30
PARTISAN REVIEW
you begins to float, as it did for me the other evening, at the Rendez–
vous des Cheminots: that's what Nausea is; that's what the Stinkaroos
-the people up on Green Hill and the rest of them-try to hide from
themselves with their idea of law and order. But what a sorry lie: no
one has any law and order; those people are completely gratuitous,
like the rest; they do not know how to escape feeling superfluous.
Deep inside, they
are superfluous,
amorphous and vague, without joy.
How long did this spell last? I
was
the root of the chestnut tree.
Or rather I was wholly and completely consciousness of its existence.
Still detached from it--since I was conscious of it-and yet lost in it;
there was nothing but it. A consciousness that was uneasy and which
still let itself go with its entire weight, suspended over that piece of
inert wood. Time had come to a halt; it was a little dark pool at my
feet; it was impossible for anything to come
after
that moment. I
wanted to extricate myself from this sinister spell, but it did not even
occur to me that it was possible; I was inside it; the black stump
did not
move on,
it stayed there, in my eyes, just as an oversized
piece of food stays in the throat. I could neither accept it nor reject it.
No one can know the effort it cost me to raise my eyes. Or even
whether I did raise them. Was I not rather blotted out for an instant,
to be reborn the next, with my head raised and my eyes turned
upward? Actually, I was not conscious of any transition. Only, all of
a sudden, it was impossible for me to think the existence of the root.
It had gone, and though I kept repeating to myself, it exists, it is still
there, under the bench, next to my right foot, it no longer meant
anything. Existence is not something which can be thought at a
distance: it must invade you, come to a stop when it is upon you,
make its weight felt on your chest like a huge lifeless animal--or else
it is nothing at
all.
That was all there was, my eyes were emptied and I was happy
in my deliverance. Then, suddenly, there was a stirring before my eyes,
slight and wavering: the wind was shaking the top of the tree.
I was not displeased to see something move; it was a change
from all those motionless existences that stood looking at me like
staring eyes. I kept saying to myself, as I watched the swinging of
the branches: movements never exist completely, they are transitions,
intermediaries between two existences, unaccented beats. I was pre–
paring to see them appear out of oblivion, develop progressively,
burst into being: at last I was going to surprise existence in the act
of birth.
In less than three seconds all my hopes were blasted. There, on
