Free Tropisms by Nathalie Sarraute

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    I
    They seemed to spring up from nowhere, blossoming out in the slightly moist tepidity of the air, they flowed gently along as though they were seeping from the walls, from the boxed trees, the benches, the dirty sidewalks, the public squares.
    They stretched out in long, dark clusters between the dead house fronts. Now and then, before the shop windows, they formed more compact, motionless little knots, giving rise to occasional eddies, slight cloggings.
    A strange quietude, a sort of desperate satisfaction emanated from them. They looked closely at the piles of linen in the White Sale display, clever imitations of snow-covered mountains, or at a doll with teeth and eyes that, at regular intervals, lighted up, went out, lighted up, went out, lighted up, went out, each time at the same interval, lighted up again and again went out.
    They looked for a long time, without moving, they remained there, in offering, before the shop windows, they kept postponing till the next interval the moment of leaving. And the quiet little children, whose hands they held, weary of looking, listless, waited patiently beside them.
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    II
    They tore themselves away from their wardrobe mirrors in which they were examining their faces. Sat up in their beds. “Dinner is ready, dinner is ready,” she said. She rounded up the family, each one hiding in his lair, lonely, ill-tempered, exhausted. “What on earth is the matter with them, for them always to look so worn out?” she said when she talked to the cook.
    She talked to the cook for hours, fussing about the table, always fussing about, preparing various medicines for them, or special dishes, she talked on and on, criticizing the people who came to the house, friends of theirs: “so-and-so’s hair will darken, it will be like her mother’s, and straight; people are lucky who don’t need a permanent.”—“Mademoiselle has pretty hair,” said the cook, “it’s thick and pretty, even if it doesn’t curl.”—“And so-and-so, I’m sure he didn’t leave you a thing. They’re stingy, they’re all stingy, and they’ve got money, they’ve got money, it’s revolting. And they’re always economizing. Personally, that’s something I don’t understand.”—“After all,” said the cook, “after all, they can’t take it with them. And that daughter of theirs, she’s not married yet, and she’s not bad, she has pretty hair, her nose is small, and her feet are pretty too.”—“Yes, pretty hair, that’s true,” she said, but, you know, nobody likes her, she’s not attractive. It’s really funny.”
    And he sensed percolating from the kitchen, humble, squalid, time-marking human thought, marking time in one spot, always in one spot, going round and round, in circles, as if they were dizzy but couldn’t stop, as if they were nauseated but couldn’t stop, the way we bite our nails, the way we tear off dead skin when we’re peeling, the way we scratch ourselves when we have hives, the way we toss in our beds when we can’t sleep, to give ourselves pleasure and make ourselves suffer, until we are exhausted, until we’ve taken our breath away. . . .
    â€œBut perhaps for them it was something else.” This was what he thought, listening stretched out on his bed while, like some sort of sticky slaver, their thought filtered into him, lined him internally. There was nothing to be done about it. Nothing to be done. To avoid it was impossible. Everywhere, in countless forms, “deception” (“The sun is deceptive today,” the concierge said, “it’s deceptive and you risk catching your death. That was how my poor husband . . . and yet he liked to take care of himself . . .”) everywhere, in the guise of life itself, it caught hold of you as you went by, when you hurried past the