At Swim-Two-Birds (26 page)

Our project is the more absorbing for that, said Trellis, a small tear running evenly from his eye to his chin and a convulsion piteous to behold running the length of his back-bone.

The Pooka thereupon betook himself into the upper air with a graceful retraction of his limbs beneath his cloak in the fashion of a gannet in full flight and flew until he had attained the sill of his window, with Trellis for company and colloquy by his side by the means of a hair-grip; and these were the subjects they held brief discourse on the time they were in flight together, videlicet, the strange aspect of tramway wires which, when viewed from above and from a postulated angle, have the appearance of confining the street in a cage; the odd probity of tricycles; this curious circumstance, that a dog as to his legs is evil and sinful but attains sanctity at the hour of his urination.

It is my intention, said the Pooka in the ear of Trellis, to remain resting here on the stone-work of this window; as for you, to see you regain the security of your bedroom (littered as it is by a coat of lime), that would indeed be a graceful concession to my eccentric dawning-day desires.

Easily accomplished, said Trellis, as he crawled in his crimson robe to the interior of his fine room, but give me time, for a leg that is in halves is a slow pilgrim and my shoulder is out of joint.

When he had crawled on to the floor, the ceiling fell upon his head, hurting him severely and causing the weaker parts of his skull to cave in. And he would have remained there till this, buried and for dead beneath the lime-clouded fall, had not the Pooka given him a quantity of supernatural strength on loan for five minutes, enabling him to raise a ton of plaster with the beam of his back and extricate himself until he achieved a lime-white hurtling through the window;and dropped with a crap on the cobbles of the street again, the half of the blood that was previously in him now around him and on his outside.

It was here that Furriskey held up the further progress of the tale with his hand in warning.

Maybe we're going a bit too hard on him, he warned. You can easily give a man a bigger hiding than he can hold.

We're only starting man, said Shanahan.

Gentlemen, I beg of you, leave everything to me, said Orlick with a taste of anger in his words. I guarantee that there will be no untoward fatality.

I draw the line at murder myself, observed Lamont.

I think we are doing very well, said Shanahan.

All right, Sir, away we go again, but don't forget he has a weak heart. Don't give him more than he can carry now.

That will be all right, answered Orlick.

Thereafter the Pooka applied his two horn-hard thumbs together, turning them at incustomary angles and scrubbing them on the good-quality kerseymere of his narrow trousers so that further sorcery was worked to this effect, that Trellis was beleaguered by an anger and a darkness and he was filled with a restless tottering unquiet and with a disgust for the places that he knew and with a desire to go where he never was, so that he was palsied of hand and foot and eye-mad and heart-quick so that he went bird-quick in craze and madness into the upper air, the Pooka at his rat-flight beside him and his shirt, red and blood-lank, fluttering heavily behind him.

To fly, observed the Pooka, towards the east to discover the seam between night and day, that is an aesthetic delight. Your fine overcoat of Galway frieze, the one with the khaki lining, you forgot that on the occasion of your second visit to your bedroom.

The gift of flight without the sister-art of landing, answered Trellis, that is always a doubt. I feel a thirst and the absence of a drink of spring water for a longer period than five minutes might well result in my death. It might be wisdom for the pair of us to attain land, me to lie upon my back and you to pour water from your hat into my interior. I have a hole here in my neck and through it the half of a cupful might escape before it could attain my stomach.

It was here that Orlick laid his pen upon its back.

Talking of water, Mr. Furriskey, he said, pardon my asking but where is the parochial house, the bath-room, you know?

The important apartment to which you refer, Sir, answered Furriskey with gravity, is on your left on the first landing on your way up, you can't miss it.

Ah. In that case there will be a slight intermission. I must retire for meditation and prayer. The curtain will be lowered to denote the passage of time. Gentlemen, adios!

Safe home, cried Shanahan, waving his hand.

Orlick arose stiffly from where he was and left the room, pushing back his hair and running it swiftly through the comb of his fingers. Lamont extracted a small box from his pocket, exhibited it and proved to the company beyond doubt that it contained but one cigarette; he lit the sole cigarette with the aid of a small machine depending for its utility on the combustibility of petroleum vapour when mixed with air. He sucked the smoke to the bottom of his lungs and these following words were mixed with it when he blew it out again on the flat of the table.

Do you know we're doing well. We're doing very well. By God he'll rue the day. He'll be a sorry man now.

A bigger hiding, remarked Furriskey with articulation leisurely in character, no man ever got. A more ferocious beating was never handed out by the hand of man.

Gentlemen, said Shanahan we're taking all the good out of it by giving him a rest, we're letting him get his wind. Now that's a mistake.

He'll get more than his wind.

Now I propose with your very kind permission to give our friend a little hiding on my own. A side-show, you understand. We'll put him back where we found him before the master comes back. Is the motion passed?

Now be careful, warned Lamont. Easy now. You'd better leave him be. We're doing very nicely so we are.

Not at all, man. Listen. A little party on our own.

The two lads in the air came to a sudden stop by order of his Satanic Majesty. The Pooka himself stopped where he was, never mind how it was done. The other fell down about a half a mile to the ground on the top of his snot and broke his two legs in halves and fractured his fourteen ribs, a terrible fall altogether. Down flew the Pooka after a while with a pipe in his mouth and the full of a book of fancy talk out of him as if this was any consolation to our friend, who was pumping blood like a stuck pig and roaring out strings of profanity and dirty foul language, enough to make the sun set before the day was half over.

Enough of that, my man, says the Pooka taking the pipe from his mouth. Enough of your dirty tongue now, Caesar. Say you like it.

I'm having a hell of a time, says Trellis. I'm nearly killed laughing. I never had such gas since I was a chiseller.

That's right, says the Pooka, enjoy yourself. How would you like a kick on the side of the face?

Which side? says Trellis.

The left side, Caesar, says the Pooka.

You're too generous altogether, says Trellis. I don't know you well enough to take a favour like that from you.

You're welcome, says the Pooka. And with these words he walked back, took the pipe out of his jaw, came down with a run and lifted the half of the man's face off his head with one kick and sent it high up into the trees where it got stuck in a blackbird's nest.

Say you like it, says he to Trellis quicklike.

Certainly I like it, says Trellis thhough a hole in his head - he had no choice because orders is orders, to quote a well-worn tag. Why wouldn't I like it. I think it's grand.

We are going to get funnier as we go along, says the Pooka, frowning with his brows and pulling hard at the old pipe. We are going to be very funny after a while. Is that one of your bones there on the grass?

Certainly, says Trellis, that's a lump out of my back.

Pick it up and carry it in your hand, says the Pooka, we don't want any of the parts lost.

When he had finished. saying that, he put a brown tobacco spit on Trellis's snot.

Thanks, says Trellis.

Maybe you're tired of being a man, says the Pooka.

I'm only half a man as it is, says Trellis. Make me into a fine woman and I'll marry you.

I'll mike you into a rat, says the Pooka.

And be damned but he was as good as his word. He worked the usual magic with his thumb and changed Trellis by a miracle of magic into a great whore of a buck rat with a black pointed snout and a scaly tail and a dirty ratcoloured coat full of ticks and terrible vermin, to say nothing of millions of plague-germs and disease and epidemics of every description.

What are you now? says the Pooka.

Only a rat, says the rat, wagging his tail to show he was pleased because he had to and had no choice in the matter. A poor rat, says he.

The Pooka took a good suck at his pipe.

Stop, said Furriskey.

What's the matter, amn't I all right man? asked Shanahan.

You're doing very nicely, Sir, said Furriskey, but here's where I contribute my penny to the plate. Here, gentlemen, is my idea of how our story goes on from where you stopped.

The Pooka took a good pull at his pipe. The result of this manoeuvre was magic of a very high order, because the Pooka succeeded in changing himself into a wirehaired Airedale terrier, the natural enemy of the rat from the start of time. He gave one bark and away with him like the wind after the mangy rat. Man but it was a great chase, hither and thither and back again, the pair of them squealing and barking for further orders. The rat, of course, came off second best. He was caught by the throat at the heel of the hunt and got such a shaking that he practically gave himself up for lost. Practically every bone and sinew in his body was gone by the time he found himself dropped again on the grass.

That's right, you know, remarked Furriskey, a rat's bones are very weak. Very soft, you know. The least thing will kill a rat.

Noises, peripatetic and external, came faintly upon the gathering in the midst of their creative composition and spare-time literary activity. Lamont handled what promised to be an awkward situation with coolness and cunning.

And the short of it is this, he said, that the Pooka worked more magic till himself and Trellis found themselves again in the air in their own bodies, just as they had been a quarter of an hour before that, none the worse for their trying ordeals.

Orlick came back amongst them, closing the door with care. He was fresh, orderly, civil, and a small cloud of new tobacco fumes was in attendance on his person.

More luck there, said Shanahan, the best story-teller in all the world. We're waiting with our tongues hanging out. The same again, please.

Orlick beamed a smile of pleasure with the suns of his gold teeth. A token of preoccupation, he retained his smile after its purpose had been accomplished.

A further thrilling instalment? Yes, he said.

No delay now, said Lamont.

I have been engaged, said Orlick, in profound thought. It is only now that the profundity of my own thought is dawning on me. I have devised a plot that will lift our tale to the highest plane of great literature.

As long as the fancy stuff is kept down, said Shanahan.

A plot that will be acceptable to all. You, gentlemen, will like it in particular. It combines justice with vengeance.

As long as the fancy stuff is kept down, said Shanahan, well and good.

Bending his head forward as if with the weight of the frown he had arranged on his brow, Lamont said in a dark voice:

Do anything to spoil the good yarn you have made of it so far, and I will arise and I will slay thee with a shovel. Eh, boys?

This was agreed to.

Now listen, gentlemen, said Orlick. Away we go.

That night they rested at the tree of Cluain Eo, Trellis at his birds'-roost on a thin branch surrounded by tufts of piercing thorns and tangles of bitter spiky brambles. By the sorcery of his thumbs the Pooka produced a canvas tent from the seat of his trousers of seaman's serge and erected it swiftly upon the carpet of the soft and daisy-studded sward, hammering clean pegs into the fresh-smelling earth by means of an odorous pine-wood mallet. When he had accomplished this he produced another wonder from the storehouse of his pants videlicet a good-quality folding bed with a hickory framework, complete with intimate bedclothes of French manufacture. He then knelt down and occupied himself with his devotions, making sounds with his tongue and with the hard horn of his thumbs that put the heart across the cripple high above him in the tree. This done, he hid his body in silk pyjamas of elegant oriental cut and provided about the waist of the trousers with gorgeous many-coloured tassels, a garment suitable for wear in the
harem
of the greatest Sultan of the distant East. He then said this to Trellis.

From the manner in which one breeze follows another about the trees, I predict that the day after to-morrow will be a wet one. Good night to you in the place you are, and a salubrious breathing of fresh-air towards the restoration of your strength. Myself, I sleep in a tent because I am delicate.

Trellis's wits were by this time feeble with suffering and by the time his courteous answer had made its way through the cloaks of the heavy leaves, it was barely perceptible.

Rain is badly wanted for the crops, he said. Good night to you. May angels guard you.

The Pooka then knocked the red fire from the interior of his meerschaum pipe and retired to the secrecy of his tent, having first taken good care to extinguish the embers of his pipe with a lump of a flat stone, for fires are extremely destructive and are jealously guarded against by every lover of the amenities of our land. And of the two of them, this much is sure, i.e., that one of them snored soundly through the night.

The night passed and the morning, having first wakened the plains and the open places, came into the fastness of the trees and knocked on the gaberdine flap of the Pooka's tent. He arose, prayed, and scented his temples with a rare balsam which he invariably carried about his person in a small black jar of perfect rotundity. He afterwards extracted a pound of oats and other choice ingredients from the inside of his pockets and baked himself an oaten farl of surpassing lightness and nourishment. He fed on this politely in a shaded corner of the wood he was in, but did not begin his feasting until he had extended to the man upon the branch a courteous invitation to make company with him at eating.