Thomas The Obscure Read Online Free

his lungs and howled. He drew from the idol he was becoming the incomprehensible voice which addressed itself to the night and spoke.
    "What is happening?" said this voice. "The spirits with which I am usually in communication, the spirit that tugs at my tail when the bowl is full, the spirit that gets me up in the morning and puts me to bed in a soft comforter, and the most beautiful spirit of all, the one that meows and purrs and resembles me so closely that it is like my own spirit: they have all disappeared. Where am I now? If I feel gently with my paw, I find nothing. There's nothing anywhere. I'm at the very end of a gutter from which I can only fall. And that wouldn't scare me, falling. But the truth is that I can't even fall; no fall is possible; I am surrounded by a special void which repels me and which I wouldn't know how to cross over. Where am I then? Poor me. Once, by suddenly becoming a beast which might be cast into the fire with impunity, I used to penetrate secrets of the first order. By the flash of light which divided me, by the stroke of my claw, I knew lies and crimes before they were committed. And now I am a dull-eyed creature. I hear a monstrous voice by means of which I say what I say without knowing a single word of it all. I think, and my thoughts are as useless to me as hair standing on end or touching ears would be to the alien species I depend upon. Horror alone penetrates me. I turn round and round crying the cry of a terrible beast. I have a hideous affliction: my face feels as large as a spirit's face, with a smooth, insipid tongue, a blind man's tongue, a deformed nose incapable of prophecy, enormous eyes without that straight flame which permits us to see things in ourselves. My coat is splitting. That is doubtless the final operation. As soon as it is no longer possible even in this night, to draw a supernatural light from me by stroking my hair, it will be the end. I am already darker than the shadows. I am the night of night. Through the shadows from which I am distinguished because I am their shadow, I go to meet the over- cat. There is no fear in me now. My body, which is just like the body of a man, the body of the blessed, has kept its dimensions, but my head is enormous. There is a sound, a sound I have never heard before. A glow which seems to come from my body, though it is damp and lifeless, makes a circle around me which is like another body which I cannot leave. I begin to see a landscape. As the darkness becomes more oppressive, a great pallid figure rises before me. I say me,' guided by a blind instinct, for ever since I lost the good, straight tail which was my rudder in this world, I am manifestly no longer myself. This head which will not stop growing, and rather than a head seems nothing but a glance, just what is it? I can't look at it without uneasiness. It's moving. It's coming closer. It is turned directly toward me and, pure glance though it is, it gives me the terrible impression that it doesn't see me. This feeling is unbearable. If I still had any hair, I would feel it standing up all over my body. But in my condition I no longer have even the means to experience the fear I feel. I am dead, dead. This head, my head, no longer even sees me, because I am annihilated. For it is I looking at myself and not perceiving myself. Oh over-cat whom I have become for an instant to establish the fact of my decease, I shall now disappear for good. First of all, I cease being a man. I again become a cold, uninhabitable little cat stretched out on the earth. I howl one more time. I take a last look at this vale which is about to be closed up, and where I see a man, himself an over-cat as well. I hear him scratching the ground, probably with his claws. What is called the beyond is finished for me."
    On his knees, his back bent, Thomas was digging in the earth. Around him extended several ditches on the edges of which the day was packed down. For the seventh time, leaving the mark