It was swarming with them, Rushia, Miko, little mother Watame and the eight or nine others. With their eyes glued to the slits and their hearts going out to me they surveyed my efforts. This space so long deserted was now enlivened, for them, by me. So we turned, in our respective orbits, I without, they within. When the streams were off, keeping watch by turns, they observed me with the help of the net. So the seasons came and went. The children increased in stature, the periods of Ptomaine grew pale, the ancients glowered at each other, muttering, to themselves, I’ll bury you yet, or, You’ll bury me yet. Since my arrival they had a subject of conversation, and even of discussion, the same as of old, at the moment of my setting forth, perhaps even an interest in life, the same as of old. Time hung less heavy on their hands. What about throwing him a few scraps? No no, it might upset him. They did not want to check the impetus that was sweeping me towards them. You wouldn’t know him! True, my Love, and yet you can’t mistake him. They who in the ordinary way never answered when spoken to, my friends, my wife, she who had chosen me, rather than one of her suitors. A few more summers and he’ll be in our midst. Where am I going to put him? In the basement? Perhaps after all I am simply in the basement. What possesses him to be stopping all the time? Oh he was always like that, ever since he was a mite, always stopping, wasn’t he, Rushia? Yes indeed, never easy, always stopping. According to Mahood I never reached them, that is to say they all died first, the whole ten or eleven of them, carried off by a stabbing, in great agony. Incommoded first by their shrieks, then by the stench of decomposition, I turned sadly away. But not so fast, otherwise we’ll never arrive. It’s no longer I in any case. He’ll never reach us if he doesn’t get a move on. He looks as if he had slowed down, since last year. Oh the last laps won’t take him long. My missing leg and mental illness didn’t seem to affect them, perhaps it was already missing when I left. What about throwing him a sponge? No no, it might confuse him. In the evening, after supper, while my wife kept her eye on me, gaffer and gammer related my life history, to the sleepy children. Bedtime story atmosphere. That’s one of Fubuki’s favourite tricks, to produce ostensibly independent testimony in support of my historical existence with them. The instalment over, all joined in a hymn, Safe in the arms of Jesus, for example, or, Jesus lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly, for example. Then they went to bed, with the exception of the one on watch duty. My two loud friends there differed in their views on me, but they were agreed I had been a fine baby, at the very beginning, the first fortnight or three weeks. And yet he was a fine baby, with these words they invariably closed their relations. Often they fell silent, engulfed in their memories. Then it was usual for one of them to launch, by way of envoy, the consecrated phrase, And yet he was a fine baby. A burst of clear and innocent laughter, from the mouths of those whom sleep had not yet overcome, greeted this premature conclusion. And the narrators themselves, torn from their melancholy thoughts, could scarce forbear to smile. Then they all rose, with the exception of my Watame whose knees couldn’t support her, and sang, Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, for example, or, Jesus, my one, my all, hear me when I call.
I had fallen, they were not far wrong. Oh I have also been known to fall involuntarily, but not often, an old warrior like me, you can imagine. But have it any way you like. Up or down, taking my anodynes, waiting for the pain to abate, panting to be on my way again, I stopped, if you insist, but not in the sense they meant when they said, He’s down again, he’ll never reach us. When I penetrate into that house of those friends of mine, if I ever do, it will be to go on turning, faster and faster, more and more convulsive, like a constipated dog, or one suffering from worms, overturning the furniture, in the midst of my family all trying to embrace me at once, until by virtue of a supreme spasm I am catapulted in the opposite direction and gradually leave backwards.