Three Novels: Malloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable

by Samuel Beckett

  And now I feel it's about to begin. They must consider me sufficiently stupefied, with all their balls about being and existing. Yes, now that I've forgotten who Worm is, where he is, what he's like, I'll begin to be. (Anything rather than these college quips.)

  Quick: a place. With no way in, no way out - a safe place. (Not like Eden.) And Worm inside. Feeling nothing, knowing nothing, capable of nothing, wanting nothing, until the instant he hears the sound that will never stop. Then it's the end, Worm no longer is. (We know it, but we don't say it: we say it's the awakening, the beginning of Worm.)

  For now we must speak, and speak of Worm. It's no longer he: but let us proceed as if it were still he (he at last), who hears, and trembles, and is delivered over (to affliction and the struggle to withstand it). The starting eye, the labouring mind. Yes, let us call that thing Worm, so as to exclaim (the sleight of hand accomplished): "Oh look, life again! Life everywhere and always! The life that's on every tongue! The only possible!" Poor Worm, who thought he was different! There he is in the madhouse for life.

  Where am I?

  That's my first question, after an age of listening. From it (when it hasn't been answered) I'll rebound towards others, of a more personal nature. (Much later.) Perhaps I'll even end up (before regaining my coma) by thinking of myself as living (technically speaking).

  But let us proceed with method. I shall do my best, as always (since I cannot do otherwise). I shall submit, more corpse-obliging than ever. I shall transmit the words as received (by the ear, or roared through a trumpet into the arsehole) in all their purity (and in the same order, as far as possible). This infinitesimal lag, between arrival and departure, this trifling delay in evacuation, is all I have to worry about. The truth about me will boil forth at last, scalding (provided of course they don't start stuttering again).

  I listen.

  Enough procrastination: I'm Worm. That is to say I am no longer he, since I hear. But I'll forget that in the heat of misery: I'll forget I'm no longer Worm, but a kind of tenth-rate Toussaint L'Ouverture (that's what they're counting on).

  Worm, then, I catch this sound that will never stop: monotonous beyond words and yet not altogether devoid of a certain variety. At the end of I know not what eternity (they don't say) this has sufficiently exasperated my intelligence for it to grasp that the nuisance is a voice and that the realm of nature (in which I flatter myself I have a foot already) has other noises to offer which are even more unpleasant and may be relied on to make themselves heard before long. (Don't tell me after that I had no predispositions for man's estate.)

  What a weary way since that first disaster! What nerves torn from the heart of insentience, with the appertaining terror and the cerebellum on fire! It took him a long time to adapt himself to this excoriation. To realize pooh it's nothing. A mere bagatelle. The common lot. A harmless joke. That will not last for ever. For me to gather while I may.

  They mentioned roses. I'll smell them before I'm finished. Then they'll put the accent on the thorns. What prodigious variety! The thorns they'll have to come and stick into me (as into their unfortunate Jesus). No, I need nobody: they'll start sprouting under my arse, unaided. (Some day I feel myself soaring above my condition.) A billybowl of thorns and the air perfume-laden.

  But not so fast. I still leave much to be desired. I have no technique, none. For example (in case you don't believe me), I don't yet know how to move - either locally (in relation to myself) or bodily (in relation to the rest of the shit). (I don't know how to want to: I want to in vain. What doesn't come to me from me has come to the wrong address.) Similarly my understanding is not yet sufficiently well-oiled to function without the pressure of some critical circumstance (such as violent pain felt for the first time). Some nice point in semantics, for example, of a nature to accelerate the march of the hours, could not retain my attention. For others the time-abolishing joys of impersonal and disinterested speculation: I only think (if that is the name for this vertiginous panic as of hornets smoked out of their nest) once a certain degree of terror has been exceeded.

  Does this mean I am less exposed to doing so, by the grace of inurement? To argue so would be to underestimate the extent of the repertory in which I am plunged and which (it appears) is nothing compared to what is in store for me at the conclusion of the novitiate. These lights gleaming low afar (then rearing up in a blaze and sweeping down upon me, blinding, to devour me) are merely one example. My familiarity with them avails me nothing: they invariably give me to reflect. Each time (at the last moment, just as I begin to scorch) they go out, smoking and hissing - and yet each time my phlegm is shattered. And in my head (which I am beginning to locate to my satisfaction, above and a little to the right) the sparks spurt and dash themselves out against the walls. And sometimes I say to myself I am in a head. (It's terror makes me say it, and the longing to be in safety, surrounded on all sides by massive bone.) And I add that I am foolish to let myself be frightened by another's thoughts, lacerating my sky with harmless fires and assailing me with noises signifying nothing. But one thing at a time. And often all sleeps (as when I was really Worm) except this voice which has denatured me: which never stops, but often grows confused and falters, as if it were going to abandon me. But it is merely a passing weakness. (Unless it is done on purpose, to teach me hope.)

  Strange thing: ruined as I am and still young in this abjection they have brought me to, I sometimes seem to remember what I was when I was Worm, and not yet delivered into their hands. That's to tempt me into saying "I am indeed Worm after all", and into thinking that after all he may have become the thing that I have become. But it doesn't work. But they will devise another means, less childish, of getting me to admit (or pretend to admit) that I am he whose name they call me by, and no other. Or they'll wait: counting on my weariness (as they press me ever harder) to wipe him from my memory who cannot be brought to the pass they have brought me to (not to mention yesterday, not to mention tomorrow). And yet it seems to me I remember (and shall never forget) what I was like when I was he, before all became confused. But that is of course impossible, since Worm could not know what he was like, or who he was: that's how they want me to reason. And it seems to me too (which is even more deplorable) that I could become Worm again, if I were left in peace.

  This transmission is really excellent. I wonder if it is going to get us somewhere? If only they would stop talking for nothing, pending their stopping everything.

  Nothing? That's soon said. It is not for me to judge. (What would I judge with?) It's more provocation. They want me to lose patience and rush, suddenly beside myself, to their rescue. (How transparent that all is!)

  Sometimes I say to myself (they say to me, Worm says to me - the subject matters little) that my purveyors are more than one: four or five. But it's more likely the same foul brute all the time, amusing himself pretending to be a many, varying his register, his tone, his accent and his drivel. Unless it comes natural to him. (A bare and rusty hook I might accept. But all these titbits!)

  But there are long silences too (at long intervals) during which (hearing nothing) I say nothing. That is to say I hear murmuring, if I listen hard enough. But it's not for me, it's for them alone: they are putting their heads together again. I don't hear what they say, all I know is they are still there, they haven't done with me. They have moved a little aside (secrets). Or if there is only one it is he alone, taking counsel with himself (muttering and chewing his moustache), getting ready for a fresh flow of inanity. To think of me eavesdropping - me! - when silence falls! Ah a nice state they have me in! But it's with the hope there is no one left.

  But this is not the time to speak of that. Good.

  Of what is it the time to speak?

  Of Worm, at last. Good.

  We must first (to begin with) go back to his beginnings and then (to go on with) follow him patiently through the various stages (taking care to show their fatal concatenation) which have made him what I am. (The whole to be tosse
d off with bravura.) Then notes from day to day, until I collapse. And finally (to wind up with) song and dance of thanksgiving by victim, to celebrate his nativity. (Please God nothing goes wrong.)

  Mahood I couldn't die. Worm will I ever get born? It's the same problem. (But perhaps not the same personage after all. The scytheman will tell, it's all one to him.) But let us go back (as planned) afterwards we'll fall forward (as projected). (The reverse would be more like it. But not by much. Upstream, downstream? What matter?) I begin by the ear (that's the way to talk). Before that it was the night of time. Whereas ever since, what radiance! Now at least I know where I am, as far as my origins go (I mean considered as a subject of conversation - that's what counts). The moment one can say "Someone is on his way" all is well. Perhaps I have still a thousand years to go? No matter: he's on his way.

  I begin to be familiar with the premises. I wonder if I couldn't sneak out by the fundament, one morning, with the French breakfast? No, I can't move, not yet. (One minute in a skull and the next in a belly - strange! And the next nowhere in particular. Perhaps it's Botal's Foramen, when all about me palpitates and labours.)

  Bait, bait!

  Can it be I have a friend among them, shaking his head in sorrow and saying nothing? Or only (from time to time) "Enough, enough"?

  One can be before beginning: they have set their hearts on that. They want me roots and all. This onwards-rushing time is the same which used to sleep? And this silence they yelp against in vain and which one day will be restored, the same as in the past? (Perhaps a little the worse for wear.) Agreed, agreed - I who am on my way, words bellying out my sails, am also that unthinkable ancestor of whom nothing can be said. But perhaps I shall speak of him some day, and of the impenetrable age when I was he: some day when they fall silent, convinced at last I shall never get born (having failed to be conceived). Yes, perhaps I shall speak of him, for an instant (like the echo that mocks), before being restored to him, the one they could not part me from.

  And indeed they are weakening already, it's perceptible. But it's a feint, to have me rejoice without cause (after their fashion) and accept their terms, for the sake of peace at any price. But I can do nothing, that is what they seem to forget at each instant: I can't rejoice and I can't grieve. (It's in vain they explained to me how it's done, I never understood.) And what terms? I don't know what it is they want. I say what it is, but I don't know. I emit sounds (better and better, it seems to me). If that's not enough for them I can't help it.

  If I speak of a head (referring to me) it's because I hear it being spoken of. But why keep on saying the same thing? They hope things will change one day (it's natural). That one day on my wind-pipe (or some other section of the conduit) a nice little abscess will form, with an idea inside - point of departure for a general infection. This would enable me to jubilate like a normal person, knowing why. And in no time I'd be a network of fistulae, bubbling with the blessed pus of reason.

  Ah if I were flesh and blood (as they are kind enough to posit) I wouldn't say no: there might be something in their little idea. They say I suffer like true thinking flesh - but I'm sorry, I feel nothing. Mahood, I felt a little, now and then: but what good did that do them? No, they'd be better advised to try something else. I felt the cang, the flies, the sawdust under my stumps, the tarpaulin on my skull (when they were mentioned to me). But can that be called a life which vanishes when the subject is changed? (I don't see why not. But they must have decreed it can't.)

  They are too hard to please, they ask too much. They want me to have a pain in the neck (irrefragable proof of animation) while listening to talk of the heavens. They want me to have a mind where it is known once and for all that I have a pain in the neck, that flies are devouring me and that the heavens can do nothing to help.

  Let them scourge me without ceasing and evermore, more and more lustily (in view of the habituation factor): in the end I might begin to look as if I had grasped the meaning of life. (They might even take a breather from time to time, without my ceasing to howl. For they would have warned me, before they started: "You must howl, do you hear, otherwise it proves nothing?") And worn out at last, or feeble with old age, and my cries having ceased for want of nourishment, they could pronounce me dead with every appearance of veracity. And without ever having had to move I would have gained my rest and heard them say (striking softly together their dry old hands as if to shake off the dust): "He'll never move again."

  No that would be too simple. We must have the heavens and God knows what besides: lights, luminaries, the three-monthly ray of hope and the gleam of consolation.

  But let us close this parenthesis and, with a light heart, open the next.

  The noise. How long did I remain a pure ear? Up to the moment when it could go on no longer, being too good to last, compared to what was coming. These millions of different sounds, always the same, recurring without pause, are all one requires to sprout a head (a bud to begin with, finally huge): its function first to silence, then to extinguish when the eye joins in (and worse than the evil), its treasure-house.

  But no lingering on this thin ice. The mechanism matters little, provided I succeed in saying (before I go deaf) "It's a voice, and it speaks to me"; in inquiring, boldly, if it is not mine: in deciding (it doesn't matter how) that I have none; in blowing darkly hot and cold (with concomitant identical sensations). It's a starting-point, he's off. They don't see me, but they hear me, panting, riveted (they don't know I'm riveted). He knows they are words, he is not sure they are not his: that's how it begins - with such a start no one ever looked back. One day he'll make them his (when he thinks he is alone, far from all men, out of range of every voice), and come to the light of day they keep telling him of. (Yes, I know they are words. There was a time I didn't - as I still don't know if they are mine.)

  Their hopes are therefore founded. In their shoes I'd be content with my knowing what I know. I'd demand no more of me than to know that what I hear is not the innocent and necessary sound of dumb things constrained to endure, but the terror-stricken babble of the condemned to silence. I would have pity, give me quittance, not harry me into appearing my own destroyer. But they are severe, greedy: no less (perhaps more) than when I was playing Mahood. Instead of drawing in their horns!

  It's true I have not spoken yet. In at one ear and incontinent out through the mouth (or the other ear? - that's possible too, no sense in multiplying the occasions of error). Two holes and me in the middle, slightly choked. Or a single one (entrance and exit) where the words swarm and jostle like ants - hasty, indifferent, bringing nothing, taking nothing away, too light to leave a mark.

  I shall not say "I" again, ever again, it's too farcical. I shall put in its place, whenever I hear it, the third person (if I think of it). Anything to please them: it will make no difference. Where I am there is no one but me, who am not.

  So much for that.

  Words. (He says he knows they are words. But how can he know, who has never heard anything else? True.) Not to mention other things, many others, to which the abundance of matter has unfortunately up to now prohibited the least allusion. For example (to begin with) his breathing. There he is now with breath in his nostrils (it only remains for him to suffocate). The thorax rises and falls, the wear and tear are in full spring. The rot spreads downwards. Soon he'll have legs, the possibility of crawling.

  More lies: he doesn't breathe yet. He'll never breathe. (Then what is this faint noise, as of air stealthily stirred, recalling the breath of life, to those it corrodes? It's a bad example.)

  But these lights that go out hissing? Is it not more likely a great crackle of laughter, at the sight of his terror and distress? To see him flooded with light, then suddenly plunged back in darkness, must strike them as irresistibly funny. But they have been there so long now, on every side. They may have made a hole in the wall, a little hole, to glue their eyes to (turn and turn about). And these lights are perhaps those they shine upon him, from time to time, i
n order to observe the progress he is making. But this question of lights deserves to be treated in a section apart, it is so intriguing - and at length, composedly. And so it will be, at the first opportunity, when time is not so short, and the mind more composed. (Resolution number twenty-three.)

  And in the meantime the conclusion to be drawn? That the only noises Worm has had till now are those of mouths? Correct. Not forgetting the groaning of the air beneath the burden.

  He's coming, that's the main thing. When on earth later on the storms rage, drowning momentarily the free expression of opinion, he'll know what is afoot: that the end of the world is not at hand.

  No, in the place where he is he cannot learn, the head cannot work. He knows no more than on the first day. He merely hears, and suffers, uncomprehending (that must be possible). A head has grown out of his ear, the better to enrage him, that must be it. The head is there, glued to the ear, and in it nothing but rage (that's all that matters, for the time being). It's a transformer in which sound is turned, without the help of reason, to rage and terror. (That's all that is required, for the moment. The circumvolutionisation will be seen later, when they get him out.)

  Why then the human voice, rather than a hyena's howls or the clanging of a hammer? Answer: so that the shock may not be too great, when the writhings of true lips meet his gaze. (Between them they find a rejoinder to everything.)

  And how they enjoy talking! (They know there is no worse torment, for one not in the conversation.) They are numerous, all round - holding hands perhaps, an endless chain, taking turns to talk. They wheel, in jerks, so that the voice always comes from the same quarter. But often they all speak at once, they all say simultaneously the same thing exactly - but so perfectly together that one would take it for a single voice, a single mouth (if one did not know that God alone can fill the rose of the winds, without moving from his place). ("One" - but not Worm, who says nothing, knows nothing, yet.)