
[1195] yourself, Molloy, man or woman, what does it matter?
[1196] But I cannot help
asking myself the following question.
[1197] Could a woman have stopped me as
I swept towards mother?
[1198] Probably.
[1199] Better still, was such an encounter
possible, I mean between me and a woman?
[1200] Now men, I have rubbed up
against a few men in my time, but women?
[1201] Oh well, I may as well confess
it now, yes, I once rubbed up against one.
[1202] I don't mean my mother, I
did more than rub up against her.
[1203] And if you don't mind we'll leave my
mother out of all this.
[1204] But another who might have been my mother, and
even I think my grandmother, if chance had not willed otherwise.
[1205] Listen
to him now talking about chance.
[1206] It was she made me acquainted with love.
[1207] She went by the peaceful name of Ruth I think, but I can't say for certain.
[1208] Perhaps the name was Edith.
[1209] She had a hole between her legs, oh not the
bunghole I had always imagined, but a slit, and in this I put, or rather she put,
my so-called virile member , not without difficulty, and I toiled and
moiled until I [⁁] discharged or gave up trying or was begged by her to stop.
[1210] A
mug's game in my opinion and tiring on top of that, in the long run.
[1211] But I lent myself to it with a good enough grace, knowing it was love, for
she had told me so.
[1212] She bent over the couch, because of her rheumatism,
and in I [⁁]went from behind.
[1213] It was the only position she could bear,
because of her lumbago.
[1214] It seemed [⁁]all right to me, for I had seen dogs,
and I was astonished when she confided that you could go about it differen-
-tly.
[1215] I wonder what she meant exactly.
[1216] Perhaps after all she put me in
her rectum.
[1217] A matter of complete indifference to me, I needn't tell you.
[1218] But is it true love, in the rectum?
[1219] That's what [⁁]bothers me sometimes.
[1220] Have I never known love, after all?
[1221] She too was an eminently flat woman
and she moved with short stiff steps, leaning on an ebony stick.
[1222] Perhaps
she too was a man, yet another of them..
[1223] But in that case surely our testicles would
have collided, while we writhed.
[1224] Perhaps she held hers tight in her hand,
- Segments
Molloy © 2016 Samuel Beckett Digital Manuscript Project.
Editors: Magessa O'Reilly, Dirk Van Hulle, Pim Verhulst and Vincent Neyt