Samuel Beckett
Digital Manuscript Project
Molloy

MS-WU-MSS008-3-49

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Segment 1

[0407] and joyful faces, faces of men, of women and of children.
[0408] I seemed to hear, at a certain moment, a distant music. [0409] I stopped,
the better to listen.
[0410] Go on, he said. [0411] Listen, I said. [0412] Get on,
he said.
[0413] I wasn't allowed to listen to the music. [0414] It might have
drawn a crowd.
[0415] He gave me a shove. [0416] I had been touched, oh not
my skin, but none the less my skin had felt it, it had felt a man's
hard fist, through its coverings.

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Segment 2

[0417] While still putting my best foot
foremost I gave myself up to that golden moment, as if I had been
someone else.
[0418] It wqas the hour of rest, the forenoon's toil ended,
the afternoon's to come.
[0419] The wisest perhaps, lying in the squares
or sitting on their doorsteps, were savouring its languid ending,
forgetful of recent cares, indifferent to those at hand.

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Segment 3

[0420] Others
on the contrary were using it to make their plans, their heads in
their hands.
[0421] Was there one among them to put himself in my place,
to feel how removed I was then from him I seemed to be, and in that
remove what strain, as of hawsers about to snap.
[0422] It's possible.

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Segment 4

[0423] Yes, I was straining towards those spurious deeps, their lying
promise of gravity and peace, from all my old poisons I struggled
towards it, safely bound.
[0424] Under the blue sky, under the watchful
gaze.
[0425] Forgetful of my mother, at liberty set free from the acts, merged in
this alien hour, saying, respite, respite.
[0426] At the police station
I was xxx to brought before a very strange official.

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Segment 5

[0427] Dressed in plain-clothes,
in his shirt-sleeves, he was sprawling in an arm-chair, his feet
on his desk, a straw hat on his head and protruding from his mouth
a thin flexible object I could not identify.
[0428] I had time to become
aware of these details before he dismissed me.
[0429] He listened to his
subordinate's report and then began to interrogate me in a tone

Transcription
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