Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre Read Free Book Online Page A

a woollen cloth. I did not see them when I came in: I simply felt there was a warm packet, half on the seat, half on the table in the back, with pairs of waving arms. Afterwards, Madeleine brought them cards, the cloth and chips in a wooden bowl. There are three or five of them, I don't know, I haven't the courage to look at them. I have a broken spring: I can move my eyes but not my head. The head is all pliable and elastic, as though it had been simply set on my neck; if I turn it, it will fall off. All the same, I hear a short breath and from time to time, out of the corner of my eye I see a reddish flash covered with hair. It is a hand.
    When the patronne goes shopping her cousin replaces her at the bar. His name is Adolphe. I began looking at him as I sat down and I have kept on because I cannot turn my head. He is in shirtsleeves, with purple suspenders; he has rolled the sleeves of his shirt above the elbows. The suspenders can hardly be seen against the blue shirt, they are all obliterated, buried in the blue, but it is false humility; in fact, they will not let themselves be forgotten, they annoy me by their sheep-like stubbornness, as if, starting to become purple, they stopped somewhere along the way without giving up their pretentions. You feel like saying, "All right, become purple and let's hear no more about it." But now, they stay in suspense, stubborn in their defeat. Sometimes the blue which surrounds them slips over and covers them completely: I stay an instant without seeing them. But it is merely a passing wave, soon the blue pales in places and I see the small island of hesitant purple reappear, grow larger, rejoin and reconstitute the suspenders. Cousin Adolphe has no eyes: his swollen, retracted eyelids open only on a little of the whites. He smiles sleepily; from time to time he snorts, yelps and writhes feebly, like a dreaming dog.
    His blue cotton shirt stands out joyfully against a chocolate-coloured wall. That too brings on the Nausea. The Nausea is not inside me: I feel it out there in the wall, in the suspenders,
    19everywhere around me. It makes itself one with the cafe, I am the one who is within it.
    On my right, the warm packet begins to rustle, it waves its pair of arms.
    "Here, there's your trumpùwhat are trumps?" Black neck bent over the game: "Hahaha! What? He's just played trumps." "I don't know, I didn't see . . ." "Yes I played trumps just now." "Ah, good, hearts are trumps then." He intones: "Hearts are trumps, hearts are trumps, hea-arts are trumps." Spoken: "What is it, Sir? What is it, Sir? I take it!"
    Again, silenceùthe taste of sugar in the air at the back of my throat. The smells. The suspenders.
    The cousin has got up, and taken a few steps, put his hands behind his back, smiling, raising his head and leaning back on his heels. He goes to sleep in this position. He is there, oscillating, always smiling: his cheeks tremble. He is going to fall. He bends backwards, bends, bends, the face turned completely up to the ceiling, then just as he is about to fall, he catches himself adroitly on the ledge of the bar and regains his balance. After which, he starts again. I have enough, I call the waitress:
    "Madeleine, if you please, play something on the phonograph. The one I like, you know: Some of these days."
    "Yes, but maybe that'll bother these gentlemen; these gentlemen don't like music when they're playing. But I'll ask them."
    I make a great effort and turn my head. There are four of them. She bends over a congested old man who wears black-rimmed eyeglasses on the end of his nose. He hides his cards against his chest and glances at me from under the glasses.
    "Go ahead, Monsieur."
    Smiles. His teeth are rotten. The red hand does not belong to him, it is his neighbour's, a fellow with a black moustache. This fellow with the moustache has enormous nostrils that could pump air for a whole family and that eat up half his face, but in spite of that, he breathes through his mouth,