Murphy. Samuel Beckett
being at conjunction, he proposed to her in the Battersea Park sub-tropical garden, immediately following the ringing of the bell.
Mr. Kelly groaned.
Celia accepted.
“Wretched girl,” said Mr. Kelly, “most wretched.”
Resting on Campanella’s City of the Sun, Murphy said they must get married by hook or by crook before the moon came into opposition. Now it was September, the sun was back in the Virgin, and their relationship had not yet been regularised.
Mr. Kelly saw no reason why he should contain himself any longer. He started up in the bed, which opened his eyes, as he knew perfectly well it would, and wanted to know the who, what, where, by what means, why, in what way and when. Scratch an old man and find a Quintilian.
“Who is this Murphy,” he cried, “for whom you have been neglecting your work, as I presume? What is he? Where does he come from? What is his family? What does he do? Has he any money? Has he any prospects? Has he any retrospects? Is he, has he, anything at all?”
Taking the first point first, Celia replied that Murphy was Murphy. Continuing then in an orderly manner she revealed that he belonged to no profession or trade; came from Dublin—“My God!” said Mr. Kelly—knew of one uncle, a Mr. Quigley, a well-to-do ne’er-do-well, resident in Holland, with whom he strove to correspond; did nothing that she could discern; sometimes had the price of a concert; believed that the future held great things in store for him; and never ripped up old stories. He was Murphy. He had Celia.
Mr. Kelly mustered all his hormones.
“What does he live on?” he shrieked.
“Small charitable sums,” said Celia.
Mr. Kelly fell back. His bolt was shot. The heavens were free to fall.
Celia now came to that part of her relation which she rather despaired of explaining to Mr. Kelly, because she did not properly understand it herself She knew that if by any means she could insert the problem into that immense cerebrum, the solution would be returned as though by clockwork. Pacing to and fro at a slightly faster rate, racking her brain which was not very large for the best way to say it, she felt she had come to an even more crucial junction in her affairs than that composed by Edith Grove, Cremorne Road and Stadium Street.
“You are all I have in the world,” she said.
“I,” said Mr. Kelly, “and possibly Murphy.”
“There is no one else in the world,” said Celia, “least of all Murphy, that I could speak to of this.”
“You mollify me,” said Mr. Kelly.
Celia halted, raised her clasped hands though she knew his eyes were closed and said:
“Will you please pay attention to this, tell me what it means and what I am to do?”
“Stop!” said Mr. Kelly. His attention could not be mobilised like that at a moment’s notice. His attention was dispersed. Part was with its caecum, which was wagging its tail again; part with his extremities, which were dragging anchor; part with his boyhood; and so on. All this would have to be called in. When he felt enough had been scraped together he said:
“Go!”
Celia spent every penny she earned and Murphy earned no pennies. His honourable independence was based on an understanding with his landlady, in pursuance of which she sent exquisitely cooked accounts to Mr. Quigley and handed over the difference, less a reasonable commission, to Murphy. This superb arrangement enabled him to consume away at pretty well his own gait, but was inadequate for a domestic establishment, no matter how frugal. The position was further complicated by the shadows of a clearance area having fallen, not so much on Murphy’s abode as on Murphy’s landlady. And it was certain that the least appeal to Mr. Quigley would be severely punished. “Shall I bite the hand that starves me,” said Murphy, “to have it throttle me?”
Surely between them they could contrive to earn a little. Murphy thought so, with a look of such filthy intelligence as left her, self-aghast, needing him still. Murphy’s respect for the imponderables of personality was profound, he took the miscarriage of his tribute very nicely. If she felt she could not, why then she could not, and that was all. Liberal to a fault, that was Murphy.
“So far I keep abreast,” said Mr. Kelly. “There is just this tribute—”
“I have tried so hard to understand that,” said Celia.
“But what makes you think a tribute was intended?” said Mr. Kelly.
“I tell you he keeps nothing from me,” said Celia.
“Did it go something like this?” said Mr. Kelly. “‘I pay you the highest tribute that a man can pay a woman, and you throw a scene.’”
“Hark to the wind,” said Celia.
“Damn your eyes,” said Mr. Kelly, “did he or didn’t he?”
“It’s not a bad guess,” said Celia.
“Guess my rump,” said Mr. Kelly. “It is the formula.”
“So long as one of us understands,” said Celia.
In respecting what he called the Archeus, Murphy did no more than as he would be done by. He was consequently aggrieved when Celia suggested that he might try his hand at something more remunerative than apperceiving himself into a glorious grave and checking the starry concave, and would not take the anguish on his face for an answer. “Did I press you?” he said. “No. Do you press me? Yes. Is that equitable? My sweet.”
“Will you conclude now as rapidly as possible,” said Mr. Kelly. “I weary of Murphy.”
He begged her to believe him when he said he could not earn. Had he not already sunk a small fortune in attempts to do so? He begged her to believe that he was a chronic emeritus. But it was not altogether a question of economy. There were metaphysical considerations, in whose gloom it appeared that the night had come in which no Murphy could work. Was Ixion under any contract to keep his wheel in nice running order? Had any provision been made for Tantalus to eat salt? Not that Murphy had ever heard of
“But we cannot go on without any money,” said Celia.
“Providence will provide,” said Murphy.
The imperturbable negligence of Providence to provide goaded them to such transports as West Brompton had not known since the Earl’s Court Exhibition. They said little. Sometimes Murphy would begin to make a point, sometimes he may have even finished making one, it was hard to say. For example, early one morning he said: “The hireling fleeth because he is an hireling.” Was that a point? And again: “What shall a man give in exchange for Celia?” Was that a point?
“Those were points undoubtedly,” said Mr. Kelly.
When there was no money left and no bill to be cooked for another week, Celia said that either Murphy got work or she left him and went back to hers. Murphy said work would be the end of them both.
“Points one and two,” said Mr. Kelly.
Celia had not been long back on the street when Murphy wrote imploring her to return. She telephoned to say that she would return if he undertook to look for work. Otherwise it was useless. He rang off while she was still speaking. Then he wrote again saying he was starved out and would do as she wished. But as there was no possibility of his finding in himself any reason for work taking one form rather than another, would she kindly procure a corpus of incentives based on the only system outside his own in which he felt the least confidence, that of the heavenly bodies. In Berwick Market there was a swami who cast excellent nativities for sixpence. She knew the year and date of the unhappy event, the time did not matter. The science that had got over Jacob and Esau would not insist on the precise moment of vagitus. He would attend to the matter himself, were it not that he was down to four-pence.
“And now I ring him up,” concluded Celia,