Short Fiction of Flann O'Brien (Irish Literature) (6 page)

I shall never forget the Thursday when the thing happened. I retired to my room at about six o’clock, fortified with a pony of porter and two threepenny cigars, and manfully addressed myself to the achievement of Chapter Five. McDaid, who for a whole week had been living precariously by selling kittens to foolish old ladies and who could be said to be existing on the immoral earnings of his cat, was required to rob a poor-box in a church. But no! Plot or no plot, it was not to be.

“Sorry, old chap,” he said, “but I absolutely can’t do it.”

“What’s this, Mac,” said I, “getting squeamish in your old age?”

“Not squeamish exactly,” he replied, “but I bar poor-boxes. Dammit, you can’t call me squeamish. Think of that bedroom business in Chapter Two, you old dog.”

“Not another word,” said I sternly, “you remember that new shaving brush you bought?”

“Yes.”

“Very well, you burst the poor-box or it’s anthrax in two days.”

“But, I say, old chap, that’s a bit thick.”

“You think so? Well, I’m old-fashioned enough to believe that your opinions don’t matter.”

We left it at that. Each of us firm, outwardly polite, perhaps, but determined to yield not one tittle of our inalienable rights. It was only afterwards that the whole thing came out. Knowing that he was a dyed-in-the-wool atheist, I had sent him to a revivalist prayer-meeting, purely for the purpose of scoffing and showing the reader the blackness of his soul. It appears that he remained to pray. Two days afterwards I caught him sneaking out to Gardiner Street at seven in the morning. Furthermore, a contribution to the funds of a well-known charity, a matter of four-and-sixpence in the name of Miles Caritatis was not, I understand, unconnected with our proselyte. A character ratting on his creator and exchanging the pre-destined hangman’s rope for a halo is something new. It is, however, only one factor in my impending dissolution. Shaun Svoolish, my hero, the composition of whose heroics have cost me many a sleepless day, has formed an alliance with a slavey in Griffith Avenue; and Shiela, his “steady,” an exquisite creature I produced for the sole purpose of loving him and becoming his wife, is apparently to be given the air. You see? My carefully thought-out plot is turned inside out and goodness knows where this individualist flummery is going to end. Imagine sitting down to finish a chapter and running bang into an unexplained slavey at the turn of a page! I reproached Shaun, of course.

“Frankly, Shaun,” I said, “I don’t like it.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “My brains, my brawn, my hands, my body are willing to work for you, but the heart! Who shall say yea or nay to the timeless passions of a man’s heart? Have you ever been in love? Have you ever—?”

“What about Shiela, you shameless rotter? I gave her dimples, blue eyes, blonde hair and a beautiful soul. The last time she met you, I rigged her out in a blue swagger outfit, brand new. You now throw the whole lot back in my face. . . . Call it cricket if you like, Shaun, but don’t expect me to agree.”

“I may be a prig,” he replied, “but I know what I like. Why can’t I marry Bridie and have a shot at the Civil Service?”

“Railway accidents are fortunately rare,” I said finally, “but when they happen they are horrible. Think it over.”

“You wouldn’t dare!”

“O, wouldn’t I? Maybe you’d like a new shaving brush as well.”

And that was that.

Treason is equally widespread among the minor characters. I have been confronted with a Burmese shanachy, two corner-boys, a barmaid, and five bus-drivers, none of whom could give a satisfactory explanation of their existence or a plausible account of their movements. They are evidently “friends” of my characters. The only character to yield me undivided and steadfast allegiance is a drunken hedonist who is destined to be killed with kindness in Chapter Twelve.
And he knows it!
Not that he is any way lacking in cheek, of course. He started nagging me one evening.

“I say, about the dust-jacket—”

“Yes?”

“No damn vulgarity, mind. Something subtle, refined. If the thing was garish or cheap, I’d die of shame.”

“Felix,” I snapped, “mind your own business.”

Just one long round of annoyance and petty persecution. What is troubling me just at the moment, however, is a paper-knife. I introduced it in an early scene to give Father Hennessy something to fiddle with on a parochial call. It is now in the hands of McDaid. It has a dull steel blade, and there is evidently something going on. The book is seething with conspiracy and there have been at least two whispered consultations between all the characters, including two who have not yet been officially created. Posterity taking a hand in the destiny of its ancestors, if you know what I mean. It is too bad. The only objector, I understand, has been Captain Fowler, the drunken hedonist, who insists that there shall be no foul play until Chapter Twelve has been completed; and he has been over-ruled. Candidly, reader, I fear my number’s up.

*    *    *    *    *    *    *

I sit at my window thinking, remembering, dreaming. Soon I go to my room to write. A cool breeze has sprung up from the west, a clean wind that plays on men at work, on boys at play and on women who seek to police the corridors, live in Stephen’s Green and feel the heat of buckshee turf. . . .

It is a strange world, but beautiful. How hard it is, the hour of parting. I cannot call in the Guards, for we authors have our foolish pride. The destiny of Brother Barnabas is sealed, sealed for aye.

I must write!

These, dear reader, are my last words. Keep them and cherish them. Never again can you read my deathless prose, for my day that has been a good day is past.

Remember me and pray for me.

Adieu!

*
“Truagh sin, a leabhair bhig bháin

Tiocfaidh lá, is ba fíor,

Déarfaidh neach os cionn do chláir

Ní mhaireann an lámh do scríobh.”

[“It is a pity, beloved little book

A day will come, to be sure,

Someone will inscribe over your contents

‘The hand that wrote this lives not.’” (Trans. Jack Fennell)]

†
Who is Carruthers McDaid, you ask?

John Duffy’s Brother (1940)

by Flann O’Brien

Strictly speaking, this story should not be written or told at all. To write it or to tell it is to spoil it. This is because the man who had the strange experience we are going to talk about never mentioned it to anybody, and the fact that he kept his secret and sealed it up completely in his memory is the whole point of the story. Thus we must admit that handicap at the beginning—that it is absurd for us to tell the story, absurd for anybody to listen to it, and unthinkable that anybody should believe it.

We will, however, do this man one favour. We will refrain from mentioning him by his complete name. This will enable us to tell his secret and permit him to continue looking his friends in the eye. But we can say that his surname is Duffy. There are thousands of these Duffys in the world; even at this moment there is probably a new Duffy making his appearance in some corner of it. We can even go so far as to say that he is John Duffy’s brother. We do not break faith in saying so, because if there are only one hundred John Duffys in existence, and even if each one of them could be met and questioned, no embarrassing enlightenments would be forthcoming. That is because the John Duffy in question never left his house, never left his bed, never talked to anybody in his life, and was never seen by more than one man. That man’s name was Gumley. Gumley was a doctor. He was present when John Duffy was born and also when he died, one hour later.

John Duffy’s brother lived alone in a small house on an eminence in Inchicore. When dressing in the morning he could gaze across the broad valley of the Liffey to the slopes of the Phoenix Park, peacefully. Usually the river was indiscernible but on a sunny morning it could be seen lying like a long glistening spear in the valley’s palm. Like a respectable married man, it seemed to be hurrying into Dublin as if to work.

Sometimes recollecting that his clock was fast, John Duffy’s brother would spend an idle moment with his father’s spyglass, ranging the valley with an eagle eye. The village of Chapelizod was to the left and invisible in the depth but each morning the inhabitants would erect, as if for Mr. Duffy’s benefit, a lazy plume of smoke to show exactly where they were.

Mr. Duffy’s glass usually came to rest on the figure of a man hurrying across the uplands of the Park and disappearing from view in the direction of the Magazine Fort. A small white terrier bounced along ahead of him but could be seen occasionally sprinting to overtake him after dallying behind for a time on private business.

The man carried in the crook of his arm an instrument which Mr. Duffy at first took to be a shotgun or patent repeating rifle, but one morning the man held it by the butt and smote the barrels smartly on the ground as he walked, and it was then evident to Mr. Duffy—he felt some disappointment—that the article was a walking-stick.

It happened that this man’s name was Martin Smullen. He was a retired stationary-engine driver and lived quietly with a delicate sister at Number Four Cannon Row, Parkgate. Mr. Duffy did not know his name and was destined never to meet him or have the privilege of his acquaintance, but it may be worth mentioning that they once stood side by side at the counter of a public house in Little Easter Street, mutually unrecognised, each to the other a black stranger. Mr. Smullen’s call was whiskey, Mr. Duffy’s stout.

Mr. Smullen’s sister’s name was not Smullen but Goggins, relict of the late Paul Goggins, wholesale clothier. Mr. Duffy had never even heard of her. She had a cousin by the name of Leo Corr who was not unknown to the police. He was sent up in 1924 for a stretch of hard labour in connection with the manufacture of spurious currency. Mrs. Goggins had never met him, but heard that he had emigrated to Labrador on his release.

About the spyglass. A curious history attaches to its owner, also a Duffy, late of the Mercantile Marine. Although unprovided with the benefits of a University education—indeed, he had gone to sea at the age of sixteen as a result of an incident arising out of an imperfect understanding of the sexual relation—he was of a scholarly turn of mind and would often spend the afternoons of his sea-leave alone in his dining-room thumbing a book of Homer with delight or annotating with erudite sneers the inferior Latin of the Angelic Doctor. On the fourth day of July, 1927, at four o’clock, he took leave of his senses in the dining-room. Four men arrived in a closed van at eight o’clock that evening to remove him from mortal ken to a place where he would be restrained for his own good.

It could be argued that much of the foregoing has little real bearing on the story of John Duffy’s brother, but modern writing, it is hoped, has passed the stage when simple events are stated in the void without any clue as to the psychological and hereditary forces working in the background to produce them. Having said so much, however, it is now permissible to set down briefly the nature of the adventure of John Duffy’s brother.

He arose one morning—on the 9th of March, 1932—dressed, and cooked his frugal breakfast. Immediately afterwards, he became possessed of the strange idea that he was a train. No explanation of this can be attempted. Small boys sometimes like to pretend that they are trains, and there are fat women in the world who are not, in the distance, without some resemblance to trains. But John Duffy’s brother was certain that he
was
a train—long, thunderous, and immense, with white steam escaping noisily from his feet and deep-throated bellows coming rhythmically from where his funnel was.

Moreover, he was certain that he was a particular train, the 9.20 into Dublin. His station was the bedroom. He stood absolutely still for twenty minutes, knowing that a good train is equally punctual in departure as in arrival. He glanced often at his watch to make sure that the hour should not go by unnoticed. His watch bore the words “Shockproof” and “Railway Timekeeper.”

Precisely at 9.20 he emitted a piercing whistle, shook the great mass of his metal ponderously into motion, and steamed away heavily into town. The train arrived dead on time at its destination, which was the office of Messrs. Polter and Polter, Solicitors, Commissioners for Oaths. For obvious reasons, the name of this firm is fictitious. In the office were two men, old Mr. Cranberry and young Mr. Hodge. Both were clerks and both took their orders from John Duffy’s brother. Of course, both names are imaginary.

“Good Morning, Mr. Duffy,” said Mr. Cranberry. He was old and polite, grown yellow in the firm’s service.

Mr. Duffy looked at him in surprise. “Can you not see I am a train?” he said. “Why do you call me Mr. Duffy?”

Mr. Cranberry gave a laugh and winked at Mr. Hodge who sat young, neat and good-looking, behind his typewriter.

“Alright, Mr. Train,” he said. “That’s a cold morning, sir. Hard to get up steam these cold mornings, sir.”

“It is not easy,” said Mr. Duffy. He shunted expertly to his chair and waited patiently before he sat down while the company’s servants adroitly uncoupled him. Mr. Hodge was sniggering behind his roller.

“Any cheap excursions, sir?” he asked.

“No,” Mr. Duffy replied. “There are season tickets, of course.”

“Third class and first class, I suppose, sir?”

“No,” said Mr. Duffy. “In deference to the views of Herr Marx, all class distinctions in the passenger rolling-stock have been abolished.”

“I see,” said Mr. Cranberry.

“That’s communism,” said Mr. Hodge.

“He means,” said Mr. Cranberry, “that it is now first-class only.”

“How many wheels has your engine?” asked Mr. Hodge. “Three big ones?”

“I am not a goods train,” said Mr. Duffy acidly. “The wheel formation of a passenger engine is four-four-two—two large driving wheels on each side, coupled, of course, with a four-wheel bogey in front and two small wheels at the cab. Why do you ask?”

“The platform’s in the way,” Mr. Cranberry said. “He can’t see it.”

“Oh, quite,” said Mr. Duffy. “I forgot.”