William Faulkner reads from his novels "A Fable" and "The Old Man"

don't be afraid the corporal said there's nothing to be afraid of nothing worth it for a moment the old general didn't seem to have heard the corporal at all standing a head below the other's high mountain one beneath the seemingly insuperable weight of the blue and scarlet hat cross-barred and dappled with gold braids and heavy golden leaves then he said afraid no no it's not i but you who are afraid of man not i but you who believe that nothing but a death can save him i know better i know that he has that in him which will enable him to outlast even his wars that in him more durable than all his vices even that last and most fearsome one to outlast even his next avatar of his servitude which he now faces his enslavement to the demonic progeny of his own mechanical curiosity from which he will emancipate himself by that one ancient tried and true method by which slaves have always freed themselves by inculcating their masters with the slaves own vices in this case the vice of war and that other one which is no vice at all but instead is the quality mark in the world of man's immortality his deathless folly he has already begun to put wheels under his patio his terrace and his front veranda even at my age i may see the day when what was once his house has become a storage place for his bed and stove and raisin spare clothing you with your youth could remember that bird see the day when he will have invented his own private climate and moved it stove bathroom bed clothing kitchen and all into his automobile and what he once called home will have vanished from human lexicon so that he won't dismount from his automobile at all because he won't need to the entire earth one unbroken machine demounting this rebel expanse of concrete paving for tuberance lists by tree or bush a house or anything which might constitute a corner or threaten his visibility and man in his terrapin myriad and clothed clotheless from birth in an individual wheel and glove-like envelope with pipes and hoses leading upward from underground reservoirs to charge him with one composite squirt which at one mutual instant will fuel his mobility pander his lust sages appetites and fire his dreams peripatetic unceasing and long since no longer accountable to die at last at the click of an automatic circuit break on a speedometer dial and long since free to bone organ and gut leaving nothing for communal scavenging but a rusting and odorless shell the shell which he does not get out of because he does not need to but which presently for a time he will not emerge from because he does not dare because the shell will be his only protection from the hill like iron refuse from his walls because by that time his walls will have dispossessed him by simple out distance his simple frail physique will no longer be able to keep up bear them attend them be present he will try of course and for a little while he will even hold his own he will build tanks bigger and faster and more impervious with more firepower than any before he will build aircraft bigger and faster and capable of more load and more destruction than any yet for a little while he will accompany direct as he thinks control them even after he has finally realized that it is not another frail and mortal dissident to his politics or his notions of national boundaries that he is contending with but the very monster itself which he inhabits it will not be someone firing bullets at him who for the moment doesn't like him it will be his own frankenstein which roasts him alive with heat asphyxiates him with speed wrenches loose his still living entrails in the ferocity of his prey seeking stoop so he will not be able to go along with it at all though for a little while longer it will permit him the harmless delusion that he controlled it from the ground with buttons then that too will be gone years decades then centuries will have elapsed since it last answered his voice he will have even forgotten the very location of his breathing grounds and his last contact with it will be a day when he will crawl shivering out of his cooling borrow to crouch among the delicate stalks of his dead antennae like a fairy geometry beneath the clangorous rain of dolls and meters and switches and bloodless fragments of metal epidermis to watch the final two of them engaged in the last gigantic wrestling amidst the final and dying sky robbed even of darkness and filled with the inflectionless uproar of the two mechanical voices bellowing at each other polysyllabic and verbalist patriotic nonsense oh yes he will survive it because he has that in him which will endure even beyond the ultimate worthless timeless rock freezing slowly in the last red and heedless sunset because already the next star in the blue immensity of space would be already clamorous with the uproar of his debarkation his puny and inexhaustible voice still talking still planning and there too after the last ding dong of doom has rung and died there will still be one more sound his voice planning still to build something higher and faster and louder more efficient and louder and faster than ever before yet it too inherent with the same old primordial false since it too in the end was failed to eradicate him from the earth i don't fear man i do better i respect and admire him and pride i am 10 times prouder of that immortality which he does possess than ever hear that heavenly one of his delusion because man his folly will endure the corporal said they will do more the old general said proudly they will prevail even when he tried to tell it even after the seven weeks and he's safe secure riveted warranted and doubly guaranteed by the 10 years they had added to his sentence for attempted escape something of the old hysteric and credulous outrage came back into his face his voice his speech he never did even get on the other boat he told how he clung to a strake it was a dirty unpainted shanty boat with a drunken rake of 10 stovepipe it had been moving when he struck it and apparently it had not even changed course even though the three people on it must have been watching him all the while a second barefoot and with matted hair and beard also at the steering sweep and then he did not know how long a woman leaning in the door in a filthy assault with a man's garments watching him too with the same cold speculation being dragged violently along trying to state and explain his simple and to him at least reasonable desire and need telling it trying to tell it he could feel again the old unforgettable affronting like an aid fit as he watched the abortive tobacco rain steadily and faintly from between his shaking hands and then the paper itself part with a thin dry snapping report burn my clothes the convict cried burn them how it held you expect to escape and then billboards the man with the shotgun said he the convict tried to tell it tried to explain as he had tried to explain not to the three people on the boat alone but to the entire circumambulance desolate water and for long trees and sky not for justification because he needed none and he knew that his heroes the other convicts required none of him but rather as on the part of exhaustion he might have picked dreamily and incredulously out of suffocation he told the man with the gun how he and his partner had been given the boat and told to pick up a man and a woman how he had lost his partner and failed to find the man and now all in the world he wanted was something flat to leave the woman on until he could find an officer a sheriff he thought of home the place where he had lived almost since childhood his friends of years whose ways he knew and who knew his ways the familiar fields where he did work he had learned to do well and to like the mules with characters he knew and respected as he knew and respected the characters of certain men he thought of the barracks at night the screens against the bugs and summer and good stoves and weather and someone to supply the fuel and the food to the sunday ball games and the picture shows things which with the exception of the ball games he had never known before but most of all his own character two years ago they had offered to make a trustee of him he would not longer need to plow nor feed stock he would only follow those who did with a loaded gun but he declined i right now stick to plow and he said absolutely without humor i done already tried to use a gun one time too many his good name his responsibility not only toward those who were responsible toward him but to himself his own honor in doing of what was asked of him his pride in being able to do it no matter what it was he thought of this and listened to the man with the gun talking about escape and it seemed to him that hanging there being dragged violently along it was here he said that he first noticed the goat's beard the moss in the trees though it could have been there for several days so far as he knew it just happened that he first noticed it here that he would simply burst can't you get into your head that the last thing i want to do is to run away he cried you can sit there with that gun and watch me i give you fair leave all i want is to put this woman and i told you she could come aboard the man with the gun said in his level voice but there ain't no room on no boat of mine for nobody hunting a sheriff in no kind of clothes let alone a penitentiary suit when he steps aboard knock him in the head with the gun the man at the sweep said he's drunk he ain't coming aboard the man with the gun said he's crazy then the woman spoke she didn't move leaning in the door and a pair faded and patched and filthy overalls like the two men give them some grub and tell them to get out of here she moved she crossed the deck and looked down at the convict's companion with her cold sullen face how much more time than you got it wasn't you till next month the woman in the boat said but i the woman in overalls turned to the man with the gun give them some grub she said but the man with the gun was still looking down at the woman in the boat come on he said to the convict put her aboard and beat it and what happened to you the woman in overalls said when you try to turn her over to an officer when you lay alongside a sheriff and the sheriff asks you who you are still the man with the gun didn't even look at her he hardly even shifted the gun across his arm as he struck the woman across the face with the back of his other hand hard you son of a bitch he said still the man with the gun did not even look at her well he said to the convict don't you see i can't the convict cried can't you see that now he said he gave up he was doomed that is he knew now that he had been doomed from the very start never to get rid of her just as the ones who sent him out with the skiff knew that he never would actually give up when he recognized one of the objects which the woman in overalls was hurling into the skiff to be a can of condensed milk he believed it to be a presage gratuitous and irrevocable as the death notice over the telegraph that he was not even to find a flat stationary surface in time for the child to be born on so he told how he held the skiff alongside the shanty boat while the first tentative toying of the second wave made up beneath him while the woman in overalls passed back and forth between the house and rail flinging the food the hunk of salt meat the ragged and filthy quilt the scorched lumps of cold bread which he poured into the skiff from a heap dishpan like so much garbage while he clung to the strake against the mounting pull of the current the new wave which for the moment he had forgotten because he was still trying to state the incredible simplicity of his desire need until the man with the gun the only one of the three who wore shoes began to stamp at his hands he's snatching his hands away one at a time to avoid the heavy shoes then grasping the rail again until the man with the gun kicked at his face he flinging himself sideways to avoid the shoe and so breaking his hole on the rail his weight catching the skiff off at a tangent on the increasing current so that it began to leave the shanty boat behind and he paddling again now violently as a man hurries toward the precipice for which he knows at last he is doomed looking back at the other boat the three faces sudden and derisive and grim and rapidly diminishing across the widening water and at last apologetic suffocating with the intolerable fact not that he had been refused but that he had been refused so little had wanted so little asked for so little yet there had been demanded of him in return the one price out of all breath which they must have known if he could have paid it he would not have been where he was asking what he asked raising the paddle and shaking it and screaming curses back at them even after the shotgun flashed and the charge went scuttering past along the water to one side so he hung there he said shaking the paddle and howling when suddenly he remembered that other way the second wall of water full of houses and dead mules building up behind him back in the small so he quit yelling then went back to paddling he was not trying to outrun it he just knew from experience that when it overtook him he would have to travel in the same direction it was moving in anyway whether he wanted to or not and when it did overtake him he would begin to move too fast to stop no matter what places he might come to where he could leave the woman land her in time time that was his itch now so his only chance was to stay ahead of it as long as he could and hope to reach something before it struck so he went on driving the skiff with muscles which had been too tired too long they had quit feeling it as when a man has had bad luck for so long that he ceases to believe it is even bad let alone luck even when he ate the scorched lumps the size of baseballs and the weight and durability of cattle coal even after having lain in the skiff's bills where the shantyboat woman had thrown them now unlike lead heavy objects which no man would have called bread outside of the crusted and scorched pan in which they had cooked it was with one hand begrudging even that from the paddle he tried to tell that to the day while the skiff fled on among the bearded trees while every now and then small quiet tentative exploratory feelers came up from the way behind and toy for a moment at the skiff light and curious then go on with a faint hissing sighing almost a chuckling sound the skiff going on driving on with nothing else but trees and water and solitude until after a while it no longer seemed to him that he was trying to put space and distance behind him or shorten space and distance ahead but that both he and the wave were now hanging suspended simultaneous and unprogressing in pure time upon a dreamy desolation in which he paddled on not from any hope even to reach anything at all but merely to keep intact quite a little of distance the length of the skiff divided between himself and the inert and inescapable mass of female meat before him then night and the skiff rushing on fast since any speed over anything unknown and invisible is too fast with nothing before him and behind him the outrageous ideal volume of moving water toppling forward its crest frost and shredded like fangs and then dawn again another of those dreamlike alterations day to dark then back to day again with that quality truncated and that chronic and unreal as a waxing and waning of lights and a theater scene the skiff emerging now with the woman no longer supine beneath the shrunken soap private scope was sitting both upright gripping the gunwale with both hands her eyes closed and her lower lip caught between her teeth and he driving this fluttered board furiously now glaring at her out of his wild swollen sleepless face and crying croaking hold on for god's sake hold on i'm trying to she said but hurry hurry he told it the unbelievable hurry hasten the man falling from a cliff being told to catch on to something and save himself the very telling of it emerging shadowy and burlesque ludicrous comic and mad from the age of unbearable forgetting with a quality more dreamily furious than any fable behind proscenium lights he was in a basin now a basin the plump convict said that's what you wash in all right the tall one said harshly above his hands i did with a supreme effort he still them long enough to release the two bits of cigarette paper and watch them last in light fluttering indecision to the floor between his feet holding his hands motionless even for a moment longer a basin a broad peaceful yellow sea which had abruptly and curiously ordered air giving him even at that moment the impression that it was accustomed to water even if not total submersion he even remembered the name of it told to him two or three weeks later by someone a chaffalow louisiana the plump convict said you mean you will clean out of mississippi hellfire he stared at the tall one shucks he said that ain't but just across from vicksburg they never named any vicksburg across from where i was the tall one said it was baton rouge they named it and now he began to talk about a town a little neat white portrait town nesting among enormous very green trees appearing suddenly in the telling as it probably appeared in actuality abrupt and arian mirage like and incredibly serene before him behind a scattering of boats and wood to a line of freight cars standing flush to the doors in water and now he tried to tell that to how he stood waist deep in water for a moment looking back and down at the skiff in which the woman half lay her eyes still closed her knuckles white on the gunwales and a tiny thread of blood creeping down her chin from her chewed lip and he looking down at her on account of furious desperation how far will i have to walk she says i don't know i tell you he cried but it's land somewhere yonder it's land houses if i tried to move it won't even be born inside a boat she said you'll have to get closer yes he cried wives desperate and credulous wait i'll go and surrender and then they will have he didn't finish wait to finish he told that to himself splashing stumbling trying to run sobbing and grasping now he saw it another loading platform and standing above the yellow flood the khaki figures on it before identical the same he said how the intervening days since that first innocent morning telescope vanished as if they had never been the two contiguous succeeding instance succeeding simultaneous had he transported across no intervening space but merely turned in his own footsteps plunging splashing his arms raised croaking harshly he heard the start of shout there's one of them the command the clash of equipment the alarm cry there he goes there he goes yes he cried running plunging here i am here here running on into the first scattered volley stopping among the bullets waving his arms shrieking i want to surrender i want to surrender arching not in terror but in amazement and absolutely unbearable outrage as a squatting clump of the khaki figures part and he saw the machine gun the blunt thick muscle slant and drop and probe toward him and he's still screaming in his horse crow's voice i want to surrender can't you hear me continuing to scream even as he whirled and plunged splashing ducking went completely under and heard the bullets going thump thump thump thump on the water above him and he's grabbing still on the bottom still trying to scream even before he regained his feet and still all submerged safe his plunging unmistakable buttocks the outrage screaming bubbling from his mouth and about his face since he merely wanted to surrender then he was competitively screamed out of range though not for long that is he didn't tell how far or where there was a moment in which he paused breathed for a second before running again the course back to the skiff open for the time being though he could still hear the shouts behind him and now and then a shot and he panting sobbing a long savage tear in the flesh of one hand got when and how he did not know and he wasting precious breath speaking to no one now any more than the scream of the dying rabbit is addressed in immortal ill but rather an indictment of all breath and its folly and suffering its infinite capacity for folly and pain which seems to be its only immortality all in the world i want is just to surrender he returned to the skiff and got in and took up his splendid plank and now when he told this despite the fury of the element which climaxed it the telling became quite simple he now even creased another cigarette paper between his fingers which did not tremble at all and fill the paper from the tobacco sack without spilling a flake as though he had passed from the machine gun's barrage into a born beyond any more amazement so that the subsequent part of his narrative seemed to reach his listeners as though from beyond a sheet of slightly milky though still transparent glass as something not heard but seen a series of shadows edgeless yet distinct and smooth the flooring logical and unfrantic making no sound they were in the skiff in the center of the broad plastic trough which had no boundaries and down which the tiny forlorn skiff flew to the irresistible coercion of a current going once more he knew not where the neat small live oak bowered talent unattainable and mirage like and apparently attached to nothing upon the airy and unchanging horizon he did not believe them they did not matter he was doomed they were less than figments of smoke or delirium and he was driving his unceasing paddle without destination or even hope now looking now and then at the woman sitting with her knees drawn up and locked and her entire body went terrific clench while the threads of bloody saliva crept from her teeth clenched lower lip he was going nowhere and fleeing from nothing he merely continued to paddle because he had paddled so long now that he believed if he stopped his muscle would scream in agony so when it happened he was not surprised he heard the sound which he knew well he had heard it but once before true enough but no man need hear it but once and he had been expecting it he looked back still driving the paddle and saw it curve crested with his straw-like flotsam of trees and debris and dead beasts and he glared over his shoulders for four minutes out of that attenuation far beyond the point of outragement where even suffering the capability of being further affronted had ceased from which he now contemplated with savage and invulnerable curiosity the full extent of which his now anesthetized nerves could bear what next could be invented for them to bear until the wave actually began to rail over his head in its thundering climax then only did he turn his head his stroke did not falter it neither slowed nor increased still paddling with a spent hypnotic steadiness he saw the swimming deer he did not know what it was nor that he had altered the skiff's course to follow it he just watched the swimming head before him as the wave boiled down and the skiff rose bodily in the old familiar fashion on a wealth of tossing trees and houses and bridges and fences he's still paddling even while the paddle found no purchase save air and still paddle even as he and the deer shot forward side by side at arm's length he watching the deer now watching the deer begin to rise out of the water bodily until it was actually running along the surface still rising sawing clear of the water together vanishing upward in a dying crescendo of splashing and snapping branches its damp scut flashing upward the entire animal vanishing upward as smoke vanishes and now the skiff struck and cast and he was out of it too standing knee-deep springing out and falling to his knees scrabbing up glaring after the vanished deer land he caught land hold on just hold on he caught the woman beneath the arms dragging her out of the boat plunging and padding after the vanished deer now earth actually appeared and the cleavage is smooth and swift and steep bizarre solid and unbelievable an indian mouth and he plunging at the muddy slope slipping back the woman struggling in his muddy hand let me down she cried let me down but he held her panting sobbing and rushed again at the muddy slope he had almost reached the third crest with his now violently unmanageable burden when a stick onto his foot gathered itself with a thick convulsive speed it was a snake he thought as his feet fled beneath him and with the indubitable last of his strength he half pushed and half flung the woman up the bank as he shot feet first and facedown back into that medium upon which he had lived for more days and nights than he could remember and from which he himself had never completely emerged as if his own failed and spent flesh were attempting to carry out his furious unflagging will for severance at any price even that of drowning from the burden with which unwitting and without choice he had been doomed later it seemed to him that he had carried back beneath the surface with him the sound of infants first mewling cry