Marathe and Kate at Ryle's (Disability and Deformity)
I think of death. I do nothing but frequently drink, roll around the despoiled countryside, sometimes dodging falling projectiles of invasion, thinking of death, bemoaning the depredation of the Swiss land, in great pain. But it is myself I bemoan. I have pain. I have no legs.’ […] ‘And us, our Swiss countryside is very hilly. The fauteuil, it is hard to push up many hills, then one is braking with all the might to keep from flying out of control on the downhill.’
Context
The moribund years: depression and disability fused so tightly that "I have pain. I have no legs." reads as one diagnosis. Then the wheelchair's lived mechanics — the labor uphill, the desperate braking downhill — which Kate answers with "Sometimes it's like that walking, too," her Identification collapsing the able/disabled line the way the whole conversation keeps doing.