z THE WAVES
are among the breadcrumbs and the stained napkins again.
That knife is already congealing with grease. Disorder,
sordidity and corruption surround us. We have been taking
into our mouths the bodies of dead birds. It is with these
greasy crumbs, slobbered over napkins, and little corpses
that we have to build. Always it begins again ; always there
is the enemy; eyes meeting ours; fingers twitching ours;
the effort waiting. Call the waiter. Pay the bill. We must
pull ourselves up out of our chairs. We must find our coats.
We must go. Must, must, must—detestable word. Once
more, I who had thought myself immune, who had said,
‘Now I am rid of all that,” find that the wave has tumbled
me over, head over heels, scattering my possessions, leaving
me to collect, to assemble, to heap together, summon my
forces, tise and confront the enemy.
“It is strange that we, who are capable of so much suffering,
should inflict so much suffering. Strange that the face of a
person, whom I scarcely know save that I think we met
once on the gangway of a ship bound for Africa—a mere
adumbration of eyes, cheeks, nostrils—should have power
to inflict this insult. You look, eat, smile, are bored, pleased,
annoyed—that is all I know. Yet this shadow which has sat
by me for an hour or two, this mask from which peep two
eyes, has power to drive me back, to pinion me down among
all those other faces, to shut me in a hot room; to send
me dashing like a moth from candle to candle.
“ But wait. While they add up the bill behind the screen,
wait one moment. Now that I have reviled you for the blow
that sent me staggering among peelings and crumblings and
old scraps of meat, I will record in words of one syllable
how also under your gaze with that compulsion on me I
begin to perceive this, that and the other. The clock ticks ;
the woman sneezes ; the waiter comes—there is a gradual
coming together, running into one, acceleration and unifica-
tion. Listen : a whistle sounds, wheels rush, the door creaks
on its hinges. I regain the sense of the complexity and the
reality and the struggle, for which I thank you. And with
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