32
PARTISAN REVIEW
its nourishment?
How was it possible for anyone to see things that way? Things
are softness, flabbiness- yes. The trees fluttered. A straining skyward?
A falling to earth rather; every minute I expected to see the tree
trunks crumple up like burning paper, collapse and fall to the ground
in a soft dark heap with deep folds in it.
They had no desire
to exist;
they could not help themselves, that was it. So they performed their
little tasks quietly, listlessly; the sap mounted to the ducts slowly,
against its will, and the roots sank slowly into the soil. But they
seemed on the point of leaving everything flat and returning to
oblivion. Weary and old, they continue ungraciously to exist simply
because they were too weak to die, because death could come to
them only from the outside. What is there, short of a melody, which
bears its own death proudly within itself, like an inner necessity?
Only, a melody does not exist. Every existent is born without reason,
perpetuates itself out of inertia and dies fortuitously. I sank back
and closed my eyes. But at once the signal was given and my shut
eyes were assailed by images which filled them with existences:
existence is a fullness that man can never put behind.
Strange images. They represented a host of things. Not real
things, but other things which resembled them. Wooden objects which
resembled chairs or wooden shoes; other objects which resembled
plants. Then there were two faces: it was the couple that had sat
near me at lunch the other Sunday, at the Vezelize Brasserie. Fat,
warm, sensual, absurd, with red earrings. I could see the shoulders
and breast of the woman. Naked existence. Those two-this suddenly
filled me with horror-those two continued to exist somewhere in
Bouville; somewhere-in the midst of unspeakable odors?-that soft
throat continued to be caressed by cool linens, to nestle in lace ruffies,
and the woman continued to feel her breasts exist in her blouse and
to think, "my little brcasties," to smile mysteriously as she felt her
breasts burgeoning and tingling. And then I cried out, and there
I was with my eyes wide open.
Was it a dream, that enormous presence? It was there, poised
over the park, tumbling from the trees, all soft, gluing up everything,
a thick gelatinous mass. And was I in it, I, and the entire park? I
was afraid, but above all I was furious, it seemed so stupid, so inap–
propriate. I despised that ignoble jelly. It was everywhere, everywhere!
It reached to the sky,
it
spread out in all directions, it filled everything
with its sprawling mass, and I could see layer upon layer of
it,
extend–
ing much farther than the limits of the park and the houses and
