348
SAMUEL BECKETT
Dear sergeant, said Camier, what exactly can we do for you?
You see that bicycle? said the ranger.
I see nothing, said Camier. Mercier, do you see a bicycle?
Is she yours? said the ranger.
A thing we do not see, said Camier, for whose existence we have
only your word, how are we to tell if it is ours, or another's?
Why would it be ours? said Mercier. Are these dogs ours? No. We
see them today for the first time. And you would have it that the bicy–
cle, assuming it exists, is ours? And yet the dogs are not ours.
Bugger the dogs, said the ranger.
But as if to give himself the lie he fell on them with stick and boot
and drove them cursing from the pagoda. Tied together as they still
were, by the post-coitus, their retreat was no easy matter. For the efforts
they made to escape, acting equally in opposi.te directions, could not
but annul each other. They must have greatly suffered.
He has now buggered the dogs, said Mercier.
He has driven them from the shelter, said Camier, there is no de–
nyingthat, but by no means from the garden.
The rain will soon wash them loose, said Mercier. Less rut-be–
sotted they would have thought of it themselves.
The fact is he has done them a service, said Camier.
Let us show him a little kindness, said Mercier, he's a hero of the
great war. Here we were, high and dry, masturbating full pelt without
fear of interruption, while he was crawling in the Flanders mud, shit–
ting in his puttees.
Conclude nothing from those idle words, Mercier and Camier
were old young.
Il's an idea said Camier.
Will you look at that clatter of decorations, said Mercier. Do you
realize the gallons of diarrhoea that represents?
Darkly, said Camier, as only one so costive can.
Let us suppose this alleged bicycle is ours, said Mercier. Where
lies the harm?
A truce to dissembling, said Camier, it is ours.
Shift her out of here, said the ranger.
The day has dawned at last, said Camier, afler years of shilly-shal–
ly, when we must go, we know not whither, perhaps never
to
return ...
alive. We are simply waiting for the day to lift, then full speed ahead.
Try and understand.
