MS-WU-MSS008-3-50-1

[0456] is Molloy, said the sergeant. [0457] Yes, I said, now I remember. [0458] And
your mother? said the sergeant. [0459] I didn't follow. [0460] Is your mother's
name Molloy too? said the sergeant. [0467] I thought it over. [0468] Your
mother, said the sergeant, is your mother's — [0469] Let me think! I
cried. [0470] At least I imagine that's how it was. [0471] Take your time,
said the sergeant.

[0472] Was mother's name Molloy? [0473] Very likely. [0474] Her
name must be Molloy too, I said. [0475] They took me away, to the guard-
room I suppose, and there I was told to sit down. [0476] I must have tried
to explain. [0477] I won't go into it. [0478] I obtained permission, if not to
lie down on a bench, at least to remain standing, propped against
the wall.

[0479] The room was dark and full of people hastening to and
fro, malefactors, policem^een, lawyers, priests and journalists I
suppose. [0480] All that made a dark, dark forms crowding in a dark place.
[0481] They paid no attention to me and I repaid the compliment. [0482] Then
how could I know they ^were paying no attention to me, and how could
I repay the compliment, since they were paying no attention to me?

[0483] I don't know. [0484] I knew it and I did it, that's all I know. [0485] But
suddenly a woman rose up before me, a big fat woman dressed in
black, or rather in mauve. [0486] I still wonder today if it wasn't the
social worker. [0487] She was holding out to me, on an odd saucer, a
mug full of a greyish conco^cction which must have been green tea
with saccharine and powdered milk.

[0488] Nor was that all, for between
mug and saucer a thick slab of dry bread was precariously lodged,
so that I began to say, in a kind of anguish, It's going to fall,
it's going to fall, as if it mattered whether it fell or not. [0489] A
moment later I myself was holding, in my trembling hands, this little
pile of tottering disparates, in which the hard, the liquid and the