Nausea

by Jean-Paul Sartre

This is what I thought: for the most banal even to become an adventure, you must (and this is enough) begin to recount it. This is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, he lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell. For example, when I was in Hamburg, with that Erna girl I didn’t trust and who was afraid of me, I led a funny sort of life. But I was in the middle of it, I didn’t think about it. And then one evening, in a little café in San Pauli, she left me to go to the ladies’ room. I stayed alone, there was a phonograph playing “Blue Skies.” I began to tell myself what had happened since I landed. I told myself, “The third evening, as I was going into a dance hall called La Grotte Bleue, I noticed a large woman, half seas over. And that woman is the one I am waiting for now, listening to ‘Blue Skies,’ the woman who is going to come back and sit down at my right and put her arms around my neck.” Then I felt violently that I was having an adventure. But Erna came back and sat down beside me, she wound her arms around my neck and I hated her without knowing why. I understand now: one had to begin living again and the adventure was fading out.

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