Some wars make everybody tired, not many of them, this one makes everybody more tired than most, I think the American civil war made everybody tired but it did not quite exhaust coincidence and superstition but this 1943 one, well in a way yes, and when I was in babyhood to fourteen little by little and all the time there was the excitement of coincidences, and of superstitions, coincidences were more exciting than superstitions in between superstitions were more exciting than coincidences and now again coincidences are not exciting but they are soothing now in 1943.

Everything begins again, now they denounce one another, why nobody knows, just perhaps to make coincidences now that there are no superstitions. Madame Chaboux just told me this one.

There is a woman living in the country, her husband was a farmer, there are more farmers than not. She was not well and she asked a neighbor to come and tend to her, she said she had pneumonia. The neighbor lived with another woman and the husband of each one of them was a prisoner a war prisoner. Well the one went to see the other, and she saw that the sheets were bloodstained and she said to the woman you have had a miscarriage have you not. And the other said how dare you denounce me. And she said but I did not I just asked to know. Well anyway she went home and about a week after a man in a uniform came and said the two women had to pay a thousand francs for having falsely denounced a neighbor and they said they had not and he said pay, and they paid. And they saw the other woman and she said she would take everything away from them and they all three had husbands who were prisoners and they were frightened and they told Madame Chaboux, her husband had been their doctor and Madame Chaboux told the mayor and he told her to go to the magistrate and she did and the police were pleased because they had always wanted a witness against the man and now they had two, and everybody was pleased and relieved even if they did not get their money back and their neighbor was still their neighbor and all the husbands were still prisoners.

Well between babyhood and fourteen no one could believe any such thing, not in the nineteenth century but now well 1943, what can stop anything since although there are still coincidences they are not, not really any superstitions because there are not. Everybody is too tired to have them even when they get one thousand francs which they do.

Such is war.

Between babyhood and fourteen there is if not everything a great deal there is the suspecting of life and death not being sure of the same but beginning to be doubtful that it might be the same. And there is nature and its evolution and then there is coming home before it is dark in the evening after playing and then there is the beginning of being a legend. One can become a legend any time between babyhood and fourteen and one can one does they do know how it can come to be true that they are a legend. It is easy to become a legend between babyhood and fourteen, and so ever afterwards books can be read, because books are all about anybody who has become a legend, and I can remember becoming a legend again and again between babyhood and fourteen, and seeing the others between babyhood and fourteen and they can become a legend. They know they can they can become a legend if they have a dog behind them on a bicycle in a basket, they can become a legend, if they hold a flower in each hand, they can become a legend if they had an accident and lost a finger, they can become a legend, if they walk up and down hand in hand, and one eye of one of them is always closed. They can become a legend and they do because a legend any one between babyhood and fourteen does become a legend, a pure legend. Later on the legend is not so pure because you mix yourself up with it but between babyhood and fourteen becoming a legend is just that it is becoming a legend. I can remember becoming a legend, I will tell several of them, several of those becoming legends and what they have to do with war. This war 1943 is not very legendary, that is one of its troubles, it is not like ’14–’18 war and other wars which naturally became legendary. This is more like the beginning of middle living when being legendary does not happen, but as I say between babyhood and fourteen everybody is a legend just anybody, and I was.

Coincidences come to be stronger and stronger between babyhood and fourteen, they replace faith, coincidences are the foundation of games, they are the foundation of faith, coincidences, in between are not so important but from babyhood to fourteen and then again much later, very much later when one is old coincidences are important, they are real, they recreate faith they are not games, but they are the reality that makes a present and a future when perhaps there could not really be any. Take war, in time of war 1943, there have happened so many coincidences and they are always happening little coincidences, nice little coincidences, later on when I tell all about this coincidental war this meaningless war, this war that put an end a real end an entire end to the nineteenth century there were so many coincidences and they were the only reality in this time of unreality. The nineteenth century called coincidences a law of chance and worked it out but now that the nineteenth century is dead, coincidences are real again, they recreate faith they make a future, and they will make the twentieth century. Everybody, wait and see.

But between babyhood and fourteen, coincidences were only really used as the really necessary basis of games, and what was real then were not coincidences but being a legend and I was, we were.

What makes the legend real between babyhood and fourteen is that there is then the first struggle not to die and the first struggle to help kill the century in which you are born.

It is a struggle not to die between babyhood and fourteen, not not to actually die, that is a matter for parents and nurses and guardians, but the not to know that death is there, and not to share, that is to be secret and not die, and not to not know why, that is what makes any one shy between babyhood and fourteen, and later on there are other things in between, there is eternity, there is or there is not being a king or a queen, but between babyhood and fourteen, beside reading writing and arithmetic, and counting, and games, and coincidences, and hot and cold, one is always either very hot or very cold between babyhood and fourteen.

There is no use in remembering between babyhood and fourteen, actually there was no war then, there might have been but actually there was no war then then when I was between babyhood and fourteen and I was a legend then, of course I was, to myself and to them and of course I was struggling not to be dying that is not to know that dying was dying and frightening was not only frightening but connected with any thing. Believe it or not, to-day they say, that children that anybody between babyhood and fourteen, does not live any life in between this which is not 1914 but 1943 and the nineteenth century is dead dead dead, and between babyhood and fourteen, I was there to begin to kill what was not dead, the nineteenth century which was so sure of evolution and prayers, and esperanto and their ideas. You might think I mean that between babyhood and fourteen, I might mean to be doing what I was doing, and in a way I was, I see them now, between babyhood and fourteen and in a kind of a way I was.

What is a legend.

There are no legends now, because nobody can now can see how they have been not now, this is 1943.

From babyhood until fourteen, to play in a garden in the evening when it is darkening is a legend. It feels like that, it is like that, any evening when it is darkening.

Between babyhood and fourteen there comes a time when in reading you cannot help thinking what happened after and what happened to their children and their grandchildren and which one married which one and what war was going on when they were growing or grown up and were they after all the time it took to be born and grown were they killed in the war that was going on then. Now in 1943 when there are armies and armies and they come humming in and the air at night, when the moon is bright is full of them going over to Italy to do their bombing and the mountain makes a reverberation as a woman said to me like being inside a copper cooking utensil well then you keep on thinking how quickly anybody can get killed, just as quickly just as very quickly, more quickly even than in a book even much more quickly than in any book, those up there flying and bombing and those down below, with houses tumbling, and burning.

So between babyhood and fourteen you first begin to think of anything going on and going on, and at the same time stopping, but that is not reasonable no not at all reasonable between babyhood, and fourteen.

Between babyhood and fourteen their names might be Paul and Pauline and they might know how they learned the why and the when and the wherefore and how they learned excitement, hope and calm.

Imagine between the ages of babyhood and fourteen being either Paul or Pauline and living when there is no war or living when there is one.

Between babyhood and fourteen when I was living then there was no war and my name was neither Paul nor Pauline. I had an aunt named Pauline but I did not know of her then, and I did not know anybody by the name of Paul although I always did think it was a nice name and liked it when I saw it in a book.

How many books I read then, I am always reading books, there was of course Paul and Virginia under an umbrella, I do not know why but they always are under an umbrella and I thought the way the Negroes talked was very strange. Dialect in books was upsetting, even then and even now, then when there was no esperanto and now when there is no esperanto, no universal knowledge although everybody does know everything. You lose a stocking and it was the best one, it was lost in the stream when they were washing, there is no soap, this is 1943, and so they wash in running water and the stocking went down the stream and it was the very best woolen stocking, only one but of what use is only one stocking, and we neither of us slept very much that night, because the stocking was gone, her stocking, and yet in these days, what you keep you have that is you have while you keep it.

Between my babyhood and fourteen that was not true you had what you kept and kept what you had and you could wonder what the children and grandchildren were doing, particularly if it was already past. All very dreamy and exciting.

Then there was another thing, in Gulliver’s Travels there was a description of the people that never die, and it is supposed to show that death is necessary, because those that do not die do not live then when they do not die.