The
Ottolenghi
was faintly amused.
Samuel Beckett
It had been good enough for his mother, it was good enough for him.
Belacqua on his knees before the flame, poring over the grill, controlled every phase of the broiling. It took time, but if a thing was worth doing at all it was worth doing well, that was a true saying. Long before the end the room was full of smoke and the reek of burning. He switched off the gas, when all that human care and skill could do had been done, and restored the toaster to its nail. This was an act of dilapidation, for it seared a great weal in the paper. This was hooliganism pure and simple. What the hell did he care? Was it his wall? The same hopeless paper had been there fifty years. It was livid with age. It could not be disimproved.
Next a thick paste of Savora, salt and Cayenne on each round, well worked in while the pores were still open with the heat. No butter, God forbid, just a good foment of mustard and salt and pepper on each round. Butter was a blunder, it made the toast soggy. Buttered toast was all right for Senior Fellows and Salvationists, for such as had nothing but false teeth in their heads. It was no good at all to a fairly strong young rose like Belacqua. This meal that he was at such pains to make ready, he would devour it with a sense of rapture and victory, it would be like
DANTE AND THE LOBSTER 13
smiting the sledded Polacks on the ice. He would snap at it with closed eyes, he would gnash it into a pulp, he would vanquish it utterly with his fangs. Then the anguish of pungency, the pang of the spices, as each mouthful died, scorching his palate, bringing tears.
But he was not yet all set, there was yet much to be done. He had burnt his offering, he had not fully dressed it. Yes, he had put the horse behind the tumbrel.
He clapped the toasted rounds together, he brought them smartly together like cymbals, they clave the one to the other on the viscid salve of Savora. Then he wrapped them up for the time being in any old sheet of paper. Then he made himself ready for the road.
Now the great thing was to avoid being accosted. To be stopped at this stage and have conversational nuis- ance committed all over him would be a disaster. His whole being was straining forward towards the joy in store. If he were accosted now he might just as well fling his lunch into the gutter and walk straight back home. Sometimes his hunger, more of mind, I need scarcely say, than of body, for this meal amounted to such a frenzy that he would not have hesitated to strike any man rash enough to buttonhole and baulk him, he would have shouldered him out of his path without ceremony. Woe betide the meddler who crossed him when his mind was really set on this meal.
He threaded his way rapidly, his head bowed, through a familiar labyrinth of lanes and suddenly dived into a little family grocery. In the shop they were not surprised. Most days, about this hour, he shot in off the street in this way.
The slab of cheese was prepared. Separated since morn- ing from the piece, it was only waiting for Belacqua to call and take it. Gorgonzola cheese. He knew a man who came
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from Gorgonzola, his name was Angelo. He had been born in Nice but all his youth had been spent in Gorgonzola. He knew where to look for it. Every day it was there, in the same corner, waiting to be called for. They were very decent obliging people.
He looked sceptically at the cut of cheese. He turned it over on its back to see was the other side any better. The other side was worse. They had laid it better side up, they had practised that little deception. Who shall blame them? He rubbed it. It was sweating. That was something. He stooped and smelt it. A faint fragrance of corruption. What good was that? He didn't want fragrance, he wasn't a bloody gourmet, he wanted a good stench. What he wanted was a good green stenching rotten lump of Gor- gonzola cheese, alive, and by God he would have it.
He looked fiercely at the grocer.
"What's that? " he demanded.
The grocer writhed.
"Well? " demanded Belacqua, he was without fear when
roused, "is that the best you can do? "
"In the length and breadth of Dublin" said the grocer
"you won't find a rottener bit this minute. "
Belacqua was furious. The impudent dogsbody, for two
pins he would assault him.
"It won't do" he cried "do you hear me, it won't do at
all. I won't have it. " He ground his teeth.
The grocer, instead of simply washing his hands like
Pilate, flung out his arms in a wild crucified gesture of supplication. Sullenly Belacqua undid his packet and slipped the cadaverous tablet of cheese between the hard cold black boards of the toast. He stumped to the door where he whirled round however.
"You heard me? " he cried.
"Sir" said the grocer. This was not a question, nor yet
DANTE AND THE LOBSTER 15
an expression of acquiescence. The tone in which it was let fall made it quite impossible to know what was in the man's mind. It was a most ingenious riposte.
"I tell you" said Belacqua with great heat "this won't do at all. If you can't do better than this" he raised the hand that held the packet "I shall be obliged to go for my cheese elsewhere. Do you mark me? "
"Sir" said the grocer.
He came to the threshold of his store and watched the indignant customer hobble away. Belacqua had a spavined gait, his feet were in ruins, he suffered with them almost continuously. Even in the night they took no rest, or next to none. For then the cramps took over from the corns and hammer-toes, and carried on. So that he would press the fringes of his feet desperately against the end-rail of the bed or, better again, reach down with his hand and drag them up and back towards the instep. Skill and patience could disperse the pain, but there it was, complicating his night's rest.
The grocer, without closing his eyes or taking them off the receding figure, blew his nose in the skirt of his apron. Being a warm-hearted human man he felt sympathy and pity for this queer customer who always looked ill and dejected. But at the same time he was a small tradesman, don't forget that, with a small tradesman's sense of per- sonal dignity and what was what. Thruppence, he cast it up, thruppence worth of cheese per day, one and a tanner per week. No, he would fawn on no man for that, no, not on the best in the land. He had his pride.
Stumbling along by devious ways towards the lowly public where he was expected, in the sense that the entry of his grotesque person would provoke no comment or laughter, Belacqua gradually got the upper hand of his choler. Now that lunch was as good as a fait accompli, be-
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cause the incontinent bosthoons of his own class, itching to pass on a big idea or inflict an appointment, were sel- dom at large in this shabby quarter of the city, he was free to consider items two and three, the lobster and the lesson, in closer detail.
At a quarter to three he was due at the school. Say five to three. The public closed, the fishmonger reopened, at half-past two. Assuming then that his lousy old bitch of an aunt had given her order in good time that morning, with strict injunctions that it should be ready and waiting so that her blackguard boy should on no account be de- layed when he called for it first thing in the afternoon, it would be time enough if he left the public as it closed, he could remain on till the last moment. Benissimo. He had half-a-crown. That was two pints of draught anyway and perhaps a bottle to wind up with. Their bottled stout was particularly excellent and well up. And he would still be left with enough coppers to buy a Herald and take a tram if he felt tired or was pinched for time. Always assuming, of course, that the lobster was all ready to be handed over. God damn these tradesmen, he thought, you can never rely on them. He had not done an exercise but that did not matter. His Professoressa was so charming and remark- able. Signorina Adriana Ottolenghi! He did not believe it possible for a woman to be more intelligent or better in- formed than the little Ottolenghi. So he had set her on a pedestal in his mind, apart from other women. She had said last day that they would read II Cinque Maggio to- gether. But she would not mind if he told her, as he pro- posed to, in Italian, he would frame a shining phrase on his way from the public, that he would prefer to postpone the Cinque Maggio to another occasion. Manzoni was an old woman, Napoleon was another. Napoleone di mezza calzetta, fa Vamove a Giacominetta. Why did he think of
DANTE AND THE LOBSTER 17
Manzoni as an old woman? Why did he do him that in- justice? Pellico was another. They were all old maids, suffragettes. He must ask his Signorina where he could have received that impression, that the 19th century in Italy was full of old hens trying to cluck like Pindar. Car- ducci was another. Also about the spots on the moon. If she could not tell him there and then she would make it up, only too gladly, against the next time. Everything was all set now and in order. Bating, of course, the lobster, which had to remain an incalculable factor. He must just hope for the best. And expect the worst, he thought gaily, diving into the public, as usual.
Belacqua drew near to the school, quite happy, for all had gone swimmingly. The lunch had been a notable suc- cess, it would abide as a standard in his mind. Indeed he could not imagine its ever being superseded. And such a pale soapy piece of cheese to prove so strong! He must only conclude that he had been abusing himself all these years in relating the strength of cheese directly to its greenness. We live and learn, that was a true saying. Also his teeth and jaws had been in heaven, splinters of van- quished toast spraying forth at each gnash. It was like eating glass. His mouth burned and ached with the ex- ploit. Then the food had been further spiced by the intelli- gence, transmitted in a low tragic voice across the counter by Oliver the improver, that the Malahide murderer's peti- tion for mercy, signed by half the land, having been re-
jected, the man must swing at dawn in Mountjoy and noth- ing could save him. Ellis the hangman was even now on his way. Belacqua, tearing at the sandwich and swill- ing the precious stout, pondered on McCabe in his cell.
The lobster was ready after all, the man handed it over instanter, and with such a pleasant smile. Really a little bit
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of courtesy and goodwill went a long way in this world. A smile and a cheerful word from a common working-man and the face of the world was brightened. And it was so easy, a mere question of muscular control.
"Lepping" he said cheerfully, handing it over. "Lepping? " said Belacqua. What on earth was that? "Lepping fresh, sir" said the man, "fresh in this morn-
ing. "
Now Belacqua, on the analogy of mackerel and other fish
that he had heard described as lepping fresh when they had been taken but an hour or two previously, supposed the man to mean that the lobster had very recently been killed.
Signorina Adriana Ottolenghi was waiting in the little front room off the hall, which Belacqua was naturally in- clined to think of rather as the vestibule. That was her room, the Italian room. On the same side, but at the back, was the French room. God knows where the German room was. Who cared about the German room anyway?
He hung up his coat and hat, laid the long knobby brown-paper parcel on the hall-table, and went prestly in to the Ottolenghi.
After about half-an-hour of this and that obiter, she complimented him on his grasp of the language.
"You make rapid progress" she said in her ruined voice.
There subsisted as much of the Ottolenghi as might be expected to of the person of a lady of a certain age who had found being young and beautiful and pure more of a bore than anything else.
Belacqua, dissembling his great pleasure, laid open the moon enigma.
"Yes" she said "I know the passage. It is a famous teaser. Off-hand I cannot tell you, but I will look it up when I get home. "
DANTE AND THE LOBSTER 19
The sweet creature! She would look it up in her big Dante when she got home. What a woman!
"It occurred to me" she said "apropos of I don't know what, that you might do worse than make up Dante's rare movements of compassion in Hell. That used to be" her past tenses were always sorrowful "a favourite question. "
He assumed an expression of profundity.
"In that connexion" he said "I recall one superb pun anyway:
'qui vive la pietd quando e ben morta
She said nothing.
"Is it not a great phrase? " he gushed.
She said nothing.
"Now" he said like a fool "I wonder how you could
translate that? "
Still she said nothing. Then:
"Do you think" she murmured "it is absolutely neces-
sary to translate it? "
Sounds as of conflict were borne in from the hall. Then
silence. A knuckle tambourined on the door, it flew open and lo it was Mile Glain, the French instructress, clutch- ing her cat, her eyes out on stalks, in a state of the great- est agitation.
"Oh" she gasped "forgive me. I intrude, but what was in the bag? "
"The bag? " said the Ottolenghi.
Mile Glain took a French step forward.
"The parcel" she buried her face in the cat "the parcel
in the hall. "
Belacqua spoke up composedly. "Mine" he said, "a fish. "
. He did not know the French for lobster. Fish would do very well. Fish had been good enough for Jesus Christ,
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Son of God, Saviour. It was good enough for Mile Glain. "Oh" said Mile Glain, inexpressibly relieved, "I caught him in the nick of time. " She administered a tap to the
cat. "He would have tore it to flitters. "
Belacqua began to feel a little anxious.
"Did he actually get at it? " he said.
"No no" said Mile Glain "I caught him just in time.
But I did not know" with a blue-stocking snigger "what it might be, so I thought I had better come and ask. "
Base prying bitch.
The Ottolenghi was faintly amused.
"Puisqu'il n'y a pas de mal fatigue and elegance.
. .
. " she said with great
"Heureusement" it was clear at once that Mile Glain was devout "heureusement. "
Chastening the cat with little skelps she took herself off. The grey hairs of her maidenhead screamed at Belac- qua. A devout, virginal blue-stocking, honing after a penny's worth of scandal.
"Where were we? " said Belacqua.
But Neapolitan patience has its limits.
"Where are we ever? " cried the Ottolenghi "where we
were, as we were. "
Belacqua drew near to the house of his aunt. Let us call it Winter, that dusk may fall now and a moon rise. At the corner of the street a horse was down and a man sat on its head. I know, thought Belacqua, that that is considered the right thing to do. But why? A lamplighter flew by on his bike, tilting with his pole at the standards, jousting a little yellow light into the evening. A poorly dressed couple stood in the bay of a pretentious gateway, she sagging against the railings, her head lowered, he
-
DANTE AND THE LOBSTER 21
standing facing her. He stood up close to her, his hands dangled by his sides. Where we were, thought Belacqua, as we were. He walked on gripping his parcel. Why not piety and pity both, even down below? Why not mercy and Godliness together? A little mercy in the stress of sacrifice, a little mercy to rejoice against judgment. He thought of Jonah and the gourd and the pity of a jealous God on Nineveh. And poor McCabe, he would get it in the neck at dawn. What was he doing now, how was he feeling? He would relish one more meal, one more night.
His aunt was in the garden, tending whatever flowers die at that time of year. She embraced him and together they went down into the bowels of the earth, into the kitchen in the basement. She took the parcel and undid it and abruptly the lobster was on the table, on the oil- cloth, discovered.
"They assured me it was fresh" said Belacqua.
Suddenly he saw the creature move, this neuter crea- ture. Definitely it changed its position. His hand flew to his mouth.
"Christ! " he said "it's alive. "
His aunt looked at the lobster. It moved again. It made a faint nervous act of life on the oilcloth. They stood above it, looking down on it, exposed cruciform on the oilcloth. It shuddered again. Belacqua felt he would be sick.
"My God" he whined "it's alive, what'll we do? "
The aunt simply had to laugh. She bustled off to the pantry to fetch her smart apron, leaving him goggling down at the lobster, and came back with it on and her sleeves rolled up, all business.
"Well" she said "it is to be hoped so, indeed. "
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"All this time" muttered Belacqua. Then, suddenly aware of her hideous equipment: "What are you going to do? " he cried.
"Boil the beast" she said, "what else? "
"But it's not dead" protested Belacqua "you cant boil it like that. "
She looked at him in astonishment. Had he taken leave of his senses?
"Have sense" she said sharply, "lobsters are always boiled alive. They must be. " She caught up the lobster and laid it on its back. It trembled. "They feel nothing" she said.
In the depths of the sea it had crept into the cruel pot. For hours, in the midst of its enemies, it had breathed secretly. It had survived the Frenchwoman's cat and his witless clutch. Now it was going alive into scalding water. It had to. Take into the air my quiet breath.
Belacqua looked at the old parchment of her face, grey in the dim kitchen.
"You make a fuss" she said angrily "and upset me and then lash into it for your dinner. "
She lifted the lobster clear of the table. It had about thirty seconds to live.
Well, thought Belacqua, it's a quick death, God help us all. ^
It is not.
Fingal
1he last girl he went with, before a memorable fit of laughing incapacitated him from gallantry for some time, was pretty, hot and witty, in that order. So one fine Spring morning he brought her out into the country, to the Hill of Feltrim in the country. They turned east off the road from Dublin to Malahide short of the Castle woods and soon it came into view, not much more than a burrow, the ruin of a mill on the top, choked lairs of furze and brambles passim on its gentle slopes. It was a landmark for miles around on account of the high ruin. The Hill of the Wolves.
They had not been very long on the top before he began to feel a very sad animal indeed. But she was to all appearance in high spirits, enjoying the warm sun and the prospect.
"The Dublin mountains" she said "don't they look lovely, so dreamy. "
Now Belacqua was looking intently in the opposite direction, across the estuary.
"It's the east wind" he said.
She began to admire this and that, the ridge of Lam- bay Island rising out of the brown woods of the Castle, Ireland's Eye like a shark, and the ridiculous little hills far away to the north, what were they?
"The Naul" said Belacqua. "Is it possible you didn't 23
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know the Naul? " This in the shocked tone of the travelled spinster: "You don't say you were in Milan (to rime with villain) and never saw the Cena? " "Can it be possible that you passed through Chambery and never called on Mme de Warens? "
"North Dublin" she said "I don't know at all. So flat and dull, all roads leading to Drogheda. "
"Fingal dull! " he said. "Winnie you astonish me. "
They considered Fingal for a time together in silence. Its coast eaten away with creeks and marshes, tesserae of small fields, patches of wood springing up like a weed, the line of hills too low to close the view.
"When it's a magic land" he sighed "like Saone-et- Loire. "
"That means nothing to me" said Winnie.
"Oh yes" he said, "bons vins et Lamartine, a champaign land for the sad and serious, not a bloody little toy Kin- dergarten like Wicklow. "
You make great play with your short stay abroad, thought Winnie.
"You and your sad and serious" she said. "Will you never come off it? "
"Well" he said "I'll give you Alphonse. ,
She replied that he could keep him. Things were be- ginning to blow up nasty.
"What's that on your face? " she said sharply.
"Impetigo" said Belacqua. He had felt it coming with a terrible itch in the night and in the morning it was there. Soon it would be a scab.
"And you kiss me" she exclaimed "with that on your face. "
"I forgot" he said. "I get so excited you know. "
She spittled on her handkerchief and wiped her mouth.
Belacqua lay humbly beside her, expecting her to get up and leave him. But instead she said:
"What is it anyway? What does it come from? " "Dirt" said Belacqua, "you see it on slum children. " A long awkward silence followed these words.
"Don't pick it darling" she said unexpectedly at last,
"you'll make it worse. "
This came to Belacqua like a drink of water to drink
in a dungeon. Her goodwill must have meant something to him. He returned to Fingal to cover his confusion.
"I often come to this hill" he said "to have a view of Fingal, and each time I see it more as a back-land, a land of sanctuary, a land that you don't have to dress up to, that you can walk on in a lounge suit, smoking a cigar. " What a geyser, she thought. "And where much has been suffered in secret, especially by women. "
"This is all a dream" she said. "I see nothing but three acres and cows. You can't have Cincinnatus without a furrow. "
Now it was she who was sulky and he who was happy.
"Oh Winnie" he made a vague clutch at her sincerities, for she was all anyway on the grass, "you look very Ro-
man this minute. "
"He loves me" she said, in earnest jest.
"Only pout" he begged, "be Roman, and we'll go on
across the estuary. "
? " . .
a contract? "
"No need" she said.
He was as wax in her hands, she twisted him this way
and that. But now their moods were in accordance, things
"And then.
And then! Winnie take thought!
"I see" he said "you take thought. Shall we execute
FINGAL 25
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were somehow very pleasant all of a sudden. She gazed long at the area of contention and he willed her not to speak, to remain there with her grave face, a quiet puella in a blurred world. But she spoke (who shall silence them, at last? ), saying that she saw nothing but the grey fields of serfs and the ramparts of ex-favourites. Saw! They were all the same when it came to the pinch clods. If she closed her eyes she might see something. He would drop the subject, he would not try to communi- cate Fingal, he would lock it up in his mind. So much the better.
"Look" he pointed.
She looked, blinking for the focus.
"The big red building" he said "across the water, with
the towers. "
At last she thought she saw what he meant.
"Far away" she said "with the round tower? "
"Do you know what that is" he said "because my
heart's right there. "
Well, she thought, you lay your cards on the table. "No" she said, "it looks like a bread factory to me. " "The Portrane Lunatic Asylum" he said.
"Oh" she said "I know a doctor there. "
Thus, she having a friend, he his heart, in Portrane,
they agreed to make for there.
They followed the estuary all the way round, admiring
the theories of swans and the coots, over the dunes and past the Martello tower, so that they came on Portrane from the south and the sea instead of like a vehicle by the railway bridge and the horrible red chapel of Dona- bate. The place was as full of towers as Dun Laoghaire of steeples: two Martello, the red ones of the asylum, a water-tower and the round. Trespassing unawares, for the
notice-board was further on towards the coastguard sta- tion, they climbed the rising ground to this latter. They followed the grass margin of a ploughed field till they came to where a bicycle was lying, half hidden in the rank grass. Belacqua, who could on no account resist a bicycle, thought what an extraordinary place to come across one. The owner was out in the field, scarifying the dry furrows with a fork.
"Is this right for the tower? '' cried Belacqua. The man turned his head.
"Can we get up to the tower? " cried Belacqua. The man straightened up and pointed.
"Fire ahead" he said.
"Over the wall? " cried Belacqua. There was no need for him to shout. A conversational tone would have been heard across the quiet field. But he was so anxious to make himself clear, he so dreaded the thought of having to repeat himself, that he not merely raised his voice, but put on a flat accent that astonished Winnie.
"Don't be an eejit" she said, "if it's straight on it's over the wall. "
But the man seemed pleased that the wall had been mentioned, or perhaps he was just glad of an opportunity to leave his work, for he dropped his fork and came lum- bering over to where they were standing. There was noth- ing at all noteworthy about his appearance. He said that their way lay straight ahead, yes, over the wall, and then the tower was on top of the field, or else they could go back till they came to the road and go along it till they came to the Banks and follow up the Banks. The Banks? Was this fellow one of the more harmless luna- tics? Belacqua asked was the tower an old one, as though it required a Dr Petrie to see that it was not. The man
FINGAL 27
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said it had been built for relief in the year of the Fam- ine, so he had heard, by a Mrs Somebody whose name he misremembered in honour of her husband.
"Well Winnie" said Belacqua, "over the wall or follow up the Banks? "
"There's a rare view of Lambay from the top" said the man.
Winnie was in favour of the wall, she thought that it would be more direct now that they had come so far. The man began to work this out. Belacqua had no one but himself to blame if they never got away from this machine.
"But I would like to see the Banks" he said.
"If we went on now" said Winnie "now that we have come so far, and followed the Banks down, how would that be? "
They agreed, Belacqua and the man, that it needed a woman to think these things out. Suddenly there was a tie between them.
The towerHbegan well; that was the funeral meats. But from the door up it was all relief and no honour; that was the marriage tables.
They had not been long on the top before Belacqua was a sad animal again.
Belacqua on his knees before the flame, poring over the grill, controlled every phase of the broiling. It took time, but if a thing was worth doing at all it was worth doing well, that was a true saying. Long before the end the room was full of smoke and the reek of burning. He switched off the gas, when all that human care and skill could do had been done, and restored the toaster to its nail. This was an act of dilapidation, for it seared a great weal in the paper. This was hooliganism pure and simple. What the hell did he care? Was it his wall? The same hopeless paper had been there fifty years. It was livid with age. It could not be disimproved.
Next a thick paste of Savora, salt and Cayenne on each round, well worked in while the pores were still open with the heat. No butter, God forbid, just a good foment of mustard and salt and pepper on each round. Butter was a blunder, it made the toast soggy. Buttered toast was all right for Senior Fellows and Salvationists, for such as had nothing but false teeth in their heads. It was no good at all to a fairly strong young rose like Belacqua. This meal that he was at such pains to make ready, he would devour it with a sense of rapture and victory, it would be like
DANTE AND THE LOBSTER 13
smiting the sledded Polacks on the ice. He would snap at it with closed eyes, he would gnash it into a pulp, he would vanquish it utterly with his fangs. Then the anguish of pungency, the pang of the spices, as each mouthful died, scorching his palate, bringing tears.
But he was not yet all set, there was yet much to be done. He had burnt his offering, he had not fully dressed it. Yes, he had put the horse behind the tumbrel.
He clapped the toasted rounds together, he brought them smartly together like cymbals, they clave the one to the other on the viscid salve of Savora. Then he wrapped them up for the time being in any old sheet of paper. Then he made himself ready for the road.
Now the great thing was to avoid being accosted. To be stopped at this stage and have conversational nuis- ance committed all over him would be a disaster. His whole being was straining forward towards the joy in store. If he were accosted now he might just as well fling his lunch into the gutter and walk straight back home. Sometimes his hunger, more of mind, I need scarcely say, than of body, for this meal amounted to such a frenzy that he would not have hesitated to strike any man rash enough to buttonhole and baulk him, he would have shouldered him out of his path without ceremony. Woe betide the meddler who crossed him when his mind was really set on this meal.
He threaded his way rapidly, his head bowed, through a familiar labyrinth of lanes and suddenly dived into a little family grocery. In the shop they were not surprised. Most days, about this hour, he shot in off the street in this way.
The slab of cheese was prepared. Separated since morn- ing from the piece, it was only waiting for Belacqua to call and take it. Gorgonzola cheese. He knew a man who came
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from Gorgonzola, his name was Angelo. He had been born in Nice but all his youth had been spent in Gorgonzola. He knew where to look for it. Every day it was there, in the same corner, waiting to be called for. They were very decent obliging people.
He looked sceptically at the cut of cheese. He turned it over on its back to see was the other side any better. The other side was worse. They had laid it better side up, they had practised that little deception. Who shall blame them? He rubbed it. It was sweating. That was something. He stooped and smelt it. A faint fragrance of corruption. What good was that? He didn't want fragrance, he wasn't a bloody gourmet, he wanted a good stench. What he wanted was a good green stenching rotten lump of Gor- gonzola cheese, alive, and by God he would have it.
He looked fiercely at the grocer.
"What's that? " he demanded.
The grocer writhed.
"Well? " demanded Belacqua, he was without fear when
roused, "is that the best you can do? "
"In the length and breadth of Dublin" said the grocer
"you won't find a rottener bit this minute. "
Belacqua was furious. The impudent dogsbody, for two
pins he would assault him.
"It won't do" he cried "do you hear me, it won't do at
all. I won't have it. " He ground his teeth.
The grocer, instead of simply washing his hands like
Pilate, flung out his arms in a wild crucified gesture of supplication. Sullenly Belacqua undid his packet and slipped the cadaverous tablet of cheese between the hard cold black boards of the toast. He stumped to the door where he whirled round however.
"You heard me? " he cried.
"Sir" said the grocer. This was not a question, nor yet
DANTE AND THE LOBSTER 15
an expression of acquiescence. The tone in which it was let fall made it quite impossible to know what was in the man's mind. It was a most ingenious riposte.
"I tell you" said Belacqua with great heat "this won't do at all. If you can't do better than this" he raised the hand that held the packet "I shall be obliged to go for my cheese elsewhere. Do you mark me? "
"Sir" said the grocer.
He came to the threshold of his store and watched the indignant customer hobble away. Belacqua had a spavined gait, his feet were in ruins, he suffered with them almost continuously. Even in the night they took no rest, or next to none. For then the cramps took over from the corns and hammer-toes, and carried on. So that he would press the fringes of his feet desperately against the end-rail of the bed or, better again, reach down with his hand and drag them up and back towards the instep. Skill and patience could disperse the pain, but there it was, complicating his night's rest.
The grocer, without closing his eyes or taking them off the receding figure, blew his nose in the skirt of his apron. Being a warm-hearted human man he felt sympathy and pity for this queer customer who always looked ill and dejected. But at the same time he was a small tradesman, don't forget that, with a small tradesman's sense of per- sonal dignity and what was what. Thruppence, he cast it up, thruppence worth of cheese per day, one and a tanner per week. No, he would fawn on no man for that, no, not on the best in the land. He had his pride.
Stumbling along by devious ways towards the lowly public where he was expected, in the sense that the entry of his grotesque person would provoke no comment or laughter, Belacqua gradually got the upper hand of his choler. Now that lunch was as good as a fait accompli, be-
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cause the incontinent bosthoons of his own class, itching to pass on a big idea or inflict an appointment, were sel- dom at large in this shabby quarter of the city, he was free to consider items two and three, the lobster and the lesson, in closer detail.
At a quarter to three he was due at the school. Say five to three. The public closed, the fishmonger reopened, at half-past two. Assuming then that his lousy old bitch of an aunt had given her order in good time that morning, with strict injunctions that it should be ready and waiting so that her blackguard boy should on no account be de- layed when he called for it first thing in the afternoon, it would be time enough if he left the public as it closed, he could remain on till the last moment. Benissimo. He had half-a-crown. That was two pints of draught anyway and perhaps a bottle to wind up with. Their bottled stout was particularly excellent and well up. And he would still be left with enough coppers to buy a Herald and take a tram if he felt tired or was pinched for time. Always assuming, of course, that the lobster was all ready to be handed over. God damn these tradesmen, he thought, you can never rely on them. He had not done an exercise but that did not matter. His Professoressa was so charming and remark- able. Signorina Adriana Ottolenghi! He did not believe it possible for a woman to be more intelligent or better in- formed than the little Ottolenghi. So he had set her on a pedestal in his mind, apart from other women. She had said last day that they would read II Cinque Maggio to- gether. But she would not mind if he told her, as he pro- posed to, in Italian, he would frame a shining phrase on his way from the public, that he would prefer to postpone the Cinque Maggio to another occasion. Manzoni was an old woman, Napoleon was another. Napoleone di mezza calzetta, fa Vamove a Giacominetta. Why did he think of
DANTE AND THE LOBSTER 17
Manzoni as an old woman? Why did he do him that in- justice? Pellico was another. They were all old maids, suffragettes. He must ask his Signorina where he could have received that impression, that the 19th century in Italy was full of old hens trying to cluck like Pindar. Car- ducci was another. Also about the spots on the moon. If she could not tell him there and then she would make it up, only too gladly, against the next time. Everything was all set now and in order. Bating, of course, the lobster, which had to remain an incalculable factor. He must just hope for the best. And expect the worst, he thought gaily, diving into the public, as usual.
Belacqua drew near to the school, quite happy, for all had gone swimmingly. The lunch had been a notable suc- cess, it would abide as a standard in his mind. Indeed he could not imagine its ever being superseded. And such a pale soapy piece of cheese to prove so strong! He must only conclude that he had been abusing himself all these years in relating the strength of cheese directly to its greenness. We live and learn, that was a true saying. Also his teeth and jaws had been in heaven, splinters of van- quished toast spraying forth at each gnash. It was like eating glass. His mouth burned and ached with the ex- ploit. Then the food had been further spiced by the intelli- gence, transmitted in a low tragic voice across the counter by Oliver the improver, that the Malahide murderer's peti- tion for mercy, signed by half the land, having been re-
jected, the man must swing at dawn in Mountjoy and noth- ing could save him. Ellis the hangman was even now on his way. Belacqua, tearing at the sandwich and swill- ing the precious stout, pondered on McCabe in his cell.
The lobster was ready after all, the man handed it over instanter, and with such a pleasant smile. Really a little bit
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of courtesy and goodwill went a long way in this world. A smile and a cheerful word from a common working-man and the face of the world was brightened. And it was so easy, a mere question of muscular control.
"Lepping" he said cheerfully, handing it over. "Lepping? " said Belacqua. What on earth was that? "Lepping fresh, sir" said the man, "fresh in this morn-
ing. "
Now Belacqua, on the analogy of mackerel and other fish
that he had heard described as lepping fresh when they had been taken but an hour or two previously, supposed the man to mean that the lobster had very recently been killed.
Signorina Adriana Ottolenghi was waiting in the little front room off the hall, which Belacqua was naturally in- clined to think of rather as the vestibule. That was her room, the Italian room. On the same side, but at the back, was the French room. God knows where the German room was. Who cared about the German room anyway?
He hung up his coat and hat, laid the long knobby brown-paper parcel on the hall-table, and went prestly in to the Ottolenghi.
After about half-an-hour of this and that obiter, she complimented him on his grasp of the language.
"You make rapid progress" she said in her ruined voice.
There subsisted as much of the Ottolenghi as might be expected to of the person of a lady of a certain age who had found being young and beautiful and pure more of a bore than anything else.
Belacqua, dissembling his great pleasure, laid open the moon enigma.
"Yes" she said "I know the passage. It is a famous teaser. Off-hand I cannot tell you, but I will look it up when I get home. "
DANTE AND THE LOBSTER 19
The sweet creature! She would look it up in her big Dante when she got home. What a woman!
"It occurred to me" she said "apropos of I don't know what, that you might do worse than make up Dante's rare movements of compassion in Hell. That used to be" her past tenses were always sorrowful "a favourite question. "
He assumed an expression of profundity.
"In that connexion" he said "I recall one superb pun anyway:
'qui vive la pietd quando e ben morta
She said nothing.
"Is it not a great phrase? " he gushed.
She said nothing.
"Now" he said like a fool "I wonder how you could
translate that? "
Still she said nothing. Then:
"Do you think" she murmured "it is absolutely neces-
sary to translate it? "
Sounds as of conflict were borne in from the hall. Then
silence. A knuckle tambourined on the door, it flew open and lo it was Mile Glain, the French instructress, clutch- ing her cat, her eyes out on stalks, in a state of the great- est agitation.
"Oh" she gasped "forgive me. I intrude, but what was in the bag? "
"The bag? " said the Ottolenghi.
Mile Glain took a French step forward.
"The parcel" she buried her face in the cat "the parcel
in the hall. "
Belacqua spoke up composedly. "Mine" he said, "a fish. "
. He did not know the French for lobster. Fish would do very well. Fish had been good enough for Jesus Christ,
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Son of God, Saviour. It was good enough for Mile Glain. "Oh" said Mile Glain, inexpressibly relieved, "I caught him in the nick of time. " She administered a tap to the
cat. "He would have tore it to flitters. "
Belacqua began to feel a little anxious.
"Did he actually get at it? " he said.
"No no" said Mile Glain "I caught him just in time.
But I did not know" with a blue-stocking snigger "what it might be, so I thought I had better come and ask. "
Base prying bitch.
The Ottolenghi was faintly amused.
"Puisqu'il n'y a pas de mal fatigue and elegance.
. .
. " she said with great
"Heureusement" it was clear at once that Mile Glain was devout "heureusement. "
Chastening the cat with little skelps she took herself off. The grey hairs of her maidenhead screamed at Belac- qua. A devout, virginal blue-stocking, honing after a penny's worth of scandal.
"Where were we? " said Belacqua.
But Neapolitan patience has its limits.
"Where are we ever? " cried the Ottolenghi "where we
were, as we were. "
Belacqua drew near to the house of his aunt. Let us call it Winter, that dusk may fall now and a moon rise. At the corner of the street a horse was down and a man sat on its head. I know, thought Belacqua, that that is considered the right thing to do. But why? A lamplighter flew by on his bike, tilting with his pole at the standards, jousting a little yellow light into the evening. A poorly dressed couple stood in the bay of a pretentious gateway, she sagging against the railings, her head lowered, he
-
DANTE AND THE LOBSTER 21
standing facing her. He stood up close to her, his hands dangled by his sides. Where we were, thought Belacqua, as we were. He walked on gripping his parcel. Why not piety and pity both, even down below? Why not mercy and Godliness together? A little mercy in the stress of sacrifice, a little mercy to rejoice against judgment. He thought of Jonah and the gourd and the pity of a jealous God on Nineveh. And poor McCabe, he would get it in the neck at dawn. What was he doing now, how was he feeling? He would relish one more meal, one more night.
His aunt was in the garden, tending whatever flowers die at that time of year. She embraced him and together they went down into the bowels of the earth, into the kitchen in the basement. She took the parcel and undid it and abruptly the lobster was on the table, on the oil- cloth, discovered.
"They assured me it was fresh" said Belacqua.
Suddenly he saw the creature move, this neuter crea- ture. Definitely it changed its position. His hand flew to his mouth.
"Christ! " he said "it's alive. "
His aunt looked at the lobster. It moved again. It made a faint nervous act of life on the oilcloth. They stood above it, looking down on it, exposed cruciform on the oilcloth. It shuddered again. Belacqua felt he would be sick.
"My God" he whined "it's alive, what'll we do? "
The aunt simply had to laugh. She bustled off to the pantry to fetch her smart apron, leaving him goggling down at the lobster, and came back with it on and her sleeves rolled up, all business.
"Well" she said "it is to be hoped so, indeed. "
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"All this time" muttered Belacqua. Then, suddenly aware of her hideous equipment: "What are you going to do? " he cried.
"Boil the beast" she said, "what else? "
"But it's not dead" protested Belacqua "you cant boil it like that. "
She looked at him in astonishment. Had he taken leave of his senses?
"Have sense" she said sharply, "lobsters are always boiled alive. They must be. " She caught up the lobster and laid it on its back. It trembled. "They feel nothing" she said.
In the depths of the sea it had crept into the cruel pot. For hours, in the midst of its enemies, it had breathed secretly. It had survived the Frenchwoman's cat and his witless clutch. Now it was going alive into scalding water. It had to. Take into the air my quiet breath.
Belacqua looked at the old parchment of her face, grey in the dim kitchen.
"You make a fuss" she said angrily "and upset me and then lash into it for your dinner. "
She lifted the lobster clear of the table. It had about thirty seconds to live.
Well, thought Belacqua, it's a quick death, God help us all. ^
It is not.
Fingal
1he last girl he went with, before a memorable fit of laughing incapacitated him from gallantry for some time, was pretty, hot and witty, in that order. So one fine Spring morning he brought her out into the country, to the Hill of Feltrim in the country. They turned east off the road from Dublin to Malahide short of the Castle woods and soon it came into view, not much more than a burrow, the ruin of a mill on the top, choked lairs of furze and brambles passim on its gentle slopes. It was a landmark for miles around on account of the high ruin. The Hill of the Wolves.
They had not been very long on the top before he began to feel a very sad animal indeed. But she was to all appearance in high spirits, enjoying the warm sun and the prospect.
"The Dublin mountains" she said "don't they look lovely, so dreamy. "
Now Belacqua was looking intently in the opposite direction, across the estuary.
"It's the east wind" he said.
She began to admire this and that, the ridge of Lam- bay Island rising out of the brown woods of the Castle, Ireland's Eye like a shark, and the ridiculous little hills far away to the north, what were they?
"The Naul" said Belacqua. "Is it possible you didn't 23
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know the Naul? " This in the shocked tone of the travelled spinster: "You don't say you were in Milan (to rime with villain) and never saw the Cena? " "Can it be possible that you passed through Chambery and never called on Mme de Warens? "
"North Dublin" she said "I don't know at all. So flat and dull, all roads leading to Drogheda. "
"Fingal dull! " he said. "Winnie you astonish me. "
They considered Fingal for a time together in silence. Its coast eaten away with creeks and marshes, tesserae of small fields, patches of wood springing up like a weed, the line of hills too low to close the view.
"When it's a magic land" he sighed "like Saone-et- Loire. "
"That means nothing to me" said Winnie.
"Oh yes" he said, "bons vins et Lamartine, a champaign land for the sad and serious, not a bloody little toy Kin- dergarten like Wicklow. "
You make great play with your short stay abroad, thought Winnie.
"You and your sad and serious" she said. "Will you never come off it? "
"Well" he said "I'll give you Alphonse. ,
She replied that he could keep him. Things were be- ginning to blow up nasty.
"What's that on your face? " she said sharply.
"Impetigo" said Belacqua. He had felt it coming with a terrible itch in the night and in the morning it was there. Soon it would be a scab.
"And you kiss me" she exclaimed "with that on your face. "
"I forgot" he said. "I get so excited you know. "
She spittled on her handkerchief and wiped her mouth.
Belacqua lay humbly beside her, expecting her to get up and leave him. But instead she said:
"What is it anyway? What does it come from? " "Dirt" said Belacqua, "you see it on slum children. " A long awkward silence followed these words.
"Don't pick it darling" she said unexpectedly at last,
"you'll make it worse. "
This came to Belacqua like a drink of water to drink
in a dungeon. Her goodwill must have meant something to him. He returned to Fingal to cover his confusion.
"I often come to this hill" he said "to have a view of Fingal, and each time I see it more as a back-land, a land of sanctuary, a land that you don't have to dress up to, that you can walk on in a lounge suit, smoking a cigar. " What a geyser, she thought. "And where much has been suffered in secret, especially by women. "
"This is all a dream" she said. "I see nothing but three acres and cows. You can't have Cincinnatus without a furrow. "
Now it was she who was sulky and he who was happy.
"Oh Winnie" he made a vague clutch at her sincerities, for she was all anyway on the grass, "you look very Ro-
man this minute. "
"He loves me" she said, in earnest jest.
"Only pout" he begged, "be Roman, and we'll go on
across the estuary. "
? " . .
a contract? "
"No need" she said.
He was as wax in her hands, she twisted him this way
and that. But now their moods were in accordance, things
"And then.
And then! Winnie take thought!
"I see" he said "you take thought. Shall we execute
FINGAL 25
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were somehow very pleasant all of a sudden. She gazed long at the area of contention and he willed her not to speak, to remain there with her grave face, a quiet puella in a blurred world. But she spoke (who shall silence them, at last? ), saying that she saw nothing but the grey fields of serfs and the ramparts of ex-favourites. Saw! They were all the same when it came to the pinch clods. If she closed her eyes she might see something. He would drop the subject, he would not try to communi- cate Fingal, he would lock it up in his mind. So much the better.
"Look" he pointed.
She looked, blinking for the focus.
"The big red building" he said "across the water, with
the towers. "
At last she thought she saw what he meant.
"Far away" she said "with the round tower? "
"Do you know what that is" he said "because my
heart's right there. "
Well, she thought, you lay your cards on the table. "No" she said, "it looks like a bread factory to me. " "The Portrane Lunatic Asylum" he said.
"Oh" she said "I know a doctor there. "
Thus, she having a friend, he his heart, in Portrane,
they agreed to make for there.
They followed the estuary all the way round, admiring
the theories of swans and the coots, over the dunes and past the Martello tower, so that they came on Portrane from the south and the sea instead of like a vehicle by the railway bridge and the horrible red chapel of Dona- bate. The place was as full of towers as Dun Laoghaire of steeples: two Martello, the red ones of the asylum, a water-tower and the round. Trespassing unawares, for the
notice-board was further on towards the coastguard sta- tion, they climbed the rising ground to this latter. They followed the grass margin of a ploughed field till they came to where a bicycle was lying, half hidden in the rank grass. Belacqua, who could on no account resist a bicycle, thought what an extraordinary place to come across one. The owner was out in the field, scarifying the dry furrows with a fork.
"Is this right for the tower? '' cried Belacqua. The man turned his head.
"Can we get up to the tower? " cried Belacqua. The man straightened up and pointed.
"Fire ahead" he said.
"Over the wall? " cried Belacqua. There was no need for him to shout. A conversational tone would have been heard across the quiet field. But he was so anxious to make himself clear, he so dreaded the thought of having to repeat himself, that he not merely raised his voice, but put on a flat accent that astonished Winnie.
"Don't be an eejit" she said, "if it's straight on it's over the wall. "
But the man seemed pleased that the wall had been mentioned, or perhaps he was just glad of an opportunity to leave his work, for he dropped his fork and came lum- bering over to where they were standing. There was noth- ing at all noteworthy about his appearance. He said that their way lay straight ahead, yes, over the wall, and then the tower was on top of the field, or else they could go back till they came to the road and go along it till they came to the Banks and follow up the Banks. The Banks? Was this fellow one of the more harmless luna- tics? Belacqua asked was the tower an old one, as though it required a Dr Petrie to see that it was not. The man
FINGAL 27
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said it had been built for relief in the year of the Fam- ine, so he had heard, by a Mrs Somebody whose name he misremembered in honour of her husband.
"Well Winnie" said Belacqua, "over the wall or follow up the Banks? "
"There's a rare view of Lambay from the top" said the man.
Winnie was in favour of the wall, she thought that it would be more direct now that they had come so far. The man began to work this out. Belacqua had no one but himself to blame if they never got away from this machine.
"But I would like to see the Banks" he said.
"If we went on now" said Winnie "now that we have come so far, and followed the Banks down, how would that be? "
They agreed, Belacqua and the man, that it needed a woman to think these things out. Suddenly there was a tie between them.
The towerHbegan well; that was the funeral meats. But from the door up it was all relief and no honour; that was the marriage tables.
They had not been long on the top before Belacqua was a sad animal again.
