broods, gets to his feet, broods, takes a little bottle of pills
from his shirt pocket, broods, swallows a pill, puts bottle
back, broods, goes to clothes, broods, puts on clothes,
c
33
broods, takes a large partly-eaten carrot from coat pocket,
bites off a piece, chews an instant, spits it out with disgust,
puts carrot back, broods, picks up two sacks, carries them
bowed and staggering half-way to left wing, sets them
down, broods, takes off clothes (except shirt), lets them
fall in an untidy heap, broods, takes another pill, broods,
kneels, prays, crawls into sack and lies still, sack A being
now to left of sack B.
Pause.
Enter goad right on wheeled support (one wheel). The
point stops a foot short of sack B. Pause. The point draws
back, pauses, darts forward into sack, withdraws, recoils
to a foot short of sack. Pause. The sack moves. Exit goad.
B, wearing shirt, crawls out of sack, gets to his feet,
takes from shirt pocket and consults a large watch, puts
watch back, does exercises, consults watch, takes a tooth
brush from shirt pocket and brushes teeth vigorously,
puts brush back, rubs scalp vigorously, takes a comb from
shirt pocket and combs hair, puts comb back, consults
watch, goes to clothes, puts them on, consults watch, takes
a brush from coat pocket and brushes clothes vigorously,
brushes hair vigorously, puts brush back, takes a little
mirror from coat pocket and inspects appearance, puts
mirror back, takes carrot from coat pocket, bites off a
piece, chews and swallows with appetite, puts carrot back,
consults watch, takes a map from coat pocket and consults
it, puts map back, consults watch, takes a compass from
coat pocket and consults it, puts compass back, consults
watch, picks up two sacks and carries them bowed and
staggering to two yards short of left wing, sets them down,
consults watch, takes off clothes (except shirt), folds them
in a neat pile, consults watch, does exercises, consults
watch, rubs scalp, combs hair, brushes teeth, consults and
winds watch, crawls into sack and lies still, sack B being
now to left of sack A as originally.
34
Pause.
Enter goad right on wheeled support (two wheels). The
point stops a foot short of sack A. Pause. The point draws
back, pauses, darts forward into sack, withdraws, recoils
to a foot short of sack. Pause. The sack does not move.
The point draws back again, a little further than before,
pauses, darts forward again into sack, withdraws, recoils
to a foot short of sack. Pause. The sack moves. Exit goad.
A crawls out of sack, halts, broods, prays.
CURTAIN
POSITION I
POSITION II
POSITION III
c B A
STAGBFRONT
35
From
an Abandoned Work
Up bright and early that day, I was young then, feeling
awful, and out, mother hanging out of the window in her
nightdress weeping and waving. Nice fresh morning, bright
too early as so often. Feeling really awful, very violent. The
sky would soon darken and rain fall and go on falling, all
day, till evening. Then blue and sun again a second, then
night. Feeling all this, how violent and the kind of day, I
stopped and turned. So back with bowed head on the look
out for a snail, slug or worm. Great love in my heart too
for all things still and rooted, bushes, boulders and the
like, too numerous to mention, even the flowers of the
field, not for the world when in my right senses would I
ever touch one, to pluck it. Whereas a bird now, or a
butterfly, fluttering about and getting in my way, all moving things, getting in my path, a slug now, getting under my feet, no, no mercy. Not that I'd go out of my way to
get at them, no, at a distance often they seemed still,
then a moment later they were upon me. Birds with my
piercing sight I have seen flying so high, so far, that they
seemed at rest, then the next minute they were all about
me, crows have done this. Ducks are perhaps the worst,
to be suddenly stamping and stumbling in the midst Jf
ducks, or hens, any class of poultry, few things are worse.
Nor will I go out of my way to avoid such things, when
avoidable, no, I simply will not go out of my way, though
I have never in my life been on my way anywhere, but
39
simply on my way. And in this way I have gone through
great thickets, bleeding, and deep into bogs, water too,
even the sea in some moods and been carried out of my
course, or driven back, so as not to drown. And that is
perhaps how I shall die at last if they don't catch me, I
mean drowned, or in fire, yes, perhaps that is how I shall
do it at last, walking furious headlong into fire and dying
burnt to bits. Then I raised my eyes and saw my mother
still in the window waving, waving me back or on I don't
know, or just waving, in sad helpless love, and I heard
faintly her cries. The window-frame was green, pale, the
house-wall grey and my mother white and so thin I could
see past her (piercing sight I had then) into the dark of the
room, and on all that full the not long risen sun, and all
small because of the distance, very pretty really the whole
thing, I remember it, the old grey and then the thin green
surround and the thin white against the dark, if only she
could have been still and let me look at it all. No, for
once I wanted to stand and look at something I couldn't
with her there waving and fluttering and swaying in and
out of the window as though she were doing exercises, and
for all I know she may have been, not bothering about me
at all. No tenacity of purpose, that was another thing I
didn't like in her. One week it would be exercises, and the
next prayers and Bible reading, and the next gardening,
and the next playing the piano and singing, that was awful,
and then just lying about and resting, always changing.
Not that it mattered to me, I was always out. But let me
get on now with the day I have hit on to begin with, any
other would have done as well, yes, on with it and out of
my way and on to another, enough of my mother for the
moment. Well then for a time all well, no trouble, no
birds at me, nothing across my path except at a great
distance a white horse followed by a boy, or it might have
been a small man or woman. This is the only completely
40
white horse I remember, what I believe the Germans call
a Schimmel, oh I was very quick as a boy and picked up
a lot of hard knowledge, Schimmel, nice word, for an
English speaker. The sun was full upon it, as shortly
before on my mother, and it seemed to have a red band
or stripe running down its side, I thought perhaps a bellyband, perhaps the horse was going somewhere to be harnessed, to a trap or suchlike. It crossed my path a long
way off, then vanis
hed, behind greenery I suppose, all I
noticed was the sudden appearance of the horse, then disappearance. It was bright white, with the sun on it, I had never seen such a horse, though often heard of them, and
never saw another. White I must say has always affected me
strongly, all white things, sheets, walls and so on, even
flowers, and then just white, the thought of white, without
more. But let me get on with this day and get it over. All
well then for a time, just the violence and then this white
horse, when suddenly I flew into a most savage rage, really
blinding. Now why this sudden rage I really don't know,
these sudden rages, they made my life a misery. Many
other things too did this, my sore throat for example, I
have never known what it is to be without a sore throat,
but the rages were the worst, like a great wind suddenly
rising in me, no, I can't describe. It wasn't the violence
getting worse in any case, nothing to do with that, some
days I would be feeling violent all day and never have a
rage, other days quite quiet for me and have four or five.
No, there's no accounting for it, there's no accounting for
anything, with a mind like the one I always had, always on
the alert against itself, I'll come back on this perhaps when
I feel less weak. There was a time I tried to get relief by
beating my head against something, but I gave it up. The
best thing I found was to start running. Perhaps I should
mention here I was a very slow walker. I didn't dally or
loiter in any way, just walked very slowly, little short steps
41
and the feet very slow through the air. On the other hand I
must have been quite one of the fastest runners the world
has ever seen, over a short distance, five or ten yards, in a
second I was there. But I could not go on at that speed, not
for breathlessness, it was mental, all is mental, figments.
Now the jog trot on the other hand, I could no more do
that than I could fly. No, with me all was slow, and then
these flashes, or gushes, vent the pent, that was one of those
things I used to say, over and over, as I went along, vent the
pent, vent the pent. Fortunately my father died when I was
a boy, otherwise I might have been a professor, he had set
his heart on it. A very fair scholar I was too, no thought,
but a great memory. One day I told him about Milton's
cosmology, away up in the mountains we were, resting
against a huge rock looking out to sea, that impressed him
greatly. Love too, often in my thoughts, when a boy, but
not a great deal compared to other boys, it kept me awake I
found. Never loved anyone I think, I'd remember. Except
in my dreams, and there it was animals, dream animals,
nothing like wha.t you see walking about the country, I
couldn't describe them, lovely creatures they were, white
mostly. In a way perhaps it's a pity, a good woman might
have been the making of me, I might be sprawling in the
sun now sucking my pipe and patting the bottoms of the
third generation, looked up to and respected, wondering
what there was for dinner, instead of stravaging the same
old roads in all weathers, I was never much of a one for
new ground. No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been
born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found.
But let me get on now from where I left off, the white horse
and then the rage, no connection I suppose. But why go on
with all this, I don't know, some day I must end, why not
now. But these are thoughts, not mine, no matter, shame
upon me. Now I am old and weak, in pain and weakness
murmur why and pause, and the old thoughts well up in me
42
and over into my voice, the old thoughts born with me and
grown with me and kept under, there's another. No, back
to that far day, any far day, and from the dim granted
ground to its things and sky the eyes raised and back again,
raised again and back again again, and the feet going
nowhere only somehow home, in the morning out from
home and in the evening back home again, and the sound
of my voice all day long muttering the same old things I
don't listen to, not even mine it was at the end of the day,
like a marmoset sitting on my shoulder with its bushy tail,
keeping me company. All this talking, very low and hoarse,
no wonder I had a sore throat. Perhaps I should mention
here that I never talked to anyone, I think my father was
the last one I talked to. My mother was the same, never
talked, never answered, since my father died. I asked her
for the money, I can't go back on that now, those must
have been my last words to her. Sometimes she cried out on
me, or implored, but never long, just a few cries, then if I
looked up the poor old thin lips pressed tight together and
the body turned away and just the corners of the eyes on me,
but it was rare. Sometimes in the night I heard her, talking
to herself I suppose, or praying out loud, or reading out
loud, or reciting her hymns, poor woman. Well after the
horse and rage I don't know, just on, then I suppose the
slow turn, wheeling more and more to the one or other hand,
till facing home, then home. Ah my father and mother, to
think they are probably in paradise, they were so good. Let
me go to hell, that's all I ask, and go on cursing them there,
and them look down and hear me, that might take some of
the shine off their bliss. Yes, I believe all their blather about
the life to come, it cheers me up, and unhappiness like mine,
there's no annihilating that. I was mad of course and still
am, but harmless, I passed for harmless, that's a good one.
Not of course that I was really mad, just strange, a little
strange, and with every passing year a little stranger, there
43
can be few stranger creatures going about than me at the
present day. My father, did I kill him too as well as my
mother, perhaps in a way I did, but I can't go into that
now, much too old and weak. The questions float up as I
go along and leave me very confused, breaking up I am.
Suddenly they are there, no, they float up, out of an old
depth, and hover and linger before they die away, questions
that when I was in my right mind would not have survived one second, no, but atomized they would have been, before as much as formed, atomized. In twos often they
came, one hard on the other, thus, How shall I go on
another day? and then, How did I ever go on another day?
Or, Did I kill my father? and then, Did I ever kill anyone?
That kind of way, to the general from the particular I suppose you might say, question and answer too in a way, very addling. I strive with them as best I can, quickening
my step when they come on, tossing my head from side to
side and up and down, staring agonizedly at this and that,
increasing my murmur to a scream, these are helps. But
they should not be necessary, something is wrong here, if it
was the end I would not so much mind, but how often I
have said, in my life, before some new awful thing, It is the
end, and it was not the end, and yet the end cannot be far off
now, I shall fall as I go along and stay down or curl up for
the night as usual among the rocks and before morning be
gone. Oh I know I too shall cease and be as when I was not
yet, only all over instead of in store, that makes me happy,
often now my murmur falters and dies and I weep for happiness as I go along and for love of this old earth that has carried me so long and whose uncomplainingness will soon
be mine. Just under the surface I shall be, all together at
first, then separate and drift, through all the earth and perhaps in the end through a cliff into the sea, something of me.
A ton of worms in an acre, that is a wonderful thought, a
ton of worms, I believe it. Where did I get it, from a dream,
44
or a book read in a nook when a boy, or a word overheard
as I went along, or in me all along and kept under till it
could give me joy, these are the kind of horrid thoughts I
have to contend with in the way I have said. Now is there
nothing to add to this day with the white horse and white
mother in the window, please read again my descriptions of
these, before I get on to some other day at a later time,
nothing to add before I move on in time skipping hundreds
and even thousands of days in a way I could not at the time,
but had to get through somehow until I came to the one I
am coming to now, no, nothing, all has gone but mother
in the window, the violence, rage and rain. So on to this
second day and get it over and out of the way and on to the
next. What happens now is I was set on and pursued by a
family or tribe, I do not know, of stoats, a most extraordinary thing, I think they were stoats. Indeed if I may say so I think I was fortunate to get off with my life, strange
expression, it does not sound right somehow. Anyone else
would have been bitten and bled to death, perhaps sucked
white, like a rabbit, there is that word white again. I know
I could never think, but if I could have, and then had, I
would just have lain down and let myself be destroyed, as
the rabbit does. But let me start as always with the morning
and the getting out. When a day comes back, whatever the
reason, then its morning and its evening too are there,
though in themselves quite unremarkable, the going out
Breath, and Other Shorts Page 2