Murphy. Samuel Beckett

      Yellow.

      Features.

      Mobile.

      Neck.

      13¾″.

      Upper arm.

      11″.

      Forearm.

      9½″.

      Wrist.

      6″.

      Bust.

      34″.

      Waist.

      27″.

      Hips, etc.

      35″.

      Thigh.

      21¾″.

      Knee.

      13¾″.

      Calf.

      13″.

      Ankle.

      8¼″.

      Instep.

      Unimportant.

      Height.

      5′ 4″.

      Weight.

      123 lbs.

      She stormed away from the callbox, accompanied delightedly by her hips, etc. The fiery darts encompassing her about of the amorously disposed were quenched as tow. She entered the saloon bar of a Chef and Brewer and had a sandwich of prawn and tomato and a dock glass of white port off the zinc. She then made her way rapidly on foot, followed by four football pool collectors at four shillings in the pound commission, to the apartment in Tyburnia of her paternal grandfather, Mr. Willoughby Kelly. She kept nothing from Mr. Kelly except what she thought might give him pain, i.e. next to nothing.

      She had left Ireland at the age of four.

      Mr. Kelly’s face was narrow and profoundly seamed with a lifetime of dingy, stingy repose. Just as all hope seemed lost it burst into a fine bulb of skull, unobscured by hair. Yet a little while and his brain-body ratio would have sunk to that of a small bird. He lay back in bed, doing nothing, unless an occasional pluck at the counterpane be entered to his credit.

      “You are all I have in the world,” said Celia.

      Mr. Kelly nestled.

      “You,” said Celia, “and possibly Murphy.”

      Mr. Kelly started up in the bed. His eyes could not very well protrude, so deeply were they imbedded, but they could open, and this they did.

      “I have not spoken to you of Murphy,” said Celia, “because I thought it might give you pain.”

      “Pain my rump,” said Mr. Kelly.

      Mr. Kelly fell back in the bed, which closed his eyes, as though he were a doll. He desired Celia to sit down, but she preferred to pace to and fro, clasping and unclasping her hands, in the usual manner. The friendship of a pair of hands.

      Celia’s account, expurgated, accelerated, improved and reduced, of how she came to have to speak of Murphy, gives the following.

      When her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Quentin Kelly died, which they did clinging warmly to their respective partners in the ill-fated Morro Castle, Celia, being an only child, went on the street. While this was a step to which Mr. Willoughby Kelly could not whole-heartedly subscribe, yet he did not attempt to dissuade her. She was a good girl, she would do well.

      It was on the street, the previous midsummer’s night, the sun being then in the Crab, that she met Murphy. She had turned out of Edith Grove into Cremorne Road, intending to refresh herself with a smell of the Reach and then return by Lot’s Road, when chancing to glance to her right she saw, motionless in the mouth of Stadium Street, considering alternately the sky and a sheet of paper, a man. Murphy.

      “But I beseech you,” said Mr. Kelly, “be less beastly circumstantial. The junction for example of Edith Grove, Cremorne Road and Stadium Street, is indifferent to me. Get up to your man.”

      She halted—“Get away!” said Mr. Kelly—set herself off in the line that his eyes must take on their next declension and waited. When his head moved at last, it was to fall with such abandon on his breast that he caught and lost sight of her simultaneously. He did not immediately hoist it back to the level at which she could be assessed in comfort, but occupied himself with his sheet. If on his eyes’ way back to the eternities she were still in position, he would bid them stay and assess her.

      “How do you know all this?” said Mr. Kelly.

      “What?” said Celia.

      “All these demented particulars,” said Mr. Kelly.

      “He tells me everything,” said Celia.

      “Lay off them,” said Mr. Kelly. “Get up to your man.”

      When Murphy had found what he sought on the sheet he despatched his head on its upward journey. Clearly the effort was considerable. A little short of halfway, grateful for the breather, he arrested the movement and gazed at Celia. For perhaps two minutes she suffered this gladly, then with outstretched arms began slowly to rotate—“Brava!” said Mr. Kelly—like the Roussel dummy in Regent Street. When she came full circle she found, as she had fully expected, the eyes of Murphy still open and upon her. But almost at once they closed, as for a supreme exertion, the jaws clenched, the chin jutted, the knees sagged, the hypogastrium came forward, the mouth opened, the head tilted slowly back. Murphy was returning to the brightness of the firmament.

      Celia’s course was clear: the water. The temptation to enter it was strong, but she set it aside. There would be time for that. She walked to a point about halfway between the Battersea and Albert Bridges and sat down on a bench between a Chelsea pensioner and an Eldorado hokey-pokey man, who had dismounted from his cruel machine and was enjoying a short interlude in paradise. Artists of every kind, writers, underwriters, devils, ghosts, columnists, musicians, lyricists, organists, painters and decorators, sculptors and statuaries, critics and reviewers, major and minor, drunk and sober, laughing and crying, in schools and singly, passed up and down. A flotilla of barges, heaped high with waste paper of many colours, riding at anchor or aground on the mud, waved to her from across the water. A funnel vailed to Battersea Bridge. A tug and barge, coupled abreast, foamed happily out of the Reach. The Eldorado man slept in a heap, the Chelsea pensioner tore at his scarlet tunic, exclaiming: “Hell roast this weather, I shill niver fergit it.” The clock of Chelsea Old Church ground out grudgingly the hour of ten. Celia rose and walked back the way she had come. But instead of keeping straight on into Lot’s Road, as she had hoped, she found herself dragged to the right into Cremorne Road. He was still in the mouth of Stadium Street, in a modified attitude.

      “Hell roast this story,” said Mr. Kelly, “I shall never remember it.”

      Murphy had crossed his legs, pocketed his hands, dropped the sheet and was staring straight before him. Celia now accosted him in form—“Wretched girl!” said Mr. Kelly—whereupon they walked off happily arm-in-arm, leaving the star chart for June lying in the gutter.

      “This is where we put on the light,” said Mr. Kelly.

      Celia put on the light and turned Mr. Kelly’s pillows.

      From that time forward they were indispensable the one to the other.

      “Hey!” exclaimed Mr. Kelly, “don’t skip about like that, will you? You walked away happily arm-in-arm. What happened then?”

      Celia loved Murphy, Murphy loved Celia, it was a striking case of love requited. It dated from that first long lingering look exchanged in the mouth of Stadium Street, not from their walking away arm-in-arm nor any subsequent accident. It was the condition of their walking away, etc., as Murphy had shown her many times in Barbara, Baccardi and Baroko, though never in Bramantip. Every moment that Celia spent away from Murphy seemed an eternity devoid of significance, and