P A S S I N G ∞ T I M E Michel Butor

because I am writing in order to find my way about in it, all these lines being the marks with which I blaze the trail: the labyrinth being my days in Bleston, incomparably more bewildering than that of the Cretan palace, since it grows and alters even while I explore it.

since by this time next Tuesday I shall be far away from you already, from your horrible oppressive and exhausting tyranny—that period in May during which I had taken Lucien to see the Museum tapestries.

and which when it touched the edge of a cloud spread out long beams that rose and fell at the wind’s touch, shifted and floated over one another like veils and then dwindled and vanished, the sun which had at last succeeded, in the late morning of the first of May,

We drove on; the rain had begun to fall; the windscreen wipers were flicking to and fro through the streaming water;

I came back here to change because I was soaked, then I set off again along the streets as far as Town Hall Square and went into the Amusements Arcade;

That Saturday afternoon in April, we had gone to the Royal Cinema with the express purpose of having a laugh,

around Easter time, when the grass in Easter Park in the northern part of the 9th district was ablaze with daffodils,

I had not yet begun to write at it, but I could spread out that map of Bleston which I have since destroyed and on which I had already superimposed that other map which nobody has ever printed,

I was making my way through the crowd as it dispersed in the rain, in the clammy darkness, under the flickering advertisements for Bovril, Players, or the Evening News,

that passage which finally leads down into the dense fog of the last days in January, those dark misty days when she loved me

grip of winter, those coffins of children who died of fever and cold far from their great native city, amidst the evil winds and yellow fogs, beside marshlands haunted by the thin whine of insects, children who died of boredom and terror and longing for the warm bright day

if it would not bore him to accompany him round the great church. As he stared attentively at those capitals from which the curious screens spring out like bridges spanning the nave half way up, I asked him in my halting English what they might represent?

amongst all those cramped dwellings with wretched little gardens; I prowled about there for hours ’til night fell, waiting for him to come home or go out, and at last I saw him drive up in his car, which is indubitably grey and not black

with his usual torrent of quaint, plaintive abuse, accusing me of having dropped him—although actually my visit must have disturbed him, for he was with Katie, who was putting on her little black shoes again when I came in; then he offered me a great glass of rum as usual.