Three Novels: Malloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable

by Samuel Beckett

  At the particular moment I am referring to (I mean when I took myself for Mahood) I must have been coming to the end of a world tour - perhaps not more than two or three centuries to go. My state of decay lends colour to this view: perhaps I had left my leg behind in the Pacific. Yes (no perhaps about it), I had: somewhere off the coast of Java and its jungles red with rafflesia stinking of carrion. (No, that's the Indian ocean - what a gazetteer I am! No matter, somewhere round there.) In a word I was returning to the fold. Admittedly reduced - and doubtless fated to be even more so, before I could be restored to my wife and parents (you know, my loved ones), and clasp in my arms (both of which I had succeeded in preserving) my little ones born in my absence.

  I found myself in a kind of vast yard or campus, surrounded by high walls, in surface an amalgam of dirt and ashes - and this seemed sweet to me after the vast and heaving wastes I had traversed (if my information was correct). I almost felt out of danger! At the centre of this enclosure stood a small rotunda - windowless, but well furnished with loopholes. Without being quite sure I had seen it before, I had been so long from home, I kept saying to myself: "Yonder is the nest you should never have left, there your dear absent ones are awaiting your return, patiently, and you too must be patient." It was swarming with them: grandpa, grandma, little mother and the eight or nine brats. With their eyes glued to the slits and their hearts going out to me they surveyed my efforts. This yard so long deserted was now enlivened, for them, by me. So we turned, in our respective orbits: I without, they within. At night, keeping watch by turns, they observed me with the help of a searchlight.

  So the seasons came and went. The children increased in stature, the periods of Ptomaine grew pale, the ancients glowered at each other, muttering (to themselves): "I'll bury you yet" or "You'll bury me yet". Since my arrival they had a subject of conversation, and even of discussion (the same as of old, at the moment of my setting forth), perhaps even an interest in life (the same as of old). Time hung less heavy on their hands.

  "What about throwing him a few scraps?" "No, no, it might upset him." They did not want to check the impetus that was sweeping me towards them. "You wouldn't know him!" "True, papa, and yet you can't mistake him." They who in the ordinary way never answered when spoken to: my elders, my wife (she who had chosen me, rather than one of her suitors). "A few more summers and he'll be in our midst. Where am I going to put him? In the basement?" (Perhaps after all I am simply in the basement.) "What possesses him to be stopping all the time?" "Oh he was always like that, ever since he was a mite - always stopping, wasn't he, Granny?" "Yes indeed, never easy, always stopping."

  According to Mahood I never reached them - that is to say they all died first, the whole ten or eleven of them, carried off by sausage-poisoning, in great agony. Incommoded first by their shrieks, then by the stench of decomposition, I turned sadly away.

  But not so fast, otherwise we'll never arrive. (It's no longer I in any case.)

  "He'll never reach us if he doesn't get a move on. He looks as if he had slowed down, since last year." "Oh the last laps won't take him long." (My missing leg didn't seem to affect them, perhaps it was already missing when I left.) "What about throwing him a sponge?" "No, no, it might confuse him."

  In the evening, after supper, while my wife kept her eye on me, gaffer and gammer related my life history, to the sleepy children. Bedtime story atmosphere. (That's one of Mahood's favourite tricks: to produce ostensibly independent testimony in support of my historical existence.) The instalment over, all joined in a hymn: "Safe in the arms of Jesus" (for example), or "Jesus lover of my soul, let me to they bosom fly" (for example). Then they went to bed (with the exception of the one on watch duty).

  My parents differed in their views on me, but they were agreed I had been a fine baby, at the very beginning - the first fortnight or three weeks. "And yet he was a fine baby" - with these words they invariably closed their relations. Often they fell silent, engulfed in their memories. Then it was usual for one of the children to launch, by way of envoy, the consecrated phrase "And yet he was a fine baby". A burst of clear and innocent laughter, from the mouths of those whom sleep had not yet overcome, greeted this premature conclusion. And the narrators themselves, torn from their melancholy thoughts, could scarce forbear to smile. Then they all rose (with the exception of my mother whose knees couldn't support her) and sang "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild" (for example), or "Jesus my one, my all, hear me when I call" (for example). (He too must have been a fine baby.)

  Finally my wife announced the latest news, for them to take to bed with them: "He's backing away again", or "He's stopped to scratch himself", or "You should have seen him hopping sidelong", or "Oh look children, quick he's down on his hands and knee". (Admittedly that must have been worth seeing.) It was then customary that someone should ask her if I was approaching none the less, if in spite of everything I was making headway: they couldn't bear the thought of going to bed (those who were still awake) without the assurance that I wasn't losing ground. Ptoto set their minds at rest: I had moved, no further proof was needed. I had been drawing near for so long now that provided I remained in motion there could be no cause for anxiety. I was launched, there was no reason why I should suddenly begin to retreat, I just wasn't made that way. Then having kissed all round and wished one another happy dreams they retired (with the exception of the watch).

  "What about hailing him?" Poor Papa, he burned to encourage me vocally: "Stick it, lad, it's your last winter." But in view of the trouble I was having, the trouble I was taking, they held him back, pointing out that the moment was ill-chosen to give me a shock.

  But what were my own feelings at this period? What was I thinking of? With what? Was I having difficulty with my morale? The answer to all that is this (I quote Malone): that I was entirely absorbed in the business on hand and was not at all concerned to know precisely (or even approximately) what it consisted in. The only problem for me was how to continue (since I could not do otherwise), to the best of my declining powers, in the motion which had been imparted to me. This obligation (and the quasi-impossibility of fulfilling it) engrossed me in a purely mechanical way (excluding notably the free play of the intelligence and sensibility). So that my situation rather resembled that of an old broken-down cart- or bat-horse unable to receive the least information either from its instinct or from its observation as to whether it is moving towards the stable or away from it (and not greatly caring either way). The question, among others, of how such things are possible had long since ceased to preoccupy me.

  This touching picture of my situation I found by no means unattractive, and as I recall it I find myself wondering again if I was not in fact the creature revolving in the yard (as Mahood assured me). Well supplied with pain-killers I drew upon them freely, without however permitting myself the lethal dose that would have cut short my function (whatever that may have been). Having somehow or other remarked the habitation and even admitted to myself that I had perhaps seen it before, I gave it no further thought - nor to the near and dear ones that filled it to overflowing, in a mounting fever of impatience.

  Though now close at hand, as the crow flies, to my goal, I did not quicken my step. I could have no doubt, but I had to husband my strength, if I was ever to arrive. I had no wish to arrive, but I had to do my utmost, in order to arrive. A desirable goal? No, I never had time to dwell on that. To go on (I still call that on), to go on and get on has been my only care (if not always in a straight line, at least in obedience to the figure assigned to me). There was never any room in my life for anything else. (Still Mahood speaking.)

  Never once have I stopped. (My halts do not count. Their purpose was to enable me to go on. I did not use them to brood on my lot, but to rub myself as best I might with Ellman's Embrocation, for example, or to give myself an injection of laudanum - no easy matter for a man with only one leg.) Often the cry went up "He's down!". But in reality I had sunk to the ground of my own free will, in order to be rid
of my crutches and have both hands available to minister to myself in peace and comfort. Admittedly it is difficult, for a man with but one leg, to sink to earth in the full force of the expression - particularly when he is weak in the head and the sole surviving leg flaccid for want of exercise (or from excess of it). The simplest thing then is to fling away the crutches and collapse. That is what I did. They were therefore right in saying I had fallen (they were not far wrong). Oh I have also been known to fall involuntarily - but not often. (An old warrior like me: you can imagine.) But have it any way you like. (Up or down, taking my anodynes, waiting for the pain to abate, panting to be on my way again.) I stopped, if you insist - but not in the sense they meant when they said "He's down again, he'll never reach us".

  When I penetrate into that house (if I ever do) it will be to go on turning, faster and faster, more and more convulsive (like a constipated dog, or one suffering from worms), overturning the furniture - in the midst of my family all trying to embrace me at once: until by virtue of a supreme spasm I am catapulted in the opposite direction and gradually leave backwards, without having said good-evening.

  I must really lend myself to this story a little longer, there may possibly be a grain of truth in it. Mahood must have remarked that I remained sceptical, for he casually let fall that I was lacking not only a leg, but an arm also. (With regard to the homologous crutch, I seemed to have retained sufficient armpit to hold and manoeuvre it - with the help of my unique foot to knock the end of it forward - as occasion required.) But what shocked me profoundly (to such a degree that my mind - Mahood dixit - was assailed by insuperable doubts) was the suggestion that the misfortune experienced by my family (and brought to my notice first by the noise of their agony, then by the smell of their corpses) had caused me to turn back.

  From that moment on I ceased to go along with him. I'll explain why (that will permit me to think of something else - and in the first place of how to get back to me, back to where I am waiting for me). I'd just as soon not, but it's my only chance (at least I think so) - the only chance I have of going silent, of saying something at last that is not false (if that is what they want) so as to have nothing more to say.

  My reasons. (I'll give three or four, that ought to be enough for me.) First this family of mine. The mere fact of having a family should have put me on my guard. But my goodwill at certain moments is such, and my longing to have floundered (however briefly, however feebly) in the great life torrent streaming from the earliest protozoa to the very latest humans, that I......

  No - parenthesis unfinished. I'll begin again.

  My family. To begin with it had no part or share in what I was doing. Having set forth from that place, it was only natural I should return to it, given the accuracy of my navigation. And my family could have moved to other quarters during my absence, and settled down a hundred leagues away, without my deviating by as much as a hair's-breadth from my course. As for the screams of pain and wafts of decomposition (assuming I was capable of noticing them), they would have seemed to me quite in the natural order of things, such as I had come to know it. If before such manifestations I had been compelled each time to turn aside, I should not have got very far. Washed (on the surface only) by the rains, my head cracking with unutterable imprecations, it was for myself I should have had to turn aside, before all else. (After all perhaps I was doing so: that would account for my vaguely circular motion.) Lies, lies: mine was not to know, nor to judge, nor talk, but to go.

  That the bacillus botulinus should have exterminated my entire kith and kin (I shall never weary or repeating this) was something I could readily admit - but only on condition that my personal behaviour had not to suffer by it. Let us rather consider what really took place, if Mahood was telling the truth. And why should he have lied to me, he so anxious to obtain my adhesion? (To what, now that I come to think of it? To his conception of me?) Why? For fear of paining me perhaps. But I am there to be pained, that is what my tempters have never grasped. What they all wanted (each according to his particular notion of what is endurable) was that I should exist and at the same time be only moderately (or perhaps I should say finitely) pained. They have even killed me off, with the friendly remark that having reached the end of my endurance I had no choice but to disappear. (The end of my endurance! It was one second they should have schooled me to endure: after that I would have held out for all eternity, whistling a merry tune.)

  The hard knocks they invented for me! But the bouquet was this story of Mahood's in which I appear as upset at having been delivered so economically of a pack of blood relations (not to mention the two cunts into the bargain: the one for ever accursed that ejected me into this world and the other, infundibuliform, in which - pumping my likes - I tried to take my revenge).

  To tell the truth (let us be honest at least), it is some considerable time now since I last knew what I was talking about. It is because my thoughts are elsewhere. I am therefore forgiven. So long as one's thoughts are somewhere everything is permitted.

  On then, without misgiving, as if nothing had happened. And let us consider what really took place (if Mahood was telling me the truth when he represented me as rid at one glorious sweep of parents, wife and heirs). I've plenty of time to blow it all sky-high, this circus where it is enough to breathe to qualify for asphyxiation: I'll find a way out of it, it won't be like the other times. But I should not like to defame my defamer. For when he made me turn and set off in the other direction, before I had exhausted the possibilities of the one I was pursuing, he had not in mind a shrinking of the spirit, not for a moment: but a purely physiological commotion, followed by a simple desire to vomit - corresponding respectively to the howls of my family as they grudgingly succumbed and the subsequent stench (this latter compelling me to beat in retreat under penalty of losing consciousness entirely). (This version of the facts having been restored, it only remains to say it is no better than the other and no less incompatible with the kind of creature I might just conceivably have been if they had known how to take me.)

  So let us consider now what really occurred. Finally I found myself, without surprise, within the building (circular in form as already stated, its ground-floor consisting of a single room flush with the arena) and there completed my rounds - stamping under foot the unrecognizable remains of my family (here a face, there a stomach, as the case might be), and sinking into them with the ends of my crutches, both coming and going.

  To say I did so with satisfaction would be stretching the truth. For my feeling was rather one of annoyance at having to flounder in such muck just at the moment when my closing contortions called for a firm and level surface. I like to fancy (even if it is not true) that it was in mother's entrails I spent the last days of my long voyage, and set out on the next. (No, I have no preference: Isolde's breast would have done just as well, or papa's private parts, or the heart of one of the little bastards.) But is it certain? Would I have not been more likely, in a sudden access of independence, to devour what remained of the fatal corned-beef?

  How often did I fall during these final stages, while the storms raged without?

  But enough of this nonsense: I was never anywhere but here, no one ever got me out of here. Enough of acting the infant who has been told so often how he was found under a cabbage leaf that in the end he remembers the exact spot in the garden and the kind of life he led there before joining the family circle. There will be no more from me about bodies and trajectories, sky and earth - I don't know what it all is. They have told me, explained to me, described to me, what it all is, what it looks like, what it's all for (one after the other, thousands of times, in thousands of connections), until I must have begun to look as if I understood. Who would ever think, to hear me, that I've never seen anything, never heard anything but their voices? (And man! The lectures they gave me on men, before they even began trying to assimilate me to him!) What I speak of, what I speak with, all comes from them - it's all the same to me. But it's no good, there's no
end to it. It's of me now I must speak, even if I have to do it with their language. It will be a start, a step towards silence and the end of madness: the madness of having to speak and not being able to - except of things that don't concern me, that I don't believe, that they have crammed me full of to prevent me from saying who I am, where I am, and from doing what I have to do in the only way that can put an end to it, from doing what I have to do. How they must hate me!

  Ah a nice state they have me in - but still I'm not their creature (not quite, not yet). To testify to them, until I die (as if there was any dying with that tomfoolery): that's what they've sworn they'll bring me to. Not to be able to open my mouth without proclaiming them, and our fellowship: that's what they imagine they'll have me reduced to. It's a poor trick that consists in ramming a set of words down your gullet on the principle that you can't bring them up without being branded as belonging to their breed. But I'll fix their gibberish for them. I never understood a word of it in any case - not a word of the stories it spews, like gobbets in a vomit. My inability to absorb, my genius for forgetting, are more than they reckoned with. Dear incomprehension, it's thanks to you I'll be myself in the end. Nothing will remain of all the lies they have glutted me with. And I'll be myself at last (as a starveling belches his odourless wind, before the bliss of coma).

  But who, they?

  Is it really worth inquiring? With my cogged means? No, but that's no reason not to. On their own ground, with their own arms, I'll scatter them, and their miscreated puppets. (Perhaps I'll find traces of myself by the same occasion.) That's decided then.

  What is strange is that they haven't been pestering me for some time past (yes, they've inflicted the notion of time on me too). What conclusion, using their methods, am I to draw from this? Mahood is silent: that is to say his voice continues, but is no longer renewed. Do they consider me so plastered with their rubbish that I can never extricate myself, never make a gesture but their cast must come to life? But within, motionless, I can live, and utter me, for no ears but my own. They loaded me down with their trappings and stoned me through the carnival. I'll sham dead now, whom they couldn't bring to life, and my monster's carapace will rot off me. But it's entirely a matter of voices: no other metaphor is appropriate. They've blown me up with their voices, like a balloon, and even as I collapse it's them I hear.