The Complete Short Prose, 1929—1989 by Samuel Beckett

Author:Samuel Beckett
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780802198433
Publisher: Grove press

7

DID I TRY EVERYTHING, ferret in every hold, secretly, silently, patiently, listening? I’m in earnest, as so often, I’d like to be sure I left no stone unturned before reporting me missing and giving up. In every hold, I mean in all those places where there was a chance of my being, where once I used to lurk, waiting for the hour to come when I might venture forth, tried and trusty places, that’s all I meant when I said in every hold. Once, I mean in the days when I still could move, and feel myself moving, painfully, barely, but unquestionably changing position on the whole, the trees were witness, the sands, the air of the heights, the cobblestones. This tone is promising, it is more like that of old, of the days and nights when in spite of all I was calm, treading back and forth the futile road, knowing it short and easy seen from Sirius, and deadly calm at the heart of my frenzies. My question, I had a question, ah yes, did I try everything, I can see it still, but it’s passing, lighter than air, like a cloud, in moonlight, before the skylight, before the moon, like the moon, before the skylight. No, in its own way, I know it well, the way of an evening shadow you follow with your eyes, thinking of something else, yes, that’s it, the mind elsewhere, and the eyes too, if the truth were known, the eyes elsewhere too. Ah if there must be speech at least none from the heart, no, I have only one desire, if I have it still. But another thing, before the ones that matter, I have just time, if I make haste, in the trough of all this time just time. Another thing, I call that another thing, the old thing I keep on not saying till I’m sick and tired, revelling in the flying instants, I call that revelling, now’s my chance and I talk of revelling, it won’t come back in a hurry if I remember right, but come back it must with its riot of instants. It’s not me in any case, I’m not talking of me, I’ve said it a million times, no point in apologizing again, for talking of me, when there’s X, that paradigm of human kind, moving at will, complete with joys and sorrows, perhaps even a wife and brats, forebears most certainly, a carcass in God’s image and a contemporary skull, but above all endowed with movement, that’s what strikes you above all, with his likeness so easy to take and his so instructive soul, that really, no, to talk of oneself, when there’s X, no, what a blessing I’m not talking of myself, enough vile parrot I’ll kill you. And what if all this time I had not stirred hand or foot from the third-class waiting-room of the South-Eastern Railway Terminus, I never dared wait first on a third class ticket, and were

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