Digital Manuscript ProjectThat Time / Cette fois

A
[0046] none ever came but the child on the stone among the giant nettles
with the sun light coming in where the wall had fallen down
poring on his book well on into the night some moods the
moonlight till they(d they'd & they all be out on the roads looking for
him or making up talk splitting breaking up two or more talking
to himself that way being together that way where none
ever came
perhaps fear of ejection having clearly no business in
the place to say nothing of the shocking appearance [stet] [
stet] loathsome appearance so
this look round for once at your fellow men and women bastards
thanking God for onceb bad and all as you were you were
not as they till it dawned that for all the reprobation abhorrence loathing
[0050] you were getting you might as well not have been there
at all the eyes passing over you and going through you
as though you were like so much thin air never dwelling with
the wonted abhorrence but passing by youor over you or was that the time
clean through you like so much thin air
or was that another time an earlier time a later another place another time
[0049] eleven or twelve in the ruin on the flat stone among the
nettles in the dark or moonlight muttering away now one
voice now another there was childhood for you till sitting
there on the doorstep in the pale sun you found youself at
it again not a curse for the passers pausing to gape at
the scandal huddled there in the sun where it had no war-
rant clutching the nightbag drooling away out loud eyes closed and the
white hair pouring out down from under the hat and so sat
on in that pale sun forgetting it all
B
[0045] or alone in the same the same scenes making it up that
way to keep going keep it going keep it out on the stone
for example alone on the end of the stone with the wheat a
and blue or the towpath alone on the towpath with the
ghosts of the mules watching the drowned rat or bird or
whatever it was floating off into the sunset till you
could see it no more nothing stirring only the water and
the sun going down till it went down and you vanished all
vanished
A
[0052] making it all up on the doorstep as you went along making yourself all
up again for the millionth tieme forgetting it all where
you were and what for Foley's Folly and the lot the child's
ruin you came to look was it still there to sit hide in again
till it was night and time to go till that time came
B
[0048] or that time alone on your back in the sand and no vows
to break the peace when was that an earlier time a later
time before she came after she went or both before she
came after she was gone and you back in the old scene
wheatever it might be might have been the same old scene
before as then then as after with the rat or the wheat
the yellowing ears or that time in the sand the glider
that passed passing over that time you went back soon after long
after
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That Time / Cette fois © 2022 Samuel Beckett Digital Manuscript Project.
Editors: James Little and Vincent Neyt