Free Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre

were only a snare. This is the hundredth time I've let myself be caught. My memories are like coins in the devil's purse: when you open it you find only dead leaves.
    Now I can only see the great, empty eye socket of the hill tribesman. Is this eye really his? The doctor at Baku who explained the principle of state abortions to me was also blind of one eye, and the white empty socket appears every time I want to remember his face. Like the Norns these two men have only one eye between them with which they take turns.
    As for the square at Meknes, where I used to go every day, it's even simpler: I do not see it at all any more. All that remains is the vague feeling that it was charming, and these five words are indivisibly bound together: a charming square at Meknes. Undoubtedly, if I close my eyes or stare vaguely at the ceiling I can re-create the scene: a tree in the distance, a short dingy figure run towards me. But I am inventing all this to make out a case. That Moroccan was big and weather-beaten, besides, I only saw him after he had touched me. So I still know he was big and weather-beaten: certain details, somewhat curtailed, live in my memory. But I don't see anything any more: I can search the past in vain, I can only find these scraps of images and I am not sure what they represent, whether they are memories or just fiction.
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    There are many cases where even these scraps have disappeared: nothing is left but words: I could still tell stories, tell them too well (as far as anecdotes are concerned, I can stand up to anyone except ship's officers and professional people) but these are only the skeletons. There's the story of a person who does this, does that, but it isn't I, I have nothing in common with him. He travels through countries I know no more about than if I had never been there. Sometimes, in my story, it happens that I pronounce these fine names you read in atlases, Aranjuez or Canterbury. New images are born in me, images such as people create from books who have never travelled. My words are dreams, that is all.
    For a hundred dead stories there still remain one or two living ones. I evoke these with caution, occasionally, not too often, for fear of wearing them out, I fish one out, again I see the scenery, the characters, the attitudes. I stop suddenly: there is a flaw, I have seen a word pierce through the web of sensations. I suppose that this word will soon take the place of several images I love. I must stop quickly and think of something else; I don't want to tire my memories. In vain; the next time I evoke them a good part will be congealed.
    I make a pretence of getting up, going to look for my photos of Meknes in the chest I pushed under my table. What good would it do? These aphrodisiacs scarcely affect my memory any more. I found a faded little photo under my blotter the other day. A woman was smiling, near a tank. I studied this person for a moment without recognizing her. Then on the other side I read, "Anny, Portsmouth, April 7, '27."
    I have never before had such a strong feeling that I was devoid of secret dimensions, confined within the limits of my body, from which airy thoughts float up like bubbles. I build memories with my present self. I am cast out, forsaken in the present: I vainly try to rejoin the past: I cannot escape.
    Someone knocks. It's the Self-Taught Man: I had forgotten him. I had promised to show him the photographs of my travels. He can go to Hell.
    He sits down on a chair; his extended buttocks touch the back of it and his stiff torso leans forward. I jump from the end of my bed and turn on the light.
    "Oh, do we really need that? We were quite comfortable."
    "Not for looking at pictures. . . ."
    I relieve him of his hat.
    33"True, Monsieur? Do you really want to show me your pictures?"
    "Of course."
    This is a plot: I hope he will keep quiet while he looks at them. I dive under the table and push the chest against his patent leather shoes, I put an armload of post