I was so astoundedby the sight that greeted my eyes that I lost all
uneasiness. It tookme a little while to get adjusted to the dim light. I
stumbled aroundbehind Fillmore, holding his sleeve. A weird, unearthly noise
assailedmy ears, a sort of hollow drone that rose up out of the cold
flagging.A huge. dismal tomb it was with mourners shuffling in and out. A
sortof antechamber to the world below. Temperature about or Fahrenheit.No
music except this undefinable dirge manufactured in the subcellar_ like a
million heads of cauliflower wailing in the dark. People inshrouds were
chewing away with that hopeless, dejected look of beggarswho hold out their
hands in a trance and mumble an unintelligible appeal.
    That this sortof thing existed I knew, but then one also knows that
there are slaughterhousesand morgues and dissecting rooms. One instinctively
avoids such places.In the street I had often passed a priest with a little
prayer bookin his hands laboriously memorizing his lines. Idiot, I wouldsay
to myself, and let it go at that. In the street one meets with allforms of
dementia and the priest is by no means the most striking. Twothousand years
of it has deadened us to the idiocy of it. However, whenyou are suddenly
transported to the very midst of his realm, when yousee the little world in
which the priest functions like an alarm clock,you are apt to have entirely
different sensations.
    For a momentall this slaver and twitching of the lips almost began to
have a meaning.Something was going on, some kind of dumb show which, not
renderingme wholly stupefied, held me spellbound. All over the world,
whereverthere are these dim-lit tombs, you have this incredible spectacle
_the same mean temperature. the same crepuscular glow, the same buzzand drone.
All over Christendom, at certain stipulated hours, peoplein black are
groveling before the altar where the priest stands up witha little book in
one hand and a dinner bell or atomizer in the otherand mumbles to them in a
language which, even if it were comprehensible,no longer contains a shred of
meaning. Blessing them. most likely. Blessingthe country, blessing the ruler,
blessing the firearms and the battleshipsand the ammunition and the hand
grenades. Surrounding him on the altarare little boys dressed like angels of
the Lord who sing alto and soprano.Innocent lambs. All

    in skirts, sexless,like the priest himself who is usually flat-footed
and nearsighted toboot. A fine epicene caterwauling. Sex in a jock-strap, to
the tuneof J-mol.
    I was takingit in as best I could in the dim light. Fascinating and
stupefying atthe same time. All over the civilized world. I thought to myself.
Allover the world. Marvelous. Rain or shine, hail, sleet, snow,
thunder,lightning, war, famine, pestilence _ makes not the slightest
difference.Always the same mean temperature, the same mumbo jumbo, the same
high-lacedshoes and the little angels of the Lord singing soprano and alto.
Nearthe exit a little slot-box _ to carry on the heavenly work. So thatGod's
blessing may rain down upon king and country and battleships andhigh
explosives and tanks and airplanes, so that the worker may havemore strength
in his arms, strength to slaughter horses and cows andsheep, strength to
punch holes in iron girders, strength to sew buttonson other people's pants,
strength to sell carrots and sewing machinesand automobiles, strength to
exterminate insects and clean stables andunload garbage cans and scrub
lavatories, strength to write headlinesand chop tickets in the subway.
Strength . . . strength. All that lipchewing and hornswoggling just to
furnish a little strength'
    We were movingabout from one spot to another, surveying the scene with
that clearheadednesswhich comes after an all-night session. We must have
made ourselvespretty conspicuous shuffling about that way with our coat
collars turnedup and never once crossing ourselves and never once moving our
lipsexcept to whisper some callous remark. Perhaps everything would
havepassed off without notice if Fillmore hadn't insisted on walking pastthe
altar in the midst of the ceremony. He was looking for the exit,and he
thought while he was at it, I suppose, that he would take a goodsquint at
the holy of holies. get a close-up on it, as it were. We hadgotten safely by
and were marching toward a crack of light which musthave been the way out
when a priest suddenly stepped out of the gloomand blocked our path. Wanted
to know where we were going and what wewere doing. We told him politely
enough that we were looking for theexit. We said "exit" because at the
moment we were so flabbergastedthat we couldn't think of the French for exit.
Without a word of responsehe took us firmly by the arm and thedoor. a side
door it was, he gave us a push and out we tumbled intothe blinding light of
day. It happened so suddenly and unexpectedlythat when we hit the sidewalk
we were in a daze. We walked a few paces,blinking our eyes, and then
instinctively we both turned round; thepriest was still standing on the steps,
pale as a ghost and scowlinglike the devil himself. He must have been sore
as hell. Later, thinkingback on it. I couldn't blame him for it. But at that
moment, seeinghim with his long skirts and the little skull cap on his
cranium, helooked so ridiculous that I burst out laughing. I looked at
Fillmoreand he began to laugh too. For a full minute we stood there
laughingright in the poor bugger's face. He was so bewildered, I guess,
thatfor a moment he didn't know what to doj suddenly, however, he
starteddown the steps on the run, shaking his fist at us as if he were in
earnest.When he swung out of the enclosure he was on the gallop. By this
timesome preservative instinct warned me to get a move on. I grabbed
Fillmoreby the coat sleeve and started to run. He was saying, like an
idiot:"No. no! I won't run! " _ "Come on! " I yelled, "we'd better get outof
here. That guy's mad clean through. " And off we ran, beating itas fast as
our legs would carry us.
    On the way toDijon, still laughing about the affair, my thoughts
reverted to a ludicrousincident, of a somewhat similar nature, which
occurred during my briefsojourn in Florida. It was during the celebrated
boom when, like thousandsof others, I was caught with my pants down. Trying
to extricate myselfI got caught, along with a friend of mine, in the very
neck of the bottle.Jacksonville, where we were marooned for about six weeks,
was practicallyin a state of siege. Every bum on earth, and a lot of guys
who had neverbeen bums before, seemed to have drifted into Jacksonville. The
YMCA,the Salvation Army, the firehouses and police stations, the hotels,the
lodging houses, everything was full up. Complet absolutely,and signs
everywhere to that effect. The residents of Jacksonville hadbecome so
hardened that it seemed to me as if they were walking aroundin coats of mail.
It was the old business of food again. Food and aplace to flop. Food was
coming up from below in trainloads _ orangesand grapefruit and all sorts of
juicy edibles. We used to pass by thefreight sheds looking for rotten fruit
_ but even that was scarce.

    One night, indesperation, I dragged my friend Joe to a synagogue, during
the service.It was a Reformed congregation, and the rabbi impressed me
rather favorably.The music got me too _ that piercing lamentation of the Jews.
As soonas the service was over I marched to the rabbi's study and
requestedan interview with him. He received me decently enough _ until I
madeclear my mission. Then he grew absolutely frightened. I had only
askedhim for a handout on behalf of my friend Joe and myself. You would
havethought, from the way he looked at me, that I had asked to rent
thesynagogue as a bowling alley. To cap it all, he suddenly asked me
pointblankif I was a Jew or not. When I answered no, he seemed perfectly
outraged.Why, pray, had I come to a Jewish pastor for aid? I told him
naivelythat I had always had more faith in the Jews than in the Gentiles.
Isaid it modestly, as if it were one of my peculiar defects. It was thetruth
too. But he wasn't a bit flattered. No. siree. He was horrified.To get rid
of me he wrote out a note to the-Salvation Army people. "That'sthe place for
you to address yourself, " he said, and brusquely turnedaway to tend his
flock.
    The SalvationArmy. of course, had nothing to offer us. If we had had a
quarter apiecewe might have rented a mattress on the floor. But we hadn't a
nickelbetween us. We went to the park and stretched ourselves out on a
bench.It was raining and so we covered ourselves with newspapers.
Weren'tthere more than a half hour, I imagine, when a cop came along and,
withouta word of warning, gave us such a sound fanning that we were up andon
our feet in a jiffy, and dancing a bit too, though we weren't inany mood for
dancing. I felt so goddamned sore and miserable, so dejected.so lousy, after
being whacked over the ass by that half-witted bastard,that I could have
blown up the City Hall.
    The next morning,in order to get even with these hospitable sons of
bitches, we presentedourselves bright and early at the door of a Catholic
priest. This timeI let Joe do the talking. He was Irish and he had a bit of
a brogue.He had very soft, blue eyes, too, and he could make them water a
bitwhen he wanted to. A sister in black opened the door for usj she
didn'task us inside, however. We were to wait in the vestibule until she
wentand called for the good father. In a few minutes he came, the good
father,puffing like a locomotive.And what was it we wanted disturbing his
likes at that hour of the morning?Something to eat and a place to flop, we
answered innocently. And wheredid we hail from, the good father wanted to
know at once. From New York.From New York, eh? Then ye'd better be gettin'
back there as fast asye kin, me lads, and without another word the big,
bloated turnip-facedbastard shoved the door in our face.
    About an hourlater, drifting around helplessly like a couple of drunken
schooners,we happened to pass by the rectory again. So help me God if the
big,lecherous-looking turnip wasn't backing out of the alley in a
limousine!As he swung past us he blew a cloud of smoke into our eyes. As
thoughto say _ "That for you! " A beautiful limousine it was, witha couple
of spare tires in the back, and the good father sitting atthe wheel with a
big cigar in his mouth. Must have been a Corona Corona,so fat and luscious
it was. Sitting pretty he was, and no two ways aboutit. I couldn't see
whether he had skirts on or not. I could only seethe gravy trickling from
his lips _ and the big cigar with that fifty-centaroma.
    All the way toDijon I got to reminiscing about the past. I thought of
all the thingsI might have said and done, which I hadn't said or done, in
the bitter,humiliating moments when just to ask for a crust of bread is to
makeyourself less than a worm. Stone sober as I was, I was still
smartingfrom those old insults and injuries. I could still feel that whack
overthe ass which the cop gave me in the park _ though that was a mere
bagatelle,a little dancing lesson, you might say. All over the States I
wandered,and into Canada and Mexico. The same story everywhere. If you want
breadyou've got to get in harness, get in lock step. Over all the earth
agray desert, a carpet of steel and cement. Production! More nuts andbolts,
more barbed wire. more dog biscuits, more lawn mowers, more ballbearings,
more high explosives, more tanks, more poison gas, more soap.more toothpaste,
more newspapers, more education, more churches, morelibraries, more museums.
Forward' Time presses. The embryo ispushing through the neck of the womb,
and there's not even a gob ofspit to ease the passage. A dry, strangulating
birth. Not a wail, nota chirp. Salut cut monde! Salute of twenty-one guns
bombinatingfrom the rectum. "I wear my hat as I please, indoors or out, "
saidWalt. That was a time whenyou could still get a hat to fit your head.
But time passes. To geta hat that fits now you have to walk to the electric
chair. They giveyou a skull cap. A tight fit, what? But no matter! It fits.
    You have to bein a strange country like France, walking the meridian
that separatesthe hemispheres of life and death, to know what incalculable
vistasyawn ahead. The body electric' The democratic soul! Flood tide!Holy
Mother of God, what does this crap mean? The earth is parched andcracked.
Men and women come together like broods of vultures over astinking carcass,
to mate and fly apart again. Vultures who drop fromthe clouds like heavy
stones. Talons and beak, that's what we are! Ahuge intestinal apparatus with
a nose for dead meat. Forward!Forward without pity, without compassion,
without love, without forgiveness.Ask no quarter and give none! More
battleships, more poison gas, morehigh explosives! More gonococci! More
streptococci! More bombing machines!More and more of it _ until the whole
fucking works is blown to smithereens,and the earth with it!
    Stepping offthe train I knew immediately that I had made a fatal mistake.
The Lyceewas a little distance from the station; I walked down the main
streetin the early dusk of winter, feeling my way toward my destination.
Alight snow was falling, the trees sparkled with frost. Passed a coupleof
huge, empty cates that looked like dismal waiting rooms. Silent,empty gloom
_ that's how it impressed me. A hopeless, jerkwater townwhere mustard is
turned out in carload lots, in vats and tuns and barrelsand pots and
cute-looking little jars.
    The first glanceat the Lycee sent a shudder through me. I felt so
undecided that atthe entrance I stopped to debate whether I would go in or
not. But asI hadn't the price of a return ticket there wasn't much use
debatingthe question. I thought for a moment of sending a wire to
Fillmore,but then I was stumped to know what excuse to make. The only thing
todo was to walk in with my eyes shut.
    It happened thatM. Ie Proviseur was out _ his day off, so they said. A
little hunchbackcame forward and offered to escort me to the office of M. Ie
Censeur,second in charge. I walked a little behind him. fascinated by the
grotesqueway in which he hobbled along.He was a little monster, such as can
be seen on the porch of anyhalfassed cathedral in Europe.
    The office ofM. Ie Censeur was large and bare. I sat down in a stiff
chair to waitwhile the hunchback darted off to search for him. I almost felt
at home.The atmosphere of the place reminded me vividly of certain charity
bureausback in the States where I used to sit by the hour waiting for
somemealy-mouthed bastard to come and cross-examine me.
    Suddenly thedoor opened and. with a mincing step, M. Ie Censeur came
prancing in.It was all I could do to suppress a titter. He had on just such
a frockcoat as Boris used to wear, and over his forehead there hung a bang.a
sort of spitcurl such as Smerdyakov might have worn. Grave and brittle,with
a lynxlike eye, he wasted no words of cheer on me. At once he broughtforth
the sheets on which were written the names of the students, thehours, the
classes. etc., all in a meticulous hand. He told me how muchcoal and wood I
was allowed and after that he promptly informed me thatI was at liberty to
do as I pleased in my spare time. This last wasthe first good thing I had
heard him say. It sounded so reassuring thatI quickly said a prayer for
France _ for the army and for the navy,the educational system, the bistros,
the whole goddamned works.
    This folderolcompleted, he rang a little bell. whereupon the hunchback
promptly appearedto escort me to the office of M. 'Econome. Here the
atmosphere was somewhatdifferent. More like a freight station, with bills of
lading and rubberstamps everywhere, and pastyfaced clerks scribbling away
with brokenpens in huge, cumbersome ledgers. My dole of coal and wood
portionedout, off we marched, the hunchback and I, with a wheelbarrow,
towardthe dormitory. I was to have a room on the top floor, in the same
wingas the pions. The situation was taking on a humorous aspect.I didn't
know what the hell to expect next. Perhaps a spittoon. Thewhole thing
smacked very much of preparation for a campaign i the onlythings missing
were a knapsack and rifle _ and a brass slug.
    The room assignedme was rather large, with a small stove to which was
attached a crookedpipe that made an elbow just over the iron cot. A big
chest for thecoal and wood stood near the door. The windows gave out on a
row offorlorn little houses all made of stonein which lived the grocer, the
baker, the shoemaker, the butcher, etc._ all imbecilic-looking clodhoppers.
I glanced over the rooftops towardthe bare hills where a train was clattering.
The whistle of the locomotivescreamed mournfully and hysterically.
    After the hunchbackhad made the fire for me I inquired about the grub.
It was not quitetime for dinner. I flopped on the bed, with my overcoat on.
and pulledthe covers over me. Beside me was the eternal rickety night table
inwhich the piss pot is hidden away. I stood the alarm on the table
andwatched the minutes ticking oft. Into the well of the room a bluishlight
filtered in from the street. I listened to the trucks rattlingby as I gazed
vacantly at the stove pipe, at the elbow where it washeld together with bits
of wire. The coal chest intrigued me. Neverin my life had I occupied a room
with a coal chest. And never in mylife had I built a fire or taught children.
Nor, for that matter, neverin my life had I worked without pay. I felt free
and chained at thesame time _ like one feels just before election, when all
the crookshave been nominated and you are beseeched to vote for the right
man.I felt like a hired man, like a jack-of-all-trades, like a hunter, likea
rover, like a galley slave, like a pedagogue, like a worm and a louse.I was
free, but my limbs were shackled. A democratic soul with a freemeal ticket,
but no power of locomotion, no voice. I felt like a jellyfishnailed to a
plank. Above all. I felt hungry. The hands were moving slowly.Still ten more
minutes to kill before the fire alarm would go off. Theshadows in the room
deepened. It grew frightfully silent, a tense stillnessthat tautened my
nerves. Little dabs of snow clung to the windowpanes.Far away a locomotive
gave out a shrill scream. Then a dead silenceagain. The stove had commenced
to glow, but there was no heat comingfrom it. I began to fear that I might
doze off and miss the dinner.That would mean lying awake on an empty belly
all night. I got panic-stricken.
    Just a momentbefore the gong went off I jumped out of bed and, locking
the door behindme, I bolted downstairs to the courtyard. There I got lost.
One quadrangleafter another, one staircase after another. I wandered in and
out ofthe buildings searching frantically for the refectory. Passed a
longline of youngsters marching in a column to God knows where j they
movedalong like a chain gang, with a slave driver at the head of the
column.Finally I saw

    an energetic-lookingindividual, with a derby, heading toward me. I
stopped him to askthe way to the refectory. Happened I stopped the right man.
It wasM. Ie Proviseur, and he seemed delighted to have stumbled on me.Wanted
to know right away if I were comfortably settled, if therewas anything more
he could do for me. I told him everything was. K. Only it was a bit chilly,
I ventured to add. He assured methat it was rather unusual, this weather.
Now and then the fogscame on and a bit of snow, and then it became
unpleasant for a while,and so on and so forth. All the while he had me by
the arm. guidingme toward the refectory. He seemed like a very decent chap.
A regularguy, I thought to myself. I even went so far as to imagine thatI
might get chummy with him later on, that he'd invite me to hisroom on a
bitter cold night and make a hot grog for me. I imaginedall sorts of
friendly things in the few moments it required to reachthe door of the
refectory. Here, my mind racing on at a mile a minute,he suddenly shook
hands with me and. doffing his hat, bade me goodnight. I was so bewildered
that I tipped my hat also. It was theregular thing to do, I soon found out.
Whenever you pass a prof,or even M.  'Econome, youdoff the hat. Might pass
the same guy a dozen times a day. Makes nodifference. You've got to give the
salute, even though your hat is wornout. It's the polite thing to do.  Anyway,
I had foundthe refectory. Like an East Side clinic it was, with tiled walls,
barelight, and marbletopped tables. And of course a big stove with an
elbowpipe. The dinner wasn't served yet. A cripple was running in and
outwith dishes and knives and forks and bottles of wine. In a corner
severalyoung men conversing animatedly. I went up to them and introduced
myself.They gave me a most cordial reception. Almost too cordial, in fact.I
couldn't quite make it out . In a jiffy the room began to fill up; I was
presented from one to the other quickly. Then they formed a circlei: about
me and, filling the glasses, they began to sing. . . .  ^ L'autre soir Mdee
m'est venue  Cre nom de Zeus d'enculerun pendu;  Le vent se leve sur
lapotence, Voila mon pendu qui se balance, J'ai du 'enculer en sautant.  Cre
nom de Zeus, on est jamaiscontent.  Baiser dans un con trop petit,Cre nom de
Zeus, on s'ecorche Ie vit;  Baiser dans un con trop large,  On ne sait pas
ou 'on dechargei  Se branler etant bien emmerdant,  Cre nom de Zeus, on est
jamaiscontent.

    With this, Quasimodoannounced the dinner.
    They were a cheerfulgroup, les surveillants. There was Kroa who belched
like a pigand always let off a loud fart when he sat down to table. He could
fartthirteen times in succession, they informed me. He held the record.Then
there was Monsieur Ie Prince, an athlete who was fond of wearinga tuxedo in
the evening when he went to town; he had a beautiful complexion,just like a
girl. and never touched the wine nor read anything thatmight tax his brain.
Next to him sat Petit Paul. from the Midi, whothought of nothing but cunt
all the time; he used to say every day _"a partir de jeudi je ne parlerai
plus de femmes. " He and MonsieurIe Prince were inseparable. Then there was
Passeleau, a veritable youngscallywag who was studying medicine and who
borrowed right and left; he talked incessantly of Ronsard, Villon and
Rabelais. Opposite me satMollesse. agitator and organizer of the pio-ns. who
insistedon weighing the meat to see if it wasn't short a few grams.
Heoccupied a little room in the infirmary. His supreme enemy was
Monsieur'Econome, which was nothing particularly to his credit since
everybodyhated this individual. For companion Mollesse had one called Le
Penible,a dour-looking chap with a hawklike profile who practiced the
strictesteconomy and acted as moneylender. He was like an engraving by
AlbrechtDiirer _ a composite of all the dour. sour, morose, bitter,
unfortunate,unlucky and introspective devils who compose the pantheon of
Germany'smedieval knights. A Jew, no doubt. At any rate, he was killed in
anautomobile accident shortly after my arrival, a circumstance which leftme
twenty-three francs to the good. With the exception of Re-naud whosat beside
me. the others have faded out of my memory;
    they belongedto that category of colorless individuals who make up
theworld of engineers, architects, dentists, pharmacists, teachers,
etc.There was nothing to distinguish them from the clods whom they
wouldlater wipe their boots on. They were zeros in every sense of the
word,ciphers who form the nucleus of a respectable and lamentable
citizenry.They ate with their heads down and were always the first to clamor
fora second helping. They slept soundly and never complained; they
wereneither gay nor miserable. The indifferent ones whom Dante consignedto
the vestibule of Hell. The upper-crusters.
    It was the customafter dinner to go immediately to town, unless one was
on duty in thedormitories. In the center of town were the cafes _ huge,
dreary hallswhere the somnolent merchants of Dijon gathered to play cards
and listento the music. It was warm in the cafes. that is the best I can say
forthem. The seats were fairly comfortable, too. And there were alwaysa few
whores about who, tor a glass of beer or a cup of coffee, wouldsit and chew
the fat with you. The music, on the other hand. was atrocious.Such music! On
a winter's night, in a dirty hole like Dijon, nothingcan be more harassing,
more nerveracking, than the sound of a Frenchorchestra. Particularly one of
those lugubrious female orchestras witheverything coming in squeaks and farts,
with a dry, algebraic rhythmand the hygienic consistency of toothpaste. A
wheezing and scrapingperformed at so many francs the hour _ and the devil
take the hindmost!The melancholy of it! As if old Euclid had stood up on his
hind legsand swallowed prussic acid. The whole realm of Idea so thoroughly
exploitedby the reason that there is nothing left of which to make music
exceptthe empty slats of the accordion, through which the wind whistles
andtears the ether to tatters. However, to speak of music in connectionwith
this outpost is like dreaming of champagne when you are in thedeath cell.
Music was the least of my worries. I didn't even think ofcunt, so dismal, so
chill, so barren, so gray was it all. On the wayhome the first night I
noticed on the door of a cafe an inscriptionfrom the Gargantna. Inside the
cafe it was like a morgue. However,forward!
    I had plentyof time on my hands and not a sou to spend. Two or three
hours of conversationallessons a day, and that was all. And what use was it,
teaching thesepoor bastards English? I felt sorry as hell for them. All
morning pluggingaway on John Gilpin's

    Ride,and in the afternoon coming to me to practice a dead language. I
thoughtof the good time I had wasted reading Virgil or wading through
suchincomprehensible nonsense as Hermann und Dorothea. The insanityof it!
Learning, the empty breadbasket! I thought of Carl who can reciteFaust
backwards, who never writes a book without praising theshit out of his
immortal, incorruptible Goethe. And yet he hadn't senseenough to take on a
rich cunt and get himself a change of underwear.There's something obscene in
this love of the past which ends in breadlinesand dugouts. Something obscene
about this spiritual racket which permitsan idiot to sprinkle holy water
over Big Berthas and dreadnoughts andhigh explosives. Every man with a
bellyful of the classics is an enemyto the human race.
    Here was I, supposedlyto spread the gospel of Franco-American amity _
the emissary of a corpsewho, after he had plundered right and left. after he
had caused untoldsuffering and misery, dreamed of establishing universal
peace. Pfui!What did they expect me to talk about, I wonder? About Leaves
ofGrass, about the tariff walls, about the Declaration of Independence,about
the latest gang war? What? Just what, I'd like to know. Well.tell you _ I
never mentioned these things. I started right off the batwith a lesson in
the physiology of love. How the elephants make love_ that was it! It caught
like wildfire. After the first day there wereno more empty benches. After
that first lesson in English they werestanding at the door waiting for me.
We got along swell together. Theyasked all sorts of questions, as though
they had never learned a damnedthing. I let them fire away. I taught them to
ask still more ticklishquestions. Ask anything! _ that was my motto. I'm
here as a plenipotentiaryfrom the realm of free spirits. I'm here to create
a fever and a ferment."In some ways, " says an eminent astronomer, "the
material universeappears to be passing away like a tale that is told,
dissolving intonothingness like a vision. " That seems to be the general
feeling underlyingthe empty breadbasket of learning. Myself, I don't believe
it. I don'tbelieve a fucking thing these bastards try to shove down our
throats.
    Between sessions,if I had no book to read, I would go upstairs to the
dormitory and chatwith the pions. They were delightfully ignorant of all
that wasgoing on _ especially in the world of art. Almostas ignorant as the
students themselves. It was as if I had gotten intoa private little madhouse
with no exit signs. Sometimes I snooped aroundunder the arcades, watching
the kids marching a-long with huge hunksof bread stuck in their dirty mugs.
I was always hungry myself, sinceit was impossible for me to go to breakfast
which was handed out atsome ungodly hour of the morning. just when the bed
was getting toasty.Huge bowls of blue coffee with chunks of white bread and
no butter togo with it. For lunch, beans or lentils with bits of meat thrown
into make it look appetizing. Food fit for a chain gang, for rock
breakers.Even the wine was lousy. Things were either diluted or bloated.
Therewere calories, but no cuisine. M. 'Econome was responsible for it
all.So they said. I don't believe that. either. He was paid to keep ourheads
just above the water line. He didn't ask if we were sufferingfrom piles or
carbuncles; he didn't inquire if we had delicate palatesor the intestines of
wolves. Why should he? He was hired at so manygrams the plate to produce so
many kilowatts of energy. Everything interms of horse power. It was all
carefully reckoned in the fat ledgerswhich the pasty-faced clerks scribbled
in morning, noon and night. Debitand credit, with a red line down the middle
of the page.
    Roaming aroundthe quadrangle with an empty belly most of the time I got
to feel slightlymad. Like Charles the Silly, poor devil _ only I had no
Odette Champdiverswith whom to play stinkfin-ger. Half the time I had to
grub cigarettesfrom the students, and during the lessons sometimes I munched
a bitof dry bread with them. As the fire was always going out on me I
soonused up my allotment of wood. It was the devil's own time coaxing
alittle wood out of the ledger clerks. Finally I got so riled up aboutit
that I would go out in the street and hunt for firewood, like anArab.
Astonishing how little firewood you could pick up in the streetsof Dijon.
However, these little foraging expeditions brought me intostrange precincts.
Got to know the little street named after a M. PhilibertPapillon _ a dead
musician, I believe _ where there was a cluster ofwhorehouses. It was always
more cheerful hereabouts, there was the smellof cooking, and wash hanging
out to dry. Once in a while I caught aglimpse of the poor half-wits who
lounged about inside. They were betteroff than the poor devils in the center
oftown whom I used to bump into whenever I walked through a departmentstore.
I did that frequently in order to get warm. They were doing itfor the same
reason, I suppose. Looking tor someone to buy them a coffee.They looked a
little crazy: with the cold and the loneliness. The wholetown looked a bit
crazy when the blue of evening settled over it. Youcould walk up and down
the main drive any Thursday in the week tilldoomsday and never meet an
expansive soul. Sixty or seventy thousandpeople _ perhaps more _ wrapped in
woolen underwear and nowhere to goand nothing to do. Turning out mustard by
the carload. Female orchestrasgrinding out The Merry Widow. Silver service
in the big hotels.The ducal palace rotting away, stone by stone, limb by limb.
The treesscreeching with frost. A ceaseless clatter of wooden shoes. The
U-niversitycelebrating the death of Goethe, or the birth, I don't remember
which.(Usually it's the deaths that are celebrated. ) Idiotic affair,
anyway.Everybody yawning and stretching.
    Coming throughthe high driveway into the quadrangle a sense of abysmal
futility alwayscame over me. Outside bleak and empty i inside, bleak and
empty. A scummysterility hanging over the town, a fog of book-learning. Slag
and cindersof the past. Around the interior courts were ranged the
classrooms,little shacks such as you might see in the North woods, where the
pedagoguesgave free rein to their voices. On the blackboard the futile
abracadabrawhich the future citizens of the republic would have to spend
theirlives forgetting. Once in a while the parents were received in the
bigreception room just off the driveway, where there were busts of theheroes
of antiquity, such as Moliere. Racine, Corneille, Voltaire, etc., all the
scarecrows whom the cabinet ministers mention with moist lipswhenever an
immortal is added to the waxworks. (No bust of Villon, nobust of Rabelais,
no bust of Rimbaud. ) Anyway. they met here in solemnconclave, the parents
and the stuffed shirts whom the State hires tobend the minds of the young.
Always this bending process, this landscapegardening to make the mind more
attractive. And the youngsters cametoo, occasionally _ the little sunflowers
who would soon be transplantedfrom the nursery in order to decorate the
municipal grassplots. Someof them were just rubber plants easily dusted with
a torn chemise. Allof them jerking away for dear life in the dormitories as
soon as nightcame on. The dormitories!where the red lights glowed, where the
bell rang like a fire alarm,where the treads were hollowed out in the
scramble to reach the educationalcells.
    Then there werethe profs! During the first few days I got so far as to
shake handswith a few of them, and of course there was always the salute
with thehat when we passed under the arcades. But as for a heart-to-heart
talk,as for walking to the corner and having a drink together, nothing
doing.It was simply unimaginable. Most of them looked as though they had
hadthe shit scared out of them. Anyway, I belonged to another hierarchy.They
wouldn't even share a louse with the likes of me. They made meso damned
irritated, just to look at them, that I used to curse themunder my breath
when I saw them coming. I used to stand there. leaningagainst a pillar, with
a cigarette in the corner of my mouth and myhat down over my eyes, and when
they got within hailing distance I wouldlet squirt a good gob and up with
the hat. I didn't even bother to openmy trap and bid them the time of the day.
Under my breath I simply said:"Fuck you. Jack!" and let it go at that.
    After a weekit seemed as if I had been here all my life. It was like a
bloody, fuckingnightmare that you can't throw off. Used to fall into a coma
thinkingabout it. Just a few days ago I had arrived. Nightfall. People
scurryinghome like rats under the foggy lights. The trees glittering with
diamond-pointedmalice. I thought it all out, a thousand times or more. From
the stationto the Lycee it was like a promenade through the Danzig Corridor,
alldeckle-edged, crannied, nerve-ridden. A lane of dead bones, of
crooked.cringing figures buried in shrouds. Spines made of sardine bones.
TheLycee itself seemed to rise up out of a lake of thin snow. an
invertedmountain that pointed down toward the center of the earth where
Godor the Devil works always in a straitjacket grinding grist for
thatparadise which is always a wet dream. If the sun ever shone I
don'tremember it. I remember nothing but the cold greasy fogs that blew
infrom the frozen marshes over yonder where the railroad tracks burrowedinto
the lurid hills. Down near the station was a canal, or perhapsit was a river,
hidden away under a yellow sky. with little shacks pastedslap up against the
rising ledge of the banks. There was a barrackstoo somewhere, it struck me,
because

    every now andthen I met little yellow men from Cochin-China _ squirmy,
opium-facedrunts peeping out of their baggy uniforms like dyed skeletons
packedin excelsior. The whole goddamned medievalism of the place was
infernallyticklish and restive, rocking back and forth with low moans,
jumpingout at you from the eaves, hanging like broken-necked criminals
fromthe gargoyles. I kept looking back all the time, kept walking like acrab
that you prong with a dirty fork. All those fat little monsters,those
slablike effigies pasted on the facade of the Eglise St. Michel,they were
following me down the crooked lanes and around corners. Thewhole facade of St.
Michel seemed to open up like an album at night,leaving you face to face
with the horrors of the printed page. Whenthe lights went out and the
characters faded away flat, dead as words,then it was quite magnificent, the
facade; in every crevice of the oldgnarled front there was the hollow chant
of the nightwind and over thelacy rubble of cold stiff vestments there was a
cloudy absinthe-likedrool of fog and frost.
    Here, where thechurch stood, everything seemed turned hind side front.
The church itselfmust have been twisted off its base by centuries of
progress in therain and snow. It lay in the Place Edgar-Quinet, squat
against the wind,like a dead mule. Through the Rue de la Monnaie the wind
rushed likewhite hair streaming wild: it whirled around the white hitching
postswhich obstructed the free passage of omnibuses and twenty-mule
teams.Swinging through this exit in the early morning hours I sometimes
stumbledupon Monsieur Renaud who, wrapped in his cowl like a gluttonous
monk,made overtures to me in the language of the sixteenth century.
Pallingin step with Monsieur Renaud, the moon busting through the greasy
skylike a punctured balloon, I fell immediately into the realm of the
transcendental.M. Renaud had a precise speech, dry as apricots, with a heavy
Brandenburgerbase. Used to come at me full tilt from Goethe or Fichte, with
deepbase notes that rumbled in the windy corners of the Place like clapsof
last year's thunder. Men of Yucatan, men of Zanzibar, men of Tierradel Fuego,
save me from this glaucous hog rind! The North piles up aboutme, the glacial
fjords, the bluetipped spines, the crazy lights, theobscene Christian chant
that spread like an avalanche from Etna to theAegean. Everything frozen
tight as scum, the

    mind locked andrimed with frost, and through the melancholy bales of
chitter-wit thechoking gargle of louse-eaten saints. White I am and wrapped
in wool.swaddled, fettered, hamstrung, but in this I have no part. White
tothe bone, but with a cold alkali base, with saffron-tipped fingers.White,
aye, but no brother of learning, no Catholic heart. White andruthless, as
the men before me who sailed out of the Elbe. I look tothe sea, to the sky,
to what is unintelligible and distantly near.
    The snow underfoot scurries before the wind, blows, tickles. stings,
lisps away, whirlsaloft, showers, splinters, sprays down. No sun, no roar of
surf. nobreaker's surge. The cold north wind pointed with barbed shafts,
icy.malevolent, greedy, blighting. paralyzing. The streets turn away ontheir
crooked elbows; they break from the hurried sight, the stern glance.They
hobble away down the drifting lattice work. wheeling the churchhind side
front, mowing down the statues, flattening the monuments,uprooting the trees,
stiffening the grass, sucking the fragrance outof the earth. Leaves dull as
cement; leaves no dew can bring to glistenagain. No moon will ever silver
their listless plight. The seasons arecome to a stagnant stop, the trees
blench and wither, the wagons rollin the mica ruts with slithering harplike
thuds. In the hollow of thewhite-tipped hills, lurid and boneless Dijon
slumbers. No man aliveand walking through the night except the restless
spirits moving southwardtoward the sapphire grids. Yet I am up and about, a
walking ghost, awhite man terrorized by the cold sanity of this
slaughterhouse geometry.Who am I? What am I doing here? I fall between the
cold walls of humanmalevolence, a white figure fluttering, sinking down
through the coldlake, a mountain of skulls above me. I settle down to the
cold latitudes,the chalk steps washed with indigo. The earth in its dark
corridorsknows my step, feels a foot abroad, a wing stirring, a gasp and a
shudder.I hear the learning chaffed and chuzzled, the figures mounting
upward,bat slime dripping aloft and clanging with pasteboard golden wings;
    I hear the trainscollide, the chains rattle, the locomotive chugging,
snorting, sniffing,steaming and pissing. All things come to me through the
clear fog withthe odor of repetition, with yellow hangovers and Gadzooks and
whettikins.In the dead center, far below Dijon, far below the hyperborean
regions,stands God Ajax, his  shoulders strapped to the millwheel, the
olives crunching, the green marsh water alive with croakingfrogs.
    The fog and snow,the cold latitude, the heavy learning, the blue coffee,
the unbufferedbread, the soup and lentils, the heavy pork-packer beans, the
stalecheese, the soggy chow, the lousy wine have put the whole
penitentiaryinto a state of constipation. And just when everyone has become
shit-tightthe toilet pipes freeze. The shit piles up like ant hills; one has
tomove down from the little pedestals and leave it on the floor. It
liesthere stiff and frozen, waiting for the thaw. On Thursdays the
hunchbackcomes with his little wheelbarrow, shovels the cold, stiff turds
witha broom and pan, and trundles off dragging his withered leg. The
corridorsare littered with toilet paper; it sticks to your feet like
flypaper.When the weather moderates the odor gets ripe; you can smell it in
Winchesterforty miles away. Standing over that ripe dung in the morning,
witha toothbrush, the stench is so powerful that it makes your head spin.We
stand around in red flannel shirts, waiting to spit down the hole; it is
like an aria from one of Verdi's great operas _ an anvil choruswith pulleys
and syringes. In the night, when I am taken short, I rushdown to the private
toilet of M. Ie Censeur, just off the driveway.My stool is always full of
blood. His toilet doesn't flush either butat least there is the pleasure of
sitting down. I leave my little bundlefor him as a token of esteem.
    Toward the endof the meal each evening the veilleur de nuit drops in for
hisbit of cheer. This is the only human being in the whole institutionwith
whom I feel a kinship. He is a nobody. He carries a lantern anda bunch of
keys. He makes the rounds through the night, stiff as anautomaton. About the
time the stale cheese is being passed around, inhe pops for his glass of wine.
He stands there, with paw outstretched,his hair stiff and wiry, like a
mastiff's, his cheeks ruddy, his mustachegleaming with snow. He mumbles a
word or two and Quasimodo brings himthe bottle. Then, with feet solidly
planted, he throws back his headand down it goes, slowly in one long draught.
To me it's like he's pouringrubies down his gullet. Something about this
gesture which seizes meby the hair. It's almost as if he were drinking down
the dregs of hu-