
[0429] the point of view of civility, left increasingly much to be desired,
in my opinion. [0430] Between his questions and my answers, I mean those
deserving of consideration, the intervals were more or less long
and turbulent. [0431] I am so little used to being asked anything that
when I am asked something I take some time to know what.
[0432] And the
mistake I make then is this, that instead of quietly reflecting on
what I have just heard, and heard distinctly, not being hard [|=|] of [|=|]
hearing, in spite of all I have heard, I hasten to answer blindly,
fearing perhaps lest my silence raise their anger to fury. [0433] I am
full of fear, I have gone in fear all my life, in fear of blows.
[0438] Now the sergeant was content to threaten me with a cylindrical
ruler, and was repaid, little by little, by the discovery that I
had no papers in the sense this word had a sense for him, nor any
occupation, nor any domicile, that my surname escaped me for the
moment and that I was on my way to my mother, whose charity kept
me from dying.[(?)]
[0439] As to her address, I was in the dark, but knew how to
get there, even in the dark. [0440] The district? [0441] By the slaughterhouse,
your lordship, for from my mother's room, through the closed
windows, I had heard, stilling her chatter, the bellowing of the
cattle, that violent, raucous, tremulous bellowing not of the pastures
but of the towns, their slaughterhouses and cattle-[#]markets.
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Molloy © 2016 Samuel Beckett Digital Manuscript Project.
Editors: Magessa O'Reilly, Dirk Van Hulle, Pim Verhulst and Vincent Neyt