this week was to be Racine let's save Racine for next week or maybe the week after I may be in New York next week this week a change of schedule last week this week I've been reading Beckett no not the saint never heard of him he's Irish Samuel Beckett but he writes in French he won the Nobel Prize he wrote Waiting for Godot I'm sure you know him last week I started his novel Malloy his first novel 1951 no not his first novel his first novel in French but I can't read French it's too hard I'm reading it in English this week I found many amusing passages especially the one about money no that must have been lost in translation it's really about cookies this week as usual
She jabbered away with a rattle of dentures and most of the time didn't realize what she was saying. Anyone but myself would have been lost in this clattering gabble, which can only have stopped during her brief instants of unconciousness. In any case I didn't come to listen to her. I got into communication with her by knocking on her skull. One knock meant yes, two no, three I don't know, four cookies, five goodbye. I was hard put to ram this code into her ruined and frantic understanding, but I did it, in the end. That she should confuse yes, no, I don't know and goodbye, was all the same to me, I confused them myself. But that she should associate the four knocks with anything but cookies was something to be avoided at all costs.