Something has happened to me, I can't doubt it any more — it came on like an illness, not as an ordinary certainty. In Bouville the afternoons drag like wet wool on the mind; I touch the table, the glass, the door-handle, the rind — and the world turns thick with itself, it leans, it presses near; a pebble in my hand, a sweetish dread, too present and too here. Their names peel off them: glass, and stone, and door — each thing swollen with its own useless being, and more. And the Nausea is not inside me anymore — it is out there, in the thing itself, in the wall, the bottle, the floor. Everything is gratuitous, everything is gratuitous — the world is here without a why; too much being, no reason at all, I am the one too many — and so am I. Everything is gratuitous, everything is gratuitous — the stone, the root, the skin, the floor; no reason in the things that touch me, and no reason in me anymore. Under the chestnut tree, the root rose into view — black, knotted, naked, exact, obscene, and true; the word "root" slid off, the word "tree" let go, just the sticking, the sheer being, the indecent overflow. "Every existing thing is born without reason," the dank truth dragging slow — "prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance" — that is the Nausea: in the thing, not the soul. Ça m'écœure, l'exister — ça m'écœure, l'exister... I am free — and that freedom is the weight; not choosing to be, only choosing, after, too late. No essence comes to save me, no clean design, no cure, just this sticky abundance of being, this surplus I endure. But the melody — four notes, a saxophone — something hard and clean that does not exist, that cannot rot; "some of these days... you'll miss me, honey" — save me with the one pure thing that is not. Everything is gratuitous, everything is gratuitous — the world is here without a why; too much being, no reason at all, I am the one too many — and so am I. Everything is gratuitous, everything is gratuitous — the stone, the root, the skin, the floor; no reason in the things that touch me, and no reason in me anymore. I exist... the world exists... the scenery changes, people come and go, but there are no beginnings, no ends — and that is all that can be said: that is the Nausea.
