Digital Manuscript ProjectL'Innommable / The Unnamable

[1033] they resume the thread of my misfortunes, judging me insufficiently
vitalized to bring them to a successful conclusion alone and un-
aided.
[1034] But instead of making the junction, I have often noticed
this, I mean instead of resuming me at the point where I was
left off, they pick me up at a much later stage, perhaps thereby
hoping to induce in me the delusion that I had got through the
interval all on my own, lived without help of any kind
[1034] for quite some time, without any recollection of by what means or
in what circumstances, or even died, all on my own, and come
back to earth again, by way of the vagina, like a real live baby,
and reached a ripe age, and even senility, without the least
assistance from them and thanks solely to the indications they
had given me.
[1035] To saddle me with a lifetime is probably not enough
for them, I have to be given a taste of two or three generations.
[1036] But it is not certain.[1037] Perhaps all they have told me has reference
to a single existence, the confusion of identities being merely
apparent and due to my inaptitude to assume any.[1038] If I ever succeed
in dying under my own steam, then they will be in a better position
to decide whether I am worthy to adorn another age, or to try the
same one again, in the light of my experience.
[1039] I may therefore
legitimately suppose that the one-armed, one-legged wayfarer of
a moment ago and the wedge-headed trunk in which I am now stuck
marooned are simply two phases of the same carnal envelope,
the soul being notoriously immune from necrosis and dis-
memberment.[1040] Having lost one leg, what indeed more likely than
that I should mislay the other?[1041] And similarly for the arms.
[1042] A
natural transition in sum.[1043] But what then of that other old age
they bestowed upon me, if I remember right, and that other
middle age, when neither legs nor arms were lacking, but simply
the power to profit benefit by them?[1044] And of that kind of youth in which
they had to give me up for dead?
[1045] If I have a warm place, it
is not in their hearts.][1046] No doubt they have done what they could to
be agreeable to me, to get me out of here, on no matter what pre-
text, in no matter what disguise.[1047] All I reproach them with is their
insistence.For beyond them is that other who will not give me
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L'Innommable / The Unnamable © 2013 Samuel Beckett Digital Manuscript Project.
Editors: Dirk Van Hulle, Shane Weller and Vincent Neyt