
by
SAMUEL BECKETT
Translated from the French by
PATRICK BOWLES
in collaboration with the author.

[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, excetpt 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-byes, finish dying.
[0014] They don't want that.
[0015] Yes, there is 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 lieft left.
[0020] When he comes for the fresh pages he brings back the pr3evious 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 h 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 myself.
[0043] It was a little chambermaid.
[0044] It wasn't true love.
[0045] The true 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's impossible.
[0050] It's 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 one the one 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 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 ballocks, 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, do you understand.
[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 betginning.
[0072] It must mean something, or they wouldn't keep it.
[0073] Here it is.
[0074] This time, then once more I think, then perhaps a last time,

[0074] 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 grow 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 dime things, saying to yourself, laboriously, It's my fault.
[0086] Fault?
[0087] That was the word.
[0088] But what fault?
[0089] It's not goodbye, and what magic in those dim things to which it will be time tox enough, when next they pass, to say goodbye.
[0090] For you must say goodbye, it would be madness not to say goodbye, 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] So I saw A qand C going slowly towards 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 edge, 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 the way 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 was not far.
[0104] It was two men,

[0104] unmistakably, one small and one tall.
[0105] They had left the twown, first one, then the other, and then 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 high, but high enough, high 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 knew each other, 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 will, 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 towards the sea which, far in the east, beyond the fields, climbed high in the waning sky, and exchanged a few words.
[0117] Then each went on his way.
[0118] Each went on his way, A back towards the town, C on wa by ways he seemed hardly to know, or not at all, for he went with uncertain step 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