MS-UoR-1659

[0221] Ah well...[0222](Pause.)[0223] I was there when - (Krapp switches off,
broods, switches on again) - the blind went down, one of
those dirty brown roller affairs, throwing a ball for a
wire-haired fox-terrier ^{little white dog}, as chance would have it.[0224] I happened
to look up and there it was.[0225] All over and done with, at last.
[0226] I sat on for a few moments with the ball in my hand and the
dog yelping and pawing at me.[0227] (Pause.)[0228] Moments.[0228|001] (Pause.)

[0229] Her moments, my moments.[0230] (Pause.)[0231] The dog's moments.[0232] (Pause.)
[0233] In the end I held it out to him and he took it in his mouth,
gently, gently.[0234] A small, old, black, ^hard, solid rubber ball.[0235] (Pause.)
[0236] I shall feel it, in my hand, until my dying day.[0237] (Pause.)[0238] O^I
might have kept it.[0239] (Pause.)[0240] But I gave it to the dog.

[0241] Pause.
[0242] Ah well...
[0243] Pause.
[0244] Spiritually a year of profound gloom and indigence, until
that memorable night in March, at the end of the jetty, in
the howling wind, never to be forgotten, when suddenly I saw
the whole thing.[0245]at last The vision, at last.

[0246] This I imagine ^fancy
is what I have chiefly to record this evening, against the
day when my work will be done and perhaps no place left in
my memory, warm or cold, for the miracle that...(hesitates)...
for the fire that set it alight.[0247] What I suddenly saw then
was this, was this, that the belief I had been going on all my life,
namely -

[0248] (Krapp switches off impatiently, winds tape forward
switches on again)[0249] - great granite rocks the foam flying up
in the light of the lighthouse and the wind-gauge spinning
like a propellor, cl^ clear to me at last that the dark I
have always struggled to keep under is in reality my most -

[0250] (Krapp curses, switches off, winds tapes forward, switches
on again)[0251] - unshatterable association until my dissolution
of storm and night with the light of the understanding and
the [⁁]^fire[⁁] -[0252] (Krapp curses louder, switches off, winds tape forward,
switches on again)[0253] - my face in her breasts and my hand on
her.[0254] We lay there without moving.[0255] But under us all moved,
and moved us, gently, up and down, and from side to side.

[0256] Pause.
[0257] Past midnight.[0258] Never knew such silence.[0259] The earth might be
uninhabited.
[0260] Pause.
[0261] Here I end -
[0262] Krapp switches off, winds tape back, switches on again.

[0263] - upper lake, with the punt, bathed off the bank, then
pushed out into the stream and drifted.[0264] She lay stretched
out on the floorboards with her hands under her head and
her eyes closed.[0265] Sun blazing down, bit of a breeze, water
nice and lively.I noticed a scratch on her thigh and asked

[0266] I noticed a scratch on her thigh and asked