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DENIALS OF THE DIVINE
in a crucified position on a mechanical cross which is erected in the morning
and lowered at night. The fragment is primarily a conversation between Ernest
and Alice, a couple, foreshadowing the relationship between Hamm and Clov
in Fin de partie. In the exposition of the play, the time is after lunch. We see
Ernest lying asleep on his cross, snoring.® The strong, provocative opening
image draws a parallel between Christ and Ernest (also, at a later point Alice
calls her husband “mon petit Jésus”’), but at the same time its blasphemous
overtones cannot be ignored. If one had any doubt of the play’s burlesque nature
with respect to Christian imagery, the sound of snoring and the sight of Ernest
sleeping comfortably on his cross with a full stomach indicates the perspective
at once. Furthermore, this opening tableau suggests that we spend our entire
lives attached to our personal cross, and there is no difference between birth
and death in that respect: Calvary begins in the maternity ward. As Pozzo puts
it in Act Il of Waiting for Godot, women “give birth astride of a grave, the light
gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.”®
On this particular day, a day different from any other, a change takes place
in the Ernest & Alice Fragment—a change that one does not expect in a work
for the stage: the machinery is out of order, and the cross fails to rise. It is
jammed. Then, unexpectedly, it rises of its own accord, as soon as Alice goes
offstage to fetch the oil with which to fix it. Ernest blames Alice for the rough
rise.
Alice Ta croix ne vaut pas un clou. On t’a eu.
Ernest Comment elle ne vaut pas un clou? C’est toi qui ne sais pas t’y prendre.
Alice Je te dis que c’est de la sale camelote. Ca vous fout plein la vue — tant
qu’on n’est pas dessus. (Elle secoue la croix.) Regarde-moi ¢a!
Ernest Ne fais pas ¢a!
Alice Elle ne tient pas debout. Ah je le regrette, je t’assure, ton vieux gibet en
chêne. Avec lui je pouvais dormir tranquille?
Alice’s response suggests that there is a temporal aspect to Ernest’s
malfunctioning cross, namely that it has a past. Its function had previously
been filled by an oaken gibbet, but Ernest replaced it with a cross, as the gibbet
Samuel Beckett, untitled, unpublished, undated typescript, in the folder Abandoned Theatre
in French, Beckett Manuscript Collection, University of Reading, MS 1227/7/16/2, 1.
7 Ibid. 4. Quoted in Stanley E. Gontarski, The Intent of Undoing in Samuel Beckett’s Dramatic
Texts, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1985, 26.
® Beckett, The Complete Dramatic Works, 83.
° Samuel Beckett, MS 1227/7/16/2, 6. “ALICE Your cross is no good at all. You’ve been swindled.
ERNEST What do you mean, no good at all? It’s you that can’t handle it. ALICE I tell you it’s
filthy rubbish. It blocks the view — if you’re not up there. (She shakes the cross.) Just look at
it! ERNEST Don’t do that! ALICE It won’t stay upright. Ah, I do miss your old oaken gibbet,
I tell you straight. With that I could sleep in peace.” English translation: Bernard Adams.
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