folly for to need to seem to glimpse afaint afar away over there what –
what –
what is the word –
what is the word
Appendix
Heard in the Dark 1
The last time you went out the snow lay on the ground. You now lying in the dark stand that morning on the sill having pulled the door gently to behind you. You lean back against the door with bowed head making ready to set out. By the time you open your eyes your feet have disappeared and the skirts of your greatcoat come to rest on the surface of the snow. The dark scene seems lit from below. You see yourself at that last outset leaning against the door with closed eyes waiting for the word from you to go. You? To be gone. Then the snowlit scene. You lie in the dark with closed eyes and see yourself there as described making ready to strike out and away across the expanse of light. You hear again the click of the door pulled gently to and the silence before the steps can start. Next thing you are on your way across the white pasture afrolic with lambs in spring and strewn with red placentae. You take the course you always take which is a beeline for the gap or ragged point in the quickset that forms the western fringe. Thither from your entering the pasture you need normally from eighteen hundred to two thousand paces depending on your humour and the state of the ground. But on this last morning many more will be necessary. Many many more. The beeline is so familiar to your feet that if necessary they could keep to it and you sightless with error on arrival of not more than a few feet north or south. And indeed without any such necessity unless from within this is what they normally do and not only here. For you advance if not with closed eyes though this as often as not at least with them fixed on the momentary ground before your feet. That is all of nature you have seen. Since you finally bowed your head. The fleeting ground before your feet. From time to time. You do not count your steps any more. For the simple reason they number each day the same. Average day in day out the same. The way being always the same. You keep count of the days and every tenth night multiply. And add. Your father’s shade is not with you any more. It fell out long ago. You do not hear your footfalls any more. Unhearing unseeing you go your way. Day after day. The same way. As if there were no other any more. For you there is no other any more. You used never to halt except to make your reckoning. So as to plod on from nought anew. This need removed as we have seen there is none in theory to halt any more. Save perhaps a moment at the outermost point. To gather yourself together for the return. And yet you do. As never before. Not for tiredness. You are no more tired now than you always were. Not because of age. You are no older now than you always were. And yet you halt as never before. So that the same hundred yards you used to cover in a matter of three to four minutes may now take you anything from fifteen to twenty. The foot falls unbidden in midstep or next for lift cleaves to the ground bringing the body to a stand. Then a speechlessness whereof the gist, Can they go on? Or better, Shall they go on? The barest gist. Stilled when finally as always hitherto they do. You lie in the dark with closed eyes and see the scene. As you could not at the time. The dark cope of sky. The dazzling land. You at a standstill in the midst. The quarterboots sunk to the tops. The skirts of the greatcoat resting on the snow. In the old bowed head in the old block hat speechless misgiving. Halfway across the pasture on your beeline to the gap. The unerring feet fast. You look behind you as you could not then and see their trail. A great swerve. Withershins. Almost as if all at once the heart too heavy. In the end too heavy.
Heard in the Dark 2
Bloom of adulthood. Try a whiff of that. On your back in the dark you remember. Ah you you remember. Cloudless May day. She joins you in the little summerhouse. Entirely of logs. Both larch and fir. Six feet across. Eight from floor to vertex. Area twenty-four square feet to furthest decimal. Two small multicoloured lights vis-à-vis. Small stained diamond panes. Under each a ledge. There on summer Sundays after his midday meal your father loved to retreat with Punch and a cushion. The waist of his trousers unbuttoned he sat on the one ledge and turned the pages. You on the other your feet dangling. When he chuckled you tried to chuckle too. When his chuckle died yours too. That you should try to imitate his chuckle pleased and amused him greatly and sometimes he would chuckle for no other reason than to hear you try to chuckle too. Sometimes you turn your head and look out through a rose-red pane. You press your little nose against the pane and all without is rosy. The years have flown and there at the same place as then you sit in the bloom of adulthood bathed in rainbow light gazing before you. She is late. You close your eyes and try to calculate the volume. Simple sums you find a help in times of trouble. A haven. You arrive in the end at seven cubic yards approximately. Even still in the timeless dark you find figures a comfort. You assume a certain heart rate and reckon how many thumps a day. A week. A month. A year. And assuming a certain lifetime a lifetime. Till the last thump. But for the moment with hardly more than seventy American billion behind you you sit in the little summerhouse working out the volume. Seven cubic yards approximately. This strikes you for some reason as improbable and you set about your sum anew. But you have not got very far when her light step is heard. Light for a woman of her size. You open with quickening pulse your eyes and a moment later that seems an eternity her face appears at the window. Mainly blue in this position the natural pallor you so admire as indeed from it no doubt wholly blue your own. For natural pallor is a property you have in common. The violet lips do not return your smile. Now this window being flush with your eyes from where you sit and the floor as near as no matter with the outer ground you cannot but wonder if she has not sunk to her knees. Knowing from experience that the height or length you have in common is the sum of equal segments. For when bolt upright or lying at full stretch you cleave front to front then your knees touch and your pubes and the hairs of your heads mingle. Does it follow from this that the loss of height for the body that sits is the same as for it that kneels? At this point assuming level of seat adjustable as in the case of certain piano stools you close your eyes the better with mental measure to measure and compare the first and second segments namely from sole to kneepad and thence to pelvic girdle. How given you were both moving and at rest to the closed eye in your waking hours! By day and by night. To that perfect dark. That shadowless light. Simply to be gone. Or for affair as now. A single leg appears. Seen from above. You separate the segments and lay them side by side. It is as you half surmised. The upper is the longer and the sitter’s loss the greater when seat at knee level. You leave the pieces lying there and open your eyes to find her sitting before you. All dead still. The ruby lips do not return your smile. Your gaze moves down to the breasts. You do not remember them so big. To the abdomen. Same impression. Dissolve to your father’s straining against the unbuttoned waistband. Can it be she is with child without your having asked for as much as her hand? You go back into your mind. She too did you but know it has closed her eyes. So you sit face to face in the little summerhouse. With eyes closed and hands on knees. In the bloom of your adulthood. In that rainbow light. That dead still.
About the Author
Samuel Beckett was born in Dublin in 1906. He was educated at Portora Royal School and Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated in 1927. His made his poetry debut in 1930 with Whoroscope and followed it with essays and two novels before World War Two. He wrote one of his most famous plays, Waiting for Godot, in 1949 but it wasn’t published in English until 1954. Waiting for Godot brought Beckett international fame and firmly established him as a leading figure in the Theatre of the Absurd. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1961. Beckett continued to write prolifically for radio, TV and the theatre until his death in 1989.
About the editor
Dirk Van Hulle (Centre for Manuscript Genetics, University of Antwerp) is co-director of the Beckett Digital Manuscript Project and the author of Manuscript Genetics: Joyce’s Know-How, Beckett’s Nohow. He is currently preparing an electronic genetic edition of Stirrings Still/Soubres
auts.
Titles in the Samuel Beckett series
ENDGAME
Preface by Rónán McDonald
COMPANY/ILL SEEN ILL SAID/WORSTWARD HO/STIRRINGS STILL
Edited by Dirk Van Hulle
KRAPP’S LAST TAPE AND OTHER SHORTER PLAYS
Preface by S. E. Gontarski
MURPHY
Edited by J. C. C. Mays
WATT
Edited by C. J. Ackerley
Forthcoming titles
MORE PRICKS THAN KICKS
Edited by Cassandra Nelson
ALL THAT FALL AND OTHER PLAYS FOR RADIO AND SCREEN
Preface by Everett Frost
MOLLOY
Edited by ShaneWeller
MALONE DIES
Edited by Peter Boxall
THE UNNAMABLE
Edited by Steven Connor
HOW IT IS
Edited by Magessa O’Reilly
HAPPY DAYS
Preface by James Knowlson
THE EXPELLED/THE CALMATIVE/THE END/FIRST LOVE
Edited by Christopher Ricks
WAITING FOR GODOT
Preface by Mary Bryden
TEXTS FOR NOTHING/RESIDUA/FIZZLES: SHORTER FICTION 1950–1981
Edited by Mark Nixon
MERCIER AND CAMIER
Edited by Sean Kennedy
SELECTED POEMS 1930–1988
Edited by David Wheatley
Copyright
This edition first published in 2009
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
This ebook edition first published in 2012
Company originally published as Compagnie, Les Éditions de Minuit 1980; first published in Great Britain by John Calder Publishers 1980.
Ill Seen Ill Said originally published as Mal vu mal dit, Les Éditions de Minuit 1981; first published in Great Britain by John Calder Publishers 1982.
Worstward Ho first published in Great Britain by John Calder Publishers 1983.
Stirrings Still first published in Great Britain by John Calder Publishers 1988; reprinted in As the Story Was Told, John Calder Publishers 1990.
One Evening originally published as Un Soir, Les Éditions de Minuit 1980; first published in Great Britain in JOBS 6, 1980; reprinted in As the Story was Told, John Calder Publishers 1990.
The Way first published in Great Britain by Faber & Faber 2009.
Ceiling first published in Great Britain by Thames & Hudson in Arikha (Richard Channin and others) 1985.
What is the Word (a translation of Comment dire) first published in Great Britain by the Sunday Correspondent 1989; reprinted in As The Story was Told, John Calder Publishers 1990.
Heard in the Dark 1 first published in Great Britain by John Calder Publishers in New Writing and Writers 17, 1980; reprinted in As the Story was Told, John Calder Publishers 1990.
Heard in the Dark 2 first published in Great Britain by John Calder Publishers in JOBS 5, 1979; reprinted in As the Story was Told, John Calder Publishers 1990.
All rights reserved
© The Estate of Samuel Beckett, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1996, 1999, 2002, 2009 Preface © Dirk Van Hulle, 2009
The right of Samuel Beckett to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
The right of Dirk Van Hulle to be identified as editor of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–26693–7
Company / Ill Seen Ill Said / Worstward Ho / Stirrings Still Page 10
