MS-BRML-NWWR-35-1136

89—B2795—NEW WORLD WRITING—9on9.5 T.R. (21)
(N.A.L.) 1-12 Spanjer

Samuel Beckett

Born in Dublin, in 1906, of Irish
parentage, Samuel Beckett went to
Trinity College in Dublin. He
has lectured at the École Normale
Supérieure in Paris, and has
taught French at Trinity. In 1938,
he settled in France as James
Joyce's secretary. He began to

write in French in 1945, and has
since then written three novels
in English—MURPHY and WATT—
and various other books,
including a collection of short
stories entitled MORE KICKS THAN
PRICKS. An examination of

Mr. Beckett's work appears
immediately after this opening
section of his novel, MOLLOY, to be
published in the United States
by Grove Press in 1954.

(Copyright, 1954, by
Samuel Beckett.)

MOLLOY
(section from the novel)

[0001] I am in my mother's room. [0002] It's
I who live there now. [0003] I don't
know how I got there. [0004] Perhaps
in an ambulance, certainly a vehicle of some kind. [0005] I was helped.

[0006] I'd never have got there alone. [0007] There's this man who comes
every week. Perhaps I got here thanks to him. [0008] He says not. [0009] He
gives me money and takes away the pages. [0010] So many pages, so
much money. [0011] Yes, I work now, a little like I used to, except
that I don't know how to work any more. [0012] That doesn't matter,
apparently. [0013] What I'd like now is to speak of the things that
are left, say my good-bys, finish dying. [0014] They don't want that.

[0015] Yes, they're more than one, apparently. [0016] But it's always the same
one that comes. [0017] You'll do that later, he says. [0018] Good. [0019] The truth
is I haven't much will left. [0020] When he comes for the fresh pages
he brings back the previous week's. [0021] They are marked with
signs I don't understand.

[0022] Anyway I don't read them. [0023] When I've
done nothing he gives me nothing, he scolds me. [0024] Yet I don't
work for money. [0025] For what then? [0026] I don't know. [0027] The truth is I
don't know much. [0028] For example my mother's death. [0029] Was she
already dead when I came? [0030] Or did she only die later? [0031] I mean
enough to bury. [0032] I don't know. [0033] Perhaps they haven't buried her
yet.

[0034] In any case I have her room. [0035] I sleep in her bed. [0036] I piss and
shit in her pot. [0037] I have taken her place. [0038] I must resemble her
more and more. [0039] All I need now is a son. [0040] Perhaps I have one
somewhere. [0041] But I think not. [0042] He would be old now, nearly as
old as me. [0043] It was a little chambermaid. [0044] It wasn't real love. [0045] The
real love was in another. [0046] We'll come to that. [0047] Her name? I've
forgotten it again.

[0048] It seems to me sometimes that I even
knew my son, that I helped him. [0049] Then I tell myself it is impos-
sible. [0050] It is impossible I could ever have helped anyone. [0051] I've
forgotten how to spell too, and half the words. [0052] That doesn't
matter apparently. [0053] Good. [0054] He's a queer card who comes to see
me. [0055] He comes every Sunday apparently. [0056] The other days he isn't
free. [0057] He's always thirsty. [0058] It was he who told me I'd begun all
wrong, that I should have begun differently. [0059] He must be right.

[0060] I began at the beginning, like an old fool, can you imagine that.
[0061] Here's my beginning. [0062] Because they're keeping it apparently.
[0063] I took a lot of trouble with it. [0064] Here it is. [0065] It gave me a lot of
trouble. [0066] It was the beginning, you see. [0067] Whereas now it's nearly
the end. [0068] Is what I do now any better? [0069] I don't know. [0070] That's
beside the point. [0071] Here's my beginning. [0072] It must mean something,
since they're keeping it. [0073] Here it is.

^[par.✓] [0074] This time, then once more I think, then perhaps a last time,
then I think it'll be over, with that world too. [0075] Premonition of
the last but one but one. [0076] All grows dim. [0077] A little more, and
you'll go blind. [0078] It's in the head.[0079] It doesn't work any more, it
says, I don't work any more. [0080] You go dumb as well and sounds
fade. [0081] The threshold scarcely crossed that's how it is. [0082] It's the
head. It must have had enough.

[0083] So that you say, I'll manage
this time, then perhaps once more, then perhaps a last time,
then nothing more. [0084] You are hard set to formulate this thought,
for it is one, in a sense. [0085] Then you try to pay attention, to
consider with attention all those dim things, saying to yourself,
laboriously, it's my fault. [0086] Fault? [0087] That was the word. [0088] But what
fault?

[0089] It's not good-by, and what magic in those dim things
to which it will be time enough, when next they pass, to say
good-by. [0090] For you must say good-by, it would be folly not to
say good-by, when the time comes. [0091] If you think of the forms
and light of other days it is without regret. [0092] But you seldom
think of them, with what would you think of them? [0093] I don't
know.

[0094] People pass too, hard to distinguish from yourself. [0095] That
is discouraging. [0096] That's how I saw A and B going slowly to-
ward each other, unconscious of what they were doing. [0097] It
was on a road remarkably bare, I mean without hedges or
ditches or any kind of border, in the country, for cows were
chewing in enormous fields, lying and standing, in the evening
silence. [0098] Perhaps I'm inventing a little, perhaps embellishing,
but on the whole that's how it was.

[0099] They chew, swallow, then
after a short pause effortlessly bring up the next mouthful.
[0100] A neck muscle stirs and the jaws begin to grind again. [0101] But
perhaps I'm remembering things. [0102] The road, hard and white,
seared the tender pastures, rose and fell at the whim of hills
and hollows. [0103] The town wasn't far. [0104] It was two men, unmistak-
ably, one short and one tall.

[0105] They had left the town, first one,
then the other, and the first, weary or remembering a duty,
had retraced his steps. [0106] The air was sharp, for they wore
greatcoats. [0107] They looked alike, but no more than others do.
[0108] At first a wide space lay between them.

[0109] They couldn't have
seen each other, even had they raised their heads and looked
about, because of this wide space, and then because of the
undulating land, which caused the road to be in waves, not
deep, but deep enough, deep enough. [0110] But the moment came
when together they went down into the same trough and
in this trough finally met.

[0111] To say they were acquainted, no,
nothing warrants it. [0112] But perhaps at the sound of their steps,
or warned by some obscure instinct, they raised their heads
and observed each other, for a good fifteen paces, before
they stopped, breast to breast. [0113] Yes, they did not pass each
other by, but halted, face to face, as in the country, of an
evening, on a deserted road, two wayfaring strangers often do,
without there being anything extraordinary about it.

[0114] But they
knew each other perhaps. [0115] Now in any case they do, now I
think they will know each other, greet each other, even in
the depths of the town. [0116] They turned toward the sea which,
far in the East, beyond the fields, climbed high in the waning
sky; and they exchanged a few words. [0117] Then each went on
his way.

[0118] Each went on his way, A toward the town, B by
ways he seemed hardly to know, or not at all, for he went
with uncertain steps and often stopped to look about him,
like someone trying to fix landmarks in his mind, for one
day, perhaps, he may have to retrace his steps, you never
know.

[0119] The treacherous hills where fearfully he ventured were
no doubt only known to him from afar, seen perhaps from
his bedroom window or, one black day, from the summit of
a monument which, having nothing in particular to do and
turning to height for solace he had paid his few coppers to
climb, up the winding stones.

[0120] From there he must have seen
it all, the plain, the sea, and then these very hills that some
call mountains, indigo in places in the evening light, their
serried ranges crowding to the sky line, cloven with hidden
^[✓] valleys that the eye divines from sudden shifts of color and
then from other signs for which there are no words, nor even
thoughts.

[0121] But all are not divined, even from that height, and
often where only one escarpment is supposed, and one crest,
in reality there are two, two escarpments, two crests, riven
by a valley. [0122] But now he knows these hills, that is he knows
them better, and if ever again he sees them from afar it will
be, I think, with other eyes, and not only that but the within,
all that inner space one never sees, the brain and heart and
other caverns where thought and feeling hold their sabbath,
all that too quite differently disposed.

[0123] He looks old and it
is a sorry sight to see him solitary after so many years, so
many days and nights unthinkingly given to that rumor rising
at birth and even earlier, What shall I do? What shall I do?
now low, a murmur, now precise as the headwaiter's And
to follow? and often rising to a scream.

[0124] And in the end, or
almost, to be abroad alone, by unknown ways, in the gather-
ing night, with a stick. [0125] It was a stout stick, he used it to thrust
himself onward, or as a defense, when the time came, against
dogs and marauders. [0126] Yes, night was gathering, but the man
was innocent, greatly innocent, he had nothing to fear.
Though he went in fear, he had nothing to fear, there
was nothing they could do to him, or very little.

[0127] But he can't
have known it. [0128] I wouldn't know it myself, if I thought about
it. [0129] Yes, he saw himself threatened, his body threatened, his
reason threatened, and perhaps he was, perhaps they were,
in spite of his innocence. [0130] What business has innocence here?