The Fall

O young woman, throw yourself into the water again so that I may a second time have the chance of saving both of us!” A second time, eh, what a risky suggestion! Just suppose, cher maître, that we should be taken literally? We’d have to go through with it. Brr ...! The water’s so cold! But let’s not worry! It’s too late now. It will always be too late.

Are we not all alike, constantly talking and to no one, forever up against the same questions although we know the answers in advance?

I would be decapitated, for instance, and I’d have no more fear of death; I’d be saved. Above the gathered crowd, you would hold up my still warm head, so that they could recognize themselves in it and I could again dominate

To be sure, my solution is not the ideal. But when you don’t like your own life, when you know that you must change lives, you don’t have any choice, do you? What can one do to become another? Impossible. One would have to cease being anyone, forget [145] oneself for someone else, at least once. But how?

I’m going back to bed; forgive me. I fear I got worked up; yet I’m not weeping.

I’m going back to bed; forgive me. I fear I got worked up; yet I’m not weeping.

I must be higher than you, and my thoughts lift me up.

I pity without absolving, I understand without forgiving,

This very evening, moreover, I shall resume. I can’t do [143] without it or deny myself those moments when one of them collapses, with the help of alcohol, and beats his breast. Then I grow taller, très cher, I grow taller, I breathe freely, I am on the mountain, the plain stretches before my eyes. How intoxicating to feel like God the Father and to hand out definitive testimonials of bad character and habits.

I crush everything, people and things, under the weight of my own infirmity, and at once I perk up