From: "genet son of genet" <radiogenet-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: beckett
Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2001 08:23:57 +0000



A Few Drinks and a Hymn: My Farewell to Samuel Beckett

          Date: April 17, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
          Byline: By John Montague;
          Lead:

          I AM in Paris, and although I am staying in Montparnasse, the 
scene of most of our meetings and
          nocturnal revels, I am reluctant to call on Beckett. His last note 
said that he was "in an old crock's
          home," but hoped to be "out and about under my own steam and back 
for the boulevard and fit for
          company again." But word is out that he is ill, dying indeed, and 
I am loath to say goodbye to an old
          friend of over a quarter of a century's standing. Besides, I have 
a broken leg, and am barely mobile
          myself. But I have a mission to accomplish as well: to enlist him 
in "The Great Book of Ireland."

          A message comes that he wants to see me, so I hobble and swing 
over to the taxi rank beside the
          Dome, where we have so often sat drinking and talking. Then down 
Raspail, another of our routes, to
          the lion of Denfert Rochereau. At night he would go left, down 
Boulevard St. Jacques, as I turned into
          the Rue Daguerre, with "God bless" as his last, uncanny 
salutation, a familiar Irish phrase made strange
          by his worldwide reputation for godlessness.
          Text:

          The clinic is in a side street off Boulevard Leclerc, up which the 
French general led his liberating
          troops. A few patients are resting in the courtyard, under winter 
trees, a tranquil enclosed setting. I find
          the door of "Monsieur Beckett" without difficulty, knock, and 
swing in. He is sitting in a bare room, at
          one of two small desks, with a stark iron bed behind. He rises to 
embrace me, kissing me, to my
          surprise, on both cheeks; he is not usually so demonstrative. "Ah, 
John. You managed it."

          The eyes are watery but briefly, almost defiantly, bright, as they 
focus and almost smile.

          "It was so good of you to come. And you bad yourself. How's the 
leg?"

          And as I falter a few inconsequential, deprecatory details, he 
starts to shuffle around. From the
          familiar, angular athleticism of even his 70's, he is now slowed, 
slowed considerably, to the dragging
          gait of one of his own characters. But he is intent on finding a 
chair for me to sit at his side, and there
          we are, face to face, as often before. "And how are you?" I ask.

          "I'm done."

          A phrase I have not heard since my aunt Mary lay dying, but the 
Irishism comes as naturally to him.
          And again the eyes focus on me, and I am astounded as always by 
their size and color, large as blue
          marbles. But clouded now, not watchful or challenging. "I'm done," 
again, with the same vehemence.
          "But it takes such a long time."

          He pauses and draws a breath. There is a breathing machine in the 
corner, like a small trolley. "I sat
          beside my father when he was dying. Fight, fight, fight, he kept 
saying. But I have no fight left."

          A gesture of resignation and, perhaps, disappointment. Sensing an 
opening, I feel brave enough for a
          direct question, even without the ritual glass before me: "And now 
that it's nearly over, Sam, can I ask
          you, was there much of the journey you found worthwhile?"

          The blue eyes briefly ignite. "Precious little." And in case I did 
not hear or comprehend, he repeats it
          with redoubled force, "Precious little!" But then a thought 
strikes him, and as if to contradict his own
          natural, now justified gloom, he directs us toward his second-best 
desk, collecting a bottle of whisky
          and glasses as he goes.

          "Now that you're here, there's a job to be done." He settles into 
the second desk seat and, with
          surprising vigor, empties out a cylinder marked "Poetry Ireland." 
Curling vellum pages, a small black ink
          bottle, a long slender pen and a covering letter. "This man 
Dorgan, is he all right?" he asks
          peremptorily.

          As I struggle to explain the many qualities of Theo Dorgan, my 
former student and now a well-known
          Irish poet, Beckett cuts me short, and points to the official note 
paper of Poetry Ireland, the arts
          organization of which I am president: "He must be all right: your 
name's on the masthead." I read with
          him over his shoulder: the letter describes the "Great Book of 
Ireland" project, a lavish compendium of
          the poets and artists of Ireland, which Theo hopes will subsidize 
Irish poetry till the end of time.

          The scroll will not stay put. Baffled, Beckett wrestles with the 
vellum, whilst I set up the small black
          ink bottle, with the skinny nib to dip in it. Finally, I have to 
hold down the curling corners, as he strives
          to write what may be his last lines: he died four years ago last 
December, 13 days after my visit. He
          would have been 88 on April 13. The lines are not new: he has 
chosen a quatrain written after his
          father's death, and the implications for his own demise, so long 
attended, are all too clear.

          Redeem the surrogate goodbyes

          the sheet astream in your hand

          who have no more for the land

          and the glass unmisted above your eyes.

          The sheet is not astream, but bucking and bounding, and his hands 
are shaking. Twice he has to stroke
          out lines, but he still goes on, with that near ferocity I 
associate with him, until the four lines are copied,
          in the center of a page. He looks at me, I look down to check, and 
murmur appropriate approval. He
          rolls the vellum, and with due ceremony hands it over to me, with 
the carton. Then, with a gesture of
          finality, he sweeps the lot, ink bottle, long black pen and spare 
pages of vellum, into the wastepaper bin.

          Job done, we rest a while, glasses in hand. He shows me the books 
he has been reading, old favorites;
          "The Oxford Book of French Verse," which he probably studied at 
Trinity College, Dublin, under his
          beloved Rudmose Brown, who introduced him to contemporary French 
literature. And "The Penguin
          Book of English Verse," with a few later volumes of his own and, 
to my embarrassment, my recent
          essays, "The Figure in the Cave," wedged between.

          "I've been reading Keats's 'Ode to a Nightingale.' It's very 
beautiful."

          It happens to be a poem that I heartily loathe, with its smarmy 
Cockney view of beauty, but this is not
          the time for sparring matches, even if fueled by Jameson's. His 
barriers are down, his sympathies
          simple, he has gone back to the pleasant discoveries of boyhood. I 
say instead that I have never heard
          him use the word "beautiful" except in connection with Yeats. He 
nods. "Ah, yes, yes, beautiful, too."

          He will not let me pour, but sloshes more whisky into our glasses: 
"I got your new book. I see you
          mention me. And Goldsmith. Ah, he was a nice man. I liked what you 
said about me: the writing is
          good."

          I don't dare ask more, but do mention something that has troubled 
me, a recent rumor. "Is it true that
          you are dictating something about yourself, something 
autobiographical?"

          He rears back. "Oh, no, nothing like that, just tidying up the 
letters. Getting things straight. Only the
          professional details, nothing personal."

          But the note has been struck, and I sound it again. "And where do 
you want to be, when you go?"

          "Ah, next door, in Montparnasse. With the wife. We knew each other 
for 50 years. We played tennis
          together when we met, and after I was stabbed on the street by the 
clochard she came back. Ah, yes,
          with the wife. We were friends for 50 years."

          Friends stands out; he does not say, "We loved each other for 50 
years," or suchlike. Perhaps it is a
          translation of the French all-purpose word, ami? More whisky is 
being poured. In our previous meeting,
          we had discussed the death of an old friend, A. J. (Con) 
Leventhal, after a long and pleasure-loving
          life. When I mentioned how much he was liked by the ladies, 
Beckett had said, admiringly, "He
          certainly had a lot of them," as if speaking of a stable of 
horses. But I keep to the present.

          "Who's looking after things, the other things?"

          "Edward, the nephew: he's very good. He's in the flat at the 
moment. He'll do everything that has to be
          done. Would you have another drink?"

          THERE is no drink left. I rise to help, but he waves me down, 
shuffling across the room again, a
          speeding snail. He lugs across a liter bottle of Bushmill's malt, 
clearly a gift from an unknown
          benefactor. And benefactor it is, because for once I feel totally 
at ease with Sam, stocious and
          glorious, as though something had been completed. We discuss the 
visiting writer program I am over
          for, and he gives me a commission for Jack Lang, the Minister of 
Culture, to whom he feels he owes a
          favor done for his niece, Caroline. Beckett the family man; I'm 
impressed as always by his
          (Protestant?) punctiliousness.

          And then, to my astonishment, he tries a stave of an old 
Protestant hymn: "Do you know that one?" I
          try to join in, in Catholic good fellowship, but unfamiliarity 
does not help. It is not "Rock of Ages," or
          Cardinal Newman's "Lead, Kindly Light," so incongruously sung by 
the Protestant Miss Fitt in
          Beckett's radio play "All That Fall," but the gloomy lines of 
Baring-Gould, beloved also by Auden.
          When the words grind to a halt, we grin and try again:

          Now the day is over,

          Night is drawing nigh;

          Shadows of the evening

          Steal across the sky.

          Of course, the hymn in "Watt." And indeed it is time to go: we 
have been most of the afternoon
          together. I help him to tidy the desk, arrange his books. He 
stands up, to embrace me on both cheeks
          for the second time. Those flaring jug ears, that furrowed brow 
above staring seagull's eyes, the limber
          spare body, now slowed by time: I will never see it, or him, 
again. He presses into my left hand a last
          present, a rare publication, "Teleplays," a catalogue of his 
television scripts; the carton is suspended
          from my right crutch. We do not discuss a further meeting as I 
swing out the door. In this side street, a
          taxi will be hard to find.










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