed a wad of snuff on the under side of his lower lip. Now and then
he spits out of the window, big healthy gobs of brown juice which resound
with a smack on the pavement below. He seems content now.

"In America," he says, "you wouldn't dream of living in a joint like this.
Even when I was on the bum I slept in better rooms than this. But here it
seems natural -- it's like the books you read. If I ever go back there I'll
forget all about this life, just like you forget a bad dream. I'll probably
take up the old life again just where I left off... if I ever get back.
Sometimes I lie in bed dreaming about the past and it's so vivid to me that I
have to shake myself in order to realize where I am. Especially when I have a
woman beside me; a woman can set me off better than anything. That's all I
want of them -- to forget myself. Sometimes I get so lost in my reveries that
I can't remember the name of the cunt or where I picked her up. That's funny,
eh? It's good to have a fresh warm body beside you when you wake up in the
morning. It gives you a clean feeling. You get spiritual like ... until they
start pulling that mushy crap about love et cetera. Why do all these cunts
talk about love so much, can you tell me that? A good lay isn't enough for
them apparently ... they want your soul too ..."

Now this word soul, which pops up frequently in Van Norden's soliloquies,
used to have a droll effect upon me at first. Whenever I heard the word soul
from his lips I would get hysterical; somehow it seemed like a false coin,
more particularly because it was usually accompanied by a gob of brown
juice which left a trickle down the corner of his mouth. And as I never
hesitated to laugh in his face it happened invariably that when this little
word bobbed up Van Norden would pause just long enough for me to burst into
a cackle and then, as if nothing had happened, he would resume his
monologue, repeating the word more and more frequently and each time with a
more caressing emphasis. It was the soul of him that women were trying to
possess -- that he made clear to me. He had explained it over and over again,
but he comes back to it afresh each time like a paranoiac to his obsession.
In a sense Van Norden is mad, of that I'm convinced. His one fear is to be
left alone, and this fear is so deep and so persistent that even when he is
on top of a woman, even when he has welded himself to her, he cannot escape
the prison which he has created for himself. "I try all sorts of things," he
explains to me. "I even count sometimes, or I begin to think of a problem in
philosophy, but it doesn't work. It's like I'm two people, and one of them
is watching me all the time. I get so god-damned mad at myself that I could
kill myself ... and in a way, that's what I do every time I have an orgasm.
For one second like I obliterate myself. There's not even one me then ...
there's nothing ... not even the cunt. It's like receiving communion.
Honest, I mean that. For a few seconds afterwards I have a fine spiritual
glow ... and maybe it would continue that way indefinitely -- how can you
tell? -- if it weren't for the fact that there's a woman beside you and then
the douche-bag and the water running ... all those little details that make
you desperately self-conscious, desperately lonely. And for that one moment
of freedom you have to listen to all that love crap ... it drives me nuts
sometimes ... I want to kick them out immediately ... I do now and then. But
that doesn't keep them away. They like it, in fact. The less you notice them
the more they chase after you. There's something perverse about women ...
they're all masochists at heart."

"But what is it you want of a woman, then?" I demand.

   He begins to mould his hands; his lower lip droops. He looks completely
frustrated. When eventually he succeeds in stammering out a few broken
phrases it's with the conviction that behind his words lies an overwhelming
futility. "I want to be able to surrender myself to a woman," he blurts out.
"I want her to take me out of myself. But to do that, she's got to be better
than I am; she's got to have a mind, not just a cunt. She's got to make me
believe that I need her, that I can't live without her. Find me a cunt like
that, will you? If you could do that I'd give you my job. I wouldn't care
then what happened to me: I wouldn't need a job or friends or books or
anything. If she could only make me believe that there was something more
important on earth than myself. Jesus, I hate myself! But I hate these
bastardly cunts even more -- because they're none of them any good.

  "You think I like myself," he continues. "That shows how little you know
about me. I know I'm a great guy ... I wouldn't have these problems if there
weren't something to me. But what eats me up is that I can't express myself.
People think I'm a cunt-chaser. That's how shallow they are, these high-brows
who sit on the <i>terrasse</i> all day chewing the psychologic cud ... That's
not so bad, eh -- psychologic cud? Write it down for me. I'll use it in my
column next week ... By the way, did you ever read Stekel? Is he any good? It
looks like nothing but case histories to me. I wish to Christ I could get up
enough nerve to visit an analyst... a good one, I mean. I don't want to see
these little shysters with goatees and frock coats, like your friend Boris.
How do you manage to tolerate those guys? Don't they bore you stiff? You talk
to anybody, I notice. You don't give a god-damn. Maybe you're right. I wish I
weren't so damned critical. But these dirty little Jews who hang around the
Dome, Jesus, they give me the creeps. They sound just like textbooks. If I
could talk to you every day maybe I could get things off my chest. You're a
good listener. I know you don't give a damn about me, but you're patient. And
you don't have any theories to exploit. I suppose you put it all down
afterwards in that notebook of yours. Listen, I don't mind what you say about
me, but don't make me out to be a cunt-chaser -- it's too simple. Some day
I'll write a book about myself, about my thoughts. I don't mean just a piece
of introspective analysis ... I mean that I'll lay myself down on the
operating table and I'll expose my whole guts ... every god-damned thing. Has
anybody ever done that before? -- What the hell are you smiling at? Does it
sound naif?"

I'm smiling because whenever we touch on the subject of this book which he is
going to write some day things assume an incongruous aspect. He has only to
say "my book" and immediately the world shrinks to the private dimensions of
Van Norden and Co. The book must be absolutely original, absolutely perfect.
That is why, among other things, it is impossible for him to get started on
it. As soon as he gets an idea he begins to question it. He remembers that
Dostoievski used it, or Hamsun, or somebody else. "I'm not saying that I want
to be better than them, but I want to be different," he explains. And so,
instead of tackling his book, he reads one author after another in order to
make absolutely certain that he is not going to tread on their private
property. And the more he reads the more disdainful he becomes. None of them
are satisfying; none of them arrive at that degree of perfection which he has
imposed on himself. And forgetting completely that he has not written as much
as a chapter he talks about them condescendingly, quite as though there
existed a shelf of books bearing his name, books which everyone is familiar
with and the titles of which it is therefore superfluous to mention. Though
he has never overtly lied about this fact, nevertheless it is obvious that
the people whom he buttonholes in order to air his private philosophy, his
criticism, and his grievances, take it for granted that behind his loose
remarks there stands a solid body of work. Especially the young and foolish
virgins whom he lures to his room on the pretext of reading to them his
poems, or on the still better pretext of asking their advice. Without the
least feeling of guilt or self-consciousness he will hand them a piece of
soiled paper on which he has scribbled a few lines -- the basis of a new
poem, as he puts it -- and with absolute seriousness demand of them an honest
expression of opinion. As they usually have nothing to give by way of
comment, wholly bewildered as they are by the utter senselessness of the
lines. Van Norden seizes the occasion to expound to them his view of art, a
view, needless to say, which is spontaneously created to suit the event. So
expert has he become in this role that the transition from Ezra Pound's
cantos to the bed is made as simply and naturally as a modulation from one
key to another; in fact, if it were not made there would be a discord, which
is what happens now and then when he makes a mistake as regards those
nit-wits whom he refers to as "push-overs." Naturally, constituted as he is,
it is with reluctance that he refers to these fatal errors of judgment. But
when he does bring himself to confess to an error of this kind it is with
absolute frankness; in fact, he seems to derive a perverse pleasure in
dwelling upon his inaptitude. There is one woman, for example, whom he has
been trying to make for almost ten years now -- first in America, and finally
here in Paris. It is the only person of the opposite sex with whom he has a
cordial, friendly relationship. They seem not only to like each other, but to
understand each other. At first it seemed to me that if he could really make
this creature his problem might be solved. All the elements for a successful
union were there -- except the fundamental one. Bessie was almost as unusual
in her way as himself. She had as little concern about giving herself to a
man as she has about the dessert which follows the meal. Usually she singled
out the object of her choice and made the proposition herself. She was not
bad-looking, nor could one say that she was good-looking either. She had a
fine body, that was the chief thing -- and she liked it, as they say.

They were so chummy, these two, that sometimes, in order to gratify her
curiosity (and also in the vain hope of inspiring her by his prowess). Van
Norden would arrange to hide her in his closet during one of his seances.
After it was over Bessie would emerge from her hiding-place and they would
discuss the matter casually, that is to say, with an almost total
indifference to everything except "technique." Technique was one of her
favorite terms, at least in those discussions which I was privileged to
enjoy. "What's wrong with my technique?" he would say. And Bessie would
answer: "You're too crude. If you ever expect to make me you've got to
become more subtle."

There was such a perfect understanding between them, as I say, that often
when I called for Van Norden at one-thirty, I would find Bessie sitting on
the bed, the covers thrown back and Van Norden inviting her to stroke his
penis ... "just a few silken strokes," he would say, "so as I'll have the
courage to get up." Or else he would urge her to blow on it, or failing
that, he would grab hold of himself and shake it like a dinner-bell, the two
of them laughing fit to die. "I'll never make this bitch," he would say.
"She has no respect for me. That's what I get for taking her into my
confidence." And then abruptly he might add: "What do you make of that
blonde I showed you yesterday?" Talking to Bessie, of course. And Bessie
would jeer at him, telling him he had no taste. "Aw, don't give me that
line," he would say. And then playfully, perhaps for the thousandth time,
because by now it had become a standing joke between them -- "Listen, Bessie,
what about a quick lay? Just one little lay ... no." And when this had
passed off in the usual manner he would add, in the same tone: "Well, what
about <i>him</i>? Why don't you give <i>him</i> a lay?"

The whole point about Bessie was that she couldn't, or just wouldn't, regard
herself as a lay. She talked about passion, as if it were a brand new word.
She was passionate about things, even a little thing like a lay. She had to
put her soul into it.

"I get passionate too sometimes," Van Norden would say.

"Oh, <i>you,"</i> says Bessie. You're just a worn-out satyr. You don't know
the meaning of passion. When you get an erection you think you're
passionate."

"All right, maybe it's not passion ... but you can't get passionate
without having an erection, that's true isn't it?"

All this about Bessie, and the other women whom he drags to this room day in
and out, occupies my thoughts as we walk to the restaurant. I have adjusted
myself so well to his monologues that without interrupting my own reveries I
make whatever comment is required automatically, the moment I hear his
voice die out. It is a duet, and like most duets moreover in that one
listens attentively only for the signal which announces the advent of one's
own voice. As it is his night off, and as I have promised to keep him
company, I have already dulled myself to his queries. I know that before the
evening is over I shall be thoroughly exhausted; if I am lucky, that is, if
I can worm a few francs out of him on some pretext or other, I will duck him
the moment he goes to the toilet. But he knows my propensity for slipping
away, and, instead of being insulted, he simply provides against the
possibility by guarding his sous. If I ask him for money to buy cigarettes
he insists on going with me to purchase them. He will not be left alone, not
for a second. Even when he has succeeded in grabbing off a woman, even then
he is terrified to be left alone with her. If it were possible he would have
me sit in the room while he puts on the performance. It would be like asking
me to wait while he took a shave.

On his night off Van Norden generally manages to have at least fifty francs
in his pocket, a circumstance which does not prevent him from making a touch
whenever he encounters a prospect. "Hello," he says, "give me twenty francs
... I need it." He has a way of looking panic-stricken at the same time. And
if he meets with a rebuff he becomes insulting. "Well, you can buy a drink
at least." And when he gets his drink he says more graciously -- "Listen, give
me five francs then ... give me <i>two</i> francs ..." We go from bar to bar
looking for a little excitement and always accumulating a few more francs.
At the Coupole we stumble into a drunk from the newspaper. One of the
upstairs guys. There's just been an accident at the office, he informs us.
One of the proofreaders fell down the elevator shaft. Not expected to live.

At first Van Norden is shocked, deeply shocked. But when he learns that it
was Peckover, the Englishman, he looks relieved. "The poor bastard," he
says, "he's better off dead than alive. He just got his false teeth the
other day too ..."

The allusion to the false teeth moves the man upstairs to tears. He relates
in a slobbery way a little incident connected with the accident. He is
upset about it, more upset about this little incident than about the
catastrophe itself. It seems that Peckover, when he hit the bottom of the
shaft, regained consciousness before anyone could reach him. Despite the
fact that his legs were broken and his ribs busted, he had managed to rise
to all fours and grope about for his false teeth. In the ambulance he was
crying out in his delirium for the teeth he had lost. The incident was
pathetic and ludicrous at the same time. The guy from upstairs hardly knew
whether to laugh or to weep as he related it. It was a delicate moment
because with a drunk like that one false move and he'd crash a bottle over
your skull. He had never been particularly friendly with Peckover -- as a
matter of fact, he had scarcely ever set foot in the proof-reading
department: there was an invisible wall between the guys upstairs and the
guys down below. But now, since he had felt the touch of death, he wanted to
display his comradeship. He wanted to weep, if possible, to show that he was
a regular guy. And Joe and I, who knew Peckover well and who knew also that
he wasn't worth a good god-damn, even a few tears, we felt annoyed with this
drunken sentimentality. We wanted to tell him so too, but with a guy like
that you can't afford to be honest; you have to buy a wreath and go to the
funeral and pretend that you're miserable. And you have to congratulate him
too for the delicate obituary he's written. He'll be carrying his delicate
little obituary around with him for months, praising the shit out of himself
for the way he handled the situation. We felt all that, Joe and I, without
saying a word to each other. We just stood there and listened with a
murderous, silent contempt. And as soon as we could break away we did so; we
left him there at the bar blubbering to himself over his Pernod.

Once out of his sight we began to laugh hysterically. The false teeth! No
matter what we said about the poor devil, and we said some good things about
him too, we always came back to the false teeth. There are people in this
world who cut such a grotesque figure that even death renders them
ridiculous. And the more horrible the death the more ridiculous they seem.
It's no use trying to invest the end with a little dignity -- you have to be a
liar and a hypocrite to discover anything tragic in their going. And since
we didn't have to put on a false front we could laugh about the incident to
our heart's content. We laughed all night about it, and in between times, we
vented our scorn and disgust for the guys upstairs, the fat-heads who were
trying to persuade themselves, no doubt, that Peckover was a fine fellow and
that his death was a catastrophe. All sorts of funny recollections came to
our minds -- the semicolons that he overlooked and for which they bawled the
piss out of him. They made his life miserable with their rucking little
semi-colons and the fractions which he always got wrong. They were even
going to fire him once because he came to work with a boozy breath. They
despised him because he always looked so miserable and because he had
eczema and dandruff. He was just a nobody, as far as they were concerned,
but, now that he was dead, they would all chip in lustily and buy him a huge
wreath and they'd put his name in big type in the obituary column. Anything
to throw a little reflection on themselves; they'd make him out to be a
<i>big</i> shit if they could. But unfortunately, with Peckover, there was
little they could invent about him. He was a zero, and even the fact that he
was dead wouldn't add a cipher to his name.

"There's only one good aspect to it," says Joe. "You may get his job. And if
you have any luck, maybe you'll fall down the elevator shaft and break your
neck too. We'll buy you a nice wreath, I promise you that."

Towards dawn we're sitting on the <i>terrasse of</i> the D6me. We've
forgotten about poor Peckover long ago.
We've had a little excitement at the Bal Negre and Joe's mind has slipped
back to the eternal preoccupation: cunt. It's at this hour, when his night
off is almost concluded, that his restlessness mounts to a fever pitch. He
thinks of the women he passed up earlier in the evening and of the steady
ones whom he might have had for the asking, if it weren't that he was fed up
with them. He is reminded inevitably of his Georgia cunt -- she's been
hounding him lately, begging him to take her in, at least until she can find
herself a job. "I don't mind giving her a feed once in a while," he says,
"but I couldn't take her on as a steady thing . .. she'd ruin it for my
other cunts." What gripes him most about her is that she doesn't put on any
flesh. "It's like taking a skeleton to bed with you," he says. "The other
night I took her on -- out of pity -- and what do you think the crazy bitch
had done to herself? She had shaved it clean ... not a speck of hair on it!
Did you ever have a woman who shaved her twat? It's repulsive, ain't it? And
it's funny, too. Sort of mad like. It doesn't look like a twat any more: it's
like a dead clam or something." He describes to me how, his curiosity
aroused, he got out of bed and searched for his flashlight. "I made her hold
it open and I trained the flashlight on it. You should have seen me ... it
was comical. I got so worked up about it that I forgot all about her. I never
in my life looked at a cunt so seriously. You'd imagine I'd never seen one
before. And the more I looked at it the less interesting it became. It only
goes to show that there's nothing to it after all, especially when it's
shaved. It's the hair that makes it mysterious. That's why a statue leaves
you cold. Only once I saw real cunt on a statue -- that was by Rodin. You
ought to see it some time ... she has her legs spread wide apart ... I don't
think there was any head on it. Just a cunt you might say. Jesus, it looked
ghastly. The thing is this -- they all look alike. When you look at them with
their clothes on you imagine all sorts of things; you give them an
individuality like, which they haven't got, of course. There's just a crack
there between the legs and you get all steamed up about it -- you don't even
look at it half the time. You know it's there and all you think about is
getting your ramrod inside; it's as though your penis did the thinking for
you. It's an illusion! You get all burned up about nothing ... about a crack
with hair on it, or without hair. It's so absolutely meaningless that it
fascinated me to look at it. I must have studied it for ten minutes or more.
When you look at it that way, sort of detached like, you get funny notions in
your head. All that mystery about sex and then you discover that it's
nothing, just a blank. Wouldn't it be funny if you found a harmonica inside
... or a calendar? But there's nothing there ... nothing at all. It's
disgusting. It almost drove me mad ... Listen, do you know what I did
afterwards? I gave her a quick lay and then I turned my back on her. Yeah, I
picked up a book and I read. You can get something out of a book, even a bad
book ... but a cunt, it's just a sheer loss of time ..."

It just so happened that as he was concluding his speech a whore gave us the
eye. Without the slightest transition he says to me abruptly: "Would you
like to give her a tumble? It won't cost much ... she'll take the two of us
on." And without waiting for a reply he staggers to his feet and goes over
to her. In a few minutes he comes back. "It's all fixed," he says. "Finish
your beer. She's hungry. There's nothing doing any more at this hour ...
she'll take the both of us for fifteen francs. We'll go to my room ... it'll
be cheaper."

On the way to the hotel the girl is shivering so that we have to stop and
buy her a coffee. She's a rather gentle sort of creature and not at all bad
to look at. She evidently knows Van Norden, knows there's nothing to
expect from him but the fifteen francs. "You haven't got any dough," he
says, mumbling to me under his breath. As I haven't a centime in my pocket I
don't quite see the point of this, until he bursts out "For Christ's sake,
remember that we're broke. Don't get tenderhearted when we get upstairs.
She's going to ask you for a little extra -- I know this cunt! I could get her
for ten francs, if I wanted to. There's no use spoiling them ..."

<i>"Il est mechant, celui-la,"</i> she says to me, gathering the drift of his
remarks in her dull way.

<i>"Non, il n'est pas mechant, il est tres gentil."</i>

She shakes her head laughingly. <i>"Je le connais bien, ce</i>
<i>type."</i> And then she commences a hard luck story, about the hospital
and the back rent and the baby in the country. But she doesn't overdo it.
She knows that our ears are stopped; but the misery is there inside her,
like a stone, and there's no room for any other thoughts. She isn't trying
to make an appeal to our sympathies -- she's just shifting this big weight
inside her from one place to another. I rather like her. I hope to Christ
she hasn't got a disease ...

In the room she goes about her preparations mechanically. "There isn't a
crust of bread about by any chance?" she inquires, as she squats over the
<i>bidet.</i> Van Norden laughs at this. "Here, take a drink," he says,
shoving a bottle at her. She doesn't want anything to drink; her stomach's
already on the bum, she complains.

"That's just a line with her," says Van Norden. "Don't let her work on your
sympathies. Just the same. I wish she'd talk about something else. How the
hell can you get up any passion when you've got a starving cunt on your
hands?"

Precisely! We haven't any passion either of us. And as for her, one might as
well expect her to produce a diamond necklace as to show a spark of
passion. But there's the fifteen francs and something has to be done about
it. It's like a state of war; the moment the condition is precipitated
nobody thinks about anything but peace, about getting it over with. And yet
nobody has the courage to lay down his arms, to say, "I'm fed up with it ...
I'm through." No, there's fifteen francs somewhere, which nobody gives a
damn about any more and which nobody is going to get in the end anyhow, but
the fifteen francs is like the primal cause of things and rather than listen
to one's own voice, rather than walk out of the primal cause, one surrenders
to the situation, one goes on butchering and butchering and the more
cowardly one feels the more heroically does he behave, until a day when the
bottom drops out and suddenly all the guns are silenced and the
stretcher-bearers pick up the maimed and bleeding heroes and pin medals on
their chest. Then one has the rest of his life to think about the fifteen
francs. One hasn't any eyes or arms or legs, but he has the consolation of
dreaming for the rest of his days about the fifteen francs which everybody
has forgotten.

It's exactly like a state of war -- I can't get it out of my head. The way
she works over me, to blow a spark of passion into me, makes me think what a
damned poor soldier I'd be if I was ever silly enough to be trapped like this
and dragged to the front. I know for my part that I'd surrender everything,
honor included, in order to get out of the mess. I haven't any stomach for
it, and that's all there is to it. But she's got her mind set on the fifteen
francs and if I don't want to fight about it she's going to make me fight.
But you can't put fight into a man's guts if he hasn't any fight in him.
There are some of us so cowardly that you can't even make heroes of us, not
even if you frighten us to death. We know too much, maybe. There are some of
us who don't live in the moment, who live a little ahead, or a little behind.
My mind is on the peace treaty all the time. I can't forget that it was the
fifteen francs which started all the trouble. Fifteen francs! What does
fifteen francs mean to me, particularly since it's not my fifteen francs?

Van Norden seems to have a more normal attitude about it. He doesn't care a
rap about the fifteen francs either now; it's the situation itself which
intrigues him. It seems to call for a show of mettle -- his manhood is
involved. The fifteen francs are lost, whether we succeed or not. There's
something more involved -- not just manhood perhaps, but will. It's like a
man in the trenches again: he doesn't know any more why he should go on
living, because if he escapes now he'll only be caught later, but he goes on
just the same, and even though he has the soul of a cockroach and has
admitted as much to himself, give him a gun or a knife or even just his bare
nails, and he'll go on slaughtering and slaughtering, he'd slaughter a
million men rather than stop and ask himself why.

As I watch Van Norden tackle her, it seems to me that I'm looking at a
machine whose cogs have slipped. Left to themselves, they could go on this
way forever, grinding and slipping, without ever anything happening. Until a
hand shuts the motor off. The sight of them coupled like a pair of goats
without the least spark of passion, grinding and grinding away for no reason
except the fifteen francs, washes away every bit of feeling I have, except
the inhuman one of satisfying my curiosity. The girl is lying on the edge of
the bed and Van Norden is bent over her like a satyr with his two feet
solidly planted on the floor. I am sitting on a chair behind him, watching
their movements with a cool, scientific detachment; it doesn't matter to me
if it should last forever. It's like watching one of those crazy machines
which throw the newspaper out, millions and billions and trillions of them
with their meaningless head-lines. The machine seems more sensible, crazy as
it is, and more fascinating to watch, than the human beings and the events
which produced it. My interest in Van Norden and the girl is nil; if I could
sit like this and watch every single performance going on at this minute all
over the world my interest would be even less than nil. I wouldn't be able to
differentiate between this phenomenon and the rain falling or a volcano
erupting. As long as that spark of passion is missing there is no human
significance in the performance. The machine is better to watch. And these
two are like a machine which has slipped its cogs. It needs the touch of a
human hand to set it right. It needs a mechanic.

I get down on my knees behind Van Norden and I examine the machine more
attentively. The girl throws, her head on one side and gives me a despairing
look. "It's no use," she says. "It's impossible." Upon which Van Norden sets
to work with renewed energy, just like an old billy goat. He's such an
obstinate cuss that he'll break his horns rather than give up. And he's
getting sore now because I'm tickling him in the rump.

"For God's sake, Joe, give it up! You'll kill the poor girl."

"Leave me alone," he grunts. "I almost got it in that time."

The posture and the determined way in which he blurts this out suddenly
brings to my mind, for the second time, the remembrance of my dream. Only
now it seems as though that broomstick, which he had so nonchalantly slung
under his arm, as he walked away, is lost forever. It is like the sequel to
the dream -- the same Van Norden, but minus the primal cause. He's like a hero
come back from the war, a poor maimed bastard living out the reality of his
dreams. Wherever he sits himself the chair collapses; whatever door he
enters the room is empty; whatever he puts in his mouth leaves a bad taste.
Everything is just the same as
it was before; the elements are unchanged, the dream is no different than
the reality. Only, between the time he went to sleep and the time he woke
up, his body was stolen. He's like a machine throwing out newspapers,
millions and billions of them every day, and the front page is loaded with
catastrophes, with riots, murders, explosions, collisions, but he doesn't
feel anything. If somebody doesn't turn the switch off he'll never know
what it means to die; you can't die if your own proper body has been stolen.
You can get over a cunt and work away like a billy-goat until eternity; you
can go to the trenches and be blown to bits; nothing will create that spark
of passion if there isn't the intervention of a human hand. Somebody has to
put his hand into the machine and let it be wrenched off if the cogs are to
mesh again. Somebody has to do this without hope of reward, without concern
over the fifteen francs; somebody whose chest is so thin that a medal would
make him hunchbacked. And somebody has to throw a feed into a starving cunt
without fear of pushing it out again. Otherwise this show'll go on forever.
There's no way out of the mess ...

After sucking the boss's ass for a whole week -- it's the thing to do here --
I managed to land Peckover's job. He died all right, the poor devil, a few
hours after he hit the bottom of the shaft. And just as I predicted, they
gave him a fine funeral, with solemn mass, huge wreaths, and everything.
<i>Tout compris.</i> And after the ceremonies they regaled themselves, the
upstairs guys, at a <i>bistrot.</i> It was too bad Peckover couldn't have had
just a little snack -- he would have appreciated it so much to sit with the
men upstairs and hear his own name mentioned so frequently.

I must say, right at the start, that I haven't a thing to complain about.
It's like being in a lunatic asylum, with permission to masturbate for the
rest of your life. The world is brought right under my nose and all that is
requested of me is to punctuate the calamities. There is nothing in which
these slick guys upstairs do not put their fingers: no joy, no misery passes
unnoticed. They live among the hard facts of life, reality, as it is called.
It is the reality of a swamp and they are like frogs who have nothing better
to do than to croak. The more they croak the more real life becomes. Lawyer,
priest, doctor, politician, newspaper man -- these are the quacks who have
their fingers on the pulse of the world. A constant atmosphere of calamity.
It's marvellous. It's as if the barometer never changed, as if the flag were
always at half-mast. One can see now how the idea of heaven takes hold of
men's consciousness, how it gains ground even when all the props have been
knocked from under it. There must be another world beside this swamp in which
everything is dumped pell-mell. It's hard to imagine what it can be like,
this heaven that men dream about. A frog's heaven, no doubt. Miasma, scum,
pond lilies, stagnant water. Sit on a lily-pad unmolested and croak all day.
Something like that, I imagine.

They have a wonde