Prisoners of drops of water, we are but everlasting animals. We run about the noiseless towns and the enchanted posters no longer touch us. What’s the good of these great fragile fits of enthusiasm, these jaded jumps of joy? We know nothing any more but the dead stars; we gaze at their faces; and we gasp with pleasure. Our mouths are as dry as the lost beaches, and our eyes turn aimlessly and without hope. Now all that remain are these cafés where we meet to drink these cool drinks, these diluted spirits, and the tables are stickier than the pavements where our shadows of the day before have fallen.
Sometimes, the wind surrounds us with great cold hands and ties us to the trees denticulated by the sun. All of us laugh, all of us sing, but nobody feels his heart beat any longer. Fever abandons us.
The marvelous railway stations never afford us shelter anymore: the long passages terrify us. So in order to go living these monotonous minutes must be stifled, these scraps of centuries. Once we loved the year’s last sunny days, the narrow plains where our gaze flowed like those impetuous rivers of our childhood. There remain nothing but reflections now in the woods repopulated with absurd animals, with well-known plants.
The towns we no longer wish to love are dead. Look around you. There’s nothing left now but the sky and these waste plots that we shall soon end up detesting. We touch with our fingers those tender stars which filled our dreams. Yonder, they told us that there were prodigious valleys: horse-rides forever lost in that Far West as boring as a museum.
When the big birds take flight forever, they leave without a cry and the striped sky no longer resounds with their calls. They pass over fertile lakes and marshes; their wings dispel the too languid clouds. We’re no longer allowed even to sit down: immediately, laughs burst out and we’re obliged to shout all our faults out loud.
One day, of which the colour is no longer known, we came across some quiet walls that were mightier than monuments. There we were and our widely opened eyes let fall a few tears of joy. We said: “The planets and stars of the first magnitude are not comparable with us. So what is this power more terrible than air? Lovely August nights, adorable seaside dusks, we find you laughable! Bleaching-water and the lines on our hands shall direct the world. Mental chemistry of our future plans, you are stronger than these death-cries and than factories’ hoarse voices!” Yes, on that evening finer than any other, we were able to weep. Women were passing by and stretched out their hands to us, offering their smiles to us like a bunch of flowers. The meanness of the preceding days made our hearts sore, and we turned our heads away so as not to see the fountains rejoining the other nights.
There was no longer anything left to respect us but unprofitable death.
Each thing is in its proper place, and no one can talk any more: each sense became deadened and there were blind persons worthier of respect than we were.
We were shown around cheap dream manufactories and shops full of obscure dramas. It was a splendid cinema in which the roles were played by our old friends. We lost sight of them and we went to find them again always in the same place. They gave us rotten dainties and we told them about our plans for future happiness. They fixed their eyes on us, they spoke: can one really remember those base words, their sleep-sick lays?
We gave them our heart which was no more than a pale song.
This evening there are two of us faced with the overflowing river of our despair. We can no longer even think. Words escape from our twisted mouths and, when we laugh, the passers-by look back terrified and hurry off to their homes.
No one knows how to despise us.
We think of the gleams of bars, the grotesque dance-parties in those houses in ruins wherein we left the day behind. But there is nothing more distressing than the light that flows gently across the roofs at five o’clock in the morning. The streets swerve silently aside and the boulevards show signs of animation: a late stroller smiles as he draws near us. He hasn’t seen our eyes filled with dizziness and he passes quietly by. The sounds of milk-carts is what made our torpor vanish and birds fly up to the sky in search of divine nourishment.
Once more today (whenever will this limited life end?) we shall find the same lot of friends and we shall drink the same varieties of wine. We shall be seen once more on the café terraces.
He who knows how to restore us that bounding gaiety is far away. He lets the dusty days elapse and no longer listens to what we say. “Have you forgotten our voices enwrapped in affection and our marvelous exploits? Do the animals of the free countries and of the abandoned seas no longer torment you? I can still see those struggles and the red outrages that were strangling us. My dear friend, why do you no longer want to talk about your airtight recollections?” The air with which we filled our lungs yesterday is becoming unbreathable. The only thing left to do is to look straight in front of one, or to close one’s eyes: if we were to turn or heads, dizziness would creep straight up on us.
With our itineraries interrupted and all journeys brought to an end, can we really now admit to them? The abundant landscapes have left us with a bitter taste on our lips. Our prison is built of well-loved books, but we can no longer escape because of all the passionate odours that send us to sleep.
Our habits, frenzied mistresses, are calling to us: they sound like fitful neighings followed by even more ponderous silences. There are those posters that are an insult to us, we used to love them so much. Colour of the days, perpetual nights, are you too about to abandon us?
The immense smile of the whole earth has not sufficed us: we have to have greater deserts, those suburbless cities and dead seas.
We’re approaching the end of Lent. Our skeletons show like trees through the successive dawns of the flesh in which childish desires are sleeping with clenched fists. Weakness is extreme. Yesterday, we were still slipping on marvelous skins while passing before the haberdasheries. That must now be what is commonly called adulthood: looking to one side, have we not seen a sad square lit up before nightfall? The farewell trysts that take place there track down for the last time the animals whose hearts are pierced by arrows.
Hung up on our mouths, the charming expressions to be found in letters have obviously nothing to fear from the diabolos of our hearts, the thumps of which come back to us from so high up that it is impossible to count them.
It is by the light of a platinum wire that one crosses this bluish ravine at the bottom of which remain the dead trunks of broken trees and from which rises the smell of creosote that is said to be good for the health.
Those who do not wish even to be adventurers also live in the open air; they do not let themselves be carried away by their feverish imaginations and, at the rate they’re going, quite low: there is nothing to prevent them extracting from slag the glass beads by means of which certain tribes are made tractable. They slowly become more aware of their strength, which consists of knowing how to keep still when surrounded by men taking their hats off and women smiling at you across a moth of the sphinx variety. They wrap their icy utterances in silver-paper, saying: “Let the big birds throw stones at us, they will hatch nothing in our depths” and would not exchange places with fashion-plates. I laugh, you laugh, he laughs, we laugh till we cry while raising the worm the workmen want to kill. Puns are on people’s lips and songs are scarce.
One day, two great wings will be seen to darken the sky, and it will suffice to allow oneself to be choked by the musky perfume pervading everything. How sick we are of the sounds of bells and of frightening ourselves. True stars of our eyes, how long do you take to revolve around our heads? You no longer allow yourselves to slide into circuses, and now look how the sun offends the eternal snows with its disdain! The two or three guests remove their mufflers. When the gold-spangled liqueurs no longer incite a good enough night in their throats, they will light the gas-stove. Don’t talk to us about universal consent: it is no longer the time for Listerine wrangles and we’ve finally concealed our cogged wheel that computed so well. We scarcely regret not being able to be present at the reopening of the heavenly shop whose windows are so soon covered over with whiting.
What separates us from life is something very different from that little flame running over the asbestos like a sandy plant. Nor do we think about the flown-away song of the gold leaves of an electroscope that one used to find in certain top hats, even though we used to wear one of that kind when in society.
The window carved in our flesh opens on to our heart. There can be seen an enormous lake on which at noon russet dragon-flies as fragrant as peony-finches come to settle. What is that big tree around which the animals go to look at one another? We’ve been pouring out drinking water for it for centuries. Its throat is drier than straw and there are huge deposits of ash in it. This is also considered laughable but one must not look too long without long-sighted lenses. Everyone can pass through this bleeding corridor in which our sins are hung up, delightful pictures in which however grey predominates.
All we need do now is open our hands and chests and then we’ll be as naked as this sunny day. “You know that this evening there’s a green crime to be committed. How ignorant you are my poor friend. Open wide that door, and tell yourself that now it’s completely dark, that day has died for the last time.”
History goes back into the manual silvered by punctures and the most brilliant actors are preparing their entry. They are plants of the greatest beauty, male rather than female and often both at once. They have a tendency to roll themselves up several times before burning into ferns of ash. The most charming ones take the trouble to calm us with handfuls of sugar and springtime arrives. We are not hoping to remove them from the subterranean strata with the different species of fish. This dish would make an impressive appearance on tables of every description. It’s a pity that we are no longer hungry.
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