And Goldstein remembered his grandfather saying,... And Goldstein remembered his grandfather saying, "Yehuda Halevy wrote that Israel is the heart of all nations He lunged along, carrying the litter through habit, not conscious of the torments of his bodyHis mind had turned inward; he could not have concentrated more intensely if he had been blindHe just followed Ridges without looking where they went
"Israel is the heart of all nations It was the conscience and the raw exposed nerve; all emotion passed through itBut it was more than that; it was the heart that suffered whenever any part of the body was ill
And Wilson was the heart nowGoldstein did not say this to himself, he did not even think it, but the idea worked through him beneath the level of speechHe had suffered too much in these past two days; he had traversed all the first nauseas of fatigue,
gucci women's watches the stupors that followed, the exaltation close to feverThere were as many levels to pain as to pleasureOnce his will had forbidden him to collapse, Goldstein burrowed deeper and deeper through exhaustion and agony, never quite plumbing the pit of itBut he was in a stage now where all the banal proportions were goneHis eyes functioned enough for him to notice automatically where he walked; he heard and smelled isolated little events; he even felt some pain from his racked body; but all this was separate from him, like an object he might hold in his handHis mind was both blunted and exposed, naked and stupefied"The heart of all nations But for a few hours, after two days and fifteen miles of staggering forward under a tropic sun, after an eternity of wrestling Wilson's body through an empty and alien land,
buy miu miu this could be true for himHis senses dammed, his consciousness reeling, Goldstein fumbled through a hall of symbolsWilson was the object he could not releaseGoldstein was bound to him by a fear he did not understandIf he let him go, if he did not bring him back, then something was wrong, he would understand something terriblebut he lost the sequence in the muck of his laborsThey were carrying him on and on, and he would not dieHis stomach had been ripped apart, he had bled and shit, wallowed through the leaden swells of fever, endured all the tortures of the rough litter, the uneven ground, and still Wilson had not diedThey still carried himThere was a meaning here and Goldstein lumbered after it, his mind pumping like the absurd legs of a man chasing a train he has missed
"Ah like to work, Ah ain't a goddam
tiffany jewelry wholesale fug-off," Wilson mumbled"If you're job, do goddam thing right, that's what Ah say His breath was gurgling again out of his mouthBrown and Stanley, shit!" He giggled feebly"Little ol' bugger May when she's a kid, always crappin' her pants He rambled through a cloudy memory of his daughter when she was an infant"Smartest little devil When she was two years old she would drop her faeces behind a door or in a closet"Goddam, step in it, git dirty He laughed, only it sounded more like a feeble wheezeFor an instant he recalled vividly his mixture of exasperation and merriment when he had discovered her leavings"Goddam, Alice'd git mad
She had been angry when he had seen her in the hospital, angry again when they discovered he was sick"Ah always say a dose ain't gonna hurt a man a goddam bitWhat the hell's a
new cartier watches lousy little dose? Ah had it five times an' it never came to a goddam thing He stiffened on the litter and shouted as if arguing with someone"Jus' get me some pyrdin whatever the hell y' call it He twisted about, managed almost to prop himself on an elbow"If goddam wound gits y' opened maybe Ah won' need the op-per-ration, jus' gits rid of all the pus He retched emptily, watching through dimmed eyes the blood trickling and spattering out of his mouth onto the rubber fabric of the litterIt was so distant and yet it sent a shudder through him"Whadeya say, Ridges, does it git rid of it?"
But they hadn't heard him, and he watched the blood fall in droplets from his mouth and then lay back again moodily
A shudder of fear, of resistance rippled through himHe could taste the blood in his mouth, and he began to
chanel classic bag tremb