Most of the timeless time I spent
promenading in the rain and sleet with Jean le Negre, or talking with
Mexique, or exchanging big gifts of silence with The Zulu. For Oloron--I
did not believe in it, and I did not particularly care. If I went away,
good; if I stayed, so long as Jean and The Zulu and Mexique were with me,
good. "_M'en fou pas mal_," pretty nearly summed up my philosophy.
At least the Surveillant let me alone on the Soi-Meme topic. After my
brief visit to Satan I wallowed in a perfect luxury of dirt. And no one
objected. On the contrary everyone (realizing that the enjoyment of dirt
may be made the basis of a fine art) beheld with something like
admiration my more and more uncouth appearance. Moreover, by being
dirtier than usual I was protesting in a (to me) very satisfactory way
against all that was neat and tidy and bigoted and solemn and founded
upon the anguish of my fine friends. And my fine friends, being my fine
friends, understood. Simultaneously with my arrival at the summit of
dirtiness--by the calendar, as I guess, December the twenty-first--came
the Black Holster into The Enormous Room and with an excited and angry
mien proclaimed loudly:
"_L'americain! Allez chez le Directeur.
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