Ocean Sea Read Free Page B

really, I’m not afraid. I always speak this way. It’s my voice. Father Pluche says that . . .”
    “Thank you, sir.”
    “I don’t know. The oddest things. But it’s not fear, not
real
fear . . . it’s a bit different . . . fear comes from outside, I’ve understood this, there
you are and fear
comes over
you, there’s you and there’s fear . . . that’s how it is . . . there’s fear and me too, but what happens to me is that suddenly
I’m not there anymore,
there’s only the fear . . . which isn’t really fear, though . . . I don’t know what it is, do you know?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “It’s a bit like feeling you’re dying. Or disappearing. That’s it:
disappearing
. It seems as if your eyes are slipping away from your face, and your hands are
becoming another’s hands, and then you think what’s happening to me?, and in the meantime your heart is beating inside you so hard you’re dying for it to stop, it won’t
leave you in peace . . . and all over you feel as if parts of you were going away, you can’t feel them anymore . . . you’re on the point of going, and then I tell myself, think about
something, you must hang on to a thought, if I can shrink into that thought then it will all pass, all you must do is resist, but the fact is that . . . and this is the really horrible thing . . .
the fact is that
there are no thoughts anymore,
nowhere inside you, there is no thought any more but only
feelings,
do you see? Feelings . . . and the strongest of those is an
infernal fever, and an intolerable stink, a taste of death here in the throat, a fever, and a bite, something that bites, a demon that is biting you and tearing you to pieces, a . . .”
    “Excuse me, sir.”
    “Yes, there are times in which it is much . . . simpler, I mean, I feel myself disappearing, yes, but gently, very slowly . . . it’s the emotions, Father Pluche says that it’s
the
emotions,
he says that I have nothing with which to defend myself against the emotions and so it’s as if things entered directly through my eyes and my . . .”
    “Through my eyes, yes.”
    “No, I don’t remember. I know that I’m ill, but . . . sometimes there are things that don’t frighten me, I mean, it’s not always like that, the other night there
was a terrible storm, lightning, wind . . . but I was calm, really, I wasn’t afraid or anything . . . Other times all it takes is a color, maybe, or the form of an object, or . . . or the
face of a man passing by, that’s it, faces . . . faces can be terrible, can’t they?—some faces, every so often, are so
real
that I feel they might set upon me, they are
faces that scream, do you see what I mean?, they scream at you, it’s horrible, there’s no way to defend yourself, there’s . . . no way . . .”
    “
Love?
”
    “Father Pluche reads me books, every now and again. They don’t hurt me. My father would rather not, but . . . well, some stories also work on the
emotions,
do you see, with
people who kill, who die . . . but I could listen to whatever came out of a book, that’s the strange thing, I even manage to
cry
and it’s a sweet thing, there is none of that
stink of death,
I cry,
that’s all, and Father Pluche carries on reading, and it’s very nice, but my father mustn’t know this, he doesn’t know this, and perhaps it
would be better if . . .”
    “Of course I love my father. Why?”
    “The white carpets?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “One day I saw my father sleeping. I went into his room and I saw him. My father. He was sleeping all curled up, like children do, on one side, with his legs drawn up, and his hands
clenched into fists . . . I’ll never forget it . . . my father, Baron Carewall. He was sleeping the way children do. Do you understand this, sir? How can you not be afraid if even . . . what
can you do if even . . .”
    “I don’t know. No one ever comes here . . .”
    “Sometimes. Yes, I notice. They talk quietly, when they