The Collected Shorter Plays by Samuel Beckett Read Free Book Online Page B

eaten I regret to say three bananas and only with difficulty refrained from a fourth. Fatal things for a man with my condition. [
Vehemently
.] Cut’em out! [
Pause
.] The new light above my table is a great improvement. With all this darkness round me I feel less alone. [
Pause
.] In a way. [
Pause
.] I love to get up and move about in it, then back here to [
hesitates
] . . . me. [
Pause
.] Krapp.
[
Pause
.]
The grain, now what I wonder do I mean by that, I mean . . . [
hesitates
] . . . I suppose I mean those things worth having whenall the dust has—when all
my
dust has settled. I close my eyes and try and imagine them.
[
Pause. Krapp closes his eyes briefly
.]
Extraordinary silence this evening, I strain my ears and do not hear a sound. Old Miss McGlome always sings at this hour. But not tonight. Songs of her girlhood, she says. Hard to think of her as a girl. Wonderful woman though. Connaught, I fancy. [
Pause
.] Shall I sing when I am her age, if I ever am? No. [
Pause
.] Did I sing as a boy? No. [
Pause
.] Did I ever sing? No.
[
Pause
.]
Just been listening to an old year, passages at random. I did not check in the book, but it must be at least ten or twelve years ago. At that time I think I was still living on and off with Bianca in Kedar Street. Well out of that, Jesus yes! Hopeless business. [
Pause
.] Not much about her, apart from a tribute to her eyes. Very warm. I suddenly saw them again. [
Pause
.] Incomparable! [
Pause
.] Ah well. . . . [
Pause
.] These old P.M.s are gruesome, but I often find them—[
Krapp switches off, broods, switches on
]—a help before embarking on a new . . . [
hesitates
] . . . retrospect. Hard to believe I was ever that young whelp. The voice! Jesus! And the aspirations! [
Brief laugh in which Krapp joins
.] And the resolutions! [
Brief laugh in which Krapp joins
.] To drink less, in particular. [
Brief laugh
of
Krapp alone
.] Statistics. Seventeen hundred hours, out of the preceding eight thousand odd, consumed on licensed premises alone. More than 20 per cent, say 40 per cent of his waking life. [
Pause
.] Plans for a less . . . [
hesitates
] engrossing sexual life. Last illness of his father. Flagging pursuit of happiness. Unattainable laxation. Sneers at what he calls his youth and thanks to God that it’s over. [
Pause
.] False ring there. [
Pause
.] Shadows of the opus . . . magnum. Closing with a—[
brief laugh
]—yelp to Providence. [
Prolonged laugh in which Krapp joins
.] What remains of all that misery? A girl in a shabby green coat, on a railway-station platform? No?
[
Pause
.]
When I look—
[
Krapp switches off, broods, looks at his watch, gets up, goes backstage into darkness. Ten seconds. Pop of cork. Ten seconds. Second cork. Ten seconds. Third cork. Ten seconds. Brief burst of quavering song
.]
KRAPP
[
sings
] Now the day is over,
            Night is drawing nigh-igh,
            Shadows—
[
Fit of coughing. He comes back into light, sits down, wipes his mouth, switches on, resumes his listening posture
.]
TAPE
—back on the year that is gone, with what I hope is perhaps a glint of the old eye to come, there is of course the house on the canal where mother lay a-dying, in the late autumn, after her long viduity [
Krapp gives a start
] and the—[
Krapp switches off, winds back tape a little, bends his ear closer to machine, switches on
]—a-dying, in the late autumn, after her long viduity, and the— [
Krapp switches off, raises his head, stares blankly before him. His lips move in the syllables of “viduity.” No sound. He gets up, goes backstage into darkness, comes back with an enormous dictionary, lays it on table, sits down and looks up the word
.]
KRAPP
[
reading from dictionary
] State—or condition—of being—or remaining—a widow—or widower. [
Looks up. Puzzled
.] Being—or remaining? . . . [
Pause. He peers again at dictionary. Reading
.] “Deep weeds of viduity.” . . . Also of an animal, especially a bird . .