back onto the throughway, I must go back home, I must put my boys to bed, I must wait for my wife Irene, I must make the best of my children and my wife, I'm forty-seven, in a few years' time all that will have gone up in smoke, I haven't time to eat an omelette in Viry-Châtillon, the best is over for me, as it is for you, and the best, you see, soon comes down to nothing, take me home quickly, I'll put on my pajamas, I'll roll into a ball with the children in the double bed, we'll wait for Irene, laughing under the covers, all three of us in the dark, and we'll give her a surprise when she gets home.
The Jeep runs down a little slope. At the bottom, on a billboard, can be read YOUR APARTMENT IN VIRY.
Adam closes his eyes. At once a glittering ankle boot appears, motionless in the dark. Adam opens his eyes, reads, WITH PICTURESQUE VIEWS OF THE LAKE ,and closes them again. The ankle boot is there, right in the middle, and it's green. Adam opens and closes his eyes several times. The ankle boot's still there, more or less fluorescent. Adam closes first one eye, then the other. No ankle boot. The ankle boot appears only when both eyes are closed. An ankle boot, he notes, that ultimately vanishes, but reappears at the next lowering of the lids. Maybe I'm becoming hysterical, thinks Adam. The way things are going, he thinks, shouldn't I approach Guen directly? Is it best to approach the top man directly, or continue on a semipsychoana-lytical track with the doctor who's treating me? And why should I have to grapple with this dilemma over the treatment, in addition to the illness itself? A mysterious assault has now been added to the phenomenon of dislocation, Doctor, the effects of which have not, by the way, completely disappeared, each time I close my eyes a green and highly luminous ankle boot appears. I say ankle boot, Doctor, but I could as well say sock, in truth it's a kind of medieval shoe, with a long point at the end of it, weren't they known as
piked shoes
, Doctor? So every time I close my eyes I see a green fluorescent piked shoe in the middle of thedarkness. Is this the famous gap in the retina you and Professor Guen hinted at? Could this be the appalling
macula hole
you and Guen alluded to? You see, Doctor, if the ankle boot had appeared without any preliminary I might not be in this state of panic, but it appeared in the wake of the phenomenon of dislocation, which, you'll remember, had not in itself caused any change to my vision. What alarms me, Doctor, is that there's a logical sequence to this. If my retina's torn, and my feeling is that it is torn, we must admit that the dislocation was the prelude to the tear. We fear the worst and the worst happens. I don't know if you can grasp the significance of this observation. A pain occurs that we call pain or dislocation and instead of it being
nothing at all
, a nonevent we can take as a basis for hope, which would in some sense be God's
back
, it's a warning sign. Do you realize, Doctor, how serious it is that there can be no pain without a sequel? I'm circumcised, Doctor, my parents made it their duty to shield me from the laws of nature and I approve of this inheritance, symbolic though it be. So it's all the more difficult for me to concede that my body should be subject to the principle of causality. Still less the whole course of my life. Frankly speaking, the principle of causality revolts me. I put it to you, Doctor, if we suppose that my retina is not torn:what's this medieval ankle boot doing at the center of my vision? You're stumped, Doctor. Ha ha ha! I gather you've not often come across the piked shoe in your books. Ha, ha, ha! What are you laughing at? says Marie Thérèse.
“Am I laughing?”
“Yes. We're here.”
They've stopped in a little parking lot. The turn she's just made into the almost empty site suggests there's a space she always homes in on.
“Over there you have the Viry-Châtillon lake. It's very well known. People water-ski
The Jeep runs down a little slope. At the bottom, on a billboard, can be read YOUR APARTMENT IN VIRY.
Adam closes his eyes. At once a glittering ankle boot appears, motionless in the dark. Adam opens his eyes, reads, WITH PICTURESQUE VIEWS OF THE LAKE ,and closes them again. The ankle boot is there, right in the middle, and it's green. Adam opens and closes his eyes several times. The ankle boot's still there, more or less fluorescent. Adam closes first one eye, then the other. No ankle boot. The ankle boot appears only when both eyes are closed. An ankle boot, he notes, that ultimately vanishes, but reappears at the next lowering of the lids. Maybe I'm becoming hysterical, thinks Adam. The way things are going, he thinks, shouldn't I approach Guen directly? Is it best to approach the top man directly, or continue on a semipsychoana-lytical track with the doctor who's treating me? And why should I have to grapple with this dilemma over the treatment, in addition to the illness itself? A mysterious assault has now been added to the phenomenon of dislocation, Doctor, the effects of which have not, by the way, completely disappeared, each time I close my eyes a green and highly luminous ankle boot appears. I say ankle boot, Doctor, but I could as well say sock, in truth it's a kind of medieval shoe, with a long point at the end of it, weren't they known as
piked shoes
, Doctor? So every time I close my eyes I see a green fluorescent piked shoe in the middle of thedarkness. Is this the famous gap in the retina you and Professor Guen hinted at? Could this be the appalling
macula hole
you and Guen alluded to? You see, Doctor, if the ankle boot had appeared without any preliminary I might not be in this state of panic, but it appeared in the wake of the phenomenon of dislocation, which, you'll remember, had not in itself caused any change to my vision. What alarms me, Doctor, is that there's a logical sequence to this. If my retina's torn, and my feeling is that it is torn, we must admit that the dislocation was the prelude to the tear. We fear the worst and the worst happens. I don't know if you can grasp the significance of this observation. A pain occurs that we call pain or dislocation and instead of it being
nothing at all
, a nonevent we can take as a basis for hope, which would in some sense be God's
back
, it's a warning sign. Do you realize, Doctor, how serious it is that there can be no pain without a sequel? I'm circumcised, Doctor, my parents made it their duty to shield me from the laws of nature and I approve of this inheritance, symbolic though it be. So it's all the more difficult for me to concede that my body should be subject to the principle of causality. Still less the whole course of my life. Frankly speaking, the principle of causality revolts me. I put it to you, Doctor, if we suppose that my retina is not torn:what's this medieval ankle boot doing at the center of my vision? You're stumped, Doctor. Ha ha ha! I gather you've not often come across the piked shoe in your books. Ha, ha, ha! What are you laughing at? says Marie Thérèse.
“Am I laughing?”
“Yes. We're here.”
They've stopped in a little parking lot. The turn she's just made into the almost empty site suggests there's a space she always homes in on.
“Over there you have the Viry-Châtillon lake. It's very well known. People water-ski
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