The Secret Life Of Dali
For some five or six days I had noticed while I was in the very clean toilet a large piece of nasal mucus stuck to white majolica wall close to where I sat. ..day after day the personality of this piece of mucus became more and more impossible to ignore. It was fastened to the white majolica with such exibitionism, with such coyness, I might even say, that it was impossible to not see it even not to look at it constantly. It seemed to be a clean piece of mucus, a very pretty, slightly greenish pearly gray, browner toward the center.
This mucus ended in a rather sharp point, and stood out from the with with a gesture that called stridently and with the trumpet-call of its insignifcance for an act of intervention. It seemed to say to me, 'All you have to do is to touch me, and I will let go and drop to the floor: that will put an end to your disgust'
But, armed with patience, I would get up impatiently from the toilet without touching the mucus' intact virginity, slamming the door in a fit of rancor and spite.
One day, I could no longer take it, and I decided to have done once and for all with the obsessing presence of this anonymous piece of mucus which with its loathsome presence was increasingly spoiling the satisfaction I derived from my personal stools. Screwing up my courage, I decided finally and irrevokably to wipe the mucus from the wall. In order to do this I wrapped up the forefinger of my right hand in toilet paper and, shutting my eyes and furiously biting my lower lip, with a gesture of savage violence into which I put the whole force of my soul exacerbated by disgust I tore the mucus from the wall.
But against my expectation this mucus was hard as a tempered steel needle; and like a needle, it penetrated between the nail and the flesh of my forefinger, right to the bone!
...[the waiter] examined my finger closely....
I could not tell him the frightful truth, ' That blackish thing which has pierced the forefinger of my right hand is a piece of snot!"
No one would have believed that. That kind of thing happens to no one but Dali. What was the use of explaining, when the reality was verily that of a purple-tinged hand that as clearly beginning to swell? The whole hand of the painter Salvador Dali, which it would be necessary to cut off, infected by a piece of mucus- if indeed it did not devour me entirely, after first reducing me to nothingness amid the spasmodic and adominable convulsion of tetanus.
I went up into my room and lay down on the bed, ready for martyrdom.
This mucus ended in a rather sharp point, and stood out from the with with a gesture that called stridently and with the trumpet-call of its insignifcance for an act of intervention. It seemed to say to me, 'All you have to do is to touch me, and I will let go and drop to the floor: that will put an end to your disgust'
But, armed with patience, I would get up impatiently from the toilet without touching the mucus' intact virginity, slamming the door in a fit of rancor and spite.
One day, I could no longer take it, and I decided to have done once and for all with the obsessing presence of this anonymous piece of mucus which with its loathsome presence was increasingly spoiling the satisfaction I derived from my personal stools. Screwing up my courage, I decided finally and irrevokably to wipe the mucus from the wall. In order to do this I wrapped up the forefinger of my right hand in toilet paper and, shutting my eyes and furiously biting my lower lip, with a gesture of savage violence into which I put the whole force of my soul exacerbated by disgust I tore the mucus from the wall.
But against my expectation this mucus was hard as a tempered steel needle; and like a needle, it penetrated between the nail and the flesh of my forefinger, right to the bone!
...[the waiter] examined my finger closely....
I could not tell him the frightful truth, ' That blackish thing which has pierced the forefinger of my right hand is a piece of snot!"
No one would have believed that. That kind of thing happens to no one but Dali. What was the use of explaining, when the reality was verily that of a purple-tinged hand that as clearly beginning to swell? The whole hand of the painter Salvador Dali, which it would be necessary to cut off, infected by a piece of mucus- if indeed it did not devour me entirely, after first reducing me to nothingness amid the spasmodic and adominable convulsion of tetanus.
I went up into my room and lay down on the bed, ready for martyrdom.