Samuel Beckett
Digital Manuscript Project
Malone meurt / Malone Dies

MS-WU-MSS008-2-47

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Segment 1

[0255] hook at one end. [0256] Thanks to it I can control the fu[]arthest
recesses of my abode.
[0257] How great is my debt to sticks!![!] [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.

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Segment 2

[0265] Perhaps she goes with
the room, in a manner of speaking.
[0266] In that case she does not call
for separate treatment study[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 gebneral 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.

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Segment 3

[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 lays[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.

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Segment 4

[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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Addition 1
!
X
Addition 2
study
X
Addition 3
lays
Transcription
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  • Marginal Additions