Nausea : Popular Penguins

Diary

Monday, 29January 1932

SOMETHING has happened to me: I can't doubt that any more. It came as an illness does, not like an ordinary certainty, not like anything obvious. It installed itself cunningly, little by little; I felt a little strange, a little awkward, and that was all. Once it was established, it didn't move any more, it lay lowand I was able to persuade myself that there was nothing wrong with me, that it was a false alarm. And now it has started blossoming.

I don't think the profession of historian fits a man for psychological analysis. In our work, we have to deal only with simple feelings to which we give generic names such as Ambition and Interest. Yet if I had an iota of selfknowledge, now is the time when I ought to use it.

There is something new, for example, about my hands, a certain way of picking up my pipe or my fork. Or else it is the fork which now has a certain way of getting itself picked up, I don't know. Just now, when I was on the point of coming into my room, I stopped short because I felt in my hand a cold object which attracted my attention by means of a sort of personality. I opened my hand and looked: I was simply holding the doorknob. This morning, at the library, when the Autodidact· came to say good-morning to me, it took me ten seconds to recognize him. I saw an unknown face which was barely a face. And then there was his hand, like a fat maggot in my hand. I let go of it straight away and the arm fell back limply.

In the streets too there are a great many suspicious noises to be heard.

So a change has taken place in the course of these last few weeks. But where? It's an abstract change which settles on nothing. Is it I who has changed? If it isn't I, then it's this room, this town, this nature; I must choose.

I think it's I who has changed: that's the simplest solution, also the most unpleasant. But I have to admit that I am subject to these sudden transformations. The thing is that I very rarely think; consequendy a host of little metamorphoses accumulate in me without my noticing it, and then, one fine day, a positive revolution takes place. That is what has given my life this halting, incoherent aspect. When I left France, for example, there were a lot of people who said I had gone off on a sudden impulse. And when I returned unexpectedly after six years of travelling, they might well have spoken of a sudden impulse once more. I can see myself again with Mercier in the office of that French official who resigned last year after the Petrou business. Mercier was going to Bengal with an archaeological expedition. I had always wanted to go to Bengal, and he urged me to go with him. At present, I wonder why. I imagine that he didn't feel too sure of Portal and that he was counting on me to keep an eye on him. I could see no reason to refuse. And even if, at the time, I had guessed at that little scheme with regard to Portal, that would have been another reason for accepting enthusiastically. Well, I was paralysed, I couldn't say a word. I was staring at a little Khmer statuette on a card-table next to a telephone. I felt as if I were full of lymph or warm milk.

With an angelic patience: which concealed a slight irritation, Mercier was saying to me:

'You see, I have to be certain from the official point of view. I know that you'll end up by saying yes, so you might as well accept straight away.'

He has a reddish-black beard, heavily scented. At every movement of his head I got a whiff of perfume. And then, all of a sudden, I awoke from a sleep which had lasted six years.

The statue struck me as stupid and unattractive and I felt that I was terribly bored. I couldn't understand why I was in Indo-China. What was I doing there? Why was I talking to those people? Why was I dressed so oddly? My passion was dead. For years it had submerged me and swept me along; now I felt empty. But that wasn't the worst of it: installed in front of me with a sort of indolence there was a voluminous, insipid idea. I don't know exactly what it was, but it sickened me so much that I couldn't look at it. All that was mixed up for me with the perfume of Mercier's beard.

I pulled myself together, convulsed with anger against him, and answered curtly:

'Thank you, but I think I've done enough travelling: I must go back to France now.'

Two days later I took the boat for Marseille.

If I am not mistaken, and if all the signs which are piling up are indications of a fresh upheaval in my life, well then, I am frightened. It isn't that my life is rich or weighty or precious, but I'm afraid of what is going to be born and take hold of me and carry me off -I wonder where? Shall I have to go away again, leaving everything behind -my research, my book? Shall I awake in a few months, a few years, exhausted, disappointed, in the midst of fresh ruins? I should like to understand myself properly before it is too late.