
36(b)
[3081] grimacing in disgust.
[3082] That was all the thanks I got.
[3083] I waited until the
last drop, the last crumb, had disappeared.
[3084] He turned to the wall and I
tucked him in.
[3085] I was within a hair's breadth of kissing him.
[3086] Neither he
nor I had uttered a word.
[3087] We had no further need of words, for the time
being.
[3088] Besides my son rarely spoke to me unless I spoke to him.
[3089] And when
I[|] did so he answered but lamely and as it were with reluctance.
[3090] And yet
with his little friends, when he thought I was out of the way, he was
incredibly voluble.
[3091] That my presence had the effect of dampening this
disposition was far from displeasing me.
[3092] Not one person in a hundred [₰]
[⁁]knows how to be silent and listen, no, nor even to conceive what such a thing
means.
[3093] Yet only then can you detect, beyond the fatuous clamour, the
silence of which the universe is made.
[3094] I desired this advantage for my
son.
[3095] And that he should hold aloof from those who pride themselves on
their eagle gaze.
[3096] I had not struggled, toiled, suffered, made good, lived
like a Hottentot, so that my son should do the same.
[3097] I tiptoed out.
[3098] I
quite enjoyed playing my parts [⁁]through to the bitter end.
[3099] Since in this way I shirked the issue, have I to apologise for saying
so?
[3100] I let fall this suggestion for what it is worth.
[3101] And perfunctorily.
[3102] For in describing this day I am once more he who suffered it, who crammed
it full of futile anxious life, with no other purpose than his own
stultification[₰] and the means of not doing what he had to do.
[3103] And as then
my thoughts would have none of Molloy, so tonight my pen.
[3104] This confession
has been preying on my mind for some time past.
[3105] To have made it gives me
no relief.
- Segments
Molloy © 2016 Samuel Beckett Digital Manuscript Project.
Editors: Magessa O'Reilly, Dirk Van Hulle, Pim Verhulst and Vincent Neyt