Murphy

by Samuel Beckett

  ‘Pleased,’ said Cathleen.

  ‘Why the—,’ said Neary, ‘is light given to a man whose way is hid.’

  ‘Pardon,’ said Cathleen.

  ‘Two large coffees,’ said Wylie. ‘Three star.’

  One gulp of this and Neary’s way was clearer.

  ‘Now tell us all about it,’ said Wylie. ‘Keep back nothing.’

  ‘The limit of Cork endurance had been reached,’ said Neary. ‘That Red Branch bum was the camel’s back.’

  ‘Drink a little more of your coffee,’ said Wylie.

  Neary drank a little more.

  ‘What are you doing in this kip at all?’ said Wylie. ‘Why aren’t you in Cork?’

  ‘My grove on Grand Parade,’ said Neary, ‘is wiped as a man wipeth a plate, wiping it and turning it upside down.’

  ‘And your whiskers?’ said Wylie.

  ‘Suppressed without pity,’ said Neary, ‘in discharge of a vow, never again to ventilate a virility denied discharge into its predestined channel.’

  ‘These are dark sayings,’ said Wylie.

  Neary turned his cup upside down.

  ‘Needle,’ he said, ‘as it is with the love of the body, so with the friendship of the mind, the full is only reached by admittance to the most retired places. Here are the pudenda of my psyche.’

  ‘Cathleen,’ cried Wylie.

  ‘But betray me,’ said Neary, ‘and you go the way of Hippasos.’

  ‘The Akousmatic, I presume,’ said Wylie. ‘His retribution slips my mind.’

  ‘Drowned in a puddle,’ said Neary, ‘for having divulged the incommensurability of side and diagonal.’

  ‘So perish all babblers,’ said Wylie.

  ‘And the construction of the regular dodeca – hic – dodecahedron,’ said Neary. ‘Excuse me.’

  Neary’s account, expurgated, accelerated, improved and reduced, of how he came to reach the end of Cork endurance, gives the following.

  No sooner had Miss Dwyer, despairing of recommending herself to Flight-Lieutenant Elliman, made Neary as happy as a man could desire, than she became one with the ground against which she had figured so prettily. Neary wrote to Herr Kurt Koffka demanding an immediate explanation. He had not yet received an answer.

  The problem then became how to break with the morsel of chaos without hurting its feelings. The plaisir de rompre, for Murphy the rationale of social contacts, was alien to Neary. He insisted, by word and deed, that he was not worthy of her, a hackneyed device that had the desired effect. And it was not long before Miss Dwyer had made Flight-Lieutenant Elliman, despairing of recommending himself to Miss Farren of Ringsakiddy, as happy as a Flight-Lieutenant could desire.

  Then Neary met Miss Counihan, in the month of March, ever since when his relation toward her had been that post-mortem of Dives to Lazarus, except that there was no Father Abraham to put in a good word for him. Miss Counihan was sorry, her breast was preoccupied. She was touched and flattered, but her affections were in bond. The happy man, since Neary would press his breast to the thorn, was Mr. Murphy, one of his former scholars.

  ‘Holy God!’ said Wylie.

  ‘That long hank of Apollonian asthenia,’ groaned Neary, ‘that schizoidal spasmophile, occupying the breast of angel Counihan. Can such things be!’

  ‘A notable wet indeed,’ said Wylie. ‘He addressed me once.’

  ‘The last time I saw him,’ said Neary, ‘he was saving up for a Drinker artificial respiration machine to get into when he was fed up breathing.’

  ‘He expressed the hope, I remember,’ said Wylie, ‘that I might get safely back to my bottle of hay before someone found me.’

  Neary’s heart (when not suspended) not only panted after Miss Counihan, but bled for her into the bargain, for he was convinced that she had been abandoned. He recalled how Murphy had boasted of conducting his amours on the lines laid down by Fletcher’s Sullen Shepherd. And the terms he had used in speaking of Miss Counihan did not suggest that he had earmarked her for special treatment.

  Murphy had left the Gymnasium the previous February, about a month before Neary met Miss Counihan. Since then the only news of him was that he had been seen in London on Maundy Thursday late afternoon, supine on the grass in the Cockpit in Hyde Park, alone and plunged in a torpor from which all efforts to rouse him had proved unsuccessful.

  Neary besieged Miss Counihan with attentions, sending her mangoes, orchids, Cuban cigarettes and a passionately autographed copy of his tractate, The Doctrine of the Limit. If she did not acknowledge these gifts, at least she did not return them, so that Neary continued to hope. Finally she gave him a forenoon appointment at the grave of Father Prout (F. S. Mahony) in Shandon Churchyard, the one place in Cork she knew of where fresh air, privacy and immunity from assault were reconciled.

  Neary arrived with a superb bunch of cattleyas, which on her arrival two hours later she took graciously from him and laid on the slab. She then made a statement designed to purge the unhappy man of such remaining designs on her person as he might happen to cherish.

  She was set aside for Murphy, who had torn himself away to set up for his princess, in some less desolate quarter of the globe, a habitation meet for her. When he had done this he would come flying back to claim her. She had not heard from him since his departure, and therefore did not know where he was, or what exactly he was doing. This did not disquiet her, as he had explained before he left that to make good and love, were it only by letter, at one and the same time, was more than he could manage. Consequently he would not write until he had some tangible success to report. She would not inflict needless pain on Neary by enlarging on the nature of her feeling for Mr. Murphy, enough had been said to make it clear that she could not tolerate his propositions. If he were not gentleman enough to desist on his own bottom, she would have him legally restrained.

  At this point Neary paused and buried his face in his hands.

  ‘My poor friend,’ said Wylie.

  Neary reached forward with his hands across the marble top to Wylie, who seized them in an ecstasy of compassion and began to massage them. Neary closed his eyes. In vain. The human eye-lid is not teartight (happily for the human eye). In the presence of such grief Wylie felt purer than at any time since his second communion.

  ‘Do not tell me any more,’ he said, ‘if it gives you so much pain.’

  ‘Two in distress,’ said Neary, ‘make sorrow less.’

  To free the hand from sympathetic pressure is an operation requiring such an exquisite touch that Neary decided he had better not attempt it. The ruse he adopted so that Wylie might not be wounded was to beg for a cigarette. He went further, he suffered his cup to be replenished.

  Miss Counihan, her statement concluded, turned to go. Neary sank on one knee, on both knees, and begged her to hear him in a voice so hoarse with anguish that she turned back.

  ‘Mr. Neary,’ she said, almost gently, ‘I am sorry if I have seemed to speak unfeelingly. Believe me, I have nothing against you personally. If I were not – er – disposed of, I might even learn to like you, Mr. Neary. But you must understand that I am not free to – er – do justice to your addresses. Try and forget me, Mr. Neary.’

  Wylie rubbed his hands.

  ‘Things are looking up,’ he said.

  Again she turned to go, again Neary stayed her, this time with the assurance that what he had to say concerned not himself but Murphy. He described the position in which that knighterrant had last been heard of.

  ‘London!’ exclaimed Miss Counihan. ‘The Mecca of every young aspirant to fiscal distinction.’

  This was a balloon that Neary quickly punctured, with a sketch of the phases through which the young aspirant in London had to pass before he could call himself an old suspirant. He then made what he would always regard as the greatest blunder of his career. He began to disparage Murphy.

  That afternoon he shaved off his whiskers.

  He did not see her again for nearly four months, when she knocke
d into him skilfully in the Mall. She looked ill (she was ill). It was August and still she had no news of Murphy. Was there no means of getting in touch with him. Neary, who had already gone deeply into this question, replied that he could not think of any. He seemed to have only one person belonging to him, a demented uncle who spent his time between Amsterdam and Scheveningen. Miss Counihan went on to say that she could not very well renounce a young man, such a nice young man, who for all she knew to the contrary was steadily amassing a large fortune so that she might not be without any of the little luxuries to which she was accustomed, and whom of course she loved very dearly, unless she had superlative reasons for doing so, such for example as would flow from a legally attested certificate of his demise, a repudiation of her person under his own hand and seal, or overwhelming evidence of infidelity and economic failure. She welcomed the happy chance that allowed her to communicate this – er – modified view of the situation to Mr. Neary, looking so much more – er – youthful without his whiskers, on the very eve of her departure to Dublin, where Wynn’s Hotel would always find her.

  The next morning Neary closed the Gymnasium, put a padlock on the Grove, sunk both keys in the Lee and boarded the first train for Dublin, accompanied by his âme damnée and man-of-all-work, Cooper.

  Cooper’s only visible humane characteristic was a morbid craving for alcoholic depressant. So long as he could be kept off the bottle he was an invaluable servant. He was a low-sized, clean-shaven, grey-faced, one-eyed man, triorchous and a non-smoker. He had a curious hunted walk, like that of a destitute diabetic in a strange city. He never sat down and never took off his hat.

  This ruthless tout was now launched in pursuit of Murphy, with the torpor in the Cockpit as the only clue. But many a poor wretch had been nailed by Cooper with very much less to work on. While Cooper was combing London, where he would stay at the usual stew, Neary would be working a line of his own in Dublin, where Wynn’s Hotel would always find him. When Cooper found Murphy, all he had to do was to notify Neary by wire.

  A feature of Miss Counihan’s attitude to Neary had been the regularity of its alternation. Having shown herself cruel, kind, cruel and kind in turn, she could no more welcome his arrival at her hotel than green, yellow, green is a legitimate sequence of traffic lights.

  Either he left the hotel or she did. He did, so that at least he might know whose were the happy beds and breakfasts. If he attempted to speak to her again before he had equipped himself with the – er – discharge papers aforesaid, she would send for the police.

  Neary crawled to the nearest station doss. All depended now on Cooper. If Cooper failed him he would simply post himself early one morning outside her hotel and as soon as she came tripping down the steps take salts of lemon.

  In the meantime there was little he could do. He began feebly to look for a thread that might lead him to Murphy among the nobility, tradesmen and gentry of that name in Dublin, but soon left off, appalled. He instructed the hall porter in Wynn’s to send any telegrams addressed to him from London across the street to Mooney’s, where he would always be found. There he sat all day, moving slowly from one stool to another until he had completed the circuit of the counters, when he would start all over again in the reverse direction. He did not speak to the curates, he did not drink the endless half-pints of porter that he had to buy, he did nothing but move slowly round the ring of counters, first in one direction, then in the other, thinking of Miss Counihan. When the house closed at night he went back to the doss and dossed, and in the morning he did not get up until shortly before the house was due to open. The hour from 2.30 to 3.30 he devoted to having himself shaved to the pluck. The whole of Sunday he spent in doss, as the hall porter at Wynn’s was aware, thinking of Miss Counihan. The power to stop his heart had deserted him.

  ‘My poor friend,’ said Wylie.

  ‘Till this morning,’ said Neary. Feeling his mouth beginning to twitch he covered it with his hand. In vain. The face is an organised whole. ‘Or rather this afternoon,’ he said, directly he was able.

  He had reached the turn and was thinking of ebbing back when the boots from Wynn’s came in and handed him a telegram. FOUND STOP LOOK SLIPPY STOP COOPER. He was still laughing and crying, to the great relief of the curates, who had grown to detest and dread that frozen face day after day at their counters, when the boots returned with a second telegram. LOST STOP STOP WHERE YOU ARE STOP COOPER.

  ‘I have a confused recollection,’ said Neary, ‘of being thrown out.’

  ‘The curate mentality,’ said Wylie.

  ‘Then nothing more,’ said Neary, ‘until that deathless rump was trying to stare me down.’

  ‘But there is no rump,’ said Wylie. ‘How could there be? What chance would a rump have in the G.P.O.?’

  ‘I tell you I saw it,’ said Neary, ‘trying to downface me.’

  Wylie told him what happened next.

  ‘Do not quibble,’ said Neary harshly. ‘You saved my life. Now palliate it.’

  ‘I greatly fear,’ said Wylie, ‘that the syndrome known as life is too diffuse to admit of palliation. For every symptom that is eased, another is made worse. The horse leech’s daughter is a closed system. Her quantum of wantum cannot vary.’

  ‘Very prettily put,’ said Neary.

  ‘For an example of what I mean,’ said Wylie, ‘you have merely to consider the young Fellow of Trinity College—’

  ‘Merely is excellent,’ said Neary.

  ‘He sought relief in insulin,’ said Wylie, ‘and cured himself of diabetes.’

  ‘Poor old chap,’ said Neary. ‘Relief from what?’

  ‘The sweated sinecure,’ said Wylie.

  ‘I don’t wonder at Berkeley,’ said Neary. ‘He had no alternative. A defence mechanism. Immaterialise or bust. The sleep of sheer terror. Compare the opossum.’

  ‘The advantage of this view,’ said Wylie, ‘is, that while one may not look forward to things getting any better, at least one need not fear their getting any worse. They will always be the same as they always were.’

  ‘Until the system is dismantled,’ said Neary.

  ‘Supposing that to be permitted,’ said Wylie.

  ‘From all of which I am to infer,’ said Neary, ‘correct me if I am wrong, that the possession – Deus det! – of angel Counihan will create an aching void to the same amount.’

  ‘Humanity is a well with two buckets,’ said Wylie, ‘one going down to be filled, the other coming up to be emptied.’

  ‘What I make on the swings of Miss Counihan,’ said Neary, ‘if I understand you, I lose on the roundabouts of the non-Miss Counihan.’

  ‘Very prettily put,’ said Wylie.

  ‘There is no non-Miss Counihan,’ said Neary.

  ‘There will be,’ said Wylie.

  ‘Help there to be,’ cried Neary, clasping his hands, ‘in this Coney Eastern Island that is Neary, some Chinese attractions other than Miss Counihan.’

  ‘Now you are talking,’ said Wylie. ‘When you ask for heal-all you are not talking. But when you ask for a single symptom to be superseded, then I am bound to admit that you are talking.’

  ‘There is only the one symptom,’ said Neary. ‘Miss Counihan.’

  ‘Well,’ said Wylie, ‘I do not think we should have much difficulty in finding a substitute.’

  ‘I declare to my God,’ said Neary, ‘sometimes you talk as great tripe as Murphy.’

  ‘Once a certain degree of insight has been reached,’ said Wylie, ‘all men talk, when talk they must, the same tripe.’

  ‘Should you happen at any time,’ said Neary, ‘to feel like derogating from the general to the particular, remember I am here, and on the alert.’

  ‘My advice to you is this,’ said Wylie. ‘Leave to-night for the Great Wen—’

  ‘What folly is this?’ said Neary.

  ‘Having first written to Miss Counihan how happy you are to be able to inform her at last that all the necessary passports and credentials to her prec
incts are in hand. Hers to wipe her – er – feet on. No more. No word of having gone, no note of passion. She will sit as one might say pretty—’

  ‘One might well,’ said Neary.

  ‘For a day or two and then, in great distress of mind, lay herself out to knock into you in the street. Instead of which I shall knock into her.’

  ‘What folly is this?’ said Neary. ‘You don’t know her.’

  ‘Not know her is it,’ said Wylie, ‘when there is no single aspect of her natural body with which I am not familiar.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Neary.

  ‘I have worshipped her from afar,’ said Wylie.

  ‘How far?’ said Neary.

  ‘Yes,’ said Wylie pensively, ‘all last June, through Zeiss glasses, at a watering place.’ He fell into a reverie, which Neary was a big enough man to respect. ‘What a bust!’ he cried at length, as though galvanised by this point in his reflections. ‘All centre and no circumference!’

  ‘No doubt,’ said Neary, ‘but is it germane? You knock into her in the street. What then?’

  ‘After the prescribed exchanges,’ said Wylie, ‘she asks casually have I seen you. From that moment she is lost.’

  ‘But if it is merely a matter of getting me out of the way,’ said Neary, ‘while you work up Miss Counihan, why need I go to London? Why not Bray?’

  The thought of going to London was distasteful to Neary for a number of reasons, of which by no means the least cogent was the presence there of his second deserted wife. Strictly speaking this woman, a née Cox, was not his wife, and he owed her no duty, since his first deserted wife was alive and well in Calcutta. But the lady in London did not take this view and neither did her legal advisers. Wylie knew something of this position.

  ‘To control Cooper,’ said Wylie, ‘who has probably gone on the booze or been got at or both.’

  ‘But would it not be possible,’ said Neary, ‘with your priceless collaboration, to work it from this end altogether and drop Murphy?’

  ‘I greatly fear,’ said Wylie, ‘that so long as Murphy is even a remote possibility Miss Counihan will not parley. All I can do is establish you firmly in the position of first come-down.’