(New WORLD WRITING #5.....page)

SAMUEL BECKETT

MOLLOY

(section from the novel)

Born in Dublin, in 1906, of Irish parentage, Samuel Beckett went to Trinity College in Dublin. He has lectured at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, and has taught French at Trinity. In 1938, he settled in France as James Joyce's secretary. He began to write in French in 1945, and has since then written three novels, one play, poetry, and criticism. He is also the author of two novels in English — MURPHY and WATT — and various other books, including a collection of short stories entitled MORE KICKS THAN PRICKS. An examination of Mr. Beckett's work appears immediately after this opening section of his MOLLOY, to be published in the United States by Grove Press in 1954.

(Copyright, 1954, by Samuel Beckett)

I am in my mother's room. It's I who live there now.
I don't know how I got there. Perhaps in an ambulance, certainly
a vehicle of some kind. I was helped. I'd never have got there
alone. There's this man who comes every week. Perhaps I got
here thanks to him. He says not. He gives me money and takes
away the pages. So many pages, so much money. Yes, I work now,
a little like I used to, except that I don't know how to work
any more. That doesn't matter, apparently. What I'd like now
is to speak of the things that are left, say my good-byes, finish
dying. They don't want that. Yes, they're more than one, apparently.
But it's always the same one that comes. You'll do that later,
he says. Good. The truth is I haven't much will left. When he
comes for the fresh pages he brings back the previous week's.
They are marked with signs I don't understand. Anyway I don't
read them. When I've done nothing he gives me nothing, he scolds
me. Yet I don't work for money. For what then? I don't know.
The truth is I don't know much. For example my mother's death.
Was she already dead when I came? Or did she only die later?

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I mean enough to bury. I don't know. Perhaps they haven't buried her yet. In any case I have her room. I sleep in her bed. I piss and shit in her pot. I have taken her place. I must resemble her more and more. All I need now is a son. Perhaps I have one somewhere. But I think not. He would be old now, nearly as old as me. It was a little chambermaid. It wasn't real love. The real love was in another. We'll come to that. Her name? I've forgotten it again. It seems to me sometimes that I even knew my son, that I helped him. Then I tell myself it is impossible. It is impossible I could ever have helped anyone. I've forgotten how to spell too, and half the words. That doesn't matter apparently. Good. He's a queer eard who comes to see me. He comes every Sunday apparently. The other days he isn't free. He's always thirsty. It was he, who told me I'd begun all wrong, that I should have begun differently. He must be right. I began at the beginning, like an old fool, can you imagine that. Here's my beginning. Because they're keeping it apparently. I took a lot of trouble with it. Here it is. It gave me a lot of trouble. It was the beginning, you see. Whereas now it's nearly the end. Is what I do now any better? I don't know. That's beside the point. Here's my beginning. It must mean something, since they're keeping it. Here it is.

This time, then once more I think, then perhaps a last time, then I think it'll be over, with that world too. Premonition of the last but one but one. All grows dim. A little more, and you'll go blind. It's in the head. It doesn't work any more, it says, I don't work any more. You go dumb as well and sounds fade. The threshold scareely crossed that's how it is. It's the head.

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It must have had enough. So that you say, I'll manage this time,
then perhaps once more, then perhaps a last time, then nothing
more. You are hard set to formulate this thought, for it is one,
in a sense. Then you try to pay attention, to consider with
attention all those dim things, saying to yourself, laboriously,
It's my fault. Fault? That was the word. But what fault? It's
not goodbye, and what magic in those dim things to which it will
be time enough, when next they pass, to say goodbye. For you must
say goodbye, it would be folly not to say goodbye, when the time
comes. If you think of the forms and light of other days it is
without regret. But you seldom think of them, with what would
you think of them? I don't know. People pass too, hard to
distinguish from yourself. That is discouraging. That's how I
say A and B going slowly towards each other, unconscious of what
they were doing. It was on a road remarkably bare, I mean without
hedges or ditches or any kind of border, in the country, for cows
were chewing in enormous fields, lying and standing, in the
evening silence. Perhaps I'm inventing a little, perhaps
embellishing, but on the whole that's how it was. They chew,
swallow, then after a short pause effortlessly bring up the next
mouthful. A neck muscle stirs and the jaws begin to grind again.
But perhaps I'm remembering things. The road, hard and white,
seared the tender pastures, rose and fell at the whim of hills
and hollows. The town wasn't far. It was two men, unmistakably,
one short and one tall. They had left the town, first one, then
the other, and the first, weary or remembering a duty, had

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retraced his steps. (The air was sharp, for they wore greatcoats.
They looked alike, but no more than others do. At first a wide
space lay between them. 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 deep, but deep enough, deep enough.
But the moment came when together they went down into the same
trough and in this trough finally met. To say they were acquainted,
no, nothing warrants it. 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. 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 often do, without there
being anything extraordinary about it. But they knew each other
perhaps. Now in any case they do, now I think they will know
each other, greet each other, even in the depths of the town.
They turned towards the sea which, far in the east, beyond the
fields, climbed high in the waning sky; and exchanged a few
words. Then each went on his way. Each went on his way, A
towards the town, B by ways he seemed hardly to know, or not at
all, for he went with uncertain steps 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.
The treacherous hills where fearfully he ventured were no doubt,

only known to him from afar, seen perhaps from his bedroom window
or, one black day, from the summit of a monument which, having
nothing in particular to do and turning to height for solace he
had paid his few coppers to climb, up the winding stones. From
there he must have seen it all, the plain, the sea, and then these
very hills that some call mountains, indigo in places in the
evening light, their serried ranges crowding to the sky-line,
cloven with hidden valleys that the eye divines from sudden shifts
of colour and then from other signs for which there are no words,
nor even thoughts. But all are not divined, even from that height,
and often where only one escarpment is supposed, and one crest, in
reality there are two, two escarpments, two crests, riven by a
valley. But now he knows these hills, that is he knows them better,
and if ever again he sees them from afar it will be, I think, with
other eyes, and not only that but the within, all that inner space
one never sees, the brain and heart and other caverns where thought
and feeling hold their sabbath, all that too quite differently
disposed. He looks old and it is a sorry sight to see him solitary
after so many years, so many days and nights unthinkingly given to
that rumour rising at birth and even earlier, What shall I do? What
shall I do? now low, a murmur, now precise as the headwaiter's
And to follow? and often rising to a scream. And in the end, or
almost, to be abroad alone, by unknown ways, in the gathering
night, with a stick. It was a stout stick, he used it to thrust
himself onward, or as a defence, when the time came, against dogs
and marauders. Yes, night was gathering, but the man was innocent,

rather for what doesn't stir, or stirs so slowly that a child would scorn it, let alone an old man. However that may be, I mean whether he saw me or whether he didn't, I repeat I watched him recede, at grips (myself) with the temptation to get up and follow him, perhaps even to catch up on him one day, so as to know him better, be myself less lonely. But in spite of my soul's leap out to him, at the end of its elastic, I saw him only darkly, because of the dark and then because of the terrain, in the folds of which he disappeared from time to time, to re-emerge further on, but most of all I think because of other things calling me and towards which too one after the other my soul was straining, unmethodical, distracted. I mean of course the fields, whitening under the dew, and the animals, ceasing from wandering and settling for the night, and the sea, of which nothing, and the sharpening line of crests, and the sky where without seeing them I felt the first stars tremble, and my hand on my knee and above all the other wayfarer, A or C, I don't remember, going resignedly home. Yes, towards my hand also, which my knee felt tremble and of which my eyes saw the wrist only, the heavily veined back, the pallid rows of knuckles. But that is not, I mean my hand, what I wish to speak of now, everything in due course, but A or B returning to the town he had just left. But after all what was there particularly urban in his aspect? He was bare-headed, wore sand-shoes, smoked a cigar. He moved with a kind of loitering indolence which rightly or wrongly seemed to me expressive. But all that proved nothing, refuted nothing. Perhaps he had come from afar, from the other end of the island even, and was approaching the town for the first time or returning to it

cur you meet, carry it the time needed for it to love you and you
it, then throw it away. Perhaps he had come to that, in spite of
appearances. He disappeared, his head on his chest, the smoking
object in his hand. Let me try and explain. From things about
to disappear I turn away in time. To watch them out of sight, no,
I can't do it. It was in this sense he disappeared. Looking away
I thought of him, saying, He dwindles, dwindles. I knew what I
meant. I knew I could catch him, lame as I was. I had only to
want to. And yet no, for I did want to. To get up, to get to
the road, to set hobbling off in pursuit of him, to hail him, what
could be easier. He hears my cries, turns, waits for me. I am up
against him, up against the dog, gasping, between my crutches. He
is a little frightened of me, a little sorry for me, I disgust him
not a little. I am not a pretty sight, I don't smell good. What
is it I want? Ah that tone I know, compounded of pity, of fear, of
disgust. I want to see the dog, see the man, at close quarters,
know what smokes, inspect the shoes, find out other things. He is
kind, tells me of this and of that and of other things, whence he
comes, whither he goes. I believe him, I know it's my only chance
to my only chance, I believe all I'm told, I've disbelieved
only too much in my long life, now I swallow everything, avidly.
What I need now is stories, it took me a long time to know that,
and I'm not sure of it. There I am then, informed as to certain
things, knowing certain things about him, things I didn't know,
things that troubled me, even things that never troubled me. What
language. I am even capable of having learnt what his profession
is, I who am so interested in professions. And to think I try my

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best not to talk about myself. In a moment I shall talk about the
cows, about the sky, if I can. There I am then, he leaves me, he's
in a hurry. He didn't seem to be in a hurry, he was loitering, I've
already said so, but after three minutes talking with me he is in
a hurry, he has to hurry. I believe him. And once again I am I
will not say alone, no, that's not like me, but, how shall I say,
I don't know, restored to myself, no, I never left myself, free,
yes, I don't know what that means but it's the word I intend to
use, free to do what, to do nothing, to know, but what, the laws
of the mind perhaps, of my mind, that for example water rises in
proportion as it drowns you and that you would do better, at least
no worse, to obliterate texts than to blacken margins, to fill in
the holes of words till all is blank and flat and the whole ghastly
business looks like what it is, senseless, speechless, issueless
misery. So I doubtless did better, at least no worse, not to
disturb myself from my observation post. But, instead of observing
I had the weakness to return in spirit to the other, the man with
the stick. Then the murmurs began again. To restore silence is
the role of objects. I said, who knows if he hasn't simply come
out to take the air, relax, stretch his legs, disinflame his brain
by stamping the blood down to his feet, so as to ensure himself a
good night, a joyous awakening, an enchanted morrow. Was he
garrying as much as a scrip? But this gait, the anxious looks, the
club, could these be reconciled with one's conception of what is
called a little turn. But the hat, a town hat, an old-fashioned
town hat, which the least wind would carry far away. Unless it
was attached under the chin, by means of a string or an elastic,

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was A one day at one place, then B another at another, then a
third the rock and I, and so on for the other components,
the cows, the sky, the sea, the mountains. I can't believe it.
No, I will not lie, I can easily conceive it. No matter, no matter,
let us go on, as if all arose from one and the same weariness,
on and on hoarding, until there is no room, no light, for anymore.
What is certain is that the man with the stick did not pass by
again that night, because I would have heard him, if he had.
I don't say I would have seen him, I say I would have heard him.
I sleep little and that little in the daytime. Oh not systematically,
in my life without end I have dabbled with every kind of sleep, but
at the time now coming back to me I took my doze in the daytime and,
what is more, in the morning. Let me hear nothing of the moon, in
my night there is no moon, and if it happens that I speak of the
stars it's inadvertently. Now of all the noises that night not one
was of those heavy uncertain steps, or of that club with which he
sometimes smote the earth until it quaked. How agreeable it is to be
confirmed, after a more or less long period of vacillation, in one's
first impressions. Perhaps that is what tempers the pangs of death.
Not that I was so conclusively, I mean confirmed, in my first im-
pressions with regard to <u>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;M&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</u> wait <u>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;M&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</u> C. For the wagons and carts
which a little before dawn went thundering by, on their way to market
with fruit, eggs, butter, and perhaps cheese, in one of these perhaps
he would have been found, overcome by fatigue or by discouragement,
perhaps even dead. Or he might have gone back to the town by another
way too far away for me to hear its sounds, or by little paths through
the fields, crushing the silent grass, pounding the silent ground. And

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