Digital Manuscript ProjectMalone meurt / Malone Dies

[0255] hook at one end.
[0256] Thanks to it I can control the fu [place = overwritten] [⁁]arthest
recesses of my abode.
[0257] How great is my debt to sticks! [place = overwritten] ![ [place = margin right] !]
[0258] So great
that I almost forget the blows they have transferred to me.
[0259] She
is an old woman.
[0260] I don't know why she is good to me.
[0261] Yes, let us
call it goodness, without quibbling.
[0262] For her it is certainly
goodness.
[0263] I believe her to be even older than I.
[0264] But rather less
well preserved, in spite of her mobility.
[0265] Perhaps she goes with
the room, in a manner of speaking.
[0266] In that case she does not call
for separate treatment [place = margin left] study[ [place = supralinear] study].
[0267] But it is conceivable that she does what
she does out of sheer charity, or moved with regard to me by a
less geb [place = overwritten] neral feeling of compassion or affection.
[0268] Nothing is
impossible, I cannot keep on denying it much longer.
[0269] But it is
more convenient to suppose that when I came in for the room I
came in for her too.
[0270] All I see of her now is the gaunt hand and
part of the sleeve.
[0271] Not even that, not even that.
[0272] Perhaps she
is dead, having predeceased me, perhaps now it is another's hand
that garnishes [place = margin left] lays[ [place = supralinear] lays] and clears my little table.
[0273] I don't know how long
I have been here, I must have said so.
[0274] All I know is that I was
very old already before I found myself here.
[0275] I call myself an
octogenarian, but I cannot prove it.
[0276] Perhaps I am only a
quinquagenarian, or a quadragenarian.
[0277] It is ages since I counted
them, my years I mean.
[0278] I know the year of my birth, I have not
forgotten that, but I do not know what year I have got to now.
[0279] But I think I have been bere for here for some very considerable
time.
[0280] For there is nothing the various seasons can do to me,
within the shelter of these walls, that I do not know.
[0281] That is
not to be learnt in one year or two.
[0282] In a flicker of my lids
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Malone meurt / Malone Dies © 2017 Samuel Beckett Digital Manuscript Project.
Editors: Dirk Van Hulle, Pim Verhulst and Vincent Neyt