faraway ringing to my ears. Familiar sounds, the rumble of motor cars, shouts, and the barking of dogs which hardly venture from the lighted streets, they stay within the warmth. But the ringing pierces the shadows and comes thus far: it is harder, less human than the other noises.
I stop to listen. I am cold, my ears hurt; they must be all red. But I no longer feel myself; I am won over by the purity surrounding me; nothing is alive, the wind whistles, the straightlines flee in the night. The Boulevard Noir does not have the indecent look of bourgeois streets, offering their regrets to the passers-by. No one has bothered to adorn it: it is simply the reverse side. The reverse side of the Rue Jeanne-Berthe Coeuroy, of the Avenue Galvani. Around the station, the people of Bouville still look after it a little; they clean it from time to time because of the travellers. But, immediately after that, they abandon it and it rushes straight ahead, blindly, bumping finally into the Avenue Galvani. The town has forgotten it. Sometimes a great mud-coloured truck thunders across it at top speed. No one even commits any murders there; want of assassins and victims. The Boulevard Noir is inhuman. Like a mineral. Like a triangle. It's lucky there's a boulevard like that in Bouville. Ordinarily you find them only in capitals, in Berlin, near Neukoln or Friedrichshainùin London, behind Greenwich. Straight, dirty corridors, full of drafts, with wide, treeless sidewalk. They are almost always outside the town in these strange sections where cities are manufactured near freight stations, car-barns, abattoirs, gas tanks. Two days after a rainstorm, when the whole city is moist beneath the sun and radiates damp heat, they are still cold, they keep their mud and puddles. They even have puddles which never dry upù except one month out of the year, August.
The Nausea has stayed down there, in the yellow light. I am happy: this cold is so pure, this night so pure: am I myself not a wave of icy air? With neither blood, nor lymph, nor flesh. Flowing down this long canal towards the pallor down there. To be nothing but coldness.
Here are some people. Two shadows. What did they need to come here for?
It is a short woman pulling a man by his sleeve. She speaks in a thin, rapid voice. Because of the wind I understand nothing of what she says.
"You're going to shut your trap now, aren't you?" the man says.
She still speaks. He pushes her roughly. They look at each other, uncertain, then the man thrusts his hands in his pockets and leaves without looking back.
The man has disappeared. A scant three yards separate me from this woman now. Suddenly, deep, hoarse sounds come from her, tear at her and fill the whole street with extraordinary violence.
26
"Charles, I beg you, you know what I told you? Charles, come back, I've had enough, I'm too miserable!"
I pass so close to her that I could touch her. It's . . . but how can I believe that this burning flesh, this face shining with sor-sow? . . . and yet I recognize the scarf, the coat and the large wine-coloured birthmark on the right hand; it is Lucie, the charwoman. I dare not offer her my support, but she must be able to call for it if need be: I pass before her slowly, looking at her. Her eyes stare at me but she seems not to see me; she looks as though she were lost in her suffering. I take a few steps, turn back. . . .
Yes, it's Lucie. But transfigured, beside herself, suffering with a frenzied generosity. I envy her. There she is, standing straight, holding out her arms as if awaiting the stigmata; she opens her mouth, she is suffocating. I feel as though the walls have grown higher, on each side of the street, that they have come closer together, that she is at the bottom of a well. I wait a few moments: I am afraid she will fall: she is too sickly to stand this unwonted sorrow. But she does not move, she seems turned to stone, like everything around her. One moment I wonder if I have not
I stop to listen. I am cold, my ears hurt; they must be all red. But I no longer feel myself; I am won over by the purity surrounding me; nothing is alive, the wind whistles, the straightlines flee in the night. The Boulevard Noir does not have the indecent look of bourgeois streets, offering their regrets to the passers-by. No one has bothered to adorn it: it is simply the reverse side. The reverse side of the Rue Jeanne-Berthe Coeuroy, of the Avenue Galvani. Around the station, the people of Bouville still look after it a little; they clean it from time to time because of the travellers. But, immediately after that, they abandon it and it rushes straight ahead, blindly, bumping finally into the Avenue Galvani. The town has forgotten it. Sometimes a great mud-coloured truck thunders across it at top speed. No one even commits any murders there; want of assassins and victims. The Boulevard Noir is inhuman. Like a mineral. Like a triangle. It's lucky there's a boulevard like that in Bouville. Ordinarily you find them only in capitals, in Berlin, near Neukoln or Friedrichshainùin London, behind Greenwich. Straight, dirty corridors, full of drafts, with wide, treeless sidewalk. They are almost always outside the town in these strange sections where cities are manufactured near freight stations, car-barns, abattoirs, gas tanks. Two days after a rainstorm, when the whole city is moist beneath the sun and radiates damp heat, they are still cold, they keep their mud and puddles. They even have puddles which never dry upù except one month out of the year, August.
The Nausea has stayed down there, in the yellow light. I am happy: this cold is so pure, this night so pure: am I myself not a wave of icy air? With neither blood, nor lymph, nor flesh. Flowing down this long canal towards the pallor down there. To be nothing but coldness.
Here are some people. Two shadows. What did they need to come here for?
It is a short woman pulling a man by his sleeve. She speaks in a thin, rapid voice. Because of the wind I understand nothing of what she says.
"You're going to shut your trap now, aren't you?" the man says.
She still speaks. He pushes her roughly. They look at each other, uncertain, then the man thrusts his hands in his pockets and leaves without looking back.
The man has disappeared. A scant three yards separate me from this woman now. Suddenly, deep, hoarse sounds come from her, tear at her and fill the whole street with extraordinary violence.
26
"Charles, I beg you, you know what I told you? Charles, come back, I've had enough, I'm too miserable!"
I pass so close to her that I could touch her. It's . . . but how can I believe that this burning flesh, this face shining with sor-sow? . . . and yet I recognize the scarf, the coat and the large wine-coloured birthmark on the right hand; it is Lucie, the charwoman. I dare not offer her my support, but she must be able to call for it if need be: I pass before her slowly, looking at her. Her eyes stare at me but she seems not to see me; she looks as though she were lost in her suffering. I take a few steps, turn back. . . .
Yes, it's Lucie. But transfigured, beside herself, suffering with a frenzied generosity. I envy her. There she is, standing straight, holding out her arms as if awaiting the stigmata; she opens her mouth, she is suffocating. I feel as though the walls have grown higher, on each side of the street, that they have come closer together, that she is at the bottom of a well. I wait a few moments: I am afraid she will fall: she is too sickly to stand this unwonted sorrow. But she does not move, she seems turned to stone, like everything around her. One moment I wonder if I have not
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