Samuel Beckett
Digital Manuscript Project
Molloy

MS-BRML-NWWR-2-38

MS. Pages: 01r - 05r 06r - 10r 11r - 15r 16r - 20r 21r - 24r

[p. 21r] [0656] a prick of misgiving, like one dying of cancer obliged to consult his dentist. [0657] For I did not know if it was the right road. [0658] All roads were right for me, a wrong road was an event, for me. [0659] But when I was on my way to my mother only one road was right, the one that led to her, or one of those that led to her, for all did not lead to her. [0660] I did not know if I was on one of those right roads and that disturbed me, like all recall to life. [0661] Judge then of my relief when I saw, ahead of me, the familiar ramparts loom. [0662] I passed byond them, into a district I did not know. And yet I knew the town well, for I had been born there and had never succeeded in putting between it and me more than ten or fifteen miles, such was its grasp on me, I don't know why. [0663] So that I came nNear to wondering if I was in the right town, where I first saw the murk and which still harboured my mother, somewhere or other, or if I had not stumbled, as a result of a wrong turn, on a town whose very name I did not know. [0664] For my native town was the only one I knew, having never set foot in any other. [0665] But I had read with care, while I still could read, accounts of travellers more fortunate than myself, telling of other towns as beautiful as mine, and even more beautiful, though with a different beauty. [0666] And now it was a name I sought, in my memory, the name of the only town it was given me to know, with the intention, as soon as I had found it, of stopping, and saying to a passer-by, doffing my hat, I beg your pardon, Sir, this is X, isn't it,?[] X being the name of my town. [0667] And this name that I sought, I felt sure that it began with a B or with a P, but in spite of this clue, or perhaps because of its falsity, the other letters continued to escape me. [0668] I had been living so far from words so long, you understand, that it was enough for me to see my town, since we're talking of my town, to be unable, you understand. [0669] It's

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[p. 22r] [0669] too difficult to say, for me. [0670] And even my sense of identity was veiled in a namelessness often hard to penetrate, as we have just seen I think. [0671] And so on for all the other things which mocked my senses. [0672] Yes, even then, when already all was fading, waves and particles, there could be no things but nameless things, no names but thingless names. [0673] I say that now, but after all what do I know now about then, now when the icy words hail down upon me, the icy meanings, and the world dies too, foully named. [0674] All I know is what the words know, and the dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning, a middle, and an end as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead. [0675] And truly ist little matters what I say, this or that or any other thing. [0676] Saying is inventing. [0677] Wrong, and rightly so. [0678] You invent nothing, you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum [?] one [17] day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is wept. [0679] To hell with it anyway.[]] [0680] Where was I. [0681] Unable to remember the name of my town, I resolved to stop by the kerb curb, to wait for a passer-by with a friendly and intelligent air, and then to take off my hat and to say, with my smile, I beg your pardon, Sir, excuse me, sSir, what is the name of this town, if you please? [0682] For the word once let fall I would know if it was the right word, the one I was seeking, in my memory, or another, [0683] and so would know where I stood. [0684] This resolution, actually formed as I rode along, was never to be carried out, an absurd mishap prevented it. [0685] Yes, my resolutions were remarkable in this, that they were no sooner formed than something always happened to prevent their execution. [0686] That must be why I am even less resolute now than then, just as then I was less so too, than I once had been. [0687] But to tell the

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[p. 23r] [0687] truth (to tell the truth!) I have never been particularly resolute, I mean subject to taking resolutions, but rather inclined to plunge headlong into the shit, without knowing who was shitting against whom or on which side I had the better chance of skulking with success. [0688] But from this leaning, too, I derived scant satisfaction and if I have never quite got rid of it it is not for want of trying. [0689] The fact is, it seems, that the most you can hope is to be a little less, in the end, the creature you were in the beginning, and the middle. [0690] For I had hardly perfected my plan, in my head, when my bicycle ran over a dog, as subsequently appeared, and fell to the ground, with an ineptness all the more inexcusable as the dog, duly leashed, was not out on the road, but in on the pavement, docile at its mistress's heels. [0691] Precautions are like resolutions, to be taken with precaution. [0692] The lady must have thought she had left nothing to chance, so far as the safety of her dog was concerned, whereas in reality she was setting the whole of nature at nought, no less outrageously than myself with my insane demands for more light. [0693] But instead of grovelling in my turn, involk-ing my great age and infirmities, I made things worse by making to run away. [0694] I was soon overtaken, by a bloodthirsty mob of both sexes and all ages, for I caught a glimpse of white beards and little, almost angel[#]faces, and they were preparing to set about upon me when the lady intervened. [0695] She said in effect, she told me so later on and I believed her, Leave this poor old man alone. [0696] He has killed Teddy, I grant you that, Teddy whom I loved like my own child, but it is not so serious as it seems, for as it happens I was taking him to the vet, to have him put out of his pain. [0697] For Teddy was old, blind, deaf, prostrated, with rheumatism and perpetually incontinent, night and day, both indoors and out [|=|] of [|=|] doors. [0698] Thanks then to this poor old man I have been spared

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[p. 24r] [0698] a painful task, not to mention the expense which I am ill able to afford, having no other means of support than the pension of my dear departed, fallen in defencse of a country that called itself his and from which in his lifetime he never derived the smallest benefit, nothing but insults and vexations. [0699] The crowd was beginning to disperse, the danger was past, but the lady was in her stride. [0700] You may say, she said, that he did wrong to run away, that he should have explained, asked to be forgiven. [0701] Granted. [0702] But it is clear he has not all his wits about him, that he is beside himself, for reasons of which we know nothing and which might put us all to shame, if we did know them. [0703] I even wonder if he knows what he has done. [0704] There issued such tedium from this droning voice that I was making ready to move on when the unavoidable police constable rose up before me.

ok mln

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