Samuel Beckett
MERCIER AND CAMIER
The journey of Mercier and Camier is one I can tell, if I
will, for I was with them all the time.
Physically it was fairly easy going, without seas or frontiers to be
crossed, through regions untormented on the whole, if desolate in
parts. Mercier and Camier did not remove from home, they had that
great good fortune. They did not have to face, with greater or less suc–
cess, outlandish ways, tongues, laws, skies, foods, in surroundings lit–
tle resembling those to which first childhood, then boyhood, then man–
hood had inured them. The weather, though often inclement (but they
knew no better), never exceeded the limits of the temperate, that is
to
say of what could still be borne, without danger if not without dis–
comfort, by the average native fittingly clad and shod. With regard
to
money, if it did not run
to
fIrst class transport or the palatial hotel, still
there was enough to keep them going, to and fro, without recourse
to
alms. It may be said therefore that in this respect too they were for–
tunate, up to a point. They had to struggle, but less than many must,
less perhaps than most of those who venture forth, driven by a need
now clear and now obscure.
They had consulted together at length, before embarking on this
journey, weighing with all the calm at their command what benefits
they might hope from it, what ills apprehend, maintaining turn about
the dark side and the rosy. The only certitude they gained from these
debates was that of not lightly launching out, into the unknown.
