e answer to every question, and every instant claws
the flesh. If you listen intently, you will hear that the echo of
everything is a sob.

It is suffering. Suffering does not find a vent, it does not bleed in
any cry, it clings to you, and nothing reveals it because it is
omnipresent, so present and so plain that you can't look for or find it.
It is not the tears choking your throat, nor the groan at night, nor the
knell of a parting footstep, nor the mourning which stifles you, nor the
heart in your breast, for that would be too little. When suffering
begins with exuberant sunshine and mornings like a flourish of trumpets,
it is even more terrible because it is further away.... Suffering is
more. It is unlike anything else. It is regular, steady as the breath,
amazing, tolerable, and it is not the last word you say, it is also the
first word; it follows its mortal, monotonous course, and you realize it
has no name: to _live_ is to suffer.

Is it human misery? No, human suffering. Stammering nights, groping
footsteps. Whither and why? No, there's no time to lose, you jump up and
go, go, because you haven't suffered enough yet. Look.

When I leave to-morrow with my suffering in my breast I shall go in
advance of suffering. I shall not hesitate in the doorway. Looking back
into the room I shall not say what I have often said: "You are a bit of
myself, good-bye. Since my eyes will no longer be here to see you, give
them a picture of yourself to take along."

Suffering is self-sufficient. You don't associate things with it, I
shall have my back turned, my body will be impatient to lean forward. I
no longer care for memories.

* * * * *

Not one. Not even the memory of you, my two dead lovers. Other dead are
further on, where I am going, or rather, other suffering. And your
suffering is over because you are dead.

The pictures I have of you rise less and less frequently in my memory.
How I cherished them at first! Some especially.... That little
station-platform where we met ... the transparent morning flew ahead of
your footsteps, the spring was intoxicated, I ran into your outstretched
arms.... And the path where I cried, the sunset sinking away between the
branches, my head grazing your shoulder like a fruit falling from the
tree.... And another.... And another....

It is over. I carry you differently. Some of your ways, which I
acquired, stick to me from habit. My voice often has